Sadly Sings Destiny

19

Heather lazed in her tent far behind the front lines, so far from the front of the battlefield that she could smell the river and feel the shots from the Sabbistahnian artillery on the far bank. Months had passed with her soldiers being unable to break the Lotheranian lines. She sighed, laying in her cot. She had been warned by everyone who had any degree of experience in warfare that waiting to solve her problems diplomatically would lead to this kind of stalemate. She regretted waiting now, but in the long run, she knew it would reflect better on her if she survived to tell the tale.

It was three months now since King Charles the Twelfth had been killed by a stray bullet. It was the dead of another cold Lotheranian winter, and only the Sabbistahni soldiers seemed not to mind. At the time, neither she nor Valerian knew how the Elsiderian soldiers and the Elsiderian country would respond to the news. Even the opposing Lotheranians seemed nervous about what the future would bring. Less than a month after the king was dead, the Serpent of the West and the Bruin of the East were crossing the river with thousands of their own soldiers keen on beating revenge out of the Lotheranian country, leaving behind the Lion of the North to manage the country until the time was right for them to go through their own methods of selecting a new ruler.

The additional Elsiderian soldiers nearly tripled the number of northerners who were fighting alongside the displaced Lotheranians and assisting soldiers. The influx of troops hadn’t done much to advance the cause for the time being, though. The Lotheranians were too well dug in, and the sheer loss of life without any real advantage to be gained had caused not only the inexperienced Heather to be nervous about pushing forward, but even Valerian and the three Beasts from Elsideria weren’t keen on running into the rifle fire. For the time being, the two sides were at a stalemate, and there was little either party could do about it.

Heather and Valerian kept up their evening walks together, even after what had happened to King Charles. The only thing that had changed was that they now walked through the frozen mud in the bottom of the trenches rather than the dry ground between the lines. They didn’t talk on these walks. When the walks had started, it was something that the three had used to discuss the day’s events and work to be done to improve their situation, but it quickly became something else. Now it was two leaders in silence walking among frightened soldiers who seemed to be more afraid of appearing unready in front of their respective commander than of the lead balls flying over their heads. The ordinarily cheerful and talkative Valerian would keep to himself several paces ahead of a once optimistic Heather who did everything she could to keep her eyes forward and away from the soldiers who looked up to her for guidance.

Heather grew to loath the walks. The soldiers who fought under her and Valerian and the former King would always look up to their respective leaders, and they would seem to be looking for guidance that was not there. Heather cursed herself every time she met the eyes of one of the men or women stuck in the trenches. She desperately wished that she was one of the heroes from the storybooks that she read every chance she had growing up. But that wasn’t the world that she lived in. Valerian had higher hopes of being a hero than she did, but even he seemed to be struggling with what he had to do. Instead, the soldiers were left to look up to another girl, one with nothing special to her name, one who couldn’t even use magic, to lead them to the victory that would allow them to storm ahead into Lotherania propper.

After months of the same old routine, Heather had enough. She woke up early one morning and marched to the back of the camp where Valerian and his wing of pilots stayed. She demanded that he ‘take her up’ with him, despite not being entirely sure what she meant by that request. Valerian had been halfway through dressing when she barged into his tent, but he had given her a wry smile and quickly accepted her demand. Within half an hour, she was dressed in the coat and scarf and hat and goggles that had been given to her by one of Valerian’s men.

Heather was not shocked when the banker led her to one of the strange machines that he brought with him. The airplane was small and delicate. The frame was made from thin pine spars and skinned in sanded balsa wood, the clockwork power unit gleamed in the spots where it was visible through the skin in the front of the fuselage, and the coil spring shone under the wings. The plane seemed primitive, even to Heather, with its open cockpit and lack of any displays in the cockpit except for one small gauge that showed the energy stored in the spring. Valerian helped Heather into the back seat, being sure to direct her away from the thin skin of his unarmed and unarmored Sparrow. He pulled away the engine brake, and the propeller began to spin accompanied by the tattletale mechanical whirring of the clockwork. Valerian shifted through the transmission and built up speed and slowly lifted the plane into the sky through unseen controls in his section of the aircraft.

Heather had to look at her hands in her lap when the ground fell away around her and the wind began to carry the airplane. Despite the warm clothing she had been loaned, she could feel the cold draft coming in through the edges of the sections of balsa that made up the skin, and the open-top cockpit with nothing to break the wind didn’t help. When she was able to drag her eyes away from her boots and looked out over the side of the plane, the ground was far below her and the trenches of her soldiers were nothing more than black lines in the ground. She was gentle when she turned to look, the skin was thin and she had nothing to hold her in her seat should the light craft jostle and push her over the side.

As Valerian flew towards the hills the soldiers had been working to capture, she felt each of her own trenches as the air currents changed. During this crossing, she made the mistake of looking over to the wingtips, and every time the plane bounced on what little thermals there were, the wings flexed more than enough to make the first time flyer feel uncomfortable. Heather shuddered and locked her eyes on the back of Valerian’s head as she adjusted her scarf in the vain hope to ward off some of the cold. She didn’t understand how Valerian or any of his pilots could stand the winter air on their daily missions.

