“Which brings both help and trouble,” Cruxer said, “in logistics and loyalty. With the skimmers and a small platoon of drafters? We’ll be unstoppable raiders. I’ve got nothing against munds, but they’ll slow us down.”

Sibéal piped up, “Like people who haven’t trained to fight their whole lives slow you down?”

Cruxer looked at her flatly. “Yes. But your Ghosts have strengths that more than balance out your weaknesses. I don’t think that will be the case with… non-drafters.”

“We’ll deal with that when it comes,” Kip said. “For now, know that I see the problems coming. I don’t know what we should do about them yet, but I’ve got them in mind.” These were things he would need to discuss with Tisis first.

The Mighty needed to sink into this country. They needed to learn the people and the land. They needed friends if they were going to stop the White King.

“First thing we need to do,” Kip said, “is divide the loot.”

“Loot? The flour?” Big Leo asked.

“When you’re hungry in the forest and someone gives you gold to snack on, I want you to think about that tone,” Tisis said.

“The loot is ours,” Kip said. “We bled and died to take the White King’s flour—”

“The White King’s flour?” Sibéal asked.

“He stole it and the villagers had no way to get it back, did they? That said, after Conn Arthur makes clear that all of the flour and the barge itself is ours by the laws of war, he’s going to take only two sevs for each of us—little enough that each of us can add it to our pack without us having to add wagons, and enough that each of us can split our share with those who join us soon. Then the conn finds whoever is in charge from the village, makes clear what is ours, and then gives all the rest and the barge itself to the village. We want to bind the survivors to us, make them grateful. Make them spread good stories about us. And for Orholam’s sake, make sure they hide the barges until the Blood Robes are long gone.”

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Sibéal Siofra nodded her head. “Saving their lives means a lot. Saving their livelihoods may mean more in the coming days.”

Orholam’s balls, Kip thought, they were going to need things like food and weapons and shoes and tents and cooks and everything else. Eight people could live off the forest without its slowing them too much. Especially with the skimmers. They wouldn’t be able to do that with the conn’s hundred and twenty added to that. And if even half the Cwn y Wawr joined? That put them at nearly two hundred and fifty souls. And two hundred and fifty mouths. Five hundred feet.

At that number, skimmers became a huge headache. With every new one they built, the quality got worse, the speed of the whole group got slower, and the likelihood of either losing one into enemy hands or having a spy steal their secrets magnified. That could have consequences for the whole war, not just the Mighty’s raids here.

Then again, what use was an advantage you were too afraid to use?

“Things are going to change,” Kip said. “It’s already started. We’re going to grow, and we’re going to learn, and we’re going to fight. We’ll always have this.” He gestured to the circle of the Mighty. “It’s always going to be special, but it’s going to change, too. For good”—he nodded at Tisis and Sibéal—“but for ill, too. So tonight let’s tell stories about Trainer Fisk, and Ironfist, and Goss and Daelos and Teia, and the battle we just fought, and how Ferkudi totally cheated in our placement fights—”

“Yeah,” Ferkudi said. “Wait—what?”

“And tomorrow, we go back to war.”

So they swapped stories and embellished a few, and were called out half the time. And mostly Sibéal and Tisis were silent. They understood. It was a wake for the boys’ childhood, which had been dying for a long time.

Tisis told about Kip’s initiation and how she’d sabotaged him. Sibéal in particular looked stunned, though Ferkudi did, too. How he’d missed that story, Kip had no idea.

“That’s how you met? And yet here you sit, together? Married?” Sibéal asked. “I can’t believe he would forgive you such a thing.”

“Kip has a remarkable ability to see the difference between an adversary and an enemy,” Tisis said. She patted his arm, and her eyes were warm.

“Oh, gag me,” Ben-hadad said.

“With wine!” Cruxer called, tossing a sack at him.

Deadpan, Kip said, “After I saw her naked, I’d forgive her for anything.”

She smacked his arm, her face bright in the firelight.

“He does have a penchant for grabbing on to something and not letting go, doesn’t he?” Cruxer said.

“Tell me about it!” Kip said, showing off his burn-scarred left hand.

They laughed, and Cruxer said, “I was thinking about Aram, in our placement fights, and how you grabbed him until he nearly broke your neck!”

So they segued into those stories: who had been better than expected, how Teia had placed everyone before the fight, how Kip had bulled his way all the way to fifteenth place, and how Cruxer had crushed Aram’s knee to disqualify him and get Kip into the final fourteen.

And suddenly the fire was rainbows of color because of the tears swelling in Kip’s eyes. But he didn’t avert his face. He didn’t stand and go hide in the dark as he would have not so long ago.

“Wine making you maudlin?” Big Leo asked, trying to let him play it off.

“No,” Kip said, and the circle went silent, all of them looking at him. “I had no friends growing up. I was the addict’s boy. The fat boy. Made fun of, beat up, the butt of jokes. The best of the townsfolk merely pitied me. I was taken on, but not taken in. I steeled myself to that. Accepted that I would always be alone. It wasn’t anyone’s fault, not even my mother’s, who hated herself for her failures more than I ever could. I was lucky, really. In a city, I’d have been pressed into a gang or taken by slavers.

“It shouldn’t have been any better with you all. I was fat and awkward and only had a place because my father had demanded it for me. But you accepted me. For the first time in my life, you made me part of something.”

“Not just part of it,” Cruxer said. “You’re the Mighty’s heart.”




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