Beyond the Shadows - Brent Weeks [67]
No one else.
“So Paerik wasn’t a fool,” Jenine said, speaking for the first time since they’d entered the vast room. “With twenty thousand men, he was facing sixty thousand. Paerik didn’t come here for the throne—or at least not only for the throne—he came for the krul. What does it mean, my lord?”
Dorian felt sick. She seized on exactly the crux of it. “My father suffered a huge setback by being stalled in Cenaria. It was a distraction, a mistake. He thought he could grab it and send home riches and food, but the supplies he hoped to send home were put to the torch instead by the fleeing Cenarians.” Dorian rubbed his face. “So when the barbarians come down from the Freeze, Khaliras will be indefensible. Its citizens would want to cross Luxbridge and live here in the Citadel. As they wait out the siege, they’ll have to be fed—and we have no food. Our military’s good at following orders, but no good at taking initiative. If I throw them into a battle facing three-to-one odds, they’ll get massacred. There’s no way to win.”
Jenine said nothing for a moment, then glanced around at the stacks and stacks of bones. “You mean there’s no way to win except . . .”
He looked at the bones of men and thought of all the stories of krul he’d ever heard, and he thought of dipping so deeply into the vir, and he thought of men dying no matter what he did. “Yes,” he said. “There’s no way to win except to raise these monsters. It will be an orgy of death.”
“Whose deaths? The invaders’ or your innocent people’s?”
“The invaders’,” Dorian said. So long as he did everything right.
“Then let us raise monsters,” Jenine said.
28
After dressing appropriately, Kylar walked to Logan’s tent. Logan’s bodyguards nodded and pulled back the flap for him. The sun was poised on the horizon, but the tent was still dark enough that lanterns were needed to illuminate the maps that the officers, Agon, and Logan were studying.
Kylar joined the group silently. The maps were accurate, aside from missing the supply train.
“They outnumber us six to one,” Agon said, “but they don’t have any cavalry. So we ride out, the wytch hunters pick off a few officers and we melt back into the hills. We start gathering food so we can make it through the winter, and send out more scouts so we find any supply train they might have coming. It’s the only way. They didn’t expect walls. They’ll starve before we do.”
“The supply train is right here,” Kylar said, pointing on the map. “It’s accompanied by a thousand horse.”
There was silence at the table.
“We have lost a scout in that direction,” an officer said.
“Are you certain?” Agon asked. “How big is it?”
Kylar dropped a sheaf of notes on the table.
There was silence as the men picked up the rice paper sheets and read. Only Logan didn’t read as the officers shared the notes back and forth. He stared at Kylar quizzically, obviously wondering what he was trying to accomplish.
“How did you get these, Wolfhound?” an officer asked, using the nickname the soldiers had given Kylar.
“I fetched.” Kylar gave him a toothy smile.
“Enough,” Agon said, throwing his papers down on the table. “It’s worse than we feared.”
“Worse?” the officer said. “It’s a disaster.”
“General,” Kylar said to Logan, “can I have a word with you? Alone?”
Logan nodded and other men filed from the tent, carrying the notes for further study. “What are you playing at, Kylar?”
“Just making you look good.”
“An impending slaughter makes me look good?”
“A disaster diverted makes you look good.”
“And you have a plan.”
“Garuwashi wants food and a victory. I propose we give them to him.”
“Why hadn’t I thought of that?” Logan said, uncharacteristically sarcastic. He was really worried, then. Good.
“It doesn’t have to be a victory over us,” Kylar said. Then he explained.
When he finished, Logan didn’t look surprised. He looked profoundly sad. “That would make me look good, wouldn’t it?”
“And