Recap: The rebellion was just going fine and dandy until Miss came to an Unexpected Realisation (?!) and bounced, leaving Emory in charge. Peppermask also showed up to the warehouse and Oakpaw escaped his captors because Young Love is not what he thought it was. Emory is not okay.
He pretends he knows nothing but the marching. The relentless drum of his feet on the ground, the horizon in his sights, the heat and noise of a hundred warm bodies behind him. He is their general, their mascot, their king. He belongs to them and a doomed cause, and his thoughts are of war. Marching brings an ache to his feet, bitter cramps to his joints, and though he feigns distaste, he does not mind the pain.
Emory trusts it; he relies on it. Temporal pain has become a crutch, and so long as his body hurts, his heart does not. The others talked about Miss constantly, at first: where she could have gone, when she'll be coming back. Emory had waited all night for her to come back- wherever she'd gone, he did not care, as long as she returned safe- and by the time the morning light graced the sky, he knew she was gone for good. She'd abandoned him, left him to marshal a bloody and graceless war he would not survive. Perhaps she'd realized she wanted to live, after all. It had only taken her months. Emory knows now that without her he is doomed.
He'd thought of his impending death for only a few short moments before he gave the order to clear out, abandon the warehouse, and commence their long-awaited march. Perhaps Miss will return to the warehouse; she will, in any case, find it cold and empty, void. He takes comfort in that. Even if she wants to, she has nothing to return to. And neither does he.
No one mentions her name now, not to him. They accept his command, perhaps in part because they've waited so long for this and want to see it through. Now, nearly a week later, they march through fields of idyllic green and crest hills of meagre and unassuming importance. The going is more than slow: they are such a large group, and they are taking a long route: he does not want any PureClan patrol to see them coming, to witness their might and magnitude and ruin one of the only advantages they possess. Still, they must stay close to the river, lest they die of thirst before the first blow can even be struck. Emory keeps the dark waters far to their left, and sends regular, scheduled parties to drink from it. He has cats scouring the countryside for more viable, clandestine watering holes, and has consulted Ice on the matter, though his information on this is veritably useless. He's doing very well at all this commander shit; he might even appear, on the surface, to be fine.
He plans to appear to be just fine until his dying moment; that's when, he thinks, he'll let a few emotions slip. And then he'll be dead. The story ends. He won't be able to care.
Emory wonders if Miss knows what fate she's left him to. And then he thinks, he knows, that she does. It was once hers.
"Sir." It's Ice. It must gall him, after everything, to defer to yet another figure in power. A tyrant, a megalomaniac. "May we slow down? We've been marching all day."
Emory eyes the other tom with no small amount of disdain. "Slow down? Meander the countryside like what, tourists? The world's blood-thirstiest group of tourists?" This is unfair of him, he knows. Ice, cold and unfeeling as he is, has to be the one watching out for the common folk. It seems like an odd twist of fate.
"That's not what I meant," says Ice, measurably disdainful. "It's foolish to waste all of our energy on marching. We'll have nothing left when it comes to the battle."
"We've been training their stamina for months, haven't we? What's the use of it, then?" Emory is being obtuse. Miss was never this way; she listened, in that calm way of hers, to the advice of others, and implemented it if she thought it could be useful. That's far more reasonable than he feels like being.
"The stamina is for battle," Ice snaps. "Sir." The honorific is almost thrown at him.
"You don't say?" Emory replies. They both swerve around a tall clump of grass, weaving in different directions, and Emory is half tempted to just stop behind it and leave Ice walking on alone. In a remarkable show of restraint, he does not.
"If you don't get your head out of your own ass, sir, you might find a coup on your hands." Ice doesn't look at him as he says this, but ahead to the horizon, as if he can already smell the aroma of unbridled political chaos.
"That sounds like a threat," Emory replies. No one, he thinks, wants a coup more than Ice. "Everyone wants the war to start in earnest. It's been long enough."
"No one wants to drop dead of exhaustion before they can even step on the battlefield." Wisely, he says nothing more on the subject of a coup. Perhaps he doesn't want to give too much of his plans away.
Emory makes a regrettable sort of sound, a gruff and awkward mnph that sounds like concession. "Well. I'm right, and you're mostly right, so I suppose we should find a compromise. We'll stop for a rest, for an hour or two. Send out some hunting parties. See if anyone needs tending to. Will that stave off the immediate threat of revolt?"
"It should suffice," says Ice.
