IRON TOWER

  PEASANTRY RANK: 212th

  FORTIFICATION RANK: 4th

  SPLENDOR RANK: 20th

  CONTROL: The Traitorous Silver Falcon clan

  IMPERIAL PROVINCE: Imperial Plains of the Falcon

  IMPERIAL PROTECTOR: Whosoever Claims the Head of Sparrow and the Commandant of the Silver Falcon Clan

  A man called Colossus brought us to the main hall straightaway to await my father, but he also made sure to bring us some salted porridge in the meantime. It was poor fare, but I knew my father must have enacted siege protocols, so I did not mind. The way Windstopper tucked in you would have thought he hadn’t eaten in weeks, when in fact, it seemed we had been eating better than those Iron Tower. The updated Imperial card painted an even grimmer picture. We were just directing Colossus to add our spare provisions to the stockpile – including the chickens and pigs from Uncle’s complex – when my father strode in, dressed as if for battle.

  He looked like he hadn’t been out of his armor in months, and probably hadn’t slept for as long, but realistically, it could only have been a matter of a week or two.

  After marching up to me, looking me up and down with an impassive eye, he let out a breath and said, “Thank Heaven.”

  Then he pulled me forcefully into a hug.

  I couldn’t tell if the creak of iron and leather was from my father’s Mandate, or if his guards and attendants were shuffling awkwardly at such an uncharacteristic display of affection from their cold-iron Commandant.

  In any case, when my father stepped away and beheld me again, I felt the need to straighten up and brush gruel from my fledgling mustache.

  He looked down at the table that was set for me and my companions.

  “No meat today?” he asked Colossus.

  The tall, bronze-skinned castellan shook his head.

  “Tea, then,” said my father, before adding, “in my chambers.”

  Colossus nodded.

  “Come,” he said to me. “We have much to discuss.”

  He turned to stride behind the austere iron-bound chair that served as his throne when greeting guests of lesser standing, but I looked to River and hesitated.

  “Father,” I said, in carefully practiced tone that had him pause and turn back to me. “This is River. What you say to me, you can say to her. River, meet my father, called Commandant.”

  She bowed.

  He looked to her, then back to me, and said, “So be it. You have a son.”

  ***

  My father’s “quarters” were little more than a spartan bed, an armor rack and a wardrobe, the open space dominated by a massive metal table worked and stenciled to depict the terrain of our homeland. The Commandant had been here over a year, and we might all die here by the end of the winter, but the way my father lived, it looked like he didn’t plan on staying long. A half dozen camp chairs surrounded the map-table and my father took up position on the north side looking down on the the Bronzesong Hills. I took a seat on the south side, facing the Plains proper. My two companions flanked me, Windstopper in the seat toward Windmarsh in the east, and River in the seat toward the capital districts in the west, and beneath that, the Blood Haunt, Ghostcaller's realm.

  After a moment, Colossus came in with the tea. My father’s bodyguard, attendant, and second-in-command – in the absence of Uncle – was taller than Windstopper, if not as broad, and he had perpetually tanned skin that was said to be tougher than bronze. I idly wondered, as the tall man served the tea and took up position behind my father, if he could give Windstopper a challenge in a martial test.

  Then again, looking Colossus over, I saw that he was much reduced from the hard, powerful blacksmith and castellan of Iron Tower that I remembered from my childhood. My father, too, now looked less like the head of the Silver Falcon clan, and more like a turtle, in too much padding and armor, with not enough neck. The last few weeks must have been especially trying, but the last year could not have been much easier.

  Even so, I hadn’t expected him to go senile so early into his gray years.

  “What did you mean by, ‘I have a son?’” I asked, now that everyone had tea in hand.

  “A boy,” said the Commandant, matter-of-fact-ly between sips. “The little wiggly things with the arms and the legs.”

  “You mean you have another son. By a new wife perhaps?”

  “I’m not raising any more children,” said my father. “I was bad enough at it the first three times. It's your son. You raise him.”

  “But it’s not possible,” I said. “I haven’t been with anyone since meeting River, erm, since you left me in the capital.”

  I looked to River, whose face was ice cold and just as hard.

  My father waved a hand in the air. “You didn’t sire him. But I’ve got a hundred and fifty orphans in the tower I don’t know what to do with and my heir doesn’t have an heir. So if you plan on making a life with her… then congratulations, you’ve just had a son.”

