Valkyrie's Shadow

Winter's Crown: Act 6, Chapter 14

Winter's Crown: Act 6, Chapter 14

Chapter 14

Lluluvien returned to the living area, helping Ludmila to prepare as quickly as possible. As she slipped into a light summer one-piece, she glanced down at her chambermaid.

“What sort of look did you give Lady Shalltear?” Ludmila whispered.

“I wonder,” Lluluvien lightly replied.

The door to the manor opened again.

“Sister,” Wiluvien’s voice called out. “Two Bone Vultures are waiting outside. What–oh, good morning, Lady Shalltear.”

“Good morning.”

Wiluvien appeared around the divider, glancing over what was going on before stepping in to help out. After a final, hurried check, Ludmila stepped out into the hall. Lady Shalltear was seated at the window with a game board on the desk. Three Vampire Brides stood silently along the wall.

“Good morning, Lady Shalltear,” Ludmila said as she walked into the Hall.

“Good morning, Lady Zahradnik,” Lady Shalltear replied.

“I’ve not seen you with your Vampire Brides in some time,” Ludmila noted. “Have we finished staffing all of the new post offices?”

“Almost,” Lady Shalltear replied. “These children will be working in the one you eventually build for your harbour.”

Ludmila examined each of the office workers in turn. Lady Shalltear tended to use ‘children’ to refer to members of her household, regardless of their appearance. Possessed of dark hair, elfin features and jealousy-inducing figures, no one else would ever refer to these exotic women as ‘children’. She eyed their diaphanous, alabaster garb, wondering if their extended presence would be a threat to public order and productivity.

“I understand that Warden’s Vale is to be a node in the transportation network,” Ludmila said, “but there won’t be much for them to do at the moment. At most, we have the Bone Vultures delivering parcels around the fief.”

“They have additional tasks as well,” Lady Shalltear told her. “For one, I’ve instructed them to begin learning about land and water transportation within the Sorcerous Kingdom. We’ve built up quite a bit of experience with it by managing the logistics of the Dwarven migration, and now we’ll put that to work here.”

It appeared that her liege was beginning to pursue her extended ambitions, beginning by solidifying her role as the Minister of Transportation. She could understand the part about water transportation, but…

“If it’s land transport,” Ludmila said, “wouldn’t the others be more suited to teach them?”

“Corelyn, Gagnier and Wagner all have three Vampire Brides assigned to them now,” Lady Shalltear told her. “My resources are not so limited that choosing one would preclude the others.”

“I see,” Ludmila lowered her head, “I apologize for making unwarranted assumptions, my lady.”

“There are a few other things that they have to do here,” Lady Shalltear said. “Mare is going to be finished with his alterations to your fief sometime in the next week or so, is he not? You’ll be laying out buildings for the harbour town after that, so they’ll be here to consult over the design of the post office with.”

Lady Shalltear set down the game piece she had been fiddling with onto the board. Ludmila glanced down. Did her liege wish to play?

“I didn’t know that you played this game,” Ludmila said.

“I am aware of the rules,” Lady Shalltear replied, “though I can’t say that I’m very good at playing the game.”

It did seem like a very noble-like thing to do: discussing business over lunch, tea or a game. Ludmila reached down and made her move.

“Lord Mare is scheduled to come finish his work here by early next week, yes,” Ludmila said. “With the Goblin army in the south, however, construction may be delayed. I have also suspended work at the villages out of concerns for their safety, at least as far as tasks outside of their walls are concerned.”

“Hmm…” Lady Shalltear moved another piece, “so both productivity and development are being affected by what is going on beyond the border.”

“It’s a reasonable delay,” Ludmila said. “A short term measure to preserve my long term outlook. Encouraging the immigration of new tenants has been a long and slow process – I cannot afford to lose the ones that have made their way here. Is it not the same with your demesne?”

Ludmila made her next move, then frowned when Lady Shalltear did something peculiar with one of her pieces.

“It is not,” she said. “My territory operates under the assumption that it will be attacked, and everything functions as intended when it is. We do not have the same problems as you have here.”

She wasn’t sure what to say about that. How was that sort of arrangement even possible? Ludmila absently reached down to make her move but stopped when she looked across the board.

“Is something the matter?” Lady Shalltear asked.

“That last move you made,” Ludmila answered. “It’s not a legal move.”

“It is,” Lady Shalltear said lightly, “according to the rules that I know.”

Ludmila frowned at the unreasonable reply, then moved a piece to keep the game going before returning to the business at hand.

“Once I’m reasonably certain that the Goblin army is preoccupied with defending their position in the upper reaches, I can lift the restrictions. The work for the harbour town may begin even sooner than that, given how difficult it is to approach this place without being detected.”

