They rallied at the pile of moss-covered boulders Gregoric had picked for them during his reconnaissance. Rudolfo watched the small bird materialize seemingly out of air. It fluttered in invisible hands before Gregoric released it.

They’d captured one of Lysias’s small messengers earlier in the week, and Vlad Li Tam had helped forge the coded message. The urgency of the message, delivered in the midst of an attack on the Entrolusian front lines, should be enough to give them the opening they needed.

Unless, Rudolfo thought, Sethbert had so eroded Lysias’s loyalty that the general refused to intervene. But he counted on Lysias’s academy training for this. No general from that austere school needed loyalty to do his job, and Rudolfo’s strategy relied upon that.

They waited while the bird shot up, then found its mark. The camp was already in the third alarm, bustling with activity as fresh squads of magicked scouts raced north to the fighting and took up positions to reinforce the camp’s perimeter. But Rudolfo’s squad was already inside that perimeter, slipping in through the temporary hole Lord Tam’s man had arranged.

Huddled near the boulders, they waited.

Finally, Gregoric’s hand pressed the small of Rudolfo’s back. He’s taken the bait, his fingers tapped.

Rudolfo twisted and touched Gregoric’s shoulder. Excellent, he answered. Give the whistle when you will.

He could hear Lysias shouting now, and knew that the Overseer’s tent would now be their defensive center. More reinforcements rushed past them into the night, some plain and some with the acrid odor of fresh magicks upon them.

Rudolfo held his breath until they passed.

After they’d gone, Gregoric whistled the first three bars of the First Hymn of the Wandering Army. He whistled it at a pitch Rudolfo’s heightened senses could barely perceive. Then, they were off and running again for the center of camp. Spread out, they rushed in, dodging and weaving in and out of people.

“Scouts in the camp,” a voice cried out. Other voices joined in and Rudolfo heard the snicker of steel through cloth and skin, the rasp of metal on metal as blades slid past blades and into flesh.

They did not stop, they did not even slow. They pressed, and when an obstacle presented itself they cut through it or went over it. As they ran, Gregoric’s sappers spread out into the camp to light their fires.

Gregoric and Rudolfo cut through the back of the mechoservitor tent while the others moved around it and dispatched the distracted guards. Already the shouts spread, and it would only be moments before they realized that the threat against Sethbert had been a Gypsy ruse.

“Mechoservitors arise,” Rudolfo said in a low voice. Scattered throughout the tent, amber eyes fluttered open and gears purred as the room rustled.

“We are the property of the Androfrancine Order,” one of the mechoservitors said, steam hissing from its exhaust grate.

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“I am Lord Rudolfo of the Ninefold Forest Houses, General of the Wandering Army. I am the duly appointed guardian of Windwir, established in accordance with Article Fifteen of the Precepts of Order,” Rudolfo said slowly, reciting the words Petronus had given him. By all the Gods, he hoped they worked. “Section three, item six grants me the authority to redirect Androfrancine personnel and property as needed for the protection of the light.” Outside the tent, the sounds of fighting erupted. It lent urgency to his voice. “You are ordered to return to what remains of the Great Library at top running speed. You are not to stop. You are to disregard further orders until these orders are carried out completely. Do you understand?”

Thirteen voices echoed in the tent, thirteen forms clicked and clacked to life as they sped into that chaotic night.

In that moment, Rudolfo heard Gregoric cry out.

Vlad Li Tam did not sleep that night. He rarely did during key moments of strategy. He sat in his tent without the kallaberry pipe and huddled in his blanket, waiting for his aide to bring word.

He’d given his fiftieth son the work he’d trained him for. Of course, when he’d first adopted this particular strategy, his fiftieth son had not been born yet. He’d had no idea which arrow he would fire at this particular target. Ordinarily, a Tam would use others as his arrows, manipulating their environment until they became the right weapon at the right time. But in this regard, he could not afford to let an unknown quantity in the vicinity of Rudolfo after so much work over so many years. So it fell to the only resource a Tam could trust: Family.

He’d sent his son away to earn the knotted cord of a lieutenant in Sethbert’s army, setting him apart for the task. And in the fullness of time, Vlad Li Tam raised that hammer in his fist.

So it was that he drove one more nail into Rudolfo’s soul-the last one that he would drive, he thought. The rest of it would ripple out now as repercussions, and what he built into his forty-second daughter would be enough to carry things forward.

Their unborn child would inherit the center of the world, and would protect it better than the Androfrancines could.

The tent flap rustled and his aide spoke, thrusting his head into its warm confines. “Your fiftieth son’s last words have arrived, Lord Tam.”

Last words. Vlad Li Tam reached out and took the rolled parchment. He unrolled it, read it slowly, and then tucked it into his shirt, nestled against his hairless chest. “It is a poem,” he said, his voice heavy, “about a son’s great love for his father.”

aligis The aide bowed his head. “I am sorry for your loss, Lord Tam.”

Lord Tam nodded. “Thank you, Aetris.”

The tent flap rustled closed and he stretched himself out on his back, staring at the ceiling of his tent as it shifted beneath the snow. It would be at least another hour before he received any confirmation from another source. But his fiftieth son would not have released the bird bearing his last words unless he was certain of the implementation of his own strategy.

He reached up and pressed the note to his chest. His son was certainly dead by now, and he felt the grief licking at him. When others could see, Vlad Li Tam wore a face of stone, unreadable and unyielding. But here, alone in his tent and without the kallaberry smoke to cut the edge of his pain, Vlad Li Tam wept silently for the son he had killed.

He knew the outcome was worthy of the sacrifice, and he knew his son would have agreed as well, if he’d known what he died to save. But still, Vlad Li Tam felt the ache of that loss, and he hated the powerlessness it visited upon him. It reminded him of another loss that still lay ahead of him on this road.

When the next bird arrived, it bore the news that Vlad Li Tam had expected. He’d gone outside for that one, his breath steaming out into the cold night air as he stamped in the snow. He pressed that message into his aide’s hands. “Reply to Petronus with condolences for Rudolfo’s loss,” he said. “And send the bird to my forty-second daughter.”

His aide nodded. “Yes, Lord Tam.”

“And spread the word. We strike camp at first light and ride for home.”

Vlad Li Tam turned south and east, staring out in the night. The War Sermon had started up at long last, and far away he could see the fires in the Entrolusian camp.

“It is finished,” Vlad Li Tam said to the night.