Chapter Forty Eight

Any relief Cinna had felt at reuniting with her uncle had been quickly blown away by worry for her father. He’d already been down on the walls when this latest crisis appeared, and judging by the position of his banner, his first response had been to go towards it. Lilia’s comment hadn’t exactly inspired confidence, either.

“Can you not simply…tell those skeletons to fall apart or something?” Cinna asked.

“It’s not that simple! If I told Mr. Bearbones to fall apart, he’d just look at me weird!” Lilia replied.

“Your bear is a singular skeleton! That is very much not!” Cinna argued, gesturing at the construct below.

It was unnatural in every way. Skeletons practically flowed towards the ruins of the Stryk River bridge from the other side of the fjord, where a scaffold of bones had begun constructing itself. Each time a skeleton touched a gap or edge of the bone structure they collapsed into a pile that swiftly snapped into place, becoming part of the forming bridge. It wasn’t just human skeletons either; animal and monster skeletons were being used as well.

“Why wait until now…?” Tryggve wondered aloud. Cinna took a deep breath to center herself, thinking the question over herself.

“Nothing has changed except that they’ve begun to build that bridge instead of using the ones they were constructing. That suggests they didn’t know how until now,” Cinna hypothesized. She turned to Lilia. “Can you at least tell us what they’re doing?”

“They’re stitching all of those souls together so they act like a single skeleton. When undead are reduced to bones they use mana to hold themselves together. Their mana…sort of coats the bones, except it doesn’t, because it’s not physical, but the important thing is that two skeletons can’t share the same bone, or they shouldn’t be able to, but—”

“But in this case they can, because it’s all effectively one soul,” Cinna summed up, cutting off Lilia, who’d begun to ramble. She always felt bad doing that to the little necromancer, but Lilia could talk for hours and had a tendency to forget where she was when she got going. In her own defense, Cinna tried to let Lilia keep going as long as she wanted in safer moments.

“Right! I never even thought of doing something like this! It’s crazy!”

“You really do know your stuff. Question is, can you kill it?” Tryggve asked.

“Yes. Well, no. I mean, I can, but it would take a while. It’s more of a they. I could erase the spells holding individual souls together, but I’d have to do it one at a time,” Lilia explained.

“Too slow. There’s going to be undead crossing that bridge the entire time. Perhaps we could work on isolating those liches instead—capture them and kill them one at a time until our own mages can destroy the bridge themselves,” Cinna suggested. “I have experience doing exactly that. I can relieve my father on the walls and thin their ranks.”

“That’s no faster than doing it her way,” Tryggve pointed out.

“But we need to eliminate the liches anyway, so it serves more than one purpose. The liches are already abandoning their other bridges to defend this one, so we can use this as an opportunity to concentrate our own forces as well, allowing us to more easily rotate our reserves in and out because of the narrower area of engagement,” Cinna argued.

“Not a bad idea, but I see a simpler one. Lilia, would it be possible for you to remove souls from the center of that construct, not just the edge?” Tryggve asked.

“Oh, uh, I don’t see why not. The spells holding it all together are kind of flimsy. Probably because they’re building it so fast. But what’s stopping them from just putting them back together behind me?” Lilia questioned, tilting her head to the side.

“Good point,” Tryggve acknowledged with a nod. He didn’t look discouraged, though, which told Cinna he’d found a solution as quickly as Lilia had poked a hole in his plan. “Aim for the supports instead. It’s hard to tell now, but I spotted some thick bones near the bottom when they were getting started. Probably trolls or the like. Remove those and the whole thing will collapse under its own weight.”

“I can do that!” Lilia confirmed excitedly. Although Cinna couldn’t quite figure out what had her so eager, she could guess. As far as Cinna knew Lilia had limited experience with undead trolls, so the promise of getting to experiment with a couple likely appealed to her.

“Uncle, I’ll escort Lilia as close to the bridge as she needs,” Cinna volunteered. In her mind, that had never been in question. She wouldn’t let this ward of hers out of her sight if she could help it.

“Out of the question,” Tryggve shot back, unwittingly echoing Cinna’s own thoughts. “You’re too injured, and we no longer have the luxury of priests that can heal wounds in an instant.”

“Assign as many knights to guard us as you please, but I’m going with her,” Cinna insisted.

“Are you a fledgling knight, hungry for glory, or a general?” Tryggve demanded in a hard tone, reminding Cinna of her responsibilities. True enough, it was hardly the place of a general to be personally body guarding VIPs. While the commander of an army typically stood on the battlefield with their troops and participated in the fighting when it was called for, this wasn’t one of those times. Ironically enough, Cinna’s father being on the front at that very moment proved that fact rather than defying it. He wasn’t the general in command of the fortress’s defenses; that role fell to Tryggve.

