Day 381, 6:30 PM

“Doubt … is an illness that comes from knowledge and leads to madness.”

― Gustave Flaubert

What?

“What!”

I reread the letter, my hands shaking.

Dear General Blackstaff,

While you are uncomfortably loitering in front of our humble fortification, our Royal Highness, the Crown Prince Corvein VI and Their royal army are laying siege to Eaglegord. They departed from Garagord on the thirteenth of Frostend and should have reached your stronghold more than ten days ago and are besieging it as we speak.

If you hurry back, you have a slight chance of breaking the siege before the loyalists of the royal family open the gates. So, if you do not mind, please turn around, leaving your back exposed to our army. Alternatively, you could split your forces in two and have them crushed in rapid succession.

While we do not have the royal army with us, we do have two knights and enough troops and food to last us for quite some time. Enjoy making your choice, please do not feel obliged to inform us of your decision.

Count Xoren

“Calm down, this might be a faint.” Vatten’s words echo somewhere in the far distance or rationality, and on some level I know he is right. The desperate enemy’s ploy after we have cornered them. Anyone can spit and shout, but why do my guts feel heavy?

F1. Select Principal is still showing ‘selected’. That means Manny is alive, and I have felt no phantom pains, so she is unharmed, but how long will that last? How willing am I to risk her life? Victory’s? But what if this world just keeps rolling after I die, and I’m leaving my wife without a husband and my daughter without a father?

And yet, I have to die. I can’t take a chance and hope that everything will be perfect, and Eaglegord waiting for me to ride back and break the siege. God or whoever is in charge is not so kind. In fact, I know from firsthand experience that they are incompetent dicks.

I have to die. I have to leave behind a widow and an orphan. But I have to make my death meaningful. If I take out the knights and blow a hole in this shitty Karengord’s defenses, Vatten can quickly conquer it, eradicate the threat to his rear, and head back to reinforce Manny.

I gulp.

Assuming nobody betrays her.

Eaglegord can withstand a siege by a sizable army, the only problem is the food store. We’ve been feeding thousands of armed forces all winter long, and even with the supplies we have purchased from Elisia, there’s not much food left.

I can… I can… What? What can I do!?

“Aang! Calm! Down! Stop shaking!” Vatten is shouting at me, but the only thing I see are my trembling hands as I struggle to breathe.

I look at the old villain, and he is shaking too. He is terrified.

He isn’t merely afraid for his life.

“Everyone out!” I have an insane idea. “Vatten you stay.”

The three mercs dash out, afraid I might go berserk, but Vatten’s bodyguards don’t move. Instead, they look at him.

“Leave us,” and they do.

“Vatten, I don’t trust you,” I whisper. “I never trusted you. But I don’t have a choice. Listen. I’m about to tell you something you won’t believe, but Manny believes me because I have proven it to her beyond the shadow of a doubt. Trust her if you can’t trust me.”

I take a deep breath. He’s going to think I’m insane.

“You’re going to think I’m insane, but I am perfectly sane.” I realize I’m lying. “I’m mostly sane, and this particular piece of information is not a hallucination. It should also explain some of the impossible stunts I’ve pulled and survived.”

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

“You are rambling, speak clearly.”

I nod and lick my lips. God, my mouth is parched like a desert.

“Whenever I die, I wake up two weeks before my death with all the memories of everything I have experienced in the future. I can go back right now, and we will know about this problem on the seventh. That’s seventeen days after we left Eaglegord. By this time, we could be rushing to break the siege. But there’s a problem.”

Vatten stares at me as if I’m mad. I can understand him. I don’t know how I’d react if someone came up to me in my past life and told me they are living in a loop. And I’ve seen “The Woodchuck Day”. Unfortunately, I have neither the time, nor the will to go through the same thing I went through with Manny to prove my claim.

“Go on, ‘but there’s a problem’,” he says, looking at me as if trying to figure out where to find a shrink strong enough to put me in the jacket.

“Yes, there’s a problem. I don’t know what happens with time after I die. I’m afraid I’m leaving Manny and Victory alone while I’m saving another Manny and another Victory.”

He stares blankly at me. God, how do you explain parallel universes and timelines to a medieval general?

