Vocabulaire:

1. Barca – A town in Lydia, N. Africa. The 'undermining alarm' tactic described by Shizuru is related by the writer Aeneas Tacticus, who alleged its use there.

2. Demetrius – Specifically Demetrius I of the Antigonids, also dubbed Demetrius Poliorcetes ("Demetrius the Besieger"). This title was bestowed on him in recognition of his titanic efforts to take Rhodes by siege. He ultimately failed, but some of his inventions for that venture gained him lasting fame. The best example is his Helepolis, the biggest siege tower in history. Some accounts claim that when the siege of Rhodes was abandoned and the Helepolis left behind, some of the materials taken from its deconstruction were used to erect the Colossus of Rhodes—one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

3. Curia (L.) – Specifically the Curia Hostilia, the Senate's headquarters in Ancient Rome.

4. impluvium (L.) (n.) – A sort of cistern that appears as a shallow pool in Ancient Roman domiciles. It was often in the atrium and employed for collection of rainwater (for household usage). While it could have drain holes, these were usually part of the cistern itself instead of located at a distance from it that required a canal.

5. scutum (L.) (n.) – The standard shield for an ancient legionary. As it was made partly of plywood, legionaries were obliged to shield it from moisture/the sun by means of a leather cover. This cover was only used outside of battle or on marches where there was zero expectation of running into an enemy.

Inter Nos II: Inde ira et lacrimae

When Shizuru received the next news of interest, it came from an ally's lips instead of a legatal letter.

"Understand that I get this from a druid," Queen Azula—of Firens, no longer the Empire—cautioned her. "It's true the druids have rivalries among their septs, but they're still of one family. The trust I accord a Firensian druid would just barely set him apart from a Gannian one."

She looked a little less careworn these days, Shizuru thought, studying the older woman. Yet Azula now had more duties to worry her than ever before. King Entei's daughter seemed to have found her metier in her new role, which was to rule Gorgo according to Firens's and Hime's interests. Not an easy task and one Shizuru had wondered if the hugely-weary-seeming woman could handle. Now here was the same creature looking more instead of less energised.

"But it still sets him apart?" Shizuru asked.

"It does, despite that." No hesitation. "I don't think I'm merely being captious in putting down the Gannian druids here, but that's for you to judge."

Shizuru asked her to explain.

"The druids of the Ganni dominate the druidic brotherhood. They control all the important shrines in the faith and the Sacred Forest, the Ruviccan, is in their territory."

"Along with the centre of druidic training, Tasgetia. I know."

"The Firensian druids might be hoping to displace the Ganni from that ascendancy," Azula suggested. "Allying themselves with the new regime would make more sense than continuing to cleave to the old empire. My druid-averse husband would be scant help for their aims—his now-likely-heir, Calchis, even less. That prince belongs to the Gannian druids. They raised him, I told you before."

"You did."

"So the imperial side has never been a very cosy one for the druids from our lands. Nowadays, there's also the extreme awkwardness of their origins speaking against them."

"Yes, your secession must have cast a bad light on all Firensians where your husband is concerned."

"Part of our druid's news is that every Firensian in the king's camp was beheaded."

Shizuru winced. "My condolences."

At this two dark brows lifted.

"That's not necessary," Azula assured her. "Only a fool would have stayed within his reach once news of our defection broke. We Firensii don't encourage idiocy, so I wouldn't count those executions as losses for Firens."

Shizuru's mouth quirked at the assessment.

"I understand the context," she prompted, wanting to get on to the other news from the druid who had just ridden into Gorgo.

The queen acquiesced.

"There's a lot of activity on the other side again," the woman offered in preamble. "He claims to have caught it while passing through the towns northwest, where my husband is now quartered. Fresh levies are being called up in that area and at a great rush."

"We have been seeing signs of that ourselves. The king is marching," Shizuru concluded, having expected no less.

"He is—but I have more. Our druid claims to know exactly where the king is going."

"My! The key word in this being 'exactly'?"

"Exactly."

No point in asking what that exact destination was: the man would doubtless tell her that himself when she interviewed him. What mattered more was whether or not Azula thought it reliable intelligence, so Shizuru asked this instead.

"Yes." A strong response. "But that doesn't mean that's all the information that matters, does it?"

"You think he might know more than he is telling?"

Here Obsidian's wife paused to think on her answer.

"I lean more to him knowing nothing else," was what she eventually decided. "Because if indeed we have someone feeding us information through him, it's likely they gave him no more than what he needed to convey. Whether he knows he conveys it to us for their purposes or does it ignorant of their intent, it would be safer for them. It's what he doesn't know that would matter."

Shizuru thought this good sense and asked to see him herself.

Their informant produced exactly the same answers for the Himean as he had for the queen. Yes, he was Firensian born and bred. Naturally, he thought a Firensian druid far superior to a Gannian one. Yes, he had been journeying home when he saw the king's agents. Of course he had it on good authority the king was going to take his army south very soon, hoping to separate the Himeans and their Firensian friends. Who was the good authority saying this? Another druid, a boyhood friend who had sheltered him during one night of his journey and hidden him from the king's executioners. This old acquaintance was now aide to the present chief of the druidic confraternity. Said chief was attached to the Prince Calchis's personal staff, so intelligence from people near him was generally to be believed.

"The question being," smiled Shizuru's legate, "if we're to be general in believing it."

Shizuru smiled too at this. "You think the idea has no merit, Toshi-han?"

"Moving that way would put his army in a pincer! He'd have Firens on one side and us on the other, wouldn't he?"

Her chair creaked as she got up to loom over the map he was facing. A finger tapped on a spot marked as Kereia.

"You assume there are only three players in the game," she told him. "It is not entirely stupid if he leaves a sizeable contingent of his forces around this place, for instance. The same if he can somehow organise simultaneous uprisings in the areas we already control. Then there is the other thing..."

"The other thing?"

"The one lurking just outside our theatre of conflict."

Her finger drifted, scraping over the parchment without a sound. It fell on a spot west of that marked as the Western Frontier.

"We should not discount the possibility that Obsidian is expecting something from the Nervii. Surely they have not failed to notice the war keeping the empire busy. Why they have not chosen to take advantage of it thus far, we cannot know. But if Obsidian does take the route that druid claimed, it might finally rouse their opportunistic instinct."

"The Nervii." Toshi's eyes were wide, as what she pointed out had not occurred to him. "Why didn't I think of it? Have you been waiting for something from them all this time, Fujino-san?"

"More or less. More, now that Firens has defected to us."

It took only a second for him to apprehend the logic behind her suspicion. Now that Firens and presumably most of the Western Frontier's warlords had broken from the empire, the border Nervii could say that the truce between the realms no longer applied to those lands. After all, they were no longer part of the Mentulaean realm defined by the original signatories in that treaty.

"It would only be a matter of time before those people decide to lend Obsidian aid against Firens. In an unofficial capacity, so to speak."

"Yes, I see that," Toshi breathed, still calculating the added difficulties such an eventuality could yield. "And yes, I don't know why I thought he would immediately take all of his army. He could and would easily leave another behind for such a march, wouldn't he? He has two imperial armies up there now, after all. Why would he reduce it to just one?"

"Actually, he might." She cocked her head at him. "I only think he shall not leave another 'imperial army', such as they use the term here."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that he is very likely going to combine the two remaining, then leave a small part of one of them behind. That rear force will look like an afterthought compared to the one he shall be taking, I imagine. Were I he, I would split my forces into more than two forces to give me better coverage. But really, Toshi-han. Can you see that coming from this enemy?"

The pleasant face bloomed into a crinkly smile.

"No, I can't," he admitted. "So if he leaves a force behind, it would be a much littler one."

"I would stake my fortune on it. I daresay he would actually prefer to go without leaving behind anyone at all. But even the self-styled King of Kings cannot always bend reality to his wishes. It is impossible for him to bring his whole force where he goes right now. He could never feed it, you see."

"That's true, despite the claims of fresh levies of food. Still, should we make any moves yet?"

The cut-ruby eyes regarded him curiously.

"Why?" She sounded mildly astonished. "We know not whether this is true or false. Or when he shall march if at all."

He looked sheepish, fresh lines carving into his face as he pulled it into a smile-cum-grimace.

"I just thought you would want to take action now either way, Fujino-san," he explained. "Move to a better location to interrupt him or strike before he gets more men through his levy. Something like that."

Shizuru turned an amused look to him.

"Indeed?" she said. "No, much though I do prefer to act sooner instead of later. As it is, Toshi-han, the King of Kings and I share a weakness. Neither of us can bend reality to our preferences so easily."

He smiled back, privately thinking that she had a knack of compelling reality's flexibility despite what she said.

