Jericho's Gamble
"Why?"
"Because if we coordinate with the warlords scattered across the land and try to strike from every side at once, Demethos will see them moving and catch on. The whole thing fails on its own. And even if it somehow succeeded, we'd have crushed a single cell. The rest would only grow warier, and rooting every last one of them off the continent would become that much harder."
"Then what's your notion?"
"Draw them all into one place. To do that, we'd first have to gather word of where they show themselves most often. From that, we could roughly fix the locations of their strongholds, and pick the ground best suited to luring them in."
"Hnh. Plausible enough, for something hatched in that head of yours. Still a long way short."
He pressed the objection.
"First, persuading those warlords. They've piled grievance on grievance until they've gone to war and are busy killing one another. You got some way to make that lot clasp hands overnight?"
Fortunately, it was one of the questions she had expected.
"If the harm Demethos has done them outweighs whatever set them at each other's throats, reconciliation may be too much to ask, but a truce is possible. And once there's a truce, an alliance isn't out of reach."
"An alliance built on a truce is worthless. They'll spend the whole time watching each other and drag their feet about committing men."
"Which is why we'd have to find a way to make them move in earnest. But it's far too early to think that far. We don't have the intelligence, and the situation shifts by the hour. Judging rashly would be worse than not judging at all."
Jericho's fingers worried at the edge of his blade, and that worried her in turn. He was not satisfied. Not nearly.
"So what you're telling me is that nothing's certain."
"Isn't all of life like that? In all the years you've lived, Captain, has there been a single thing you were sure of? The times a man moves on certainty and actually succeeds are fewer than you'd think. What decides it is the variables a changing situation throws up, the luck of choosing well among the options that situation offers, and, last of all, how much you know when you make that choice."
"Then what, exactly, can you do for me? For this company?"
At that moment a mercenary came pounding up, breathless. He spared her not a glance. His eyes were on Jericho, and his mouth was already open.
"Hah... hah... C-Captain. It's bad!"
"Bad, is it. So. The bastards made it this far?"
"Yes, sir. Just as reported—a considerable force is marching on this place."
"And now?"
"Withdrawal's nearly ready, but if we're to haul the prisoners and the plunder, we'll need more time, no way around it..."
"Hm."
Listening in, she pieced the shape of it together well enough. If she could turn this mess to her advantage, she might yet live through it.
"The master of the village is bringing his men this way, I take it?"
"...Quick, aren't you."
"And from the way you're fretting over nothing, it sounds as if you may have to leave the plunder and the prisoners behind."
"Likely."
"Then what about this? Leave the prisoners. Don't simply leave them, though. Put false word in their hands before you go, something that will tangle the men chasing you."
"And what, exactly, is that supposed to mean?"
"I'm sorry I can't offer a proper example. I don't have enough to work with. So let me ask you one thing, Captain. If you're slipping out of this village ahead of the pursuit, which road do you mean to take?"
"...They're coming down from the north. We'd have to run for the eastern track, or the forest path to the southwest."
"Then use the prisoners. Let it leak that you split, and fled both ways—east and southwest."
The mercenary who had been standing silent beside them put the question to Jericho.
"Captain. Who's the girl?"
"None of your concern."
He tossed the short answer off without heat, then turned back to her.
"So. You figure their numbers will dwarf ours, and what you're handing me is a way to split them."
"Well. Something like that. But it doesn't end there."
"Doesn't end there?"
"The lie has to look true. So you'll need to pick a handful of your quickest men and send them down one of the roads."
"You want us playacting a flight in both directions."
"Yes. That's how you get them to trust what the prisoners say, and divide their strength."
"And then?"
"On the other road, you make it look like a rout, and you lay an ambush. For that, you'll need something worth wanting."
"Such as?"
"Jewels. Ornaments. Coin. Nothing turns a man's head, or loosens his guard, quite like those."
"We've a fair store of that sort of thing. How do you mean to bait them with it?"
"Make it seem as if it was spilled in a panic, dropped along the road while you ran. They stoop for one piece, then another, and follow the trail until a heap of it is lying right in front of them. What then?"
"Nothing more suspicious than that."
"To the men giving the orders, yes. But what about the men taking them? Ownerless goods, there for the grabbing. Don't you think they'd drop their guard and come running to claim them?"
Jericho said nothing. He only sat with her words, and the silence held.
At first he had taken the wench's talk for empty fancy, the sort of scheme that could never be made to work. The longer he listened, though, the more the thing took on a shape. Threadbare in places, maybe, but it held together. There was sense in it.
Isn't all of life like that? In all the years you've lived, Captain, has there been a single thing you were sure of?
The words sent him back over his own years, and he found himself asking whether he had ever once moved on certainty.
He had lived because he had failed to die, and out of rage and the hunger for revenge he had taken up a mercenary's life. Spite had carried him far enough to plant himself at the head of a company. It was nowhere near enough. He wanted a greater strength than that. If he meant to drive those Demethos bastards into the fire, he would have to grow, and grow again.
So he had driven them without rest, and more than once the driving had ended in a bitter failure. Most of the men he had known were dead for it. He had filled the ranks with new faces, and the company was weaker than it had been. The new men were selfish, eaten up with wanting, and they made trouble as a habit. Starve that wanting and they would not be led at all.