“Look, I want my death to help you destroy this army fast enough so you can head back for Eaglegord and try to save my wife and daughter, if it’s possible to save them. Otherwise, live your life as you see fit and thanks for the effort.”

I stop talking, and his lips finally move.

“You are completely insane.”

“Look, ignore whether I’m sane or not, just use me as a suicide soldier to the best of your abilities to conquer this castle tonight. My idea is to scale the walls from the forest side as soon as the night falls, kill the knights and nobles inside, then explode the gate and let you and your guys enter into the chaos I’ve made. Does that work for you?”

His frown is so deep, it might split his head in half.

This isn’t working.

“Look, let’s play a game. If someone murders the leadership inside the castle and eliminates the knights, then opens the gate in the dead of night, how would you seize the moment, as Vazzen the Wise calls it in Warfare?”

“Storm the gate with cavalry, trample the confused soldiers. Without a proper chain of command, soldiers cobbled together from various lords will fall into disarray, they might even start fighting each other in the ensuing confusion.”

“Great!” We’re getting somewhere! “Now. Two weeks ago, had we known Manny was in danger, what should I do?”

“What nonsense—”

“Indulge me, please.” I drop down to my knees, putting my hands together. “Please, I’m begging you, don’t argue, just answer me. Consider this my dying wish. I’m off to die in a couple hours.”

“Don’t fuckin—”

“Indulge me, what should I do two weeks ago?”

Vatten gnashes his teeth, then tugs at his goatee.

“Two weeks ago, we were marching for seventeen, eighteen days?” He tugs at his beard more forcefully. “That means we need to cover eighteen days worth of relaxed march in four days to make it in time. We could do it in nine, if we forced it, but not in—”

“What if we cut through the woods?” I interrupt him, and Vatten takes a moment to blink and look at me with a stare I thought only Manny would dare give me.

“That’s griffon hunting grounds. One attacked us in the area. If we go through their territory, they will attack and drive us away. Horses can’t stand them.”

Right, griffons.

“What if we leave the infantry behind and just take the cavalry?” It’s a stupid question. One I already know the answer to.

“They will take about the same. Instead of thirteen-fourteen days, they could do it in twelve, maybe eleven. Ralek has superb horses, more fit for messengers than light cavalry, they might make it relatively fresh in six days, four if they ruin their beasts, which they will not, and I would never order it. If they arrive tired, they will be unable to fight, but even fresh, they are only a hundred and ten. They will hardly tip the scales.”

Vatten explains everything slowly, as if my own common sense was telling me things I already know when I’m about to make a rash decision.

“All right. So, we retreat in waves, I can jog along with Ralek’s squad, you lead the cavalry, and the foot soldiers will cover our rear. But, what happens with Karengord’s army when we don’t show up?”

“The spies in the first town through which we pass will send word, and the troops stationed at Karengord will follow behind us, weeks too late, of no relevance to what happens if we head back to Eaglegord. In fact, them arriving after we have defeated the royal army gives them the option to surrender or be annihilated. But, Aang, the royal army could be in Karengord and this is all a bluff meant to unnerve us.”

“I’ll know soon enough, when I get my hands on the first noble. Actually, I can just grab and torture a soldier or seven until they confess everything. There’s no way they don’t know whether royal knights and the crown prince are with them.”

A proto-plan comes into being, I just need to polish the details to make things work. I’m about to say I’m off to die, when my wisdom smacks me in the brain with the huge, insurmountable problem.

How do I convince Vatten from two weeks ago that this is really happening?

I have no freaking idea.

I look at the old man, he thinks I’m insane even with the letter. I could write down notable things happening and have him read the letter, but that would waste time and he could always say I’m fabricating the evidence.

I pull on my hair, and Vatten’s gaze becomes even more concerned.

“If I told you two weeks ago that I know the future, one which would ruin your battle plan, what would it take to make you listen to me?”

“Aang, I think you should calm down. Assuming this letter is the truth, we are already too late, too far—”

Yeah, he’s never going to believe me. He doesn’t believe me now.

“Vatten, you’re not a good man, but if my wife and daughter are alive, please take care of them.”

“Aang!”

I dash out of the tent and into the twilight forest. I will make this work, somehow.