Activity at the Mountain slowed after Darren's departure. After the hunters had set off into the night with Harkat Mulds hobbling along beside them and Darren promptly catching his foot on the root of a tree, Mika had endeavoured to take on the task of managing the war effort. Paris was growing tired, and he had forced his old mentor to take regular breaks from the Hall and steered him into his coffin at daybreak, regardless of whether their work for the night was done.
It had worked for a couple of weeks, but eventually Mika's short fuse had begun working against him. Every night, he was confronted by hordes of soldiers helplessly whining about back up, or directions, and tens of Generals reporting that they'd found nothing while they'd been away. Eventually, after he'd lost his temper spectacularly with Korat Murrell for saying that he didn't see the point in fighting anymore, Paris had sent for help in secret. Arrow had returned from a four year mission within a week and taken on some of the duties it seemed that Mika no longer had the patience and Paris no longer had the energy to manage.
It had been Arrow's idea to begin training an army, and so the Generals and younger vampires who elected to stay behind after Council had their days and nights filled with endless sparring under Vanez's instruction, a couple of the weaker participants killed every week in battles with their elders. Arrow rationalized that he was creating an elite force of new Generals capable of battling destiny itself if all else failed. With Paris' health failing, Mika spent his nights hunched over the Stone of Blood, giving directions to Generals and their soldiers, and waiting for the inevitable.
"Staffen is an idiot," Arrow grunted, downing a mug of blood during a brief break in his meetings. There was an almost constant stream of groups seeking instruction as they left the Mountain and Generals returning to pass back information that they had gathered while they were away, and while Paris slept Arrow was tasked with receiving the reports while Mika handled the strategy. In the last hour, two Generals had returned without their soldiers, reporting losses. The second was Staffen Irve, who had been out on a number of "fact-finding" outings and had managed to keep himself alive but had returned without his troupe on a number of occasions. "If we keep letting him loose, I give it a year until there isn't anyone left for him to command."
Mika murmured an agreement, loosening his hand from the Stone momentarily.
"You might have noticed that we've a slight shortage of good Generals," he commented. "Staffen isn't ideal, but he's better than some of the new-bloods Vanez has released into the field."
The acceleration of training for new Generals had been Paris' idea. Though Mika agreed that in theory desperate times called for desperate measures, he wasn't sure whether Paris yet understood exactly how desperate these measures really were. A couple of nights ago, there had been a report of a new General taking out his own eye with a loose boomerang, and, after that Mika had begun to wonder how long they could keep this up.
"Should we be recruiting?" Arrow wondered aloud. "The Vampaneze have vampets now. Perhaps –"
Mika growled, low in his throat, and Arrow's thoughtless stream came to a halt.
"Just because the Vampaneze have lost their senses," he said firmly. "Doesn't mean we should too."
Mika had spent many years now wondering about the Vampaneze's new strategy. Whoever their Lord was had taken some radical steps during his time in power – until now, the Vamapneze had lived by an extremely strict code of honour and would have died to preserve their traditionalist ways. Mika had never had word of a Vampaneze traitor before, but these nights vampets were carted back to the Mountain missing limbs and spilling hundreds of secrets, all they knew, begging for their lives. It was unfortunate that they knew very little.
"Not just anyone," Arrow clarified. "Human soldiers defecting from their armies, perhaps. If all the good Generals took an assistant or two, rushed them up to speed in a year or two, and then sent them into battle, maybe there wouldn't be any Vampaneze left if the hunters lose out in the end."
Mika grunted in disapproval.
"Don't be stupid," he said. "You can't change destiny, if it's already been decided."
Arrow sighed heavily, watching the Stone again as it pulsed and glowed in the low light of the Hall.
"I know," he agreed, trying not to think too hard on that. "But…"
The thought expired on his lips, and the silence in the Hall echoed in their ears.
"Besides," Mika said, eventually, to break the silence. He was smirking vaguely, and Arrow allowed himself to be pulled along with the façade, not wanting to face the topic they had been trying to avoid. "Imagine waking up one day with your very own Darren Shan."
Arrow snorted. He didn't have any ill feeling toward Darren by any means – he was impressed by the boy, and would have defended his honour to anyone – but he was an irritating little mutt most of the time. He had a good heart, and occasionally he had some genius ideas, but the majority of the time he still acted like an imbecile.
