Father Simeon smiled softly. “It may not surprise you to hear that I believe in miracles—”
“I wish I could say the same, Father. But when I see my family tomb and read the names of those who died on the battlefield, I find myself grasping for something more solid on which to build my own belief.”
If Asta had not known better, she would have believed the Woodsman’s sorrowful tone herself.
“Something or someone?” Father Simeon inquired.
“Someone,” Jonas confirmed. “Father, I believe that if Axel Blaxland were to replace Jared as Prince, we would have a much stronger chance of addressing this threat. Axel is experienced at wielding the sword. Prince Jared is still training with haunches of meat from Vera’s larders. Axel has played a key part at diplomatic meetings. Jared has not. Who do you think is better qualified to defend our borders and—I pray that it does not come to this—negotiate the terms of surrender? I don’t want to sound disloyal…”
“It is not disloyal,” Father Simeon said.
Asta’s blood ran cold as the Priest continued.
“You can only do as your heart and mind instruct you, Jonas. That is the way to honor your family, both living and dead. That is the way to honor the Princedom.”
“Thank you, Father,” Jonas said. “You cannot imagine what a great relief it is to hear those words from you. I feel a burden lifting from my shoulders.”
“I am glad,” Father Simeon said. “I am glad you called upon me to help and that I was able.” A pause. “Perhaps I should go now and leave you alone here with your thoughts and your ancestors?”
“Yes, thank you, Father.” Jonas’s traitorous voice was husky now. It was taking all of Asta’s powers of self-control not to race around the family tomb and charge through the iron doors to openly challenge the Woodsman about his duplicity.
“Father,” she heard Jonas speak again.
“Yes, Jonas.”
“How will you determine your own path through this chaos?”
“I will do as you have done,” Simeon said. “I will search my soul and challenge myself with the most difficult questions. I will decide what is best for the Princedom. My duty, like yours, is first and foremost to Archenfield.”
“I hope, Father, this will not prove a torturous process for you.”
“We must all wander through the darkest woods at certain moments in our lives,” the Priest said. “Such moments are those that define us not only as men, but as God’s creatures. You are right—it will not be a comfortable journey. But I shall embrace it nonetheless.” He paused. “And having talked to you, I have already begun the process.”
Asta heard the scrape of footsteps and realized that Father Simeon was turning to leave. There was the sound of the iron gates clanking shut as he went on his way. She watched as Jonas Drummond rose to his feet. He turned and she briefly caught sight of his face. There were, as she had anticipated, tears on his face. But nonetheless he was smiling.
Of course he was.
Before he could notice her, she darted around the side of the tomb, only to find Father Simeon standing on the path, staring at her.
She stumbled toward him. “Father, I can explain.”
“I’m not sure that I would care for your explanation,” he said. “Skulking around tombs hardly seems fitting behavior for the court Poet.” He shook his head. “These are testing times for us all,” Father Simeon resumed, more gently. “But, all the same, we must act with the dignity expected of members of the Twelve.”
“But surely you see what’s going on here?” she protested. “Surely you know what Jonas came here to accomplish, on Axel Blaxland’s behalf?”
Father Simeon frowned.
“He came here to recruit you!”
“Recruit me?”
“He may not have said it in so many words, but Axel is poised to launch a vote of no confidence in Prince Jared. We will each have to pick a side.”
“Indeed,” Father Simeon said. “Well, your actions here today may have helped me make my own decision.” Head down, he continued on his way.
“Please!” she implored him.
“Leave me,” Father Simeon said, turning back briefly toward her. “I am not given easily to anger, but your actions today have inspired it in me.”
She let him go. Furious not only with Jonas but herself, Asta stood impotently on the path. She was not looking forward to explaining what had happened to Nova and Koel.
As she watched Father Simeon disappear around a corner, she heard footsteps behind her. She glanced over her shoulder to find Jonas Drummond striding toward her.
