Chương 398: 11.7

Resistance from Magarska had been all but non-existent so far, Jewel's arrival at the gates of Bledaten were preceded by immediate capitulation, as it had been from each of the fortress towers along the army's route south. The pace of the march had been rapid. The speed of the soldiers and beasts, fueled by no need to scout or forage, the only cost being the grey and brittle waste left where forests and fallow fields once embanked the road.

The Hewer's sorcery continuing to sap the wilderness dead in Jewel's wake to supply them with ever harvested grain and fodder for the animals. But when they finally reached the walls of the first proper siege of Magarska since the war began Jewel had not even needed to ask him to begin that service for the army. Because the siege did not even get a chance to begin. All told the war was going very well in its first season. There was, to date, no real resistance against her from Magarska. But Jewel's own forces?

The Weird of Farms needed to be restrained from the fervor he took in stripping the fields around Bledaten into dead wastes, beyond that he'd in fact complained loudly when there had been no call to 'till over' the walls, buildings and streets of the city." The thieves deserve to feel the hunger in their bellies, the sting of what they take and take and take every tithe on the workers of the land."

Jewel was thankful she had been able to convince the Hewer to not 'till and burn' the entire city as he very openly stated he wanted to do, a horrifying proposition given his abilities, but at least he bowed to her commands readily on this. If it was only the Farm Weird that Jewel had to struggle with regarding his overeager hunger for retribution on Magarska, she'd have thanked the stars no matter how deaf they were to her words. But it was not. Far from it.

"My Countess" Jewel had come to hate that one from her father, it would always feel wrong to hear that tone in his voice, that difference directed at her. It was supposed to be proper. but she had strived to never hear it unless absolutely necessary for years, yet the army demanded order, propriety and structure above all else. It demanded that she no longer avoid him speaking like that to her, at least not to her oldest and largest self.

Jewel was the Countess, her father's liege, general on the battlefield in the air, and appointed Lady Reigning in this war on the side of the Realm, and there was terribly little in all the army's sprawling city of an encampment each night that could be considered private, especially anywhere that Jewel was also present in. No matter how much she tried. Even now with her war council occupying the only suitable room in Bledetan's keep that could fit the Wyrm he spoke to her like that.

She'd not heard his voice with her own wyrmish ears in any tone but that of a vassal to their lady since that first day marching into Magarska! Even now when he was trying to berate her on her treatment of the army he was bending his voice to differ to her judgement!

"It is impossible to prevent these things with an army even a quarter this size. Anymore then you can prevent the forming of the follower camps. Generals who press too hard to do either always lose half their army at best, neither fear nor loyalty can stand totally against the hunger of soldiers." Jewel wished she could hear even a hint of the courage she knew her father had in his voice now. That it wasn't the near total stranger of Mathias' appointed general that had any heat or dissent against her.

Even if what they were demanding she accept was monstrous. Gem and the twin's tails thrashed in the hallway, fingers clenched, jaws flexed, necks tensed and relaxed, chests heaved air. All the things she could not afford to do even in the supposed privacy of her war council.

"This is so Lady General, It's part of the dues that every soldier expects Countess. Levy, footman and knight alike, they all march for glory, spoils and the other advantages of victory in war. Perhaps in your own land's men and martial women your word might be enough to hold them back, but your allies will not stay with the army if you try to forbid all the benefits of war! We are already short on officers as it is to maintain the discipline we have!"

That it was a stranger to tell her these things, some foreign general appointed by Mathias?! She wanted to snarl, but her words, her every expression, would carry, even here in the keep of Bledaten her ever mounting irritation of an army would gossip like every weaving circle she had ever attended. So her spawn silently cursed and stomped and thrashed back and forth in the hallway. This was absurd!

"They have no reason to hunger at all! We have been fully supplied this entire march! We've had no need for forage so far and the lords of Bledetan and Pyrenean surrendered immediately to me! On the promise that I would not ravage their cities!" She spoke with as much control as her temper could allow but still the stones rattled with her anger.

Outside the room she paced with three sets of feet, she scowled with three sets of lips, she tried to silently vent what felt like more emotion than four hearts could contain. Mathias's general continued to show the spine Jewel wanted to see in her own Father. But he continued to defer to her, as would help support her position, as was his role as her direct vassal. Even as he metaphorically stabbed her.

"And all the lords have been left untouched! This army has been as well behaved and disciplined under your command as I could possibly expect them to be with only five trained footmen or knights and one captain to every hundred levy! It is only by the grace of the Hewer that Bledetan and Pyrenean still have granaries not stripped bare! I could hardly call a few misadventures among the enemy's commoner populace ravaging the city!"

