CHAPTER SIX
Luka had been drowning in paperwork all day—and well into the night—as the War Council of generals and advisors tried to find some way of winning this damnable war that Luka’s uncle had started.
Everyone knew he was being groomed to take over his uncle’s seat on the War Council, and as such they sent him reams of paperwork and letters upon letters, detailing their plans for pulling back from Telluria, negotiating with their ruler, for pressing on to a decisive victory, for the necessity of pressing new troops into battle…it went on in a never ending stream of words that washed over him in waves that were set to carry him away.
He knew Maya thought he had holed himself up in his study to avoid her, but the truth was that he had enough to be getting on with even without the need to evade her.
Luka answered what letters he could, trying to temper his uncle’s predilection for rash decisions with the Council’s advice to strike while they were at an advantage and push Telluria into accepting a diplomatic solution.
They couldn’t keep fighting forever, no matter what Uncle Yarek thought. The man seemed to think the Imperial Army was nothing more than the little dolls the pushed around his model maps as he made plans with the War Council—expendable, replaceable automatons sent out onto the frontlines to do his bidding.
Luka was ashamed to think he had thought the same, once. But he had the pitiful excuse that he had been but a boy, unknowing of the truth of war.
While Uncle Yarek had commanded the Rurik regiment in his youth. He’d fought against Merovia, short but intense skirmishes along the border.
How was it that a taste of battle had forced Luka to grow up, but his uncle had remained the same?
Luka remembered the last War Council he’d attended at the capital. “This is the way the world works, nephew,” his uncle had said, when dismissing one of the other lords’ objections to sending another regiment into battle. He’d shaken his head when Luka had hesitatingly disagreed. “You need to grow up more before you understand, Luka,” Yarek had said, not unkindly, and now, Luka ground his teeth at the memory.
It seemed like the war had been going on forever, but really, it was only because there had always been fighting at their borders. As a child, Luka had seen his uncle and his father ride to battle against the Merovians and the Sunvaarans—for land, or resources—and as the years went on, the constant warring was slowly driving their great and noble kingdom into the ground.
And of course, the worst of it all was the cost to their kingdom. The royal scribes recorded nearly every battle as a victory for the Drakazov Kingdom, but at what cost? Luka had seen, firsthand, how many of his men had been injured in his mad rush against the Tellurian army and their damnedtamefiredrakes—
He shook himself as a shiver worked its way down his spine. Well, following that thread of memory would guarantee that he would spend the rest of the night at the bottom of a bottle.
And he had work to do tonight.
Stoffel had informed him that the Convalescence Halls he was having built were being expanded. Hopefully, they would be done by the end of the week, his aide had written to the nearest towns for their best stone mages who had experience in architecture.
It would help revive the economy, too, Stoffel had said, and Luka agreed. He’d been away from Kamenev for a long time. First, because he’d been playacting at being a soldier in the capital, attending War Councils and meetings as if he knew anything at all, and then, out on the frontlines, ready to die for a nebulous concept such as honor, without thinking about what would happen to the tenants on his lands, the towns that had sprung up in his province, all of them depending onhimto manage their holdings and shepherd them into success. He’d left it all to others, just as his mother had done before him, content to the let their steward run the show in their absence.
Well, there were some things the steward could do, and some he could not. The man had worked loyally for him in his absence, but he was only able to keep things running as they always had been. To make improvements, to excise deadwood, to cut loose the things that were not working and to change course mid-stream—he had neither the imagination nor the authority for it.
Not that Luka could blame him. The steward had worked hard, and Luka was grateful. When he’d come back to the estate a month previous, he’d had Stoffel share all the tasks of running of the estate with the man, and the steward had been grateful for the help.
Now, with the steward to maintain the running of the estate as required, Luka was free to concentrate on the thingshewanted to do: starting with making sure his injured men were looked afterproperly.
He’d found, to his dismay, that the injured and maimed soldiers who returned from the frontlines had nowhere to go. Most of them made the long journey home to their estates, only to realize that they were essentially useless—they could no longer serve as soldiers, and most of them were too injured to till a field or plant crops.
Many of them became shepherds and goatherds, while others had remained farmers. They had made do with rudimentary prosthetics, but most of them suffered from pain all their lives.
The mages had a better time of it—they had their magic, and it was not affected by their injuries. They worked as stone carvers in the quarries, or helped the dockworkers in ferrying large blocks of stone to the ships, or worked under architects in bringing their designs to life in brick and stone.
But the men without magic—and there were many of them, outnumbering the mage officers two to one—they were left at loose ends. Several of them had been second sons, or common men without inherited wealth to cushion their return to civil life. They’d joined the army for the chance at a better life. And now they were left without even the means to support themselves. Now that they could no longer sit on a horse, or hold a sword, they were cast out of the Imperial Army, and left to fend for themselves.
Luka would not let them be cast out into the cold. Perhaps he had been blind to it all before—he couldn’t remember ever seeing a single injured soldier in the capital, not that he had looked too closely as a young man, to his everlasting shame. He suspected now that his father, who loved beautiful things, had stashed all his injured soldiers out sight. Out of sight, and out of mind.
But now that Luka was aware of how many men came back injured and broken from these damned wars, he had to do something about it. Better late than never.
So he built a large convalescence wing at the Healing Houses in the capital of Kamenev province, and was trying hard to ensure that each injured soldier would have some way of supporting himself and his family.
Stoffel brought him lists and lists of things that were essential to the new wing, to the new project, every day. He’d even suggested that they bring the injured horses back with them, when usually they were left on the field of battle to their own devices or shot dead as the army retreated home.
But Luka couldn’t bear the thought. It wasn’t the horses’ fault he was a poor leader who’d managed to get his regiment beaten so soundly. He couldn’t abandon the poor defenseless creatures in their hour of need, any more than he could abandon his men.
And so, Stoffel was put in charge of building large stables on the Kamenev lands. Luka had sent letters to the ambassadors to the Ellem Isles, hoping to ensure that their ships would be able to sail to Kamenev through the Northern sea with its cargo of injured horses, unmolested by the Elves. The injured men returned in caravans and covered wagons, but the horses could never be expected to make the journey home on foot. They had galloped to war, but to make the return journey the same way was asking for too much.
The few responses that Luka had received from the Elves were encouraging, but none of them had been outright acceptance.
