Night and dinner came all too soon. One moment, the sky was blue with Stephan doing the last round of inspections of the walls. A blink later, the sky was dimming into the orange of just before sunset. The sight of the sprawling camps so close yet out of trebuchet range killed his appetite as surely as they drowned the minds of everyone who dared look towards the invaders.
Invaders. The word was so bitter, no amount of cornbread could wash it away. No matter how hard Lacy tried.
“Well, you look wretched,” she said from across the table. A laugh followed the words, but it rang hollow. Her day was no better than Stephan’s. The skin around her eyes had darkened from the lack of sleep.
“I’ve wasted hours thinking about what the warlock will do once he attacks us in earnest.” Stephan shared his troubles with Lacy, who listened quietly.
She ate as he spoke, holding the fork in her hand with a familiarity that hadn’t existed a few months ago. The girl who once stabbed meat as if it might run away now handled cutlery properly. Much like Stephan himself.
“I’d triple the guards for food,” she said. “And if you already have people patrolling the streets, perhaps they could do it so that there’s always someone within earshot of a granary?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Seems to me food’s more important than graveyards.”
Of course she thinks that when she never faced a zombie or a skeleton. And where are we going to find the men? Three hundred soldiers at the wells, two hundred and fifty at the graveyards, and another five hundred spread across various warehouses. Then there’s the castle guard…
Out of five thousand defenders, a third had internal security assignments. More.
“I’ll think about it,” he said, knowing he couldn’t spare the manpower. “We have a war council meeting in the morning, and I’m going to do a round of the city’s graveyards before sleep. It shouldn’t take more than two hours.”
It took three, and all the graveyards were blessedly silent, but wherever Stephan and his entourage passed, people looked down from their windows. He liked to think that even with everything quiet, his efforts had driven away some of the cityfolk’s nightmares.
The night was dark, autumn clouds gathering and hiding the stars, yet Stephan easily found the way to his room.
Lacy was already in bed, but woke up when he joined her.
“That was more than two hours,” she muttered, then resumed her soft snores.
You always have to make a jab, don’t you? Stephan smiled and kissed her neck before falling asleep himself.
***
The attackers took two days to arrive and set up their many camps. The beast of war, made of numerous men and women, spilled out of the forest like a serpent, then spread across the clearing like duckweed on a pond.
Stephan stood atop the battlements, watching them.
Behind him, Ernest and Anita waited in silence.
“Shouldn’t they start digging trenches and building palisades?” he asked.
“No, Sir,” Ernest replied with a cheerful smile. “They need to take a day to rest. Count Longbridge, who commands the vanguard, is already entrenching himself as you can see, but like Avery said, he is a prudent, well-read commander.”
The wind tousled his hair as he leaned on the stone beside Stephan.
“And besides, we’ve already bloodied him, so his men know the price of complacency. The others simply think we wouldn’t use the same maneuver twice.”
“And we won’t,” Stephan squinted at the distant palisade.
“And that’s why I’m laughing, Sir.” Ernest’s grin widened. “A wise man is preparing in vain, thus making himself a fool while fools turn out wise in their laziness.”
Stephan snorted. “When you put it like that, I feel like ordering a sortie.”
“And that would be a mistake, Sir,” Anita said immediately. “We don’t know if the enemy is setting a trap to catch our raiders.”
“I’d try it,” Ernest said out of nowhere, his posture still relaxed. “I’ll lead fifteen men I trust and attack them in three hours, an hour after sunset.”
“Ernest!” Anita barked at her cousin while Stephan turned to stare at him. “You have nothing to prove.”
Ernest’s face darkened at her words. Avery’s success and rising fame hung around him like thick smoke ever since the man carried out the successful sortie.
“I believe it’s a good idea,” Stephan said, sizing up Ernest before holding his gaze. “If you think you can pull it off safely.”
Ernest straightened, suddenly serious. “Sir, they’ve been so relaxed and disorganized, it took them nearly three full days for their entire column to arrive. If I can’t burn their supplies, I’ll shave my head and grow a beard.”
Stephan cocked an eyebrow. You want to make yourself look like Avery if you fail?
“All right, I’ll allow it.”
“Sir!” Anita protested.
“You won’t regret this, Sir.” Ernest saluted, then spun on his heel and left.
“Sir, this is very unwise,” Anita said.
Everything about this is unwise. But he didn’t say it.
