When the last glimmer in the sky had faded, and the waters of the Aracthus had drained away, the men on the banks climbed stiffly down into the damp riverbed. A messenger from upstream reported that three of the cannon barrels they transported had been unsecured when the waters of the Aracthus swept down the canyon. They’d lost sixteen men when two of the loose barrels had destroyed the support for a platform down river from Eugenides and Xenophon. Four of the twenty camped on the platform had managed to grasp the supports of a platform farther downstream and had been plucked out of the floodwaters. Of the rest of the men there was no sign.

The cannon were found at the edge of the pool at the base of the last great waterfall before the Aracthus reached the dystopia. “Two of them were split and unusable. The third Xenophon decided was still worth the difficulty of transporting. He had snorted when he’d seen them by the bank and said, “Thank the gods we don’t have to dig them off the bottom.” The pool was deep, deepest where the waters of the river dropped into it. The bottom was invisible in the darkness, and retrieving cast-iron cannon from the depths would have been impossible.

Where the ground was level, the gorge was wider, and there was room for the soldiers to camp in relative comfort for the day. There were no fires, but the men took dry uniform tunics and pants from the waterproofed bags they’d carried on their shoulders and put them on. When the sun set, Xenophon began the cautious advance across the dystopia. Once again the cannon moved impossibly slowly, and the soldiers dragging them cursed.

“Attolia’s border patrols won’t come this far?” Xenophon checked with Eugenides. He needn’t have, these details had been discussed in Eddis, but Eugenides was happy to reassure him, glad that the responsibility of leadership was Xenophon’s, not his.

“I doubt they’ll bring their horses into the dystopia without good cause, certainly not at night,” he said.

Xenophon was relieved that the Thief no longer seemed offended by the general’s gaffe the night before. “This is the stupidest plan that I have ever in my career participated in,” he said.

“I love stupid plans,” said Eugenides. “How long will it take to get across the dystopia?”

“Twice as long as it would take without those worthless cannon of yours.”

Eugenides laughed.

Once the Eddisians reached the edge of the dystopia they were surrounded by the trees called the Sea of Olives that grew along the base of the Hephestial Mountains in Attolia. They regrouped into orderly units and rested. They made no fires, and the olive trees hid them from view. In the afternoon their officers directed the soldiers onto one of the narrow tracks that led through the groves, and they began their march toward the Seperchia. Before they reached the road, they met up with a horse trader. A sharp-faced man, he looked likely to drive hard bargains, but he surrendered his horses to the Eddisians, taking nothing in return, and disappeared between the olives to return to Eddis.

The horses were hitched to the gun carriages. Then the Eddisians moved on, under Xenophon’s cautious direction, from the narrow track to a road and down the road to a small town on the river. The townspeople stared incuriously at the soldiers in the heavily quilted tunics that were their uniform and their armor. All of them were colored the celestial blue and yellow of Attolia’s army. The disguised Eddisians moved through the town to the docks where four ships waited to receive them. Wordlessly the soldiers were directed by their officers up the gangplanks and onto the riverboats. The men managing cannon muttered directions under their breaths, to hide their Eddisian accents, as they unhitched the horses and shifted the cannon barrels to the edge of a dock, where they were loaded with the aid of a block and tackle onto one of the ships.

Eugenides watched, unable to interfere, but he whispered to Xenophon, “Please the gods, no one is going to notice that you just put twelve cannon onto one riverboat.”

Xenophon winced, but he also was unable to interfere. His orders or a soldier’s response might give away their identity. They weren’t the only soldiers in the town, and it was urgent that they leave it as quickly as possible. Within the hour they were gone, the boats moving down the river with the current, while Eddis’s agent, who had procured the boats, reported to Xenophon. He was a merchant and a citizen of one of the city-states on the peninsula, with no particular loyalty to Attolia or to Eddis. His loyalty was to his own treasury, and he would remain with the Eddisians until their need for secrecy was over.

The ships were stocked with food, and each had a bricked hearth in which to cook. On each ship, hot coffee was poured into the soldiers’ cups, and they made themselves comfortable for the trip. They would not risk a stop on the shore until it was time to disembark.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

IN EPHRATA, ATTOLIA SAT RELAXED on the large chair on the dais that served as her throne when she was in residence. Until the current war with her neighbors, her visits had been rare. Ephrata was a small castle. As with so many of Sounis’s and Attolia’s strongholds, the one large room that had been the entirety of some minor prince’s home had come to be the main hall of a fortified residence. The word megaron, which had originally described a building consisting of only one room, had changed to mean both this style of stronghold and the large hall inside.

There was a harbor nearby, but it was small and not well protected during the summer windstorms, so the tiny town on its shore had never prospered. Now it suited the queen’s purpose well, allowing her to be close to her army as it blockaded the pass to Eddis and to communicate with her ships as they moved in and out of the harbor at her orders. None of the ships stayed long. Her navy was not so large that she could keep a fighting ship inactive at Ephrata, and so the poor harbor posed little danger to her fleet. All her larger ships sailed with her fleet, between the islands. She relied on a few fast messenger ships to carry orders to her sailors, but she had sent two out the day before, one of them carrying her secretary of the archives back to the capital to keep an eye on events there for his queen, and the harbor was empty.

Seated on her throne, Attolia listened to reports from her army and from Relius’s spies. The spies reported mainly on her own army—at least on its hereditary officers—but they also confirmed the reports that the Eddisian army had camped just within the pass.

Attolia believed it was a tactical error and was pleased. Eddis had moved her army beyond the protecting fire of her cannon, and she wouldn’t easily be able to retreat up the narrow pass. Attolia’s army was the larger and the better equipped. She was on the verge of summoning her officers for a council of war when the Medean ambassador was announced. The queen dismissed the men before her and smiled at the Mede.

“Your Majesty hardly needs interrupt her business for me,” he said as he came forward.

“The business can wait for my pleasure, Nahuseresh. I had thought you were many miles away in the capital.”

“It was too dull to bear any longer without you,” he said, bowing over her hand. “And too terribly suspenseful to know that you were here perhaps in direst need of my assistance.” He said it with a smile, as if to assure her that he joked, that he had complete confidence in her ability to direct her army and her barons to Eddis’s defeat.