Emory stops abruptly; Ice walks on for several more steps before he realizes. Emory hides a celebratory grin, satisfied, for now, with his meagre win over the deputy. With an almost collective groan of relief, the army behind comes to a milling, confused halt. Several of his sergeants approach and he gives his new orders. Emory has an effective system, if nothing else.
"While I have your attention," Ice continues, standing resolutely beside him. "There's still the matter of Peppermask to resolve."
"That hapless PureClan tom? He's still hanging around?" Emory had barely registered his arrival to the warehouse; he'd been busy with the pursuit of Oakpaw, who had somehow, defiantly, managed to escape. He'd taken a she-cat with him, a tiny thing barely bigger than a kit, but she was no particular loss. Now, though, Emory can only hope they catch Oakpaw before he slinks back home and runs his mouth. It's his only hope, really.
Ice snorts. "You imprisoned him. I daresay he's still with us."
Of course. Emory, too tired to deal with yet another PureClan runaway, had merely thrown Peppermask in the hold and dragged him out again come morning. Ice warned him not to trust the tom, that he was as dark and ambitious as any Clanner could be. He works for Morningstar or he wants her job. He's got no place in an anti-PureClan army. Those are Ice's words, and Emory is more than inclined to agree.
"Let's pay him a visit then," Emory replies, shrugging. Fiend or not, he still might have a use.
Together, the two toms wander closer to the army. Peppermask has been assigned three guards, and is safely sequestered away from the bulk of the soldiers. He looks unbothered as Emory and Ice approach, reclining graciously against the grass in a patch of sunlight. Imprisonment almost seems to suit him.
"Gentlemen!" he says, prostrated at their feet. "Have you come to your senses? I'm only here to help, you know."
"So you say," Emory replies, unconvinced. He glances over the guard detail: Thaddeus is on duty, alongside Kenna and Scipio. None of them look amused. "I'm in no rush to believe you're here to aid the war effort."
"Why else would I be here?" Peppermask asks, dropping the jovial tone. He's examining his claws as though wondering how best to use them. "Morningstar chased me from my home. She wants my head. I have nothing but help to offer you."
"Oh," Emory says, as though on the precipice of some great epiphany. "So you're not here to use us for your own betterment? You're not trying to fill the vacant leadership position Morningstar will leave behind?"
Ice interrupts before Peppermask can answer. "And why, pray tell, does Morningstar want you dead?"
"I've done more for your cause than either of you can claim to," Peppermask retorts, smirking. "I tried to have her killed. I'm perhaps the only living cat who can say that."
Ice turns around, rolling his eyes. "Like I said. Peppermask serves no cause but his own. He'd sooner slit our throats than work for a genuine purpose. We ought to dispatch him now and stop worrying."
Peppermask makes a show of yawning.
"No," Emory says slowly, musingly. "He makes a good hostage. Morningstar might like to dispose of him herself."
"So he can betray PureClan and join the folds of the rebellion, but I can't?" Peppermask is indignant. "What kind of hypocrisy do you call this?"
"It does seem unfair, sir," Kenna says, with a glance back at the warrior. Ice regards this statement with blatant contempt.
"Ice has been with us since the beginning," Emory says. "This tom botched an assassination attempt and is only turning to us to save his own skin. What he's getting now is no more than what he deserves. That's all I have to say."
He wishes everything could be so black and white, so right and wrong. The rebellion was altruistic from the start, but it's changed now, become so many layers of something else. He can no longer muddle through the differences.
"Sir," Thaddeus says, dipping his head. Kenna says nothing else.
"Walk away," Peppermask snaps, snidely. "You won't be so lucky next time you come face-to-face to with a Clan warrior."
"You overestimate everyone we've left behind," Ice says, as Emory begins to leave. "They aren't as great as you remember or as vengeful as you hope."
He doesn't hear Peppermask's response. Perhaps there is none.
He gives the order to leave again- through Fray, this time- and resumes the march. The movements of it are as familiar as breathing now. Behind him, like a great tide, the army ripples outwards and onwards, moving and breathing as some great kind of entity. He feels like the head of it, the mind of it, and impulse and compulsion behind its every step. He doesn't think that Miss ever truly felt like a part of it; she'd merely been its overseer, the thing watching from overhead, the one assessing her own needs. In the end, her needs simply moved past the intrinsic desire for revenge. Emory has no idea what triggered this, the act, the realisation. She'd had no sense of self, ever since her inglorious return from the forest, a feat achieved by few. Miss had had no identity; she'd lost it in the cave, left it behind as she ran. Maybe she's been looking for some semblance of it ever since. Maybe she's found it.
