Chapter 88
CHAPTER EIGHTY-EIGHT
A fter hours of ordering the repositioning of some of our troops, reinforcing others, and delegating supplies to the battle lines that needed it most, I trudged my way back to my tent.
It was late, the tiny sliver of moonlight hiding behind snow clouds.
Iiro’s forces weren’t as familiar with Bear territory or the snow squalls that could appear out of nowhere. I was counting on those things working in our favor to stay his hand until morning.
Then, at dawn, we would maneuver the battle lines into the forest.
The dense trees and hilly terrain offered more cover for my soldiers. It would also give us the high ground, which might just be enough to decimate the Elk and Obsidian troops if the weather held.
I poured over a map of the area, planning our line of defense for another hour until Pavel came with the latest updates from our captains on the front lines.
A headache was beginning to form in the center of my forehead as I added their casualties to the master list I was keeping before signing off on their various requests.
Aistov’s men needed more weapons. Kuzmin’s needed food. Three others needed more soldiers. And finally, Doyevsky’s few remaining men needed to return to camp since their battalion had been almost completely wiped out.
The ones left were likely too injured to make it back on their own. I debated their odds of survival in general, weighing it against which able-bodied men I might be able to spare to escort them.
The answer was murky, at best. And if the reports could be believed, I would more than likely be sacrificing the lives of the soldiers I sent after them.
I contemplated that reality against the morale of my soldiers when I picked up another piece of parchment. The master healer’s writing was a scribbled mess of blotted ink that had become all too familiar.
He wrote to report our latest casualties, a number that was startlingly low for the number of bodies that had been carted in over the past few days. My mouth tugged upward as I read my wife’s name and the reluctant praise that followed.
Before I could finish the report, Rowan emerged through the tent door.
Her fair skin was sallow, blue circles lining the bottom of her eyes as she met mine. Judging by her blood-stained gown and what I had already seen in the healer’s tent, I could only imagine the day she’d had.
“We need to get you an apron, Lemmikki,” I said, offering her a half-hearted smirk.
She let out a humorless laugh, heading for the cleaning station set up in the corner of our tent. She hadn’t complained once about not having a warm bath at the end of each day, or about the discomfort of sleeping on furs on the cold, hard ground instead of our luxurious bed.
Instead, she silently stepped out of her ruined gown before using the icy water to scrub someone else’s blood—several someones’ if I had to guess—from her skin.
“What you did today…” I began, and she slowly turned around, her expression guarded. “The healers say you reduced the casualties by more than half.”
The corners of her lips tilted up, satisfaction breaking through her exhaustion.
“Some of the men were dying from ridiculous, preventable things,” she said with a shake of her head. “There just weren’t enough hands, and I knew there were no able-bodied young men to be spared, so it was the next logical choice. The only option, really.”
She wasn’t wrong, yet it was an option that hadn’t occurred to anyone else, myself included. Truth be told, even if I had considered it, I would have assumed that the villagers would be far too resistant to bother.
“How did you convince the women to come?” It was something I had been wondering all day.
She might have used me as leverage to order them, but they had looked more resolute than resigned. Still, something had made them buck several centuries of traditions and risk the scorn of the men around them.
Rowan picked up one of the dry towels, wiping the freezing water from her skin.
“Oh, I just told them we had the finest knitting needles in all of Socair, and a big strong husband at the end, to boot, and they gleefully came skipping after me.”
Her tone dripped with sarcasm, her offense on behalf of the women apparent. Which I supposed was fair, all things considered. Perhaps it hadn’t taken as much as I would have thought, convincing the women to step into a new role when their brothers and husbands and sons were on the battlefront.
A chuckle rumbled through me at her sardonic smirk and I pulled her down onto our makeshift bed, warming her freezing body with mine. In spite of everything, at least she was here, still willing to make jokes in the middle of all the death that surrounded us, just as she had done at the Summit when it was her own life on the line.
“Did you tell them the only thing you knew how to do with those knitting needles was stab someone?” It was a guess, but I was fairly certain it was true. I couldn’t picture her with the patience for any kind of needlework.
