If once there were orchards which grew towards the walls of Val Chevin, there is little evidence of them now. The land surrounding the city has been victim to industrious clear cutting during the initial occupation and now, in the intervening months since the break of the Tevinter-Anderfels line, allowed to grow over with stumpy grass and wildflowers seeing their first ever bloom here in the first gleamings of Springtime. Fields changed to meadows, a strange strip of youthful green pockmarked with stumps forming the no man's land between patrolled city fortifications and the dug in front line of the Orlesian army.
Anyway, it makes for a fine place to sit in the late afternoon now that they've slipped the leash of the estimable Capitaine Remetter.
The sun is at their backs. Theoretically, makes it difficult for any guardsman along the walls to sight them. Candidly, Flint has his doubts that it really fucking matters. They're beyond the range of crossbows and the city must be used to a certain level of being under observation.
From where he sits on a stump with one leg stretched before him in the grass turned brilliant gold by the late afternoon, Flint studies the city just a moment longer through the lens of a battered old spyglass. At this distance (or because it has been too long and he is no longer familiar with all the colors and heraldry), he can't parse whose banners are flying over the city.
He lowers the glass from his eye, but neither looks away from Val Chevin or to his companion though he addresses him plainly enough:
There's a fallen log, perhaps from the very severed roots that serve as Flint's seat now, that's been left so long to molder that where the earth ends and the bottom of the wood begins is now lost — or at least buried under a carpet of flowers. Holden sits here, hands briefly pressed against the rough bark.
There's dissonance:
because he's seen war, his share of battles, studied military tactics and strategy, but never on Earth — a blockade of a moon, of a station, interplanetary trade routes held hostage, would feel less jarring to him than watching a captive city from a matter of miles away with flowers and sweet leaves scenting the air, with bees singing,
because he's seen the most of this war in dreams, and no matter what he says of focusing on reality, of moving on, he'd expected the distribution of forces to look different — and hadn't realized the expectation existed until it was disappointed.
The quirk of Flint's brow and the small tilt of his head says, Well or maybe even You're not wrong.
It is messy.
"Like as not, being in the Divine's company was probably serving to rally morale. With the Exalted March pushing on ahead in the north, we might have expected there to be indecision in it's wake."
The spyglass, still extended, is turned in hand and offered across to Holden.
He accepts the spyglass on a sigh, looks through it as if hoping to find answers to the situation here. Or, at least, whatever Flint had been looking at.
(Is in a serious enough mood to not spend much thought on how using a spyglass makes him feel like an actual on-the-ocean sailor, but it tickles at the back of his mind, and he'll probably think about it later.)
"I understand the need to keep civilian casualties low," he says, his tone more allowing a bloodbath would be unforgivable, "but there has to be a better answer than 'fuck around while they're trapped.'" Like he already knows the answer: "What are the odds of Tevinter withdrawing peacefully?"
"I would say that depends entirely on why Tevinter is holding the city in the first place."
Divested of the spyglass, Flint has settled on the stump with one wrist hooked across the pommel of his belt knife and the other over top of it. It's a casual thing--almost comically sedate given their proximity here to the city's walls. War is a strange animal: a beast which bites only when it's been trained to.
"They've been cut off from the main body of the occupation since last summer when Montfort capitulated. Originally, I might have said that they remained in residence in the hope that the invasion force's front line would be able to retake that ground and close the gap again. But with the occupation pushed to Andoral's Reach, any fit Commander General in Val Chevin should at this point expect to remain isolated for at least another year if not longer.
"In which case, that same Commander General ought to be wary of the possibility that someone, somewhere will eventually close his only reliable path of supply by sea. He weathered one hard winter, but that was with an early harvest at his disposal. The next one will be harder. So if he means to get out with his skin and rejoin the effort in the north, he will need to leave before then. And should he leave Val Chevin as a pile of ashes behind him--There are two armies between him and Tevinter by land and it's a long way to the Amaranthine by sea, with plenty of opportunity in either direction for an incensed allied force to get their revenge. Leaving on good terms, overland if he can negotiate it so as to rejoin the war sooner, would theoretically be in his and the Imperium's best interest."