“Asta, have you come here to pray?” His face was close now, gazing down at her. “You should pray. You should devote every last breath to prayer, Asta Peck. Because you’re going to need it.”
The Physician’s Surgery, the Village of the Twelve, Archenfield
Asta found her uncle in the middle of his surgery, surrounded by a circle of evenly spaced wooden crates. In his hands was a long scroll of paper, which appeared to be covered—in his distinctive hand and green ink—with a detailed list. Asta watched as her uncle took up his pen and scratched rather viciously through one of the items on the list. Then he glanced up.
“Oh, it’s you.” He made no pretense of being pleased to see her. “I’m preparing these boxes of medical supplies for the troop divisions,” he told her, placing a sealed earthenware container in the box nearest him. The table behind him was loaded with an array of similar-looking containers—each with his typically immaculate labels—standing to attention beside vast wraps of bandages and, even more ominously, sharp-looking saws. She didn’t like to think how such implements might be utilized, though she had a reasonably good idea.
“I assumed,” her uncle’s voice cut across her thoughts, “that you were busy helping Axel in your capacity as the new Poet. But when I spoke to him, he said that I was mistaken about this—that he has scarcely seen hide nor hair of you outside the meetings of the Twelve.” Elias’s eyes met hers. “Where are you spending your time, Asta? What are you up to now?”
“I’ve been with Nova and Lady Koel,” she told him. “Uncle Elias, has Axel talked to you about his vote of no confidence in Prince Jared?”
She saw Elias flinch at her words. “If he has, then that would constitute a private matter between two members of the Twelve,” he said.
Asta shook her head. “This vote affects all of us on the Twelve. Not to mention Prince Jared, and the court, the Princedom as a whole—”
“Thank you very much for the informative lesson,” Elias said. “Truly, anyone would think that you were the insider at court and I was the one lately sprung from the dust and dirt of the settlements.” He raised a finger at her. “Just because you have the new Prince’s ear, that does not give you the right—”
Asta could no longer contain her anger. “What? The right to care whether Prince Jared has a throne to return to? The right to think about who is best placed to rule Archenfield? The right to defend the Prince and encourage others to do so?” She could feel tears gathering in her eyes—tears of sadness, anger and deep frustration. “Uncle Elias, I don’t understand why you would be angry with me about this.”
“No,” he said. “I think that is true. You understand very little about me, it transpires. And, I confess, the feeling is mutual. From where I am standing, this gulf between us is only likely to grow wider.”
“It doesn’t have to,” she said. “We could find a way back to how things used to be.”
“I think that would be impossible now.” Elias sighed. When he resumed speaking, his voice was steadier. “I think it might better suit us both if you were to move out of my house. The Poet’s Villa has been vacant since Logan Wilde’s incarceration. Seeing as you have taken over his position, I assume the villa belongs to you too.”
Asta was dumbstruck. “You want me to move out?”
He nodded. “It would enable me to get on, uninterrupted, with my duties. And y
ou to do the same.”
“When?” she gasped.
Elias shrugged, and turned his back on her.
THIRTY-TWO
The Palace, Archenfield
“WELL, VERA, YOU HAVE TRUMPED EVEN YOUR OWN extraordinary standards tonight,” Axel told the Cook as he brushed past her chair on his way out of the dining chamber.
“Thank you, Axel,” she said smugly.
“It was not a compliment,” he hissed, before striding away.
Lamb testicle stew? Really? Hard on the heels of that vile tripe dish the night before. She was clearly taking his point about the need for frugality to new heights.
He was tired and now, on top of that, nauseous, but he needed to get back to his office by the striking of the Edling’s Bell. Only two days remained until Paddenburg’s threat of invasion became a reality. If the latest reports from his spies were correct, the enemy army outnumbered his own by four to one. Grim as this estimate was, the latest troop deployments needed to be finalized.
