Chương 400: 11.9

Jewel won the day. But her body felt beaten and bruised, and the victory felt hollow. The Magarskans had fled after only two passes of her wyrmdoom, their casualties were ultimately minor against their numbers, hundreds died to her fire but thousands upon thousands more escaped without seeing combat. Her army had barely been bloodied in the engagement, mostly on the fronts most distant from her own action.

And those flanks had been the ones secured with the most experienced and well armored warriors available to her! Nearly the entire enemy army had slipped away, not in a broken route that might promise victory, but in orderly retreat! Neat lines of men falling into rank and jogging away despite their fellows just feet beside them vanishing into ash under her flame! Worse—she had been denied harassing and claiming any extra losses on the battlefield for their cowardice!

While on the ground, her forces had barely even been tested, it was another matter entirely in the air! The Magarskan warflocks had descended on her like a pestilence of flies upon a beast! Their beaks and talons scraping, clawing, biting and stabbing in great screeching waves. Sheer weight of numbers would have forced her towards the ground unless she broke away and back to clearer skies! Feathered bodies and blood raining down around her like a macabre hail!

She had needed to swim in the nearest river before she felt clean, it felt like a frustrating defeat to Jewel, but at least for the people of Viznove it was a victory. The encampment was alight with festivities, the finest food possible provided by the Hewer of Wheat and Dariusz' hundreds of staff and aids working the cooking fires. Music was being played, the sound of instruments among her closest retinue captivating the army with elvish flutes and strings. Jewel wondered of the providence of the meals tonight.

The gryphons had scavenged what they could from the dead, mostly the corpses of their lesser kin. But the mounds of feathered bodies were far in excess of what any rider could allow their steed to gorge on in a single day. Not with only a single battle won in what was shaping up to be a much longer war. The rest of the bodies had been 'tilled over' and 'made food for the worms', the Hewer of wheat had been especially pleased by the 'quality of soil' in the places burned into grey ash by Jewel's doom.

The masses of powdery grey had been kneaded and rolled like flour into dough over the battle field as the Weird worked his sorcery. Turning a mostly waste plain of scrub grass into black earth that smelled thickly of storm rain and growing things. That same soil was now a barren chalky dust marking the site of their battle after the Hewer of Wheat had called on it to fill their stores with grain, vegetables and fodder to fatten and finish the herd of animals for slaughter.

Jewel looked out over the star lit desolation the weird's sorcery had wrought. It had been a short battle, barely a skirmish, yet she had not scattered her enemies as she had hoped! Magarska's army retreated but it was not broken, and she had been driven off from her pursuit by sheer numbers! And the act of sorcery upon the battlefield was so much worse from the act of a single weird then when three had rallied to her side.

The Hewer of Wheat had turned what was once a small valley of grass fit for sparse grazing into an expanse of dry baked ground. Nothing grew in the land, what's more the world itself seemed quieted in that earth. All the growing things she was accustomed to hearing beneath her feet? The soundless presence that was supposed to be nestled into the dirt? The only voice of the world there now was the dead stones and grains of sand, left perplexed by their sudden isolation.

It had been there before, sparsely quieted but always the work of the Farming Weird had been tempered, shallow, still surrounded on all sides by the teeming hum of living, growing, sleeping things. Here and now though? So wide and deeply had all those unheard voices been silenced that there was no denying it.

The Weird had said " this earth will be unable to bear any life for four generations of men" She'd thought she understood that, after all Rochford and Valasect both depending on the fertility that the earth could provide. But to witness it, to see it sunk so deeply and spread so wide? The sound of celebration and men playing a pale imitation of elvish song and music were a poor fit for her. Not against this desolation.

Footsteps carried to her ears, and then the memory of her smaller selves washed over her, all three of them and Smithson moving with them. The music and dance of three sets of limbs trying to find relief where their largest self was consumed with the magnitude of the affairs of state. And ah, of course held between all four of them a pot of Dariusz' stew. If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

"My Lady Jewel. It's not becoming for the lady of war to be absent so long from the festival of her first victorious battle in war." Smithson was slow in bending his legs to set the pot down in the crackling crust of the desolation. Gem and her younger (but no longer smaller) selves simply lowering their hands down from over their heads.

Then she began to portion out great scoops of the favorite dish to a bowl for each of her selves and Smithson, Gem's hands wordlessly handing off to him which he welcomed with a nod of thanks before turning to look at the silvery lit expanse where things once grew.