And maybe it is so simple as that. That is almost certainly what Celene and Cuissard and whoever else might be after a quiet reconciliation will be hoping for.
"But I suspect that's not why they're still here."
He nods as he listens; it's sound logic, all of it, information that fills gaps in his knowledge and helps paint a clearer picture of what's happening here. He slots it together with what they've found here, with the details provided by Remetter's frustration. There's a breeze that picks up, briefly, carries the scent of the sea as it ruffles through hair and clothes and grass alike.
"A distraction," he suggests, lowering the spyglass and turning from the city's ramparts to Flint. "Keep eyes on this city, keep the Orlesian generals arguing, while the Imperium gets ready to strike elsewhere. And if that doesn't go as planned, they still have an entire city held hostage."
"With the added bonus of having neatly divided what was once an allied force while they're at it," is a very mild form of assent, whatever force which paints Flint as such a severe figure in Kirkwall having evidently failed to follow them here.
He reaches out to reclaim the spyglass. Once returned to his possession, it's succinctly collapsed back into its more compact shape and tucked into the band of his broad belt.
"It's cleverly done, so long as you don't mind risking the loss of the entire force occupying the city."
He makes a sound of agreement, thinks on the bitterness with which they'd been told of the Chantry's declining interest in Val Chevin, the tensions between navy and ground-based forces. Tevinter doesn't even have to lift a finger to watch the stress cracks grow, splintering out of this city.
"If they minded that kind of risk, we'd be fighting a very different war."
Maybe his confidence as he says so will sound absurd to a native. James Holden hasn't been here a year, after all. And yet — he cut his teeth in the navy on tales of the Vesta Blockade, of every military engagement or near-miss that'd bubbled up for centuries and then subsided because both Earth and Mars knew better than to engage in a shooting war. They both gave a shit about the costs.
Nothing he's seen, in the waking world or otherwise, suggests a similar climate here.
It's not a real question; it's a stick for measuring by. That much is apparent in Flint's distinct lack of surprise and the way in which his attention drifts from the city before them—with its sturdy walls, and heavy gates, the sprawl of unprotected wooden and plaster structures spilling out along the coastline like when birds rides a druffalo's back—to Holden near at hand.
It can't hurt to have a sense for where the man's head is.
Of course it's not a real question; it's a test. Holden meets his eyes briefly, frowning faintly, before he answers.
"When it comes to an empire that's big on enslavement, conquest, and worshipping a demonic being, my money isn't on them respecting peoples' lives. But," he says, leans back a little, breathes out, "that can go more than one way. They think they're better than everyone else, they take care of their own more carefully. Or, any cost is acceptable for the glory of Tevinter, and it's an honor to die for the Imperium."
He remembers Bobbie, her unit slaughtered as part of a sales demo, for Mars. She'd kick his ass for the comparison, but he can't help making it.
"They wouldn't have made this move in the first place if they cared about the cost to their troops. I'm guessing their numbers can support it." Since like, "Open war isn't the only way to expand their borders. The fact that they're fighting says a lot about their resources. Not to mention their priorities."
There is something in there which seems to amuse, tugging small at the corner of Flint's mouth somewhere behind the bristle of his whiskers. But the fixture of his attention is otherwise unbroken, patient, and when the natural break in Holden's side of the conversation arrives what he says is,
"I take it you've some experience with this business."
—rather than issue any correction or corroboration.
He thinks of: Have you heard of Genghis Khan? He built one of the greatest empires in human history. Killed or displaced a quarter of the entire population on Earth during his conquests. Eros is hardly a rounding error by comparison.
He thinks of: Everything done here has been to stop what's happening on Venus.
He thinks of: We're all just walking in the footsteps of history, the ancient frontier. All those post offices and railroads and jails cost thousands of lives to build. You should've stayed at home until I built a post office.