“I disagree,” he turned to gaze at the enemy again. “If Ernest succeeds, it was a good move. If he fails and comes back with a lesson learned, perhaps humbler, we have also gained something.”
“And if the enemy captures him?”
Stephan clenched the stone in front of him, staring at the sloppy camps. “How likely is that? I believe it’s very unlikely, and if the enemy is really as disorganized as they seem to be, we might inflict a lot of damage while risking very little.”
“This isn’t a game, Sir,” there was a sharp note of reprimand in Anita’s voice.
A thought came unbidden. If all the causes and consequences of our actions are erased, both the ending and the path leading towards it gone, are we doing anything wrong?
Stephan considered Paladin Tristan’s question and found he would regret Ernest’s death, even if it vanished from history. The man had put in a lot of effort. He patrolled the cemeteries and visited the soldiers manning the walls at night, helping to keep them awake during the dark hours. Truly, when left to his own devices, he did more than Stephan would have ordered him to do had he taken charge of the minutiae.
Out of all the captains, he, Anita, and Avery were putting in the most visible effort. Not one of the ten was slacking, but those three were giving him their all. And while Avery’s motive was questionable, as Stephan was under the impression the man was trying to gather as much power and influence as possible, perhaps to become the next Lord Marshal, it didn’t change the fact that he was doing good.
“Do they believe that, Anita?” he asked after a long silence, pointing his finger towards the fires.
“What?” she said.
“That this isn’t a game.” He glanced left and right, and when he saw none of the soldiers were within earshot, he elaborated. “They have uprooted so many people from their homes, brought them here with no regard for the feelings of their subjects, those they are meant to protect, all for their selfish reasons. I am sure they think this is all a game until a blade is sticking out of their chest, at which point any revelations they might have are pointless.”
“Sir, I told you, you will be better served if you had these discussions with Lord Silas.”
There wasn’t a hint of emotion in her voice. Not a trace.
I know she cares, so why does she turn a blind eye to the nobles’ malicious disregard of their subjects’ lives?
Stephan once disregarded it. Back when he was a boy in a town without a noble living in it. But he couldn’t ignore it when it was a part of his life.
“Is there another side to this?” he asked aloud just as he realized he was viewing the entire problem from a singular and quite biased standpoint.
“Commoners report less than they own for taxation,” she started mercilessly. “They work twice as slowly when tilling their lord’s fields compared to their own; they steal wood from our forests without paying, graze their cattle in our pastures… There are many things those poor, innocent peasants do. When they get into debt from drinking and not working, they turn to banditry, robbing us, and poaching from our lands.”
Stephan had read the histories, or at least some of them, and he nearly made the mistake of asking how Anita’s ancestors, the Bellas, had gained control of their domain, but he held his tongue. For all he knew, the family might have been granted the land by the King or bought it fairly after hoarding riches as merchants. Besides, smearing mud on their name was a shortcut to ruining his relationship with his most trusted Knight.
Also, he knew his parents were under-reporting their wealth, as meager as it was.
“I see,” he said at last. “I guess every coin has two sides to it.”
“That it does, Sir. That it does.”
***
After sundown, Stephan went on his patrol of the graveyards. He would have preferred it if he could stand on the walls, but feared breaking routine might alarm the warlock, who in turn would alert the enemy, endangering Ernest.
So Stephan walked the quiet streets instead. Patrols and healing he was performing were the only sources of warmth Stephan had sensed ever since he had defeated the late Lord Harrington’s zombie, and Queen Eleanor was gaining on him fast with her levels.
Torches started hissing faintly as a light rain began; perhaps it would foil Ernest’s plan, perhaps aid him. Stephan wondered, as both seemed plausible.
“Another blessedly slow night?” he saluted the soldiers minding the small graveyard of Harvest, the goddess of fertility and agriculture.
The men smiled and returned the gesture, honored that the Paladin was talking to them, when a faint squelch came from the gloom ahead.
Stephan snapped his head towards it and squinted into the darkness. Nobody else seemed to hear a thing in the light rain’s susurration and the hissing of torches. A splash followed, loud enough to make the soldiers stiffen and catch their attention.
Stephan grabbed Gawain’s torch and hurled it into the dark. It flew, flame flickering and leaving a trail as it spun in the night.
In a flash, the light revealed everything.
A half-buried body digging its way out of a grave; three more already stood free of the earth. Some decayed, some nothing but bleached bone. Then the torch hit the ground. It landed in a puddle and its flame died with a hiss.