  He directed this last towards River, who went from casting me a dark stare to directing it at my father. Seeing their gazes collide was like seeing a hawk dive on a falcon. One way or another, this wasn’t going to end well.

  River’s gaze turned mild and supplicating, but she didn’t drop her eyes. “How many people within Iron Tower have also just been granted a child, my lord?”

  My father didn’t bother posturing but instead answered flatly, “A hundred so far.”

  “And how men of them are women, my lord?”

  “A hundred so far.”

  “And how many have you asked if they wanted a child?”

  A muscle flickered in the Commandant’s jaw. “Why is that relevant?”

  River’s smile grew even sweeter, and waved at the air as if it were nothing. “Oh, because if you had thought to ask before commanding there would be a number of women in Iron Tower who would have heaped thanks upon their lord for granting them a child. Instead, all one hundred women will be grumbling about the burden of their lord’s command.”

  With this last, her sickly sweet smile locked onto my father like talons.

  My father’s teeth ground but he held her gaze.

  When I couldn’t take the tension any more, I coughed and said, “How… How old is the boy?”

  Reluctantly, my father’s gaze flicked to me before pausing to think. His eventual response told me all I needed to know about how much love and tenderness my father heaped upon his progeny. “Perhaps a year? Maybe half a year? How big are they by two?”

  “Any less than half a year and the child may well die without a breast,” said River.

  “I… know that much at least,” said the Commandant, snapping at first but checking himself. He was not in his element when it came to child-rearing. “The child’s been weaned.”

  “The parents?” I asked.

  “The father?” The Commandant shrugged. “But the mother was tough. She wore no pendant, so we can’t say for sure, but she seemed well-enough fed and furnished in this chaos to be of some rank. She was wounded on her way here and died not long after arriving. The boy’s name is Ang.”

  I sat there a long while in silence, absorbing it all, and no one spoke to disturb my thoughts.

  “Ang…” I finally whispered to myself, as if speaking the babe’s name too loud could cause the dream to shatter. “He’ll be my heir? I’ll raise him as a true-born son?”

  “Officially, the boy’s late mother will be listed as your first concubine in our records. The boy will be made legitimate. Aside from that…” He glanced toward River and waved his hand in the air, indicating that the rest was for me and my companion to figure out.

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  I was still caught up in the wonder of having a child – in however unlikely a fashion – but something in my father’s words snapped me out of it. I snorted. “You speak so lightly of raising a son. Is it so insignificant a task for you, to be responsible for the well-being of a life?”

  My father turned at that and began eyeing me like prey, before responding. When he did speak, his words came out as sharp as a spearpoint. “Every single thing I have ever done,” he said, “has been with the sole intention of ensuring this clan’s continued survival. For the last year, I was not certain if you would ever return to Iron Tower. In fact, every scrap of information I received about your position had me more and more convinced that you would fall afoul of Dreadwolf in one way or another. Given that man’s despotism and history of familial extermination you will forgive me if I did not press the issue of your creating an issue so long as you were in the capital. But now that you stand before me, whole and capable of defending yourself, I now deem it as likely a time as any for you to start thinking about the continuity of the clan. If you’re suddenly overcome with paternal instinct, feel free to scurry downstairs and coo over the child. But do not linger. Because if you think a father’s affection is what that child needs, right now, then you haven't been paying very close attention. ” His gaze held me for a moment longer, and then he leaned forward over the map table. “I assure you that a father’s protection is far more important to that child, at the moment.”

  I opened my mouth to respond with the first thing that came to my mind, but checked myself.

  Damn. He was right. The moment I had learned that I would have a child, and had accepted the fact – all too willingly, in fact – all I wanted to do was spend every last moment I could with this creature I had never met. But the more I listened to my father, the more I realized that if we couldn’t figure out how to get out of this mess, that might not be very long. I hated the fact that this cold, hard man was my father. But more than that, I hated the fact that he was right. I hated that he was turning me into the same thing as him, even in my very first moment of fatherhood, natural or otherwise.

  More than any of that, though, I hated myself in that moment, for wanting to be the same as my father, because that was the kind of man I needed to be right now. For myself. For my new child. For River. And yes, for my clan and those who depended upon it to keep the wolves and scavengers at bay.

  I carefully re-constructed my face and blinked until the brimming tears no longer threatened to fall. Then I carefully lifted my teacup and took a long, bracing sip. I cleared my throat.