What he says is, "I'm finding that war is war, no matter where you go. Humanity can't seem to stop repeating the same old patterns." And then, "Is something funny?"
That cracks the line of his mouth wide enough for some brief, lopsided flash of teeth. Not a laugh—that must be a very specific prize to win out of the old bastard—, but it is almost certainly in the spirit of one.
"It's possible that I've failed to afford the Divine's position as much credit as it deserves. You've been here, what? Seven months?" Is potentially a startling accurate estimation from a man known for leaving the various incidentals of personnel to his teenaged division assistant. "And already she has you talking about the Imperium like a Southerner."
Humanity can't seem to stop repeating the same old patterns. Now that is funny.
He glances away from Holden, lined face squinting toward the pale walls of Val Chevin. The forked tongues of company flags drift in the wind high behind the battlements and the air smells bizarrely like some expensive cheese: earth and salt brine in combination. Complicated.
It's a short beat. When Flint looks back, some of the humor in his expression has tapered and he has clearly resolved on—
Something.
"Humor me. Let us pretend for a moment that the Divine's Exalted March were to break the Ander-Tevinter line and stream north toward Minrathous tomorrow. There is Corypheus, with only a nation between the two of them. If it's as you say, with Tevinter made up of zealots with little regard for life and a willingness to take it in defense of their home, it makes for a wide killing field through which they must first pass."
After all, it's not exactly a short march to the northern coast.
"If it were you at the head of the column, how would you have your men conduct themselves when you encounter your first town?"
"No," is his answer. He dismisses the question, the scenario, with a shake of his head.
"I think the leadership may be zealots, or just power-hungry. I think they might be willing to let their people pay for their greed. How complicit are the forces holding this city is another unknown. Maybe the brass are true believers. Maybe they don't believe their country would abandon them. Maybe the infantry just wants to go home. I imagine most people in Tevinter probably just want to get the hell on with their lives, but you can tell me if I'm wrong."
"You're not wrong," comes readily enough, as dismissive of Holden's refusal to entertain an elaborate hypothetical. His wrist is still idly hooked across the shell shaped pommel of his belt knife, casually forgotten.
"I only wonder whether the Divine is making that distinction known to the people following behind her. They've been taught their whole lives the shape of what you gathered in less than a year."
He'd straightened when he made his refusal, but relaxes somewhat now, letting his weight fall back onto his hands as he breathes out.
"That's doubtful. It's easier to sell people on a war if they think everyone on the other side is an enemy. And then she doesn't have to worry about justifying what the Exalted March does, either — like if they raze the first Tevene town they find."
The line of his brow quirks high and the angle of his temple tips with it as if to concur without going so far as to actually verbalize his agreement.
"I imagine," he says after a moment, nodding to Val Chevin's walls which gleam bright and pleasant in the warm afternoon daylight. "That regardless of what the man overseeing that city does or doesn't believe about the thing which has the Archon under it's thumb in Minrathous, the Divine's sensibilities are currently one of his utmost concerns. More so than what Celene is thinking in Val Royeaux.
"Even if she or Cuissard were to make it known that they were willing to negotiate a surrender, he will need to believe the Divine will abide by it before he will be convinced to budge. She's the one standing between him and home, and of the two of them—between the Divine and the Empress—I know of only one who has put surrendered Tevinter soldiers on the chopping block."
"Last summer when the Inquisition recaptured Montfort. Just before your time here, if memory serves," he says, unhurried. Not quite as if they are discussing the weather, but very like as if they are studying pieces on a board. In a sense, they are.
"And I would imagine that the news of such an approach has gone rather a long way to quieting any arguments which might have otherwise been raised in either the Magisterium or Publicanium by now. Correspondence captured during the retreat from around Montfort seemed to suggest that the entirety of the Tevinter force—to say nothing of the Anders with them—isn't wholly in the pocket of the Venatori."
He looks at him.
