B3Ch77-Seeing Sarah again (Patreon)

Dalen pulled up two strides short and snapped a salute. It was clearly something he had gotten a lot of practice doing over his time here.

He hesitated before saluting him back.

The last time he'd stood this close, Dalen hadn’t been soft exactly, but he hadn’t looked like this either. He had been a mid-level office manager, and now that man was gone. Tattoos ran up the back of his right hand, climbed the forearm, and showed again at the collar. Nothing of the softness remained. 

And behind him, the sixty lords were in a rough formation. Not one of them tried to push past Dalen to reach Harold first. They seemed to defer to Dalen, and that little tidbit told him everything he needed to know about how little Lord Dalen had grown up. Dalen had taken a rock in a craggy, shitty area of the Blackjaws, fought for it all winter. And made a town. It wasn't hard to see why they deferred to him.

Harold grinned at him.

He didn't say anything. He just stood there in his battle-stained Thresher King plate and beamed. He couldn’t have been more proud of the man.

Dalen held the salute one more second. Then the corner of his mouth started to rise, and the two of them closed the gap and grabbed each other. Harold pounded him on the back hard enough that his gauntlet rang off something under the cloak, and Dalen hammered the plate right back and swore when his knuckles hit the plate.

"Ow — God. What is that, an anvil?"

"Close enough," Harold said, and held him out by the shoulders to look at him again. "Look at this place, Dalen. I came over that ridge and thought I was seeing things."

"I didn't make anything." Dalen chuckled, stepped back, and shook out his hand; his eyes cut to the walls and back, and something moved across his face on the way. "Everyone else did the work. I pointed at a rock and said,  “Put a wall there”, and then I got out of the way while better people than me put it up." He chuckled a little. "We lost the north towers twice. Buried a lot of people to do it too—" He stopped, glanced at the lords. "I wouldn’t have made it without the constant support you sent through the pass."

Harold let that sink in, then let his hand drop. "I read the reports coming up. Then I met your gate centurion and worked out how much you were leaving out."

Dalen huffed something that wasn't quite a laugh. "Centurion Hank wouldn’t have told you. The new kid?"

"The boy."

"Of course he did." Dalen glowered. “I tell you, Harold,” he turned, and the two of them walked through the mass of Lords. “Without the constant recruiting from the Stele and supplies, this position was untenable.”

The lords were still hovering, not quite close enough to be in the conversation while making it obvious they wanted to be included. Harold knew what was going to happen if he let it get that far — before he had so much as a cup of coffee. He'd ridden up here for his sister and Adeline. Not for this.

"I need something from you," he said, pitched for Dalen but not bothering to hide it. "Dinner. All of us — every lord, every senior retainer, in one room.  Let's have a hot meal. I'll address everyone at once."

Dalen's shoulders came down half an inch, and the relief on him was almost funny. "Thank God. Yes. I can get you that; I have already been planning for something like that with Lady Adeline’s help." He already had the little notebook out of his coat. 

"Good. And I've got something to show them, too." Harold left it there. "Save it for the room."

Dalen looked up from the notebook, curious, and didn't push. "I’ll get it done."

Harold clapped him once on the arm and turned, and raised his voice just enough to carry.

"Now — before any of you take it the wrong way." He said it to the lords, not to Dalen, so there was no chance of them pretending later they hadn't heard it. "There are two extremely important women I have to go and see right now. Before they decide I've insulted them by not coming straight there. I’m sure you all have wives and girlfriends whose fury you would not risk." He turned so he could look over them all, seeing a few familiar faces. 

That drew a laugh from them. If it was a real one or not, he couldn’t make himself care in that moment. One further back muttered something about having met Lady Sarah, and they eased back a step. 

Carter, at his shoulder, choked back a laugh.

"Where do I find them?" Harold said to Dalen, already half-turned to go.

That was when Dalen's face froze into a nervous expression.

"Ah — well." Dalen rubbed the back of his tattooed neck, and tipped his head up the slope. "Lady Adeline's taking tea. Top level of that little fort your crafters threw up — there." He pointed further up the hill, past the close-packed roofs, at a squat, blunt little keep of pale stone. "You can't miss it. Only thing up there finished newer than the walls."

Harold caught the look. Dalen's eyes wouldn't quite hold his, and his stomach dipped before he knew it.

"What?" he said. A little freaked now. "Why are you looking at me like that?"

Dalen sighed. "I'm sorry, Harold." He put a hand on Harold's plated shoulder. "She's having tea with Sarah."

And Harold's stomach went straight down into his boots.

