David met with Rust and Ragna for lunch. He tried to vary the times the three of them all sat down together, just in case the Valoise managed somehow to track their movements. It seemed unlikely—mostly, the werewolves tracked the pisscoats—but he doubted he could be too careful at this point.
They sat in the wet grass around a deep and narrow firepit, roasting small pieces of meat. David had done his best to limit the smoke that escaped, but there was always a little bit rising in the sun. Not that his companions worried about the smoke.
“They appear to be changing course,” Ragna noted. “Going west.”
“Any idea what they might be doing, Rust?” David asked.
“Could just be they’re hoping for better roads,” Rust shrugged. “Maybe they’re going to cross the river.”
David looked up from poking the meat in surprise. “Why on earth would they try to cross the Lessing?”
“Well, they might think they can get us in a pincer movement?” Rust scratched his beard. “Or maybe they want to do that with Deva. Or first us, then Deva. Or maybe there’s a city garrison they don’t want at their back, though I can’t think of one off the top of my head.”
He grinned wryly. “Sorry, but I can’t read the minds of those fancy marshalls.”
“Thanks for trying,” David said.
Rust crunched on the hard bread they had found in some deserted farmstead. After a moment he added: “Could be we’ve hampered their supply lines to the point where they want to make it into lands we haven’t burned yet. Could just as easily be that they promised their soldiers looting rights and they want a city for them to raid to bring up morale. Might even be all of these. There’s bound to be more than one reason, in any case.”
“What are we going to do?” Ragna asked.
David mulled that over. He didn’t have a map of the area, and it wasn’t like Rust and Ragna had spent lots of time in the heartlands. He had a vague idea of where they were, but he wasn’t even sure what the closest crossing over the Lessing was.
“I might have to ride ahead and find a city,” he admitted slowly. “Figure out where exactly we are and if we’re lucky, send a telegram to the palace. DeVale must have arrived by now, right? Perhaps he has an opinion on this. Or advice.”
He also really wanted to know whether Imani was fine. And George Louis, too.
“I’m tempted to just ignore this, otherwise,” he added. “If they’re hoping to loot a city, there’s little we can do to stop them.”
“Be careful,” Ragna warned.
“Maybe we should go with you a way,” Rust suggested slyly. “If we want to keep them off-balance, doing nothing for a couple of days might just be the thing. Give everyone a break, too.”
“We can take a small break,” David allowed. “But you can’t all come. I’ll take a bodyguard, but the rest of you need to at least show themselves every now and then, to keep the pisscoats worried.”
***
They ended up drawing lots for who got to go into the city with David. Or a city, given that nobody was quite sure which one it would be. Nine of them got the privilege, plus Rust to stay in contact with Ragna. Which was sure to cause panic when they returned to civilization. David had briefly considered taking only those who could pass as human, but really, what was the point? Given how they looked, they would cause a panic anyway.
People would probably think they were deserters from one army or the other.
He wasn’t even sure if they would be wrong to think so.
If they were lucky, they would find out.
After a half day of quick travel, they reached the Lessing. If David remembered correctly, it was named thus because it was “the Lesser Torrent” which had somehow been worn down to just “the Lessing” over the years. Though how anyone could know that, he had no idea. Maybe there were old texts?
Greg would know. Lane would probably have opinions about his musing about the origin of words. Nathan would make a joke on his expense. Andrew would have something to snack on.
Sun, how he missed them.
But he couldn't focus on that.
Despite being the lesser of the two rivers, it was certainly the one more torrential, so fast flowing, even the Rot was having difficulties taking it over. It was quite deep, too, making it hard to cross. If he absolutely had to, David could see himself making the other bank with the werewolves, but he seriously doubted that the Valoise would get their cannons and carts across. Not without a bridge.
He turned in the saddle to address one of the veterans. “Ever blown up a bridge, Robert?”
The giant wolf nodded. He wasn’t very good at communicating in this body yet.
“Think you could blow up one across the Lessing?”
Robert rotated his head on his neck.
“Not sure? Cause the bridges here are difficult to blow up? Or because we don’t have the right stuff?”
The latter got a nod.
“Well, we’ll try to get you the stuff,” David said. “Might have to slow down the pisscoats a bit.”
That got a tail wag.
David glanced to his other side. They followed the river, on a narrow footpath right at the water’s edge. Alvin’s shade jogged along on the waves as if they were solid grounds, no matter how wild the rapids got.
He wasn’t real. Except that he had fought the Rot to defend David. Maybe he was only “real” to other magical things?