"There are other, more immediate concerns and objections," she was saying. "For instance, supplies are strained for us too, so there is little enough leeway for gambling."

He conceded that.

"Then there is the fact that our foes are great tortoises. If we send contingents to intercept them now, our assets might have pickled by the time they finally arrive."

That got him to chuckle.

"And finally..." she started.

"Finally?"

"All of this is arrant conjecture." She clapped him on the back with easy affection. "There is no sense in investing ourselves in something still so uncertain, you realise."

His shoulders sagged ever so slightly.

"That's true," he allowed, before casting her a doubtful look from the corner of an eye. "But we're not going to do absolutely nothing, I'm guessing?"

"Careful the Senate's rhetoricians do not hear you, Toshi-han," she teased. "Yes, we can afford just a little something. Send scouts to take up positions along every path from the vicinity of Kereia to the west and the south. Use ones who can blend in and load them with everything they might need for speedy transit in case of emergency. Money, passes where necessary, and two horses always for each man."

"Should I inform any of the other legates?"

"No. The only one who needs to be told right now is Kenji-han in Firens, but I shall do that myself."

He waited but she ventured no more. He took this to mean she was not going to make that particular legate budge from his present location either.

"What I'd like to know is what it's all about," he mused, looking over the map again for the alleged route their enemy would take. "If we believe someone really did put this druid up to it—and I think we both believe that—then who was it and why did they send us that information? Are they people looking to make friends or more enemies looking to gull us?"

She gave him a look that he felt before seeing it. Yet another odd question, the look seemed to say.

"Why should we care about that?" the slightly lilting voice asked. "Their intentions are insignificant because this information is practically insignificant. We already knew of renewed activity over there before this druid arrived. I do not doubt we would have known shortly too once our foe started a march, even had we not been informed of these plans. Was it to warn us or to gull us that our informant was sent, you ask. It matters not because we are neither warned nor gulled. What actions we do take are ones we would have taken presently, even without this specific prompt. Later on this druid's tale may simply be a very minor aid or a very weak deception. A pebble, but not a boulder. Not even a stepping stone."

She smiled at him kindly as he thought on that.

"Never allow things like this to fill your eyes, Toshi-han," she cautioned, stifling a yawn with one hand. "You end up playing into someone else's game if there is indeed someone else. Note things, by all means. But do not overthink them."

She was right that he might be overthinking it, he considered while enforcing the orders she gave. But he also felt that her relaxed attitude was a privilege exclusive to her rare ilk. Another general would be more troubled by the idea of a march cutting him off from two key legions and his allies. Shizuru Fujino, Toshi thought, could and would yawn instead. But that was because Shizuru Fujino's legions were always willing to march and her centurions always there to prepare them for any destination. Her scouts were among the most efficient he had seen and her veteran officers among the most loyal.

Most importantly of all, her mind was a veritable wonder.

These were not things the enemy understood just yet, even if it had begun to suspect the efficiency of the military machine it faced. Many things in the war might have changed were this otherwise. For instance, had the Mentulaeans truly understood the quality of this foe, a certain warrior-prince would not have sent a druid with news to lay at Queen Azula's feet.

Calchis informed the Himeans of his father's march to ensure their readiness for it. That he did not count this as aiding the enemy was because they would not be facing him. He was excluded from his father's march, ordered to command elsewhere with his own troops. These were now only a fraction of what they had been before his reunion with the king. As Shizuru had suggested to her legate, Obsidian would be leaving a small force behind: it was made of the skimpy remainder of Calchis's old army after it had been cannibalised to enlarge his father's.

In spite of this attenuation to his forces, the prince was untroubled at the moment. It was simply part of the plan, which was what mattered, even more than his army. Even the scheme to cut off Firens from Hime was part of the plan Calchis was authoring. Yet everyone in the know—including the king and Calchis—believed that particular idea to be the king's.

Well, the king did for the most part. Calchis believed it not at all, in reality. In spite of that he was the most assiduous in convincing people otherwise and saying the king had thought of it. That he could even do such a thing was thanks to his sister, whose courtly experience had guided him through it.

"The trick is to lead Father into saying at least one handy word each time he speaks," Faris had instructed. "That's all you need. One word you can seize and pretend to take as a hint."

Calchis had asked, "A hint of what?"

"Of his superior intellect's machinations, of course, which he's trying to get you to see. What has to happen is that instead of telling you what he's thinking outright, he's giving you clues to them. You shall be pretending that he's leading you to his thoughts, like a teacher who doesn't want to just spoonfeed his student. Like a father teaching his son, or a master guiding an apprentice. The idea is to voice your thoughts as though they're your interpretations of his hints and then praise him for what he's led you to realise."

"Sounds too contrived for me. A great general he isn't, Faris, but he's not entirely stupid. He'll think me taking him for a turn, like some of the courtiers he just had beheaded last week. He'll be even more suspicious of people right now. The Court's gone topsy-turvy again!"

Faris's smile had borne the complacency of an ironclad presence in the aforementioned council.

"It's true that he may suspect it," had been her response. "But if you do this right, he'll not suspect it as much. Knowing his ego, that'll lead to him suspecting it not at all, eventually. But let's talk first about why you can pull this off, as I see you're worried about it. You know you've spent barely any time as a courtier, Calchis? What time you have spent in Court has been spent mute yet compliant. You're considered a political lightweight in that regard, even if you aren't one militarily. I've contributed to that by regaling whomever I can with anecdotes of your moronic sincerity and obedience to the throne—peppered with the occasional true story of your stupider doings, for verisimilitude's sake."

"Hah! You're saying he'll think me too slow and too unsophisticated to mean much behind it if I'm the one doing this."

"Correct. He doesn't know you as a political entity. None of them do! So be the dunce they despise, Brother, as it's the only way to do this and live through it. He must always be the genius, and you a mere spokesman for the ideas he's producing."

"I'll be shockingly grateful for their production," he had smirked, already knowing what to say.

So when his father said "We will break our foes now", he loudly admired the idea of breaking apart their enemies. Such a move would weaken them and let the empire deal with them separately, he observed, which was something only a man of his father's great intelligence could possibly come up with.

When his father said "Your army will give us the size and numbers", he gasped at the enlightenment of using military bulk wisely. Taking the vast majority of the troops and leaving only a small skeleton behind would give the king the power he needed to overwhelm all before him, even as the smaller force helped protect his rear in case of emergency.

And finally, when his father said "Someone less important shall command the troops to be left", he nearly wept with amazement, prostrating himself before the throne's wisdom and charity. His gratitude knew no bounds for being allowed to serve his king thus, he claimed: there could be no greater glory for him than to protect the king's rear. At the same time, he also professed it more than meet that he should not take part in the southwest march. Said march should rightly reap glory for the king alone, who would command it.

"At least, that's what we want him to think," Calchis told his sister as they held their discussions in yet another dark and close room. "But the truth is, it won't earn him the glory he thinks it will. I'll do everything I can to make sure it doesn't, though I don't need to do a lot at this stage. I'll just withhold my best men from him and send a warning to the Himeans about what he's planning. That way they won't be caught unawares... although I do disbelieve they will given how capable they've proven thus far."

"We can leak information somehow. I'll talk to Hiempnos."

The prince nodded and continued talking.

"Also, talk to all our people here, Faris—find all the Ganni unquestionably loyal to us instead of him. Have them hide away as many of their resources as they can so he can't commandeer them for his baggage train. The same for their fighting fit. Give 'em all bandages and red dye and say they've disabling injuries! Or say there's illness going 'round and have them go about weaving in their tracks. Have them hide their warriors away and claim them dead if they have to, so long as they escape his press-gangs."

"Clever!" she said appreciatively. She knew it was so the Gannian warriors would get saved for his levies once the king had marched away.

"I see what you're planning," she added. "But do you really think it's enough to end him?"

"It's more than enough," Calchis responded with eyes blazing. The enormous energies within his person were tumbling about, all astir. Only the import of secrecy mastered the urge to shout that was welling up within him.

"Yet this stratagem to separate Firens and Hime does make some sense," his sister tried again.

"Of course it does. It's why he went for it. But it's... a conditional sense, Sister, and one he can't fulfil. Were I the one implementing it, it might even lead to victory. But he's the one doing it so he won't do everything that needs to be done for it to go that way."

"I suppose I'm concerned someone else might see that, Calchis."

The princess made a steeple of her hands and contemplated her own objection.

"He'll be commanding some of our oldest, most experienced generals on this march," she elucidated. "Not to mention all of his advisers and the totality of the Court—with my exception, given a timely illness that I can see in my future. Put all those minds together and they might be enough to counteract his failings. They might turn this into something fabulous yet by counselling him into what 'needs to be done', is what I fear."

