"HOOT"
"Don't be like that, I know what I'm doing," I told Featherball as I put on my armor. After months of use and several fights it no longer was a pristine covering of black leather, fabric and metal plates; scrapes, little tears and other signs of wear had accumulated over time no matter how many hours were spent fixing it and many of the plates of the inner layer were shiny and new where dented ones had been replaced. The rows of rivets still held strong, cracked ones replaced over time. Funny thing was, much more of the damage had come from my training with Jorah than real battle and only once had it failed to protect me from worse than bruises. It was also getting more difficult to put on and tighter once there; soon, it would need replacing entirely.
Featherball gave me a critical, upside-down stare, obviously not believing my claim in the slightest. She did not pick at the message I'd strapped to her right leg though and waited me to get ready for my imminent meeting with the two Targaryens before offering her other leg. When I was ready, I picked up the tiny, insensate hummingbird I'd warged as soon as Jorah had taken the Targaryens into the old Overseer's dining room and put it flat on its back on the table. There it stayed barely breathing, its little speck of a mind crushed by my mind-shadow's rough intrusion. Tweezers got the feathers on its chest out of the way and my dagger cut a strip of its skin a mere two inches long. That I wrapped around feathers soaked in its blood along with a drop of my own per feather and tied it around Featherball's offered leg.
"This will only last until the token completely dries, probably no longer than sundown. Do you understand?" The tiny hummingbird that was Featherball flapped her new apparent wingspan of five inches instead of her usual six feet and chirped derisively. "Yes, yes, you're smarter than our soldiers. If you get there early just tear the token off and the glamour will break," I told her.
Moments later, a hummingbird flew out of the window, a tiny dot against the early morning sky at only fifty yards away, disappearing entirely at two hundred. I doubted anyone with normal vision would see or hear her much above a hundred feet, which was a great improvement over being noticeable from a couple of miles away. The limitations of glamour at my level of skill meant I'd hardly ever skin a victim to make a short-lived disguise token, but a stealth Featherball? Now that had much greater potential.
xxxxWhen I arrived to the manor's dining room, Viserys and Daenerys were wolfing down a breakfast of lentil soup accompanied by slices of cheese, dried meat and flatbread with the dedication of growing people that had lost more than a few meals in recent times. Their drink was watered wine that had never been of particular quality to begin with, with more water than wine in Daenerys' case. Neither of them had appeared to be truly starving, with only a few signs of malnourishment in Viserys' case and barely hints of such in Daenerys', but the lack of complaint about the relatively simple fare was telling.
Viserys stopped to stare almost the moment I walked into the room, his eyes wide in surprise. What he saw of me now was very different to what he'd seen an hour earlier, both in my readiness and to his expectations. The dressy nightgown was replaced by well-used armor, my long silver tresses were caught in a simple, no-nonsense braid, a set of long Lysene dirks was strapped to my belt and I held my spear in one hand like a walking stick, the rhythmic tap-tap-tap of its metal-capped butt on the stone floor the only announcement to my arrival.
He did not speak as I picked up a bowl of my own, filled it with lentil soup from the cauldron, then ground a slice of hard cheese into it with my fingers and added a dash of undiluted spiced wine into the mix. Ah, the twin advantages of great strength and relative wealth; allowing man to enjoy lentil soup as the gods intended since the invention of cheese in prehistory. The spoon was my one concession to privilege; mine was a single piece of green sapphire while everyone else ate out of wood.
"Lady Belaerys, we-" Viserys stopped talking as I raised my arm. It was good that he did; he would not have enjoyed the alternative. The rest of the meal passed in silent intensity as Viserys' eyes followed my every motion and even little Daenerys peeked at me with unbrindled curiosity often, though she was more interested in her food. Jorah was standing in a shadowed corner like a good bodyguard should - or a spy. Even in this timeline that Varys had never recruited him he still had some inclination towards subterfuge... or perhaps he did not think getting involved in the conversation to come was his place. If so, he would be right in more ways than one.
"Now that we are all fed, watered, and have partaken of all necessary precations of good manners and common sense, let's move to more important matters." I steepled my fingers under my chin and returned Viserys' intense stare with interest. "How did you arrive here?"
"How did we-" the young man almost shouted then, visibly collecting himself, continued in a calmer if not truly polite tone. "My lady, why does the manner of our arrival matter? A friend brought us over so we could discuss matters of great importance with you."
