stomach the news. We’ll need to get word to the overmistress.”
“Agreed to both,” Enken said. “If she replaces you with someone political, I think the Blades will take it ill.”
Reht nodded, listened to the patter of rain, and pondered his course. A third of his forces under Lorgan had not reported back. Likely they had been delayed by the weather or cut off by Saerbian forces. He knew a sizeable force of Saerbians had mustered on the shores of Lake Veladon. He suspected Endren Corrinthal was among them.
Reht was inclined to meet them in the field. He knew that Forrin’s orders had been to raze Saerb and disrupt any potential muster of Saerbian forces. They’d razed Saerb but at least a partial muster had gone forward anyway.
“I am tempted to move against the Saerbians at Lake Veladon.”
“The commanders will support that,” Enken said. “Gavist and I had been advocating as much with Forrin before … this.”
“Well enough. It’ll give the men a focus. Call the commanders together.”
Enken saluted, grinning through his beard the while, and stepped out of the tent.
“Reht has command until further notice!” Reht heard him shout to the gathered men outside. “Pass the word.”
They would assemble the army with the dawn and formally announce Reht’s promotion with all the assembled commanders at his side. He expected no resistance. He knew he was respected, even liked. He’d led many of the men in the army personally, fought beside them, bled beside them. They would follow him for as long as he had command.
But in the privacy of his own thoughts, he felt himself smaller than the task, a halfling in a giant’s boots. He did not have Forrin’s nose for strategy. The weight of authority felt heavy on his shoulders. He’d have to rely on his commanders.
He found a bottle of Forrin’s wine and two tin chalices in a small chest. Spurning the chalices, he pulled the cork with his teeth and took a long swallow directly from the bottle. It’d be the last he had for a time.
A commotion from outside the tent rose above the sound of the rain. Reht set down the bottle and started out but before he did Strend burst into the tent, dripping rain, breathless, his face red from exertion.
“Speak, boy,” Reht said.
“They killed Vors, too,” Strend blurted. “And the Corrinthal boy is gone.”
“Damn it.” Reht strode past Strend and out of the tent. The weight of two dozen gazes settled on him as he emerged. He stopped and looked his men in the eye. He kept his tone even but authoritative.
“Stand your posts, stay alert, and do your jobs. We will avenge all that has happened.”
Nods and grudging acknowledgements from all around.
Reht saluted, was answered in kind by all the men in sight, and walked through the camp. As he passed, men saluted, hailed him as commander. Word had spread.
On the way to Vors’s tent, he met Gavist, a skilled junior commander who could not yet grow a full beard. Gavist, too, saluted him.
“I am tired of that already,” Reht said.
Gavist smiled.
Reht said, “The general is taken and Vors is dead.”
Gavist’s young face showed no emotion. “I heard as much.”
“Anyone else?” Reht asked.
“Not that I’ve heard,” Gavist said.
“Precise strike,” Reht said.
They fell in together and marched through the camp. By the time they reached Vors’s tent, they trailed two score soldiers in their wake.
Othel stood at the entrance to Vors’s tent and greeted Reht and Gavist with a nod. Reht was thankful Othel didn’t salute.
“Ugly in there, Commander,” Othel said.
Reht stepped through the tent’s flap and looked inside.
“Tempus’s blade,” he swore.
Vors lay on the ground in the center of the tent, his breastplate at his side. A spear impaled his guts, stuck out of his body like an oriflamme. His open eyes, glassy and swollen from a beating, stared upward at nothing. His mouth hung open in an unfinished scream of pain. Blood caked his lips, his beard. The pungent, sour stink of blood and worse hung thick in the tent.
Vors had died in pain, prolonged and deliberately inflicted. He would have taken a quarter hour or more to die with the spear in his belly.
Gavist chewed his upper lip, as if feeling for the nonexistent moustache with his teeth. “Looks personal. And why take the boy?”
“The Shadovar are allied with Selgaunt and Selgaunt is allied with Saerb,” Reht said. “The Corrinthals are important among the Saerbians. Rescuing the boy makes sense, either to earn goodwill or use as leverage.” He