"They won't, Faris. Trust me."

He bounded over, grabbing the smaller hands and pressing them with resolve. Even in his excitement, though, he was mindful not to crush them because of his strength.

"I know war," he declared hoarsely. "I know war! What's more, I know him even if he doesn't know me. Yes, he could have a chance with the scheme we've dreamt up for him. I admit it. That chance exists. He even has enough forces now to make a good sally with the right movements and decisions. But like I said, he won't realise any of those. He can't because they go against his nature."

He gave her a grin of confidence and she reflected it on instinct. There was an answering confidence in her grin too, yet he could see it was a confidence in him and not in his scheme. He could see her still waiting, unwilling to release her doubt until he gave her reasonable cause to do it.

It was expected; it did not sting him.

She always belonged to Esus, he thought fondly as he looked upon his sibling. Faris belonged to a god with an affinity for air so her mind and spirit ruled her being. Just as he belonged to Taranis, the lord who preferred passion and flame. No wonder they made a good team: air and fire mixed beautifully.

"He won't split up his army because he won't command anything that can't swarm over an enemy. You know this. You know he won't listen to anyone who so much as suggests it because he's also a bully to the bone. Bullies only understand what they want and how to overwhelm others to get it. They're impatient as children drooling over a sticky treat. That's what he thinks he's headed for, Faris. A great, big sticky treat! He thinks he can just waddle along as a result and let the enemy try to bash itself on him. Because he's so sure nothing can take down an army that big. Isn't that just like him? To think all he needs to do is be big!"

They traded smiles, both being familiar with the juvenile side of their sire's character.

"That big army won't last long, even if it does win something. He might get a piece of his treat at first. A battle or two if he's lucky. It won't change the outcome, you see. He's going to get dragged down by his ineptitude and that army's going to trip over itself, which will be the bully's ending."

"If he doesn't manage to run away before someone kills or captures him."

"Aye, there's the beauty of it. They don't even need to kill him, do they? They just need to show him up for the incompetent he is. After which all those still loyal to the empire will look for a better leader on which to pin their hopes for dealing with these invaders."

"Ah. Now I see."

"So what do you think of our chances?"

Her smile said she liked them a great deal.

"Even if we will lose many of the imperial soldiers this way," she cautioned, because that was her role: to caution him. "As well as most of the veteran imperial officers and arms, which is something of a pity. He'll take them along with him, you know, and won't leave you with much when he leaves."

"I don't expect anything else." Calchis broke into hearty laughter. "But I don't care. Let him! That way, all of the forces loyal to him will share his destruction. I want new blood, Faris. You need new blood to make a new empire. There will be new imperial soldiers, so why not new officers? There are hundreds, even thousands of other potential officers around us now. Just as courageous, just as experienced! They work for the nobles instead, for the small aristocrats, for the old feudal powers running their territories under our sanction. We won't run out of men to turn into imperial officers even if that whole army of his ends up dead. I'll build my own army with fresh men, ones levied from the Houses and tribes eager to side with us and ones who'll see me as the first king they've officially belonged to. It will be a better army than the old ones, I promise you... and it will be the one to thrash the Himeans when all this is over finished!"

A fortnight after the Firensian druid, reports began of a gigantic army in the northwest. It was supposedly the main imperial one, now rolling out of Kereia and geared up for conflict. Further reports said it was picking its ponderous way south and pointing its snout where the druidic informant had said it would after all.

Shizuru summoned the senior legate and told her everything.

"Do you want the Third?" asked that worthy, snapped to attention by the words "gigantic" and "army".

"No, I need you to retain command of it." Shizuru smiled breezily. "I am summoning the Eighth, Tenth, and Fourteenth already. Actually, I sent for the Fourteenth a while ago. It should be on its way here as we speak."

She took on a pensive look, but far from a troubled one.

"Do you not think Keigo Kurauchi-han has been proving quite capable?" she said suddenly. She was speaking of the legate leading the Fourteenth, whose stoutly Traditionalist brother had not been ashamed to ask Shizuru for a post on behalf of his sibling. "I confess I am a little astonished. He had only decent recommendations besides his brother's, so I did not really expect a lot of him."

"Yes, well. But about Obsidian—you shall go after him?" Shizuma persisted, wondering at her cousin's airy comportment. They were talking about a gigantic army here!

But "Who knows?" was all the answer she got, followed by a commander going off to talk to one of the lesser officers about something trifling. It was an unorthodox dismissal and not altogether polite, not to mention handed out by someone who had once been babysat by the one receiving it. Little wonder the volatile senior legate was near explosion when a touch stalled the blast she was raring to unleash.

"Ave," said the owner of the hand on her arm. "I am pleased to see you again, Shizuma."

Shizuma cursed her weakness for pretty young women, especially ones with sparkling looks of greeting. Against her will her scowl trembled. It finally fell away when two pink lips curved shyly.

Yet her irritation with her cousin was not so easily scotched on the inside, so her first words were less than charming.

"You're all oddly business-as-usual here despite the news." Her tone made it plain that it was an accusation as well as a critique. "Does she realise half your natives have barricaded themselves in their homes and the other half taken to furiously debating whether or not to decamp?"

"Yes."

"Yet still oddly business-as-usual."

"Yes."

Shizuma's back bent afterwards from the force of her sigh.

"You know she thinks I came here at her summons but I really came to see you?" she eventually said to the only person in the room apparently still willing to give her serious attention.

The Otomeian coloured as she had hoped, but did not lose composure.

"I am complimented," Natsuki said. "You will walk with me?"

Shizuma was taken off-guard and showed it. More and more oddities in her cousin's offices today!

"It would be my greatest pleasure," she said, recovering her gallantry.

She took the offered hand, which she knew by now to carry scars aplenty. Conspicuously glossy patches and lines ornamented it in an embossed and chaotic relief. Yet the colour on those disfigurements was the same as on the unmarked skin, which was ice-white and without blemish.

"But shan't they miss you?" she asked. "I know that cur I call cousin shan't miss me!"

"No. Come."

They walked out of the stuffy room and its choking, acidically-paper-scented air. Their exit took them to a colonnaded hall bustling with Himeans and bright with noon sunshine.

The Otomeian guided them through that and many salutes and numerous turns. Shizuma barely recalled their convoluted path afterwards. The route took them to a wide courtyard that was as bright as the hall outside Shizuru's offices. However, unlike that hall, the courtyard was devoid of bustle.

Shizuma took time to survey the place to which her escort had brought her. It was old, to judge by the wear in the floors, which were paved with slate-blue and purplish flagstones. The space was also a perfect square, each side of it the same length. There was a small recess in the centre that repeated the shape and reminded her of a Himean impluvium. She did not think it served the same purpose: canals ran from each corner and into drain holes at the courtyard's edges.

Natsuki stopped their promenade by the recessed area in the middle. Shizuma saw that it held only a shallow and scummy layer of water.

"This," the Otomeian said, which word Shizuma took to encompass the whole square. "Where they held many executions."

Limpid eyes regarded the cistern.

"Beheadings," she expanded.

And that was all.

A darkly amused Shizuma processed the words. That explained the concentration of purplish flagstones by the cistern, which she supposed was where the heads and blood fell after the axe dropped. Shizuru's senior legate realised that it might explain the emptiness of the place too. Doubtless most of the locals associated it with a dark and headless nightmare.

"Have you been talking to the local executioner?" she asked.

Natsuki said she got her information from the Firensian queen.

"An upper-class local executioner, then," the Himean drawled back.

She ran a hand through spun-silver hair, wondering what had brought them to this place. She liked her cousin's lover—even fancied her quite a bit, to be honest—but the Otomeian was not really a model of comprehensibility. Sometimes she was easy enough to read, but at other times she reached a level of alienness that extended beyond her status as a foreigner. Shizuma for her part doubted she could resolve that without her cousin's help.

She supposed she could try the direct approach first.

"I am complimented too, Natsuki, to use the words you did earlier. This is the first time a girl has ever invited me to a walk that had a destination so grisly. I suppose you brought me here for a reason?"

"Spies."

The Otomeian said the word in a whisper, her natural register aiding the intended secrecy as well as gravity of the revelation.

"She asked that I tell you after you finished," she went on. "Somewhere safe."

Hard to stop the laugh. "This place is your idea of safe?"

"Hm." A spark of humour. "The beheaded neither speak nor listen."

"True, although it's hardly as though we could behead someone for eavesdropping on us right here."

Shizuma folded her arms and took another survey of what surrounded them. The nearest persons appeared to be slaves carrying jugs a good distance away, likely too far for eavesdropping. And she and Natsuki had been speaking Greek.

"She thinks Obsidian's spies are listening in on her own command room?" she asked, low-voiced too.