"It matters because you have neither ships nor friends, Viserys of House Targaryen." In the brief silence that followed I pushed my empty bowl aside and it flew off, wobbling off the table in a ring of dull reddish glow and floating across the room to be collected and washed later. Viserys' and Daenerys' empty dishes followed. "The method of your arrival and who provided it might reveal what factions were interested in a meeting between us, had knowledge of my location, and what method they used to convince you to meet with me. It might even give hints as to why they did what they did. It was not because they were your friends, I assure you."
"We wanted t-to meet with t-the Golden C-company," the prince stammered, eyes round and wide like golden crown coins flickering between me and the bowls. "We were in P-Pentos when we heard about t-their move to Lys... and about a Valyrian sorceress of noble blood raising an army." His shock wore off quickly as he spoke faster and faster, replaced by something dark and bitter. "Ser Myles Toyne and the other Captains feasted on our gold, heard us for an hour, then laughed. They laughed and sent us away like we were nothing!"
"Oh?" I leaned forward and smiled at the physically older but still childish prince. "Then what are you, if not nothing?"
"I am Viserys Targaryen, blood of the dragon, rightful King of the Seven Kingdoms," he proclaimed proudly, every trace of earlier shock and doubt replaced by the utter surety of either a line repeated countless times, or madness... and therein lay the problem. But most problems had a solution.
"That is an odd statement," I told him with feigned confusion, looking at the young prince and not at his sister who had quietly walked off her chair without him noticing and was even then across the room, poking at the bowls I had carried away with magic. "Do you mean to say you are an Andal?"
"What? No!" Viserys scoffed as if my question had offended him - exactly as it had been meant to. "I am a dragon! Blood of Valyria!"
"Are you sure?" I challenged him with a smirk. "Because Valyria never had a king. For three thousand years it never needed a king and neither its lords nor its people believed in monarchy. Forty Great Houses were the Dragonlords of old, their lords and ladies ruling via council. Kings and thrones were the belief of Andals, and their backwards faith."
"House Targaryen ruled Westeros for three hundred years!" he immediately shot back. "Aegon the Conqueror brought the Seven Kingdoms to heel and bound them to the Iron Throne!"
"Is that what you were told? Because that is not how I remember it." I sat back in my chair and took a faraway look. "It was a hundred and four and ten years between Daenys' dream and the start of Aegon's conquest. Five generations before your House tried to unite Westeros, and you had fewer dragons and less magic during the Conquest than upon your arrival in Westeros." I paused to let him chew on that and when he opened his mouth to speak I went on before he could. "Besides, House Targaryen never fully ruled Westeros. Dorne resisted and you lost a dragon and a queen. The faith resisted, and King Maegor died. The lords resisted, and most of your House died in the Dance along with your dragons. The lords resisted again and overthrew your father and your dynasty entirely." The more I talked the more Viserys' expression became less confident and more mulishly petulant. And if my words were accompanied by a hint of mental pressure that made them harder to challenge and easier to browbeat some sense through the cracks in his pride it would be for his own good in the end. By the end he was sweating, his hands shaking just a little, what I'd said getting to him more than it would have by words alone.
"Vissy, are the bowls magic?" Daenerys interrupted, pulling at her older brother's sleeve with all the cuteness of a nine-year-old that didn't quite get what the adults were talking about. Viserys actually jumped, only then just noticing that his sister was still around.
"Not now, Dany," he said, trying to shoo her away. He failed and I had to stuggle not to laugh. "Yes, they're magic," he hissed and pulled his arm off her grip. "Now go play with them. I'm trying to have an important conversation!"
"Why are you sending your sister away?" I asked him, drawing the attention of both siblings once more. "These are things she should learn if she is to be a princess, as you claim."
"It is no mere claim!" His back straightened and his face hardened as he rallied in the face of arguments that undermined the foundation of his beliefs. "The Iron Throne was made by a Targaryen for Targaryens, not for the Usurper to sit his ass on."
"All thrones are but empty seats until claimed. Robert Baratheon claimed his by his might, by his hammer, by all those willing to follow him, and by his Targraryen blood." The young prince shot up from his chair but my glare and the weight of my mind-shadow stopped him from immediately saying or doing something stupid. "Orys was the Conqueror's brother before he married Argella Durrandon and made House Baratheon. Since then there have been enough Targaryens in his line that were dragons to return the one you call Usurper would have a good chance of bonding to one."
