and grains wherever it made sense, send scouts to find what they could find, possibly barter with communities, when and if they found any.
Flour, sugar, salt—basics they’d have to flash in from New Hope until they found a better way. He was, he thought, essentially starting out like his mother and the New Hope Originals had.
At least he had their template to work from, and experienced troops.
The armory would serve for now, he calculated, but they’d want to add to that, too.
He sat in what was essentially a shack with his lists and maps. The most secure structure—which he’d added layers to—now served as a prison, not for slaves or tortured magickals but for captured enemy.
He needed them off his base as soon as possible, and wrote down suggestions for prison camps.
He glanced up when Mallick came in.
“I’m sending out hunting, scouting, and scavenging parties at first light. I figure the faeries we’ve got with us can get started on growing food, for us and for livestock, but maybe we need some sort of agrodome for fruit trees.”
“I’ll ask about that when I get to New Hope.” Mallick glanced over to where Duncan had stacked bottles of whiskey, gin, beer, wine.
“I figured it was safer in here with me. We’ll keep some. Soldiers need a little recreation, and some can be used medicinally. And we can barter with the rest.”
With a nod, Mallick selected a bottle of wine, opened it, sniffed. “Barely palatable. Still.” He found cups, lifted a brow at Duncan.
“Yeah, why not? I’m sending a list of need now with you, and a list of need eventually.”
“All right. You did well tonight.”
Duncan took the cup of wine, tapped it to Mallick’s with the clink of tin to tin. “You, too. Then again, it wasn’t much of a fight.”
“Because we’d prepared and planned and followed through on the plan.”
“And because the enemy was mostly drunk assholes.”
“Yes, but even drunk assholes can kill. We lost no one.” He sat with his wine. “South Carolina lost eight.” Looked into his cup before he drank. “Arlington lost sixty-three, with another ninety-eight wounded.”
Duncan set down the cup, rose to walk to the window. “Tonia said it was bad. She said Flynn lost Lupa. I know Lupa and Eddie’s Joe have lived longer than they would have because of magickal treatments and healing, but still … I can’t imagine New Hope without Flynn’s wolf.”
He turned back. “Do you have the names of the dead, the wounded?”
Mallick laid a paper on the table, so Duncan came back.
As he read, he picked up the cup, drained the wine.
“You’d know them,” Mallick began.
“I went to school with two of them. Len and I used to play basketball, pickup games. I dated Marly a couple of times. Ben Stikes used to play this thing—ukulele—on his front porch. Margie Frost taught me and Tonia chemistry in the academy. I knew them. I knew all of them.”
And he could see them, hear them. He knew their families, their friends. He remembered he’d dated Marly primarily because she’d caught him with her quick, infectious laugh.
“It grieves her.”
Duncan pressed his fingers to his eyes, dropped them. “It has to. It should never be easy.”
“Correct.”
“I don’t mean she deserves—”
“I know what you mean, boy. I trained her, I watched her become. And though I had devoted my life to just that, when the time came, I grieved for her, for the weight she’d carry.”
“You came to love her.”
“I did. An unexpected development.” Mallick drank again. “And tonight, though it’s another beginning and not the end, she showed what she is.”
“She invited an attack. Not here. We’re not worth it at this point.” Though he’d make damn certain they would be. “Probably not South Carolina. But Arlington.”
“She meant to. She’ll hold what she took.”
“I know it. I have issues with her apart from this, but I believe in her, absolutely.”
“I know that as well. You’re a credit to your blood, Duncan.”
“Wow.” Sincerely surprised, Duncan searched for words. “That calls for another drink.”
With a laugh, Mallick poured them both more wine.
“I’ll build this place into a stronghold, and from here, we’ll expand the West. Tell her … Shit, I don’t know what I want to tell her.”
“You will, when you see her again.”
“I don’t know. Maybe.” Right now, he thought, he had to focus everything on making that stronghold, feeding, clothing, drilling the troops who’d hold it.
“What I do know?” Duncan said with a shrug. “Unexpected development—I’m going to miss you.”