Empire of Ashes

Chapter LXXII - A Little Birdie

You guys are like eight chapters behind what I'm writing but I am getting to ... the ... bit. So. nearly. done. Also this book is past 200k words so you've technically read the equivalent of 1x Goblet of Fire/2x Throne of Glass/3x Philosopher's Stone and it's taken you about 11 hours.

I was not allowed to retire after dinner. Instead, the king had me wait in that tiny, empty room while he heard Ark and Saqui's report. It took an hour and a half. Unsurprising — there was a lot to tell, after all. We had been busy since the Pass. I could only count the flagstones and stare out of the window.

By the time the side door opened, I was thoroughly fed up with the sight of those four walls. I stood up, stretching my aching legs and sore knees. The king beckoned me into the adjourning chamber, which looked like part of his private quarters, and he had me sit on a blue velvet sofa. There was a lingering smell of salt and spice which I had come to associate with Ark and Saqui, but they were nowhere to be seen.

"I am going to give you a history lesson, Lyra, and when it is done I have a question for you," Herox said. He unrolled another map and spread it on the table between us, using his wine goblet to pin the far corner. He did not wait for my assent. "When we invaded Cambria, we took a fleet of ships over Blood Bay. I wanted to take the northerners by surprise, because they were by all accounts the most formidable of Cambria's forces."

I nodded along. I couldn't tear my eyes away from the cross that marked Sierra, which I somehow considered my home. The king had a finger on it. I had never been there, and this was the first time I had even learned where it was. But there it was, a tiny x caught between the mountains and the coastline. The place this had all begun. The place I would go once it had ended.

The king had only paused for breath. "So I landed twenty thousand men in Sierra. And in the time it took to ferry them off the ships and get them into position, Temris had killed his father and two more warlords. He came to me and knelt, and that was, I admit, convenient. To control the north without losing a single man. I liked it, and I liked him for making my job easy."

Who wouldn't? There was nothing like turning an enemy into an ally.

"And I trusted him," he went on. "Perhaps too easily. I sent six thousand men to take Taiga and Saford. The rest came back to Anglia with me. I intended for the northerners to subdue the wetlands. That way I would have the whole country in just a few moons. So easy."

His finger slid downwards from Sierra, ending in the heartlands of the south, where most Cambrians lived. I was beginning to see how he saw my people and my country. Numbers to be overcome. Space on a map to be outlined in red. Sat in this little room, it was easy to forget that lives hung in the balance. It was easy to forget that it was not only soldiers who lost their lives in war. It was easy to forget that empire-building was more than a game.

Herox did not seem to notice my disgust. "The army suffered heavy losses at Taiga. They took the city, yes, but they lost two thousand men at the walls. Most to your damned Cambrian archers. Only three thousand marched to Saford, and they were harried along the way. At the time, we thought it was the rebels. I now suspect foul play. My three thousand men dwindled to fifteen hundred, and they had to turn back to Taiga."

I hadn't known about any of this. While armies had marched and cities had burned, I had been milking cows and cutting hay and kneading bread. My family and I had lived in a nice little bubble where the only enemies were birds and foxes and the only danger was harsh weather.

"So I sent another two thousand men through the Pass," Herox continued, anger in his voice now. "They were supposed to meet Temris at Saford and lay siege to the city together. But you know what happened to that army."