Book 5 - Chapter 18 (Patreon)

Man, what a day. Sorry it's so late; I feel like I've done nothing but write for the last two days, but somehow the word count just hasn't been going up. If it makes you feel any better, the next chapter will be the last in Part 1, and then we'll have an interlude. A Hogg interlude.

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Brin entered the Commander's Camp to find a city of tents. Yes, there were tents everywhere in the rest of the camps, but those had a distinct "camp" feeling. This felt like a city. The tents were higher, richer, and made of sturdier cloth. Colorful fabrics, people from diverse regions and cultures, and even a few food carts with flatbread or kebabs, it all gave the area a metropolitan feel. 

He'd seen much of this by spying from outside with his Invisible Eyes, but now that he was inside the protections he had much more freedom to snoop. He sent out a dozen or so to see everything that could be seen before he'd need to leave again.

The first thing that he noticed was that Commander's Camp wasn’t actually a great name for this place. There were three separate command camps, one for Frenaria, Olland, and Prinnash. Maybe they'd all parked nearby out of mutual protection, or maybe they'd all grouped up together as a show of unity. If that was it, it was only a show. The three camps didn't mix. Soldiers guarded the perimeters of each region. They didn't look like guards; they leaned against tent poles or relaxed on wooden folding chairs, but it didn't take Brin long to figure them out. None of these armies would have normally let men out of uniform casually hanging out at key access points all day. No, they were going through the motions to pretend this was an open, friendly collaboration, but Brin bet that if anyone crossed into another nation's area, they'd find out the real truth very quickly.

Actually, maybe he could cross into the Frenarian camp. He was technically serving in an Ollandish Order, but he was still a citizen of Frenaria.

"Am I seeing this right? There are three separate camps here. How do you coordinate with each other?" said Brin.

"You're seeing it right," said Cid, ignoring Brin's second question.

Did that mean they didn't coordinate with each other at all? They had to. For one, Galan was always dashing around to meet with the leaders of the other armies, if only because they all used him as their errand boy.

"What do you mean?" asked Brin.

"Nothing." Cid said. He usually wasn't the type of person to evade direct questions, but he was also careful to never say anything negative about his superiors. It wasn't a bad policy in this case. Telling the troops that their commanders weren't united wouldn't exactly help them increase morale.

Cid sighed, and looked left and right. They weren't exactly in private here; officers and attendants crowded them in every direction. "Maybe things will change today. Do you see the amphitheater being built?"

"I do," Brin said. His Invisible Eyes were already watching it. Towards the center of the camps, they'd dug a big terraced hole in the ground. Wooden planks had been laid across the terraces to make bench seating, all facing an oval on the bottom. Plenty of Skills had to have been used in its creation because it wasn't as muddy as it should've been. The dirt on the ground was packed rock hard and didn't seem to touch the boots of the few workmen still putting the final touches on it.

"General Grimwalt is expected to lay out a plan for mutual aid and cooperation going forward. He'll address everyone at once, from the heads of martial Orders all the way down to... well, to Primes that have earned leadership Classes," said Cid.

"Is it going to work?" asked Brin.

"Even just getting everyone together is a promising first step," said Cid.

Brin felt a pang of worry at the idea of getting all the leadership together in one place. Not a good idea, based on how the joint exercises had gone. Still, they must've thought of that. If Arcaena was capable of putting a bomb in the Commander's camp, she definitely would've done that already. No, [Witch] threats were more insidious than that. The real danger of a meeting like that would be that it would fracture the combined armies more than unify them. 

"Can I attend?" Brin asked. He might be able to help ward off any mind control effects, or at least notice them.

"No. You're my escort. No one travels alone, not with all the assassinations last night, but I can’t bring you into the meeting itself. I thought you might like to tour the camps while I'm there. Davi works in that checkered tan tent, from what I hear," Cid said, nodding towards the Frenarian camp. Brin saw the one he meant.

He escorted Cid to the conference, though he was fairly redundant. Everyone else had brought their own guards, which meant that the walk through the tent city to the amphitheater was probably the safest Cid had been since he was born. They arrived without trouble, and then Brin was free to make his own way. 

Coming up with a strategy to cross into the Frenarian camp took up his thoughts, enough to distract himself from the fact that he still didn't know what he was going to say to Davi. The biggest problem was the passive perimeter guards they had around the camp. He didn't think they'd look too kindly on someone with the Order of the Long Sleep's symbol displayed prominently on his chest trying to march straight into their camp from the Ollandish side. He also wasn’t sure if just walking up to them and explaining things would be socially acceptable; they were incognito for a reason. He could leave the camp completely and try to enter through the regular checkpoint. Those soldiers might accept that he was Frenarian, but they also might not. It wasn't worth the risk.

