CHAPTER 897: PLANS IN THE FINAL HOURS OF DAYLIGHT (PART ONE)

Heila felt the weight of a dozen pairs of eyes as soon as she stepped into the command tent, and for a moment, she had to resist the urge to turn around and leave, or to blurt out that Lady Ashlynn or someone who was actually important and capable would be here soon.

She had followed Lady Ashlynn for months and in that time, she had transformed so completely that her current self was almost completely unrecognizable to the simple serving girl she’d been less than a year ago. Yet in all that time, she had yet to truly understand what it meant for Ashlynn to be Nyrielle’s Seneschal until now.

As a witch and even as a warrior, Heila had plenty of confidence, but she never thought of herself as a leader. Lady Ashlynn was a leader. Lady Nyrielle was too. But Heila was someone who followed those women, acting on their orders, she wasn’t a person who commanded others. Yet now, because the army currently answered to a vampire, she found herself in the uncomfortable position of holding command during the daylight hours when Dame Sybyll slept.

"I’m sorry to keep everyone waiting," Heila said awkwardly as she looked around her tent and realized that all of the army’s other leaders had already arrived, and from the look of things, they had been present for some time.

At the center of the command tent, a table held a detailed map of Hanrahan Town and the surrounding areas. The map had grown increasingly detailed as the scouts and hunters brought in more and more information, and by now, there wasn’t a single wood cutter’s cottage, farmhouse or sentry station that hadn’t been marked on the map on the table.

"We don’t mind it, nobody minds it, High One," a petite woman even shorter than Heila said from the stool she stood in order to make updates to the map. Captain Lusia was a member of the Lightfoot Clan, one of the physically smallest clans in the Eldritch world, with soft brown fur, delicate features and large, saucer-like ears.

"Come here and look, look," she said excitedly as she tapped an empty stool sitting next to her. The wide grin on her face made it clear to everyone who knew her that she was savoring the fact that the ’High One’ was a woman almost as small as herself.

The Second Army had been formed around the core of Savis’s Black Wolf Brigade and the captains from High Lord Hamdi’s territory were all physically powerful, imposing men. Elsewhere in the tent, a brooding pair of captains from the Iron Tusk clan stood shoulder to shoulder with the Golden Eyed warriors, looking as if they were vying for the title of supreme hunters of the forest. Meanwhile a trio of lanky archers from the Glass Eyed Clan looked on with an air of quiet superiority, as if they floated above the contentions within the army for the title of strongest elite soldiers.

Adding Ipiktok’s giant Tuscans only made it worse for the tiny Lightfoot woman whose people were the furthest thing from predators you could find in the fierce army that Ashlynn and Nyrielle had put together out of the most elite soldiers who had joined their cause. And yet, the small stature, incredible speed and mastery of concealment had made the scouts under Captain Lusia’s command the clear stars of the early phases of their campaign against Hanrahan Town.

When Heila took her place next to the map, she did her best to look confident, mimicking the way she’d seen Lady Ashlynn and Lady Nyrielle conduct themselves on countless occasions. She carefully studied all of the changes to the map, noting all of the new slips of parchment with neat writing that had been added to the map since she last saw it in the early hours of the morning, and saying nothing until she was confident that she understood everything she had seen.

Inwardly, her heart raced as she tried to remember all of the notations the army used to mark down and categorize enemy soldiers, whether they appeared strong and well trained or weak and ill-equipped, whether they were heavily or lightly armored and dozens of other details the scouts found important.

Each slip of parchment might be small, but the symbols on them carried a great deal of meaning to the professional warriors gathered around her, adding to the intimidating weight that made her feel she was the wrong person to stand in for Dame Sybyll while the powerful vampire slept away the day.

Outwardly, however, everyone in the tent backed away from her as the aura of prickly power emanating from the Willow Witch intensified, making the diminutive woman look even fiercer and more intimidating in their eyes than she had been when she first joined the army.

Most of them had seen her fight in the arena, and they’d all heard Ipiktok’s story about the painful curse she’d inflicted on him and his men in order to force them to surrender, but seeing her from the stands or hearing stories about her did little to prepare them for the fierce presence she radiated when she entered the tent in her War Hat and armored long-coat.

They had already been grateful to be joined by such a powerful healer before a great battle, and when they heard that she was delayed in joining them because she was concocting healing salves for the wounded the battle was certain to produce, none of them had uttered a word of complaint that they had to wait for her to finish. But now that they saw her dressed for war, the smiles on their faces grew almost predatory as they imagined what it would be like to fight beside her in the coming battle.

"Captain Ipiktok mentioned you saw human soldiers entering the city," Heila said, giving up on trying to interpret the markings on the parchment and doing as she had seen Ashlynn do so many times before, asking without phrasing her question as a question. It was something subtle, but in her mind at least, it was one of Ashlynn’s best ways of maintaining her authority, even when she knew little about the specifics being discussed.

"Tell me about them," Heilla commanded, keeping her words brief as she fought to cling to the illusion that she was worthy of holding command in Dame Sybyll’s absence. It was a feeble illusion, in her mind, but hopefully, if she held on to the lessons she learned from Lady Ashlynn, it would be enough to get through the night.