Ordering his scouts to continue their exemplary work, Aptezor began a series of maneuvers with the full cooperation of his troops, thrilled at last to take part in a facsimile of a real war. He moved from hill to building, prepared to have his troops plant the stakes Taomenk had supplied for them at a word, all while creeping closer to the ziggurat from which he proposed to extend walls to the capitol of Queen Ava, the district's strongest fairy.
He had a straight route to the empty city his captains had described, he thought, but the scours informed him the hostile force was moving to a mound between him and his objective. “Is the mound very high, or has it anything notable?”
“I guess not. Sir.” The scout added the title not with hesitation, but with the emphasis of someone trying too hard to do his job. The Aptezor method, it might be called. “The tower behind it is pretty tall, though.”
What followed was a series of short marches by both armies wherein Ydridd's tried to reach the ziggurat without offering battle while the unknown force put itself in the way by taking vulnerable positions which, upon inquiry, were inevitably revealed to be near far better ones, often already fortified with rough palisades.
“The other general is better at this than I am,” Aptezor said in the privacy of the officer quarters, which was a little portable tent Taomenk had created between rituals.
“Likely we are against Medant Denmarof, which if true ought to hearten us rather than depress. Has he sent out scouts, or?”
“Mine have reported none, Captain Dirant.”
“We must then merge our superior discipline and his superior generalship into a tediously unstoppable army.”
“Be sure you aren't enjoying this too much,” Taomenk warned.
Dirant confessed that he was, and that moreover, he hoped to impress Medant. “Not that there is any rivalry between us. It is simply that we have I believe achieved something meaningful and worthy of recognition. Further, the inexplicable bonds military types speak of developing among one another so that they are readier to make sacrifices for an unlikable comrade than they are for their genial neighbors are not a myth. I prefer our fairies over theirs while acknowledging there to be no sound reason behind it.”
“I was convinced only I felt so because the queen put me in charge.” Aptezor and Dirant found a common feeling, but as Taomenk had spent more time with materiel and less with the troops, he remained as indifferent as before.
The problem which confronted them was how to confer with the enemy general. Ydridd may have accounted for the contingency of hostile collaboration by giving orders to prevent it, and the same might be true on the opposite side. Therefore it was with trepidation that Aptezor proposed, when the armies closed sufficiently to cost the scouts their job, to invite the foe's commander to parley.
The result betrayed his fears. The soldiers, far from taking action against the meeting, considered the notion the very height of human invention. Discipline nearly broke down entirely when fairies argued who would have the honor of holding up the banner which flapped from the upside-down spear specified for use at such occasions by Adaban martial tradition. The individual who wanted the honor of painting the customary point-down sword on it (why Ydridd had a collection of plain banners was another fairy enigma) meanwhile went about it without facing any objection. The contenders progressed from polite requests to mutual threats, and doubtless an army-wide brouhaha would have broken out had Dirant not prepared a dance ritual during the threats phase. As it was, Aptezor chose the scout who first discovered the enemy by way of a reward.
The opposing general responded to the presentation of the banner by sending a fairy to plant a spear in the ground, an acceptable recourse if caught without one's parley banner but one which would count against the officer so sloppy as to resort to it when later reviewed by historians and prospective employers. Condottieri of course frequently commissioned personalized banners emblazoned with their favorite weapons depicted in the peaceful position and sometimes, in an excess of decoration abhorred by traditionalists, deer or other herbivores.
Ydridd's officers trusted in their worthy adversary's integrity, at least compared to certain people behind them, and walked to the spot between the two spears unattended by any spies or fairies who were not spies. The other general walked alone to the surprising meeting, though the surprise was all on one side.
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“And there is Mr. Medant as expected.” Dirant bowed. “Mr. Medant, before we begin speaking of matters of mutual benefit, I must tell you that your family has not forgotten you and is worried about your welfare to distraction since your disappearance.”
“That is good to hear, for I am worried myself!” While there was humor in the response, the speaker and his listeners all understood there was no purpose in disguising the undesirability of their situation.
