The war council dispersed in sullen silence, each lord stalking back to their own quarters with suspicion coiled tight in their chests. Lord Five, whose garrisons had held the western granaries and whose sappers had been blown to smithereens in the crater field, kept his head bowed, his knuckles white beneath his gauntlets.
Thousands of his people were dead. His strongest outpost was ash. And now his peers were whispering that he had done it to himself—that he had colluded with the tunnel rats, that he had laid the fire and thunder traps himself to sabotage the Covenant and hoard what supplies remained. He bit his tongue until he tasted blood. To argue would only make it worse. To protest would only make him look guiltier.
The alliance was fraying at the seams, and no one seemed to notice or care.
In her command pavilion, Murong Xue stood before a great wall map, a gilded blade in her hand, and drove the point straight into the northern coastal plain.
"Five legions," she said, her voice cold and sharp. "Five thousand radiant knights. Ten thousand light infantry. All angelic support wings. We march at dawn."
Her captains leaned forward, relief plain on their faces. For months they had been chasing shadows. For months they had been ambushed, baited, robbed, and made fools of by an enemy that would not stand and fight. Now the Tide Pact was coming to them. They were landing troops on the northern shore, marching inland to seize the central river valleys.
Finally. A real battle. An enemy they could see, and charge, and break on the field of honor.
"They think we are distracted," Murong Xue said, her eyes glinting. "They think the tunnel rats have broken us. They think we are weak and divided."
She lifted her chin, her regal bearing settling over her like armor.
"We will show them how wrong they are."
Outside the pavilion, horns blared. Banners unfurled. The great host of the Radiant Covenant began to move north, a river of steel and white silk and glowing holy light, fifty thousand strong. For the first time in months, morale surged. They would crush the sea savages. They would win a clean, glorious victory. And then they would turn around, and they would dig those miserable rats out of the dirt once and for all.
No one noticed the small, hooded elven contingent lingering at the back of the column, peeling off into the woods as the main army marched past. Liora Voss had known this was coming. She had seen the rot in the Covenant from the inside. She would not waste her people on someone else's glorious last stand. Not when the real war was going to be won with roots and seeds and patience.
Deep beneath the central plains, the great burrow hummed with the quiet urgency of a hive packing to move.
Lirael knelt over a crudely drawn map, her finger tracing a line eastward, toward the sea. Borgul and Korg leaned in on either side, their shadows falling across the parchment.
"The Covenant is marching north," she said. "Every last soldier they can spare. They want a pitched battle with the Tide Pact. They want to win clean, on an open field, so they can feel proud of themselves again."
Korg grunted, cracking his knuckles. "Good. Let 'em fight. We hit their empty camps while they're gone. Burn their tents. Steal their remaining stores."
"Too small," Lirael said, shaking her head. "Too risky. If they turn back, they'll pin us between their army and the coast. No. We do not stay here."
She tapped the eastern coast, where a cluster of Tide Pact supply ports glowed with charcoal marks.
"They are fighting for the mainland. They have left their backs wide open. Their ships. Their storehouses. Their grain depots. All sitting unguarded on the shore, because no one expects an enemy to come from underneath the beach."
Borgul's stone scales clicked softly as he rumbled in thought. "We dig all the way to the coast?"
"Not all the way," Lirael said. "We dig to the cliffside caves north of the main harbor. We move under cover of night. We hit their warehouses. We sink their supply barges. We take every crate of grain, every coil of rope, every ingot of iron they have stockpiled for their invasion."
She looked up, her eyes sharp.
"If the Covenant wins this battle, they will be too strong. They will control the whole mainland, and they will turn every last soldier and sapper on us. If the Tide Pact wins, they will control the rivers and the coast, and they will starve everyone else out. Neither can be allowed to win. We bleed them both. We keep them even. And while they are busy killing each other, we grow stronger."
Korg stared at the map for a long moment, then laughed—a low, rough, delighted sound.
"Hit 'em in the back while they're punching each other in the face. Beautiful. I love it."
"The drakes will dig the advance tunnels," Borgul rumbled. "Water slimes will scout the harbors from below. No one will see us coming."
Lirael nodded. Already the order was rippling out through the tunnels. Pack the stores. Dismantle the siege engines. Collapse the western tunnels behind them. Leave just enough sentries to make noise, to keep the Covenant's rearguard thinking the whole army was still there.
By dawn, the main body of their little army would be marching east, under the earth, while two great hosts marched north to kill each other above ground.
Two days later, the northern plains shook with the drumbeat of marching feet.
Murong Xue sat astride a white warhorse at the head of her legions, her armor gleaming in the sun, her banner flying high. Across the plain, the Tide Pact's host was forming up—trident warriors, sea giants, leviathan riders wading up from the shore. Soren Shaw stood at the fore on the deck of a great tidal warship run aground, his cloak snapping in the sea wind.
The battle was about to begin. The whole world was watching.
Neither commander had any idea that three hundred miles to the east, a handful of stonehide drakes had just broken through the soft rock of a coastal cliff, and a raiding party of frost wraiths and silverback apes was slipping silently toward the Tide Pact's largest supply depot.
The great war had started.
And the rats were already in the larder.