The Prince of Exiles (The Exile Series) (53 page)

And then he heard cheering, a deafening roar of it. He turned to look back at the camp and saw a crowd of Kindred there; it looked as if half the camp, some tens of thousands, had gotten a view of the battle, as it had taken place halfway up the mountain, clearly visible to anyone who’d been looking.

“Come on Tym,” the Prince said. “Time to go tell Henri bloody Perci the shadow-cursed light-blinded pass is clear.”

“Okay,” the boy said, hurrying along beside him.

When he reached the crowd below, they were still cheering for him, and he awkwardly bowed his head, at which they all cheered louder. Elder Keri looked like she was barely restraining herself from rushing in and examining him, only held back by the large number of Kindred separating him from her. Elder Spader was applauding with vigor, and Ishmael was grinning ear-to-ear.

And then the Prince saw Leah.

She was staring at him with a face white with fear. When his eyes landed on her, she broke her stillness and came straight for him, her face bearing the soft, congratulatory nature of a black thundercloud.

“Why did you risk yourself like that?” She asked, voice harsh and low. Her tone hit him just the wrong way; he was still breathing hard, his mind still racing from the memories of the dead Defenders, his heart beating so hard it felt ready to come out of his chest.

“So apparently,” he replied, “if I want you to talk to me, I need to almost get myself killed. That’s handy, I’ll remember that.”

“You’re an
idiot!
A sheep-brained, half-witted, wretched pile of –”

“I did it because
someone
had to!”

“Not you! You’re the
Prince of the Veil!
”

“OH, SHUT UP!”

She took a step back, shocked by his vehemence, and he strode forward, pressing his advantage, shrugging out of the wet blanket Tym had thrown on him, standing in just his smoking and singed armor.

“I save your thankless hide
literally
from the ruins of a burning city, get elected Prince of the bloody Veil to avenge
your
father, raise an army and invade the
Empire of Lucia
and you decide that
then
is a good time to stop talking to me? Well FINE! Blame me all you want, but guess what, I have an army to lead, because I took your advice, and I’m here trying to make things right. I’m trying to do the right thing, I’m trying to save you all from destruction and damnation at the hands of the Empress – Henri Perci won’t do it, because he’s determined to have you all go die in the
bloody desert! –
the Elders and the Generals just want to
talk
me to death, and
you
– just because you decided to throw a sullen
little girl tantrum
in the middle of a goddamn
war
, does not somehow make you the arbiter of what I can and cannot do!”

Her eyes had slowly widened more and more as he went on, and by the end of his tirade she’d taken several steps back. Most of the Kindred who had gathered to watch him were now staring at the two of them, looking utterly stupefied. The crowd began to disperse, some nodding at him in frank approval, including Davydd Goldwyn himself, which made the Prince’s cheeks burn with embarrassment.

“You finished?” She asked, looking wary.

“No,” he said, though quieter, “you’re also dumb, and you have stupid hair.”

“Stupid hair?”

“Yes! So shut up! ”

“Point well taken,” she said, smiling very slightly. It was this smile more than anything else that brought him down out of his anger. It didn’t quite say that things were the same between them – but it did seem to indicate that she was in a good mood and wasn’t planning to leave.

“We have to keep moving,” said the Prince randomly, feeling the need to speak, to say something to explain what he’d just done. He nodded to the Kindred who passed him, and saw Spader, who had recruited the help of little Tym, leading Keri away even though she looked intent on examining the Prince. Davydd and his group of Rangers had ridden forward to secure the hill. Maybe they would even be able to track down the messengers. Where were the generals and Henri Perci? Had they returned to Council already?

“Keep moving
where
?” Leah asked. “What strategy have you and the generals been hatching in that huge circus of a tent? And why did it involve you running at a Daemon on a suicide mission?”

“I’m not involved in much strategy,” the Prince said bitterly. “You know I’ve never been good at that … point me at a target, and I’ll tell you the best way to achieve it. But the order of a campaign,
those
kind of details … they’re beyond me.”

Leah just looked at him for a moment, and then slowly her face softened, just the barest fraction. He looked away, smiling and nodding to another group of Kindred who were passing him, looks of awe on their faces. Once they were gone, he turned back to her and spoke before he could stop himself.

“I need you,” he said honestly, with candid sincerity. “I need you and Tomaz both. You’re the brains, he’s the wisdom, I’m just the detail in between. I can’t do all three jobs … I can try, but I know this won’t go well. It’s always been this way, no matter how many lessons Rikard and Geofred tried to beat into my head … I do
tactics
, not
strategy.”

“What’s the difference?” She asked, looking confused.

“I can tell you, after reading the supply list over just the one time, how many sword, spears, arrows, and other weapons we have at out immediate disposal,” he said. “I know how long each of those quantities will last. I know how long we could put siege to a fortress. I know how long it would take for our army to cross given terrain, I know how the best place for us to face an Imperial army would be in wooded hills, and given a specific setting and terrain, I know how to completely crush an enemy force. I know how to both defend and attack a fixed position. I know how many troops we have in what capacity, and I know how long they can last before we’ll need to fall back in retreat.