He'd need to sneak across. Passing between two close tents, he cast Invisibility on himself. That wasn't enough on its own because he had to assume that the watchmen had [Rogue] senses, but his armor should help. It could handle all the regular [Rogue] senses except smell. He had consumables for that.

He had a few cheap anti-body odor tablets that would work pretty well, but those were mostly for sparing the people around you. It would erase his own odor, but only that. To eliminate the subtle smells of the polish on his armor or the scents from other parts of camp that still carried on his clothes, a spell was preferred.

He reached into Lumina's ring and withdrew a little slip of paper. He'd bought a whole deck for a couple gold; Sion had helped him find the buyer.

Tearing the paper activated the enchantment, and now he was completely invisible to the nose. Theoretically. He hadn’t tested this, and it wasn’t like he could smell anything different.

He crossed out into the open, and no one gave any sign that they noticed him. He was glad the ground was hard packed dirt, he would have had a hard time with grass, but it was easy enough to cover his slight footprints with illusion.

Then, he walked across the unmarked boundary between the Ollandish and Frenarian camps. He waited for something to stop him, for the other shoe to drop. It seemed like every time he thought he was being really clever with illusions someone else had already thought of the counter and it all fell apart. This time, nothing happened. The watchman never looked in his direction. No alarms went off. He simply walked across the camp.

He almost didn't want to get away with it this easily. Wasn't it a problem that their commanders were this vulnerable to invisible infiltrators? Then again, all he was doing was moving around inside their main perimeter, and it had taken him several hundreds of gold and a rare Class to even get this far.

Cid had warned him that many of the tents would have illusion-detection enchantments, so Brin found a nice hiding spot again and let the illusion drop. Now that he was well inside the Frenarian camp, he'd probably be fine. There were a lot of escorts for that conference today, so no one would be surprised to see someone they didn't recognize. He still covered his armor in a thin layer of glass, coloring it to make it look like plain metal. It nicely covered up the closed eye on his chest as well as any other identifiable designs or symbols.

Then he strode back into the open. A short walk later, he was at Davi's tent. He took a breath, opened the flap, and stepped inside.

Davi was sitting and writing in a book that was two feet wide and eight inches thick, spread out across a rustic writing desk. He rushed to his feet when he saw Brin arrive and took a step back.

"Can I help you, sir?" asked Davi. He wore a customer-service smile and held his hands up like he was ready to soothe a rampaging bull. He casually stepped to the side, putting himself between Brin and a big slate that dominated the back of the tent. Did he not want Brin to read that? It was mostly numbers.

Brin chuckled, covering his unease at that reaction. "You know I've already memorized everything in this room, right?"

Davi squinted. "Brin?"

"Oh. I forgot." Brin pulled off his helmet.

Davi laughed in relief and collapsed back into the chair. "Sancta Solia, Brin! I almost needed a change of underwear. How'd you even get in here?"

Brin smiled along. "The same way I get anywhere, I guess. Hey, how did you recognize me with my helmet on? Everyone says my voice is a lot deeper now."

“Not that much deeper,” Davi said. “But it looks like you finally hit that growth spurt. Keep this up and you’re going to be taller than me!”

“I have a hard time picturing that,” said Brin.

“Me too.” Davi probably hadn’t changed all that much in the couple months since he’d seen him last. Maybe he’d filled out a little more, grown more muscle in the arms and legs; he obviously hadn’t been skipping his weight training. It was still impressive. Davi was probably six inches shorter than Hedrek, but he didn’t lag behind him on muscles at all.

He hadn’t known exactly what he’d feel when he stood here, and he was happy to see that he was actually happy to see Davi again. At the same time, all the dormant resentment about the way Davi had ended things last time, emotions that Brin had thought had faded with time, sprang up into his guts, ruining what could be a nice moment.

The [Delusionist] had an opinion on that. Davi was an important ally and a valuable asset, and he could be utilized again. Brin just needed to forgive him, or tell Davi that he was the one at fault if that’s what it took. And why shouldn’t he? They’d both be better off. All these nasty negative feelings could go away with a single glance in a mirror…

Brin shoved that idea down deep. He was not crossing that bridge, not yet. To distract himself, Brin used [Wyrdic Inpsect]. On the Wyrd side of things, there wasn’t much to see. Davi was employed by the army. As in, they paid him money and he did a job. It was fairly unimportant and uncomplicated where the Wyrd was concerned. It was the regular [Inspect] message that made Brin’s jaw drop.

