“Eh, the prophecy says we can get there on time; therefore we will, right?”
Cruxer grimaced. “I don’t think it works like that. And maybe the Third Eye was lying to us just to get us to try. She could even be working for the Color Prince for all we know, and we’re going to our destruction.”
“Corvan Danavis wouldn’t let that happen,” Kip said.
“Well, maybe these Ghosts are lying about what Corvan and the Seer said.”
“How would they know such a lie would work on us?” Kip asked.
Cruxer just frowned.
“Why so dour, Crux? It’s not like you.”
The young commander rubbed his face. “Didn’t sleep well last night.”
Well, Tisis and I didn’t do anything to keep you awake, that’s for sure. “That’s not so rare. Doesn’t usually leave you grumpy.”
Cruxer pursed his lips. But then he spoke. “I had this terrible nightmare about Commander Ironfist. It felt like a premonition. We were both wounded from fighting wights or something. But then we turned on each other. We killed each other, Breaker.” He shook his head. “It felt so real.”
“If it’s any consolation,” Kip said, “I don’t believe you could kill Ironfist.”
“I know, I can’t imagine anything that would turn us against each other.”
“No, I mean the man could kick your ass while sipping kopi and reading the day’s briefings and never spill a drop.”
An unwilling grin broke over Cruxer’s face. “You’re a real flesh protuberance, you know that, right?”
“I got your back,” Kip said, patting his friend’s shoulder. “But if you fight Ironfist, I’ll have it from way, way back.”
“Thanks a lot.” Cruxer’s face fell again, though. “I wish he were here. I wish he were leading us, not me. I mean, no offense to you, Breaker. But you know what I mean, right? I’m not making sense, I’m too tired. Sorry.”
“I know what you mean. I wish he were here…” Kip forgot what he had been about to say next as something occurred to him. “Huh.”
He pulled on some spectacles and started drafting, swapping spectacles as necessary. In a few minutes he had a pretty good luxin model of the map they’d created.
Cruxer had immediately summoned the people who’d helped with the map earlier, and Kip held the luxin open so they could make the model accurate together.
The leadership had gathered by the time Kip expanded the model to include the surrounding countryside for several leagues.
“Avoid battle, seek victory,” Kip said. He remembered that from one of Master Danavis’s books. “They’re here for grain. Conn Arthur, you mount an attack on the warehouse. You come straight from the forest here.”
“I can do it, but why do we want to go after grain? You plan to keep it? If we undermine support from the people…”
“To win, the Blood Robes need that grain, so if we threaten it, they have to defend it. Try not to actually set the warehouses on fire, though. You decide how many people you need to make the attack credible, but it must fail. Fall back and regroup—probably here—within sight of them, giving them time to call for reinforcements.”
“And… what?” Conn Arthur said. “There’s no way to get around them in this valley without being seen.”
“We don’t attack them at all. This isn’t a battle; it’s an attack.”
“I don’t…” Cruxer said.
Kip asked, “What’s the trouble with moving huge amounts of grain?”
“It’s heavy, bulky,” Cruxer said.
“Right. Their goal is to transport the grain, so they may hope to take the village’s barges to send the grain down the river and then back up the river to their own tributary. But I can’t imagine that the villagers would be that dumb—if you’re sitting on a fortune in grain, the last thing you do when you see an army coming is to leave your barges in places to make your stuff easier to steal. Naturally, if you do see barges, sink them. Thus…”
Kip looked around. Everyone was giving him their total attention, not even trying to interject. Even Cruxer looked impressed. As Tisis had said, they were turning to him. He was becoming a leader in their eyes, if not his own. What did that say?
He went on. “Thus, the Blood Robes either have their own wagons up here above the falls, or they have more barges even farther back. With the skimmers, the Mighty can get in place without being noticed.”
Conn Arthur said, “Why are we looking at the same thing and I see a problem, but you don’t? Like you said, their barges or wagons are up a completely different tributary above the falls. If we split our forces to attack in two places at once, how do we possibly coordinate an attack? We don’t have any idea how many soldiers, drafters, and wights they might have. We could get massacred.”
“The tributaries end up pinching close at Deora Neamh. When the battle starts at the warehouse, we’ll be able to hear the musket fire.”
“Over the noise of the waterfall?” Cruxer asked.
“Good thought,” Kip said.
“It’s not that big,” someone who’d visited the town said. “You’d hear a musket over it.” Others agreed.
“What if something goes wrong?” Conn Arthur asked.
“Oh, something will go wrong,” Kip said. “Even if it doesn’t, we use luxin flares to communicate.”
“That gives away our position if we use them,” Cruxer said. “And if these, uh, Ghosts use them, the enemy will see that they’re using flares and suspect a trap.”
“No. They won’t see them at all, because we’ll use superviolet flares,” Kip said. “Conn Arthur, tell me you’ve got at least one superviolet drafter.”
“Three or four.”
Kip went on. “And before you point out that this means we have to have two people watching the sky constantly in the superviolet spectrum, we specify times instead. We each get a sand clock or a water clock—whatever Ben-hadad can make—and we check the sky at set times. Even if this captain has superviolet drafters, they won’t know to be looking at all or when to look if they do, so they’ll miss whatever we signal. Remember, victory for us isn’t wiping them out. It isn’t even fighting them at all. It’s stopping them from getting food. Saving the village, saving the grain, and killing lots of Blood Robes—all nice, but very much secondary. If we sink the barges or burn the wagons and scatter their horses and they still get the grain and decide to carry it back to the main army, we’ll have plenty more chances to wipe them out in the forest.”