Jaycee Woods

I finished formatting Chapter 32 of Boudica and The Butcher, which I gave the working title of “The Feint” because of the deception in the chapter.

Initially, I was going to call it “No Quarter” after the flag gifted by Miles and Ella to the general. Gideon decides that as a symbol it will allow him to be in more than one place at the same time after the fall of Pilgerruh. Rebel cities would surrender at the sight of his No Quarter flag at the head of a Union army like a modern Tamerlane, even if he was not physically present given his reputation for brutality after destroying a city by famine, disease, and fire for opposing him. Thus, that flag deception would achieve his goal of speeding the end of the war. As he had been training the reserve forces in the Ohio theater to use his methods during the siege of Pilgerruh, the threat symbolized by the flag would be real as his ideas were there if not his body.

Despite her fear of the symbol, Boudica took heart because Miles had brought Gideon a solution to a problem that The Butcher had not fully solved, scaling his methods. She accepted the if Miles could solve a problem for Gideon, then she might be able to help Gideon find the purpose that would save his soul from the consequences of the choices he made in the war.

After, Boudica engages in her own deception by ascribing the problem she sees in Gideon to herself then asking him to brainstorm ways to solve “her” problem so she could try those options on him. This occurred after her failure to get him to engage with her directly as he had resolved that there is nothing for him after the war as every day the war finds new ways to breakdown the ashes of his remains.