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| ===Chapter 4 - Do You Ever Smile?===
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| ''"It is better to conquer yourself than to win a thousand battles. Then the victory is yours. It cannot be taken from you, not by archons or by demons, by celestia or by hell."''
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| '' - Samaran Saying''
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| Lydia twiddled the quill between her fingers before she crossed another item off the checklist. As the senior aide-de-camp of Coalition Central Command, it fell upon her to organize the plethora of military documents that Subutai had requested late last night. She had been up since two hours before dawn, which had given her a precious three hours of shuteye.
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| "Did you find the command roster of the Kamenka garrison? Aaaaaand..." she stifled yet another yawn with her palm. "...The supply manifest for the new regiment at Sheksna?"
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| "Yep."
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| The energetic reply came from Captain Elizaveta 'Liza' Dolina, a sylphlike girl with bushy, chestnut hair who sat next to Lydia as the second-ranking aide. Her golden-green pupils were warm and supportive as she bobbed a parchment scroll towards her superior. Lydia took it without looking up before unfurling it to double-check.
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| "That's it for a whole regiment?" She scanned through the single parchment on top. Fifteen hundred men and women could eat through several wagonloads of food ''per day'', let alone the arms, armor, and winter gear they needed.
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| "Light infantry. Mostly hunters from the fur trapper communities." Elizaveta pointed to a brief mention. "They bring and make their own equipment: bows, spears, leather, and skis."
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| Lydia put down the scroll and quill as she closed her eyes and rubbed her temples. She hadn't been sleeping well ever since the coalition army departed for the disaster at Perym. The Protectorate of Sheksna was considered the fur capital of the continent, supplying nearly sixty percent of its demands. This lucratic trade was one of the chief revenue sources for the western Polisian states. As the daughter of a merchant and daughter-in-law of a trade diplomat, she really should have known better.
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| "Uh, Lilya..." Elizaveta added worryingly. But before Lydia could ask, another youthful voice joined them across the table.
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| "I heard ink is a lousy flavor, Lilya. You should stick with the jam."
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| Lydia reopened her eyes to meet the smiling gaze of their white-haired healer. Dasha was a Samaran mystic nearly forty years of age. Though between her short stature and the Samarans' long lifespan -- reaching as far as two centuries -- she looked mid-twenties at most. She sat down across from Lydia, at the end of a long, oak table in the Coalition Central's officers lounge. Together with the twenty-four years old Elizaveta, the trio of them formed the only officers from Lydia's original company who escaped the encirclement at Desna alive.
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| Looking down, Lydia finally noticed what the two of them were talking about. She had laid the quill down in the breakfast bowl that she had forgotten about, straight into the spoonful of strawberry jam served atop her kasha milk porridge.
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| An annoyed scowl formed as she pulled the quill out. Cereal and jam now stuck along its writing end. She wiped the tip on her tongue before inserted it into the curled-up scroll.
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| ''At least it wasn't the report...''
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| "I know Samarans don't get food poisoning. But you really should have just thrown that out," Elizaveta grimaced as though imagining ink's horrid flavor, when all it did was make the jam a little bitter.
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| "Waste of supplies," Lydia retorted between wolfing down mouthfuls of the now-lukewarm porridge in a rather unladylike manner. Military life had thrown much of her prior ettiquette training out the door, though she at least swallowed before speaking again.
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| "Our granaries are emptying fast enough as it is," she added in a quiet mumble.
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| The sun was scarcely thirty minutes above ground, and everyone else was enjoying their breakfast in the great hall. But Lydia was nonetheless careful with that information.
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| "Don't remind me," Elizaveta grumbled. "I haven't had a full meal since last year. Feels like the Colonel's familiar eats better than we do!"
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| Since the defeat at Desna, the Eastling invasion had overran the southern principalities one by one. That temperate, fertile region -- known as the 'breadbasket of Polisia' -- had been responsible for most of the Federation's food production. Its loss precipitated food rationing and imposed a time limit on how long they could continue to prosecute this war. Even if they ate up all the reindeer herds in the Protectorate of Kamenka, it was doubtful that mass starvation could be averted for more than two years.
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| "Ilyusha ''does'' eat better," Lydia casually added, her left hand reopening the checklist parchment once more. "Drakes are carnivores after all. We lose cow pastures, he get reindeer meat. But if you'd like to dispute a Zmey Gorynych over his dinner, be my guest."
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| "He might have the advantage on you in heads though," the petite Dasha teased as she waved her spoon, before digging into her own porridge. "Not to mention that hot and toasty breathe. I heard that if they blow softly, they can cook meat nice and tender..."
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| "I'm not a roast pig!" The young Captain blurted out. "It just, doesn't feel fair..."
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| ''Of all things, you complain about food?'' Lydia almost replied, before she swallowed it alongside another spoonful of cereal. She reminded herself that the reason they fussed over these minor concerns in the first place was because it distracted them from the greater, existential woes.
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| ...Like whether they were going to live through the next year.
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| "Consider it a good shrink for your stomache, Liza."