"But pride on the one side and fear on the other make rather good spurs."
He lets out a long breath, seems to deflate a little with it. None of this is surprising, actually; it certainly lines up with what he knows about the Chantry's attitude towards mages, rifters. With what he'd been drawn into speculating, just a moment ago. He doesn't expect them to be better, hadn't even hoped it, but it's still fucking disappointing.
"We need to find ways to build trust with the people. We have to earn it."
Which is clearly going to be an uphill battle. He glances back towards Flint to ask,
"The Inquisition has long used its allegiance to the Chantry as a means of legitimizing itself in the absence of a Divine's leadership. Now that someone has been restored to that position, I expect if they didn't support her wishes that they would quickly find themselves with an inconvenient lack of friends in a world easily convinced of their redundancy. The Divine has her March, and has recalled the Templar Order to her side. And if there is an authority when it comes to managing the damage done to the Veil, then it is Riftwatch. So if the Inquisition is effecting anything, it's the harboring of rebel mages whose alleged crimes the South has conveniently chosen to forget for as long as they are pointed in the correct direction."
There is uphill and then there is ascending a vertical cliff face.
"So," is like a punctuation mark or the act of turning to some new page. "If there is to be any clear path forward in this, I think it likely we will have to cut it ourselves."
"You already know how to discredit them if they get in the way."
He's interested in circling back to the idea of making their own path forward, here. But he's heard a lot of thought already put into opposing the Inquisition, and he doubts it's all — or only — about the notion of repairing relations with non-Venatori Tevinter.
He looks at Holden, the lines of Flint's face drawn in against the height of the sun. A lifetime of taking measurements from it has contrived to make this narrowed, squinting look the one his face wears most naturally.
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Holden, late Cloudreach;
Anyway, it makes for a fine place to sit in the late afternoon now that they've slipped the leash of the estimable Capitaine Remetter.
The sun is at their backs. Theoretically, makes it difficult for any guardsman along the walls to sight them. Candidly, Flint has his doubts that it really fucking matters. They're beyond the range of crossbows and the city must be used to a certain level of being under observation.
From where he sits on a stump with one leg stretched before him in the grass turned brilliant gold by the late afternoon, Flint studies the city just a moment longer through the lens of a battered old spyglass. At this distance (or because it has been too long and he is no longer familiar with all the colors and heraldry), he can't parse whose banners are flying over the city.
He lowers the glass from his eye, but neither looks away from Val Chevin or to his companion though he addresses him plainly enough:
"Is it everything you were expecting?"
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There's a fallen log, perhaps from the very severed roots that serve as Flint's seat now, that's been left so long to molder that where the earth ends and the bottom of the wood begins is now lost — or at least buried under a carpet of flowers. Holden sits here, hands briefly pressed against the rough bark.
There's dissonance:
because he's seen war, his share of battles, studied military tactics and strategy, but never on Earth — a blockade of a moon, of a station, interplanetary trade routes held hostage, would feel less jarring to him than watching a captive city from a matter of miles away with flowers and sweet leaves scenting the air, with bees singing,
because he's seen the most of this war in dreams, and no matter what he says of focusing on reality, of moving on, he'd expected the distribution of forces to look different — and hadn't realized the expectation existed until it was disappointed.
"What a fucking mess."
no subject
It is messy.
"Like as not, being in the Divine's company was probably serving to rally morale. With the Exalted March pushing on ahead in the north, we might have expected there to be indecision in it's wake."
The spyglass, still extended, is turned in hand and offered across to Holden.
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(Is in a serious enough mood to not spend much thought on how using a spyglass makes him feel like an actual on-the-ocean sailor, but it tickles at the back of his mind, and he'll probably think about it later.)
"I understand the need to keep civilian casualties low," he says, his tone more allowing a bloodbath would be unforgivable, "but there has to be a better answer than 'fuck around while they're trapped.'" Like he already knows the answer: "What are the odds of Tevinter withdrawing peacefully?"
