The Chronicle of the Worthy Son

Conceit

Four or five dozen more people than usual took their seats when the chiefs took to the floor today, filling the room with a thrum of anticipation. Did their spirits seem high because they had not attended the previous meetings nor followed up on them by discussing various supplies and troops with their respective managers? Able turned his notebook and its depressing calculations over in his hands and sighed. Maybe they knew something he didn't.

Battlechief Wroughter stalked the ring below eyes darting from each hallway above the ring to the next. He nodded then rolled his burly shoulders back, perhaps satisfied that anyone who was coming was already here. "Right. Right, I called this meeting because Fiddler, Dawnwatch, and I all think we cannot tarry any more."

Wroughter looked to these two until they nodded for him to continue. "It's true we haven't yet heard from any of the Western townships, but if we wait any longer to decide to march or not, marching will be out of the question. We know we can barely scrape through the winter as it is, and like as not, the late reports will tell us the path is further washed out. Either we act or we lose good folk all winter long and stand starving when the Banders and their reinforcements march in the spring."

The chamber had fallen silent as he had been speaking and now seemed to hold its breath. Hawking nodded, a strangely reassuring motion coming from his composed posture, as he said, "I agree."

He began to pace the ring. He was a smaller man than Wroughter and Dawnwatch, but in the way he carried himself, he didn't look it. His greatest skill, fueled by an arsenal of subtle gestures, was putting people at ease. Right now he took in a face at a time to take the alarm out of his words. "It's unfortunate that we are not all accounted for, but we're running out of time. We do need to decide what we're going to do."

Dawnwatch, something of a field captain, had none of this grace. "I know you're tired of me saying this. But there's still a few thousand Banders sitting on a fair amount of arms and supplies in Aimsby, and we need the supplies but not the Banders. And I also know— " He held up his hand to stall Chief Provisioner Windfurrow before she could object and continued, "that we have little information as to the state of their garrison and defenses. But we won't be getting that, will we?" He flicked a challenging glare to Chessie.

She only stared back impassively. Why would anyone think they could win a staring contest with her?

"It bears considering," Windfurrow said with a scowl. "And if we march, we better make that effort."

"It's time to be done with 'if' we march," Wroughter insisted. "It was always we'll go to them or wait until they come to us. No one likes our chances if we go to them, but we will not survive if we wait for them to come to us."

"Fairbanks is not defensible," Chessie said. She pressed her fingers together before her mouth and stared somewhere far from here and now. The room held silent on the edge of her breath. "From the sea, least of all. Still, Reeve cannot afford to allow us to overrun his supply line and may weaken the defenses at Aimsby in response to any attacks we manage."

"Especially if we destroy the piers," Windburrow added and crossed her arms and jutted her chin at Dawnwatch. "That'll delay their landing operations regardless of any other outcomes. See? We have been thinking along these lines."

"So don't invent division where there isn't any," Chessie finished, her voice demure but her eyes boring holes into the older men.

The silence settled once again. Able turned to Lark, seated beside him. Her thoughts were bound up beneath her furrowed brow and her nerves reduced to chewing on her thumbnail. Had Chessie told her already she would suggest attacking Fairbanks? When no rider from the city had arrived with a report?