“The Lizardmen appear to be free of these restrictions,” Lady Shalltear noted, moving another piece.

“The Lizardmen don’t even have permanent homes to stay in yet,” Ludmila replied. “The risk for them will decrease drastically once they have constructed their villages and the new lake and marsh are filled. They are not in the same situation as those in the farming villages, who may be attacked from the forests surrounding the valley. The villages and the harbour make it difficult to reach the interior of the Vale, as they effectively serve the same function as castles that project power over their respective surroundings.”

Once again, Lady Shalltear moved a piece in a way that it shouldn’t have been able to. When Ludmila responded to eliminate the offender, she was thwarted by another illegal move. Leaning back from the board, she chased away a mounting sigh and pressed her lips together to keep the frown off of her face. How could anyone play a game when there were two different sets of rules? That was assuming Lady Shalltear was playing by any rules at all: everything she did appeared to be largely advantageous to her.

Across the desk, Lady Shalltear smiled slightly.

“Is there a problem?” She asked.

Ludmila could only answer with silence and her barely-restrained expression of annoyance.

“This is quite amusing,” Lady Shalltear said.

“I am not finding this game amusing, my lady,” Ludmila replied.

“Rather than this game being amusing,” Lady Shalltear said, “I was more referring to you.”

Ludmila looked up from the desk, at the twin appearances of Lady Shalltear. Her chin rested against the knuckles of her right hand; her thumb and index finger stretched out to cradle her cheek.

“The other day,” she said, “you expressed your disdain over this game: about how it in no way reflected the realities of war, but your former peers would treat it as such. Yet, even when you’re exposed to my rules, you still play by theirs.”

“A game is defined by its rules, my lady. Playing like this seems pointless.”

“That would depend on who is playing it, yes?” Lady Shalltear told her, “Putting aside this game, life is full of games – life is a game, of sorts. I have watched you for months, now, Ludmila. I have heard the tales of your family and seen how you play the games of life. How many times have you suffered at the hands of someone else’s rules? How many times have you carried on, unaware that there were other rules at all? Or that a game was even being played? Why is it that your own rules only dominate the field when you believe that you are playing the game you were meant to play?”

“I cannot force others to play according to my rules in everything,” Ludmila said.

“You do not need to.”

Lady Shalltear gestured to the board, which had long lost any sense of being a proper game to Ludmila.

“I am not forcing you to play by my rules,” Lady Shalltear said. “Yet you are being subjected to their results. You may play according to whatever rules you wish, but, in the end, you cannot stop me. By the same token, do you think any lesser being can stop you? I have claimed you as my own, Ludmila. By becoming one of mine, you have become an agent of His Majesty’s Will. Once, your conviction was so strong that you were willing to cast aside all of the games that others played. Yet now, as your life has settled into something more familiar, you, too, have settled into playing a familiar game.”

“I don’t think everything is exactly as it once was,” Ludmila replied. “If anything, things have greatly changed. Life in the Sorcerous Kingdom is already on the course of becoming so far removed from the world around us that I would hardly call it ‘familiar’ anymore.”

“These are mostly transient, material changes,” Lady Shalltear told her. “Perhaps, to someone who only measures the world in such a way, it may seem like great changes have come to pass. You, however, should understand what I mean.”

Ludmila looked out of the window. Certainly, there were many transient, material changes going on in the Sorcerous Kingdom. Like Lady Shalltear asserted, she understood that other, more substantial changes would need to occur to truly set the Sorcerous Kingdom apart from the nations around it – changes that superseded all of the superficial ones that dominated the territories of the realm today.

“I believe your intuition is already leading you on the right path,” Lady Shalltear drew her attention back from the view outside, “but your mind cannot make sense of where your heart leads you. As a result, your world is still framed within the bounds of that limited understanding, even as you already hold the answer in your hands. This is a problem that I am well acquainted with, as I suffer from it as well. There is a distinct advantage that I hold over you in this regard, however.”

“What might that be?” Ludmila asked.

“I know the rules,” Lady Shalltear answered. “The rules that matter. The games that matter. The score that matters. If you are to continue growing as my vassal, you must know what matters as well. You have taken but a single step on the journey to understanding what it truly means to serve His Majesty, yet it appears that you’ve stopped to sit down after that first step. It’s high time that you take the next.”

Lady Shalltear rose from her seat, making her way over to the living area to stand over the map of the upper reaches. Ludmila followed, taking a place adjacent to her liege. The advance of the enemy encampments continued from the previous day, but she was hopeful that the disruptions that had already started would produce their desired effects.

