＊＊＊
Once Timona and his men reached the northern peak of the hill, they were in a perfect position to witness Imperium forces pushing back the friendly mercenary lines. As Carmine had predicted, the lay militia and new conscripts to the east had failed to remaneuver after routing their enemies.
As soon as they arrived, Timona gave his orders.
“Drop everything you have down the slope. Take apart any nearby carver cannons you can find and throw them down too.”
“We’re dropping the cannons?!”
The squire resisted Timona’s orders. But it wasn’t just him—the platoon commanders were thinking the same thing. Once their men had brought over the cannons, they too came over to object to the plan.
“We can still use these cannons! Do you know how expensive these things are?!”
Timona did know. He’d personally processed the paperwork to procure these weapons by the emperor’s side. He couldn’t not know.
“These are His Majesty’s orders. Obey them.”
“But...”
Faced with the unrelenting officers, Timona asked himself what his master would do.
“First,” he started slowly, “we can’t use the cannons in this kind of melee. Any shot will hit our allies. A cannon that can’t be fired has no purpose. So, we may as well use it in any way we can. This is His Majesty’s plan. Also, he won’t mind the cost. He knows very well that siege weapons are resources to be expended.”
Figuring that Carmine would have explained the reasoning behind his decision, Timona inferred the emperor’s intent in doling out his orders and passed it down to the officers.
This was all conjecture. Timona hadn’t been told why he was doing what he was doing—only that he was to do it. However, from years of watching Carmine by his side and listening to his thought processes, Timona had managed to completely reverse engineer the emperor’s plan.
“But...do we have to?”
Still, the platoon commanders resisted. They had apparently been charmed by the carver cannons’ wiles.
“Our enemies don’t have cannons. That’s why they’re putting up with the casualties that come from fighting in hand-to-hand combat. His Majesty would say, ‘Then let them have ours.’”
Timona was confident that he’d chosen precisely the turn of phrase his liege would have resorted to.
“B-But wouldn’t that help the enemy?”
At the squire’s hesitant retort, Timona shot him a look before answering.
“If they piece them back together, yes. And we’re only taking them apart, not destroying them, so they surely will in a matter of time.” Down below, the mercenary formation was nearing its breaking point. Deciding that time was up, Timona sighed, cursed his lack of persuasive talent, and gave his final notice. “They will not have that time. His Majesty is saying that the fighting ends today. Do it. Stall any longer and you’ll be tried for insubordination.”
✦ ✦ ✦
＊＊＊
With Timona’s orders, bits of deconstructed cannons and other miscellaneous junk went tumbling down the hillside, ripping through the enemy flank. Though the Imperium’s daring attack had pushed back the mercenaries significantly, it had been at the cost of their own defensive formation.
The forces across from Timona’s on Ginaugh Hill saw the attack and commenced one of their own on the other Imperium flank. Their frontal assault thwarted, the Imperium’s army retreated.
As the once-struggling allied forces put themselves back together, a spy came with urgent news for Timona.
“His Majesty is personally leading his troops into a charge?” Timona asked incredulously.
“Yes. He intends to lead the militia in. The spymaster tried to stop him, to no avail.”
All who were present to hear the news were in shock, save for one: Timona finally knew what that bad feeling of his had been.
“If I recall,” he said, “your memory was exceptionally good even among our spies. Please recite His Majesty’s exact words, as he spoke them, when he spoke to the Count Palatine.”
Having trained as a spy himself, Timona remembered this messenger and his strengths. Recalling that the man had a keen enough memory to accurately steal secrets without a paper trail, he made the spy recite the conversation word for word.
His Majesty spoke formally throughout.
In Timona’s eyes, Carmine was a strange person. Despite being born an emperor, it felt as though he was always merely acting the part. When he was particularly distraught or emotional, he often dropped the royal pronoun from his speech, switching to the informal “I” instead. Only a select few people, like Timona or Count Palatine Vodedt, knew of this quirk.
As an aside, Timona had only recently discovered that his speech pattern also changed when speaking to someone heart-to-heart.
His Majesty is of sound judgment. He would have slipped otherwise. Considering the time it took to deliver the message, he’s likely already left the encampment. It’s too late to stop him.
The emperor’s participation was not just for a chance to win the head of the self-styled duke. It would solve all sorts of issues—chief among them the consolidation of authority under Duke Warren. If he could directly lead his army to success and wipe away his reputation as a puppet emperor, he could break the cycle that was pulling more and more weight toward Duke Warren.
Good was the victorious monarch, but heroic was he who led his men himself. There was no better opportunity for glory.
Timona’s mind was made up in an instant. “Light the smoke signal. The one for ‘pursue’ after our victory should be the red one.”
“W-Wait! Only the deputy general can authorize that signal. This is clear overreach!”
The squire tried to dissuade Timona; anyone thinking normally would have agreed with him. But Timona reasoned that he ought to force the issue regardless.
“I know that I’m overstepping my bounds. The deputy general will light the red signal himself at any moment now. But a signal from base camp won’t be visible to the Order of Atúr on the northern side of these hills—we have to light them here. Besides, doing it now won’t be much different from doing it after we confirm the deputy general’s. It’s a rounding error. So light it.”
“But sir,” one of the remaining platoon commanders said, “the signal flares are magical devices. Only a select few people know how to work them as a contingency against our enemies trying to use them.”
Looking around, no one here fit the bill, including the newly arrived spy. Or so it would seem to all but Timona.
“Miss Chapelier, do whatever you must to light the fuse.”
Among the resources Carmine had provided for this man-made avalanche scheme had been Vera-Sylvie and a fully loaded mana-sealing ward. However, Timona had kept these in his back pocket, instead leaving the cannon tossing to the burliest of his men.
“I’m not...good at it...but, um...I’ll try.”
“A-Are we seriously doing this? Why are we taking this risk?”
If it really were a rounding error of a few minutes, there was no point in ignoring the chain of command and risking punishment. A good executive decision could make a career, but a bad one could break it.
Yet Timona saw it differently. By his estimation, those few minutes could alter the state of the battlefield—not for himself, but for the Order of Atúr. The Order’s military strategy revolved around firing arrows from a safe distance, but once it was time to pursue a fleeing foe, they drew their blades and charged with reckless abandon. It was precisely this phase of battle that offered the most glory to be gained.
Rather than allow the enemy to get a head start on the horse archers, it would be better to have them prepare for the chase before the enemy could fully switch gears. That way, they’d be ready to hunt as soon as the enemy turned heel, and would rack up more honors.
But most importantly of all, Timona was not a man looking for a promotion. Unfazed by the prospect of punishment, he gave his orders.
“With His Majesty on the front lines, our success is guaranteed. Light the signal of victory!”
Little did anyone know, these words would go down in the history books as the most famous phrase from the Battle of Chelán Hill.
✦ ✦ ✦
＊＊＊
Upon confirming the billowing cloud of red smoke, Timona walked over to Vera-Sylvie.
“Well then, Miss Chapelier, I’ll leave things here to you.”
“Huh?” Vera-Sylvie opened her eyes wide. Timona was usually the kind of person to tell her she’d done a good job, and she didn’t understand what he was saying. “Um, are you...g-going somewhere?”
Timona “borrowed” the spy’s horse, answering from atop the saddle in a tone that suggested he was about to go for a nice walk.
“My work here is done. I’m going after His Majesty.”
The man kicked his steed and rode off into the horizon.
Left behind, Vera-Sylvie and the spy turned to one another, commiserating each other’s confusion with blank stares.