He turned and looked up the hill at the little new fort, and the cold didn't have anything to do with the feeling that walked up his spine.

Harold went up through the little fort with his guard strung out behind him on the stairs — Corwin, Ren, Elroy, Jenkins, and Jack bringing up the back. The fort was good work but he completely ignored it in his urgency to get up there.

From somewhere above him came laughter and he knew it was too late. They laughed like old friends. Of course, Sarah started talking to Adeline.

His stomach, which had already gone into his boots, somehow found another inch to fall.

He'd told himself that the worst case was the two of them fighting. He'd been wrong. The worst case was this. The worst case was them getting along, with nothing to do but compare notes about him.

"Oh, no," he said, mostly to himself.

"Sir?" Jenkins said.

"Nothing. Keep climbing."

At the top, the stairs opened onto a short landing and a single heavy door, and in front of the door stood two thickset men. Men-at-arms, by the look — broad, still, hands loose, nothing on them you'd pick out of a crowd.

They turned their heads to look at Harold at the exact same moment. And it wasn’t close to the same moment. It was the exact same one. 

Behind him, the whole landing flinched back half a step. All of them except Jack, who just looked bored with them.

"The hell," Elroy breathed. "That — that was creepy. Who are these fellas?"

"Elroy." Harold didn't raise his voice. "Say nothing. Touch nothing. That goes for all of you."

One of the two men reached back without looking and opened the door.

The laughter inside stopped like a cut wire.

Harold took a breath.

Ren leaned in at his shoulder, low enough that it stayed between them. "Good luck, my lord. That's a battle I don't want."

"Cowards, all of you," Harold said, and went in alone.

The room was warm. A fire was going, a table in the middle of it with a proper tea service laid out, steam still coming off the pot. One of the thickset men stood at the table, pouring carefully and filling a cup to exactly the right height. Two more stood against the far wall, and their faces all looked to him at the same moment.

Adeline sat on the near side of the table with a teacup in both hands. She saw him and started to rise.

She didn't get the chance. Sarah came up out of her chair and across the room — quick, though not Mira-quick, and hit him about as hard as Mira had, both arms locking around the back plate of his armor.

"I missed you," she said into his shoulder. "You absolute idiot. Thank you. For all of it — for taking care of us up here. I know what it cost. Well, maybe I don't, but thank you all the same. I missed you."

Harold put his arms around his sister and held on, and for a second the town and the war disappeared. Even the nail in his chest woke up to see what was going on. He could feel it scoff in his chest and settle back down. 

Then Sarah leaned back and held him at arm's length, grinning.

"And you got yourself a girlfriend," she said. "I was just catching her up. All the best stories. The really good ones. You know, like that one from you in middle school and the cafeteria."

Harold looked over her head at Adeline.

Adeline set her cup down, came around the table, reached him, put her arms around him, and kissed his cheek.

"Hello, Harold," she said against his jaw.

"Please tell me which stories," he said.

"No," both women said at once, and that set them both again.

She dropped back into her chair and reached for her tea, still laughing.

"You better treat Addy right, Harold. She's a godsend. You have to understand how bad it was," Sarah said, pointing at him with the cup. "The lords start rolling in, right, and every single one of them wants to talk to you, and you're off somewhere being important, so they come to me. Figure I'm the next best thing." She shook her head. "Harold, I am hopeless at it. I only got them to work with you up here cause I bribed them all and did the odd jobs for them. One of them starts in about grain quotas and marching order and whose banner stands where, and I'm just standing there thinking about how much I'd rather be exploring something. Speaking of which, I have so much to show you."

"She is not exaggerating," Adeline said, settling back onto her side of the table. "She told Lord Harland his seating arrangement was 'a you problem.'"

A laugh burst out of him before he could stop it, and he looked around for another chair.

"It was; he just didn’t like hearing it." Adeline sipped. 

"So she takes over." Sarah tipped the cup at Adeline, delighted. "And it's like watching someone organize an orchestra. The second those lords worked out she's yours — that she speaks for you — they all just... turned. Flocked to her. And now she's got the whole lot of them eating out of her hand and half of them don't even know it happened."

"Some of them know," Adeline said mildly.

"Especially," Sarah said, and snorted before she even got it out, "especially after that one fool invited her to his bed."

Harold's eyebrows went up. "He did what?"

"Oh, it was beautiful," Sarah said. "She didn't even raise her voice. Didn't make a scene. An hour later, they kicked him out of the Army. Gone. Out. And it was Hale who walked him to the edge of camp and pointed him down the hill." She wiped her eye. "Ever since, the lords look at her like she's a lovely, lovely snake. Awe and terror. It's the most fun I've had in months. You picked a good one, brother."