Name: Davi Pimental

Age: 15

Class: Skald

Level: 40

“No. No! How? How are you such high level already?” He tried to play it up like he was only pretending to be offended when actually he was happy for Davi, but he couldn’t help let some of the real shock into his voice.

Davi chuckled. “Well, first there was…” Davi paused and Brin heard the unspoken nod to their conscription fight, which must’ve been even more lucrative to Davi than it had been to him. “...but after that a lot of things happened. Like–”

“And why are you even here? Last I heard, you were going back home!”

Davi's grin slipped from his face. "I did go home. They were waiting for us in Hammon's Bog."

"I don’t buy it. You couldn't give them the slip?" Brin couldn't imagine Bruna standing idly by and letting someone cart her son off to war. Anyone who tried would definitely come down with a pox of some sort.

“Easily, I’m sure. But then what? With basically any other Class I could just hide and wait until they leave, or go start life over somewhere else. But [Bards] are famous, by definition almost. If we want to perform, we can’t always be looking over our shoulders wondering if any of the city watch are going to feel like cashing in one of the king’s bounties,” said Davi.

“Hm.” Brin rubbed his chin, trying to decide if that sounded plausible, or if there was something else going on here. “Even so, with a Class like [Bard], you could easily work around it. ‘[Bard] Davi? No, I’m his younger brother [Bard] Bavi.’ People will believe that crap when a [Bard] says it.”

Davi shook his head. “You really think my Class works like that? Even if it did… well, let’s say that Jeffrey probably could’ve dyed his hair and changed his clothes and started over. But I don’t exactly look like other [Bards].”

Brin felt his eyebrows raise. “Oh.”

“Yeah…”

Brin shook his head. “Sorry. I’m not here trying to accuse you of anything. I guess I’m still wrapping my head around it. I thought that out of all of us, at least you were home and safe.”

“Yeah, I get it. It all worked out, though! They were pretty excited about my Class. It’s not every day you find a [Skald] of any age, and they were really impressed that I got it so young. I work under [Field Commander] Pedrin, and he made the offer. He said he’d sponsor me up to level 40 if I promised to take a Skill of his choosing,” said Davi.

“What Skill? And how do you ‘sponsor’ someone for levels?” asked Brin.

“You know, putting me in front of high level monsters, having me play for the soldiers in the thickest of the fighting, special training for my Skills, getting experts to help develop my General Skills, stuff like that.” Davi couldn’t hide the real excitement in his voice.

“Sounds like a paradise,” said Brin.

“It’s been amazing. I’m here working on something important, with real decision makers. [Field Commander] Pedrin is a second lieutenant by rank, and he works directly with General Grimwalt. I’ve met the general three times, and once he told me that he appreciates the work I’m doing,” said Davi.

“That’s awesome! I’m happy for you,” said Brin. He felt his smile slipping, and mentally bolted it in place. He was not going to rain on Davi’s parade.

“It’s like, all these high-level important people know my name and they’re suddenly interested in making sure I do well. I just keep thinking, is this what it’s like to be Brin?”

Brin laughed. Loudly. Way too loudly to be authentic, but it was kind of funny, wasn’t it? Because that’s not how he remembered getting stronger. He remembered being thrown into a long series of miserable and completely unfair situations, and only barely surviving by being willing to crawl through the mud on broken fingers.

Davi’s smile was way too wide to be real as well. Brin needed to change the subject.

“What Skill did you get?”

“That’s the downside, I guess. [Skald] is a Historian Class, among other things, so the Skill it offered was [True Record]. I can remember all the little details about major events,” Davi said, still awkwardly over-friendly.

Brin knew he was the same but couldn’t figure out how to fix it. “With enough time, I could probably work out how that’s useful, but help me out here.”

“I know exactly how many men are deployed, in every single unit, in our entire army. I know who’s hungry, who’s sleeping, what they’re armed with, and even how many pairs of socks everyone owns.”

“And how many people died overnight from the curse plague?” Brin asked with a smirk.

“That too!” Davi replied, still over cheerful.

“What about the enemy?”

“Not a ton! Their illusions mess up the Skill, and besides that, it’s not a spy Skill. I only see what’s public knowledge! But you’d be surprised what the Skill considers public knowledge!”

“That’s great!” Brin purposefully pushed the grin off his face. “Can I ask you something? Are we losing?”

The question was apparently shocking enough that Davi also stopped smiling. “What are you talking about?”

