Author’s Note: This one will require some context to understand.
I don’t think I ever published this one anywhere; I would call the draft I had of it unfinished. It’s sort of the start of the novel that would tell the story of how Keadar-Ainjir came to be in power - his coup, basically. That means it takes place well before the culture of Ainjir as represented in Kostas has come to be - you still have something of a triumvirate government of priestesses, nobility, and army, you still have widespread and actively practiced religious belief, you still have a very uncertain country somewhat defined by its uncertainty as much as anything else.
That’s why you’re going to see the word ‘Monday’ - believe me I took it out, put it in, took it out, came up with new word, put that in, took it out, wrote Monday again, etc - because we’re going full Tolkien-esque ‘this is translated’ and frankly it didn’t make any fucking sense if I put in too much of a different word, and anyway, it’s moon-day of whatever so it’s not really religious BUT that’s not what the process of secularization did in Ainjir which is all fuckin’ way too much to get into, so it’s Monday.
I know why I left this unfinished and haven’t returned to it, and it’s because I just don’t have the energy at the moment to tackle this novel. IF I were to write it, it would be a full-on, old-school court drama style sprawling tale of intrigue and war and philosophy and loyalty and betrayal and all of that. It would be a lot. I might do the post-Kostas novel first, but even that’s got to wait for the end of Academy Days. And I like these guys, and I hate to spoil it but they are super gonna die. I mean, Madadh is Keadar-Ainjir, so we know he’s going to succeed, right? That’s not really a spoiler. More a bone of the whole tragedy skeleton. And it is really a tragedy.
you know, Cole and Nika lost their war, too. why am I always writing about dudes losing wars?
Anywho, hopefully that’s enough context that the story is enjoyable
-end-
Faolan stepped through the canvas, stepped back, twitched it aside to look out again – a precaution since last Monday – strode to the chair and sat. It wobbled precariously, but held, as did his hands on the table edge, in case the chair didn't hold for long.
“What are you going to do?”
“I don't know what I'm going to do,” Osgar said.
“I hate when you say that.
Osgar unfolded his hands to shrug.
“You always say that.”
Osgar leaned back in his chair, which was perfectly stable, because it was a bale of hay. And 'perfectly stable' in this case meant it stank, shed, and shifted in unsettling ways either having to do with vermin or progressive rot, only one of which could potentially benefit them, depending on hows supplies held out.
“Say something else,” Faolan demanded.
“You're a lieutenant,” Osgar replied with weary affront.
“Want me to ask your previous advisors? Hm?” Faolan weathered a reproachful glare. “I could chuck a rock with little note tied to it over the river, had we, say, a catapult, and had they, for example, not a shit-ton of longbows.”
“No,” Osgar said. “They wouldn't know either.”
“Or have any good advice, I reckon.”
“Beyond, you know, betrayal. I suppose that looks rather good at this moment.”
“Not really,” Foalan said, sniffing and adjusting the wobble of his seat. “I never liked them. Shit company.”
“I did.”
“You've bad taste.”
“Obviously.”
“But any ideas?”
“None,” Osgar replied
“Why do they promote you?” Faolan threw himself back in his chair, unwisely releasing the table, and met his just reward by being dumped on his ass. While he cursed softly and reassembled his chair, Osgar thought.
“I suspect they won't, anymore,” he said.
Faolan was going to ignore him until he had equal footing – or seating, in this case – so he entertained himself.
“This can't have been a plan as of last Monday. This can't just be us.” He let go a heavy sigh and rocked back on his hay bale, unfolding and refolding his arms. “But if so, I do wonder why they didn't tell us.”
“Major Osgar,” Faolan said, primly reseated, “you are perhaps the most trusting and least capable holder of secrets in the entirety of the army. Everyone likes you and you have the indelicacy to like them in return. You could no more be told of a plan to betray your fellow officers than you could be expected to... I don't know, strike a man without a thorough explanation of why you should.”
“Well, if the King told me to. Or the Queen. Might do it for a general I liked. Otherwise, I ask in good faith. I don't see the point of needless violence,” Osgar replied. “'What is honor that it need be fed with blood? What creature? Wherefore its kin?'” he misquoted.
“Seems silly,” he did not quote.
“You're a terrible soldier.” Faolan said, then, forestalling interruption, “But not as terrible a soldier as I. At least you don't vomit at the sight of blood. At least camp food doesn't give you cramps. At least you walk with straight feet, and have a father you can name, and–”
Osgar had held up his hand. Now he put it down.