"That makes him even worse! A Kinslayer!" Viserys protested but he sat back down and his retort was not as vehement as his earlier ones.
"Maybe he was, but so will you be if you slay him," I told him with a shrug. "But don't get ahead of yourself. You have no loyal followers by your own admission. You have no weapon worth mentioning, and if you think you can match Robert in might or skill at war even now, the Golden Company would have been right to have laughed you off. How do you plan to regain your throne, o' rightful king?"
"What would you have us do, then? Wander the streets like beggars until we starve?" he asked, more pleading than anger in his words.
"No, but if you're worth more than just food and drink remains to be seen. Unlike everyone else who claimed to be your friend so far, I will not promise you anything but I will not laugh at you either." That, at least, seemed to calm Viserys down, for the time being. "Now that you've opened your eyes to your situation at least a little, let us open them a bit further. How did you arrive here? You never finished telling me."
"It was after the Golden Company threw us out," the young prince told me bitterly, "that a Lysene Captain got out of the alehouse just after us and approached us." Viserys frowned pensively. "He told us he'd overheard the whole thing and he was sympathetic to our plight."
"He was very pretty!" Daenerys enthusiastically piped up.
"Hush, Dany," her brother said and continued. "The good Captain Noso told us that perhaps we'd find more support in a company that was run by another Valyrian," he glowered at me accusingly for not entertaining his dreams but when he saw I was unmoved he just went on. "He took us on his ship for a pittance and landed us a few miles up the coast by boat, telling us where to find you after." He deflated as if the effort of telling the brief story had taken the wind off his sails.
"Interesting, very interesting. Just this much tells me a lot of things. Care to guess what?" When Viserys gave me another mulish scowl I shrugged. "I guess we can extend this lesson a bit further. First of all, high-class Lyseni establishments offer privacy, especially to patrons as powerful as the Captains of the Golden Company. Allowing the affairs of the most powerful army within two thousand miles to be spied upon would be bad for business at best, lethal at worst. So it's clear the good Captain Noso lied to you just by saying he overheard anything. How then did he know what was said?"
"I..." Viserys scrambled for an answer and found none. "I do not know."
"At least you're not hopeless. Admitting this lack of knowledge was the first sensible thing you did but at least shows you're not delusional, merely deceived." The boy scowled again, but at least he was thinking. "You say he took you on his ship for a pittance. How much?"
"Ten silver," he admitted. "It's... not enough, is it?"
"For a trip to no port, without stopping to load or unload any cargo? Just his expenses should be fifty times what you paid." I knew that much just from paying for Spark Plug. "Risking his ship during wartime to sail through the area of greatest danger, when the Council of Lys is restricting travel? Nothing you could offer to a merchant would have paid for it. So here is a question you should be asking yourself; why would your new friend would want two out of maybe six surviving Targaryens out in a warzone raided by sell-sword companies and pirate ships instead of the well-defended, relatively safe city of Lys?"
"That bastard!" Viserys roared. "He will taste the rage of the dragon when next we meet!"
"Which would probably kill you, not him," I added dryly, raising my eyebrows in challenge when the prince scowled. "He has a whole loyal crew working for him, remember?" Then something struck me out of everything I'd just heard, but not something Viserys said. "This Captain Noso. Describe him."
"He was Lyseni," Viserys told me. "Pale lilac eyes, long white-gold hair, probably diluted Valyrian blood." When he saw this did not satisfy me he continued. "His lips were full, his fingernails painted purple, and he wore lots of pearls and amethysts."
"And he was pretty!" Daenerys added again.
"Yes, yes, he was pretty like a Lyseni who-" the young prince paused, looked at his little sister, then looked at me, then awkwardly changed what he'd been about to say. "Like a Lyseni woman. The prettiest Lyseni I ever saw."
"That's unfortunate," I admitted with a sigh. "I know of whom you speak, but he is no ship's Captain. His true name is Lysono Maar, a scion of House Maar, a sell-sword and the Golden Company's spymaster." Though very, very few people knew about that last bit. Viserys stared at me in surprise, Dany looked on with naive curiosity and even Jorah shifted uncomfortably in the shadows.
The plot thickened... and not in a direction I liked.
Butter, salt, and a generous helping of flint corn was added in the steel canister before the heavy lid came down and was sealed with the safety lock. Then the canister was hung over the fire by the protrusion in its bottom and the shaft of the lever attached to the lid. From that lever it was turned like a pig on a spit and only minutes later the heat expansion of the safety lock let pressurized air, steam and nose-tingling buttery goodness escape to announce that everything was ready.
