Positioning

Gil returned to Culhwch’s castle in good spirits, as much as anything intending to drop off Clust. As good as he was at tracking, he was apparently pretty ass in a fight. He apparently used to be tougher, but still no better than any average soldier in this land and he was pushing forty.

Balin was extremely reluctant to enter the castle, so Gil left him alone Echidna, since the dragon had massively warmed up to him once he was part of her “tribe.” Then again, she was slithering off into the woods pretty soon after he left. Presumably a girl had to eat; she was an absolutely massive creature and she really hadn’t eaten much relative to her body weight in the last few days.

Rose was just outside of the castle’s grounds, tossing hastily carved darts into trees. They weren’t very aerodynamic, basically just sharpened sticks, but they were functional in her hands and pierced all the way through the trees when tossed from a hundred feet away. She didn’t consider it anywhere near as impressive as Gil did.

“I’m slowly increasing how much energy I put into these things.” She explained. “As it is, I’m being very, very conservative. In Brockton Bay I could throw something like this clear through a brick wall. I do not want to regrow another hand.”

“Must make arming you pretty cheap.” Gil said, studying the “dart.”

“Hardly. They’d never let me use something this crude in the field, even if I wanted to. Too high a chance for collateral damage.” She said. “My crossbow is substantially more accurate and has a vastly larger range. I just haven’t been able to figure out how to reliably extract something the way I can in Brockton, so if I shoot a bolt here it’s probably going to be stuck for the foreseeable future. It’s a shame I never learned how to use a longbow. Did you know crossbows are illegal here?”

“Probably because they punch through armor even without your powers.” Gil said with a shrug. “Also a fair bit easier to use than a proper longbow. Knights in settings like these tend to define anything that gives a random peasant an edge over them as dishonorable. Crossbows, poison, groups of people fighting one guy, that sort of thing.”

Rose grunted, accepting the point.

“How did it go?” She asked. “Did you get him?”

“Fully.” Gil said, pulling out his tablet and gesturing at it. “He should be a tremendous help. Depending on what else happens, we might want to invite him to travel abroad.”

“Great. So, are we leaving now or waiting for those fellows?” Rose asked, gesturing vaguely to the southeast.

A couple dozen names, all in the white text that indicated Lucan’s retinue, were moving quickly towards the castle. Hellawes the Necromancer lady and Breuse the dark knight were the only two people above T2 in the cluster, at T4 and T3.

“Absolutely we are bringing them.” Gil said. “They’re the only disposable troops here.”

“Disposable?” Rose asked. “I know they were drafted as an alternative to the gallows, but I don’t believe Lucan sees them in such a pragmatic light.”

“It’s less callous than you think.” Gil explained. “He’s the host. The enemy is here to fight Lucan, everyone and everything else is just set dressing to the Company, but this is supposed to be a friendly match where nobody gets excessively hurt. Any retinue member who gets killed will be restored to perfect health and sent back when all this ends.”

“Why not reset the world at large?” Rose asked, “If they wish to minimize consequences.”

“Resurrecting a few people is much, much cheaper for the company than rolling back an entire world, especially if anyone is captured and taken away.” Gil explained, “The difference is trivial to the Company as a whole, but the Board of Directors will latch onto any way to save resources. Across ten million bouts, it becomes big enough to qualify as slightly more than a rounding error.”

Rose stared at Gil, not quite able to process the sheer scale of what he described. She could see the outline of what he meant in her mind, but it was the difference between the map and the continent. She accepted that as good enough after a few moments.

“So truly disposable because they will return?” Rose asked, rolling back the subject. “Even so, it sounds terribly callous.”

“People risk themselves in war.” Gil said. “I don’t intend to command anyone to toss themselves off of a cliff. We need to know what the enemy is capable of.”

Rose rolled her eyes.

“I have not become soft hearted, husband.” She said, “I’m asking if they will accept this same logic. I certainly don’t feel like an immortal, and I doubt they do either. You do tend to be a bit cavalier.”

“It’ll be fine.” Gil assured her. “Just a bit of harrying if we can justify it, with Balin in the lead. At minimum I’d like to get a look at their form of transport. Besides, I’m honest with you because I know you can handle it. I calibrate for everyone the same way.”

Rose rolled her eyes. In her experience, he thought quite a lot of quite a few rather unimpressive people if that was any indication.

••••••••••

Nimue’s eyes opened in the middle of the night, though she saw nothing through them. Her body sat up, slowly, gently. No quick movements, no loud noises. Her chest still rose and fell with the cadence of the sleeping. She padded across the room, bare feet on soft fur carpet instead of cold stone, and crouched next to a small chair near the bed Rose had sat in earlier that day.