“You destroyed the bridge.”
Faolan, red faced, said nothing a long while. Then, “Well, I had all that pitch.”
“Natural reaction.”
“To bridges?”
“To being chased by traitors.”
“Well.”
“Naturally.”
They sat silently. Both resisted the urge to check outside the flap.
“We'll have to do something, Osgar,” Faolan said. “We've three hundred and fifty soldiers here who won't hold out long without supplies. If Madadh makes it across the river, we've no hope of beating them in a fight – if the soldiers will even fight their former messmates. If we go south we run the risk of being caught by Surrag-folk and Badb only knows what will happen to us then.”
“Don't ask her, then,” Osgar replied.
Faolan, in a deference only paid to Osgar and with utmost irony, made the warding sign with his hand.
Silence fell again. Faolan got up, twitched the canvas, saw the dispirited camp and not a crossbow aimed at his forehead, and sat back down.
Osgar sighed. “I don't know what to do, Lieutenant.”
Faolan sat forward, elbows-on-knees, hands clasped.
“...but I have an idea.”
Faolan gave one quick nod.
But Osgar didn't go on. Osgar glanced at him. Osgar pulled his hands down from where he had subconsciously stretched them, over his head, as if releasing his thoughts were a tandem gesture to releasing the tension in his body.
“This isn't like my usual ideas, Faolan.”
Unperturbed, Faolan twitched his nose. Then he scratched his nose. Then it sank in that he should be perturbed.
“Why?”
“I am afraid this must be bigger than us. I am afraid it might be very big.”
“Yes.” Faolan paused. “Yes.”
“Why betray us, Faolan?”
“Why not?” Faolan sniffed again – perhaps the hay rot. “We are expendable. Guiare did it last month because the King diverted his Brigade's supplies to his own hunting camp and told him to forage. Fionn did it because she'd been told to put her own hometown to the torch last year. One more uprising in the coal districts and the Adineh are going march down from the mountain to just seize the plains before Geron’s woolly hordes can dam the rivers and force us to be their vassals again – that is, if the Wulsh don't send a few hired blades to beat at least the interest on our loans out of us, and the Western savages have something to do other than raid the border this year. Amuigh has probably already fucked off. The only thing remotely holding everything together right now is habitual deference to the King and pretty much everyone, at this point, realizes that they don't even like him that much – and you can take as evidence the seven hundred or so soldiers that just threw in their lot with a man named 'Dog.' But what's the alternative? Be Wulsh?”
Faolan snorted, throwing himself back in his chair again. It broke again. He cursed again. Osgar waited again.
“Why betray us, Faolan,” Osgar said, when Faolan was composed again, “and stay on the other side of the river?”
Faolan blinked. “Ràth bho Tuath is too far.”
“But the King is hunting.”
Faolan's grip tightened on the table.
Osgar elaborated. “It's not a long trip up the Ards to Bein-Sheilg, and while the palace there is fine, it is no castle – it would require no siege, provided one could get into the town, which one can, because the town guard is little more than the King's hunting buddies who were too hungover to ride.”
“I forget you're of the town,” Faolan said, though with less apology than curiosity.
“They stay because they intend to not let us cross again. I do believe that Madadh intends to address his complaints to the King directly, and would prefer to do so without the King being overly prepared for such an address.”
Faolan was silent a moment. “Well, if they'd only asked–”
“You already know why they didn't tell us.”
Faolan sniffed. “I never liked them.”
Osgar smiled at him. “I have an idea to get us across the river.”
Faolan smiled back, then thought a moment. “Across the river to do what?”
Osgar's smile changed the way too many smiles had changed in Faolan's life – to be a little sad. “Somebody will need to tell the King.”
“Fuck the King.”
Osgar shook his head, and Faolan sputtered at him. “But why? Why not? We follow the bastard but it's not like he's particularly qualified – or loved, or capable, or anything, never you mind what the priestesses say that the Gods say about him, or at least the spunk that grew him. That's all we're going on, anyway, is overly-qualified spunk! He's not exactly answered questions three to earn his seat.”
“But he has his seat,” Osgar said, “and as you've said, as long as he has his seat, we're not Wulsh.”
“That doesn't make any particular sense, out of context.”
“But it does, Faolan.”
“It really doesn't.”
“You're qualifying spunk,” Osgar said, then blushed.
Faolan blushed too, which he hated. “But what if Madadh succeeds? Who cares? Who's to say the King's... nephew or whoever is next in line isn't better? Or at least, won't be if he's got the army breathing down his neck?”