Emory thought he could be part of it, months ago, even when he knew what their conjoined kind of fate offered them.
He thinks about this, though he tries not to, for the rest of the day. As the sunset turns the sky a malevolent shade of red, the army halts and settles for the night. Their progress has been slow, as always, but each step forwards, each step in the direction of the enemy, feels enough like victory.
Emory picks a patch of grass and tramples it underfoot, preparing to bed down for the night. He's an early riser, and he likes to get enough sleep, even if that means closing his eyes while the sun is still in the sky. Nearby, the bulk of the army prepares to eat, drink, and rest. Ice is nowhere to be found. Emory likes it that way: the prospect of the Clanner watching him sleep, even a self-professed reformed one, makes him uncomfortable.
He watches the cats bustle around for a moment, craning his head to track their movements. From the north, he sees a lone figure coming towards them, a mere shadow against the grass. A scout, he thinks. One with news.
It is not, he sees, a mere scout.
"Achilleus," he says in greeting, as the black tom draws near. He looks well enough. Emory remembers giving the tom leave to create his own scouting party, one that had departed the warehouse three weeks ago. He's only been slightly concerned for their safety, but their task is more important; they were sent to gather PureClan reconnaissance, to find an appropriate piece of land to camp their army on, and the perfect places for battle. He has only vague ideas on what kind of fortifications Morningstar has commenced in the last few weeks. It's intelligence he sorely needs.
"How did you find us here?" he continues, suspecting it was more luck than innate scouting ability.
"Emory," the tom replies gruffly, surveying the army. "Your scents carried on the wind, and I was on my way back anyway." His eyes are wide: Emory can see the whites of them.
"What news do you have?"
"Nothing… nothing good," Achilleus says, shifting his weight, looking around with those wide and white eyes.
Emory says again, warningly, "Achilleus."
"Where's Miss?" he asks, deferring. "She should hear this."
Achilleus has always been her beast, Emory thinks, feeling sour. He might not hand around without her.
"She's gone," he replies, hating the words. "For good. You report to me now."
"Gone how..? Murdered?" Achilleus' eyes are only going wider, and he's looking at every passing cat with suspicion, as though they're wearing her blood. Emory has thought of the possibilities, and concludes that murder is not one of them.
"No," Emory scoffs. "She vanished. The rebellion was too much for her after all. Tell me what you have to say."
"The scouts are gone, Emory. They were caught. They're dead."
His head spins and there's a roaring in his ears, the sound of wind and rage. Butchered by the beasts of the forest. Sentenced to the same fate she escaped. "How? When?"
"They went too far into the territory, and some warriors caught them. They were dragged back to their camp and killed."
"When?" Emory demands again. He's almost glad Miss isn't here to take this all in, to witness the suffering that should have been hers.
Achilleus swallows. He sees it, hears it. "Two weeks ago, sir."
The rage swallows him whole. He has the strange, insistent urge to march again, to walk until his feelings cease. Emory's paw raises, every nerve of him blazing with anger, and strikes the other tom across the face. Blood splatters onto the idyllic grass.
"Two weeks ago," Emory says. "And you decide to tell me now. What the hell was more important than delivering this news? And what were you doing, while this was going down? Huh? Scouting master. Hunter. Assassin. Pathetic. You probably hid in the weeds and watched, right? That's where you belong. You should've stayed there."
"I-" the other tom says, stuttering, reaching for words that fail him.
"And you've been doing what since? Hiding like a mouse in the shadows? Simpering and pleading at the feet of the enemy?"
"No!"
His blood is soaking into the ground. The grass roots will be stained red.
Emory's lip curls. "Disgraceful."
The black tom bows his head against his chest. He has nothing left to say, no excuses to save face. He should be dead too.
"You're not fit to kill my morning meal," Emory growls. "Leave me. I'll find someone else to manage my scouts and excursions. With any luck they won't be responsible for so many stupid, needless deaths." Emory tries to think of the faces of the lost, but can only manage to conjure a red haze in his mind. The other tom doesn't fight his sentence, doesn't plead. That would be wrong.
Achilleus walks away, dripping blood onto the grass. It's a meagre penance. His deeds are worthy of death.
so i figured out the final chapter count. there will be FIFTY-FIVE chapters in total. i want to get this story finished by like early next year and i've finished uni for a few months so hopefully this is doable.
anyway pls review it gives me life. i see y'all lurking.