Under my supervision, the cook removed the canister from the flames, popped it open and deposited the first non-magical popcorn Westeros and western Essos had ever seen. The little puffed corn seeds might be smaller and not as white as modern varieties back on Earth but they would certainly impress the ancient popcorn-makers of New Mexico back in 3600 BCE. They certainly impressed the cooks as soon as they got a taste of the hot buttery snack. The rest was split in two bowls I took with me while the cooks prepared the next batch to be loaded into the newly 'invented' popcorn hammer.
Leaving the cooking area behind, I made my way towards the busy training field we'd made by clearing the burned-out wooden buildings next to the repaired breach in the palisade. There, close to two hundred soldiers both from Dread Company and the town militia were training on crossbows, while even more went through spear drills or were up on the wooden walkway that was being added to the town's reinforced palisade. Others still were showing groups of plantation workers how to assemble Roman Hedgehogs, six-foot wooden caltrops that could block cavalry and break up advancing infantry lines that could be quickly made by combining Roman palisade stakes. There were many ways to multiply the defensive advantages of what was essentially a huge worker camp and everyone was determined to deploy as many as we could in what little time we had.
The smallest group among both the militia and the soldiers were our equivalent of hedge knights, people with enough talent, training and unique fighting styles to be more effective as individual strong points in our lines instead of joining the rest of the pikes. Jorah Mormont was in his element there, as was Lotho the militia leader, the company's sergeants, half a dozen former sell-swords that had been caught up in Saelys when the raiding started and, of course, my wights - though more as sparring partners and motivational implements than actually training. Which made the two silver-haired, purple-eyed people in the mix very easy to notice.
"You'll have more luck with the crossbows," I told Daenerys when I found her huffing and puffing over a training sword that was way too big for her. "Who gave you that two-handed load, anyway? It's a weapon meant for grown knights in full plate, not trainees - let alone little girls."
"But Targaryens are good with swords!" she pouted and gave me puppy dog eyes. "I wanna be like Visenya when I grow up!"
"Visenya was smart enough not to try a sword longer than she was tall," I told her and picked the thing from her hands then threw it over my head to land point-first in the weapon barrel behind us. "Besides, you are smaller than Visenya at the same age much like your brother is smaller than your older brother Rhaegar was. It is unlikely you will ever be very good in melee." Most of that was probably the result of malnourishment and hardship I had hopes of fixing, especially in Daenerys' case, but the truth was we had no time for either of them to become great warriors before the Long Night, not unless they had talent they had never shown in the original timeline or we found some way to cheat. Considering what I had seen so far that seemed... unlikely.
"This is not fair!" Daenerys complained and stomped the ground in the way of kids everywhere. "After years of... of running and going hungry the gods finally smile on us to meet someone straight out of Valyrian legend, give us a chance to become great and..." her eyes flickered towards the field for a moment "...and it turns out we are not good enough? Was it merely a stupid girl's dream?" OK, so not quite such a silly reaction after all.
"Life is fair, Daenerys. Kings and beggars, they end the same; surrounded by rot and blame. Everyone always falls short of what they could have done, seen by the perspective afforded by hindsight." I gave her the bowl of popcorn while downing a crunchy buttery handful of my own. "But most of us who live in the now can only act on what we know in the present, can only play the cards in our hands. It falls to us to do what we can with the time and talents we have been given." Though in some cases we cheated outrageously, I did not add.
"But what will we do?" She fretted even as she ate the popcorn with relish, childish delight tempered by wariness and doubt. "We are the last Blood of the Dragon, or so I have always been told. The last descendants of Aegon, Visenya and Rhaenys, at least. What will we do, if not this?" She pointed out at the training field, at the reason she'd tried a sword too large for her.
Viserys was dueling Jorah for what had to be the tenth time, though duel was not quite how most would describe it. He wielded his blade in wide, wild swings of plenty of power and speed for his lanky frame but little skill. Jorah parried each one with ease, bouncing his own training sword off them to prod and whack Viserys through his nonexistent guard, leaving punishing bruises even through the exiled prince's arming doublet, or welts where the quilted cloth did not cover. Yet the Beggar Prince persevered through the injuries and kept fighting. Unlike Daenerys who was too young I had given him a healing ring, but the determination to go through the pain was all him.
