The Totem-Maker (part ninety-two)

The Totem-Maker

Chapter Nine

The Recalcitrant One

(part ninety-two)

“What, again, do I not believe, my subtle young friend?”

I felt I had caught myself, for opening my argument from a place within my thoughts. “If you had brought your household to me at the tollhouse,” I said to him, “the rumors would fly. The Balbaecans, the spies among them, would conclude you marched with the summer.”

“I intend it. But I cannot make a secret of the seasons. Summer is the only time…and sooner than that. I wait another muster, another fleet. The supply trains go to the first outpost, and the companies follow when the scouts return.”

Our servants were behind the hanging mats, where servants become deaf. I sipped, wanting not to overdo…but wine or no, I resolved to leave Lord Ei’s house with my full counsel given. What I decided, I would choose. My Totem’s hints in my ear must cease, for I would hear them no more.

My advice was contrary to the Prince’s predication, that he could not spare the gathering of his forces over another winter, but must make his attack in good, rather than the best, of time. Hurry in warfare? Surely never advised. I wanted to ask, what will you do when you array your army there, when you see the Citadel’s mount towering to the clouds? You cannot besiege them, because you cannot get round them. Your soldiers are not your men. They are the men of three nations; they are not loyal to one another. Evil weaponry will rain agonies upon them, and what, shrinking in terror, haunted by the burned and maimed, feeling they gain nothing of worth to them now, by your promise of gold…

What persuasion, other than the iron fist? You will order them to keep to their camps, as though the camps could be redoubts, not doorstones for beggars. When most have deserted you, the Emperor, because you have made yourself too weak to protect him, will ask some other Prince to be his protector.

“And so I impress you little,” the Prince said. “You sit with an arch face that disapproves. Yet in silence. Let me repent, whatever I have done.”

“I am not a general. You do not want me for advice you had sought and trusted long before you’d known of my existence. You could name me now who travels with you, who sits with you, when you propose your attacks, when you hold that sort of council. I have at times been gifted by my father Lotoq with vision. Vision tells me we do not know these people of the Citadel. My own mind says persuasion is better than brute force.”

With no formal plea for my blessing, he asked it. He, not resting in his home more than a quarter of any year; he, the sagest of the battleworn, wanted what they all did. A magical person whose notions were not the equal of any thoughtful soul’s, but willed by heaven, both unfathomable and ordained.

He would not consult his common sense, for having above mine the sum of two decades.

96

The Recalcitrant One

The Totem-Maker (part ninety-three)

(2018, Stephanie Foster)