image [https://i.imgur.com/tKQNqej.png]

PART 2: THE FLAME OF TRUTH

“Let’s practice it one more time,” Lady Luviana suggested.

“Which part?” said Adara.

“The initial proposition.”

The two of them were waiting in the throne room, moments away from a crucial negotiation. Adara’s epistles to Emperor Stoneclaw had received no answer, so they had instead written to Calamar’s commanding officer at the front. Their letter had been answered, and a griffin emissary had arrived in Saven earlier that morning to commence diplomatic talks.

Adara took a deep breath. To center herself, she took a moment to close her eyes and focus on her other senses: the weight of the Everborn crown on her head. The feel of the scepter in her gloved hand. The rustle of her dress—one of the finest in her wardrobe—as she shifted in her throne.

Adara opened her eyes. “Sir Firewing,” she rehearsed, “our royal personage has brought you here to propose a temporary armistice, one that will advance the interest of both our nations. We believe such an armistice—”

“Remember,” Lady Luviana interrupted, shifting in her basin of water beside Adara’s throne. “Avoid hedging.”

“Right.” Adara straightened a little. “. . . the interest of both our nations. Such an armistice would—”

“And slow down,” Lady Luviana interrupted again, chuckling. “You’ll talk his ear off.”

Adara took another deep breath, trying to calm her nerves. How could Lady Luviana chuckle at a time like this? The fate of their nation rode on Adara’s performance in the next half-hour. She looked around, trying to find a glass to check her appearance. But the throne room, though glistening with crystal and marble, yielded no mirror in the right position for her to see herself. Why had she decided to wear gloves today? Normally she could gauge her appearance by checking the skin tone on her hands.

“You’ll do fine,” said Lady Luviana, reading Adara’s thoughts—or, more likely, her complexion. The merfin leaned out of her basin and patted the queen’s arm. “You have your father’s blood in you.”

A rap came at the door. Adara nodded to her guards, who opened it.

Sir Firewing, the Calamarvan ambassador, pranced into the room with all the grandeur of a prizewinner on race day. The griffin wore a brilliant golden collar, studied with rubies as big as strawberries. His mane and plumage were dyed in vibrant shades of reds, oranges, and yellows, casting the illusion of fire rippling down his neck and shoulders as he walked. He kept his wings slightly open, magnifying his already impressive size.

image [https://i.imgur.com/Pwzqx6l.png]

In Firewing’s wake, Chancellor Skagar loped into the room like some naughty kitten in its mother’s shadow.

Adara rose from her throne. “Sir Firewing! We extend our royal greeting.” She curtsied regally.

To her surprise, the griffin didn’t respond with the deep bow that the occasion merited. Instead, he stood straight, holding her gaze for a second as she straightened. Only then did he bow his head—but it was a tiny gesture, the acknowledgement of Adara as an inferior rather than an equal.

“Salutations to Her Majesty, Queen Everborn of Elandria,” the griffin announced. His next words boomed around the throne room. “. . . enemy of the Eternal Empire of Calamar.”

The phrase, with its implicit antagonism, hung in the air.

Adara fought for words in the wake of the griffin’s wholly unexpected greeting. Her insides squirmed. She had not rehearsed any scenario like this. She had to reestablish an equal playing field—somehow. “Sir Firewing! . . . We . . . express our thanks . . . in your willingness to come to this parley.”

“Calamar does not parley with thieves and treaty-breakers,” Sir Firewing stated.

Adara stole a glance at Luviana, dropping her voice to a whisper. “Thieves?”

“Haeber,” Luviana replied out of the corner of her mouth.

Right. Adara remembered that in the years before the war, Calamar had repeatedly claimed that Elandria had been withholding the precious commodity.

Adara cleared her throat. “I—we—have already sworn on past occasions that there was no . . . duplicity in our nation’s dealings with your merchants.”

Amusement played in Sir Firewing’s eyes. “You have, Your Majesty?”

Adara was at a loss for a second. Then, realizing her mistake, she backtracked. “Such was sworn by Our Majesty’s regents, acting in our name and with our royal authorization.”

“Get back on track,” Luviana whispered.