Jewel focused on her flame, on holding back the sorcery, the invoking of her will upon the world. She cycled the current of it in Gem and each twin's bodies, spending it spuriously just for the attention needed to make it move through her scales, muscles and bones."

A hundred households so far burgled and stripped of every scrap of silver or metal possession, at least three merchant caravans and their goods taken in banditry, A dozen of the more prominent families in both cities with daughters going missing for two nights before half of them turn up in an unacceptable state and even more unknown but whispered incidents that are not even being reported to me! Are these your few misadventures!?"

Mathias' General and her father shared a glance before once more the man she was certain should have been the braver of them differed to the foreigner to speak what he could not.

"The city still stands, Its lords and highest nobles unmolested, there have been no fires, no buildings, statues or temples torn down, hardly any murders or permanent disappearances. So, yes, these are minor misadventures in war." You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story. He walked around the room, all of the men in the room were standing, chairs had been foregone to allow enough space for Jewel's coils, the war council members and the one table.

She could no longer simply express herself with her spawn's thrashing, in a trembling need to smother the scream and whatever horrors of magic it might entail she grabbed Gem around the chest with the Twin's arms and lifted her up so that she could press her face into the tunics between them and hiss a rattling, phlegmic wail in frustration. Jewel kept her outward composure, although even she suspected it was stony."

Countess, do not call it burglary, this is war and those are spoils of the campaign, earned by the soldiers of Cantor Reborn for their service. It is not banditry against traders but confiscating the goods and resources of the Magarskan war machine that could have fed their own armies. Those rich daughters have all been returned in good health and I have heard that not even all of them were taken unwillingly!" He smiled up at her, but there was no humor or joy to his eyes.

In the outburst she could feel tears burning in Gem's eyes and her oldest spawn's body was shaking uncontrollably in the grip of the twins.

"If this city had forced a siege for even four days? With the strained discipline we are already seeing?" He waved out the narrow window of the Bledaten keep they had claimed for their time in the city.

"Your soldiers would have torn both cities to the ground, emptied the granaries and ravaged, murdered or sold its populace, the lucky among the women would maybe live to raise their warbegotten in bondage to the officers and not a treasure would still be left in its temples or noble households. A ransom might have been possible for the lords and ladies, but it would by no means be a sure thing. There would be costly noble blood on some of your soldier's hands."

He turned back to her, the smile gone, only a grim line to his lips and a coldness to his eyes.

"And if you had tried to stop it? we would then lose a third of the army to desertion and banditry fleeing into the countryside. This is the reality of war and the nature of the specific army you have mustered. We cannot strain discipline any further by wholesale denying any more of them their just rewards than we already have." Jewel did not look at her father, but she could feel his own gaze on her, she could smell his agreement. And as if to leave no doubt he offered words that sounded empty and obedient.

"We've limited the numbers allowed into the cities to strictly those of rank and the levy that have proven the greatest prominence during the march. Normally we would be rewarding merit in battle but without forage, engagement or siege to test their mettle we've had to favor the most obedient candidates and those showing promise for acting captains." Jewel felt her flame burning in her chest, in her lungs and stabbing her heart. The people of Bledaten had cheered for her arrival just last year!

The twins slipped as far from the room as they could without losing their bond with her. Gem's teeth clenched as hard as she could on an offered forearm. She had agreed to their surrender on the grounds her occupation of the city would leave them unharmed! And yet no one on her war council seemed to care that her unruly beast of an army was making her a liar to its people! The urge to speak to the world itched in her throat. But what would that cost?

What would it do if she unleashed her sorcery on over forty thousand men? Would that even be enough? What about the camp followers and the complaints she had heard whispered about them along the streets of Pyrenean and Bledaten. What about the people that cowered and submitted themselves, their belongings or their own children at just the sound of a Viznove voice who whispered her name in threat?! What could it do for the sullying her good name had already been dragged through.

She had walked these streets welcomed as a guest just last year, she might very well have sheltered and protected the very same merchant caravans her army had descended on like ravenous wolves. This was not right, a city that honorably surrendered on grounds it would be safe should not be suffering as this. She tasted her own blood seeping around the comparatively weak jaw of her smallest self. She felt the sting of the bite in her forearm, where a few of the sharp teeth found purchase between the broader scales.

If it was the only matter concerning her Jewel would have sent them home, disbanded the army here and now, but there was more that was needed of her and this rabble of unrestrained brigands that Mathias had handed to her in place of a proper army! The greed and laziness of the foreign levy that they would dishonor her like this?!