Below the two sky-bound leaders, the hills rose up, covered in the trees that had hidden their enemy for so long. Valerian and Heather scanned the ground below, Valerian doing a better job as he had a spyglass with him. The plane circled the enemy lines, or where they thought the lines were, for what felt like an eternity in the cold air. Finally, Valerian broke away from the lines as the gauge that displayed the level of power stored in the spring neared the one-third mark. The delicate plane flew further south to inspect what lay behind the Lotheranian lines and what may be supporting the enemy or waiting for them beyond.

Heather let herself relax into her seat. Now that Valerian was keeping the aircraft level, it was much more bearable for her. She looked over the side from time to time and took in the scenery with a wistful smile. Under any other circumstances, this would have been a once in a lifetime opportunity for her. As far as she knew, she was the first Lotheranian, perhaps even the first Tylmathri person to fly in one of the small airplanes. The airships had been around for a while, and it was common for the more affluent members of Lotheranian society to use those to fly to Sabbistahn, but the single motor small aircraft were an expensive rarity in her land. She sighed and leaned back in her seat again as the plane bounced on the air currents.

A shout from Valerian brought the young girl from her thoughts with a jolt. She looked forward to see a gloved hand motioning towards a black column in the distance. She gasped and stood up a little in her seat, trying to see better over her pilot’s shoulders. Valerian took a risk and lowered the aircraft to try and get a better view, but it was impossible to gain much more information than that the newcomers were flying the Lotheranian banner and that there was a great deal of them. Valerian shook his head and climbed out of the range of any rifle fire. He pulled a pistol from somewhere unseen and fired a blue flair into the sky. It gave away his position, but it also sent an order to all of the other aircraft in the air to return to the makeshift airfield. Heather watched with a deal of admiration as the wing flew into formation with Valerian flying point. As they neared the temporary landing strip. Valerian was the first to go down as the others held in a landing pattern until it was their turn.

Valerian was quick to jump out of the aircraft without a second thought for the struggling Heather who punched a hole in the balsa skin with her foot as she stumbled over the side and ran to catch up with the Banker who was lighting a cigar and walking in the direction of the Elsiderian Beasts ready to tell what the two of them had seen. For hours the five of them debated how to handle what they could only assume was reinforcements coming to aid the enemy. Heather felt out of place, her lack of experience made her feel like nothing more than a child sitting in the corner while the adults sorted out the important matters. She did her best to help, but she could tell by the way the others would nod kindly then ignore her advice. The only thing that broke the Boar, the Serpent, the Bruin, and the Banker out of their arguing was the sudden eruption of rifle fire and sounds of battle coming from the hills.

The camp was in full alert as Heather and the others charged to the front trench to take up defenses and see what was causing the commotion. Heather was handed a rifle as she took her spot on the trench wall and looked over no man’s land, along with thousands of curious soldiers. The sounds of battle echoed across the snow-covered field, emanating from the trees a half-mile away. Heather exchanged uneasy glances with the soldiers to her sides. Something unexpected was coming, and it didn’t seem like it would be anything good for the invaders.

The sounds of battle continued through the night, and in the camp of Elsiderians, Sabbistahnians, and refugees, none slept. All soldiers stood on guard in the trenches, and the Sabbistahni artillery silently waited for the order to rain shells down on whatever may be left in the woods beyond. Some of the waiting soldiers were able to sleep, but Heather was not one of them. She spent the entirety of the cold night gripping her gun so tight that her knuckles were white and her arms were cramping. It was early in the morning when the sounds stopped, but there was something more horrible than the noise in that detail. When the sun rose, Heather had yet to sleep, and the stress of the night was wearing on her.

As the sun rose above the horizon to Heather’s left, a single woman walked across the blasted field between the two armies. A quick look through a spyglass showed that she was unarmed and that there was nothing behind her that would suggest a trap was being laid. There was a quick conference between the leaders of the insurrection, and it was decided that Heather and Valerian would meet the lone woman standing halfway between the two armies. Heather was not keen on the idea, and she was shaking with fear as she walked across the field with the banker a half dozen paces behind her. The world seemed to stand still, and each one of her steps seemed to only cover a tenth of the normal distance. She bit her lip as she worried about what she would face, and not for the first time, she wished she could be as brave as one of the women in the books she read.

“Hey,” she called out when she was twenty feet away from the woman who had walked across the empty field. She bit her lip and cringed without showing it, it seemed like a ridiculous way to start what could be one of the defining moments of her campaign. She watched as the woman raised an eyebrow in confusion, and she would have sworn on her mother’s life that she heard Valerian choke back a laugh at her expense.

“Heather von Trent?” the other woman asked in a firm voice, though the fearful leader seemed to sense an equal amount of fear in her voice.

“Yes?” she said, standing slightly taller and with a hint of false pride.

“My soldiers and I have gathered from every city and every countryside in Lotherania. We are the ones who could not run as your women did.'' The girl said, “And I am Abigail Martin, I have led my army of deserters across the country, growing in numbers with every city we passed and every regiment of soldiers in the land and every farm that had a hand to spare. We have come here because we’ve heard of you and what you’ve done for our people who ran to Elsideria. We’re here to help you fight for your homeland. Our homeland.”

Heather looked over her shoulder at Valerian, who shrugged in response, then turned back to the woman who stood before her.