It had been another failed attempt at seduction by Lady Durst. Really, the woman was almost as bad as Merlin. Nimue was quite daring by the measures of her own world and certainly intended to take a lover when she was ready to do so, but there were limits. She was certainly not open to dalliances with someone she had only just met. Some passing thought even acknowledged how strange it was she was even considering a woman for such a role, though it faded like morning fog. Even as forward as Lady Durst was, it was pleasant to speak with another lady so learned in natural philosophy.

Rose claimed that she was from a land where such topics were taught to most under the names of science and mathematics, and upon being pressed the limits of her knowledge manifested quickly. Broad as the ocean, shallow as a stream, but still better than most ladies of Camelot whose whole world started and ended with the work of raising children and managing their husbands’ estates while he went off to war. Practical, but unendingly dull after the hundredth repetition about managing peasants and calculating tribute.

Nimue’s hand found the item she had been looking for, a small wooden stamp that Rose had left tucked away behind the seat. One end glistened with blue ink, barely visible from the faint moonlight streaming in the window. Nimue hiked up her shift, and pressed the cool wood against the back of her own thigh, just beneath her rump. A place where no man or woman, not even herself, would have any need to gaze upon in the next three days.

Nimue’s lips smiled a smile that was not her own, and she discarded the stamp back to its hiding place. She returned to her bed, with no evidence of this night’s happenings save a strange dream.

In another room of the castle, Rose opened her own eyes and grinned. Her entire body hummed with tension even as it shuddered with exhaustion. Sleep would evade her after delicate work like that, she was certain. Had she made even the smallest mistake, she was sure she would have been cast out violently; it had felt like diffusing a bomb.

Well, if she couldn’t sleep she’d make it someone else’s problem.

“Gil.” She said, shaking him awake. “It worked.”

Gil barely surfaced, blinking blearily at her. She was happy, rather than panicked, so he marked the interruption of his sleep as superfluous and rolled over once he puzzled out what she meant. He might have been more receptive to being woken up had there been any chance of a celebratory rendezvous, but thus far he and his wife still didn’t have that kind of relationship despite his best efforts.

“D’nt talk about it near the corn.” He mumbled, refusing to awaken. “S’dangerous.”

••••••••••

Breuse and his boys arrived a few days before Lucan could. Most of them seemed to be reasonably skilled woodsmen, which probably let them move a bit faster. Gil was pretty sure they were sent ahead because they were a little bit offputting.

They were less a disciplined military unit than a raucous band of jumped up bandits, led by Breuse in dented black armor. They, one and all, leered at both Rose and Echidna in an openly predatory manner, one even going so far as to point at the dragon’s chest and thrust his hips to the great amusement of his fellows. Despite what some may think, it’s not that hard to tell the difference between playful banter and premeditation if one is familiar with both. There was just enough of an edge to it that Gil suspected that under normal circumstances they’d be a real danger to any women they encountered.

Of course, these weren’t normal circumstances. Each and every one of the men with white name tags floating above their heads was bound to the laws of chivalry with an oath, enforced by Lucan’s binding. Regardless of the dark deeds they might wish to do, they could do none of them if it would be dishonorable to do so. Gawain was more likely to overstep than these men in any real sense of the word.

There was no greater evidence of their pacification than the woman, labeled in white as Dame Hellawes (T4), that rode impassively alongside them. She had no visible protection from the brutes, not even the fragile shield of being unattractive, but she looked at the men around her with more disdain than fear. She wore a dress made of dark fabric, which clung to her torso before flaring out into skirts that exaggerated her hips. Nothing too impractical, not by the standards of this world, but definitely intended to enhance her allure more than anything else.

“Good, he sent his necromancer.” Gil said with a smile. “Should be useful, probably.”

“A shame she can’t raise an army of the dead.” Rose said, pursing her lips. “If you wanted disposable, there’s not much more disposable than that.”

“Maybe not, but one thing that does clear that bar would be illusions.” Gil said, cracking a smile, “Supposedly she can do those too. The real question is how good she is with them. Illusionist is a discipline with almost as much variance as Necromancer across the many worlds I’ve seen. Also, assuming her magic works like Nimue’s, we might also be constrained by what she has ready to go.”

“How often does she expect to need an illusory army?” Rose asked rhetorically. “It does sound somewhat specific.”

“Yeah, but she’s working for Lucan. He’s a knight.” Gil said, “Given her line of work, that’s not as silly of a question as it otherwise might be. Be sure to pump her for information while we are on the road.”

“Why me?” Rose asked. “You seem more likely to be able to know the right questions.”

“Well for one, look at the company she keeps.” Gil says. “I don’t think that she’s primed to be receptive to a man speaking to her right now. Besides, I’m going to need to actively manage the men, in particular I need to keep them separate from Balin, and I doubt they’ll listen to you about anything. Speaking of which, we can’t let them settle or we’ll lose another day. I don’t think we can afford that.”