Chapter Six

I’ll Prove You Wrong

Maren, Delmar and I burned into the wee hours of the night by ourselves on one of the corner tables at the Library. The glow of a few other stacks and shelves across the Hall told me that some other groups and students were doing the same. A week’s leave and a lent horse meant a lot after six months of isolation inside the College’s walls. Although they did get quite a fair share of visitors, even the Kreuzhainers hadn’t been able to visit home themselves in that time.

“I’m as tired as a workhorse with a rusty boot, but I’m not one to bail out first. This damned be harder than some fieldwork, but it’s got its own rewards,” Maren muttered to herself as she lit another candle for us to study from. We were all taking our own routes to tackling the challenge; she was playing to her strengths, looking up cases on ironwork-reinforced battlements. I was keeping my options open, and hoping for divine inspiration to strike.

“That’s one way to say it Maren, but you’re definitely speaking some truth,” Delmar agreed with her. He was studying some more formulae for calculating loadbearing, hoping to frontload more stone and brick by the surface walls. “Scip, could you help me out with this? What does this say exactly?”

I hunched over the table to take a look at his tome. “That says ‘dynamic.’ As in, dynamic loads.” Delmar gave me a humbled quizzical look, so I elaborated, “You can’t just make one calculation for the load to be carried by a capstone over one time. Things change. They’re dynamic. Soldiers run from one part of the wall to another, a Helsten dokkalfar troll climbs onto some turret, the loads change. You need to account for that sort of thing.”

“I see,” Delmar said, his voice trailing off in a way that didn’t inspire confidence. By any measure of success, he was struggling here in the College, though I suppose that was to be expected. He had no experience nor passion for building to draw from to serve as a source of strength with each lecture and each task. Maren, Ceecee and I have all never attended an actual academic setting either, but at the very least, we knew how to build something that could stand strong after a week or two. It was in our intuition.

“How in the world did you even get to reading so good in the first place, Scip?” Maren asked me, curious. Over the past few months, I had been helping them both through their tomes.

“I guess I sort of grew up with it. Reading in both Common and in Dalintayan, what we speak back home, at least. My Da, he used to dive in the open waters and find pearls, you see. But you can’t eat pearls, so he’d trade them with other fishermen, who’d then trade them with merchants from Highbury and Listerborough who’d come sailing into the isles on their ships. And whenever he had pearled enough to have something left over after all that, he’d go to the merchants themselves and trade them for books.”

"Puh," Delmar mumbled, the sound slipping from his mouth in casual surprise. “If that were my Da, he’d trade them for some salted meats to stockpile for the winter.”

“We didn’t have winter back where I was from,” I clarified. “And, well, my Da said the books would pay for themselves eventually. They’re helping now, aren’t they?”

“Yeah, don’t listen to Delmar, he’s just being a right sourpuss,” Maren waved away. “What kind of books did your Da buy with those pearls he found?”

“Any kind, to be honest. He didn’t read himself, so he’d take anything that he could trade a pearl for.” I flipped a page on my tome. “My favorite was this one book of maps he had gotten. I always wondered how that ship made it back to Listerborough without it. Suppose they had some spare.”

“Right,” Delmar said. “It’s getting late. Should we head off to bed?”

“You two can go ahead. I’ll stay here,” I answered.

“Scip, you’re going to run yourself into the ground the way you’re headed,” Maren pointed out. “Take some rest and you can get back to it in the morning.”

I raised my hands in protest and echoed her words, “I’m never one to bail out first.”

Maren rolled her eyes. “Now you’re just showing off, you know that? You’d be loads more productive with some warm bread a morning after a warm bed.”

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“Just one more tome,” I answered flatly, and that ended discussions there. The Avengardian boy and the Helsten girl lingered for another second before deciding that there was no arguing with me, and they took their leave to the dormitories.

I did not enjoy the solitude for long, however. As I poured through another tome, this one on the intertwining of weight relief magic on foundation stones, I was soon approached by a dwarf with a thick ginger beard and golden baubles in his braids.

“They say sheepherders rise early for the morning harvest,” Kazador said. “I see this one’s taken to reaping chaff by lanternlight.”

“Kazador,” I replied, acknowledging the dwarf but not his comment. “I understand you’re wanting for friends, but I’m afraid that I’m not exactly available for you.”