Natsuki asked if she thought it impossible.

"Of course it's possible," was her admission. "I suppose it's true too, in this place more than any other within the empire. Has anything happened to cause her to worry about spies? Aside from that episode of the Firensian druid-informant?"

The other's response was a denial.

"And you?"

"I?"

"Has anything happened to cause you to worry about spies?"

That put a twinkle in the green eyes. "You think me more alert on this than Shizuru?"

"I wouldn't know if I would word it thus," Shizuma admitted, dissecting her own reason. "Why did I say that? I merely imagine you've more experience with those than either of us, having been reared in a monarchy."

Natsuki actually grinned.

"But Hime," she retorted wickedly, "is six hundred monarchies masquerading as none."

"Brutal truth," the Otomeian's lover said later when Shizuma reported the opinion. "Although her choosing not to answer your other question really means she has seen nothing worthy of report. That is more or less how we feel about the spy issue, anyway. Highly probable but nothing so alarming yet that we cannot take easy precaution."

By which she meant having their talk in her private quarters, ostensibly away from prying eyes and ears.

Shizuma observed: "For this discussion you thought it better to be especially safe, evidently."

The other canted her head.

"I did not want anyone in the other camp getting the faintest inkling of what I shall do once I lead several of the legions out of this city."

The senior legate's eyes grew wide.

"So you are going to meet him after all!" Shizuma hissed.

"Yes, but not immediately," was the younger woman's response. "I am not about to oblige them with a direct confrontation from the get-go. I want to head up a bit first and possibly dog his tracks."

The shrewd Hanazono mind came to the fore: "You'll try to seize his supplies."

"Right you are," Shizuru said, winking at her cousin and friend. "If I know my Obsidian by now he shall be trailing a lot of baggage behind him. Getting all or even just part of it would be the idea. And who knows? I think I may take the legions on a romp through Comus too, just to remove another cog in the imperial machine. I hear it's one of the only two foundry towns really able to mass-produce the imperial army's falces. It takes a great deal of workmanship, most people do not realise, to get a piece of steel into the shape and sharpness of a Mentulaean falx."

Her expression changed into one of restrained displeasure.

"If there is a chance we can rid ourselves of those things, I shall take it," she added suddenly. "We may be able to get the upper hand when we hit them with ranged assaults or lock them up so tight they cannot swing the damned things about. It does not change the fact that those weapons often leave worse injuries than their swords when they do make contact. I am tired of seeing my men with shoulders and arms sliced like hams! Our only good fortune is that Hime has faced falces before. Otherwise the scutum would not have been redesigned and we would be seeing more casualties than we do now."

The fairer Himean said that was true, but then moved to warn her of something.

"One of your ideas comes with a share of risk," she submitted. "You'll be in deep Gannian territory if you go to Comus, Shizuru. Terribly loyal to the imperial powers, our people say."

"I know, but it shall not be all that distant from Firensian territory either. Yes, the Ganni shall be informing Obsidian of our movements as soon as we enter their turf. Or shall they be informing the Prince Calchis instead? Either way, either one of them—he shall never be anything but short of finding us unless I wish it. A big army packs a punch, I grant, but it is a very slow one. What matters it if he knows our position when he shall always be too sluggish to get there in time?"

"What of local resistance?"

"I shall deal with it, although I do not expect anything significant. All our information indicates that he has spent his time dragging new men in to further stiffen his army. Most of the Gannian warriors shall already be within his ranks, I think. Fewer militia forces to think about if so."

"You don't think he'll leave a rearguard force to look after that area?"

Shizuru explained her suspicions about that.

"I can deal with it if ever," she concluded. "I would be more worried about what I am leaving you to, actually. You will only have five legions left to hold our current territory, Cousin"

The senior legate thought about that. She knew that would not be the sum total of her resources. Besides those five now-veteran legions were in fact other forces she could draw on, such as the Otomeian auxiliaries and the militia called up from the provinces of Sosia and Argus.

That noted, she was still a Himean of Himeans—and possibly even more of one than her cousin in one way. To her, victory was still something won by proper Himean legions, helpful though she conceded auxiliaries were.

"We're expecting new recruits any day," she pointed out. "Shouldn't Taro-san be sending up more legionaries now from Outer Fuuka, Shizuru?"

"He sent a legion up already for Miyuki-han's camp. He says he should have another in a few weeks, he wrote to me, and he shall bring that one up himself. I arranged for more artillery to be brought up too. One can never have enough of those, in my opinion."

A pause before she added: "The new legionaries will be raw, of course."

Shizuma had been about to sip from her cup and now put it down with a look of disgust.

"Oh, of course," she echoed with distaste. "Much help those would be, Cousin."

"They can be with time."

"Two legions of raw recruits, for Jupiter's sake!"

"It cannot be helped—you know what is going on over there," Shizuru reminded the other woman. "We should be able to find opportunities for getting them up to speed in the coming months. We all have to start somewhere, do we not?"

As Shizuma knew she would likely be the one blooding these novices, her response was a dirty look. Shizuru smiled in apology and amusement.

"It is not as though you shall be entirely without help," the younger of the cousins ventured. "I imagine Miyuki-han shall do a fine job of drilling them even before you can blood them right."

That was a thought. The senior legate had a vision of five thousand pimply youths fainting on a drill field, a remorseless Miyuki yelling their ears off. How that comforted her!

"Miyuki shall definitely take care of them," she purred, at which her cousin looked amused again.

"Toshi-han also forwarded a letter to me from the King of Caledon," Shizuru disclosed. "I wrote to him advising that he tighten watch over their mountain passes and post some troops on fixed guard near them for the duration of the spring and summer."

Shizuma's eyes cleared, the vision of Miyuki torturing the recruits fading away.

"I see," she told her cousin. "You're worried some of the more adventurous Mentulaeans might get the idea of emulating your march through the massif."

"I do doubt it," the other shrugged. "But better to be safe."

"I agree. The last thing we need is for this war to bleed southwards. He assented?"

"More than that. His letter offered to send a contingent of spearmen over as added auxiliaries. I accepted, of course, although I did advise against sending too many of them."

"Worried about the food?"

"Among other things, although I did ask that they carry their own," Shizuru replied. "It is not as though I cadged those spearmen off him, after all. He offered, so he feeds, is how it goes. No, Cousin, I think my chief reason may be slightly less prosaic, at least in the sense of the prosaic being immediate."

The fire in her eyes banked lower as she spoke her next words.

"Caledon's continued existence was always for our own protection, not so? Their pliancy as allies was a great factor too, but it was really out of defensive self-interest that we pursued an alliance with them in the first place. This area, the Far North, has long been a wild place in Himean imaginations. The people on the other side of the Alps—the Mentulaeans before they all became Mentulaeans—were also constantly embroiled in some manner of tribal or clan conflict. The Caledonian Alps served as a physical barrier against that even back then. The Caledonian Kingdom added a further layer of defence. Both were meant to stop nasty northern powers that might have been otherwise tempted to go traipsing down to our lands."

Shizuma drained her cup as her cousin mused aloud.

"That's so," she said when the younger Himean was done. She was familiar too with the political history of their lands, so none of what her cousin had said was novel. She knew that it was only Shizuru's roundabout method of saying something else.

So she said: "Is your descant on this your way of saying you don't want to siphon too many forces out of Caledon for Hime's sake?"

Shizuru said yes.

"Remember that it also serves as a near source of auxiliary forces," she told Shizuma. "Caledon's auxiliary armies are the closest non-Fuukan ones for Hime. Especially considering the worsening piracy on Our Sea and what we know of the unrest in Asia right now, I would feel better with Caledon's forces staying at home. They can thus be nearer Hime if something comes in over the waters—an insurance policy, just in case."

"I can understand that."

The senior legate put down her goblet and smirked at the distortion of her face on its reflective side.

"You do realise," she jested, "that this talk of keeping the Caledonian barrier still tempts me to think you do not trust me to control our territory in your stead?"

"Well, do not give in to the temptation!" Shizuru laughed, before suddenly sobering. "Though I do have my fears over that, come to it. Not because of you, Shizuma, but because of what you have to do and what little I have to leave you with to do it. You may have the more difficult task between the two of us, in one way. Do you think my uprooting so many of the legions will precipitate movements like the one you narrowly aborted with the Carsinii?"

A tangle of silver hair was smoothed back as Shizuma pondered the question.

"Hard to say," was her answer. "Despite their moments of savagery many of the Mentulaean tribes are actually sophisticated, especially the Carsinii—sufficiently so to appreciate the reprehensibility of breaking a contract, which is what matters. There's also Fregum, which I think made clear how we view egregious breaches of our treaties."

She pursed her lips and made her conclusion.