"He is not that bad," I said and Daenerys scowled at me. "He really is not. When I started learning the spear, my aunt could knock me down just as easily. It was even worse when it came to knife-fighting." Had that really been only a year before?
"Vissy... he's seven and ten now." The little princess whined, which showed that even legendary figures could be little kids at heart. Especially when they were little kids in the rest of their bodies. "No one ever taught us when we were little. Well, Ser Willem tried, but he was too old and then he died. Afterwards... there was no time or teachers in the streets. None we would like at least."
"You are still 'little', Daenerys," I told her, winning another scowl in response. "There is time for you yet to join the ranks of legends. All you need is a chance, and to be a legend of your own rather than trying to be like someone else."
"You think I could?" she asked, and there was something small and vulnerable in her voice.
"I do not think, I know," I told the pre-teen princess that had grown up starving, on the run, hounded by those that wanted another pawn or worse.. "I have seen it."
In the training fields beyond us, Viserys was knocked on his ass yet again.
xxxx
"The palisade is not sturdy enough," was the first thing Jorah told me when he came into the Overseer's manor after the day's training had ended.
"We have days till the enemy arrives, maybe a week." Bloodbeard still had not managed to get the Company of the Cat ready to march after my bombing run the night before. "We can build it up, train more militia to defend it, add towers for the siege crossbows, add more hedgehogs, finish a proper trench. It will be twice as strong by the time we're done, maybe more."
But Jorah was already shaking his head. "It will not be nearly enough," he told me with a grimace. "Not against three thousand experienced sell-swords. Not when all we have is only two hundred proper men-at-arms and the rest are just untrained rabble."
"Are you sure?" There were some aspects of the defense he might not know about - that he couldn't know until the proper time to reveal them but... but he knew much and one of the reasons I had recruited the exiled knight to begin with was military advice. Dismissing his opinion out of hand would be dumb.
"I know sieges, my lady. I was at Pyke where Greyjoy's reavers were similarly outnumbered." He sat heavily on the table and scarfed down flatbread, jam and peanut butter. "They had a wall. Still weak and short as such things go, but more than this town will have by the time we are done. They were also surrounded by cliffs over the sea on three sides with only one side to defend. None of it mattered when we stormed the walls in too many places to stop. I was the second man to climb that wall and once we were in close quarters in a narrow space superior armor and training won over numbers. I must have slain a score of squids that day and Thoros of Myr cut down half again as many with that burning sword of his." He sighed and sipped at his spiced Myrish wine. "The same will happen here. Even if the palisade is not broken through they will overwhelm us."
"Well, we can't have that, can we?" I wiped crumbs off my mouth and armor and chased the thickness of peanut butter down with some local juices. One of these days I'd raid Sothoryos just to see if there were cocoa beans over there, and if there weren't I'd make them with sorcery and mad science as was right and proper. Until then, the world would be bereft of that king of all beverages - chocolate milk, of course - and I'd have to settle for inferior replacements. In the meantime, I sent mental commands to both Featherball and my wights before setting the dishes aside to be washed later and picked up my spear and bowstave.
"What will you do?" Jorah asked.
"I am going to remind a few thousand bloodthirsty bastards that what goes around comes around," I shot back unhelpfully.
xxxx
The rickshaws were loaded with water, trail rations, ammunition, oil, spare weaponry and other expendables in less than an hour. Enough for over a hundred men to comfortably survive in the wilderness for at least two weeks with no need to resupply, forage or search for a water source. The men themselves strapped on another 'invention' of mine; proper modern-style backpacks. Like back on Earth in medieval times, Westerosi armies and most sell-sword companies made do with simple bags carried over the shoulder or strapped to belts, hanging from polearms, or carried on wooden poles between two people, Made not of wood or reeds like peasant baskets were, the backpacks had a stiff frame of hardened leather and twin shoulder straps wider than the usual rope or belts and allowed each soldier to carry as much as fifty pounds with greater comfort and ease than every other army's levies carried smaller loads. Said pack included emergency rations and water for another week, a crossbow with a hundred spare bolts and a simple survival kit, including a map of the Disputed Lands each soldier had been allowed to copy from my own accurate mapping efforts through warged birds.
