arrayed so that they could be disentangled as quickly as possible without tipping Kip’s hand that he was splitting his army. Word of any vast change would inevitably get out, and Kip wanted his men to have a chance to outrun the rumors of their coming.
Kip’s goal this morning was simple: he had to tell his people that he was unexpectedly abandoning them, without them feeling like he was abandoning them. This army had come together largely because of him, and now he was leaving them, and he needed to do so without destroying their morale.
“We’ve had good news and bad,” Kip said. “The bad news? The Wight Who Calls Himself King has collected bane from all over the world. Maybe all of them. The bane immobilize drafters. Whoever faces him will do so without their drafters. The good news? Neither the Wight King nor his best soldiers will be at Green Haven. You won’t be facing them.”
He could see relief wash over some faces. None of the drafters wanted to face a bane—something that could turn their own magic against them—that made their bowels turn to water. By the same token, none of the soldiers wanted to face wights and Blood Robe drafters without their own drafters.
“So you might ask, ‘If they aren’t going to be at Green Haven, where will they be?’ ” Kip said. “What could be more important to them?” Kip let that sink in. He glanced at Ambassador Red Leaf, who shared the stage with him, and was maintaining a pleasantly interested expression, betrayed only by a worried tightness around his eyes: why was Kip going on about this?
Kip continued, “They’re taking their best troops and all the bane to the Chromeria. The Chromeria only has a few fighters, and many drafters to protect themselves. And they don’t know what’s coming. You have fought against some of the Wight King’s best. Now imagine barely trained tower guards fighting wights and drafters, without any drafters of their own. Imagine what happens on the Jaspers when Koios wins over those he hates most.”
Many of the men and women here had seen slaughters, had heard of neighboring villages completely wiped out. There were those here who cared little for the empire. It hadn’t done much to defend them, after all. Others felt they’d been let down, but still had great affection for Gavin Guile, who’d ended the Blood Wars and brought two decades of peace. But no one in this passionate people could think of another Blood Robe massacre of innocents as some abstraction.
Cries went up, angry denials that they couldn’t let this happen. Curses.
Few had gotten as far as thinking of what it might mean for them.
“There is hope,” Kip said. “A slender one. I’ve learned that the Chro-meria has a weapon that can defeat the bane. But the Chromeria doesn’t know it. It doesn’t know how to use it. And only one man can.”
There were cries of ‘Luíseach!’ and ‘Lightbringer!’
Kip bowed his head. They’d hadn’t been slow on that one at all.
Then he lifted his head. “I don’t know if I’m the Lightbringer, but I know this: if I’m not, many thousands of innocents will die on the Jaspers, and the empire will fall, and the Wight King will come here next. We have one best chance to stop him—and that’s this chance, now. I don’t know if I’m the Lightbringer, but I know Orholam won’t abandon us now. I don’t know that I’m the Lightbringer—but I believe!”
As they roared, and as the cries went up again, Kip’s entire form was bathed in light. It pulsed, and their awe was redoubled.
Kip hadn’t done that.
Dammit, wife, he thought. That was what that lotion she’d insisted on him using this morning was. A Prism-on-Sun-Day trick, Kip knew. He’d heard of it, though he’d never seen it himself. Still, old tricks endure because they work.
He wondered idly how much that balm had cost, and how many soldiers he could’ve fed or given better armor for that doubtless-princely sum.
Kip let them roar for a moment, then lowered his hands. He glanced back at her; she was smiling innocently, but she gave a small signal to a superviolet drafter and his shine went down to a low burn.
“That leaves us with two problems,” Kip said. It still took them a moment to quiet, so he repeated. “Two problems: First, we have little time. Too little. Most of you know how slowly a full army moves versus an elite corps. If we