"I think not at first, Shizuru. We shall have quiet at first. But later on? And even later on? The odds against peace mount the longer you and Obsidian stay on the field. Obsidian will have to go down quickly if we want no unrest at all."

"True."

"I am not about to wager on us getting unnaturally lucky in that respect, though."

"True again. You will get your own battles before I am finished, I think."

A pause as the two cousins sipped at their cups in silence, considering their respective tasks. It was the younger cousin who broke the silence.

"Can you handle it?" she said, which drew a smirk.

"Is a Himemiya blue-eyed?" Shizuma quipped.

It took time to get three legions up to Gorgo, but still less than it would for Mentulaean troops to do the same. Even the queen asked how long ago Shizuru had summoned them when Shohei showed with the Tenth and Eighth in less than a week. Then soon after that, Keigo Kurauchi led in a very jaunty Fourteenth. These had wintered at the southern citadel of Trogum, a secure place surrounded mainly by allied townships. Owing to this, the men and women of that legion had seen less action of late than the legions of the centre and north.

It was why Shizuru had chosen them in particular for the march she was about to undertake. It was bad generalship not to sate troops so long hungry for battle. The Fourteenth was also one of her original legions from the first northern campaign. In fact, of the four extant legions from then, three would be coming for the march on Obsidian and the lands of the Ganni.

The auxiliary dispositions she settled early with her cousin. She would be taking all of the horsed archers, some of the foot archers, and part of the light infantry. To these she added some of the horsed skirmishers and the entirety of her favourite horse division, the Lupines. As for auxiliary leadership she bequeathed the Princess Alyssa to her cousin along with the remaining auxiliary. She would have done the same with the other Otomeian princess if she could, but said other princess had a very strong preference to the contrary.

They argued the matter for hours until one gave an ultimatum.

"Leave me," threatened the Otomeian, "and I shall marry my cousin."

So that settled Shizuru's defeat nicely. She surrendered on a condition, however, which she supplied with a look that said she was wrestling an impulse to break something.

"Fine, come if you wish. But if an arrow so much as grazes you I shall wed you to your horse, you accursed wretch. One arrow! Do you hear me? You wouldn't be so distant a pair—a mule is half-horse, is it not?"

"Yet it is not a nag," the other uttered defiantly.

This twisted Shizuru on the first days of the march, left her feeling an abrasive mixture of sourness and adoration. That was not how she wanted to feel when she saw that beloved face, but there was no helping it. This was no march on an open road, as it had been when they had headed to Berentum. This was a sally into enemy lands, with myriad enemy forces that were still unknown quantities. It was so unnecessary to take this risk. Only, what choice had she been left?

The stupid girl would have done it. She would have married that woman Shizuma called "The Frozen Salt Lick" in a sophomoric tantrum. She would have abnegated all they together had on a single frustration of her selfishness. The stupid girl. The too-wily, too-stupid girl!

Despite her fury there was a part of her that said this could be a good thing. There had to be such a voice in her, she supposed, else she would never have agreed even with that ultimatum. There was still no safer place than by her side anyway, this voice said to her objections on the danger. There were wounds too on Natsuki that only this could cure, the same voice said further on the topic.

She wondered if the voice was the Creature Martial in her sympathising with another. But why wonder about that—what more did it matter? They were on the march already, she and the stupid girl herself!

"Do not think," she said one evening, draped over the other's body, "that I have forgiven this."

The sigh cooled the side of her neck.

"I know."

Moments after, the elegiac voice appended: "But you will?"

She considered lying, but disliked being so petty.

"I will," she admitted. "Eventually."

It was fortunate there was much generalling to keep her busy. She had to keep the army trudging an evasive course, speeding west and north as the foe dragged its ponderous bulk towards the east and south. Shizuru erred on excess with her scouting parties for this march, intent that she should not blunder into the imperial host at too early a stage. What she intended to find first, as she had told her cousin, was said host's baggage so that the men could eat. Food was the desideratum still.

The Mentulaeans followed standard army practice by having their supplies and noncombatants pull after the soldiers. They were also standard in using oxen for their carts, which carried not only army necessities but also the many trappings required of a royal entourage in transit. There were many such carts with very heavy loads, and there were whole herds of oxen yoked into pulling them.

Oxen are very well equipped for dragging a lot of weight, of course, but not for doing it at speed. Even heavily armoured men will outmarch an ox wagon in a few paces. This meant that the Mentulaean baggage typically fell very far behind of the soldiers. They could be separated by sufficient distance to mean days passed between the army's crossing a marker and the baggage doing the same.

Now what Shizuru was hunting was a prodigious baggage train because it belonged to a prodigious army. It meant two things that she hoped to use to her advantage. First, it would be rolling very far behind the main force given its weight. Second, its guard would likely be either stretched along its length or limited to closely watching just one end of it. She rather doubted Obsidian would leave a full army just for the baggage, even with its importance. Even if he did, she suspected it would be smaller than the five-legion one she carried.

She had the measure of her man and knew he considered himself the most important thing in the army. Never mind the fact that he himself had a vested interest in the army's supplies: what came first and would need the most protection was his person.

That said, she still worked her scouts heavily as she progressed. If she knew anything of war, it was that naught was certain until it had happened.

So the search dragged on, the careful feeling about in the territory in search of an enemy's tail while evading its head. It was not quick given the distance between her force and the enemy's. Shizuru knew it would take weeks before the enemy's baggage came within sight of her scouts, which meant it would be awhile before she could feed her troops Obsidian's hoarded meat and grain. She was also travelling light. No heavy baggage for a Fujino army looking to capitalise on its speed.

She resolved the problem of supplies as most commanders did in times of great urgency. But she sacked only settlements or villages that did not give her army a welcome. Only those few—and these being loyalist lands, they were few—who readily greeted the foreign invaders were spared.

Pickings were meagre from the start. Feeding soldiers on the march was always a challenge in drought-riddled lands. It was even more so when said lands were still chiefly hostile. Then there was the fact that most agricultural activities had been halted by the war. In fact, most of the fields they passed were empty of both crops and dwellers. The latter had evacuated long ago, back when she penetrated the imperial capital and took residence in its vasty halls.

While this was a good thing in that it reduced the persons noting and passing word to the foe on her whereabouts, it also meant less food for her army. Shizuru suspected too that Obsidian's levies had already taken a great part of the northwest's stores. So in addition to seizing food from hostiles, the legions were forced to put in a lot of foraging.

It was anything but an easy march, but she had known it would be so. She had been sure too to let the legions know it, even when they had still been in Gorgo.

"I shall not stand here and tell you this march shall be a holiday," she told them in her address before they set out. "The thing is, boys and girls, if we go we will not eat well. We know it for certain. But if we do not go, another thing is certain. We will still not eat well and will be besieged to add to it! That bloated cow our enemy calls an army will eat up everything on the field if we take no action now! It will try to lock us up here or do it to my other legions, your comrades in another city. Licking its lips all the while! Feasting while we starve!"

She had licked her own lips showily and fixed the troops with a predatory smile.

"So it's go or do not go, and neither will be comfortable. I still know which option I prefer. What of you? Which one would you take?"

Thus her legionaries were ready from the start to deal with discomfort. So set were they to take on the challenge that they even downed meals of pure protein with gameness and goodwill.

Her legate-on-loan from the Traditionalist camp (or so her cousin liked to call him between the two of them) observed this with amazement.

"Not a grumble—when others have mutinied for less!" he exclaimed to his fellow legate.

"Fujino-san doesn't invite mutiny," Shohei said.

"Nor even dissent, sometimes," replied Keigo with a weak smile. He was recalling an unpleasant memory: a terrified Katsu Hitagi cringing before the commander in the Curia.

Shohei was a Fujino man to the bone and looked puzzled.

"Why should she, when she's often right?" he asked.

And right she was. It took nearly three weeks from the time they set off, but they found Obsidian's baggage train. Her scouts confirmed its distance from the main force as more than sufficient for her purposes. The size of its guard was also reported to be manageable. The moment she had all she needed, Shizuru pulled a double march to catch up with her target.

She let the horsed skirmishers lead the assault on the train's rear. So large was it—and so poorly organised, in her opinion—that the Otomeian horse had devastated its rearguard by the time the escort at its head got word of the attack. These did not turn back, receiving reports that the ambushing army was no small fry. Instead, they hurried the front and middle part of the caravan forward, trusting that getting them nearer the army would afford better protection. In effect, the rear of the baggage was sacrificed with an alacrity even Shizuru had not expected.

She took the gift, although not as graciously as the escapees hoped. She sent the troopers out to harass the departing train for some time, which task the ever-bloodthirsty Otomeians found delightful. She would not let them follow the baggage all the way, though. She was mindful of the possibility that some of Obsidian's main force might have fallen back enough to take them by surprise. She also refused to leave her legions without horse in relatively open and foreign territory.

