.
My first desire was to fly back to Lisrau immediately and act upon what I had learned overnight. I now had an ally in the search for Amelia, and I now had a solid image of how to identify passages into the underground world. The Berado might have discovered one of those ancient passages, but I believed it more likely they had accidentally tunneled into it in a mine. Even so, if I could find one of those passages, I could enter Ilim Below and look for the Berado entrance from the inside.
With respect to my meeting with the vodyanoy, it might seem strange that I was trusting Lord Moram, whom I had just met. I had a gut feeling more than trust based on a rational analysis, but I did not believe that an ancient monster of a species predisposed to be a homebody, having no good reason to deceive me, would be lying.
He was in the safety of the natural fortress he had built for himself centuries ago. Many of the trees in that forest were so massive they had to be close to a thousand years old, and they were cypress and black gum, species that could not thrive naturally in this valley which should be too cold in the winter for them. That meant he had planted them and artificially maintained them throughout their lifespan, probably by using his magic to harness the power of the mana spring. He only needed his treaty with the humans in order to help defend it and provide his daughters and granddaughters safety. He had no reason to assist the humans in schemes of intertribal conflict that went beyond defending his home.
I wanted to fly back, but I couldn’t. I had promised to check in with Dilorè, and I couldn’t feel right showing up there without double-checking the situation.
Thus, I went out of the barrier to fly a quick reconnaissance.
The previous day, the clan chieftain had pointedly asked Dilorè and I not to participate in the main battle on the southern perimeter, where Berado forces had become trapped in a pocket outside of the barrier. I assume it was a matter of pride. As things stood, they already had the advantage, with the enemy cut off and their own numbers gradually growing. As long as the other side’s fairy knights continued to stay out of the fight, the Amaga could win this battle on their own. So we had been patrolling, feeding the Amaga vital reconnaissance, not only watching for any new surprises incoming from other directions, but also tracking the enemy’s disposition inside the pocket.
That was why I knew immediately what was happening, the moment that I crossed over the Berado positions.
Berado watch fires were burning in all the reasonable locations, spread evenly around their perimeter, but I could sense that the soldiers had moved out. They were all gathered to the east end of the pocket, quietly forming up in battle order. They were about to attempt a breakout, and it was a do-or-die plan. They weren’t leaving any sort of rearguard behind to hold their current ground.
With a sigh, I resigned myself to the intensely frustrating fact that I needed to stay here for now. Lisrau and the search had to wait.
I came in low, keeping my Cloak engaged, to confirm what I was seeing. The starlight was just strong enough that I could see that the campsites were abandoned. I crossed over the lines and came around from the rear of the Amaga soldiers, landing a safe distance from the camp closest to what appeared to be the center of Berado’s planned attack.
“Old man, you have your shields ready to go, right?”
You don’t want to call them out?
“I’m just worried about friendly fire.”
Then I shall defend as required, My Lady.
I kept my wings materialized and walked toward the camp.
“Halt!” a warrior stage-whispered from out of the shadows. A human probably wouldn’t have been able to see him, but he was visible to me. “Password!”
“No idea,” I replied.
His reaction was immediate. He leveled his crossbow and ordered, “Throw down your weapons and put your hands up!”
I raised my hand and lit a [Fairy Light] in it, dim but enough to illuminate me, visibly holding neither my sword nor my focus. I had shown myself over their lines enough times in the past two days that he should recognize my black wings at least.
“Shut up and listen, soldier,” I told him firmly. “A Berado breakout attempt is about to come your way. You are standing right in the middle of the area they plan to overrun. Let your sergeant know and tell him to wake all his troops and pass the word to the other squads.”
I doused the [Fairy Light], cloaked and sprang into the air, then repeated the performance to more camps. That was good enough, I thought. It was time to go alert the chieftain.
The headquarters camp was set up inside the barrier, facing the Berado pocket. I came in and landed at the command tent, startling the sentries.
They recognized me, so there was no time wasted on a password I didn’t know anyhow. I was allowed into the tent without question.
Inside, a barely adolescent human boy was snoozing in the corner, and a fox girl and a human girl were on duty, sitting on either side of a war map populated with marker stones. Each girl had several talking stones beside her. The system seemed to be that they would take reports from strategic points around the battlefield and move the markers when needed.
Both of them looked up in surprise as I strode in. It was before the first light of daybreak, so was it probably a little early for somebody to show up.
The fox girl recognized me. “Good Morning, Lady Tia.”
“Good Morning. Who is the officer on duty?”
The human, looking a bit perplexed, said, “I guess that’s me?”
From her expression, I guessed that formal military terminology wasn’t a thing with these tribal militia types. She was probably just the more senior warrior between the two.
