I’m on the tail end of Covid but I’m still working much slower than I’d like, so the next chapter will be up tomorrow afternoon instead of the usual midnight. I’ll be taking down this post when the chapter comes out.

“Invading Callow is like stepping on a porcupine: do it long enough and it shall be crushed, but one should expect to lose the foot.”

– First Princess Clarisse Merovins

Juniper looked like she wanted to bite someone’s head off, and it was not impossible she would before the day ended.

“They were already retreating,” my marshal admitted. “I called the retreat myself so it would be in order instead of a rout.”

So mostly to save face, I thought with a grimace. All attempts to cross the bridges had ceased, a sight that had my stomach clenching in fear and unease. The longer we let the Dead King dig in on the other side, the worse this would get. I thought it pretty telling that no serious attempt had been made to destroy our bridges yet. Sorcery was still traded back and forth, filling the sky with streaks of colour and eerie shrieks, but so far the enemy had not even tried turning their ballistae on our forces this side of the chasm.

“We need to punch through,” I bluntly said. “If we don’t the battle’s good as lost.”

The attacks through the last two stone bridges were going to get shredded if we didn’t draw enemy forces with our own push and the Praesi had orders not to commit their forces before we had a beachhead inside Keter’s walls.

“I know that, Catherine,” the Hellhound growled. “You think I don’t? But I also know that if I give the order it won’t be obeyed.”

I grit my teeth.

“I know casualties are-”

“We’ve lost almost two thousand already,” Juniper evenly said.

The number gave me pause. Gods. That many?

“It hasn’t even been an hour,” I numbly said.

“Those bridges are pure murder,” the Marshal of Callow replied. “I ordered a push with mages putting up shields and all it did was draw ballista fire. The only saving grace is that the bodies fall instead of block the way.”

It obscured how many we’d lost, too. At least to some extent. Men who’d been three companies back when the battle started were going to notice they were now the frontline because everyone in front was dead.

“We need to commit Named,” Juniper said. “Can Hierophant cover our advance?”

Still feeling numb, I clumsily undid the clasp of my helmet. My face was covered in sweat and dirt, too-warm locks of hair falling over it when I took off the helm.

“Not without fucking over another front,” I said. “If he protects our advance, he’s not countering enemy rituals.”

I spat to the side, fruitlessly trying to get the taste of iron out of my mouth.

“How’s the Blessed Artificer?” I asked.

“Back on her feet, it was just a bump,” Juniper said. “You think she can run interference for us?”

“I think she’s the only heavy hitter left that’s not already committed,” I said, “so it’s her or no one.”

“I’ll send for her,” Juniper replied, then hesitated.

“Speak your mind,” I said.

The tall orc looked uncomfortable.

“It won’t be enough to get them to take the bridges again,” she said. “Not after the slaughter they just went through.”

Brushing sweaty hair off my dead eye – my ponytail was fraying – I turned to the Army of Callow. Juniper’s command tent was well situated, overlooking the offensive while boasting both a solid set of wards and room for me to land Zombie. She was still back there, tied to a post. An army, I had thought more than once, was like a large beast. It had a breath to it, lungs and veins and blood. It could be angered or wounded, made brave or craven. And though I did not have it in me to call any of these men and women who had followed me halfway across the world cowards, I watched those shifting ranks and saw the fight had just been beaten out of them.

Twice now every assault on the walls of Keter had failed and now they were asking themselves an ugly question: could they be breached at all?

They weren’t sure, not anymore, and in a battle like this that was as bad as thinking it couldn’t be done. Once you doubted, the whistle of every arrow was a dirge and the glint on the enemy’s blade as the promise of death. Like a worm in an apple, the doubt was eating my army alive.

“My fault,” I quietly said.

Juniper turned to glare at me.

“I don’t know what you’ve gotten in your head but-”

“My fault,” I repeated, in a tone that brooked no contradiction. “I’ve been fighting this battle mounted, Hellhound. That’s not what it takes to win a slog like this.”

I clenched my armoured fist.

“Blood and mud,” I said. “It always comes down to the blood and mud, doesn’t it?”

I pulled my helmet back down on my head. Juniper glared at me.

“Recklessness won’t bring us victory,” she said.