This was since they had now passed into what her Firensian allies called "The Greencloaks' Lands". These were avowedly unfriendly.

"It's harder to get information here," Shohei reported after Shizuru called a swift council. "Even our disguised scouts are regarded with suspicion. We'll be working with a shorter range."

"So no idea yet if he left another army here and where it would be?"

"I'm afraid not, General. We'll keep working on it."

She waved her hand: "I know you are doing all you can."

A look over her shoulder as she addressed one of the tribunes.

"Please fetch the primipilus of the Ninth," she asked the woman, who trotted out of the tent. Once the officer was gone, Shizuru continued her brief.

"Anyway, we have what we wanted, so we can cut back on foraging. However, what effort is spared there has to go into caution and speed. Obsidian should have word by now of what we did to his baggage and he shall be very unhappy. He shall also be deciding whether or not to turn back and try to punish us for our effrontery. I personally think he shall not turn around. In front of him is too appealing an opportunity, given that he now knows he can expect fewer enemy forces east if we are here. Even if he does decide to come after us instead, I have no intention to let him see so much as the dust cloud from our column. It is a forced march hereon. Firens is not that far away despite us being among the Ganni, so we have a fallback position we can try to run to in case something happens."

Her glare raked over the officers. Each one strove to look extra-attentive.

"Do not misunderstand me. As I told the legions, this is no holiday. We are in enemy territory and dealing with a gargantuan enemy. We have no idea if there is another nearby and whether or not it poses a problem yet. We are also near enough the boundary with the Kingdom of Celsor to make that Mentulaean ally a threat. Even if our last reports indicate that it is too busy fighting off its own would-be-invader to participate in this conflict, we cannot be certain it shall take no action. No one, and I mean no one, may slack off. If you see a legionary marching with his scutum covered, you may box his ears with my blessing. But bear this in mind—if I see you seeing that and doing nothing, I shall box your ears myself and return you to Hime in profound disgrace. Clear?"

Everyone said it was.

"Where are we heading?" Keigo dared to ask, simultaneously disturbed and thrilled.

"Comus." A quick nod to the tribune who had reappeared, primipilus in tow. "Kenji-han should be closing in on it with the Sixth and Thirteenth as we speak. So as I said, we need to hurry. I am not leaving those legions in a lurch if indeed the Ganni have something to throw their way!"

She faced the centurion just joining their party and acknowledged the crisp salute from the red-haired woman.

"Nao-han, I need you to get to work on the captives."

"What am I looking for?"

"Everything they can give, although I would specifically like to know first if there is yet another imperial army, where it is, and how big it stands."

The centurion's smile sent a shudder through the others, who saw in it more than a touch of eagerness. Despite their misgivings about her methods—and about her enjoyment of them—they all had cause to be thankful later. A carefully-controlled bout of torture managed to produce results. Cross-checking individual captives' disclosures yielded similar responses, so Nao reported that her torture specialists had good confidence in the information. Shizuru informed her officers that there was indeed another imperial army: the king had not fully absorbed his son's forces after all.

"To all appearances, it is a modest force," she continued. "How long it stays that way is anyone's guess. It should be at Vedio, so I have sent scouts to ascertain its whereabouts."

It was Keigo who spoke up again: "And in the meantime?"

"In the meantime we meet Kenji-han. Comus it is."

Shizuru had been sending missives to Firens even before her scouts found the enemy baggage. Written in Greek and always tucked into odd hiding places, communications sped to and from her legate despite the prevalence of enemy forces around the areas they traversed. Prior to the assault on the baggage, Shizuru sent another of these communiques. Her disguised courier carried a very tiny and folded-up letter inside a false patch sewn onto a waterskin. It instructed Kenji to march on Comus. That legate had ascertained by then that no major enemy force sat near the foundry city. It was therefore feasible for him and his two legions to try and take it by themselves.

His post being nearer the place and his route less twisted—as Shizuru's was of necessity, given that she was both pursuer and evader—he arrived there before the Gorgo contingent. Accompanying him was a complement of Firensian cavalry ready to war with yet another of their longtime neighbours. There would have been more of them had it not been for some alarming movements across the border in the west, which separated the now-Kingdom of Firens from that of the Nervii.

"It's mostly just skirmishing," the Firensian king said. "But there's the stink of something more about it."

"How so?" asked Shizuru's legate.

"It feels like they're testing us before something more serious. Do you know those pricks and prods armies often give each other right before a full-on engagement? That's what it feels like to me, Legate. I may be wrong, but my old bones say I'm right and they've seen a lot of war already."

Kenji thanked King Entei and said he was grateful for whatever the man could spare him.

Thence Comus, the foundry city. It was a modest town once, but had grown fat over the years, all thanks to the imperial armies and the way they kept expanding. It went through growth parallel to that of its main customers, its mass even coming to sprawl over its walls and reaching far beyond them. Its borders as a young town were still marked by those barriers, which had grown larger and thicker over the years. However, they not been extended to encompass the new additions to the city. Now many of the foundries actually stood outside of these old defensive structures. They were joined by roads, homes, and the myriad other features of urbanisation.

Unprotected streets and buildings meant easy pickings for an ambushing army. Kenji rushed the Sixth and Thirteenth to Comus and began the assault with nary a preamble. That he did not give the locals a chance to capitulate was because he understood his General. She did not want Comus as a base or as an addition to the list of exemplary converts from the empire. She wanted Comus gone, simple as that, so terms were unnecessary.

Unfortunately, the place's destruction at his hands was not to be. The city was still existent when Shizuru showed up with the other legions and the part of Obsidian's baggage train that she had seized. Kenji had dismembered Comus by then but failed to still its heart, which was still beating. That organ continued to pump with the roaring bellows of the foundries sheltered by the old walls of the city.

What had saved Comus was its own sprawl. While most of it was easily taken by Kenji's assault, its core had more resilience as it was protected by the old town's walling. This central location also had more time to prepare for assault given that all the urban clutter surrounding it served as further defensive barricades. By the time Kenji managed to get the Sixth and Thirteenth to the gates of the city-interior, these had been shut and reinforced with heavy steel. Many of the people inside the walls had already been armed too with weapons of their own making.

"I wish I'd caught them all napping," Kenji related to his commander soon after she arrived. "But as you can see, it would've still been damned tough going. The city extends so far and so thickly from its old walls that the buildings themselves were obstructions to us as we progressed inwards. We had to wade through a lot of other structures before we finally made it to those gates. Many of the locals had shut themselves in by then."

She took a deep breath and searched the walls before them, no doubt seeking a weakness he had not yet discovered. That she would find it eventually he did not doubt. No one could rival her talent for tearing down defences, at least not among the generals he had known. Perhaps it was because of the way she approached it? Most commanders did not enjoy siegecraft and its exercise in willpower and patience. Whereas she revelled in its challenges and treated each siege as an enlivening game.

She'd take the title off Demetrius and bear it with more merit, he thought while watching her work. The problem was that a siege needed time—and he knew they were working on a short schedule. She did not want to stay in Comus long enough to give Obsidian a chance to turn around and catch up, but neither did she want to leave this crucial city unbroken as a symbolic win for the Ganni.

"What is inside?" she asked.

He rattled them off in a list: "Local nobility's houses. Also most of their public structures, governance buildings. Meeting hall. Temple. Storehouses."

He hastened to add something when the last word elicited interest.

"Not all of them, Fujino-san. The city's grown too big from its origins for the storehouses inside to keep all of their food. There were some outside the walls and we took them."

"Good. But it still means they can hold out if it came to a true siege."

Nothing to say to that, so he simply nodded. Then he indicated the ribs of a good-sized foundry, still being stripped down to raw materials by his troops.

"There are foundries inside the walls too," he told her. "Not to mention the warehouse. Well, a number of warehouses, actually, all managed by the same entity. It acts like a common depot, from what we gather, to spare the foundries the trouble of storing as well as delivering big orders. The foundries pay a fee for the service."

"Efficient system. I am guessing this depot also holds the bulk orders for the throne's armies?"

"Falces upon falces in there, our prisoners are saying."

She folded her arms and dropped her eyes in contemplation. Her foot scuffed the ground when she turned to look about them. The track of loose and dark soil her boot left caused him to voice an idea.

"Those walls aren't thin," he said. "But this is good ground for tunnel work. I was thinking of undermining."

Even as she shook her head he knew the objection.

"Too slow and it would not work," she stated with no small certainty. "I talked to your Firensian troopers and they say a lot of the locals hereabouts work the mines in the north and west. They would see it coming and dig countermines the moment you begin."

