Chapter 327: 327: Games of Wars
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No one flinched at the word throne. They were ants. They did not flinch at words.
Vorak raised the Mandible Stone enough for the four to see it and then set it down again. "With this I will know what he is. All I need is a drop of his blood. I will talk to him myself when I arrive. Until then, I refuse to be bored."
Mardek’s grin widened a degree. Oru’s antennae angled as if a good scent had drifted upwind.
"I am dividing the fun. Skall. Oru. Yavri. Mardek. You will each take one thousand ant. Leave the heavy units. Leave the supply wagons. Travel fast. Reach that mountain and conquer it within twenty days. Do not waste your men on sand that will never remember their names. Take it from behind. Take it from underneath. Take it from the sky by climbing a cliff I do not see on this map, I do not care. Take the mountain under your control. Bring me the white hair and put his face against the ground under my boot."
The line of four did not move. The message had sunk already. Vorak smiled and let them taste the hook he always hid in the meat.
"The first among you who succeeds will receive the materials and the sanction to climb to seven star rank. I do not mean promises. I mean a cart and a chest and a ceremony and a line in the rolls. You will not ask me. I am telling you. You will earn it and I will pay for it."
This time something moved. Not their bodies. The air between them. They were six stars. They did not beg. They did not hope where others could see. But the will that fuels promotions has a sound. He had heard it in many tents. It always lifted his mood.
He leaned forward on his stool and lowered his voice until it became something conspirators use.
"I will take a detour," he said. "Three weeks. I will be later than my shadow. You will keep me informed and entertained. Send reports to every camp I raise, whether or not I am still sleeping in it when your messengers arrive. Draw me maps with blood if you cannot find ink. If you discover the white hair is nothing, string him by the wrists anyway and wait. If you discover he is something, cut away some body parts but don’t kill him too fast, wait for me so that I may ask my questions."
Skall said, "Yes, General," in a voice that sounded like a door closing.
Oru asked, "Rules of engagement."
Vorak looked pleased. He liked Oru best when he asked for permission to be cruel. "Avoid a siege. I will not congratulate a man for starving a mountain I need intact. Do not burn anything I will want later. Kill whoever gets between you and the peak. Do not touch any royal-marked females. Bring me the white hair. If he is not there, bring me the nearest thing that cries when he is hurt."
Yavri said, "Understood."
Mardek rolled his wrist idly. "If another of us reaches the mountain’s shadow at the same hour, who claims first right."
Vorak grinned, open and white. "You can claim it from each other like soldiers. I will not police your pride as long as my result does not limp."
They bowed their heads in the exact degree their rank allowed and stepped back.
He let them get to the edge of the awning before he added, "One more piece."
They stopped.
"Each of you will take a different road. Skall, you will cut east, hug the marsh line, and come up under the ridge. The mud will slow you but no one checks the marsh in dry season. Oru, you will vanish. I do not want to hear your feet again until your shadow falls across the mountain’s mouth. Yavri, take the old caravan cut. It is obvious, which is why you will not be obvious on it. Mardek, go north first. Make the birds nervous. Then turn hard and run the spine of the dunes like a knife. If you die in a hole, I will be annoyed."
They nodded again, the nod of people who had wanted orders and liked the taste of the ones they had been given.
"Go," Vorak said. "Your time starts now."
They went.
He listened to the camp change shape around their leaving. Captains peeled off their companies like bark from wet wood and reformed smaller. Quartermasters cut ration ropes and tied new ones. Scout masters came in close for a breath, took scent, and vanished. The great body of the army did not sway. It never swayed.
The twenty thousand ants army that marched with him belonged to Vorak alone, and he turned his head slightly to watch the way they breathed. Four thousand ants left with four vice generals for his entertainment. Sixteen thousand ants standing at his back. Enough to crush a town with a shrug. Enough to be crushed by the legs if he made a single pointing of his finger.
Vorak turned the map and marked four lines with a piece of coal. He did not draw them wrong on purpose, but he did draw them the way he would not take them, because that was how he kept his mind limber. He placed a small X where he believed the white hair’s mountain perched like an insult. He set the Mandible Stone on the X and pressed until the wood dented.
"I will talk to you soon," he murmured to the nothing between forests. "If you are the killer, you will confess in a language I like. If you are not the killer, you will become the lesson I need."
He lifted his eyes and looked past the awning at the forest which pretended to be old enough not to care. The northern trees stood like wet spears. The eastern trees leaned in to eavesdrop. He smiled without joy.
"Keep me entertained," he repeated, this time to the night itself. Then he sat back and called for the next reports, because a general who made games of wars still counted bread and iron like a miser.