her design, and it remains your duty to fulfill your role.” Slowly the rage abated, and Thirrin looked at the soldier who now sat, head bowed, before her. She stooped and took his hand in hers. “Come on, Uncle Ollie, your people need you, and so do I.”
As she watched, the massive shoulders seemed almost to inflate as he drew a deep steadying breath and released it in an explosive sigh. After a few moments he climbed to his feet and smiled, uncertainly at first, then slowly broadening it into a brilliant grin that seemed to split his face. “Elemnestra wouldn’t let me rest, anyway. ‘There are things to be done and we’re the ones to do them,’ she’d say. Let’s go and see what needs doing.”
Thirrin hugged him fiercely, relief and happiness flooding through her, then taking his hand she led him back to the small doorway, each step seeming to add strength to the consort of the fallen Basilea.
The first two of the reinforcing armies had arrived, and Scipio Bellorum had personally overseen their settling into camp. Talk among the soldiers would have soon let them know just how difficult this stage of the war was proving to be, and he wanted to put the stamp of his authority and personality on them before morale could slip too far.
He’d already announced two rest days, which would allow the other two armies to arrive, and also let his men get well and truly drunk, with a day for recovery before they continued the campaign in earnest again. It also wouldn’t be lost on the soldiers that the Empire was sufficiently in control to dictate the pace of the war. There would be fighting when they chose, and not before. The barbarians would have to wait until the Empire was good and ready.
The army hadn’t been totally inactive, though. Bellorum had questioned some of the survivors from the earlier attacks on the Icemark’s defenses, and there seemed to be some evidence that the ditch-and-embankment system didn’t extend very far into the forest. There might even be a gap in the defenses. With this in mind he’d sent in several armed scouting parties, but so far none had returned. He sat now in his tent, its viewing wall raised, and watched through his monoculum as a much larger skirmishing party entered the eaves of the forest.
This time they had orders to send back messengers at regular intervals to give reports. As he watched, the last of the soldiers disappeared from view, and for the next hour he waited patiently, nibbling from a silver dish of exotic fruits that had been sent from all parts of the massive Polypontian Empire.
Bellorum then heard the unmistakable sound of a musket volley, followed by the scattered, sporadic firing of soldiers under pressure. Obviously whatever the defenses were in the forest, they were strong. For the next hour he continued to scan the trees. Once, he thought he caught sight of soldiers in oddly designed and colored armor, green and brown like the surrounding foliage, but not one member of the skirmishing party emerged.
“No weak point there, then,” he said to himself, and decisively snapping his eyeglass shut he sent an orderly to call his staff officers together so he could begin planning the next move.
For the rest of the day Bellorum discussed the tactics of the “endgame,” as he insisted on calling the stage of the war they were about to enter.
“I’ve decided to make these backward people use their own barbarity against themselves.” He smiled charmingly around the table where his officers sat watching him attentively. “The rational sciences are virtually unknown to them, so superstition rules their every moment. The night, therefore, probably holds an entire pantheon of terrors for the soldiers of the Icemark — and I intend to exploit that foolishness.”
Bellorum walked to an easel where a large chart of complicated equations and diagrams was drawn. “You’ve probably all noticed over the past few days that the moon is almost full, and that in these latitudes it’s remarkably large and bright.” A murmur of agreement drifted around the table. “Well, gentlemen,” he continued, pointing to the chart, “in two days’ time the moon will be at its largest and brightest; in the eyes of the barbaric and backward, it is a time of power and magic, a time of fear and dread, and a time, gentlemen, when we will attack!”
The murmur rose to a babble, which abruptly stopped as the general