On the fourth day of their invasion, the Valoise were still landing troops and unloading supplies. David had recovered enough by then to sit upright and watch the endless rows of people, pack animals, and carts. The latter came out of what remained of Port Neaf loaded, and went back empty, turn after turn.
Did the pisscoats think there was no food on Loegrion?
Or maybe the food wans’t good enough?
Or maybe he just had no idea how much an army like this ate. How many horses had the Valoise shipped across the sea, anyway?
“One for each cavalryman,” de Burg said wrily. “Plus officers, plus reserves.” The Marquess craned his neck. “They’ll be building a whole depot here, I reckon.”
The sappers were certainly busy building something, though David didn’t think it was a depot. He thought it looked more like stakes.
He glanced around uneasily at the other cages in sight. He’d been somewhat lucky that the Valoise had put him into a cage with just two others—probably preferential treatment in the light of their nobility. The rest of the cages were stuffed with as many Loegrians as would fit. Many of them were healers, doctors and their helpers, also the injured soldiers who had been sent back to camp. Basically, all the people who hadn’t fought back when the camp had been taken.
It didn’t look like a whole lot of Loegrian soldiers had surrendered while they’d still been able to fight, so there were also a lot of dead bodies amongst the cages.
In the very next cage, Fleur was covering awkwardly between the healers she’d been protecting from the Rot during the fight. They were giving her as much room as possible, but hadn’t pointed her out to the Valoise yet.
A few cages further away, there was Bernadette, still recovering from her injuries, surrounded by off-duty pisscoats gaping at her though the bars.
Waiting for the spectacle, weren’t they? First night was the one after tonight.
The Valoise were still not making any effort to find newly bitten werewolves amongst their own injured men, as far as David could tell. Nor had he seen any sign that Port Neaf’s civilans were being tested, and even given the distance, there should be some? Considering the city’s size, the sheer manpower to clear everyone out, and then the silver needed to do even a cursory check of the people as they filed back into the city should raise a fuss in camp?
That was how werewolf hunters on Loegrion used to do it, at least. Make everyone leave the affected village, check them over as they return through the gates.
Provided of course that the village still had working gates.
Though, really, any line would do. As long as you could keep all the people in sight and stop them from sneaking away or hiding injuries…
Maybe the Valoise thought Port Neaf was just too big to bother.
David shuddered at the thought. If there just ten people in the city who had gotten bitten and survived—that would be worse than the hunt that had started all this. And then they’d transform in the middle of the city three days from now, biting even more people. Even if each just left three victims alive, that was thirty werewolves in another month, and from then on out, the problem just got worse and worse.
And he had told the werewolves to leave the cavalrymen alive that had attacked the wagon trail on the way here.
He tried not to do the calculation in his head, but he just kept running it with different base numbers. Even if Loegrion somehow managed to win this war, and push back against the invasion, they’d still pay for this for generations.
Not that he thought they could win, considering the mass of soldiers all around. Grenadiers, and fusiliers, cavalrymen of different kinds and mariners, even some Imperial Guards, easily recognisable by their bearskin hats. Chasseurs with silver adorned hats and epaulettes that made the werewolves flinch if they came too close.
Men from all corners of the Empire, by the look of it.
And more artillery than David had ever seen in his life.
“How many soldiers do you think they’ve landed so far?” he asked, turning to de Burg.
The Marquess looked around glumly. “It seems to me like they’re bringing over at least one whole Corps d'armée, possible two. As befitting a Levant of the Empire,” he added. “I had just hoped they wouldn’t go all out for us.”
He sighed. “Then again, Loegrion is too a large colony to hold onto with a single division, even with their allies in the south. And with the prince here…”
He shook his head.
Right. The Levant couldn’t afford anything but a victory. So he’d bring as many troops as he could.
How many had the rebels in the south raised?
“Speaking of the devil,” de Burg grumbled.
A group of people was walking down the path along the cages: Imperial Guards up front, and more in the back. Between them walked a boy in an oversized ermine cloak, followed by two servants who had to hold up the precious furs so they wouldn’t drag in the mud of the camp’s unpaved walkways.
Was that really the crown prince? He looked younger than Greg!
Not that that cloak helped. It did nothing for his posture, making him walk hunched-over rather than striding along regally. Was it just that white-blond hair, or was he too young too even shave?
But he did wear a circlet on his head, so it probably really was the prince.
Next to him walked a much older man, wearing the elaborate midnight blue uniform of a Valoisian marshall, easily recognisable by the white feathers on his hat.
“I reckon that’s the one really commanding all these troops?” David asked.