Undermining was a critical technique for destroying walls in a siege. The besieger dedicated some troops to digging tunnels and setting up pit-props of dry timber within them. Once a tunnel was sufficiently large and extended under the wall the besieger wanted to destroy, the diggers fired the timber props and swiftly got out. The result would be an explosive collapse of the ground above the tunnel and a consequent collapse of the wall on that ground. Done right, it was hugely effective. But it could also be easily thwarted, especially if the defenders knew someone was digging.

One way was for the defenders to do their own excavation. The hope was for their tunnel to touch the besiegers' enough for them to try several things, from smoking the enemy tunnel to causing a premature cave-in. Sometimes, defenders even sent armed men down to kill the diggers from the enemy.

Shizuru had seen such things happen, also against towns with a lot of mine workers in the populace. These were not only experienced enough to start countermines quickly but sometimes had ingenious ways of detecting when mining took place. She recalled a famous instance from faraway Barca where locals thwarted underminers by placing shields on the earth. The bronze on the shields had vibrated whenever there was tunnelling in the vicinity.

"The wrong enemy for it," she said in a soft voice, seeming to him very far away. "And besides, we just do not have the time, do we?"

It came back to that, he thought ruefully, feeling this failure keenly because he saw it as his. Perhaps Comus would survive after all, even if only as a core without its limbs. How the Ganni would gloat about it!

"Ah!"

The exclamation brought him out of his misery. She was bending over to pick up something, which she showed to him.

"I cannot be certain from this distance," she said. "But their walls look to be made of stone similar to this."

He frowned as he eyed it.

"It is the same stone," he told her. "Much bigger blocks up on the walls, of course, but exactly the same otherwise."

She turned the rubble around and around her fingers.

"You are certain it is the same?" she asked.

Her voice told him this was very important. He gave his answer with assurance.

"I promise you it's the same, General."

"Then let us have a little experimentation," she said to that, dropping the sharp rock onto the ground again. "I suppose you also tried ramming?"

A twist of his mouth said yes.

"There's a problem with that too," he said. "For one, we can only attack the walls. The area in front of the gates is liked a death trap right now, especially with those two towers they have over it. I don't put it past them to have heaped up iron beams and whatnot behind those gates either. They've materials enough for it in there, I'm afraid."

She urged him to continue.

"Now while we can attack the walls instead, there's still an issue," he said. "One, they're thick. Very old but thick, and made of large blocks that've been cut and mortared together properly. Granted, the age helps us, as it means some of the joins between blocks have been weathered and weakened over the years. Still, hitting them won't do much good unless we aim for the mortar and keep it up for some time. But as you said—"

"We have no time. Quite so. Keep going."

"Defenders aren't shy about fighting back either, probably because they have a surfeit of weaponry all stocked up in there. We've had caltrops, spears, fire, and even molten metal and red-hot pieces of it thrown onto siege engines we bring near them. Iron sheets helped with the first three. Not the last ones. Horrid! The red-hot pebbles—they're usually bits of lead—are the worst. A handful eats through iron and even armour like a flame goes through paper. It doesn't stop there either. Just keeps going. Those poor men—"

He blenched at the memory. She waited as he fought down his gorge, saying nothing.

"It's why our siege tower didn't work too well either," he went on later, still unable to forget the screams of the legionaries as the bits of hot metal sank into their skin. Deeper still, into the muscle, and even into the bone, where the evil things kept glowing. The way the flesh hissed! Who could forget that? Who could live through it?

"Getting it close wasn't the problem. Using it once it got there was. Aside from the molten metal they seem to have a huge store of incendiary material and pitch in there. Probably because it's a foundry town."

She looked up at the sky with her fine brows slanted. There were black spires rising from within the walls, no doubt signalling the defenders' ability to cast more bits of hot lead onto their attackers.

"So the tower burned," she guessed, which he affirmed. "And I suppose all the previous rams you made are gone too, then."

"Yes, though we could make more easily." He ran a hand through his ginger hair and gave her a wry smile. "The only good thing about seizing foundry towns it that you get a ton of iron to work with as long as you seize at last one foundry. We have enough sheets of iron to roof a dozen ram sheds if you wanted them. Even two dozen, easy."

"Good. Make them."

His jaw went slack. It stretched out his already lean and somewhat wolfish face, giving him the look of a man both astonished and hungry.

"Two dozen?" he repeated dumbly.

"Leave me two without iron roofs. Use only wood on those. Thick wood, of course, but dry. And capable of holding a fire. Not stuff that burns out too fast. In fact, find a way to fit chopped firewood inside. I want a lot of loose fuel that they can heap up."

The wolf's face grew even more astonished, became hungrier at this.

"You want those to burn?" he asked in bewilderment.

"Very much so," she told him. "Get on it now. Whom did you assign to sort through the stores seized here?"

"One of the tribunes, Hayao—I'll send him to you."

"Good," she said again. A wide smile came from out of the blue and was bestowed on him. "You did well, Kenji-han. Most of Comus's foundries have been destroyed, and the few remaining in those walls will not be able to produce nearly as many falces as before. Even if what I have in mind does not succeed, we can afford to let Comus survive as it is. You have taken away most of its value to the enemy already."

The long face looked its gratitude to her, yet the discomfort remained in the rangy body's movements.

"Maybe it would've been better if I had sent a party first to infiltrate it," he proposed, still trying to correct what he saw as his error.

She shook her head at his persistent self-critique, her eyes warm as they regarded him.

"Maybe," she said. "And maybe not. Either way, you have already done most of the work, as I said, so be of good cheer! I count this a victory. Now let us see if I can do any better before we leave this place."

She put a hand on his shoulder and led him away. Suddenly her smile brightened, something very close to mischief in it.

"Honestly, I have no idea if this will work at all," she said in a confidential tone. "But it seems a shame not to try it. How my girl shall enjoy this if it turns out right, though!"

The polemarch seemed to enjoy it even before that, as it happened. She followed the operations with red cheeks and an indelible smirk on her mouth. Both told Shizuru's puzzled officers that the Otomeian at least knew what the commander was trying and was wildly entertained. Not that any of them shirked their jobs for their own ignorance of their commander's plan. They did all Shizuru required, even if they had no idea what was playing about her head.

It took but a day for them to build all the rams she wanted and put together everything else she said they would need. However, it was already too late by that time to do anything but put inside camp for a good night's rest. Their commander said they deserved it.

They began with the morning.

It commenced with a quartet of rams sent to strike at a part of the wall. Two went ahead of the others, which appeared to move more slowly in the advance. The pair in the lead was conspicuously devoid of sheet-iron roofing but quite fast. They even sped up on the last few metres, so much so that their operators smashed the sheds into the wall in their enthusiasm. They did not bother pulling them back once there. They simply began working the rams against the old stonework, a noisy tattoo flagging the start of the battle.

The defenders were not slothful in their tasks. As Kenji had said they would, they mounted the battlements over the attacked section even before the rams struck the wall. Then they cast pitch and torches on the two already-working ram sheds, choosing not to bother with molten lead when they saw the naked wood roofing. The moment the defenders' bombardment took place, the battery from the engaged rams seemed to weaken. It became progressively more anaemic, until at last they ceased to swing entirely. In spite of that no operators came running out of the sheds, which had begun to smoke already.

Still more pitch and torches were cast. Soon both sheds' roofs were aflame right next to the wall. Still no operators had exited their confines despite it, yet no fresh battery had been delivered by the rams. The perplexed defenders were on the verge of calling for the bits of hot lead from their comrades when a great roar hit them, followed closely by a billow of heat. An eyebrow-singing conflagration licked up against the wall and the sheds burst into a terrible flame.

The defenders of Comus had to shelter behind their battlements to avoid being seared. When they looked over the wall again they saw several sooty legionaries running in the opposite direction. The two rams' operators, it seemed, had finally been ejected by the blaze.

The slightly-burned legionaries escaped to the safety of the two laggards in the original quartet of siege machines. This pair of sheds had apparently stopped moving and now sat out of reach of the defenders' firebrands. It was clear that the ones driving these sheds thought better of their venture after their precursors' spectacular failures. They hesitated, creaked, then turned back instead of pressing on.

The people on the walls raised a cheer, casting many a gibe on the retreat.

Comus had little time to bask in the small victory. More rams and a stunning array of siege engines were suddenly drawing up in front of the gates. As the rams approached the siege engines began fire, their intent clearly to prevent the defenders from venturing out from behind the parapets. Some of the first volleys from the little catapults were off, but Himean ballista-shooters were trained into expertise: they found their range in no time. Soon the bolts were picking off defenders as fast as the shooters could load them, giving the rams time to do some damage before the lobbed pitch and smouldering "pebbles" forced the rammers to abandon their work.