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| "I don't have a stomache!"
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| "Oh really?" Dasha grinned. "Please return all those meals you've been feeding that bottomless pit of yours. The orphanage would be happy to receive it."
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| "Tomorrow's gruel: vomit," Lydia replied in a deadpan, her mind focused on the checklist.
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| A regurgitating sound came from Elizaveta as if she just threw up a little inside her mouth. With a grimace she then gulped down the porridge:
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| "I'm still eating here, you know!"
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| The two Samaran girls glanced at once another. Dasha's cheeks had swollen to the point of laughter, while Lydia returned a rather amused scowl.
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| "Still, that unnatural metabolism isn't going to last you forever," Lydia added. Elizaveta was one of those lucky girls who kept her figure slim no matter how much she ate.
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| "I'm older than you are!" Elizaveta countered. "Besides, not everyone lives like nuns like you two!"
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| "I may be an ascetic," Dasha tilted her head with a ''fine-I-admit'' expression, before swiveling her spoon towards Lydia. "But she's just a trussed up chicken who lives in a fancy coop."
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| "''Cluck cluck!''"
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| Elizaveta waved her straightened palm as though flapping a tiny wing, and Lydia rolled her eyes as she opened up another scroll. This time, it was a report on the requisition of civilian wagons for military conversion.
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| "I haven't been 'trussed up' for two years now, thank you."
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| "But did you really wear a corset when you studied at the Academy?"
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| Lydia's thoughts suddenly froze as the images of those bright days trickled into her mind once more. She could still feel Aleksei's warm, gentle hands wrapping around her corset-squeezed waist, or see his affectionate smile as his fingers brushed back strands of her hair behind her ears...
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| Her eyes moistened as her chest squeezed. She bit down on her lip, using the taste of blood to drive back her bittersweet memories.
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| The older Dasha sent Elizaveta a glare, and the younger girl's lips fell open:
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| "I'm s--"
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| "Almost every day during my marriage." Lydia never gave her the time to finish as she pushed the conversation forward by force. She didn't want pity. She certainly didn't need those eyes that looked upon her as though everything worthwhile in her life was now over.
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| ...Even if that was how she felt waking up every morning.
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| "Joining an aristocratic family meant I had expectations to meet. I actually didn't mind the corset. Found it useful at the academy too: curbed any possibility of developing bad posture habits like bending forward to read."
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| It was sort of ironic: despite being the only one present who wasn't a mage, Lydia was also the only noblewoman amongst the trio. Dasha was a Samaran mystic and wandering healer before the war. Meanwhile Elizaveta was a yeoman -- a magic-blessed 'first-class peasant' -- from a remote village in the foothills of the Dead Mountains.
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| "Speaking of nobles, did you ask where the new commander came from?" Elizaveta changed the topic with a soft, almost-apologetic tone. "Everyone says he must have been a hermit somewhere to turn up only now. Maybe he descended from Kresnik's Golden Mountain?"
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| Lydia sighed. It hasn't even been twelve hours since Tara's arrival, yet the rumor mill was already working hard in connecting him with Gods and mythical places. Meanwhile half her mind returned to reading the scroll: ''how did we suddenly acquire seven hundred wagons?''
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| "He claims he was reborn just two days ago," she revealed while crossing off another item from the checklist.
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| "''Really!?''"
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| "I guess I could be a deceitful hag who is lying to you," Lydia added in a matter-of-fact tone, which instantly shut Elizaveta up.
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| Meanwhile, Dasha struggled to find the right words as she stared back with bright-lavender eyes:
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| "Well, he's certainly... ''grown''."
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| "Makes you wonder what Her Holiness has been feeding him, doesn't it?"
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| Had Lydia paid attention, she would have noticed that Dasha's gaze flew right past her.
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| "Soldiers!" Elizaveta was even more oblivious as she began in a suppressed, announcing tone. "Meet your new general: an infant."
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| "Fortunately, this infant knows how to run an army."
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| The sudden, deep voice from directly behind them made both Lydia and Elizaveta scramble. The two girls bolted up from their seats and pivoted about into an upright salute.
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| "Sir!"
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| Subutai stood hardly two paces before them. No longer covered in mismatching felts and furs, he had traded much of his wardrobe for a tight Polisian uniform in white and azure. Only a cape of white, polar bear fur remained to hang from his wide shoulders, each of which wore the double-thundermarks of a Lieutenant General. The dramatic shift in image instantly made him look seventy-percent more civilized; only seventy because the man had neglected to shave and still sported his long, axe-hacked beard.
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| He took another step perpendicular to them, and Lydia's eyes widened as the muscular man landed his foot on the hard floor with barely a sound.
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| Only Dasha calmly stood up from her seat at the table:
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| "Good morning, golden boy."
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| Subutai's brows furrowed. "Boy?"
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| "You were born two days ago, right?"
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| "I've lived a lifetime."
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| "Pish posh," Dasha batted his stoice words aside with a wave of her hand. "We're Samarans. Every one of us has a lifetime behind our faces. Age means little to us, only wisdom," she grinned.
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