Military camps had been set up between key settlements and the southern border with Paddenburg. The most recent report from the south confirmed his worst fears. The people of Inderwick and Grenofen—the two settlements closest to the Paddenburg border and thereby most vulnerable to attack—were fleeing north with whatever possessions and livestock they could carry.
Just as Asta Peck had predicted, the southerners had no further appetite for war. The southerners had a reputation for being fiercely patriotic and they had been quick to enlist at the outset of war with Eronesia. In doing so, however, they had seen severe casualties in battle. With more than half their population dead or bleeding in the north, those that had remained had struggled to harvest the crops; those who had not offered up their lives on the battlefield nearly starved to death at home. It came as little surprise that, one way or another, war had eroded what was left of their patriotism.
Others might have seen this flight of refugees from the south as the final nail in Archenfield’s coffin, but what separated Axel from other, lesser, mortals was his ability to hold his nerve—even in what seemed to be the Princedom’s darkest hours. Surrender to Paddenburg was no more an option than surrender to Eronesia had been. He would begin the fight back on two fronts—first, by halting the flight of the southerners and persuading them to return to defend their home turf; second, by convincing the settlements to the west of the necessity to bear arms.
The Borderlands
Lydia swung her sword. The power she had mustered was sufficient to unseat her target in his saddle. She leaned forward to deliver the killer blow with her blade but, as she did, the target’s horse twisted round, unwittingly protecting its rider by taking him just beyond Lydia’s reach. Adrenalized for the kill, Lydia plunged the length of her sword into horseflesh instead—one creature’s blood was as good as another. She swiftly retracted her weapon, dripping crimson.
The horse, initially frozen in pain, began to convulse and its rider was thrown off onto the battleground, showered with the blood of his dying horse as it reared up into the air one last time. Lydia directed her own steed over the fallen rider’s body, hearing the satisfying crack of bones underfoot.
Her next target came into focus before her. Like those Lydia had already felled, the woman was not in armor but only the winter garb of a border guard. It left her woefully vulnerable as Lydia swung her sword and sliced through her rival’s arm, watching the geyser of blood gush up in the air. Some of it sprayed onto her own golden armor, but Lydia had little care that her pristine armor was sullied: blood was a badge of honor. She continued on, inhaling the scent of death and new beginnings that permeated the thick air. She didn’t have time to think about where her deputy and the rest of the troops were. Her sole focus was directed on clearing her way through the obstructions that lay between her and the stretch of land ahead: land she was taking in the name of Paddenburg. In her mind, she was the hero of a folktale—such as those Logan had told her in her younger, more impressionable days—slashing her way through a vast forest of thorn-encrusted vines. Like the hero charged with gathering twelve roses to wake the sleeping king, she must do whatever it took to achieve her destiny.
She heard the clang of steel on steel as her next opponent’s sword clashed against her own, and she could feel through the contact of their weapons the strength of this newest enemy. Digging her heels into her horse’s flank, she surged forward. The two swords smashed together again. He was attempting to unseat her, trying to use the weight of her armor against her. As he came yet closer, Lydia judged the distance, then propelled herself forward, smashing her helmet into his exposed forehead. She was ready for more of a fight but as she drew back, she saw with a certain sadness that she had already rendered him senseless. Shoving him firmly from his horse to the ground, she moved on.
These people had not known what hit them. They were ill prepared and outnumbered. On she went, slashing her way through the forest in her head. On and on and on again, until at last there were no more vines to slash, no more bloodred roses to gather. She found herself alone at last.
It was perfectly still and quiet: No more echoes of clashing steel; no more drumming hooves; the pitiful cries of the dying muffled by the circling wind. Ahead of her was land, as far as the eye could see, a beautiful expanse of empty green fields.
“We’re in!” she cried in heady excitement. “The border is ours!”
Glancing back, she saw her comrades maneuvering their horses carefully over the moving, squirming sea of bodies beneath them. Earthworms. That was all they were—a field of slowly wriggling earthworms. Turning her eyes once more in the other direction, she inhaled deeply the sweet greenness of it all, feeling it flood her senses. Already, her mind was emptied of all thoughts of what had come before. This was her gift—a rare one indeed.
