The tactics of the Invictan military were well established in the years after Gaius’s ascension. As soon as he inherited Aivor he began a fresh campaign of conquest in the regions within and around Gaurlante. The army would enter an area previously unconquerable and would set up a new town as a staging area. The campaigns would be won in two stages: first, attrition, as the Invictan towns would develop and grow and prosper under the guidance of their army, while draining resources from the surrounding areas. Then, an army would be mobilized from the Core, and the conquest of the new province would come with startling quickness and efficiency. Of course, there are limits to any strategy – when you witness an individual attempt the same thing many times in a row, you begin to predict their next move will be the same. So it is with armies and nations, just as well.

- From “From Core to Corod”, a travelogue of the Scholar Geshor

244 YT, Winter: Etyslund.

Backed by reinforcements from Kivv, the militia in Etyslund was growing and more organized than any local force Stepan had seen before. In fact, they were starting to look less like Valers than like Invictans, much to Stepan’s discomfort.

The irregular soldiers who came – some raised up and recruited from other villages around the Vale, others straight from Kivv, even a few Ordian migrants and Invictan defectors – were carrying the finest weapons of the Vale, clad in the highest-quality armor the region could produce, and organized like an army worthy of the Invictans themselves. When Stepan watched them from the rooftop of his library, when he saw them drilling in the fields, he thought of the Invictans. The fields on which they fought, preparing for the real fight in Carakhte, was the same field on which Stepan had watched so many of his acquaintances die. The cairns around the village were only obstacles to them. The pieces of the rock where Marga’s blood had fallen, spread around the village, meant little to most of these men and women.

They had bigger things to worry about than a village that was already saved, bigger things to worry about than the anxieties of an old man the world was all ready to pass by.

Stepan Zelenko knew that if he went back to Kivv again, he would be welcomed there. There was a great deal he could do to help the war preparations from there, and though it had been a long time since he’d truly fulfilled his duties as a Sower it was never too late to seek new beginnings. At least, that was what he thought Voloshko would tell him. He would even have the chance to be with his children again, and – of course! – he wanted to go and be with them. But…

The village was moving on without him, he felt, even though so much had happened here. In the weeks after the battle, Stepan had thought the village needed him, and yet what was he? A messenger, an errand-runner. He’d helped rebuild what was broken, to the extent that his Cultivation allowed, and then he shuffled off to his library to let the world continue moving around him, without him. He wasn’t needed anymore!

Every day for weeks, Stepan went to the heart of the library and listened at the radio for the signal he knew would come one day. Luca and her saboteurs at Carakhte would call Etyslund when the time came, would send a message that the city had been infiltrated. And then Etyslund’s makeshift army would come, and Luca and her saboteurs would open the gates and slash the tires and burn the weapons stores, and Carakhte would fall. After that, perhaps the Vale would be safe. Or perhaps the destruction of the staging ground these Invictans had worked so hard to create would only provoke a greater military response from them. Either way, there was little choice involved in the Valers’ decisions now. The war was already on its way.

Perhaps if Stepan left now, if he carried himself across the land with a Sower’s power, without regard for the marks he might leave, then he could catch up to Luca before the time came. But Stepan had little faith that he would make it into Carakhte.

Go to Carakhte, and risk getting himself caught, dying, compromising the whole mission.

Go to Kivv, become a part of the city’s defenses, be with his children but forget about Etyslund.

Or stay here, and do nothing.

Of the three options, going to Kivv was the wisest – Stepan knew that in his mind.

But for now… just for now… he didn’t want to leave Etyslund.

Staring into the south, toward Carakhte, Stepan let the thin slips of paper scratch between his fingertips. They were crumpled and covered in the blood of those who’d died trying to destroy Stepan’s home. Written on the papers was Gaurl script he couldn’t fully understand. It was either Bless your memory or Curse your memory, he thought, but he wasn’t sure.

Maybe I’ll ask Cigdem next time I get to question him, Stepan thought. Maybe I’ll give him a little piece of my mind while I’m at it. it’s his fault I’m so far from my children. It’s his fault Marga is dead.