To the defenders and even many besiegers that day, the action at the gate was a maelstrom. Yet the commander of one side noted that war often only appeared to be chaos when the observer was in the thick of it.

"Participants experience fractured pieces of the whole, which is the norm for all events, to be sure," Shizuru told her princess as they watched from a distance. "The trouble is that all of them assume their piece central even if it is not. It leads to some constructing the totality around an insignificant fragment. One man's wound became the centre of the event, another's close call the turning point of the action. It leads to distortion of the greater picture and that means distortion of the pattern. In warcraft, one must always be alert to the pattern. Do you think the defenders of Comus see it now?"

The other took time to observe the fray some more moments before giving her response.

"No," she said. "I think not."

"It is what happens when there is no one truly functioning as the leader," Shizuru concluded, watching the same thing with interest. "It tends to happen most often in civilian-led actions, such as the one you see now. Lack of authoritative structure. No one is high up enough to see the motif in the maze."

This was true, for while the defenders were long on bravery and resourcefulness, they were short on military leadership. Most of the soldiers who lived in Comus had already been called up for the army when Kenji arrived. Nearly all the defenders the Himeans were now fighting were either civilians or merchantmen.

So when the flamboyant assault on the gates got under way, it blinded them to the possibility of grave assaults elsewhere and wrapped in less recognisable skins. So desperate had the unceasing volleys of the ballistae looked that even the ones masterminding the defence eventually sacrificed supervision for involvement.

There were thus few to notice that the rams at the gates always came in trios or quartets with at least one playing a slug. The leading machines would be the ones doing an attack and the men from the attacking machines were quick to exit their sheds once the hot lead came out. These men were always ready to flee under artillery cover and into the one shed hanging back. As this shed retreated to carry the men to safety, another set would advance, and the volleys would begin anew.

There were also few of the defenders to care that the first two rams to attack that day burned throughout the entirety of the battle. They burned so hard and so long that the wall glowed with their heat like a white ember. They continued burning even when they had been reduced to a heap of black wood smoking against the stone.

That was past noon, and it was when Shizuru gave the signal. A row of artillery that had been held in reserve materialised before the wall where the first two rams burned down. At first all the shooters did was hurl stones to find their range. Once they had the mark, though, they began a rapid bombardment with sealed crocks that broke in wet splashes.

The action at the gates was not yet finished by then. So concentrated was the defence on that area that one could count the defenders to take note of the fresh bombardment on the other side. Even then the gates seemed more important, the assault there being noisier and far more aggressive, not to mention unrelenting considering it had gone on for hours. It was difficult to care much about a place assaulted by crockery when the other side was taking actual bolts and rams. If the foreigners were trying something funny with the former, there would be time enough to laugh at it after the action at the gates had wrapped up. Some passing near the area with the crockery bombardment did think the dying fire stank of something tart and remarkably familiar, but there was still nothing to give them cause for alarm there. Besides, the enemy itself had put out the fire on that part of the wall.

Then more rams came, not for the gates but for the wall that had suffered the blaze. Cavalry preceded them, quick-riders carrying jugs, and these threw water against the embers that still remained. By the time the rams arrived there were defenders ready to ascend that part of the wall again. The chiefs of the defence had woken up.

But the defenders found it impossible to reascend the battlements above the now-dead fire. The blaze they had left there for so long had rendered the stone so hot that it burned them through their shoes. All the defenders could do was mount the battlements beside the steaming section of wall.

Still the new group of rams advanced. The defenders attempted to hurl their pitch and firebrands at the rams from a distance. These had proper metal sheeting on the sheds, however, so they weathered the attack. When one was finally close enough to the wall to strike, it did that and produced an ear-shattering crack.

The stone wall split from its bottom to very nearly the top.

The defenders stared at the fissure from the cooler battlements, nerveless. Where the rams had made barely a dent before, they now seemed capable of breaking down the wall completely. Their serried ranks clustered in that area, the legionaries in the sheds ignoring the great heat still in the already-watered ground. Powered by them the rams beat into the stone like hammers beating into chalk. Each blow the great logheads struck caused a new fracture, and the defenders had to watch the large stone blocks break into shards that splintered off in a heartbreaking defection. On and on went the pounding, the heartless beat, until a concerted strike ended the matter.

A fire, a crockery bombardment, a few rams. That was all it took for a century's worth of protection to crumble into wreckage.

The waiting cavalry stormed over the gap first, their steeds easily leaping the rubble. The legionaries followed later. The defenders of Comus were dragged down from their walls and slain with great efficiency. Their pans of red hot lumps were upended and their corpses fed into their still-glowing furnaces. Then the army's officers took control of the looting, seizing everything that could be of use before directing the destruction of each edifice and foundry.

Shizuru's officers quizzed her in the aftermath.

"Fire quenched by vinegar," she said to their question. "Followed by brute force to finish the job. Not original, to be sure. Hannibal."

She met several blank stares and one of dawning recognition.

And at the corner of an eye was that smirk, the red cheeks, the green eyes. How it had pleased her girl!

"Oh, I remember! During his crossing!" The one who said this was her old scribe, Aisuka, who babbled on before the others could say a word. "Who would have thought it would be true, though? I admit I suspected old Livius of fiction when I read that part of his work."

"Well, I thought I would test it first before doing the same," Shizuru said to him with a grin.

She turned to the others and gave the explanation.

"Hannibal was said to have done it with vinegar when a boulder blocked his crossing the Alps. I used vinegar too when I first tried it back home, to see if it was fact or fiction. I used far smaller rocks then but it seemed to me that there was no reason scaling up the other factors accordingly would not produce the same results on a larger rock. It does not work as dramatically on all stone, by the way. I noticed that in my experiments. But this type, limestone, always cracked."

She threw a piece of the rock to Kenji, who caught and eyed it with wonder.

"Oh, no one will believe this!" Aisuka cried, unable to keep still. "It never even came to mind as something to try in this sort of situation! That was—oh, I don't know—wonderful creativity, General!"

"Spare me the blandishments, Aisuka-han," she joked, entertained by his excitement: her eldest scribe had been reduced to hopping in place like a boy. "I am not lessening your workload no matter what."

"So that's why you had Hayao gather all the vinegar," Kenji rumbled out. He looked less hungry than before, despite the crooked grin seaming his face. "Damned if I could have guessed that was what you would do! What would you have done if there had been none of the stuff, Fujino-san? Tried the legions' wine? Most of it's gone sour by now."

She said it would have been her next option.

"Although I do not know if it would have worked as well," she conceded. "Ye gods, can you imagine if it had not? Our poor bibulous troops would have thought it a ruse from us trying to turn them teetotal."

Incredulity from Kenji as Shohei laughed his retort: "General, no one in the command is teetotal!"

"How does it work, Fujino-san?" Keigo cut in. His voice was softer than the other legates' and his eyes were still wide in a fixed fascination. Fire and vinegar to take down a wall? There was something magical about all of this; Aisuka was right when he said they would not believe it. He could not wait to write to his brother. Only how to do that without letting on his perpetually growing admiration of this woman?

The commander was answering.

"I am not certain either, Keigo-han. Part of it is I think due to the sudden change from hot to cold. A kind of shock to the material, I suppose."

A moment to give an order to a tribune, then back to them.

"They do the same thing when mining tough rock faces," explained the rich mine owner to her officers. "They set a powerful fire against the face and then cast cool water upon it. It cracks the rock face, renders it brittle and easy to chip away. But that still does not explain the more extreme reaction when it is strong vinegar instead of water that quenches the blaze. I can only guess here, but if I had to, I believe it may be something in vinegar's sourness—its biting quality."

Natsuki told her later that if this was so, she might as well have thrown the Ninth's primipilus at the blaze instead. Shizuru retorted that the hitch with that substitution was said primipilus's preference for fuelling fires over quenching them.

"One need only look at that hair," she said, laughing.

"You did not worry they would think of it?"

"Who would not think of what?"

"The people of Comus. Of what you were doing." The Otomeian narrowed her eyes and elaborated: "You said before they had many miners. You did not worry they would see you were, ah, you called it?"

"Fire-setting."

"Fire-setting. Yes."

"Not really. Or not very much." Shizuru displayed her even teeth. "Why do you think we had that farce at their gates, mea vita? I keep telling my legates to give people something to think on before they can think up anything else. It is true of a lot of things—you should always keep them busy!"

She repeated it to her legates later at another quick council, after which they asked where she wanted to keep the enemy busy next. Where now were they headed, they asked their general.

"I would have though it obvious," she said with upraised brows. "Is it not obvious to you, Your Highness?"

The young woman beside her squinted.

"Vedio," said the princess, her voice saying she found it painfully evident. "Where else?"