Harold looked at Adeline. And the stark difference didn't escape him, even in his first life. When he introduced his wife to Sarah back then. She had hated her. That Sarah approved and even liked her relieved him more than he liked.

Adeline looked back at him over the rim of her cup, took a small sip, lifted her pinky, and lowered the cup as if she had never done a single thing wrong in her life.

"Well," she said. "Lord Barrow barely brought three thousand men. He wasn't worth the trouble of keeping, and his reputation with the other lords was already poor." She turned the cup a quarter-turn on its saucer. "We don’t need men of his character in the alliance army."

Harold laughed. He couldn't help it. He was still laughing when one of the men at the wall stepped up to him.

His blood went cold.

It was the smaller one — small for a man-at-arms, anyway, which should have clued him in. The man smiled up at him, but nothing warm or human behind it. A kind of patient amusement was on his face as he looked up at him.

He surged his mana to his eyes to break the glamour, and he saw the cap of blood-red felt the man held tucked under one arm. He saw the cleaver on the belt, the right hand, and the gap where a finger should have been.

“Dammit,” he thought to himself. He knew this one.

The Winter Court kept a few troubleshooters. Assassins. People it sent to handle certain matters. They didn't work for the Court's princes and princesses. They worked directly for the Queen. And if Mab had sent Robin here, then there was politics at play. 

"Ah," the small man said. His voice was gruff though quiet and precise. "So you know who I am, Count Harold."

"Yes," Harold said. "Unfortunately, I do."

Across the room, he felt more than saw the two women go still. Sarah's cup stopped halfway down. Adeline had not moved at all. With her, that meant she was prepared to move if needed. The warmth had gone out of the room somewhere in the last few seconds; his breath was showing now, faint, over the table where it hadn't been. Winter had arrived.

"How about a trade, Robin," Harold said. He kept his voice level and watched the little man's eyes. "The information I gave your Court — the location of the Mantle of the Hird, and the thing that guards it — that must have been well received. I know a great many more things that would be of value to Winter. So here's my offer. You tell me why the Court is so interested in me that they'd send the Queen's own hand to guard me and mine, and I'll tell Mab something worth just as much as the mantle."

Robin's smile didn't change. He seemed to turn the offer over and his eyes stared back up at him without blinking.

"The Mantle was a pretty gift," he allowed. "The Court was pleased. My Queen was pleased. You know things that surprise even my Queen, Count, for a mortal. Everyone says so."

"Then we have a deal."

"We have no deal. And if you don’t give the Queen the respect she deserves, I’ll be forced to kill you after this assignment ends." Still mild. Still amused. "You should know Winter places a great deal of emphasis on respect. You assumed something about the Court, and then you offered to pay me for it. That is a poor way to bargain." He tilted his head a degree, and the gap in his hand was obvious. "You have told yourself a story in which you stand in the middle. It is a very mortal habit. You all seem to think yourself so important. The sun goes around you; the Court turns its face to you; the Queen loses sleep over a count in the mountains." He let that sit. "What would you give me, I wonder — not the Court, me — to learn whether I came for you at all?"

Harold's eyes narrowed as the cold invaded the room.

"Then who?"

"I was loaned to you," Robin said, "For a time. I stand at a door. I pour the tea." He glanced, just once, down the length of the room and brought his eyes back. "Not that I don't enjoy this assignment. Your sister and mate are gracious hosts. You should drink it while it is hot. It does not stay warm long, up here."

He stepped back to assume his position, but he didn't let him keep going. His mind was racing, and he knew he had to halt this now. The Winter Court respected only one thing.

Harold narrowed his eyes and allowed his aura to come out. These days it was always ready and the nail. Sensing his mood, fully woke up. He narrowed his eyes and threw it down onto the Redcap.And he gave himself over to it. This Redcap. This thing. Had come here and deigned to dare! To think. That he would enforce control over him. Robin's face was contorted in pain as he allowed his aura, reinforced by the nail, to eat away at him. A nibble at a time. Robin's own aura tried to escape and fight back, but his aura was empowered by the nail and gained its own properties. And it was hungry.“You dare. Come into my home and threaten me. I am not bound by the rules of your kind and your Court. If I want to say Mab’s name, then I will say it. The Court emphasizes manners because, in the end, the only thing that matters in your Court is power. I am not a weak mortal lord you are used to solving. Your Court has inserted itself into my life, and I am not thankful for it. Robin's hand was drifting to his cleaver, though he tried to slam his aura down on the Redcap and stop it, and behind him he could sense that his own people were pointing their weapons at the remaining Redcaps. Pinning them to the wall.“I tried to give you the respect your position is due. I know who you are, Robin Redcap. I know what you are. I know what your job is and I know who you answer to. Don’t presume to know anything about me.”He glanced over at Sarah and Adeline, who were looking at him troubled, and it was an effort to contain his aura to only Robin.