Maybe he could ask Pierre about it some day. Would Morgulon be able to talk to the ghost?
It was weird, riding back into civilization. David hadn’t taken a real bath for the better part of a month. Jumping into a river to put on the same clothes he had worn for weeks afterwards wasn’t the same thing at all. He felt all the more dirty as they left the range of what the werewolves had ravaged behind, riding between pristine pastures and fields. There even was livestock out to graze, despite the army being no three days away. Two, if the pisscoats hurried up a little.
David shuddered in the warmth. He supposed the animals still needed to eat, enemy soldiers or not.
One field they came by was in the process of being reaped. Men and women with knives and hooks made the most of the two days of stable weather they’d had, nearly disappearing behind the wheat. When they saw the werewolves passing by, they started yelling at each other. They didn’t stop what they were doing, but David thought the work took on a new urgency.
Did they hope to get the harvest in before the Valoise got here? Even if they could, what were they going to do with it? Flailing it would take even more time. Or did they plan to take the whole sheaves with them?
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That might work, actually. Not that he was a farmer. But if they got the field cleared today, loaded it all up…
Maybe they’d have some food. Or something to sell.
If they were quick enough.
Eventually, a city appeared on the horizon, on the other side of the river. It was quite a large place, David thought. He could see the smoke of industry rising above. So this had to be either Highham or Erkford, right? There weren’t that many big cities along the Lessing, and he was quite certain they had not travelled far enough to reach Northeim.
As most cities, this one had outgrown its walls. As far as David could see, there didn't seem to be any attempt of reigning in the sprawling outer districts. Given that the Lessing was nearly Rot free, this probably wasn't the security issue it would have been almost everywhere else. The main part of the city was on the other, higher bank of the river, the old town with the walls and the garrison with its own defenses. An old, fortified bridge led across the waters, and on this side, there were factories and the kind of poor man’s quarters that tended to spring up around any substantial industry.
Erkford, Rust commented. Before David could ask how he knew that, he added: Only place with a fortified garrison around here.
“They'll be thrilled to have us,“ David commented.
Despite the speed with which the werewolves travelled, word had gotten to the city first. The guards at the city's outskirts had been reinforced by soldiers. Or maybe they usually had watch shifts a hundred people strong, but David doubted that.
“Do they carry silver?” David asked Rust.
Just some trinkets.
Not enough soldiers then, if the werewolves really wanted to force their way into the outer quarters. More than enough soldiers to kill David, though. So he waved at the werewolves to wait out of musket range and rode forwards alone, keeping both hands in the air where the guards and soldiers could see them.
He should have brought a white flag.
They let him ride up nearly all the way to where the countryside abruptly gave way to the pigpens at the very edge of the sprawling suburbs. The smell of pigshit hung over everything, mixing with the smoke from the factories. It reminded David of the very first letter Greg had written them from Eoforwic.
“Halt!” an officer yelled at him as soon as he passed the first pigpen. “Get off your horse and raise your hands! No funny business! And tell those monsters not to move!”
Or what?
David rolled his eyes, but did as he was told.
“What’s your name?” the lieutenant asked.
“I’m David Feleke, son of Baron Feleke. You may know me as part of the Feleke Four, or Lord Relentless. I need to talk to whoever is in charge of the city and the garrison.”
“And what’s that?” the lieutenant asked, pointing at where Alvin’s shade was just barely visible in the sun.
David glanced over at the gangly youth chasing shadows.
“That’s the ghost of a dead werewolf,” he said.
A bunch of soldiers promptly aimed their muskets at Alvin.
David swore. “Oh for—Look.” He reached out a hand, waved it through Alvin’s spectral body. “Don’t waste your bullets. You can’t shoot him, and he can’t hurt anything but the Rot.”
“Damn,” the lieutenant muttered, and a couple of men made the sign against evil. But at least the guns went up again.
“I can’t leave him behind,” David said, before anyone could demand that. “He’s tethered to me. Wherever I go, he goes.”
And he hadn’t yet figured out how to make him disappear to that other shape around his shoulders. If that was even something he could control.
The officer of the watch considered that for a moment. “What about the rest of the werewolves?”
“They’re quite real,” David said. Which he realised wasn’t what the man wanted to know. “They’ll wait here for my return,” he added.
Hopefully, it would ensure that he was allowed to return. He wasn’t sure if these people had any idea what nine werewolves could do to their city this side of halfmoon.
When the guards finally got out of the way, Rust commented: Don’t take too long.