  ***SPARROW’S MISSION BRIEFING: SURVIVE THE WINTER***

  Primary Objective: Survive the Winter.

  Secondary Objective: Do not lose any more lives to hunger or soldiers to desertion.

  Bonus Objective: Hold Iron Tower.

  Fail Conditions: Sparrow, River, or Baby Ang die.

  “Where do we stand?” I finally asked.

  My father gave me an unreadable look – perhaps because I had presumed the role of commander by asking him to report – but he eventually leaned further over the table.

  “Rebels hold the Bronzesong Hills to the north. The ones we’ve captured claim an ultimate leader, one they call The Provider, but none of the rabble has ever seen him. Windmarsh, however,” my father gestured to the eastern third of our ancestral lands, “we now know has been claimed by Swaying Willow, right out from under our noses.”

  “Swaying Willow?” I asked, remembering the kindly old minister who had worked beneath my father on the yellow plains and in the weeks thereafter. He was a likeable old man who had helped me sort through more trials of youth than my father had. “That can’t be right.”

  “You remember him then,” my father nodded. For River’s benefit, apparently – she still sat impassively flicking her gaze between me and my father – the Commandant continued. “He was a man of middling talent and moderate Imperial rank when he was in our employ, but the people of Windmarsh seem to have taken a liking to him amidst the chaos. What’s worse, is that he claims to have a decree from the Emperor to hold our land against all rebels and assassins. Right now, ‘rebels and assassins’ would include us.”

  I grimaced. In the long flight from the Imperial palace, I had been wondering when I was going to hear news of my rank, finally. Some part of me had held out hope that I could retain the modest rank I had worked so hard to achieve. But the larger part of me knew that rebels were often stripped of rank with the stroke of a brush. I pushed down the feeling of disappointment.

  “And the Plains proper?” I asked. The lands of the Silver Falcon clan, as I knew them – as I used to know them up until recently – were made up of three historical provinces. My father having given updates on the two lesser ones first – the Bronzesong Hills and Windmarsh – I knew he was holding back the worst for last.

  “Vultures, Sparrow,” spat my father. “At least five minor warlords, all vying for the chance to take down the Falcon. But with no single enemy to face, no one army to break, it's proving more effective than a perfectly coordinated assault. Dreadwolf, or his ministers, since I don’t think the bastard’s that cunning, issued a decree that puts us in almost the exact same position the three rebel generals were in a year ago. He branded us enemies of the Land Under Heaven and offered the province to whomever could bring him our heads. The Lion clan to the north is in the same position, barring Frozen Bay.”

  My father still hadn’t closed the mission he had given me over a year ago to make allies and prepare for war. As far as I was concerned, our allies were now our only hope, but we wouldn’t know where we stood with them until we could get some messages out.

  “Ok. We abandon the tower. We break through them one at a time,” I said. “We forge a path to Lion’s Reach in the north. Surely no minor warlord can stand up to our cavalry for long. And if we keep moving until we can join forces with Noble Lion, maybe even White Stallion…”

  The Commandant ground his jaw.

  “What?”

  “The outriders brought you in?”

  “Yes.”

  “You count them?”

  “Not specifically no. Looked like fifty or sixty, though. Why?”

  My father nodded, agreeing with my assessment. “Because that’s what we have left.”

  “Of the heavy cavalry?” I asked, incredulous. The heavy cavalry made up the bulk of our armies and was usually around five to ten thousand strong, depending upon how many were called up and where they were needed. If our elites were down to only sixty…

  “Not the heavies, no. Of the army. Fifty-eight screamers, in total.”

  I blinked and finally said, “I don’t understand.”

  “I have no use for infantry and archers, aside from the two dozen or so it takes to hold the tower. Just more mouths to feed. Initially we held a thousand cavalry in reserve, to support the three fronts. But the last five years of rebellion and war dwindled our surplus and reduced the peasantry. It was turning around this past year, but…”

  I thought back to the fields we traversed on the way here. Fallow and untouched on the far side of our borders and deliberately burned or trampled within our territories.

  “I saw,” I grimaced. It was horrible timing. A month later and we’d have been able to restock. Ready for the winter at least, if not a protracted war.

  “An army fights on its stomach, Sparrow, you know this. With no food for horses, horses become food. With no money for soldiers, they join the winning side. Even the wings that won their battles didn’t come back.”