“One of them,” de Burg said darkly. “He was doing the rounds with a different marshall before.”
Sometime when David hadn’t been fully conscious, presumably.
“You don’t remember?” Lord Pettau asked. “He commented on your new companion.”
He glanced towards Alvin’s ghost, curled up in a corner of the cage.
David shook his head. He was vaguely aware that there had been people standing around the cage several times, commenting on the apparition, but he hadn’t really be present enough to remember faces or uniforms. Mostly, he had been curled up in misery.
“How’s your head feeling now?” de Burg asked promptly.
“It’s fine,” David sighed. It still ached slightly, but he couldn’t tell if that was from the blow or because he had been lying on his back almost unmoving for the past days.
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He was really ready to get out of here.
Unfortunately, their conversation hadn’t gone unnoticed.
“I’m glad to see the great hunter Feleke has recovered,” the prince commented, swinging his whole entourage towards the cage. His voice was nasal, not quite as high-pitched as David had expected. Grating, still. “We were quite worried.”
“Why, does it lower the price on my head if you present it smashed in?” David asked.
The prince arched an eyebrow at him, then smiled too brightly. “So you did get our message!” he said, as if that were a lucky coincidence. “Truth be told, it was mostly the arch bishop pushing for it. There was a lot of unhappiness in the college about that—unpleasantness concerning High Inquisitor d’Evier..”
“And it’s easier to execute a Baron’s son over that than a duke. Especially a duke your father himself appointed.”
The prince waved that off. “Thankfully, that won’t be an issue much longer,” he said. “We don’t know if you heard—there has been infiting amongst the Loegrian nobility, a most distasteful business. Really, you should be grateful—your end at Rambuillet will be swift in comparison.”
He looked up at David serenely, daring him to ask what had happened.
David rolled his eyes, while deBurg retreated further into the cage.“We are aware of what happened at Deva on halfmoon.”
“So you know that any further resistance is pointless,” the prince said, more seriously. “Your leaders are dead, or will be in a few days. Your army has been scattered. We will march this army to Deva, and take back control over what is rightfully ours.”
David laughed. “Take back what’s yours? All you did was run Loegrion into the ground when you had it fully under your control.”
The prince wasn’t so easy to goad, unfortunately. “Mistakes were made,” he said simply. “They are of the past, and they shall not be repeated. We will be sure to scourge the land of both calamities this time—the werewolves and the Rot. As you see, multiple companies of Chasseuers stand ready to start the work as soon as our preparations are finished here.”
“I see,” David said softly. He had to bite his tongue to stop himself from pointing out what a bloody poor job they were doing of containing the werewolf spread right now, preparations or not.
Something must have shown on his face anyway, because the prince said: “We have been assured the cleansing will be starting tonight. Perhaps you will join us for the spectacle.”
The prince turned to the Marshall at his side, and even though the boy had phrased it as a question, the older man bowed at once. “It will be done,” he said.
“Don’t trouble yourself for me, Your Highness,” David said, with the most mocking bow he could manage. Since he was still sitting down, he reckoned it was quite mocking indeed.
But the prince smiled brightly in response. “Lord Feleke, if you didn’t want us to give you trouble, you should have stuck to the hunting of werewolves, rather than the rescuing.” He stepped closer to the cage. “We will start with the werewolves locked up here in the camp, and then we’ll make our way north, all the way to Deva, to deal with the little freaks you’re allowing to grow up there. And then further north, and west, all the way to the Argentum Formation. We will not stop until we have cleansed all that land.”
“Because that worked so well last time.”
He just couldn’t get a rise out of that boy, could he?
“The army of then is hardly comparable to the army of now,” the prince said calmly. “We have alchemy and manpower on our side. And the venerated Church, or course.”
He had that smug expression of a teenager who had figured it all out over the stupid adults, plastered all over his face.
David could only hope that it was just that, youthful overconfidence. He couldn’t help but feel that he’d be just as confident, with two Imperial marshalls and all their troops behind his back. Especially if the enemy had just lost their only general with any proper experience at large scale campaigns.
The prince turned away, still bend over under his own cloak. That, at least, put a grim smile on David’s face.
“That’s true nobility for you,” he griped. “Murdering a score of ermine so you can wear a coat you can’t even walk in properly.”
Then he sighed. He didn’t want to know what would happen to the werewolves tonight. And he certainly didn’t want to watch.
Not that he was given a choice in the matter. As the sun vanished behind the hills to the west, guards came to pull him out of the cage, one man holding onto each of his elbows and a third one following with a pistol aimed at his back. They marched him to the center of the camp, where the big command tent stood, and the constructions he had seen going up all day.