“Sorry, that was a pretty big whiplash. I was just thinking, if you’re this connected then you might actually have an idea of what’s going on. I mean, you must hear things, right? Do they have a plan for winning this thing?” asked Brin.

Davi shook his head. “Brin. Nobody is talking about winning the war with Arcaena.”

Brin slumped. “Then–”

“All anybody is talking about is how to get as much territory as they can after the war with Arcaena,” said Davi.

 “What? Frenaria doesn’t even border Arcaena,” said Brin. He scratched his ear and looked at the slate board covered with numbers. Those were units with headcounts, and it verified something Brin already kind of knew, that in this army the Frenarians outnumbered the Ollanders and Prinnashians combined, and if Davi’s estimates were correct, they outnumbered their Arcaenean enemies ten to one. There was another army coming from the north, that one would probably have mainly Ollanders, and the army coming from the west would have the bulk of Prinnash’s forces.

Thinking out loud, he said, “I bet Frenaria wants the eastern coast. That’ll let them move ships up north without worrying about Ollandish raiders. Of course, Olland will want the same area.”

“It’s not even about countries. If it were, that would almost be easier. It’s everyone. The High Lords of Prinnash each want to grab territory to add to their estates. The [King] of Prinnash wants to stop his High Lords from gaining more power. All the Orders want roaming and hunting rights, any intact fortresses we find, and maybe enough land to make a little fiefdom of their own. So they’re all looking at each other and hoping someone else takes the brunt of the fighting with Arcaena so that they can keep their own troops fresh for the real fight.”

“The real fight is already here! You’re not on the front lines, so you haven’t see, but–”

Davi held his hands up. “Whoa! I’m right there with you. It’s not even me saying this, I’m just repeating what I’ve heard Pedrin say.”

Brin rubbed his temples. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine,” said Davi, but whether it was fine or not was still a matter of debate. Brin was certain of it now. Davi was upset with him as well. But why should he be? Brin couldn’t recall anything he’d done that was wrong. Davi had Zilly had been the ones to corner him.

“I just don’t understand where this confidence is coming from. This is the [Witch Queen] we’re talking about,” said Brin.

Davi said, “I know you don’t take much stock in what fortune tellers say…”

“You mean [Weavers]? Very little,” said Brin.

“Then I shouldn’t waste my breath! But they’re saying that Arcaena is gone. Some say dead, or missing, or apathetic, but they all agree she won’t take part in the war,” said Davi.

“That’s insane.”

“Then why even ask? Not all [Weavers] are Tawna, you know.”

“I know that!” snapped Brin.

“Do you?” Davi looked like he wanted to say more, but clenched his jaw instead.

Brin sighed, shaking his head. It actually would explain a lot. Arcaena killed a [Paladin], and then she’d spent several hundred years getting stronger since then. If she’d been leading the army, he honestly didn’t think the allies would have even made it this far.

“Have you heard from Zilly?” Brin asked. It just slipped out. He hadn’t wanted to bring up Zilly until Davi did, but now it was out there. He winced in anticipation.

“She’s a [Scout] in the western force. It’s commanded by General Pombe, but she’ll be serving under Duke Gaspar from Frenaria,” Davi said neutrally.

That gave him nothing. Did Davi still think that he and Zilly had been in the right? Even if he did, Davi should just apologize. Brin was due an apology.

But instead of saying that, Brin said, “Hm. Any other important names I should be aware of?”

Davi gave him a list of all the stars and celebrities in the invasion of Arcaena, and while the awkwardness never went away, staying on a neutral subject eased it somewhat, until they were talking almost like old friends again. Almost.

After he’d pumped Davi for all he knew, he made him promise to meet for dinner sometime. Apparently, Davi had leeway to visit the commoner’s camp and had already talked to Sion more than once. Brin honestly wasn’t surprised.

When he left the tent after less than an hour, he felt more drained than after a whole day of fighting. He slapped his cheeks. “What was that? Ugh.”

He’d somehow avoided bringing up the one thing he actually wanted to talk to Davi about, and honestly, that was just like him. But it wasn’t like Davi. That was the problem. None of that was like Davi. Cornering him into a duel was a Zilly thing. If it was just her, he wouldn’t even be that mad because that’s just what she was like. But from Davi he expected better.

He was no closer to reconciling than he’d been before. He was no closer to knowing if he wanted to reconcile than he’d been before. 

It didn’t matter. That was a problem for later. For now, Cid’s leadership conference was still going on, and now that he understood what was at stake, he meant to listen in.