Sure enough, she sniffed in defiance.
“That felt like unnecessary information to share,” she said with a yawn before sneaking her frozen fingers under my tunic to press against my stomach. “I need to organize everyone into shifts.”
“That would be wise,” I said in response, pressing a kiss to her head and pulling her even closer. “But it can wait until tomorrow. You look exhausted, Lemmikki. For now, rest.”
Before your royal Lochlannian arse succumbs to hypothermia. Storms, we needed to work on her tolerance for the cold.
She yawned and nodded half-heartedly. Like all Socairan soldiers, I had trained extensively in the snow and sleet with limited gear and clothing, which was the only reason I didn’t wince outright when she slid her icy toes along my calves, pressing her entire shivering body against me until there wasn’t a single part of her that wasn’t touching me.
“Only if you rest, too,” she countered between her chattering teeth.
Fortunately, she passed out before I was forced to lie to her about the likelihood of my being able to rest.
Instead, I waited until her skin warmed to an acceptable temperature and her limbs were so heavy with sleep that she wouldn’t notice when I crept away.
And then I picked up where I left off, because while I could hope Iiro wouldn’t move his troops in the night, I had no guarantees. And I would be damned if I let him get the upper hand while I had the nerve to sleep.
The next day, I took Pavel and Henrick to ride to the front, reassessing the line in the light of our latest plan of action.
It was working. We had gained ground since just yesterday. I focused on that instead of the river of corpses littering the space we had reclaimed. I didn’t want to look for too long at their faces, to discover how many of them I had trained firsthand.
More of the bodies were clad in purple than black, of course, but that was little comfort when the soldiers had no choice but to fight for their self-proclaimed king. They had died needlessly, at Iiro’s selfish whims.
All of them.
I added this battlefront to the growing list of sins he would answer for.
The days that followed passed in a blur of strategy and bloodshed. We continued to push the line out of our territory, just as we continued to pay the price for that in the blood of our own.
Every night, Rowan and I both returned to the tent well past midnight, and even she was back on her feet by sunrise. I didn’t realize how much I would miss her having the luxury of lounging in bed with the cat until I watched her frantically throw her dress on in the dark every morning, hardly taking time to don a cloak before she rushed to the tent that still overflowed with the wounded.
She was later than usual tonight, enough that I considered going to the healer’s tent to cart her back myself. Finally, though, I heard the sound of her footsteps crunching through the snow. I added wood to the small fireplace before taking off my tunic so that I could warm her more quickly since her winters in Lochlann had in no way prepared her for the icy climate here.
The tent flap rustled as she entered and I turned expectantly toward her. She was always tired when she returned at night—we both were—but there was something more in her expression tonight, something both hollow and raw.
“Lemmikki?” I asked tentatively.
Instead of responding, she crossed the small distance to me, taking a deep, slow breath as she leaned her head against my chest. It was still so rare for her to let her guard down, especially here, in the middle of the war camp where she spent her days bathed in other people’s blood.
Even outside this camp, we had both come into this relationship wearing our battle armor, and removing it didn’t come naturally to either of us.
Instead of risking breaking this spell by speaking, I wordlessly wrapped my arms around her, pressing my lips to her head and trying to infuse her with whatever warmth I could. She breathed against my skin for several long moments of silence, like we were the only two people left in the eye of the storm.
Finally, she spoke, her voice as empty as her eyes had looked when she walked into the tent.
“I’m just so tired of watching people die.”
Though I knew the deaths had weighed on her, it was the first time she had admitted it. She was always so steadfast, so strong, but I should have realized that even my feral little lemmikki couldn’t emerge on the other side of this without losing a part of her soul.
I took a slow breath, inhaling the remnants of citrus and amber that seemed to follow her everywhere, and let it out in a long exhale, pulling her a little closer.
There was no honest comfort I could give her. We didn’t know if this would be over soon. We didn’t know how many more deaths we would see before it was.
So I said the only honest thing I could. “So am I, Lemmikki.”
At least she would know she wasn’t alone. That I felt the weight on my soul as surely as she did.