He hadn’t been mistaken. It was stakes, indeed. Big piles of wood, dozens or them, filled a large square in front of the command tent, each one with a pole in the middle and multiple sets of shackles attached to them.
Were the Valoise aware that they would need silver to stop the werewolves from turning?
He feared they did.
His heart beat high in his chest and he stumbled a little as he was dragged into position himself. Right in the first row of spectators, the pistol still digging into his back.
He really, really wanted to close his eyes, to look away from the piles of firewood. But there was the prince, smirking at him as he wandered over. The boy had ditched the cloak, but still stood with his shoulders hunched. More used to a desk than the battlefield, David thought.
“We have decided to show mercy and give your monsters a chance at the next life,” the prince said, looking back and forth between David and the piles of wood. “If they even have a soul, it shall be cleansed as it rises into the night.”
“How very generous of you,” David spit out through gritted teeth.
He took a deep breath and wriggled in the grasp of his guards until he could clasp his hands behind his back. It allowed him to dig the nails of one hand into the palm of the other without being totally obvious about it. A little bit of pain to distract himself from the horror that was just starting.
The first werewolf dragged up his pyre was Lorenz, the young man David had sent to the doctors to bite the soldiers who wouldn’t make it otherwise. One of the criminals. Lorenz cried out to him, begging him for help, but there was absolutely nothing David could do with three soldiers standing guard over him and no weapon. He didn’t even bother trying to reason with the Levant, who was smirking at him from between his guards.
If it weren’t for the pistol at his back, David might have thrown himself at the bastard, Imperial Guards or not. If only he had his sabre, he might have done it, pistol or not. If only there were a chance to at least bloody the Levant’s nose before the guards killed him.
But there was no chance he’d manage even that.
So he didn’t move. Biding his time. Schooling his face into the mask of the Relentless.
He wanted his last seconds to matter. Even if it was just a tiny bit. If he was going to die, he wanted to draw blood first.
He didn’t look away as one werewolf after the other were dragged up the piles of wood and tied to the centrepiece with silver.
That was the least he owed them—to not turn away like a coward. To witness their final moments.
And yes, somewhere, the Valoise had learned to put silver on the werewolves to stop them from turning as they were dragged up the pyres.
David’s breath caught as Bernadette was dragged up as one of the last ones, wiggling desperately. Somehow, she managed to slip out of whatever they had put on her, turning instantly on the men dragging her despite her injuries. She didn’t attack them, though.
Instead, she howled at the blood red sky above, so fitting to what was about to happen.
Fleur, don’t… she cried.
David dug his thump into his palm with all his strength to stop himself from turning his head in the direction of Fleur’s cage. He had been so distracted by the horror of what the Valoise were about to do, he hadn’t even realised that she wasn’t amongst the werewolves dragged up. But now that he was really counting, he realised that several of his human looking soldiers were missing.
The Valoise hadn’t actually tested their prisoners. And if the other soldiers in a cage kept their mouths shut…
The echo of Berndatte’s cry still rang in David’s ears when a priest stepped forwards. Giving a sermon, of all things, preaching about Mithras’s mercy and generosity to his enemmies. David thought it was a final insult—or maybe the Valoise were really that blinded in their faith.
He hummed to himself to drown the priest out. Praying to the moon instead for a miracle to save the werewolves whimpering as the silver burned their skin. Praying to Morgulon that she had one more trick hidden, something to keep Imani alive. And yes, George Louis, too.
And he prayed that Lane could keep the situation from spiralling out of control. Muster more troops. Possibly even more werewolves, even though he didn’t know where they would find any.
Anything to stop the pisscoats from taking the country back. Anything at all to stop this from happening elsewhere.
Heat washed over him when the stakes were lit, terrible heat. There was nothing gentle about these flames, nothing kind, whatever the priest had just said. All they brought was death and suffering.
Smoke blew into his face, together with another wave of warmth, but inside, inside, he was cold. Not a muscle on his face moved, even as the flames licked up the werewolves’s bodies. He wondered what it felt like, to be frozen by the silver of the manacles and burned by the fire at the same time.
Their cries cut him open, leaving him raw and bleeding. Still he didn’t look away. Didn’t close his eyes, no matter how much the smoke burned. It wouldn’t have helped against the screaming, anyway.
As Alvin’s shade pooled around his shoulders like armour, he let the tears and the hate pool together inside his chest.
If he ever got a chance, he would make these murderers hurt the same way.