"I didn't mean you," Arrow added. "We've talked about this. If you ever come to me with another assistant I will kill you and it, no questions asked. I still mean it."
Mika's lips quirked into a sad kind of smile, finally, the first in weeks.
"Not us," Arrow clarified. The truth of it was that in these times, they both would have made excellent tutors to a new crop of Generals – but they didn't have the time or the inclination. Mika was a terrible teacher, and it had been almost a century since he could last remember having any time for a human. Arrow wasn't particularly fond of becoming emotionally invested in things that had the capacity to die one day – though he laughed it off and pretended that he didn't have the time for an assistant, Mika secretly understood that the aversion ran deeper than that.
"You think someone else might be suitable, though," Mika finished, on his behalf, still not impressed by the idea. "Vanez, perhaps, could take on twenty or so and train them all at once."
Arrow laughed out loud, imagining Vanez's legendary skills tested by twenty half-vampires who couldn't hold a sword properly. He'd been informed by a weary Larten Crepsley one night over a mug of ale that it sometimes felt like he needed two pairs of eyes to effectively keep Darren out of trouble. It was probably down to exhaustion, but Arrow had a sudden image of Vanez with forty pairs of eyes instead of none, and had to stifle his continued laughter with his fist when he realized Mika was giving him a strange look.
Once he'd managed to get control over himself again, Arrow blinked away the tears that had gathered at the corners of his eyes and sniffed, as though nothing had happened.
"Maybe I was wrong about the recruiting," he grumbled, with Mika still staring at him like he'd lost his mind. "We'll just manage. We can still wipe the curs out, if we try hard enough."
Mika grew quiet after that. It was clear that while exhaustion had driven Arrow to the stage of hopeless laughter, it had driven Mika in the opposite direction. He stared down at his hands in thought, turning them palm-up and then down again, curling and uncurling his fingers.
"Don't get miserable again," Arrow said, quietly, drawing Mika's dark gaze upwards again. He spoke softly, as though placating a child. Mika was already working up to a glare. "We've got enough warriors. It might take a while, but we can drive them to the brink."
Mika looked murderous, not enjoying being patronised. "You've missed the point," he said, returning his gaze to the Stone. "We're going round in circles. You agreed that there's no way to change destiny once it's already in motion, didn't you?"
Arrow said nothing, jaw set defiantly. He could see where this was going.
"If there's no way to change it," the dark Prince whispered, knowing that despite the way he turned his eyes away, not wanting to hear anymore, that Arrow would still be listening, still straining despite himself to hear. "Then what's the sense of fighting?"
Arrow whirled around again, this time so far that he was twisted all the way around.
"You almost killed Korat for saying that, by all accounts," he argued, confused, and Mika chuckled sadly.
"Sometimes that's the way you react when someone tells you exactly the opposite of what you want to hear."
Arrow frowned deeply. Over the past few months, Mika had swung from one extreme to another, furious one moment at their helplessness, their own lack of control over the hunters, optimistic the next after a successful interrogation, and morose the next, when he had a moment to sit and think again. Paris was never happy, but he never looked downright depressed either – he had a permanently troubled look about his eyes, but was nothing if not level-headed. Five hundred years as a Prince had given him a kind of wisdom, a kind of understanding of the way his responses might affect his people, that his younger counterparts could not yet replicate. For his part, Arrow had set out a plan when war was declared, and as with the rest of his life, he would not be diverted from his course. He had promised himself that he would fight, even long after there had ceased to be a cause in fighting, and intended to stay true until the end.
"It's important that we carry on," Arrow said, and his voice was authoritative, definite, but inside his thoughts were wavering and uncertain.
"Why?" Mika asked, infuriatingly.
"Because we could probably still win," Arrow tried, eyes hardened, don't say it, you don't have to –
"No we can't," Mika whispered, but it hit home to Arrow as though he'd bellowed it at the top of his lungs. "And even if we can, it won't be anything to do with us or the war we're fighting on the ground or anything we do. You weren't here when Tiny made the speech. You don't understand."
Arrow understood perfectly. He dragged himself to his feet, and took a few purposeful steps over to stand in front of his brother.
"What else should we do?" he asked, trying hard not to think about any of it. "We might not win the war on our own efforts, but the more Vampaneze we kill the fewer there are who might kill Larten and Darren on their quest."
Mika shot him a look. "You're still doing it."