"Quite an auspicious start to the war, Lady Jewel, driving off the largest of Magarska's armies in the first bout." She could only shake her head while each of her pairs of hands began scooping tender meat and deeply stewed roots into their snouts alongside the bready thickness of its broth. She paused for a time before finally taking up the serving spoon Gem had used to partake in a portion with her largest self.

"It was not a victory, at most Magarska met us in a stalemate, Smithson. I could not pursue them for the fierceness of their warflocks, despite my efforts to unmake them, their armies were unbroken, they retreated in good order." Her first among her Knights hummed at her words, then looked up at the sky.

"You still sent them running, you still made Magarska bleed hundreds of men and thousands of gryphons. You still made them march to meet us in open battle, and tonight it's us that are celebrating, and they who have to try and rally against desertions." Jewel looked out over the desolation of the battlefield while chewing and swallowing with four sets of mouths. Tasting the same favorite stew with four slightly different tongues. The flavors mingled in a unique way for each of her selves.

Even the twins were not the same in how they tasted Dariusz' pottage. One felt the hint of salt and bone far sharper in the broth than the other. She thought of the way that despite so many of what seemed like levies in the Magarskan ranks how they did not break and run. Even when she made sure to clip the banner festooned dragon spear wielders of their captains. Magarska's armies were stalwart in the face of her wyrmdoom that simply did not match her experience at ten years old.

Was Murad's forces simply that much braver than her own people? Was a Magarskan Levy not only better armored and armed then the Realm's but stronger in courage as well!? Or was it as some of the Princes had been? Heavenly bondage forcing men to stand when they wished to flee? As a child she'd broken Arva's knights and fully trained footmen with her Wyrmdoom. Having commanded them in her march south and seen their discipline those were some of the best troops she had!

But now despite driving the Army from the field Jewel was starting to suspect that not only did Magarska outnumber her forces, but they solidly outclassed them as well! Still, it was a victory. This battle was over, and her army would be buoyed by this momentum. Jewel would be a fool to waste it.

"They've taken our measure and so have I of them, the next battle will not be so easy Smithson." She spoke with Gem's throat for her largest one was occupied with slurping up stew. For practice she forced words from the closest twin's throat and lips as well, the voice subtly different from her first spawn's. What was impossible in Gem's short throat came ever so slightly more natural in either twin.

But what she had learned with Bethica with her smallest spawn also fit poorly on the lips and tongue of her newest 'daughters'." Smithson, Magarska's soldiers are a better sort than our own. They have metal armour for every one of their levy, there are more of them than us on land, hundreds more of them in the air, and they do not break even under wyrmdoom." The voice was deeper, buzzing, hard to control in an entirely new way but she was already managing it, just requiring more practice.

Which was hard to remember to do when Gem could so easily speak for all of them. Her nurse Knight sighed and leaned against the shoulder of her largest self.

"Just so, but tonight was a victory and even the foreigners under our command are full of hope and confidence after your showing. You saw an enemy unbowed by a terror that has broken armies, they saw their countess enter the field and drive an army nearly twice their number fleeing from the field." He was calm, with a weariness she recognized. Jewel rumbled in her longest throat, it was true, but at the same time it felt all wrong. This war was nothing like her last one.

There was so far no need for forage, the Farming Weird made certain of that. But it was not like fighting Arva had been at all. The dead earth before her was a devastating, sorcerous scar." Lo do I see the ugliness of Uruk's children sprouting anew." Alder's voice drifted on the wind, tired, weary in a way that seemed an echo of the lifeless emptiness before her. She turned expecting to find the Elf, but there was no sign of them, no scent, no indication at all that the ancient being had been there at all.

"Lady Jewel?" Smithson's voice tugged on her attention, but she kept her wyrmish eyes on the darkness around them.

"Did you hear that smithson?" He shook his head, but his gaze was already sweeping the darkness intently. She knew from Gem and the twin's own eyes he almost certainly would spot nothing she could not. It was well past dusk. There was no sign of the Elf, no scent, no sound, but there would not have been, there never was. It was as always like he had never been there, but Jewel was certain she had heard his voice.

"Alder?" Her voice was soft but carrying, pitched to reach the forest. She hoped for a reply, for the wisdom or just the companionship of the elf. Maybe even to have him there to aid in whatever wondrous and terrible manner he could in war. Only the wind and the distant sounds of an army's merriment answered her, Smithson and her spawn's breathing providing a rhythmic undercurrent. And then the wind rose up again. But of the Elf there was no further sign.