Naamah's Blessing

honestly. “But I fear it is only a matter of time.”
    In that, I was right.
    Despite his irritation at my warning, within a day’s time Raphael was already at work solving the dilemma that the moated fortress presented. He ordered laborers onto the slope of the mountains where a sparse forest of evergreens grew. Trees were cut, their trunks shorn of branches and dragged through the city to the base of the fortress.
    The
Sapa Inca
did not accept the inevitability of defeat. His warriors clustered on the high walls of the fortress, hurling spears and rocks down on the men who sought to wrestle the trunks in place across the moat, forming crude bridges.
    If they had been men in ordinary Quechua gear of padded cotton and wooden shields, it might have proved an effective tactic. But Raphael set his trusted vanguard to accomplish the task—Prince Manco, Temilotzin, and the others clad in steel D’Angeline armor, the armor my own company had labored so hard to bring to Tawantinsuyo, never reckoning it would be seized by their own countryman and put to such a purpose. While I daresay Raphael’s men sustained many an unpleasant bruise, none took a serious wound.
    Once it was done, the bridges were in place.
    I saw the final battle because Raphael de Mereliot wished it so, summoning me to his side.
    “All genius craves a witness, Moirin,” he said to me in a companionable manner, slinging a careless arm over my shoulders. “In that if nothing else, I am no exception—and you are
my
witness.” He squeezed me. “Does that please you?”
    I shuddered beneath his touch. “No.”
    “Pity,” he said absently, loosing me to raise one arm. All along the banks of the churning moat, hungry ants gathered. And they
were
hungry. I could sense it in their inchoate thoughts, hear it in the clicking of their mandibles. Their antennae twitched, waiting for orders, waiting for a promised feast.
    With a smile, Raphael lowered his arm. “Go!”
    The crude bridges would not have sustained a human army—but they did not have to. The black river of ants divided into a dozen streams, swarming the fallen trunks laid across the moats.
    Even then, the
Sapa Inca’s
men fought. From atop the ramparts of the fortress, they emptied vessels of oil into the moat. They threw down flaming brands, and the surface of the water caught fire.
    “Oh, clever!” Raphael said in admiration, gripping my arm. “Very clever!”
    I pulled away from him.
    He glanced at me. “You yearned for my touch once, Moirin.”
    I wrapped my arms around myself. “That was a long, long time ago.”
    Through the flames, the ants persevered. There were just too gods-bedamned
many
of them. Thousands after thousands, they clambered across logs crumbling into glowing embers, they forged living, writhing bridges across the moat.
    Some died, sizzling. Some were swept away in the torrent and carried into the canal system.
    Still, they kept coming and coming until the moat was black with their bodies. Ant crawled over ant, obedient to Raphael’s orders. They scaled the walls of the fortress in a relentless rising tide. The fortress could have held out against a human onslaught for as long as its stores lasted. It was not built to withstand this.
    Soon there were screams.
    I felt sick. Raphael stood beside me, his eyes wide and unseeing, his nostrils twitching as he received messages borne on the air by his unnatural insect army. “They are beginning to flee,” he informed his herald. “Tell the men to make ready.”
    The herald called out the order and the men spread out around the moat, weapons at the ready.
    It was only a matter of minutes before the doors to the fortress were unbarred from within. Quechua warriors in padded armor staggeredout, brushing frantically at themselves, plunging heedlessly into the waters of the moat.
    The first wave of the
Sapa Inca’s
men to struggle ashore through the waist-deep water were cut down ruthlessly, hacked by swords and bludgeoned by clubs. It was not until those behind them began to cry out in supplication that Raphael ordered his men to stay their hands.
    “You did not need to kill them!” I whispered in horror. “They’re fleeing!”
    “They opposed me,” he replied in a pitiless tone. “Bloodshed is the only language men such as these understand.”
    Ants streamed out of the fortress, regrouping in twin columns on the far side of the moat, apparently held in abeyance once more by Raphael’s order. Between the