Rewrite That Witch
CH113 · Rewrite
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Chapter 113: Warning

Spring arrived without ceremony — two days of rain after the Months of the Demons, and then sun, as though the sky were paying back a debt. The musty winter air cleared from the office. When Roland opened the windows in the morning, something that smelled genuinely like growth drifted in from the direction of the river.

The road to Longsong Stronghold had nearly recovered its surface. And with each day the road improved, Roland’s unease sharpened by a corresponding measure.

The merchants hadn’t come.

Every spring, once the thaw opened the road, traders from the Stronghold arrived within the first week — salt, cloth, preserved goods, the ordinary commerce of resuming contact. This year the road was passable and the caravans had not appeared. Lightning was flying reconnaissance twice daily, watching the Stronghold’s gate for the dust that a marching army raised and a trading convoy did not. So far: nothing. But the absence of merchants was itself a signal.

They know the army is coming, Roland thought. Or they’ve been warned not to travel.

The First Army had been in comprehensive exercises for a week.

The defensive-line drills were the simpler half — what made them work was Lightning. She would fly at height, watch the approach, and raise flags. At eight hundred meters: solid shot from the artillery. At five hundred: solid shot again, faster volleys. At three hundred: canister. At fifty: rifles. The flag system made the range calls clean; the team leaders trained to read and relay without waiting for confirmation. After six days the latency had compressed to something Roland found acceptable, though not comfortable.

The pursuit drill was the piece he’d spent the most time designing, because it was the piece most likely to fail.

When Duke Ryan’s army broke — when, not if, he’d decided to call it that in his own head — they would retreat toward Longsong Stronghold, two days’ march even for men moving fast. Even the Duke himself, fleeing on horseback and abandoning his hired troops, would need a night in the field. That night was the window. Lightning would track the column from altitude while the First Army shadowed it, staying outside scouting range, the artillery and ammunition wagons handled by town civilians. When the enemy made camp, encirclement. At dawn, annihilation.

The plan had no complicated moving parts, and it still depended on coordination that was nearly impossible without radio. He was relying on the witches to fill the gap — Lightning’s eyes for distance, Nightingale’s for truth when the intelligence came in. Whether it would actually work in field conditions was a question he couldn’t answer in an exercise.

That’s what the real battle is for, he told himself, which was a very unsatisfying thing to tell himself.

The gunpowder reserves were low.

Because of that, the exercises had been run without live ammunition — blank drills, the motions without the cost. It bothered him less than it might have; the goals were coordination and timing, not marksmanship, and those could be drilled dry. But the actual engagement would consume what he had, and two serious fights after that, the rifles became spears.

He’d sent agents south along the Shishui to Fallen Dragon Ridge and Redwater City looking for saltpeter deposits. He’d written a purchasing list — saltpeter, grain, seeds — and was sending one of Barov’s apprentices to the King’s City to try the open market. Summer was coming, and wealthy households in the capital salted their iceboxes against the heat; saltpeter moved in volume this time of year. If he could find a stable supplier before the battle, he could afford to be less careful about consumption.

He also had two men already out in the field on separate programs.

The first was spreading rumors — carefully shaped, no direct mention of Roland — that the Witch Cooperation Association had found the Holy Mountain and was recruiting survivors. A safe haven, unnamed, reachable. A breadcrumb trail for any witch who’d heard enough to be looking for one.

The second had gone to Clearwater Port to buy seeds from Fjord traders: crops that didn’t grow in the Western Region, varieties he wanted to test in Border Town’s soil. Anything interesting encountered along the way was to be sent back immediately.

He handed the completed purchasing list to Scroll and sent her to the Town Hall. Then he reached for his tea.

The cup was empty.

He was halfway out of his chair when Nightingale materialized from the corner — not from the fog, just from the chair she’d been occupying — crossed to the fireplace, lifted the kettle, and filled his cup. She set the kettle back without a word. She was smiling.

Roland watched her settle back into her chair.

She’d been like this for several days. Smiling at nothing in particular. Refilling his cup before he asked. He’d asked her once what had happened; she’d laughed and refused to answer. He’d let it go because there was no lever that would move Nightingale when she’d decided not to say something.

Could Gwent really produce this level of sustained satisfaction? He sipped his tea. When I invent poker I could open a casino—

He stopped that line of thought firmly. Not the moment.

The question of what came after Longsong Stronghold had been sitting in his peripheral vision for weeks, and he let it move to the center now while he drank.

Relocating his seat of power to the Stronghold was the obvious move — larger city, longer history, more resources. He’d considered it seriously and rejected it. The Stronghold had over a hundred years of established noble structures, divided territories, competing families who had been managing their own affairs long enough to consider those affairs permanent. Walking in as the new lord and attempting consolidation would require either an accommodating revolution or a suppressive one, and he didn’t have the leverage for either without creating the kind of instability that got princes stabbed in the street by “radical aristocrats.”

Border Town was different. He had built it. The people who lived there were mostly miners and hunters — one social stratum, no legacy structures competing with his — and after three Months of the Demons they had watched him stand between them and the dark and not flinch. The First Army was his. The witches had accepted it as home. The Church’s influence here was thin enough to manage.

So: Border Town as the core. Longsong Stronghold as a revenue stream. He’d let someone else administer the Stronghold on his behalf, take a percentage in taxes and a percentage in skilled workers who could be persuaded to relocate, and let the nobles’ captured wealth cycle back through the commoner economy and return to him eventually through the market.

In theory, he reminded himself. In theory.

Who would administer the Stronghold, and exactly how the tax structure would work, and what “persuaded to relocate” would look like in practice — all of that waited on the other side of the battle. He’d build the plan from what was left standing.

The shadow came through the open window before the sound did — a yellow flash dropping fast from height, pulling up at the last moment with a thump of air and a skid of boots on the sill.

Lightning.

She was breathing hard. He held out his tea; she took it without drinking.

“Your Highness.” She looked at him over the rim of the cup. “They’re coming.”

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