‘Chop the trees to the south,’ I ordered. ‘Set every fletcher to work; I want enough arrows to fill the Iron Sea.’

  Over the past few days, our army had grown beyond the two hundred mark. Our main priority had been producing enough tents to keep up with the ever-growing demand, as we wouldn’t last long without them. People needed to be warm as much as they needed to be fed, and with the worst of winter coming in hard, both of those had become problems.

  The food part of this equation had turned out to be the simplest to solve. The southern Goldmarch was an “agricultural powerhouse”, to borrow the phrase from a minor lord who had been advising me since I returned from Coldharbour. Turell, the lord in question, had come from a family that had grown rich from farming, and so he knew the industry well. He knew it so well, in fact, that he knew of the key warehouses that stored dried wheat and salted meat.

  We sent scouting parties out to barter—or beg, as needed—for this produce, and most of these scouts came back empty-handed; the warehouses were empty. A few scouting parties, however, were more than successful. Along the path of the malae caravan, monsters had been drawn out from the darkness, and these monsters had attacked the towns. We’d seen this for ourselves, having ridden through many ghost towns on our journey to Auricia. But not all of the citizens had had time to empty their food stores before fleeing this terror, and some towns had kept more than enough food to spare.

  The warmth issue was slightly trickier to solve. We had a good few people working on creating tents—weaving warm fabrics and building tents that would withstand the worst of the winter winds—but they couldn’t work fast enough. We needed ready-made cloth, and for that, we needed coin. Our volunteer army were generous with their coins, recognising that now was not the time to hoard wealth, but it still wasn’t enough.

  Our breakthrough came only when Val slipped back through the still-open portal to Lenktra and met with Yua alone. My suspicions were correct; Yua recognised the need to raise their army to join us, but her voice had been in the minority of Lenktra’s government. As she was a woman of honour, she stuck with the established workings of their democracy and respected the wishes of the elected leaders. But she had once been a duchess, and as such, she still had great personal wealth.

  Great personal wealth that she sent almost entirely our way in the form of supplies: cloth, food, weaponry and enchantments. The supplies were managed between Seah—Yua’s personal aide, who now spent most of her time in the camp—and Val, the only member of the Slayers that Yua seemed to totally trust. Our shelter problem, as well as a fair few problems that I hadn’t had time to think about it, were solved.

  So here we were, our most basic needs sorted. We now looked beyond, to making us as strong an army as possible. We stood in the command tent, all those that had taken leadership roles in the camp: myself, the rest of the Slayers, Zoi, Turell, and Seah.

  ‘I’ll see that it is done,’ Turell said, leaving with a bow. I wasn’t fussed about the bowing—that seemed to be something that Turell expected was wanted—but I appreciated the man’s “get straight to it” attitude.

  ‘I was gonna tell him to expand the archery range too, but…’ I shrugged. It was all well and good arming soldiers with bows, but if they didn’t have even the most basic Archery skill with which to use them, then it was pointless. Corminar had told me that the range would help him share his own skillset.

  ‘I tell him when I see,’ Arzak said.

  I nodded.

  Val spoke up next. ‘Seah is going to come with me to other towns in the Tundra. Yua thinks that her face might help change some minds.’

  Seah raised her eyebrows. ‘I am grateful that the governor has such faith in me, but…’

  ‘It’s worth a try, either way,’ I replied. ‘Give me a list of towns, and I’ll open portals to any that I’ve been to before.’ I turned to my elven friend. ‘You can create more mana potions for me?’

  ‘Yua’s gifts included plenty of ingredients.’ Corminar paused to nod his gratitude to Yua by way of Seah. The governor’s aide returned the nod in kind. ‘We have enough that we will not need to worry about running low on these potions any time soon. But, I must reiterate, you do also require sleep.’

  ‘I slept last night,’ I said, my tone bordering on snappy.

  Val glanced at me; she knew this wasn’t true, but at least she didn’t say anything to anyone else. I’d snapped at her, too, last night—then immediately apologised. She’d been nice about it, attributing it to my lack of sleep. The reality, though, was that my abrasiveness came from the lack of an artifact hanging from my neck. Once again, I touched the spot on my chest where it should have been.

  ‘How are we on recruits?’ I asked, eager to shift the conversation along. It was a question that could be answered with a pretty good accuracy simply by looking outside the tent, but it was still worth asking.

  ‘Three hundred,’ Arzak said. ‘We at one hundredth of thirty thousand goal.’

