We did eventually catch up to Sybil and her group a few days later. They made up camp a day or two from the pass and waited for us. We did traverse through two more villages since then, each of them giving us more troops and weapons. We had grown from a small troop of around thirty to numbering two-hundred.

When we crest the hill about mid-afternoon, I find that Sybil and Via have also been hard at work, as they’re flanked with thirty or forty skeletons and clay-constructs similar in shape to Henry, but none near his size. I can’t help but feel my smile stretch wide. Whatever had scared Sybil from helping me with my army had clearly been foreshadowed in light of Soleil’s capture. Now, she was all in. The last time I’d seen so many skeletons was the first year into the invasion, when I encountered a formidable necromancer by the name of Maisley. She had rushed our flank in the night with an army numbering two fold of my men. It was a bloody night that had forced us to retreat. It had been reported to me that she had died a few weeks later from a bout of pneumonia – back then, I felt that it was a small price to pay for the lives she had taken from me. Now, I understood the truth: she died relatively peacefully in an unfamiliar and scary place protecting her home. I was glad she didn’t die in battle.

I marched up to Sybil who was helping settle in some of the new troops. She offered me a weak grin and I offered her my arm. She took with an uneasy glance and I slapped her on the back in a show of camaraderie. “Thank you,” I whisper into her hair before releasing her.

She waves me off. “It’s nothing.” She says, but I see the dark circles under her eyes.

Via bounds up to me. “Hello, princeling!” she crows in her child-like voice.

I roll my eyes when I know no one can see me. “You gave a lot of the men quite a scare,” I chide underneath my breath. “They thought I’d lost a child.”

She holds her hand to her chest in mock offense. “Tony! You wouldn’t misplace a child would you?”

Haven swats her away and crosses her arms. “Via says that Sol is being held in a distribution warehouse in Pirovo. Depending on how fast we can get through this bottlenecked attack – of which we’re so sure is going to happen–” she says snidely, “We should be able to reach him in three days. Will we be able to break him out?”

I consider for a long moment. “What if,” I pose, “I send a forward group to draw them out, and a small group of you move around them and make your way into town?”

“Sneak behind them and around?” Sybil considers.

“Not to attack from behind?” Simon asks, coming up behind us.

I shrug, “We can do two different groups, then. Break them up. Surprise attack from behind, let some of the others go on ahead and we’ll take care of this here?”

Simon nods to himself.

“I think that’ll work very nicely,” Via muses, sitting on a rock nearby us.

My eyebrow quirks. “Any chance you know our rate of success?”

Via looks legitimately insulted this time. “No,” she says shortly and walks away from us.

“She can’t see the future,” Sybil says under her breath, and I think I’m the only person who can hear her. “She’s a little touchy about that fact.”

***

I gather the elected lieutenants and inform them of our strategy, and then we set our trap. The following morning, we move quickly in formation. Two squads, including one squad made up of Sybil, Via, and two beastmen, take a long detour into the forest. The main formation breaks into two platoons, the first one creeping forward over the hill and into the bottleneck between two cliff faces that have somehow naturally sliced through the atmosphere high above across a narrow path from one another.

I hang back with the second formation that stands away from the forward march, arms prepared. Eventually, there’s a clatter of metal and a shout, and I know that we have intercepted the king’s troops. It takes about an hour of careful maneuvering backwards until the heads of the formation. Once the heads of the forward formation were in sight, I give the orders and we surge forward, weapons raised. The enemy group are numbered just as our forward scouts told us: relatively one-hundred men in full dress.

I direct the force to wrap around the enemy like a stiff and loud embrace. We descend upon them with swords and spears in a surprise convergence that knocks their forces unsteady. I feel the stone in my pocket tug, and I know that Sybil and her team have been able to sneak beyond their forces. Good. I run into the fray, knowing we need to finish this quickly to continue on our way to the capital.

Our forces are surprisingly well-matched to the formally trained troops of the capital, and it doesn’t take us very long to overcome their forces, rounding those that we can and forcing them to surrender – in its entirety, the battle takes all of two hours. While we benefited from the surprise attack, we still incur some losses. I send a few troops back the way we came to let the people know of the dead while Simon and some of our men help commit the bodies of both our own people and the guards we overrun to the next life.

The ritual takes up most of the afternoon before we load up the surrendered troops bound into the back of one of our wagons to drop off at the next town. We are tired, we are hungry, and we are battle-worn already, but our feet need to carry us onward. The sooner we get moving, the closer we are to helping Sybil and her party rescue Soleil, if they need it–and the closer we are to my brother’s throne.

***

It takes us four days to make the journey that takes Sybil and her team two – according to her correspondence with Lasis. The forward scouts bring back the information that the city is completely closed to outsiders when we’re a day out, but we aren’t sure whether they are friendly or not. We decide to make camp, where I leave my budding army in the capable hands of Lasis. Simon, one of my lieutenants, and I make our way into town. We are stopped at the gate by two guards that are in full armor: helmets glinting in the sunshine and their hands weighing on their hilts. “State your business.”

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“Visiting a friend,” Simon tells them.

“Who is your friend?”

He straightens, “He’s actually held in one of your jail cells. He was recently arrested from our town of Reisau. We want to finalize some details of his estate before he gets taken in for trial.”

“A lawyer?”

Simon nods.

The other guard speaks up, “And who are these two?” he gestures to me and the lieutenant, who are wearing chainmail and leather bracers, our own swords strapped around our waists.

“Road protection,” Simon says easily, he, in his regular cloth outfit, posing no more threat than a wandering peasant. “It’s been dangerous out. I’ve heard tale that the Mad King is rising again – raising an army as he goes.”