“
That,”
he said, “is tactics. But I am terrible at choosing the field of battle. I don’t know which objective is the most important – do we secure our supply lines or do we devote troops to a heavy march hoping to shock the first army we come upon? Do we invade north, or do we divide our forces? Is the element of surprise worth giving up if we take the time to secure a fortified position? That’s strategy, and I’m no general, I never have been. I’m just a – a –”

“Battle Commander,” she said slowly.

He looked at her, and saw that she hadn’t said the title with any kind of heat to it – if anything, she had said it as if it were some kind of honor not usually bestowed.

“That might be more useful than a General, given the right circumstances,” she mused, eyes now far off in the distance, thinking. His heart lurched into a faster rhythm, beating quickly. He stayed silent, watching her, barely daring to hope that she might share a plan with him. But then her eyes focused on the present again, and she shook her head, dismissing whatever she’d just thought of as foolishness.

“Leah,” the Prince said quickly. “There’s an answer here that I’m not seeing. Perci wants to go to Tibour, and Oleander is supporting him. Ishmael says nothing, Spader just makes quips, and the other generals are next to useless, they’re scared to death of invading the Empire and can only think of safe ways to retreat.”

“Why don’t you want to go to Tibour?” Leah asked quietly, her eyes suddenly studying him very closely.

“None of the details work out!” He said, exasperated. They were still at the edge of camp, and though the crowd was gone, he worried suddenly that they would be overheard. He motioned with his head toward the camp, and Leah, taking the Prince’s lead, began to walk with him into the long rows of tents. She didn’t walk easily next to him, but instead seemed to withdraw, walking further away from him than she’d used to. Well, at least she was walking in the same direction.

“What details?” Leah asked, continuing the conversation.

“Tibour is a veritable desert,” the Prince said, rattling off facts, “it’s total area is
hundreds
of square miles, stretching nearly half the length of the Empire, and
none
of it is arable, meaning there are no crops, just weed-grass for miles and miles on end, which bleeds into desert. What food there is is grown in the city itself, and the population is carefully controlled by Dysuna so that there is just enough for all the Commons with no extra left over. The palace itself is near impregnable – we’ll lose at least three battalions worth of men sitting
outside
the damn thing waiting –”

“So it’s a colossal waste of our resources, and likely a death trap,” Leah summed up quickly.

The Prince felt a huge swell of relief and sudden vindication.

“
Exactly!
I just don’t know where else to
go!
North makes sense, but only because that’s the only other choice we have right now. I keep coming at this from every angle, and the only thing I’m sure of is that there is no possible way to make an invasion work if we strike Tibour first.”

“Then abandon it,” Leah said abruptly. “Go somewhere else.”

“
Where else would we go
?” The Prince asked, watching her closely. Her eyes were looking off into the distance again, and he held his breath. It looked as though she was examining the landscape, but he knew that she was somewhere else entirely, somewhere deep inside her mind, looking at maps, calculating, piecing things together.

“East is out, that’s just swamp and coastline until we get farther north … South is retreat, but the mountains are no use to us as ambush sights, they’re too spread out and the Empire can hold us there as they go through the pass … the north is hemmed in by Tyne on the east coast and Formaux on the west, though …”

She stopped speaking, and a look passed over her face that made the Prince’s mouth go strangely dry; he knew that look. It was the same look she’d had the first time he’d met her, when she’d launched the plan that had ended with him, her and Tomaz crossing the Empire in a successful two-month-long journey back to the lands of the Kindred.

“We go for Banelyn,” she said.

She looked at him and, for the first time in what felt like years, she smiled.

“Okay,” he said immediately.

A beat of time passed, and what she’d said sunk in.

“Wait … really?”

“Yes,” she said quickly. “Think about it – we pass Tibour, cut deep into the heart of the Empire, and upset the economic center of the nation. Spring has just arrived, crops are low from winter storage – we weaken the entire Empire by disrupting trade, we manage to gain a stronghold nestled in the Elmist mountain range that extends for miles both north and south and into which we can easily retreat for ambush if necessary, we –”

“What about Dysuna?” Asked the Prince.

“She’s waiting for us in Tibour, right?”

“It looks that way – we’re being led right toward her.”

“Then if we go
now
for Banelyn, there is nothing stopping us. You just cleared a Daemon out of the path that will take us to the Imperial Road – we can make it to Banelyn via that road in two weeks with a forced march.”

She fell silent and they stood looking at each other for a long moment, both breathing heavily. And then, as one, they took off running through the camp, heading for the War Council.

“Oy!” Roared the voice of Tomaz, his huge shape coming toward them. “What’s all this about you killing a Daemon without me?”

“Great story,” Leah said, “he’ll tell it later. Come with us.”

“Right,” Tomaz rumbled, not even the least perturbed by Leah’s abrupt words. “Where are we going?”