  ‘But we get more every day,’ Val added, slightly more encouragingly; the orc’s tone had been so flat as to suggest she was close to giving up. But my wife’s addition to the report wasn’t just to add a positive spin to dire results. It was true that with every day that passed, our number was growing by a higher amount; we weren’t adding to our army linearly. The stronger our army was, the more convincing the argument to join us.

  ‘Still,’ Arzak continued, ‘we need big army to join us. Two better.’ She turned to Lore. ‘Go Coldharbour? See if can convince them?’

  ‘There’s no point,’ I replied, speaking for him. ‘We’ve done all we can there; they either join us, or they don’t.’

  ‘I prefer join us.’

  ‘Wouldn’t we all,’ Val added. ‘There is still the Sundorn, in the south. We could try them.’

  ‘What reason would they have for joining us?’ I asked. ‘We’ve done nothing to help them.’

  ‘Err… survival?’

  I nodded. ‘Fair point. I can open a distant portal to Farnet. Do you think you and Corminar could ride from there?’

  ‘Sure,’ Val said, at the same moment that Corminar said, ‘No.’

  I looked to the elf for an explanation.

  ‘I will need a day, and a portal to Uil, if possible. If Uil is not possible, then any location in the eastern Goldmarch will be suitable.’

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  I nodded. ‘Val—take Lore instead. Corminar—I can do Uil, or any location on the road to the witchfinder village. But can I ask… why?’

  Corminar held my gaze for a moment, and I swore I could feel his eyes boring into my soul. ‘You may not. I ask instead that you trust me.’

  A moment of cautious silence passed through the tent, all eyes on me. I nodded. ‘Fine.’ Turning to the group at large, I added, ‘I think we’re done here for today. Val, Lore, I’ll sort out that portal in ten minutes—get ready.’

  With that, our leadership group left the tent, separating to go about our separate duties. Except, I pursued Corminar. I knew he would realise I was following him—it was hard to sneak up on an elf—but he made no show of it until we were at the edge of the camp, where the archery range was being set up. Here, there was nobody close enough to overhear us.

  ‘You do not trust me,’ Corminar said. It was not phrase as a question.

  ‘I trust you, Cor, but do you trust us? If there’s something you can do to turn the tide of this battle, don’t you think you should tell us? We need to know.’

  ‘And if knowing causes you to stop me? What then?’

  I looked around the camp, to make sure nobody was nearby. What was there that Corminar didn’t want anyone knowing? ‘Tell me,’ I insisted. ‘You need my portal. This is the price.’

  Once again, the elf held my gaze. ‘The army of corruption is not our only obstacle,’ he said after a minute or two of silent consideration. ‘There is another—one that has altered or destroyed our plans on multiple occasions.’

  I understood, then, where he was going with this. This wasn’t a plan that he didn’t want anyone to know. This was a plan that he didn’t want me to know. ‘My mother,’ I said.

  The elf nodded. ‘I had Arzak put out word through her network, and through my business contacts. I told them that I would pay the fortune of a lifetime for a means by which to render invisibility magicks inert. We heard last night—we have found one.’

  ‘You’re going to kill her before she kills one of us. And you didn’t tell me because you thought I might stop you.’

  ‘She is your mother,’ Corminar replied. ‘And you have had… reservations on the matter already.’

  ‘Just because I won’t kill her with my own hand, doesn’t mean—’

  ‘It is more than that. I know of her offer—that she would give you and Val a place in the new world. What if you recognise that our chances of success are thin? What if you treat this new world as a backup plan? What if our battle no longer gets your full attention—could that be the difference between success and defeat? At such low odds, I would not take any chances.’

  I nodded, considering these words for a moment. Corminar didn’t trust me, not totally—that much was clear. I already had suspicions about Arzak and Lore having their own doubts. I wanted to blame them. I really did. But there was this thought in the back of my mind: if we do fail to stop the Council’s ritual, what harm really was there in me saving my family?

  A chill ran down my spine when I realised that—when I realised my friends were right not to totally trust me.

  But I didn’t say any of this. Instead, I asked Corminar, ‘Uil, are you ready to go?’

  He replied with a nod, and I opened a distant portal in front of him, my hand immediately going to the mana potions hanging at my waist. ‘I will open another portal in the same location, three days from now. Be there, yeah?’

  Corminar paused on the threshold of the portal and looked back to me. ‘Thank you,’ he said.