Chapter Two: The March

How stupid did the Queen of Queens think the Sodden Pontiff was? Her offer was too good to be true. It had to be a ploy to discredit, or even assassinate him. The Royal Council with all their wisdom was even allowing the Savior to bring his army with him, the fools.

Thit marched in anger with her column of half a thousand ants. She held her longpike proudly, the polished, armor-piercing head glimmered in the morning sun along with the other hundreds of longpikes. Her column looked like a shiny forest of death. Thit was dressed in brand new bronze armor, trimmed with pure white, and wore a matching helm, which covered her head and cheeks, but had two holes on top that allowed her antennae to pop through. On her back, she carried her heavy round shield, which had recently had the white tower of Halite painted on it.

  She turned around to get one last look at the White City. The rising sun gave half the city a heavenly white-yellow glow, while the other half was still hidden in the dark blue of dawn. Thit had lived in Halite all her life, and she knew that she might not see it ever again. She would gladly give her life for her city, if that was what it took.

Behind her were dozens of columns just like her own, and those were only the ones in her field of vision. Thit was one of a hundred thousand pike soldiers, which made up the core of the Sodden Pontiff’s army. Fifty thousand cavalry mice supported the core, along with almost eighty thousand archers and various other missile soldiers. There were ten thousand siege engineers following up the rear who would construct catapults, towers, and ladders. Twenty five thousand specialized climbing soldiers also accompanied the army, who were prepared to make a dangerous free climb up the tall cliff if the army had to besiege Hornblende. The war would be over far before they reached Hornblende, though, if the inland ants knew what was good for them. Two hundred sixty-five thousand soldiers marched northeast with the Sodden Pontiff toward Feldspar. Another thirty-five thousand soldiers traveling upriver by warship from The Island of Basalt were going to meet them under the City on the Bridge, bringing the army’s total up to three hundred thousand.

The Sodden Pontiff’s plan was simple. He would walk straight into the Royal Councilants’ ploy in Feldspar, and turn their ‘negotiation’ around on them. He would show them his army, and should they make even a hint of aggression toward him, the army would immediately besiege Feldsapar. The coastal army was much larger and better equipped than the skeleton of the inland army. The Queen of Queens would have no choice but to surrender her empire to The Savior, but if she was foolish, the army was fully prepared to kill the Royal Councilants and cleanse the entire inland of non-believers all the way to the capital city on the cliff.

This attempt at a negotiation, or perhaps an assassination, had to have been an act of desperation by the Queen of Queens, the slow and overly cautious crusty old ant. She was afraid. She was afraid of Halite’s power, and she was afraid of The Order, even though the Sodden Pontiff was the one who saved her and her precious Empire. It was Halite’s blessed filtered water that kept the Empire breathing during the Great Drought, but the inland river cities never learned to respect it. They were too stuck in their old ways of the Old Queens, too dependent on the Feldspar River. The river used to be the lifeblood of the Empire, but now the river was sick, and the Empire was weak. It was time to convert the inland non-believers, and to liberate them from suffering, and from the tyranny of the Old Empire.