The twenty most experienced squads, over half the men of Dread Company, were getting ready in the staging area next to the town's waterfront, Spark Plug standing ready to ferry them on the other bank of the river Sal. Crossing would take less than an hour including the loading and unloading, which made it a hell of a lot faster than marching over the closest bridge, more than twenty miles away. We would have used Saelys' ferry, a simple barge on ropes that was pulled between banks in only a few minutes, but the thing had been a casualty of the recent raid and nobody had noticed until we'd needed it. Now the sun was low over the sea in the west, no more than a couple hours of daylight left.
"My lady, please reconsider," Jorah told me. "By the time you can reach the Company of the Cat they will be halfway here and raiding a greatly superior force is a dangerous proposition."
"I once knew a man that could march a hundred miles a day, every day, and if pressed run twice that distance between one sunrise and the next without using a drop of magic," I scoffed over the exiled knight's protests. "I did not forge those magic rings just to heal our people's bruises between training bouts, Jorah, but for strategic mobility. I plan for us to be in striking distance of Bloodbeard's band of rapists and pillagers by this time tomorrow at the latest."
"That is..." he paused, visibly thought through the implications of infantry that only needed to stop for two or three hours every day and could march double time without killing themselves, and changed what he'd been about to say. "At least let me come with you."
"If both of us leave, morale will plummet. The militia will be broken before the battle even starts, the workers will probably scatter and die in the wilderness and the town will fall." I put my arm on his shoulder and gripped hard enough that even through thirty layers of quilted cloth he felt my grip. "One of us needs to stay here and you are better at organizing troops and defensive works than I am. And you can't see the land from above and direct a company around any scouting parties or through hidden paths like I can. We will delay the enemy but we need you to turn this town in a stronger fall back point for when we retreat."
"And what about the other matter I mentioned?" Jorah asked in a near-whisper, trying not to look around us, or say too much. "Anything could happen out there."
"Yes. Anything could," I agreed. Frankly, I'd have preferred not to take risks, to lay back and bombard the Cats with fire from above. Unfortunately, as long as I was limited to my own blood there were limits to how many blood sacrifices I could make in a given period without crippling myself. After burning through hundreds of prepared incendiary tags in the alpha strike I needed at least a couple of days to recover. "Which is why I am taking this calculated risk now, instead of during a siege or big battle."
The only question was how the enemy would respond...
After nearly twenty hours on the march, I'd come to the conclusion that marching was boring. It was the ultimate incarnation of the old military adage 'hurry up and wait' because effectively you were both hurrying and waiting. Putting one foot in front of the other from dusk to dusk wasn't even a challenge any more, for me because I'd left the realm of normal humans behind many months and many hundreds of sacrifices before, for the troops because the magic rings they wore meant they recovered almost as fast as they were worn down.
Even the terrain and weather were pleasant enough. With everyone wearing at least a helmet of perpetually cool steel the sun was far less of an issue and with Featherball and other warged scouts finding us the best path through the wilderness there was no time wasted on detours, scouting, or back-tracking because we never had to worry about dead ends, swamps, rocky hills or similar obstacles. Low, dense shrubbery, thin, dry soil, sparse conifer trees and yellow-green grass replaced the plantations and cultivars as the dominant biome about fifty miles from Saelys. Ancient ruins dotted the landscape every few miles, the overgrown, crumbling remnants of stone buildings the only thing left from countless towns and villages that had sprung up only to be destroyed in the war between Myr, Tyrosh and Lys in the centuries since the Doom. The land still echoed faintly with the spilled blood of millions, a testament to the countless nameless victims of four centuries of endless war for everyone with eyes to see and ears to hear the ancient screams. Little spots of cold and warmth dotted the plains, places where I felt magic would be a bit easier marking the spots where such towns once stood. Not as strong a reaction as some places in the Neck, but the land remembered.
We marched north-east around the marshlands whence the small river Vel sprung, then turned south. A hundred and twenty men, a dozen wights, a winged menace and a sorceress did not a small group make, but there were none around to see us. Featherball spotted the dust clouds of other groups moving through the area from the air, but none came closer than fifteen miles nor were nearly large enough to be our quarry. Whether scouts from other companies, Tyroshi raiders, or outlaws, they were not our business as we were not theirs and with the help of aerial reconnaissance we passed them far enough away they never noticed our passage. Marching through the night proved easy enough, despite the men's grumbles. With wights able to see in the dark as well as they could see without eyes, my own night vision being more than good enough to handle a moonlight night as if it were the first hour of twilight just after the sun had dipped below the horizon and warged scouts providing an even better view, nobody got lost and there were only a few bruises and scrapes from the occasional fall that faded away within an hour or two thanks to the trickle of healing from the troops' rings. The day after we marched on, getting closer and closer to where the Company of the Cat had retreated after their losses to the air raid.
