Chapter 882: Battle for the sands(2)

A cool breeze crept over the room and ran a hand along Blake’s neck, lifting the thin sweep of hair at his nape. Below, the city he had taken lay in a ragged, smoking scrawl blackened roofs, torn banners that smelled faintly of ash and old blood even from here. The harbor glittered with captures: hulks of ships, fat barges packed with plunder, and a forest of masts that bobbed like teeth along the water.

It had been lucky that they had enough hands to burn as many corpses as they did. If the stench of the dead had settled for long, the whole enterprise would have become an epidemic more than a victory.

They had worked the slaves like a human tide, hauling bodies into pyres, feeding the flames until the night sky swallowed the smoke.

Men do not like to be in a city that smells like a graveyard, after all.

He now could see how childish he had been with his plan.

He would have gone there and declared himself king and asked them for their support. Had he done with the original plan, he would have been deserted at best , killed during the night at worst.

Cain’s plan was much better; he could not receive a crown by conquering his state, so he had to accept it after being the victim of it.

Who knew his brother could be so useful?

"Didn’t know you had that much stagecraft in you," Kroll said, catching Blake’s shoulder and giving it a friendly kick that forced him back from the ledge. The squat man’s grin was half mockery, half fondness; his boots left dark prints on the marble as he shifted to admire the same view.

"I cannot do it alone, my friend,"

he said, thumping his breast as Blake had done, mocking his theatrics. "I would have felt cheap if I were you....never took you for an actor"

Kroll squinted at him. "Should I read that as disapproval?"

"Nah." Blake shrugged, but the smile slid off his face. "Entertaining. Still a mistake, maybe."

They both let the silence sit, big men letting the wind carry their thoughts. Kroll’s voice lost its teasing edge and went harder. "We’re playing on a land that ain’t ours. How long has it been since the Free-Men tried to fight a real field battle?"

Blake of course knew the answer. He didn’t remind Kroll.

"Eighty-nine years," Kroll said, spitting the number out. "And it wasn’t even against Romelia. We got trounced by farmers with sharpened scythes. Don’t make that memory a second one."

"Habadia still breathes," he said. "We can take our due there later. If we must swing inland, Yarzat’s would be the best prize. Supplies, ports, and above all rich in coin.I have not forgotten who those were that supplied food to the Oil-fuckers when they sailed the sea at Harmway."

Kroll chewed a date and spit the stone. "Maybe. Maybe." He glanced out over the city again. "You did well today. No one can take that from you. But I’m telling you blunt: we are fat rats right now. We should sail, while the spoils fill our bellies. Let the noise of our taking be the last thing they remember of us. Don’t give the Azanians time to crown a new sultan who’ll come at us twice as hard."

Blake’s jaw hardened.

Retreat, consolidate, live to plunder another day, did they have no taste for more?

The perfect opportunity for an empire was there?Why was he the only one with a mind clear enough to see this?

He had countered that hesitation with swagger and oath, with two decades of proving men wrong. "How many cried the same when I pushed to retake Harmway? How many said we were fools for challenging an imperial fleet? I’ve heard it all. I proved them wrong again and again."

Kroll’s mouth tightened. "And who’s to say you’ll prove them wrong this time? Maybe you will. Maybe you won’t. Maybe this is the one time where the ocean makes us into fish out of water.

Discipline isn’t a thing you can raid for and hope to find in other’s cellars. They have drilled men for decades into formations that will swallow our skirmishers like tidewater swallows minnows."

His mind ticked through sights he had never seen, he had never been in a land battle, so really this was to be a novelty for all. "We are not the same men as the first time," he said finally. "We are more united than ever. We’ve got momentum on our side.’’

"But numbers?" Kroll pressed, voice like a rasped rope. "Discipline? We haven’t seen a proper column since the debacle at Red Grain, I had hoped that would be the last. We eat like wolves, but at war we’re sheep. The Sultanate fights like a machine drilled, fed, obedient. If they let those machines loose on open ground, they’ll carve us down and hang our heads from these walls as trophies. We don’t have the tactics, we don’t have the minds for it. By the abyss... we don’t even have the numbers to be a threat."

"The last one’s solvable," Blake said at last, as if numbers were an annoyance to be brushed aside. He looked past the rows of his guards wearing the fine armor of the men who made of the palace where they slept their last stand. "We’ve got a city full of weapons and armor." He nodded toward the newest kits on his guards "And more hands than you imagine."

Kroll barked a laugh that had no humor in it. "You cannot really think of it....You’re mad. We took their city; we raped their wives, made their children slaves and you’d give them swords? What, you expect a miracle? Will your witch bless them so they’ll fight for us?"

Blake’s jaw tightened at the mention of the hag. The woman’s visions had been thin these days; her machinations had its place, but not at the heart of his plan. He let the remark slide and let the plan stand on its own merits.

"They know who holds their children," he said quietly. "They’ll know the choice. We just need to tell them : fight and I’ll free your kin or flee and see them taken to the slave pens . I believe most wills have the first in their hearth." He let that sit, then chuckled low. "Who knows? Maybe they’ll fight harder for the taste of freedom now that they have tasted what’s on the other side."

"Cain’s?" Kroll asked, suspicion curdling into respect. He watched Blake for a beat, the question almost rhetorical.

"Cain’s," Blake replied with a nod. The name had the rough gleam of a blade. "He saw the play two moves ahead. I had thought him dead weight once; turns out the bastard’s mind is the map."

Kroll’s mouth tightened. "He has his usefulness." The words were hard-won.

"Still," he continued , rubbing at a bruise on his knuckle as if it could rub weariness from the world, "we’ll be fielding a good portion of our fighting force from foreigners , men whose city we just smashed. I don’t know how they’ll hold. I don’t know how the troops will take that. And even with them, I don’t think victory is certain."

A shadow crossed Blake’s face like a cloud. "Since when have you lost trust in me?" he asked, and for a heartbeat the bravado slipped, revealing the man who hated doubt more than death.

"I never did," Kroll answered, softer now. "I’m not blind to your daring. But I’m not so drunk on it that I can’t name a bad plan when I see one. You’ll lead us to our deaths if you misjudge this."

Blake’s expression flickered , concern, then the stubborn set of a man used to having his path questioned and answering anyway. "Does that mean you won’t stand with me?" he asked, because wherever he went, Kroll’s back had always been the rock behind him.

"Never said that." Kroll’s voice hardened with the old affection that had no time for flattery. "I promised to shove you to the bottom of the sea if you fucked up, but to stay with you all the same, and I still mean that. But I also won’t spare words to make you see where you’re going wrong. Friends do that."

A pause. The low thrum of the harbor filled it. Then Kroll’s tone shifted, grudgingly optimistic. "This isn’t as hopeless as you painted. Maybe you were right to bring my brother. I underestimated him. He’s no blade in the field, sure, but he’s got a mind for war.

He may very well be the key to our victory.’’ He tore his eyes away from his friend and toward the sea ’’What would you do if I were to tell you of a way to bring our way of doing warfare on land..."

’’I’d call you mad and dull’’ Kroll said without hesitation, though his black highbrow arched up, he was interested in hearing the answer.

"Well then, I’d suppose all the rumors were correct, and my brother truly earned that name."