“But in any event,” Adara continued, trying to ignore the shaking in her legs, “our royal personage has brought you here to suggest—I mean, to propose—a temporary armistice that—”

“No one has brought me here,” Sir Firewing interrupted. “I came of my own choice, with one purpose: to issue an ultimatum.”

This was not going anywhere near what Adara had planned. She swallowed. “An—ultimatum?”

“Surrender,” Sir Firewing declared. “Surrender to the vast military might of the Eternal Empire of Calamar. Surrender to our hosts, numbering in the hundreds of thousands. Surrender to our brilliant strategic masterminds, who have won dozens of victories so far. Surrender to our superiority in technology, mancery, and weaponry. In the face of your most assured defeat, in the face of your capital burning to the ground, in the face of your people enslaved at the point of the sword, surrender!”

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A stunned silence filled the throne room. Sir Firewing stood dominant, his wings spread, a fierce light in his eyes. Adara looked to Lady Luviana, then to Skagar. Both displayed a mix of shock and anger on their faces, but neither said anything. All eyes were on Adara. Only she, as Elandria’s queen, could answer such a challenge.

Her heart pounded in her chest as she raced through her tutelage. What response did this warrant? If this were a public challenge, meant to dismay her people or her allies, she should rebuff the challenge with a show of strength. But doing that here would only bring the negotiations to a close before they could begin. But could they even begin? Sir Firewing showed no intention of discussing the possibility of an armistice. Then why had he come? He must know they would never accept his call to surrender.

Sir Firewing shifted his stance. The movement snapped Adara back to the moment. How long had she been silent? She had to say something—but what?

“I . . .” Adara’s mind was still devoid of a response. “We . . .”

Adara closed her eyes and ran her thumb over the head of the Everborn scepter. Her father’s scepter. Her scepter.

She would make no headway with Firewing until she understood him and saw him as a friend.

But he had shown he was not interested in friendship. He had openly mocked her authority and threatened her people with death and slavery. Volthorn’s warning in their last council of war came to mind. Until we smash them in battle, they will be unwilling to negotiate.

She opened her eyes. “Sir Firewing, your ultimatum is premature,” she said, trying her best to not make it sound like a gasp. She refilled her lungs. “You . . . underestimate our ability to defend our people. The armies of Elandria are strong, brave, and skilled. We will yet meet your hosts in battle, and then we shall see the truth of your words.”

Sir Firewing lifted his beak, again holding eye contact with Adara. There was a haughty look in his eye. A knowing look.

“That day may be closer than you think,” he said. Then he turned away. “I shall return on the morrow to hear if your answer has changed.”

His words carried an implication. Adara’s mind raced, thinking through the timing. Calamar’s army was encamped a little more than two hundred miles away. For a griffin, traveling that distance would take six to eight hours of flying. Sir Firewing had arrived well before noon, meaning he had left early that morning.

He obviously knew that something was afoot—that a battle between the two armies was imminent. No word of such battle had yet arrived through Elandria’s own messengers. Yet Firewing was confident that such news would arrive by tomorrow.

Which meant the Calamarvan army had to have spent the night positioning itself for a battle. A surprise battle. A battle that, by now, was probably well underway.

* * * * *

Earlier that morning.

“Commander! Commander Skarr!”

Volthorn burst out of his tent. He nearly collided with the sentry shouting his name. “What is it?” he barked.

“A scout—” the sentry gasped. “Just returned. Urgent news.”

A spike of alarm swept through Volthorn’s veins.

“Wake my aides,” Volthorn ordered the sentry. “All of them.”

The morning was thick with fog, casting everything in a hazy blue light. Volthorn could barely see the other tents in his command circle. The fog, spawned every morning by the river near their camp, seemed even thicker than usual, smothering everything in blind silence.

A couple yards away, a swifter scout was waiting in the clearing between the tents, his sides heaving and his eyes frantic. “Report!” Volthorn said.

“The enemy’s crossed the river,” the swifter said. “Under cover of darkness. They’re on the far side!”

“Slow down,” Volthorn said, forcing himself to keep his voice calm, though his muscles screamed at him to act. He wouldn’t get anything useful out of this scout unless he could get him to calm down. “Deep breath. Out. In. There we go. Now, let’s start again. Where did they cross?”