Medant Denmarof retained the youthful, nearly adolescent appearance Dirant remembered and likely always would unless he reached an exceptionally advanced age. The observation referred solely to his face; he had developed his body to the dimensions one expected of a Myrmidon who favored the physical applications of his class abilities over the more social ones such as improved workplace cooperation. The travails of the fairy realm had not sufficed to dislodge his customary headband, partially disguised by his Adaban-standard hair, which he found necessary on account of the regular inundation of his forehead caused by said physical applications. Aside from that he dressed conventionally, and it took Dirant a moment to realize the oddity of that. He had been thinking of Medant as someone who vanished during his vacation, but as a fairy general who possessed some prowess, should he not have girded himself in fairy armor? Either his master's treasury fell short of Queen Ydridd's in certain important categories or else he had no intention whatever of fighting.
“I thank you for the message,” Medant continued. “Are you a professional person-finder, or? I am likely being foolish. You have the speech of a Kitslofer. Ah! But are you Dirant from Fennizen?”
Dirant did not bow again, as the gesture would have appeared overly formal given their acknowledged relationship, minor as it was. He nodded instead, though someone who described that as a neck-high bow would not be mistaken so much as given to unconventional description.
“I must ask after your family and so, but perhaps we may consider that done without doing it. How is it that you came to be here? I cannot believe you were looking for me, you a company Ritualist.”
“And yet I was.” From there Dirant introduced his companions and explained the situation as he understood it, finishing with the proposition that Medant betray his fairy overlord and join his capabilities to their ambition.
“Or, if there is an argument for conducting ourselves in the reverse manner, we must entertain it, recognizing you as a more complete student of the military arts.”
“I am not so certain about that. You say you got them to scout for you?” Aptezor made a neck-high bow, whereupon Medant whistled. “I failed completely in that. Then. There is no question of my refusing. Queen Ava has offered me nothing but punishment for disobeying, though in truth there has not been much even of that. The order is to go fight, without any explanation given of means, goals, or what I am to receive for my service. It is an insult to a professional.” Genuine indignation was in his tone.
“Our queen isn't so different as you might be hoping, Mr. Medant.” At Taomenk's comment the two sides swapped information about the two sovereigns, and at the end, Medant still preferred theirs.
“A castle within a lake is a suitable base for an army. You can say that for it. Queen Ava rules from the most peculiar building. What is it those things are called which are set up like terraces? Do you know, or? Iflarent's Hideout should have some but I never made it there.”
“Ziggurats.”
“Ziggurats! That is the term. Queen Ava took one of those, flipped it upside-down, and dropped it on another one. It is wholly ridiculous. I can only think the abomination stays up because of fairy magic, though I am no architect. She gave me the top floor to use as my headquarters. Staying there frightened me more than any battle but my first.”
The description, against Medant's intention, fascinated Taomenk. His expression approached something appropriate for a ceremony devoted to an especially benevolent god. “The tops are missing! All the tops! Can it be true?” Taomenk cleared his throat and returned to his habitual manner, though not entirely so. “This nonsense about fairies. I must do calculations and tests, but there's so much in the way. These delays!”
With it resolved that Medant would be joining them, and after the council paused so they could shoo away fairies creeping up to listen, they fell to arranging the details. Medant raised a reservation he had with their ideas cautiously, unwilling to offend or to rely too heavily on his human-specific expertise. “I think we possibly should reevaluate some of our premises. Am I understanding that our aim is to gain permission to take a small crew of fairies to a point in the caverns close to the surface and tunnel out, or?”
“It is so,” Dirant confirmed.
“But if I deliver my army up, we can capture them and force them to dig. Can we not extract ourselves with that much manpower? Tell the fairies it is normal for the defeated to labor thus for the victor, which in historical terms it is, and they are likely not to object.”
“We need Mr. Doltandon to do that,” Aptezor objected. “Ah. No, we don't, do we? I thought we did.”
Dirant confessed it was the same for him. “His organization of a small group and the progress he achieved with it impressed me so much, I forgot to consider that we might exceed his team's speed simply by getting more fairies. There is still the matter of our missing friends, however.”
Medant, freed from his diffidence by the swift acquiescence of his collaborators to his corrections, advanced with cheerful confidence to laying out a plan of action they agreed to be the most plausible method of achieving their goals.