"What of the Magarskan forces, have the scouts confirmed the sign of their march north?" Her father finally spoke with something like authority, she might be the general in the Air but he was first among the gryphon riders of The Ridgetail Vault.

"The sign of their warbeasts in the air darken the horizon as only Magarska's war flocks can, and in numbers and at sizes that it could only be a major offensive. I personally sighted the passing of two different Rocs landing and departing. They will be within reach of harassing flights in two days' time at the latest." Jewel mulled, she had studied war as was her role, she had seen the standing armies of footmen in every city.

The sheer numbers of armored men far exceeded anything in Viznove, but she was still a youth to generalship and her talks with Paul had long established her perspective from the air made for an ill sort of understanding the nature of war on the ground. Slowly with her focus shifting she found the will to part Gem's jaws, to gently pull herself free and lick the blood from her lips and swallow. The uninjured twin left the bounds of their bond, seeking proper bandages and poultice for the injury.

Jewel briefly yearned that she would be the one to escape this matter, but she was left behind.

"What numbers do we expect to march given the count in the skies and two of their greatest gryphons at the encampment?" Mathias' general made a noise of consideration, he was a veteran, to be an advisor as well as the figure to which the foreign levy would be loyal he had to be. March Lord Sergej commanded the Viznove armies and those native to the Ridgetails as general on land, as she had agreed, but he managed the bulk of the rest of the Realm.

Her northern neighbors and ostensible allies in the vault had not come themselves. Thurzó was apparently ill and his son too young to risk war, but Arva's armies had come in full force, far in excess of the muster Mathias had promised to command from her fellow vassals. The ruler of Zekhedge was also absent, although he had sent his younger brother as a gryphon lord that rank had not superseded Jewel's own father as first among them.

Alexander was also among the flights, joining their father as a chance to be bloodied in war. But again, despite being father's heir, his rank did not admit him to this council. Here in the cramped chamber that only just had room for Jewel and the highest ranking of her army was a single exception in the young lord Kliatbatrn, officially the leader of her cavalry and war horses.

Attending only as a chance to grow into the eventual position as General on land of Viznove, as befit his family's role and alliance with Rochford. The pregnant silence finally broke like a cracked egg as Mathias' man spoke.

"By these reports I estimate no less than sixty thousand fighting men under magarska, By recognition of direct sight on distribution the flocks might number that and half again." He gestured to the maps they had been able to draw up from scout flights, which by Jewels own flights seemed mostly proper.

"Magarska in the past has been loath to field the Rocs in actual battle unless their dominance in the air is secured, the beasts are vast and their wakes can flatten unbraced levies in prelude of cavalry charges or warbeast assault. But with you in the field I doubt they would risk such targets, Magarska keeps at least three of those great beasts by last report. No more than five if the word of our informants can be trusted."

Jewel considered, then gestured to the wooden marker carved into a Magarskan gryphon to mark Murad's presumed army.

"That still leaves more than twice our number. Most of their Gryphons are not suited to riders but the kinds I saw used for fighting in war further south are each nearly the size of a man. How many can we expect of their men as levies?" The General on Land scowled at the map where she pointed.

"Far fewer of their number than us, and even those they raise as levy will be armored better then ours. Magarska pours riches into its arms, armour and gryphons, there will also be beast men and ogres who are easily worth more than levy even untrained." The Shining Wyrm of Viznove looked at the map, at the vague place where they marked seeing the Magarskan war flocks in the air, great black clouds in the distance milling and sweeping around a slowly moving point, shrouding the march of the army beneath it.

"What of their wizards or sorcerous support?" The general hummed then shook his head with a sigh.

"That is the one grace we have, Magarska's sorcerous contingent are still all foreign mercenaries by last word. Bought and paid for by ruinous contracts. Even if they are present they will not engage until we raise up our own sorcerous forces, and if pressed they will retreat. If we can afford to hold on calling upon the Hewer we can delay their own direct action in any engagement."

Jewel shook her head at that, it sounded foolish, to not even have the fealty of a single wizard to any of the vast lands of Magarska or its principalities? Or was that proof of how rotten Murad's rule truly was? That no sorcerer would bind themselves to him in any but the most transactional way? Perhaps she could reach out to them after the coming battle and make an offering of truce in what was obviously a just war against an evil man's rule. Still, the realities of the engagement before her were stark.

"I will not risk Bledaten nor Pyrenean to a siege from Magarska's armies. We will engage them in open battle well beyond the cities." She did not see dissent among any of her war council, however, despite her declaration, there were still a great many details to work out to make sure it actually happened. The departed twin returned and together Jewel's spawn began to tend to her self-inflicted injury.