  “So this is it?” I asked. “Fifty-eight horse, a skeleton crew in Iron Tower, and us.”

  “And not a single Mandate that can change the battlefield.”

  I was wondering when the talk would turn to Mandates. No war council was complete without it, because what good was a well-played game of chess when someone could walk in and flip the game board. Raising and supplying troops, formations and traps, it all meant nothing when one man with a singular Mandate could redirect a river through your army, or raise a fortress where you thought there was flat land, or strike so much fear into the hearts of your soldiers that nothing you could say or do would convince them to advance. When large armies met there was usually a discussion about who needed to die first before anything else could happen. And if there were Heroes of the Times on both sides, they’d face off first, knowing that nothing could happen until one of them was removed from play. But, since we were no longer a large army, all we could hope for was a few Mandates that could shift the balance.

  “Where are my brothers?” I asked.

  “De was in Trappersburrow when Snow Fox fell. I’ve had no word of him since.”

  “And Bin?”

  “Training hard under the Tiger in the Southlands, but still unnamed and unmanifested.”

  That was expected. De and Bin – their given names, and their only ones for at least the next year or two, respectively – were still boys of fourteen and thirteen. They might be able to hold a sword if they had no choice, but they would have been prodigies if they had manifested any earlier than sixteen. And they were both born under my father’s Silver Star – many noble families planned for such things – so the chances were that they would display a more common Metal Mandate, like lending speed to blades or horseshoes, or bending the path of an arrow, mid-flight. Expecting salvation to come from one of them was too much to ask.

  Still, they were boys and I worried for them – especially if a Protector of an Imperial Province could barely even protect his own tower in times like these.

  “And your concubine?” I asked.

  “Concubine?” My father echoed.

  I rolled my eyes. “That old ‘nursemaid’ you keep around who hasn’t done any nursing or maiding in the last twenty years.”

  My father, like me, had no interest in harems. He needed only one good woman upon which he could rely, and my mother had been the last woman he had taken as true wife or concubine. I couldn’t believe he thought I wouldn’t notice the older woman who had become his secret confidant when he was here and ran his household with an iron fist when he was gone.

  And… after getting to know River and her story, sharing the bed of a lord might not be the only secret a woman in a place of power might keep.

  “I will ask,” he said. “But surely she would have mentioned if she had a gift.”

  I looked to River.

  She blinked as if pulled from a revery and just catching up to the conversation.

  “Hardly,” she said simply. I had no idea where her mind had been. Was she thinking about whether or not to mention her own Mandate, eventually deeming it too unpredictable to be worth using, except in the gravest of circumstances, as I had? Was she still stuck on how grim our prospects were, here? Was she still stuck on the boy?

  Whatever the case, my father gave another curious glance to River and then nodded, moving on.

  “And you?” said the Commandant fixing his eyes upon me. If I had the power to break open the sky like the General of Heaven, now would be the time to mention it.

  “No,” I said, curtly. “I have done nothing that leads me to believe that I have any Mandate, much less one that can help us out of our current predicament.”

  My father nodded, but the bronze Colossus behind him creaked, perhaps because of my tone, or perhaps because he didn’t like the idea of a powerless heir any more than my Uncle had. I could only guess.

  I glanced toward Windstopper who seemed to be following the conversation quietly, but again squashed any thoughts of testing my bodyguard’s strength when strength was in such short supply. No, what we needed now was prudence and cooperation.

  My father and I both leaned over the intricately worked metal map of what had once been our lands and grimaced, both racking our brains.

  Finally my father sat back. “Did you happen to pass by Boshe on your way here?”

  I didn’t look up from the map. “No, but I know where he settled and the bandit activity there is minimal. My guess is he’s enjoying his retirement.”

  “Good,” said the Commandant. “Good. That’s good.”

  “Well,” I said, finally looking up. “I guess there’s only one thing left to do, then.”

  “Hm?” asked my father, leaning back toward the map and looking for the thing he had missed, that I seemed to have spotted.

  “You won’t find a fresh army on your map, Commandant,” I said. “The only thing left to do is to invent one.”

  Romance of the Three Kingdoms novel didn't (despite its name) and partly because I didn't feel it would resonate with readers of this tale. Lady Ding was the second wife of the historical figure and she did adopt a son by his first wife, so I'm jumping through some hoops to bring this fiction in line with history to a certain degree.