“I don't think that is his goal.” To Faolan's raised brows, Osgar said, “I don't think he can afford for that to be his goal. That would be a simple thing – that wouldn't require our three hundred, never mind his seven. All that requires is a little truckling and an accident. But even that would call down the Wulsh–”
“The Wulsh are not really of that much concern, Major.”
“–or whoever, because every time the crown changes hands, someone makes a bid for it. Or why else would we have had careers for the past thirty years?”
“I'm twenty four.”
“No, Madadh is too smart for that. Madadh was too smart to be a brigadier. He must be aiming for a greater goal.”
“But what?”
“I don't know. But you don't take an army to kill a king.” Osgar shrugged again. “At least, our kings.”
“I heard somebody did in the King's uncle with an oyster.”
“I think he did that to himself, but regardless, Madadh is taking seven hundred soldiers and not an oyster.”
“But really – what do you think he's going for?” Faolan’s eyebrows raised. “What if he succeeds?”
“You know, normally I might praise you for a clever dive for the heart of the matter–”
“Well, at least consider it.”
“—but I’m afraid that this time the question is ‘can we risk him failing?’”
“Nonsense,” said Faolan, fingers bent like duck bills as he gripped the stupid table from his stupid wobbly, broken chair.
“Well, we must decide which side of this nonsense we’re on, and we must do it quickly.”
“Obviously we’re not on the side of the bloody rapscallions who were pointing arrows ‘tween our beautiful eyes less than a week ago.” Faolan growled and released the table, gingerly though furiously sitting back in his chair. “We can’t even decide which side of the river we’re going to be on, how does it matter which side of war we’re going to be on?”
“At least you see the war.”
The chair did fall apart. They chose to ignore it.
“They’ve picked for us, haven’t they,” Faolan said from his lofty seat: the ground.
“Well, they did pick the side we would’ve picked anyway.”
“Fuck them,” he said, embarrassing them both but with full honesty, which is never quite all-the-way embarrassing.
“I don’t want to die for that royal fuck,” Faolan said.
“You shouldn’t have signed up for his army, then.”
“As if there was much choice.”
“I do believe you’re being offered a choice.”
“Don’t be silly,” Faolan scoffed, so dismissive of the thought he did not see Osgar’s shoulders lower and the great breath that left his lungs. “The man’s named ‘Dog’, and I never liked him.”
“He had his points–” Osgar said.
“Obviously ‘loyalty’ not among them.”
“–but I suppose that’s moot, now. We must get across the river and if we take the three hundred who have stayed with us, we’ll all die. And if we leave them, they might die anyway–”
“They haven’t had the sense to desert yet.”
“–but it will surely break their hearts. I am afraid, my lieutenant, we must do the worst.”
Osgar was smiling at him in that way again, and he hated that smile. He hated the smile almost as much as he was sure he was going to hate this plan and was equally sure they were going to do it. In fact, he was already lining up supplies in his mind, with no concept of what they would be used for.
“We’ll have to betray them.” Osgar said, moving items across the table as if it had any effect on anything instead of being a sort of poor stand-in for a real planning table, with figurines and that long stick for pushing them about and everything. “Madadh mostly doesn’t want us crossing the river, but he’ll have to decide soon whether to kill us all before moving forward or not. I’m sure he’s been consolidating his plan and his power with his fellow traitors – that’s the only thing worth risking moving too slowly. We cannot defeat his seven hundred; our three are too dispirited even had we any advantage to exploit. And if any of them know of our plan to warn the King, then they can tell Madadh, and he can send someone after us. We must leave in the night. We must move secretly, and we must move faster than anyone lacking Carolan’s boots ever has.”
“Madadh will know anyway,” Faolan said. “Even I must say he’s clever.”
“But we will at least have the night’s advantage – hours of a lead,” said Osgar.
Faolan grunted in disgust. “There is no gratitude among Lords. That ingrate, runt, poorly-spunked bastard of king will kill us for abandoning our commission. Weakening his forces.”
“But he might still be king to do it, which I suppose has to be something.”
He grunted again, disgust and anger, repeating, “There is no gratitude among Lords.”
Osgar moved an ink cake, then moved it back. He looked up, or rather down, at his lieutenant.
“I am glad you didn’t aim a crossbow at me, Lieutenant.”
“Ha!” Faolan said. “The man’s name is ‘Dog’! It brings down the reputation of the animal.”
He stood, brushing dirt and rotting hay from his clothes.
“I suppose it’s worth dying to thwart him, if we must.”