“Quatsch,” he answered in dwarvish, in a tone that told me that he didn’t exactly agree with what I had just said to him. “I’ve got plenty friends, yes, and a drop of blood from any of them would be worth more gold than what you’ve seen in your whole lifetime.”

“Okay, that’s great to hear then,” I answered, the conversation turning a bit too rich for my taste. Opting to switch over to another topic, I asked, “You’ve had plenty of them visit over the past few months. Have you heard of any news from the front?”

The expression on his gaunt and hardy face shifted to a more contemplative look, or about as contemplative as Kazador could handle. But still, this was a topic that each and every student of the College respected, and he acquiesced to my curiosity and grumbled, “The entire continent of Jatta trembles under the weight of this war.”

When I said nothing in reply, he elaborated further based off what his visitors from Kreuzhain had informed him, “The Emir of Sevisk has dug his claws into the City of Roses. The Crown Princes have all of their heads resting in baskets, so I’m told. And so more of the Emir’s Chosen are beating down the gates to Fleur d’Lain. Soulgnasher, Deadraiser - both of them taken arms to the Eternal Oak. If those Seviskian cowards raze that damned tree, then the whole city falls with it. Mark my words.”

“And what of the war to the south?” I asked. I was inquiring about Helstendam, an important canal city that separated Sevisk from the Mittelsea; and with it, Kreuzhain, Avengard, and the dwarven mountain stronghold of Duar D’aldin.

“The war there is beginning to hold shape,” he said, and my heart dropped. If Helsten falls, then the Emir has his way to landing massive armies on Western Jattan soil. And with that, the raids on Avengard would turn to occupying forces. “Two of the Emir’s Chosen are raiding Helsten villages. The ones they call Widowmaker and Dreamstealer. The city itself would then be next, I believe.”

If Helstendam holds, then the only way the Emir could land an invading force onto Avengardian soil would be a long, arduous journey around the northern tip spanning the Voxden mountain ranges, through the Ocean of the Great Beyond, before finally landing on the Black Forest itself. If Helstendam holds, then Avengard could stand a chance.

If Helstendam falls, then anything is possible on Jattan soil.

“I appreciate the news you’ve shared with me, Kazador,” I thanked the dwarf.

But then, the look on his face seemed to revert back, and he said, “So you understand the scale of this war then, you do? And you understand why the war might be better off if I snapped your neck in your sleep tonight, along with the other sheepherders from Avengard?”

The thought of Kazador looming over my dormitory bed at night sickened me and instantly formed a pit in my stomach. I grimaced, and my blood began to boil. This was not the first time Kazador threatened to take one of our lives.

The ginger dwarf continued, “You lot can barely read a damned rune on a page, you can. Look at how long you take to get through a single tome. And the brown haired one, he can barely calculate the coin he’d need at a meatmarket, what more can he handle with the weight of a battlement or the trajectory of a siege engine?”

“We’re all trying our best, dwarf, what more could you be wanting for?”

“You four out of the College, that’s what would be best,” he grumbled spitefully under his thick beard. “One little error in a calculation from one of you sheepherders and maybe a wall collapses on a forgeband of dwarven ironwielders. A small oversight and a sling snaps off a trebuchet’s counterweight and fells a whole pavilion of Kreuzhain’s proudest. Do not, manling, force me to imagine what would happen if one of you sheepherder’s committed a big mistake. None of you are engineers. None of you ever will be.”

I held my tongue, lost for words. Because as arrogant and belligerent as he was, Kazador had a point. We were being handed an absurd amount of responsibility for having only served a few months at what was essentially a training school out in the woods. Delmar, after all, had just lied his way in - with my help. What right did we hold to act as Engineers for the war effort? What privilege did we earn in being called Lances of the War College?

Meanwhile, scores and scores of other men and women were drafted as footsoldiers and infantry and shieldmen. Scores and scores of other people had already probably died, just six months after we had all been together before the Laurelsmeister announcing the draft.

“I’ll prove you wrong, dwarf,” I answered him feebly, with a crestfallen voice, the timbre of my words shaking with each syllable. Even I didn’t believe myself at that time.

Kazador bellowed a deep, taunting chortle. He spat on the floor next to me, and the pungent odour of tar-black tabak hit my nostrils. “I wish you would, sheepherder. Less dead dwarves out there if you did. But I suppose some dead sheepherders would accomplish the same thing.” He turned his back to me, and before I could think of anything to say to him, he had been gone.