Cinna rode through the gates of Dvergafjall Castle at the head of two regiments, coming to a stop at the far side of the courtyard. She turned and watched as the troops filed in behind her. Just a cursory glance proved enough to reveal a disturbing number of issues. Men and women with their equipment loosely strapped, incorrectly positioned sheathes, poorly maintained spearheads…the list went on.

  But these were fresh soldiers. Their training had ended only two days before departure, and there had been a depressingly small number of veteran troops available to stiffen the backbone of these units. What few Cinna had available were already positioned along the base of the Geirarj?tnas. Moreover, almost half of Selkarc’s finest would remain unavailable until she could find a solution to the raging waves keeping her navy at anchor.

  Her navy? No. King Artemisias’s navy. With her father bedridden for months now, Cinna found herself increasingly slipping into the role of monarch. He’d fallen into an even deeper depression when Dalton’s emerald had shattered, erasing any progress he’d made towards recovery up to then. Some days Cinna felt forced to confront the possibility that Dalton might never return and that her father may not recover.

  Queen Cinna Selkarc. She hated the sound of it.

  Pushing the matter aside for the time being, Cinna settled into her saddle and waited for her troops to assemble. It wasn’t them she needed, though; she wanted to speak to the captains of each regiment before heading to meet with General Valto. Unfortunately their units lacked the discipline and experience to form themselves into ranks all on their own, however, so she had to give the two leaders time to sort it out themselves.

  “Captain Beck. Captain Lund,” Cinna acknowledged when they finally approached her. “Sort your men into companies and keep them here for now. I will discuss with General Valto where they are needed most and send word.”

  “Understood, general.”

  “Pardon me, general, but who should we place in charge of each company? We have no senior soldiers,” Captain Lund asked.

  “Determine the most responsible among each group and appoint them leader for now. Each company will be attached to a more veteran unit at their destination. The captains on site will likely assign experienced lieutenants to lead them,” Cinna instructed them. Then she rose from her saddle and dropped to the cobblestone below. Once her feet were on the ground, Cinna waved over a soldier from the garrison. “See my horse to the stables, please.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  A small group of knights accompanied Cinna as she entered the castle and made her way to the strategy room where she expected to find Valto. She walked straight in without knocking while her guards took up positions outside. General Valto stood over a map of the local area surrounded by a bevy of low-ranking nobles serving as captains.

  “Valto.”

  “Gener—no, Princess Regent Cinna? To what do I owe the honor?” Valto asked stiffly, surprised at the sudden arrival.

  “Am I interrupting anything?”

  “No, Your Highness. You’re all dismissed for the time being,” Valto replied, waving everyone else out. Cinna spotted a handful of disgruntled looks as the nobles left the room. There’d always been a few that rankled at serving under a man with no noble title. She’d considered ennobling Valto, but Count Stromberg had advised her that Valto’s low birth was the real problem to these sorts and no amount of new titles would change their minds.

  “I see some of them are still chafing,” Cinna remarked once the last of the nobles left and the guards outside closed the doors.

  “Even a ravening horde of undead isn’t enough to settle noble squabbles, Your Highness,” Valto replied.

  “Oh, drop the formalities,” Cinna ordered with a roll of her eyes. “It’s been less than a year since we were on even footing, Valto.”

  “Even then it felt like I was pushing it. We might have both been generals, but you were a princess,” Valto pointed out.

  “What, still worried about those rumors we’re fucking?” Cinna prodded, allowing some of her inner soldier to emerge. She’d been a squire sleeping in the hold of a warship like a common soldier once upon a time. Advancing into the upper ranks had sanded off most of the rough surfaces, but it felt nice to let loose now and then. “Every dumbass spouting that one shut up when they realized I’d never marry any of their sons. Besides, we’ve fought shoulder to shoulder before. You’ve called me much worse things than my name.”

  “When I had a hole in my gut! You always seem to forget that part! Gah, there’s something wrong about hearing you talk like that while wearing that uniform,” Valto sighed. “Cinna, as much as I’d enjoy reminiscing about fighting Carissites in the Kaldarif Archipelago, you know the situation we’re in. Please just tell me why you’re here.”

  “As tempting as it is to make you guess…now’s not the time, I agree. I brought two of our new regiments. Where do you want them?”

  “Throw a dart at the fucking map. Do you realize how much land we have to cover here? Two regiments aren’t enough to fill in all these holes. But that’s not why you’re actually here. You didn’t need to come all this way to hand off command of two regiments,” Valto asserted, propping his arms on the table and leaning forward.

  “How is morale doing right now?” Cinna asked, seemingly changing the topic.

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  “Worse than you’d expect. Everyone is motivated to defend their homes and families, but they’re unsettled by the fact that Barkolt’s war is suddenly on their doorsteps.” Valto held up a hand. “I know, Barkolt is dead. But everything to do with him was a distant threat for years now. They don’t know how to cope with the change. Doesn’t help that all of those noble retinues I commandeered are different sizes. Had to place some rival noblemen together just to keep my forces spread evenly.”

  “They’ll realize their idiotic feuds are pointless once they’re facing down more draugr than they have hairs on their asses,” Cinna dismissed.

  “Now you’re just doing it on purpose,” Valto groaned. “I think you’re giving them too much credit, though. I’m worried that if things start looking bad for them they’ll see a golden opportunity to get rid of an enemy by retreating first and letting the undead overrun their rivals.”

  “Mother and father should have centralized the army while Uncle Tryggve had the nobles cowed,” Cinna lamented. “This is exactly the problem with drawing levies from fiefs. We have to rely on petty lords and their inbred scions to captain the armies they raise. The Clovicians don’t have this problem.”