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Divested of the spyglass, Flint has settled on the stump with one wrist hooked across the pommel of his belt knife and the other over top of it. It's a casual thing--almost comically sedate given their proximity here to the city's walls. War is a strange animal: a beast which bites only when it's been trained to.
"They've been cut off from the main body of the occupation since last summer when Montfort capitulated. Originally, I might have said that they remained in residence in the hope that the invasion force's front line would be able to retake that ground and close the gap again. But with the occupation pushed to Andoral's Reach, any fit Commander General in Val Chevin should at this point expect to remain isolated for at least another year if not longer.
"In which case, that same Commander General ought to be wary of the possibility that someone, somewhere will eventually close his only reliable path of supply by sea. He weathered one hard winter, but that was with an early harvest at his disposal. The next one will be harder. So if he means to get out with his skin and rejoin the effort in the north, he will need to leave before then. And should he leave Val Chevin as a pile of ashes behind him--There are two armies between him and Tevinter by land and it's a long way to the Amaranthine by sea, with plenty of opportunity in either direction for an incensed allied force to get their revenge. Leaving on good terms, overland if he can negotiate it so as to rejoin the war sooner, would theoretically be in his and the Imperium's best interest."
And maybe it is so simple as that. That is almost certainly what Celene and Cuissard and whoever else might be after a quiet reconciliation will be hoping for.
"But I suspect that's not why they're still here."
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"A distraction," he suggests, lowering the spyglass and turning from the city's ramparts to Flint. "Keep eyes on this city, keep the Orlesian generals arguing, while the Imperium gets ready to strike elsewhere. And if that doesn't go as planned, they still have an entire city held hostage."
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He reaches out to reclaim the spyglass. Once returned to his possession, it's succinctly collapsed back into its more compact shape and tucked into the band of his broad belt.
"It's cleverly done, so long as you don't mind risking the loss of the entire force occupying the city."
no subject
"If they minded that kind of risk, we'd be fighting a very different war."
Maybe his confidence as he says so will sound absurd to a native. James Holden hasn't been here a year, after all. And yet — he cut his teeth in the navy on tales of the Vesta Blockade, of every military engagement or near-miss that'd bubbled up for centuries and then subsided because both Earth and Mars knew better than to engage in a shooting war. They both gave a shit about the costs.
Nothing he's seen, in the waking world or otherwise, suggests a similar climate here.
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It's not a real question; it's a stick for measuring by. That much is apparent in Flint's distinct lack of surprise and the way in which his attention drifts from the city before them—with its sturdy walls, and heavy gates, the sprawl of unprotected wooden and plaster structures spilling out along the coastline like when birds rides a druffalo's back—to Holden near at hand.
It can't hurt to have a sense for where the man's head is.
no subject
"When it comes to an empire that's big on enslavement, conquest, and worshipping a demonic being, my money isn't on them respecting peoples' lives. But," he says, leans back a little, breathes out, "that can go more than one way. They think they're better than everyone else, they take care of their own more carefully. Or, any cost is acceptable for the glory of Tevinter, and it's an honor to die for the Imperium."
He remembers Bobbie, her unit slaughtered as part of a sales demo, for Mars. She'd kick his ass for the comparison, but he can't help making it.
"They wouldn't have made this move in the first place if they cared about the cost to their troops. I'm guessing their numbers can support it." Since like, "Open war isn't the only way to expand their borders. The fact that they're fighting says a lot about their resources. Not to mention their priorities."
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"I take it you've some experience with this business."
—rather than issue any correction or corroboration.
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He thinks of: Everything done here has been to stop what's happening on Venus.
He thinks of: We're all just walking in the footsteps of history, the ancient frontier. All those post offices and railroads and jails cost thousands of lives to build. You should've stayed at home until I built a post office.
What he says is, "I'm finding that war is war, no matter where you go. Humanity can't seem to stop repeating the same old patterns." And then, "Is something funny?"