“How about we use this to learn, hm?” Lady Shalltear motioned loosely over the map, “It is something you appear to already be quite adept at. Tell me: have you put the Death Knights into play yet?”

“I have.”

“What do you think of them?”

“They are quite useful if you can force the opponent into a conventional battle on unobstructed terrain,” Ludmila said. “Their ability to create Squire Zombies offers various possibilities, but only a limited number of them are available per Death Knight. The Squire Zombies can create regular Zombies, but they are only Zombies in the end. In a battle between proper armies, they might have a place in some auxiliary role that takes advantage of the sheer number that can be raised, but it’s the Death Knights and Squire Zombies that matter the most.”

She supposed that was how Death Knights could destroy small countries: forming masses of Zombies that overwhelmed an undefended countryside while the Death Knight and its Squire Zombies removed any real threats to their endeavour. Lady Shalltear pointed down to the marker indicating the recently-conquered encampment.

“You’ve already made your first move here, I think?” She said, “What is your plan going forward?”

“It would depend on how they react to the disruptions we’re inflicting upon them with the Shadow Demons,” Ludmila said. “We’re targeting the supplies that accumulate in the encampments with the idea that we can strain the army. As time passes, we can start isolating and eliminating camps that begin to suffer from attrition and fall into disorder. If we’re lucky, they’ll do most of our work for us in the end.”

“As time passes…yet work in your demesne suffers as long as this threat remains.”

“It shouldn’t take overly long,” Ludmila replied. “A week or two, at most, assuming that their supplies are reasonably limited. Doing it this way is also safer for my subjects – without a clear target to strike out against, this Goblin army will be too concerned with itself. Weakening the overall strength of the enemy will also have the effect of making the regular Zombies more effective.”

“You took this camp without incident,” Lady Shalltear said, “why not just rampage through the rest?”

“It wasn’t in a single move. I had to draw out a quarter of their forces, then strip away the troops stationed around their perimeter. After that, we killed their resting soldiers with Shadow Demons and Wraiths before moving in for the final assault.”

“You can’t do the same to these other camps?”

“I intend to whittle them down in any way possible,” Ludmila said, “but I don’t expect such favourable results every time. Even with this camp, we encountered some unexpectedly strong Hobgoblins – strong enough to delay Death Knights when working together. ‘Rampaging’ through the upper reaches with my limited forces may result in an organized response that can actually counter them. If they figure out that they aren’t unstoppable, they figure out what sort of moves I currently have no answer against.”

“Hmph. You might be a Human, but you may as well be Undead with the way that you fight. Preying on the weaknesses of the living; coldly acting with the full intent of driving tens of thousands into desperation and despair. You possess the patience of the grave: extending death’s embrace to your enemies.”

“…I suppose you could put it that way,” Ludmila frowned, “but I wasn’t considering things that way when I came up with all this. I am simply leveraging what I have at my disposal to the greatest effect that I can conceive of. Patiently waiting for the results is simply a part of that.”

“I meant it as a compliment,” Lady Shalltear twisted her lip, “but at the same time, you are not considering a few potential solutions to the limitations that have been imposed upon you.”

“I’m not?”

“What I mentioned earlier applies even here,” Lady Shalltear told her. “You’ve imposed certain rules upon yourself without considering that there may be other rules that you could follow. You clearly understand the limitations of the Death Knights in this sort of environment, but you are not the only one that has considered their limitations in the Sorcerous Kingdom. This Goblin army represents a unique opportunity – one currently available to only you…hmm, maybe that was too big of a hint.”

“I see,” Ludmila sighed. “What of the administration?”

“The administration of the Sorcerous Kingdom exists to serve the Sorcerer King. They will not move against those who act in His Majesty’s service unless they find some fault in it…ah, I see that you’ve figured it out already.”

She had. Ludmila had approached the problem of her limited forces in the entirely wrong fashion, using the wrong avenues. By doing so, she had not only caused trouble for herself and her people but withheld opportunities for others as well. She had gone to the administration with what amounted to a personal problem, and they determined that she already had everything she needed to deal with that problem.

Though she had gone about it in a roundabout manner, Lady Shalltear had already provided several hints to her in the time they had been together. As her liege had mentioned, her intuition had already led her to the correct solution on multiple occasions, but her mind could not make sense of where her heart had led her. She already had the answer in her hands, but she did not apply the proper rules to them. If service to the Sorcerer King was paramount, then she would have to reframe her motives and actions to consider how the greatest service could be rendered.

“Do you think that Lord Cocytus is available to hold an audience?” Ludmila asked.

A Gate appeared in the way between the living area and the hall, and Lady Shalltear smiled.

“Why don’t we go and find out?”