“Downriver. Nine—maybe ten miles.”

“How many?”

“Several battalions of infantry. Perhaps cavalry, too. They built a pontoon bridge during the night.”

“Just one bridge?”

The swifter gritted his teeth as he thought. “I’m not sure. I didn’t get a good look. My partner and I were patrolling downriver on this bank when we saw them crossing in the fog. We dared not go any further—there were enemy patrols everywhere.”

Volthorn cursed. He had run this risk when he had shrunk their perimeter of reconnaissance. Calamar had cast a wide screen of air and ground patrols, then used that cover, combined with the darkness of the night and the fog of the morning, to move part of their army in a deep flank around Volthorn’s position. This was bad. This was very, very bad.

“How many troops?”

“We couldn’t tell through the mist. But they sounded like a lot. Several thousand.”

Volthorn nearly punched a tent. “SPECIFICS! Was it two thousand, or ten thousand?”

“I . . .” The swifter shook his head. “I don’t know.”

By this time, several of Volthorn’s aides were stumbling out of their tents, eyes widening as they caught the tail end of the scout’s report. Volthorn turned to one of them, a griffin. “Grab a wingmate, get in the air, and scout out Calamar’s main camp. Tell me their position and their movements. What fraction of the army is still there? Are they on the move, and in which direction? Go!”

The griffin opened her wings and launched into a running takeoff, soon disappearing into the fog. Volthorn turned to a cluster of aides. “Rouse the camp—every battalion. You, First division. You, Second. You, Third. Have the whole army ready to march within a half hour. Go!”

The aides ran off. Volthorn forced his muscles to relax. Despite the urgency of their predicament, he had fifteen or twenty minutes now to process and think. There was no point issuing orders before the army was ready to follow them.

While the rest of his staff spilled out of their tents, Volthorn sat down on a stump to think. Panic and alarm swirled within him, but he clamped the emotions down, forcing his mind to think through the situation with pure logic.

Calamar’s plan was obvious—and brilliant. They had taken advantage of Volthorn’s reduced perimeter to entrap him. Under cover of night, they had marched part of their army around him to the south. Now, with a hastily erected pontoon bridge, they were crossing to the east bank of the river to get behind Volthorn’s army, where it was camped on the west bank guarding a major ford.

image [https://i.imgur.com/wiZDurt.png]

Map generated in Inkarnate.

But how many were in the flanking force? That was the million-shekel question.

“We have three options,” Volthorn thought out loud, more for his own sake than for his staff’s. “Option one: we retreat across the ford to the east bank, to the same side of their flanking force. That force will arrive to block our crossing within two hours or less. We could only get maybe a third of our army, eight thousand troops, across by then. If their flanking force numbers less than that, we could break out quickly and survive. But any more than that, and they’ll trap us against the river, while their main force hits the rest of our army from this side.”

“Like a hammer and an anvil,” his brother Kelzern said.

“A very wet anvil,” Volthorn agreed. “Option two: We stay on this side of the river, deploy part of our army to hold the ford at our rear, and prepare the rest of our force to face their main army hitting us from the west. But the outcome is the same—we’d be trapped, with our backs to the river.”

“A very wet river,” Trazar said.

“Option three,” Volthorn said, pointedly ignoring the comment this time. “We march north. This would allow us to dodge the trap entirely—but we would lose the war. They would claim the ford, march across, then make a beeline for Saven and take it before we could catch up to them.”

Volthorn’s aides and officers looked at him, each face a collage of fear and concentration. Outside their ring of tents, the camp was coming alive with shouts as twenty-six thousand troops readied for battle.

“What do we do?” said Kelzern.

None of the three options would work. Each was exactly what Calamar’s generals expected Volthorn to do. Each would lose him the battle or the war.

An alternative popped into his head. He studied it out, thinking through its contours. It would be daring. It would be risky.

But war was all about risk.

“Do you trust me?” Volthorn asked.

Each head in the circle nodded.

A grim smile slowly spread across Volthorn’s face. “Then we do option four. We attack.”