The guards nod knowingly. The first gestures us inside. “Whatever your deal with your prisoner is, I pray it is resolved quickly. How long are you staying in town?”

Simon shrugs, “Maybe three days. Who can tell?”

“Keep your wits about you.” The second guardsman says.

And then they let us pass.

The city is still bustling with activity, though the usual chatter that I anticipate from a city of this size is muted. People who move past are worried, their faces ashen and smiles strained. “Sybil said she would wait for us at the Dragon’s Tongue,” I tell them and look around. “Have either of you been to Pirovo before?”

Simon shakes his head but the Lieutenant nods. “Only a few times,” he admits, “Ma had a sister that lived out here. “Used to spend the summers visiting when I was a teen, helped her out.”

His response reminds me of Tols that my heart skips a beat and my chest clenches. I swallow down a knot of loneliness.

“The Dragon’s Tongue is an old establishment, I think it was in the Grey Quadrant.” He sets off and Simon and I follow along, eager to be on our way. The way Lasis had relayed it, Sybil and Via were having a difficult time around the prison, and needed some back-up to properly spring her lover from the captivity of the crown. They had confirmed his whereabouts, at least.

The city was so large that it took us thirty minutes to traverse from what Lieutenant was calling the Yellow Quadrant into the Grey, where the streets and buildings gradually shift from bright and colorful into stone buildings and streets. Not that there is a particular lack of color in this quadrant – the people who lived in this section hung colorful scarves across their windows and doors, and banners criss-crossed above the streets. The Dragon’s Tongue itself was a thin and long building that crouched into the neighboring church, leaving an alleyway on the other side, distancing itself from the cobbler’s shop next door.

We enter from the street side into a bustling tavern room filled with quiet patrons. I sidle up to the long, square bar in the center and flag down the barkeep. I press a coin onto the countertop and smile genuinely, “I’m looking for a pretty woman, long black hair? She’s traveling with two others.”

The barkeeper flicks the coin from my fingertips and nods to a corner booth where I catch sight of Sybil. “They’ve been here all day. Waitin’ for you, my guess. Thanks for the coin though.” He turns to address his other patrons and I lead Simon and Lieutenant over, bemoaning the loss of my precious money for only a beat.

Sybil stands up when she sees us, Haven has rested her head on her arms beside her, and Via sits with her knees drawn up to her chest in the chair. The beastman with them smiles up at us as we approach the table. “They shut the city down after we got in yesterday,” Sybil tells me as we sit down across from them. “Henry is hiding in the woods beyond the city.”

“We staked out some of the area around the facility last night,” Haven adds, her voice muffled by her arms. Her red hair is in disarray and she seems crankier than usual.

“We didn’t learn much,” Sybil explains. “We were able to mark some of the passing guards but we haven’t been able to sort out their shifts.”

“Have you been in to see him?” Simon asks.

Haven glances up, her eyes are watery and her nose is red. “I take that as a yes,” I say underneath my breath and she shoots me a dirty look.

She shakes herself out and wipes at her eyes. “Yes. Sybil and I went in to see him.”

Sybil nods, her face thrown into a deep scowl. “He’s doing… okay,” she explains, voice steady. “They aren’t feeding him well, for one. But how could they, when they don’t know his diet and they won’t listen to him when he speaks?”

Haven grumbles in affirmation and Sybil charges on. “They broke his glasses along the way, so he’s having trouble seeing properly. He’s tired, and scared, and…” I take a good look at her as her voice drifts off and see her fists in white-knuckled grips. I realize that while Haven is dealing with her anger in tears, Sybil has a silent and deadly vendetta that she intends to carry out. I suppress a shiver as I catch her cold gaze staring past me at the half-wall that blocks our booth from the patrons behind us.

“Tell us where to stand,” I tell her, “Whatever you need. Our army is just outside of town.” I gesture between us.

“Our army,” Sybil scoffs, crossing her arms in half-disgust. I can’t very well blame her. She’s been through so much the past three years.

Simon shakes his head disapprovingly. “No, Sybil. He’s right. It isn’t just his army anymore. It’s also yours. The two of you have built it up from bones and dust in your own way.”

She hesitates, then meets my eyes again. She nods once. “Our army, then.” She amends. “Anyways, I’ll need a handful of people to help us get inside.”

“I’m a lawyer,” Simon suggests. “I’m representing our friend Soleil.”

I nod. “I brought you some help, too,” I gesture at Lieutenant. “This is Lieutenant Fredrick. He’s a member of the Bimanan militia. He’ll go with you. If you can get a message back to Lasis, he can maybe send a few more of our people disguised as merchants. I’ll try to get a meeting with the city councilmen, strike some sort of deal or compromise: see if they are interested in joining our cause and what that would cost.”

Sybil nods. “I’ll let Lasis know,” she agrees. “In the meantime, Lieutenant, Haven, and I will stake out the rest of the day. We have rooms upstairs already for the night, if you need to rest.”

While the idea of a warm bed is terribly inviting now, I know I need to get a move-on. “Simon, go on ahead, see what you can learn from the inside under the guise of taking Soleil’s statement.”

Simon nods and picks up his things, hurrying from the room.

Via looks up at me blearily. “I think I might nap,” she whispers.

“You have been grumpy,” Haven groans beyond a stuffy nose, and Sybil threads her arm around Haven’s shoulders and presses her forehead tightly against Haven’s head.

“We’ll get him back,” she promises.

“I know we will,” Haven grumbles, digging a fingernail into an opposing cuticle. “I just hope we can get him out quickly.”