The sun was dipping low on the horizon once more when we came up to a small thicket of trees by the banks of the river, when I called for a stop.
"Finally," a nearby soldier grumbled. "I feared the march wouldn't end 'fore we died on our feet!" He dropped his backpack on a patch of grass, then fell on his ass in the soft clay of the riverbank.
"Why are you whining, Drenzo?" I asked the guy with a laugh. "This was what, a hundred and thirty miles?"
"'cause me feet are killing me, lady," the crouchy guy shot back, struggling to pull off his boots. "A hundred and thirty miles? The damn horselords only do sixty... and they ride on bloody horses." Similar muttered complaints were heard from several people nearby, proving that magic rings or no, some fatigue had still bled through.
"How old are you?" I asked, glancing at the guy's salt-and-pepper hair and the faint wrinkles in the suntanned skin of his face. "Forty?"
"Close enough," he said with another grunt. "Way too old for that kind of march, magic or no." He pulled the iron flask out of his backpack and drunk deeply from it. Water... could the healing magic replenish that? I'd never actually checked.
"Ya filthly liar!" another soldier even older-looking than Drenzo accused him. "Yer only two and thirty! I remember kicking your lazy ass when we both were with the Second Sons!"
"Still too old for this by half, ya old dog" Drenzo shot back. "We ain't wee lads no more."
"Hear, hear," someone else added but from the chuckles all around it was just the usual soldier complaints. Well, there was a cure for that; perspective.
"It could have been worse," I added to the banter and immediately got a dozen incredulous looks.
"Beg your pardon, lady," a younger blond that still had a decade on me asked. His name was... Satch? Snatch? It started with an 'S'... probably. "But how could it have been worse? We marched farther than any men ever have."
"You think so, do you?" I laughed. "In an old realm far away from here, each year a hundred volunteers would be chosen and given two days to march from the lowest point in the whole country to the highest. It was called the Badwater march on account of the region having even less water and hotter sun than the Red Waste." Well, not quite, but this world didn't have the word 'marathon' on account of there never having been a place named Marathon in it.
"That's damn fu-" Drenzo glanced at me and reconcidered. "-freakishly hot, lady. Were them people crazy?"
"Maybe," I shrugged. "They did do it not for war but just to see if they could. A hundred and forty-six miles from the lowest point to up in the mountains, with several peaks and cliffs in the way so they had to climb four miles as well." Now everyone was looking at me as if I were lying, or shaking their heads. "About seventy of the volunteers made it every year, thirty or so not managing to finish in time. The best of them finished the march in less than a day though."
"Ha! Weaklings!", a burly dark-haired guy that had taken off his helmet and splashed water all over his head said with a snort. "None of us gave up halfway."
"Sure, but none of them used magic either and many of them were women." Nobody had to say anything to that, all the naysayers seemingly poleaxed. "One of said women thought that march through the hottest, driest place in all the world was just too easy so she went and did it twice more in succession. Four hundred and forty miles, all told."
"...that is... I beg your pardon my lady," the older soldier that had called Danzo out for his fib said diffidently, "but it's a very tall tale."
"It also happens to be true. I did see that woman after her race wan won myself." Seeing her on a screen definitely counted.
"Oh." Because what else could be said? Now for the kicker.
"Did I mention she was four and fifty years old?"
xxxx
"Wake up," I prodded the old solder with the butt of my spear and he bolted upright in an instant, spear already half-raised before he blinked and tried to see who I was in the dim light of the stars.
"My lady?" He looked around at the rest of the troops being similarly prodded awake by wights and one unlucky guy by an irate Featherball hooting angrily over his face. At least there was a river nearby so he could wash himself... eventually.
"There is a mounted patrol from the Cats approaching," I told him, stringing my bow with a simple pull. "Pick up a crossbow and get cranking." Lord Reed's gift felt more like a child's training bow in my arms now than a proper warbow; it was half a foot shorter than me, too light, and stringing it came too easily. Given the heavy use I'd put it through in the past year it would soon need to be replaced... but it would still do for this night and a few nights more.
"Shouldn't we just avoid them if we saw them before they saw us?" he asked but kept moving, going through some quick stretches to warm up.
