Rin had immediately volunteered the Cike for the task of delaying the fleet. She couldn’t stand being around the refugees anymore, and she wanted to get Baji and Suni well away from the Hesperians before their restlessness manifested in disaster.
She wished she could bring Kitay with her. But he was too valuable to send out on what was most likely a suicide mission for anyone who wasn’t a shaman, and Vaisra wanted him behind city walls to rig up defense fortifications.
And while Rin was glad that Kitay would be out of harm’s way, she hated that they were about to be separated for days without a means of communication.
If danger came, she wouldn’t be able to protect him.
Kitay read the look on her face. “I’ll be all right. You know that.”
“But if anything happens—”
“You’re the one going into a war zone,” he pointed out.
“Everywhere is a war zone.” She folded the manual shut and stuffed it into her shirt pocket. “I’m scared for you. For both of us. I can’t help that.”
“You haven’t got time to be scared.” He squeezed her arm. “Just keep us alive, won’t you?”
Rin made one last stop by the forge before she left Arlong.
“What can I do for you?” The blacksmith shouted at her over the furnace. The flames had been burning nonstop for days, mass-producing swords, crossbow bolts, and armor.
She handed him her trident. “What do you make of this metal?”
He ran his fingers over the hilt and felt around the prongs to test their edges. “It’s fine stuff. But I don’t do many battle tridents. You don’t want me to mess around with this too much, I’d ruin the balance. But I can sharpen the prongs if you need.”
“I don’t want to sharpen it,” she said. “I want you to melt it down.”
“Hmm.” He tested the trident’s balance over his palm. “Speerly-built?”
“Yes.”
He raised an eyebrow. “And you’re sure you want this reforged? I can’t find anything wrong with it.”
“It’s ruined for me,” she said. “Destroy it completely.”
“This is a very unique weapon. You won’t get a trident like this again.”
Rin shrugged. “That’s fine.”
He still looked unsure. “Speerly craft is impossible to replicate. No one’s alive now who knows how they made their weapons. I’ll do my best, but you might just end up with a fisherman’s tool.”
“I don’t want a trident,” she said. “I want a sword.”
Two skimmers departed from the Red Cliffs that morning. The Harrier, led by Nezha, raced upriver to hold the city of Shayang, situated on a crucial, narrow bend in the upper river delta. Shayang’s inhabitants had long since evacuated down to the capital, but the city itself used to be a military base—Nezha needed only garrison the old cannon forts.
Rin’s crew, headed by Captain Dalain, a lean, handsome woman, followed at a slower pace, paddling at a crawl in what was supposed to have been Jinzha’s warship.
It wasn’t close to finished. They hadn’t even named it. Jinzha was supposed to choose a name when construction was done, and now no one could bring themselves to do it in his stead. The bulkheads of the upper deck hadn’t been put in, the bottom decks were sparse and unfurnished, and cannons hadn’t been fitted to the sides.
But none of that mattered, because the paddle wheels were functional. The ship had basic maneuverability. They didn’t need to sail it into enemy territory, they just had to get it twenty miles up the river.
Kitay’s pamphlet turned out to be brilliant. He’d sketched a series of little tricks to create maximal delays. Once they anchored Jinzha’s warship, the Cike and Captain Dalain’s crew spread out over a span of ten miles, and with incredible efficiency, implemented each one of them.
They erected a series of dams using a combination of logs and sandbags. Realistically these would buy them only half a day or so, but they would still tire out the soldiers forced to dive into deep water to clear them away.
Upriver from those, they planted wooden stakes in the river to tear holes in the bottom of enemy ships. Kitay, with Ramsa’s enthusiastic support, had wanted to plant the same sort of water mines that the Empire had used on them, but they’d run out of time before he could figure out how to dry the intestines properly.
They stretched multiple iron cables across the river, usually right after bends. If the Wolf Meat General was smart, he would just send soldiers out to disassemble the posts instead of trying to hack through