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"It's possible that I've failed to afford the Divine's position as much credit as it deserves. You've been here, what? Seven months?" Is potentially a startling accurate estimation from a man known for leaving the various incidentals of personnel to his teenaged division assistant. "And already she has you talking about the Imperium like a Southerner."
Humanity can't seem to stop repeating the same old patterns. Now that is funny.
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He doesn't seem to share Flint's humor, mysteriously.
"Is there any other way I should be talking about it?"
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He glances away from Holden, lined face squinting toward the pale walls of Val Chevin. The forked tongues of company flags drift in the wind high behind the battlements and the air smells bizarrely like some expensive cheese: earth and salt brine in combination. Complicated.
It's a short beat. When Flint looks back, some of the humor in his expression has tapered and he has clearly resolved on—
Something.
"Humor me. Let us pretend for a moment that the Divine's Exalted March were to break the Ander-Tevinter line and stream north toward Minrathous tomorrow. There is Corypheus, with only a nation between the two of them. If it's as you say, with Tevinter made up of zealots with little regard for life and a willingness to take it in defense of their home, it makes for a wide killing field through which they must first pass."
After all, it's not exactly a short march to the northern coast.
"If it were you at the head of the column, how would you have your men conduct themselves when you encounter your first town?"
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"I think the leadership may be zealots, or just power-hungry. I think they might be willing to let their people pay for their greed. How complicit are the forces holding this city is another unknown. Maybe the brass are true believers. Maybe they don't believe their country would abandon them. Maybe the infantry just wants to go home. I imagine most people in Tevinter probably just want to get the hell on with their lives, but you can tell me if I'm wrong."
Since that's what, apparently, they're doing now.
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"I only wonder whether the Divine is making that distinction known to the people following behind her. They've been taught their whole lives the shape of what you gathered in less than a year."
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"That's doubtful. It's easier to sell people on a war if they think everyone on the other side is an enemy. And then she doesn't have to worry about justifying what the Exalted March does, either — like if they raze the first Tevene town they find."
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"I imagine," he says after a moment, nodding to Val Chevin's walls which gleam bright and pleasant in the warm afternoon daylight. "That regardless of what the man overseeing that city does or doesn't believe about the thing which has the Archon under it's thumb in Minrathous, the Divine's sensibilities are currently one of his utmost concerns. More so than what Celene is thinking in Val Royeaux.
"Even if she or Cuissard were to make it known that they were willing to negotiate a surrender, he will need to believe the Divine will abide by it before he will be convinced to budge. She's the one standing between him and home, and of the two of them—between the Divine and the Empress—I know of only one who has put surrendered Tevinter soldiers on the chopping block."
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"When the hell did that happen?"
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"And I would imagine that the news of such an approach has gone rather a long way to quieting any arguments which might have otherwise been raised in either the Magisterium or Publicanium by now. Correspondence captured during the retreat from around Montfort seemed to suggest that the entirety of the Tevinter force—to say nothing of the Anders with them—isn't wholly in the pocket of the Venatori."
He looks at him.
"But pride on the one side and fear on the other make rather good spurs."
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"We need to find ways to build trust with the people. We have to earn it."
Which is clearly going to be an uphill battle. He glances back towards Flint to ask,
"The Inquisition supported that?"
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There is uphill and then there is ascending a vertical cliff face.
"So," is like a punctuation mark or the act of turning to some new page. "If there is to be any clear path forward in this, I think it likely we will have to cut it ourselves."
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"You already know how to discredit them if they get in the way."
He's interested in circling back to the idea of making their own path forward, here. But he's heard a lot of thought already put into opposing the Inquisition, and he doubts it's all — or only — about the notion of repairing relations with non-Venatori Tevinter.
In the way, he says, not our way.
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He looks at Holden, the lines of Flint's face drawn in against the height of the sun. A lifetime of taking measurements from it has contrived to make this narrowed, squinting look the one his face wears most naturally.
"But what good would that do us?"
This too is an act of calculation.
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slaps a bow on this