Finua

Chapter 26: Castle Berahd

Ultimately, Valdopeer's prediction was correct: we did not pull out of Beradak, despite Haraku's counsel. It was a classic case of the sunk cost fallacy. Instead we labored there for twenty-five days before we occupied the town and reached the giant off-white plinth, losing by attrition at every single turn. Our entire infantry was decimated in the first month of what was expected to be an epic campaign; if you had asked Haraku, he would have told you that not only should this campaign not have been quite so epic in the first place, but also that losing so much of your infantry at the starting gun was a generally negative omen.

At the end of the fourth week, Noboru finally admitted a stalemate with Sir Otherwise and lowered himself back to solid ground after an entire month up in the sky. His maniac eyes were bloodshot and sleepy, and his stiff whiskers were frayed.

"Is that how magic duels between experts typically go?" I asked him as he began to drag his feet back to his quarters.

"Librarian! The heavens are whipped to and fro overhead, a rapid-tap bird-wing flap of night and... fuck. No. No it isn't. That was so unusually protracted. Oh my god."

"Think I'll ever be able to do magic like that?"

"Only a student who can dance in the river of—I don't know, okay? Please leave me alone, I haven't slept in weeks."

He disappeared, and I didn't see him again for a good bit.

I didn't see Valdopeer again for while either. After his argument with Denthrak, he and his two mates Lick and Murne were unaccounted for by anyone you bothered to ask. Everyone assumed they had deserted together... and at the moment where they had seemed to have finally gotten the hang of fighting for the means to fight, no less. I had never particularly favored Valdopeer, but aside from his constant bitching, which was a recent development, I hadn't come to particularly dislike or even devalue him. So I felt his absence in my head for the next few days, whenever I tried to plan or strategize something, or whenever I was trying to account for my manpower. I kept on forgetting and reminding myself that he had vanished.

On our first morning beyond Beradak, in our giant evil goblin camp between the town and the off-white plinth of Berahd, with the giant portal we had first passed through finally closed for good, I was awoken in my tent by both a deep vehicular rumbling and the exuberant rousing of Yusla. Next to me, Ahka stirred, giving Yusla the stink eye as he bobbed and weaved into the low-standing tent, lit pure gold from the rising sun shining down on it.

"Shit, what time is it?" I grumbled, rubbing my eyes.

"Late, is what it is," Yusla answered. "They're finally bringing in the towers! Why aren't you out there? We're about to make the jump to the Castle!"

"OH MY GOSH," I cried, scooping up Ahka and scrambling to my feet. "Is that what that sound is?"

"Yes! Come on! I'm gonna hitch a ride on one."

He slinked out of the tent, and Ahka and I followed him into the daylight of the camp. Far to my right, past the city of tents like the one I had warped to from Tierena, were the blackened ruins of Beradak. And to my right, like an elevated horizon, was the base atop which the city of Berahd was built.

In between was the convoy of siege towers.

They lumbered slow, messy, rough, and utterly unstoppable, splitting the earth they were dragged through like spoons through a tub of cream. And like the plinth, they towered, immensely, as we all watched them agape at their feet. Ahka squealed with discovery and pointed enthusiastically, but my reaction was hardly much different.

Yusla jogged through the camp, around the wide, viscous base of the tower passing in front of us, and I jogged after him.

"Now we'll have two options," he told over his shoulder. "One, we stay on the ground as infantry, wait for the towers to occupy Berahd, and then follow them up afterwards. Or two, we climb onto the damn things and let them roll us directly into the heat."