"No. We will take down the Cats' scouts tonight." It was the first step to my plan, one that leveraged our advantages and their weaknesses and lay the foundation for the steps to follow. "We want the main company blind, confused and if possible too scared to respond quickly."
The man nodded and, as I'd ordered, got cranking. The crossbows the Florian brothers and I had designed were a bastardization of late medieval and Han dynasty designs. Like some of the more expensive crossbows in Westeros and Essos and the more powerful examples from late medieval Europe their bows - the part the Florians insisted was called the prod for some reason - was a steel spring. Unlike those designs though, the steel spring was almost four feet wide and a bit thinner, allowing it to bend more. It had a draw weight of only six hundred pounds, half that of the most powerful European and Essossi crossbows, but could be drawn twenty-four inches instead of seven to nine. It also did not use the simple rolling nut trigger with the long lever but the more complex but easier to use short mechanical triggers the Chinese had invented all those millennia ago. The combination allowed the crossbows to put more power into each bolt than any non-mounted crossbow but as usual, there were trade-offs.
None of us could draw a six-hundred-pound crossbow by hand. I might have been able to using both my arms and legs but it would have been a needlessly exhausting, dangerous proposition... which was why I'd introduced the steel crank or, as it was known back in late medieval Europe, the cranequin. It was a metal rack with prongs to engage with the crossbow's string, a gearbox that wrapped around the rack and could travel up and down by turning a hande and a protrusion on the underside of the gearbox that attached to the butt of the crossbow. Unlike the windlass device that already existed in Essos and used a rope and pulley system to do the same thing, there were no issues with tangling ropes. Also, because the Florians were not dumb, they'd suggested prongs on both ends of the metal rack. That way, instead of having to unwind the crank back into position, all you had to do was turn it around and it would be at just the right extension to attach to the same crossbow. That made it faster and easier to use than the windlass and in theory trained soldiers could pull off a shot every fifteen seconds.
As my warged animals made enough noise to attract the enemy to our location, a hundred and twenty men carefully cranked up just as many crossbows. It was dark so it took them twice as long as usual but that was fine; there was time. While they were doing that, I was reaching out with my mind's shadow to the enemy riders' horses. By the time they had come within a couple hundred yards it was all done, though not a shot had been fired yet. Neither them nor my soldiers could actually see well enough to fire at anywhere above point-blank range in the dark.
I had no such problem and seconds later a sell-sword screamed as a heavy war arrow drilled through his flimsy mail. His companions stared around in confusion so I sent another bolt, then another, firing slowly but steadily as they reacted more and more wildly in their effort to see where the arrows were coming from.
"There!" a cry was barely audible from that distance, despite the near-silence. "The archer is down that way!" With half a dozen men shot down it had become evident that the attacker was both a single archer and too dangerous to leave alive and given an obvious target the Cats' scouting band reacted as expected. Unfortunately for them, we were ready.
My men couldn't see any better than the enemy, of course. That is why a dozen of them handed off their crossbows to the wights. Said wights aimed, pulled the trigger, and handed the crossbows back. That group of men got back to cranking while the next dozen handed their crossbows in turn. A dozen crossbow-wights that could actually see the enemy better than I could fired every few seconds while the horsemen could not charge properly in the dark or risk breaking their necks. The unexpected weight of fire sent them into chaos. Some of them tried to charge anyway and either tripped or were shot down before they could cross the last few dozen yards. Others tried to shoot back with crossbows of their own but unless they came within twenty yards of us the best they could do was shoot aimlessly in our general direction. There was only a single hit, and the much lighter enemy crossbow bolt failed to penetrate the layers of hardened leather of Snatch's chest armor.
Of the thirty-five scouts, seventeen turned to flee in panic. It was then they found their horses standing still, ignoring all commands as if struck deaf and dumb - which, of course they were. A single powerful command from me had sufficed for most even after I'd left their minds and for those that proved stubborn, breaking their minds was as easy as stepping on eggshells. Crossbow bolts and arrows scythed through the darkness, reaping confused men that didn't understand why their trusty steeds would not respond, determined men that planned to lay low in a darkness that did not hide them, or those dropping their arms in terror. In a bit over two minutes they were all dead or crippled.
"Get ready for a march," I ordered as I set my bow aside, unstrung it, then picked up my spear. "The next scouting party is less than a league to the east."
Then I went out to finish the horses and the injured so none would slip back to Bloodbeard's camp and warn him of what was coming.