The nail wanted to eat. The nibbles weren’t enough, and the pressure coming off Robin was substantial. And to be honest, if not for his aura, he wasn't sure he would be fast enough to stop him if he attacked in earnest.He released his aura, and Robin almost collapsed as he caught himself. But Harold leaned over until he was able to speak in his ear. I am no mortal Robin, and I promise you this. Threaten me or mine again, and I will devour you.Robin looked him in the eyes before glowering down again. “Aye, Count Harold. We are in agreement.”He nodded and turned to Adeline.

He needed Sarah out of the room. Adeline's dispatches held things he didn't want his sister to hear.

"I want your team tonight at dinner. It's been too long." He scratched the back of his neck. "Would you go find Robert and drag him up here? I want to see him before the hall fills up and I can't get a word in. Just — the two of you, first. Before the circus."

It worked exactly the way he'd known it would. Sarah's whole face opened up.

"Yeah?" She was already up out of the chair. "Yeah. God, he'll — he's been wanting to actually talk to you, but you have to be nice! None of whatever just happened here." She came around the table and squeezed his arm hard enough to feel through the vambraces. "Don't go anywhere."

"I'll be right here."

She went out, and one of the Redcaps, released for Jenkins' sword, came off the far wall and fell in behind her without a sound. Then it was quiet. Winter retreated, and the fire and Adeline refocused him.

Robin and the other had stepped out to the landing when the other did. He hadn't seen them go. The door was shut, and it was just the two of them now in the warm room with Winter leaking back out of it.

Adeline reached down beside her chair and brought up a flat leather folio, and she didn't open it right away. She looked at him first.

"You’ll have to explain to me what happened later.” Her hand traveled over his face and cupped his cheek. “Balfiel?” 

And he nodded into her hand and cupped it with his own. “Yeah, I found him. He’s here now. It was…hell, I don't know what it was. It’s good to see him again.”She came in closer and kissed his neck. “Good, you needed it.” She kissed him again. Then backed up. I have a lot of reports you need to hear.” She set the folio on the table and smoothed her hand over it. Harold pulled out the chair across from her and sat down, and finally relaxed.

"Alright, tell me," he said.

She told him. The Landing had held. The Legion had broken the ants with the help of the Centaurs while the adventurers had infiltrated the nest. Found the lizardman priestess conducting the ritual. And killed them. They had gained some notable loot, but the losses had been horrendous on the Legion, though. Over 500 dead and over 200 adventurers permanently dead. Though Josh and Beth were on the team that found the ritual, and Josh was responsible for penetrating the barrier that protected it. Supposedly, he had surrounded Beth with a version of his own stone body to protect her, while Taylor Vane had surrounded her with his best fighters. He still couldn't believe that she had done that. 

And out on the water, the second strike had come, right where Harold had predicted. Henri met it with his ships, though he let them land. They couldn't breach the town. Supposedly. Henri had tried to fight the warlord and had been soundly defeated. Though he had been saved from death by Lukas. Upon seeing him go down, he rallied the Legion, recovered the ballista on the ships, and used those in conjunction with the adventurers to kill the Orc warlord. The navy was gutted, though, and the fort destroyed. It would take months to recover the cost.

Harold looked at the list for a long moment and sighed. He’d known something would happen, but this was more than he had been counting on. The defenses needed to be improved. And he needed a couple of different relics in order to really make the Basin the fortress he knew it should be. This campaign would do a lot to fix that.

He put his elbows on the table and his face in his hands, just for a moment, and let the weight come down where only she could see it. 

Adeline didn't say anything. She reached across the table and put her hand flat on the back of his neck, warm against the cold, and left it there. “One piece of good news, though. It has accelerated Councilor Margaret’s plan. She used the confusion and Elia to squirrel away supplies to build small caches for the people our enemies are infiltrating. Henri’s allies are sending him supplies and even ships to help him recover and are using the opportunity to insert their own people. Margaret is confident she can still handle it but requests we ask Alnor to send a few more higher-tier people to help.”

He sighed again and let the words wash over him."Drink your tea," she said, after a while. "While it's hot."

He huffed a sound that wasn't quite a laugh. “Don’t suppose you have any coffee?”