Page 3343

Loren admired his confidence but didn’t share it. “Sir, if the enemy has sent someone to infiltrate, they won’t be pushovers. Frederick himself could be among them.”

“Doubtful,” said Caster, “but if he is, that would be fortunate for us. I should like to speak with him.”

Loren frowned. He supposed there was no point in arguing, but from everything he’d been hearing of these two Melmoorian warfronts, Captain General Fen Frederick of the Vanguard was most likely not someone that they would want to encounter. While there were definitely other men making names for themselves out here, the Surgeon Saint’s reputation had risen the most.

Frederick was being attributed with the majority of Melmoore’s success thus far. Whether that was actually the truth of things or not remained to be seen, but Lighteyes had seen and heard the fear that his name evoked in many of the men around here.

There was one particular story that had caught Loren’s attention, too.

Supposedly, it happened in a place called Erimor, a little mountain town in southern Melmoore and one of the earliest conquests in Corrico’s invasion. The town had quickly become a headquarters from which the Corricoans organized and coordinated their assaults on larger cities in the area. By all accounts, it had been a well-positioned, easily defensible location--and nicely hidden away, to boot. Even satellites couldn’t spot it because of the way a certain mountainous cave arched over it.

The expectation had been that, even if their offensives failed or otherwise stalled, Erimor would allow their HQ to operate discreetly for quite a while, buying them plenty of extra time to regroup or implement various contingency plans.

And progress had been good. The invasion proceeded quite strongly.

At first.

Major cities were captured quickly--or just completely annihilated. The sphere of influence grew rapidly, with Erimor near the heart of it, well-protected on all sides.

Until Erimor went totally dark.

Word stopped arriving. No new orders. No new plans. No new intel. No new anything. And the cracks in the invasion began to form, until every new assault failed, either because they were too unorganized or the enemy too well-prepared.

The rumors were still uncertain about how Erimor had been taken back so suddenly, but it was popular sentiment that Frederick was responsible, that he’d snuck into the town with a small force--or even alone, as some told it--and done something to all of the Abolish reapers there.