Knight, Heir, Prince

Sartes looked around, surprised they were taking the idea seriously.

“We could leave people in the villages so that they don’t fall,” Yeralt suggested. “We have the conscripts with us now.”

“They won’t stand against the army for long if it comes,” Oreth shot back. “They’d die along with the villagers.”

Sartes knew he was right. The conscripts hadn’t had the training that the toughest soldiers in the army had. Worse, they’d suffered so much at the hands of the army that most of them would probably be terrified.

He saw Anka gesture for silence. This time, it took a little longer in coming.

“Oreth has a point,” she said.

“Of course you’d agree with him,” Hannah shot back.

“I’m agreeing because he’s right,” Anka said. “We can’t just go into villages, declare them free, and hope for the best. Even with the conscripts, we don’t have enough fighters. If we join together in one place, we give the Empire an opportunity to crush us. If we go after every village, they’ll pick us apart piecemeal.”

“If enough villages can be persuaded to rise up, and I persuade my father to hire mercenaries…” Yeralt suggested. Sartes noted he didn’t finish the thought. The merchant’s son didn’t have an answer, not really.

“Then what?” Anka asked. “We’ll have the numbers? If it were that simple, we would have overthrown the Empire years ago.”

“We have better weapons now thanks to Berin,” Edrin pointed out. “We know their plans thanks to Sartes. We have the advantage! Tell her, Berin. Tell her about the blades you’ve made.”

Sartes looked around to his father, who shrugged.

“It’s true I’ve made good swords, and the others here have made plenty of passable ones. It’s true that some of you will have armor now, rather than being cut down. But I’ll tell you this: it’s about more than the sword. It’s about the hand that wields it. An army is like a blade. You can make it as big as you want, but without a core of good steel, it will break the first time you test it.”

Maybe if the others had spent more time making weapons, they would have understood how seriously his father meant his words. As it was, Sartes could see they weren’t convinced.

“What else can we do?” Edrin asked. “We’re not just going to throw away our advantage by sitting back and waiting. I say that we start making a list of villages to free. Unless you have a better idea, Anka?”

“I do,” Sartes said.

His voice was quieter than he intended. He stepped forward, his heart pounding, surprised that he had spoken. He was all too aware that he was far younger than anyone else there. He’d played his part in the battle, he’d even killed a man, but there was still a part of him that felt as though he shouldn’t be speaking there.

“So it’s settled,” Hannah started to say. “We – ”

“I said I have a better idea,” Sartes said, and this time, his voice carried.

The others looked over at him.

“Let my son speak,” his father said. “You’ve said yourselves that he helped to hand one victory to you. Maybe he can keep you from dying now.”

“What’s your idea, Sartes?” Anka asked.

They were all looking at him. Sartes forced himself to raise his voice, thinking about how Ceres would have spoken, but also about the confidence Anka had shown before.

“We can’t go to the villages,” Sartes said. “It’s what they want us to do. And we can’t just rely on the maps I brought, because even if they haven’t realized that we know their movements, they will soon. They’re trying to goad us out into the open.”

“We know all this,” Yeralt said. “I thought you said you had a plan.”

Sartes didn’t back down.

“What if there were a way to hit the Empire where they don’t expect it and gain tough fighters into the bargain? What if we could make people rise up with a symbolic victory that would be bigger than protecting a village?”

“What did you have in mind?” Anka asked.

“We free the combatlords in the Stade,” Sartes said.

A long, stunned silence followed, as the others stared at him. He could see the doubt in their faces, and Sartes knew he had to keep going.

“Think about it,” he said. “Almost all combatlords are slaves. The nobles throw them in to die like toys. Most of them would be grateful for the chance to get away, and they can fight better than any soldiers.”

“It’s insane,” Hannah said. “Attacking the heart of the city like that. There would be guards everywhere.”

“I like it,” Anka said.

The others looked at her, and Sartes felt a rush of gratitude for her support.

“They wouldn’t expect it,” she added.

Another silence fell over the room.

“We wouldn’t need mercenaries,” Yeralt finally chimed in, rubbing his chin.

“People would rise up,” Edrin added.

“We’d have to do it when the Killings were on,” Oreth pointed out. “That way, all the combatlords would be in one place, and there would be people there to see it happen.”

“There won’t be more Killings before the Blood Moon festival,” his father said. “That’s six weeks. In six weeks, I can make a lot of weapons.”

This time, Hannah fell silent, perhaps sensing the tide turn.

“So we’re agreed?” Anka asked. “We’ll free the combatlords during the Blood Moon festival?”

One by one, Sartes saw the others nod. Even Hannah did, eventually. He felt his father’s hand on his shoulder. He saw the approval in his eyes, and it meant the world to him.

He only prayed that his plan would not get them all killed.

CHAPTER THREE

Ceres dreamed, and in her dreams, she saw armies clashing. She saw herself fighting at their head, dressed in armor that shone in the sun. She saw herself leading a vast nation, fighting a war that would determine the very fate of mankind.

Yet in it all, she also saw herself squinting, searching for her mother. She reached for a sword, and looked down to see it was not yet there.

Ceres woke with a start. It was night, and the sea before her, lit by the moonlight, was endless. As she bobbed in her small ship, she saw no sign of land. Only the stars convinced her that she was still keeping her small craft on the right course.

Familiar constellations shone overhead. There was the Dragon’s Tail, low in the sky beneath the moon. There was the Ancient’s Eye, formed around one of the brightest stars in the stretch of blackness. The ship that the forest folk had half built, half grown seemed never to deviate from the route Ceres had picked out, even when she had to rest or eat.

Off the starboard side of the boat, Ceres saw lights in the water. Luminous jellyfish floated past like underwater clouds. Ceres saw the faster figure of some dart-like fish slipping through the shoal, snapping up jellyfish with every pass and hurrying through before the tendrils of the others could touch it. Ceres watched until they disappeared down into the depths.