The road rounded the final trees, finally giving Marshall Allard a clear view of the open sea at the bottom of the cliff. He allowed himself a relieved sigh at the sight of the white sails over the glistening blue waters. An Imperial frigate was riding north on an easterly wind just a mile or so off the coast—and it wasn’t alone. Allard spotted more sails to the north and south.

  “Never thought I’d be this glad to see a damn boat,” a soldier behind him voiced what Allard was thinking, causing a tired chuckle to go around the group of Allard’s staff officers.

  “Don’t tell Admiral Ducrot I said this,” Allard said, “but I have to agree.”

  It truly was a beautiful sight.

  The navy was watching the coast. Most likely keeping up the blockade of Loegrian harbours, too. And most importantly for Allard’s personal health, the ships meant that there was a chance they had relayed at least some of his many reports to the Roi Solei. If they had, supplies and possibly even reinforcements might be already on the way.

  And even if none of the messengers had reached the ships and Valoir, communication with the mainland was now possible. There’d be healers aboard too, who hadn’t yet been squeezed dry like lemons. Who could practise their craft in the security of salted planks.

  Allard sighed again at that thought. He felt old. Ancient, in fact. Every muscle in his body ached in a way he had never experienced before. A persistent malaise had him shivering in the saddle. Made him feel weak. Fragile.

  He feared it was another effect of the Rot. Or perhaps it was the curse of Loegrion taking a hold of him.

  He had survived thirty years in the service of the Empire, most of that time spent in one campaign or another. He had travelled all the reaches of the earth. He had seen natural diseases and magical maladies and curses. But he had never seen whatever this was. Despite the Empire’s best alchemy, every little cut led to infection, and even a burst blister had laid him out for a day because the bleeding wouldn’t stop until an exhausted healer had managed to close the wound.

  Even the prince, who had a healer all to himself, had nearly vomited himself to death when he had caught one of the myriad sicknesses of this cursed country. He hadn’t left his carriage in a week.

  All Allard could hope was that he’d feel better once he was back at the mainland. It was getting exhausting to put up a brave face in front of his soldiers. He couldn’t afford to be seen flagging. Not while the men endured worse.

  It actually made him miss Soto. The man hadn’t had much sense, but he had been good at driving the men onwards, no matter what trials lay ahead.

  It was only thanks to the madness of Lord Relentless that desertion was hardly a problem. There was nowhere for the men to run, no no-man’s-land to hide out at. Allard supposed now that they had reached the coast, the sea’s sanctification might entice more soldiers to try their luck.

  The thought made him glance over his shoulder, at the endless snake of soldiers marching up the gentle slope he had just ridden up. They were moving in good order, and at a decent pace—at least considering the many sick they couldn’t afford to leave behind for fear of feeding the Rot, and the countless beasts of burden they had lost.

  Allard turned back into the other direction, towards the distant frigate. The road was leading up another one of the bloody cliffs that made landing troops on these cursed shores so difficult. He spurred his horse, and the rest of his staff followed him.

  When the group reached the top of the cliff, Allard had them hail the frigate. A signaleer stepped right up to the edge of the cliff, holding two bright blue flags with a white accent in the middle. When the signal officer was ready with his looking glass, the soldier waved his flags up and down to each of his sides for a few seconds, then lowered them again, waited, before repeating the signal.

  Allard had to fight against the urge to step up right to the edge of the cliff too, as he extended his own looking glass. That would have just risked obscuring the signaleer or the signal officer’s line of sight. Allard’s hands shook as he waited for the ship to answer. It seemed to take forever. As row after row of the vanguard marched past them, more officers gathered, taking out their own glasses.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  “Glory to Mithras,” Allard whispered when finally, he spotted two red dots jumping up and down between the sails and the deck—the answering signal. He reckoned the frigate was just out of range for effective communications, but his signal officer was younger and apparently had better eyes. Allard could barely make out the movements while the major was quickly rattling off letters to a scribe.

  It took some back and forth, but eventually, the signal officer announced: “There’s a village with a harbour just to the north. They’re offering to meet us there.”

  “Perfect,” Allard said.

  He couldn’t wait.

  He expected the signal officer to relay that answer right away, but the man was already staring through his spy glass again, giving letters to his aide to write down.

  “They’re also going to hail the rest of the fleet,” the signal officer added after another minute of hasty scribbling.

  “Good man,” Allard said. “Ride with me. I want a report of everything they sent.”

  He waved to the rest of his staff to get moving again. A fishing village. He couldn’t wait to get there. But first—

  He turned to a young captain. “Ride ahead and catch up with the leading troops. They may requisition whatever food that fishing village has, but under no circumstances are the villagers or their boats to be harmed. We may need to requisition more food from them soon.”

  At least the fish would be fresh, unlike their supplies.

  ***

  Deggan was on fire.

  Allard stopped his horse in the middle of the road when the city came into view. He had known what to expect—the pillar of smoke had been visible ever since they had left camp in the morning. The fire must have started sometime late on the day before.

  Now that the city was close enough that he could distinguish individual ruins, the stench and the ash in the air made even the trained war horses prance. Allard gently patted his gelding’s neck to calm him down.

  “Madness,” the prince whispered from next to Allard. “Has everyone in this whole country gone mad?”

  “I suppose so,” Allard said.

  His hands cramped around the reins as he prompted his horse to move onwards. Towards the burning city.

  He couldn’t shake off a flicker of worry.

  According to the army’s intelligence, Deggan had been a city of several tens of thousands of souls. There was no way that Lord Relentless on his own had convinced all those people to run—and if he had used his werewolves to drive them out, the Grande Armée should have come across at least some of the refugees.

  The fact that the outriders hadn’t caught or even seen a single living Loegrian indicated that the evacuation had been orderly. Organised. That there was a place for all those displaced people.

  And not just any place. A place which they felt gave them a better chance of survival than throwing themselves at the mercy of the Imperial army.

  It also indicated that the Loegrian leadership thought there was still a point to going through all the effort of evacuating cities. That there was some point to burning down so many homes.

  Which was mad. Allard turned to look behind himself, at the snake of soldiers marching steadily north. The sight filled him with pride. Despite the Rot and the werewolves and the weather and the sicknesses and the bloody Lord Relentless, his men were still moving like a well-oiled machine.

  Now, that was relentless.

  And it made the evacuation and burning of Deggan all the stranger. How far were the Loggies planning to retreat? All the way across the Argentum Formation?

  Wouldn’t that be nice. They could have the plains for all Allard cared. His orders were to take Deva and restore the Roi Solei’s rule within its former borders.

  He straightened in the saddle, looking down at the city. A few surrounding villages on the way had been burned to the smouldering ground, with just a few stone foundations left. There was no army in sight, not even a place for a larger group of werewolves to hide.

  It seemed too easy.

  Once the Grande Armée had taken Deggan, all of Loegrion was open to them. They would sail straight up the White Torrent to Deva, take the capital with the reinforcements he had requested last week as soon as he had linked up with the navy. Which should be getting on the ships just about now.

  Then it was just a matter of squashing out the resistance in the south and around Mannin.

  Allard had expected a fight to take the harbour, maybe another werewolf trick—just something else but smoldering ruins.

  This felt too much like Erkford. Like he was being handed the city on a silver platter so he wouldn’t look elsewhere. But where wasn’t he supposed to look?

  “I want outriders scouting the land as far out from the city as the Rot will let them,” Allard ordered. “And I want the city scouted, too, as soon as the fire allows it.”

  He wasn’t going to have another bridge blown up in his face. He wasn’t going to be surprised by invisible werewolves like Soto, either.

  Not even by Lord Relentless.