“Alert your chieftain,” I told her. “The Berado are preparing to break out.”
She stared at me for several heartbeats, then strode over to knock the boy on the head.
“Ow! What the heck, Sis!”
“Run and wake Lord Dorin, tell him to come here immediately,” she ordered. “Run.“
I guess she had to decide first whether to listen to me. Well, I didn’t have a right to give out orders, but I didn’t know where the chieftain slept, so I had just hoped they would listen to me. Plan B had been to fly to Sidis’s treehouse and enlist her help.
The girl wondered, “Should we tell the other areas that the Berado are retreating? They should be chasing them, right?”
“Wait for your commander,” I advised her. “The retreating troops could be setting up traps. Let him decide how your guys should deal with it.”
She and the fox girl did take the initiative to call everyone on the other end of their talking stones to a general alert. They had just finished when Dorin came striding in, immediately calling for a report, asking several questions as the human complied, before turning to me and debriefing me just as rapidly.
Once I had explained everything I had seen, pointing out enemy positions on the map, he nodded and ordered a patrol to go probe the western positions and confirm they were abandoned.
“If you’re right, they’re definitely going to try it before dawn. As soon as it’s light, our warriors will be able to tell they’ve abandoned their positions.”
I wasn’t offended that he needed his warriors to confirm it. He didn’t know how clearly I could see the enemy. To him, I was reporting on things I had seen by starlight.
Saerim and a couple other officers soon filtered in, just in time to hear the first reports from the patrol. Just as I had reported, the watchfires were left burning but nobody was home.
Dorin began directing troop movement, ordering the western line to sweep inward, with the southern line joining them as they passed. It was unlikely they would be able to close in and attack from the rear before the Berado began their move, but it would move them closer to the action.
Then he frowned at the map and said, “But the whole reason they haven’t tried to break out so far was that we grew too strong on all fronts. Are they desperate or do they have something up their sleeve?”
There was one ‘something’ that might be devastating, if too many Amaga were too close together, so I said, “I would like to go fetch Lady Dilorè, Lord Dorin. If their plan involves the fairies, we will step in.”
Frankly, that last bit was why I needed to stay. To keep the vodyanoy happy with me and see what his spirits could find, I needed to keep helping the Amaga. And I wasn’t sure if Dilorè, who was merely Serera’s protégé, not a fully trained knight, would be able to defend herself, much less the Amaga, if both fairy knights on the other side showed up.
He had a frown on his face, but he nodded. “Please.”
I rushed at full speed to the treehouse where she would be resting as Sidis’s guest, cloaking so that I wouldn’t alarm anybody as I flew into the little bird-kin community.
Flying up to the appropriate window and hovering, I rapped on the simple wood shutter sealing it against the cold.
Dilorè, inside the room with the window, could sense me through the wall, so she didn’t need to open the window to identify me. We were soon on our way back to the battleground.
“I want to leave this to you and fly back to Lisrau, but this might be the end of this battle,” I told her as we flew side-by-side.
“I thought you were going to stay here today?”
I shook my head. “I now have something I need to do there.”
I filled her in on the change of plans, and the plan to do a divination in the morning. I also told her about how we could eliminate the possibility that the girls were being hidden by the Amaga, and why I believed the old vodyanoy who told me.
“We can tell them this much using the talking stones, though.”
I nodded. “But I want to help with the search for the entrance. I don’t have to wait for tomorrow like the others have to. I can start today.”
And I have a pretty good idea how to find it, I added in my head. I wouldn’t be able to explain to them how I found it, but I could come up with a way to fake ‘accidentally stumbling across it’ once I knew where it was.
A lot more people were in the tent now. Dorin saw us come in as he was barking out a series of orders to the girls with the talking stones and snapped his fingers at an aide and pointed at us.
The young man carried two stones over to us and handed them to us. “The chieftain requests you two to carry these and make reports, if you are willing. He wants live reconnaissance while the battle is happening.”
I smiled, because this was really pushing the idea of handling the fight themselves. Over the last two days, we had only been patrolling the wider area, looking for any new surprise movement, while leaving the main battleground to the Amaga.
Looking at my cousin, I said, “I guess he’s accepting more help from us now.”
She nodded, then bowed to the aide. “Let your chieftain know we will do as he asks.”
After we left the tent, I told her, “We didn’t arrange for them to open a portal. You know what that means, right?”
Dilorè grinned. “I get to flirt with a beautiful knight while she gives me a princess carry, right?”
She held her arms high, to facilitate my picking her up. With a sigh, I complied while answering, “Something like that, yeah.”