  “I don’t know about all of that. But without more manpower I can’t replace them,” Valto said.

  “We have two regiments available to do just that. I’d planned on deploying them to reinforce weak points, but maybe we can use them to even out the distribution of noble retinues and cut down on the chances of backstabbing,” Cinna proposed.

  “I’m not sure it’s worth it. We’d be trading unit cohesion for numbers,” Valto objected.

  “Embedding our greenhorns with veteran regiments will give them the benefit of experience. They’re too wet behind the ears to have gotten attached to their regiments anyway. Move those morons you were worried about around so they’re grouped with their buddies and replace them with troops from elsewhere. Use the new soldiers to fill in the gaps,” Cinna instructed.

  “Hm…it’ll be difficult to pull off with more and more undead coming down from the Geirarj?tnas, but I’ll see what I can do.” A light seemed to blossom in Valto’s head. “Just taking a guess here, but is morale the reason you came by? I suppose having the regent visit the frontlines would inspire the soldiers.”

  “That, and I asked Leo to meet me here. He appears to have found something while investigating the rogue undead problem and I didn’t want to make him return all the way to the capital just to send him here immediately after,” Cinna explained. “Hopefully a true Hero will prove an effective reactionary force.”

  “Maybe. I’m still stuck on that Clovician Hero. We’ve got undead on our doorstep, so what ever happened to that guy? And if we thought to summon one, did any of the other nations?” Valto wondered aloud, looking pensive.

  “You think the lack of the gods’ blessings will hold him back, and that other Heroes have already bit it?” Cinna asked in turn, tapping her lips with her fingertip. “It’s possible. But the nations we’ve lost contact with all fell long before we managed to brute force the summoning ritual, so the odds of them having summoned their own are low. The Clovician Hero is another matter, but those Imperial bastards were too good to answer our farspeakers. No point worrying about shit we can’t know.”

  “You’re right.” Valto sighed and drummed his fingers against the table. “Give me a few minutes to figure out where to send the new troops. Get a snack or something in the meantime.”

  “My, giving me orders like one of your captains? Whatever became of the decorum you so insisted on earlier?” Cinna questioned, reverting back to more proper speech in an instant. “Fine, fine. I’ll excuse myself. We’ll speak again when Leo arrives.”

  Once again forced to maintain a royal demeanor, Cinna couldn’t simply head down to the mess hall and grab something from the larder. She tasked one of her guards with fetching something, and he in turn sent his squire to do it instead. Cinna barely suppressed an amused snort. She didn’t miss being the designated go-fer.

  It took only a few minutes for the squire to return with sandwiches for both Cinna and her guards. She gave them leave to eat and retired alone to a side room to do the same. Another handful of minutes passed as Cinna devoured her sandwich with all the manners of a cave troll, and then she found herself returning to the strategy room.

  “Done yet, or should I go gamble the royal jewels away to pass the time?” she asked Valto, dropping her royal bearing again the moment they were alone.

  “Keep doing that and you’re going to forget how to act in public,” Valto warned with a scoff. “Here. Marching orders. Have a squire deliver them; one of my lookouts informed me that Leo is on the way up the mountain.”

  “Why wasn’t I informed?”

  “Because I know how you eat when no one is looking.”

  Cinna punched Valto in the shoulder for that one. He raised a fist in retaliation, hesitating for a moment before striking her right back. She chuckled all the way to the door, straightening up her expression only long enough to pass off the list of orders.

  While they waited on Leo, Cinna and Valto discussed the current situation in greater detail, going over which parts of the wall had been completed and which were still patched with barricades. They briefly touched on what they would do next once the fortifications were complete, agreeing on a narrower point further down the peninsula Selkarc sat on as the best location for a fallback position.

  Leo’s arrival ended that discussion for the time being. He’d draped a cloak over his armor at some point and entered with the hood pulled down over his face, but once he came inside he shrugged the whole thing off and left it on a chair.

  “Your Highness. It’s been some time,” Leo greeted. “And you are General Valto, correct?”

  “Well met,” Valto said.

  “Welcome to Dvergafjall Castle,” Cinna replied. “What have you found?”

  “This,” Leo replied, plucking a small bag from his waist. He emptied it onto the table to reveal a strangely-shaped and jagged-edged crystal.

  “That doesn’t tell me anything,” Valto noted dryly.

  “It resembles something called a monster crystal. I take it your monsters don’t have these?”

  “None that I’ve heard of,” Cinna answered.

  “Ah. Well, in my experience monsters usually have crystals near their hearts. It’s what makes them monsters. They’re stronger and sometimes they can use magic because of these things,” Leo explained, looking down at the crystal. “The strange thing is that I found this inside a zombie.”

  “What is a zombie, and why were you cutting it open…?” Valto questioned.

  “A walking corpse. What do you call them?”

  “Draugr. But that’s not important right now. You said you found this inside one?” Cinna asked, shooting Valto a sharp look.

  “Yes. It was…far more resilient than any I’ve seen before. I was forced to hack it to pieces to stop it from moving, and in the process I exposed this crystal. I check several others and all had one forming at the center of the spine,” Leo elaborated.

  “I’ve never heard of an undead with such a thing inside.” Valto’s expression darkened. “It can only be another consequence of the gods’ departure. But…what could it mean?”

  “There’s no use speculating, but I have no doubt this is related to our rogue undead problem. I’ll make sure Archmage Alfvin receives this. Leo, I’d like you to remain here and assist Valto in holding the line. I intend to prepare a second line of defense, but until then, this is all we have. If the Dvergafjall line falls, so does Selkarc.”