And yet…

“This battle doesn’t need two generals giving orders, uncle. But it does need Lilia, and she is not a soldier. She’s a villager thrust into a war she had no idea existed mere weeks ago. You cannot expect her to stand on the frontline guarded by a unit of soldiers she has never met and feel safe enough to fulfill her role,” Cinna countered smoothly. Her uncle’s face twisted as if he’d tasted something sour.

“Fine. Find the biggest shield you can and keep her covered, but leave the actual fighting to people with two working arms,” Tryggve ordered, waving Cinna away. He had orders to give, and Cinna had a lot of distance to cover. She rather expected that by the time she reached the ground level he’d have a group of the best knights not already in combat waiting for her.

“Let’s go, Lilia,” Cinna said, guiding Lilia away by the shoulder. As they reached the stairs, Cinna continued. “I’m sorry. I never asked if you were willing to risk your life to aid us.”

“That’s okay,” Lilia replied as if she’d never even considered it as something that required an apology. “If I do it, though, can I ask for a reward afterwards?”

“Of…course?” Cinna promised tentatively, surprised by the request. Lilia hardly ever displayed anything approaching a desire, so Cinna hadn’t expected her to ask for a reward. That didn’t mean that Cinna had assumed Lilia’s services were free, of course. She had a list of things she planned on doing to return the many favors Lilia had done her by now, and the many she hoped the necromancer would continue to perform. It’s just that those rewards largely pertained to her greatest interest in life, namely necromancy, and Lilia scarcely needed to ask for help with that.

“Great!” Lilia said without elaboration. Expecting her to continue at some point, Cinna stayed silent until they reached the elevator, but it soon became clear Lilia had no intention of explaining herself further.

“Might I ask what you intend to request?” Cinna posed the question as she set the elevator to go to the bottom floor, then stepped aside so Lilia could activate it.

“I’ll tell you after we win,” Lilia promised.

“…very well,” Cinna relented with a sigh. Few things were less fortuitous than making promises right before a battle, but explaining that to Lilia would be an exercise in futility. Not because she thought poorly of Lilia’s intelligence, but because she suspected that talking about luck would just make Lilia question hers.

The two stepped off the elevator at the bottom with Cinna in the lead and proceeded out of the keep. In the courtyard, much as she’d predicted, a platoon of knights awaited her. Fewer than she’d expected, in all honesty, but where they were going there were already a plentitude of friendly soldiers present. One of the knights carried Cinna’s own standard—a selkie, for which the country was named, in armor and bearing a sword in one hand and a scepter in the other. She didn’t know where they’d acquired it, as the original had been lost with her bannerman during the retreat from Saltrvatrmarr Fortress. It might have just been a copy of her father’s standard with the tips sharpened to show it represented the crown princess rather than the king.

As Cinna walked into the courtyard, one of the knights stepped forward to offer her a shield. Based on the lack of heraldry adorning the heater shield, Cinna guessed it to be a common infantryman’s shield plucked straight from the armory rather than the knight’s own equipment. Selkarcian knights rarely used shields to begin with, but it wasn’t unheard of for them to carry ones with this shape to display their coat of arms, hence the confusion.

“Thank you, sir…?”

“Tennfjord, ma’am,” replied the knight.

“Sir Tennfjord. Help me with the strap, if you would,” Cinna said as she accepted the shield. While the knight strapped the shield to Cinna’s arm, she turned to the rest. “My uncle might ordered you all to escort myself and this mage, but he likely did not have time to elaborate. I shall. This maiden accompanying me—”

One of the knights, likely a man risen from the ranks of the common soldiery, mostly managed to suppress a laugh at the word “maiden.” Knowing her own reputation, Cinna chose to let it pass.

“—is a mage with a unique skillset. I’m sure word has spread across the fortress of the bridge being constructed with necromantic magic at this very moment. By now it is likely complete. That bridge, if it stands, will allow the undead army clear and easy access to our very gates. They will assault those gates day and night with an unending stream of corpses just as they have the walls, but in far greater numbers, if that bridge is allowed to stand,” Cinna continued, looking out across the thirty-odd helmets facing her, some with their visors up and some not. A few didn’t even have visors to raise, granted.

“Your duty is this: escort myself and Mage Lilia to the base of the bridge and defend her until she is able to sabotage the bridge and collapse it into the fjord. Sally through the gate. Fend off the inevitable waves of draugr that attempt to stop us. Push them back onto the bridge itself and hold them there until Lilia’s work is completed. Do this, and you save not just this your fellows; not just this fortress; but Selkarc itself. Your family and friends are counting on you, Selkarc’s finest, to carry this mission through to success.”

Cinna paused, giving the words a moment to sink in and for dramatic effect. She needed these men and woman to understand the importance of this duty; to be willing to fight and die to the last if it meant success.

“Are you with me? Will you march into the jaws of the enemy to thwart this latest of their attempts at massacring us and adding our corpses to their army?”

Thirty voices roared in agreement.

“Excellent! Then form ranks, knights of Selkarc, and join me as we bring the fight to the enemy!”