I Became an Ant Lord, So I Built a Hive Full of Beauties-Chapter 498: Night of Talking part two
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Vorak grunted. "And the Lord on the hill," he asked. "Kai the white hair."
"Limping," she said. "Bleeding. Thinking. Breathing. Not badly injured."
"You are certain," Vorak said.
"If he was unable to fight tomorrow," she said, "you would have heard it. Not here. In the way our men spoke. In the way the desert itself shifted. You would have seen a different pattern in the torches on that mountain. No. He will fight tomorrow."
Vorak’s jaw tightened.
"Good," he said. "I promised myself we would speak. I am old enough to keep promises, even to men I have not met. I will kill him tomorrow."
He reached for one of the clay markers and turned it between his fingers. It was carved with a simple symbol. A circle. Teeth around the edge.
"Tomorrow," he said, "we lay these in the ground. Here. Here. Here."
He tapped three points on the map with the marker. Each point aligned with a curve in the ramp, a place where Kai’s defenders would have to bunch up.
"Ground teeth," the old woman murmured. "They bite whoever steps on them, general. Yours as well as his."
"Then I will step first," Vorak said. "If my men see me walk where they are afraid to, they will walk. If the teeth bite me, better they learn the cost of my blood."
The old woman’s chalk paused.
"You always did assume that if someone had to pay, it should be you," she said. "It is a very inefficient habit. The armies like it. The ledgers do not."
Vorak smiled without humor.
"A queen once told me that a general who spends carelessly on men is a thief," he said. "I have no wish to be a thief. If I am to be a criminal, let me at least commit my own crimes."
He set the marker down and picked up another. This one bore a different sigil. A spiral.
"And this," he said. "Do we deploy the sandstorm coils?"
The old woman lifted her head.
"Against a mountain," she said. "You will scour your own men as thoroughly as his."
"We place them here," Vorak said. "On the flanks. If I can drive him down from his ramp, make him fight on the flats, then a controlled storm will punish his heavy plates. He is very heavy."
"You admire that about him," she observed.
"I admire the way he has refused to be wasteful," Vorak said. "I have spent men all day trying to make him break formation. He has not. Even when he leaped, he kept his wall still. That was cruel to my captains. Kind to his drones. I would have liked to recruit him in another life."
He placed the spiral marker on the map with the same care as a man placing a cutting board under meat.
"We will not deploy them unless we must," he said. "But we will have them. The Scarlet Kingdom pays me too well for me to be stingy with tools. And the capital is watching."
At that, the old woman’s mouth tightened.
"The capital watches with its own ledgers," she said. "They see numbers, not faces. You know this."
"I do," Vorak said. "That is why they hired me. Their numbers were not adding up."
She returned to her slate.
"For what it is worth," she said softly, "the Scarlet Kingdom is not a single hand. There are fingers that would prefer you not to die here. Some of them reach farther than you suspect."
Vorak glanced at her.
"Are you telling me to be cautious," he asked. "Or to be bold."
"Both," she said. "Always both. You never know who is listening."
As if on cue, someone outside shouted.
Vorak’s hand went to his spear.
The flap of the pavilion rustled. A young officer thrust his head in, face pale.
"General," he said. "We have a visitor at the outer line. Not one of ours."
Vorak’s brows rose.
"An envoy from the mountain," he asked. "They have found courage after all."
"N... no, general," the officer stammered. "She came from the north side. From the dark forest. She walked up to the perimeter ward and... told it to sit. We listened. The men are... uneasy. She got a royal token of scarlet ant kingdom."
The old woman’s chalk stopped dead.
"She told the ward to sit," she repeated.
"Yes, seer," the officer said. "And it did. The sigils dimmed. The ground teeth there turned themselves aside. It was... polite. She is... general, she is unranked, by the panel. But she feels wrong. We never saw her in the ant kingdom."
Vorak stared at him for a heartbeat, then put down the spiral marker.
"Bring her to me," he said. "And tell the men on the line that if they put so much as a scratch on her before I have spoken with her, I will use them to test the teeth myself."
"Yes, general," the officer said, and vanished.
Vorak glanced at the old woman.
"Well," he said. "It seems the night wishes to speak to us before the morning."
The old woman’s eyes had gone very far away.
"Be careful what you say," she advised. "To some visitors, words are as binding as contracts."
Vorak chuckled under his breath.
"Then perhaps it is time I negotiated with someone I do not have to pay," he said. "Only in a sense."
Ikea had never liked weak scarlet banners.
They were dramatic, yes. They caught the light beautifully. They snapped in the wind like the tongues of very tidy dragons. They also hid bloodstains.
She walked past three of them on her way into Vorak’s camp.
It was not the first Scarlet army she had walked into uninvited. It was the first she had done so while officially unranked, wearing a travel stained cloak and a status panel that insisted she was no one.
The perimeter wards had recognized her before the men did.
They had risen in front of her in a low, shimmering line, ready to hiss and snap and fling whatever nasty surprises Vorak had invested in them. She had lifted a hand, not in a grand gesture but in the casual, irritated flick she used on disobedient furniture, and murmured an old command under her breath.
"Sit," she had said. "You are making the place look unfriendly."
The wards, which were not intelligent and high rank enough to argue with the bone deep echo in her voice, had folded themselves down. The teeth in the ground had turned politely sideways.
The men on watch had made noises that were probably words in their own internal language of terrified profanity.