Her eyes were drawn to a falcon wheeling gracefully overhead. She felt almost overcome by the perfect peace and silence of the scene.
The Captain of the Guard’s Office, the Palace, Archenfield
Sitting alone in silence, Axel had barely had a chance to skim the lists when there was an urgent rapping at the door.
“Enter!” he called out.
His deputy, the ever-dependable Elliot Nash, pushed open the door. He looked flushed. “I have news,” he announced. “And you’re not going to like it.”
“Well? Spit it out, man.”
“Paddenburg,” Elliot rasped.
Axel frowned. Even the name of that bloody Princedom now had the capacity to turn his stomach. “I’m going to need more than just one word,” he told Elliot.
His deputy nodded. “Word has just reached us from the western border. Neutral Tanaka has been invaded! They have surrendered, and now Paddenburg troops are racing toward the border between Tanaka and Archenfield.”
Axel rose to his feet. Tanaka shared a considerable border with Archenfield to the west, just as Paddenburg did to the south. If Henning and Ven had taken the time and trouble to annex Tanaka, then this was going to be a hell of a lot worse than he had predicted. The bastards of Paddenburg had shown their deadly hand: they were planning to simultaneously attack Archenfield on two fronts. Now the people of the western settlements would not be valiantly coming to the aid of the beleaguered south, but fighting to save their own land, homes and families.
“We have to face facts.” Elliot’s voice was drained of emotion. “It is now only a matter of time before Archenfield falls.”
Axel frowned but spoke calmly and quietly. “I don’t need you to tell me when to face facts. Be assured that I am always one step ahead. That’s why I’m in the position I am in.”
Elliot looked more flushed than ever. “I’m sorry, Axel, but you know as well as I that our fighting numbers were slashed in the conflict with Eronesia. Paddenburg, in contrast, has a swollen army, which we now have no hope of defeating.”
Axel raised his hand to silence Elliot’s increasingly grating voice. “Our fighting numbers are diminished. You know
that and I know that but, crucially, the twin demons of Paddenburg do not necessarily know this. If we can still mobilize energetic troops to both fronts, we can make Henning and Ven think that we have a greater force at our disposal than we do. We can still win this—”
“By smoke and mirrors?” Elliot was clearly unconvinced.
“Wars are won as much with the head as with the sword,” Axel told him. “You, for example, seem already to be unfurling the flag of surrender, simply in response to news of enemy troops clustering in the vicinity of our borders. At times like this, it is vital to hold one’s nerve.”
To his surprise, Elliot did not back down. “There’s a difference,” he said, “between holding one’s nerve and steadfastly refusing to accept the facts.”
Was his deputy accusing him of such a refusal? Where was this uncharacteristic impudence coming from? “You have gone beyond your brief, Elliot,” Axel snapped. “And yet, I sense you have more to say to me?”
Elliot nodded. “Just as we are being briefed by our spies across the border, how can we be sure that Paddenburg’s spies within Archenfield have not given their leadership the clearest of indicators as to the size of our fighting force?”
“What spies?” Axel moved toward Elliot.
His deputy shrugged. “I’m just saying that in principle—”
“Elliot, it is your job to ensure there are no spies in Archenfield—none who still draw breath, at any rate. Have I not always made my feelings on this subject plain?”
“Yes,” Elliot acknowledged. “But, nonetheless, I think by this stage in the proceedings, we have to assume that one or two have probably… possibly slipped through the net.”
Axel smiled nastily, then shook his head. “This was your job,” he repeated. “If a spy has slipped through your net, then it is you who has allowed him—or her—so to do.” He paused, considering. “So, we have reached a crucial point in this conflict. It is time to take decisive action.” Yes, that had gotten his attention, cut him down to size. “Here’s what you will do. Take anyone you suspect of being a spy and make an example of them.”