David waved at him, then led his horse after the guards who formed up around him. They walked him through the outer district of what he hoped was really Erkford, all the way to the single bridge that crossed the Lessing. It was a mediaeval construction, with fortifications on either side: High towers from a time when there had been toll borders here overlooked the land in all directions. David thought he saw cannons up there.
“Is your telegraph still working?” he asked, when he spotted the tell-tale wires running along the river.
The lieutenant gave him a confused look. “Why wouldn’t it?”
David paused. “Because the enemy is no three days away? It’s half a day for light cavalry to the river. Can’t be hard to cut the wires.”
“Haven’t heard any complaints,” the lieutenant said. “Keep it down about the enemy, will you? We’ll have a panic on our hands.”
“They’re on their way,” David said. “You can have it now or when the Grande Armée marches up, but it’s going to happen.”
“Are you mad?” the lieutenant hissed. “What would they want with Erkford?”
David shrugged. “At a best guess, they want to keep up morale by letting their soldiers loot the town.”
The guards on his sides looked nervously at each other.
It was a good bridge indeed, David thought when they passed beneath the first tower. It was long and just wide enough for a couple of carts to pass, and he saw openings to shoot would-be crossers from inside the tower.
“How many more werewolves did you bring?” the lieutenant asked when they reached the other side.
“Just the nine outside.”
“But there’s more?”
“There’s more, yes.”
“Enough to defend the city?”
David raised his eyebrows. “The pisscoats brought sixty thousand soldiers over. We’ve whittled them down a bit, but how big is your garrison?”
“Two and a half thousand soldiers.”
That was a good number. Usually.
David didn’t need to say anything more, and the officer didn’t ask. He did send off one of his men ahead to take word to the garrison and make sure David would meet the right people there.
There was no holding Erkford. Which didn’t stop people from turning their noses up at him, the captain of the garrison and the mayor. Both of them were twice David's age and quite round, wrapped in fine fabrics, and in the case of the mayor, a lot of jewellery. If either one of them had ever spent a night sleeping rough, it had been decades ago.
David was wishing for Captain Reed before they had even started speaking.
So he decided not to give them a chance. “The Valoise are two quick days or marching away from here. They have changed direction, heading directly towards the Lessing. Chances are they will try to take the bridge. I need to use your telegraph to inform whoever is in charge at Deva of the development.”
“That can’t be,” the mayor said. As if that would banish the bad news.
David looked at the garrison’s captain. “I’m only here to pass on a message,” he said. “But there’s a good chance the Valoise are coming here to loot. So if I was you, I’d evacuate. At the very least, move the women north.”
He paused. “You’re not going to have too much time to follow them, given that the Rot is on the way.”
“The Rot? The Rot can’t take the Lessing.”
David rolled his eyes. “We’re burning fields and villages so the pisscoats can’t plunder them. And kill the livestock in the pastures. The Rot will show up sooner rather than later. Lessing or not.”
“You can’t do that!” the mayor protested.
“And you’re going to stop me?” David asked.
“I’ll have you arrested!”
“You can try,” David said. “In that case, my werewolves will save the Valoise the trouble and destroy your city first.”
“They can’t do that!” the mayor yelled.
David rolled his eyes and looked at the captain, curious to see what he would do. The old soldier sighed, and finally stood straight.
“Lieutenant Markis, take the Mr. Vilis somewhere where he won’t be in the way. I’m hereby declaring martial law in the city. Tell the guilds to ready their militias. I want them mustered at six.”
David did his best to hide his surprise when the lieutenant snapped a salute, and marched out of the room.
“While they get on with that, let’s contact Deva, Lord Feleke,” the captain went on. “If you’ll follow me?”
“You want the citizens to fight against the Valoise?” David asked. He didn't try to hide his doubts about that idea, but followed after the captain.
“Hah! That would be a slaughter,” the captain said. “But word of you and your monsters is sure to spread. While they’re mustering, they aren’t panicking. And they can help with evacuating.”
David could only hope the man was right.
As they crossed the courtyard of the garrison, bells started ringing in the city. Not the cheerful sound calling the believers to church, or the mournful tolling of a funeral, but the wild ringing of the alarm, rising all over the city.
Loud enough to wake the dead, David thought.
“Your werewolves,” the captain asked, “can they hold the bridge?”
David shook his head. “For a short while, maybe. If the enemy doesn’t attack on full moon. I doubt it would be worth the cost, though. I don’t see what we gain by sacrificing the only advantage we have currently have just to hold Erkford for an hour or two longer. Let’s see what Deva says, though.”