In the middle of that headache, the end of his revenge had felt impossibly far. The knot in him only fed the flame. Rage with nowhere to go had been eating him hollow, a little more with every day.
And then this brazen brat had turned up. She did not look like much, and yet she spoke as if she knew him down to the bone. He had wanted, at the start, to deny her. Her words had a pull the others' never did. They got under a man before he noticed he was agreeing. Stranger still were the notions that kept coming out of that small head. Sharp-eyed, quick to reckon—sharp enough that he found himself wanting to know what the wench really was.
If. Only if. If he took the brat for his own, might that road of revenge, the one that ended with those bastards wiped out, finally come within reach?
It was still no more than a possibility. He would have to watch, and wait. For now, the thing to do was put her words to the test, and break through what stood in front of them.
"So what you're saying is this. The moment they lose their hold on the soldiers, we hit them."
"Exactly. An ambush, yes—but if we can cut down the ones doing the commanding, and only those... the rest will take fright and come apart."
"Hm. I'd like to call it wrong. It's a sound strategy all the same. Talon."
"Yes, Captain."
"The whole lot gathered close by?"
"They are."
"Take me to them. I've words to pass."
"Understood."
He shoved the blade home and took his eyes off the two brats.
"Come."
Dugald and Elon, vassals of Osron, lord of Blackwood Castle, saw the dirty smoke drifting in from far off, and the fierce light burning under it. One look was enough. Someone had fallen on their domain. They led their men out of Oak Fortress.
The column was infantry and nothing else, and by the time they reached the village the blue sky they had marched beneath had stained itself red. In the ruins, survivors were still on their feet.
"...Vile bastards."
"Ask the survivors which way they ran."
"Yes, sir!"
At the knight's order, soldiers went in among the survivors, filthy now, their faces wrecked with ash and flight.
"You. You know which way those bastards went?"
The survivors had resentment enough, and anger, for domain soldiers who had come so late. They did not put it in their mouths.
"...They fled down the road on the far side."
"The far side. Which is that? East? Or southwest?"
"Cough, cough... Both."
The soldier brought the answer back.
"Well? What did they say?"
"Both roads, sir. The eastern track and the southwestern one. They split and ran."
"Did they. Then we split as well, and we hunt. Elon. Take half the men and follow the eastern road. I will take the rest southwest."
"Very well."
Elon turned east with his half of the column. Dugald left him behind and marched the remainder toward the southwest.
They had not gone far before the light began to fail, and the dark came seeping in to take its place.
"Hm? What's this?"
One soldier felt something give under his boot. He let the men around him pull ahead without a thought for it and bent to the ground.
"Whoa! What is this!"
He startled even himself, blurting it at the thing in his hand.
The shout broke the quiet. Soldiers nearby caught sight of the costly ornament clenched in his fist, and found their tongues.
"Y-you. Where in the world did you come by a thing like that..."
"Off the ground. Felt something under my foot, had a proper look, and would you believe the luck."
"Then don't tell me..."
On the chance of it, the others began to search the dirt at their own feet.
"Ooh!"
"Whoa!"
Gold coins, jewels, one rich find after another came up out of the road, and the cries of wonder did not stop.
The sudden clamor turned Dugald's head toward the source of it.
"What is this uproar?"
"Ah... that is, this..."
He rode in on the noise.
"Where did those jewels and ornaments come from?"
"Picked them up off the ground, my lord."
"Picked them up? Those?"
"Yes, my lord. Hard to credit, I know, but it's the truth!"
If their fellow took a reprimand, the rest of them would share it soon enough, and so the other soldiers stepped in to plead his case.
"Way it's always been, my lord—goods with no owner belong to the man who picks them up, don't they?"
"Beg pardon for the noise, my lord. Only, what's lying right there in front of us is awful hard to leave be..."
"Hm."
Dugald turned it over. Had they fled in such a panic that they would spill treasures like these? If so, catching them might already be beyond him. He drew breath to give the order.
"Halt the pursuit—"
"And what is this, now!"
"Hm?"
Another uproar had broken out ahead.
"That's all mine!"
"Like hell it is!"
"No—mine!"
Whatever they had found, the soldiers up front broke and ran for it in a rush. Dugald, thrown, spurred forward, and the scene that opened in front of him was a pure disgrace.
"Greedy little shit! Quit stuffing your pockets, you bastard!"
"Look at you, shoving coins down your drawers!"
"A-ahem! The more a man has, the better, isn't it? Take plenty of this home and a fellow can do right by his wife and little ones!"
Dugald felt the column coming apart under him, and he tried to take it back in hand.
"All of you, hold! Form up! What do you think you are doing!"
It was no use. Once their eyes had turned over for the plunder, no order in the world could reach them.
"These wretches..."
"Kahaha! Now I'm a rich man—ghk!"
One soldier, hung all over with ornaments, was laughing up at the sky when a short bolt sprouted from his back.
Arrows and quarrels came hissing in from both flanks, and against them the column was hopelessly thin.
"Guh."
Shafts through them, the soldiers folded and went down hard. Dugald fought to hold what was left.
"Shields up against their arrows! Defensive formation!"
Most of the men who had lunged for the treasure had already set their shields on the ground. They came apart without a fight. And then—
The shout tore out of the black of the woods, and with it mercenaries burst from both sides, roaring as they came. For the knight Dugald, it was enough to drive the fear straight in.