"What?"
"This isn't a matter of we might not, or we probably won't, or it probably isn't going to make a difference. There isn't anything we can do, Arrow. There's no probably about it."
Arrow could feel his blood boiling, temper rising, the despair was coming thick and fast. It had been seventy years since he'd called off his quest to make an end of every last Vampaneze walking the Earth, and for sixty four of those he had wondered if he'd made the right decision. He had allowed himself to forget, during the night at least, about the look in Sarah's eyes in that final moment, about how cold her lips had been when he'd kissed her goodbye, about how it had been his fault. He had allowed himself to be guided by others, wise elders, who assured him that war would serve no purpose, who had encouraged him to dedicate himself to the clan, which was strong and could never fall like Sarah had.
For the last six, he had realized that his decision had been the wrong one. He should have continued with his crusade – and if not, he should have striven to be appointed as a Prince and, damn Mika and the consequences, pushed for war as hard as he could.
He had made a mistake that night, and he'd paid for it when Sarah had breathed her last. He'd made a mistake again this time by calling an end to the cries of war all those decades ago when they were at their peak, and now the clan, the one thing he had been promised could never die, was on the brink of paying for his error the same way Sarah had.
Doing nothing was not an option.
"With that attitude," he ground out, through gritted teeth, heart aching. "You'd serve us all better dead."
Mika said nothing for a long couple of minutes, taken aback. Very little rendered him speechless, but Arrow had a knack for taking the air right out of his lungs sometimes.
"I'd serve better calling an end to the fighting," he said, eventually, quietly, dark eyes dull. "Those who choose to die could meet their end nobly, without a drawn out, pitiful war. The rest could fall into line, and we could begin talks of a surrender. Almost all would choose death, but wouldn't that be better than waiting, like this?"
"No," Arrow growled, leaving no room for argument.
"It's going to be a bitter end, either way," Mika said. "We're fighting without a cause. It's all out of our hands."
"Better that than do nothing at all," Arrow commented, eyes fixed ahead as though focusing on his chosen path, unwilling to be diverted by his brother's doubt.
"Our pride won't save us," Mika concluded, and Arrow's eyes shifted to him when his voice cracked on the last syllable. There were tears on his cheeks, and his hand shook as he raised it to wipe them away. "If he taught me anything, Kurda taught me that."
The mention of that traitor made the blood thump in Arrow's ears again, hands clenching, wishing there was a way to go back and kill him before he'd ever existed. For Mika, saying the name still made his throat hurt, but not out of hatred.
Struggling to find a way to bring Mika back into now and away from dangerous thoughts of a surrender, Arrow scrambled for something convincing to say.
"And you always taught Arra the opposite," he blurted, regretting dragging it up again when the corners of Mika's eyes twitched, wincing.
"And they're both dead," the dark Prince replied, bluntly, breath catching in his throat painfully. "Both partly on our orders. So how am I supposed to know who had it right?"
Kurda was a traitor, Arrow's heart screamed, but he supposed it was a sign of the times that Mika could propose a surrender without being called the same.
"I don't know what to do for the best," Mika admitted, after a moment. It was as good as his own personal surrender – in all the centuries they'd stood at each other's side, Arrow had never heard him admit that he had no idea what to do next. They were Princes. There was nobody else for them to follow, but they were more lost now than they had ever felt as cubs.
Neither do I, Arrow thought, but now was not the time for that. When he had wavered, when his resolve was weakened, Mika had always been there to drag him back to his feet, to spur him on and show him the way. This time, he would return the favour.
"Get some rest," he grunted, reaching down to pull him up. Mika swiped furiously at his eyes, but half-sobbed when he tried to draw breath. Years ago, Arrow might have wrapped his arms around him. This time there was no time for sympathy. He steered him towards the back of the Hall, to a coffin he had dragged down from his cell many months ago after realizing that he would likely never have time to leave the Hall again. "And then carry on."
For the first time that Arrow could remember, Mika did not argue. He shuffled over to his coffin like a broken man with back bent and shoulders hunched, looking centuries older than his years. He closed the lid almost instantly, locking himself in the peaceful dark, seemingly thankful for the privacy.
Without bothering to wake Paris, Arrow summoned a guard and motioned for the waiting Generals to be sent in to give their reports. When Mika was weak, it was his responsibility to stay strong.