I secured the clasp, pulled at it to make sure it’d stay in place. The gesture was familiar, almost comforting. How many times had I done this before? Gods, how long had I begun to? I smiled at her, unable to help it.

“Do you remember the first war game we ever had, you and I?” I asked.

She snorted.

“Ratface and I had a war game,” Juniper corrected. “You were just some bum with a sword that took command after I beat him.”

My smile widened into a grin.

“I still remember how godawful furious you were, when I used my Name to leap over that log trap,” I said. “You snarled ‘what the Hells was that?’ and-”

“And you replied: ‘me, winning’,” Juniper finished, almost smiling. “I remember.”

I looked at the broken walls of the Crown of the Dead, the empire of horrors that still awaited beyond it.

“Come a long way, haven’t we?” I softly said.

“All the way to the end of the world,” the Hellhound replied, baring her fangs.

She had that look in her eye that’d made me want her from the start, even when we’d just been kids playing at war in the Tower’s shadow. The one that was all flint and iron, that said the soul behind it would rather snap then bend. I raised my arm, offered it, and after a heartbeat if hesitation she took it. An old legionary’s salute.

“The army’s yours,” I said. “You know the plans.”

Her face tightened, emotions flickering across it too quickly for me to read. Her grip tightened around my arm.

“It’s a fool thing, what you do,” Juniper of the Red Shields said, voice hoarse. “It’s a damned fool thing, and I can’t even shout at you for it.”

She released my arm as if the armour had burned it.

“Warlord,” Juniper said.

My staff I raised, then slammed it down. Though it was only dead yew and beneath it was stone, it parted for the wood like water. It was stuck in the stone and would stay there until I took it up again.

“Hellhound,” I replied.

And without another word, I went down into the crowd. Into the ranks. My eye wandered, looking for something, and found it. A boy, about my height, and as I opened my mouth I recognized with a start that I knew him.

“Edgar, isn’t it?”

“Ma’am, yes,” the boy – no, it’d been years, the young man now – hastily saluted. “And I’m a sergeant now, ma’am.”

“So I see,” I replied, glancing at the stripes.

He swelled at the words.

“I need another favour of you, Sergeant Edgar,” I said. “I must borrow a shield.”

He did not hesitate, I saw with something that was neither quite pride nor grief, for a moment. Without batting an eye he offered it, even helping me slide in my arm.

“Won’t do no good on your monster crow, though,” Sergeant Edgar noted. “It’s a footman’s shield, ma’am.”

“Then it’s exactly what I need,” I replied.

He paused, and others did around us. Neither of us were trying to stay quiet, and the press of soldiers was close. Murmurs rippled out.

“Get another before you go in,” I said, clapping his shoulder with affection. “Fortune be with you, Sergeant Edgar.”

“Hells,” the young man grinned, “that’d be a first.”

Hard, satisfied laughter followed. I let it carry me forward. One limping step after another, I crossed the sea of legionaries. Eyes followed me as if I were a falling star, hands reaching out shyly to touch my shield or the hem of my cloak as I passed. And I felt it move with me. Something like a shiver, a physical tremor going through the great beast that was my army. I was there, among them. Word of it passed from lip to ear, moving so quickly that before long the soldiers ahead me were already looking my way. I did not hurry my limp, because hurrying would do no good. When I reached the edge of the camp, the edge of the cliff, when I rose the steps to the beginning of the bride and turned, I found a sea of faces awaiting me.

Above us a clouded, hellish sky lit up with the eerie lights of war sorcery. The distant eruptions of power were like a broken breeze, just enough to have the banners moving. First Army. Fourth Army. And, standing before me, the Third. The vanguard of my every victory, which I had named Dauntless for that unflinching bravery.

“I won’t lie to you,” I told them, Name strengthening my voice for all to hear. “There’s death ahead.”

None were surprised. They had seen too many of their friends killed to be.

“They’ll come for us with fire and storm,” I said. “With every horrible trick they’ve been waiting to unleash. The moment it looks like we might win, they’ll unleash the Hells until the broken gates are left swinging in the wind.”

I breathed out.

“And still I ask it of you,” I said. “To march. To bleed. To die, until we’ve crossed the deep and rammed death back down the Dead King’s throat.”

There were no cheers at that. It was not a boast I’d offered them, something to laugh about. They all knew what it would cost to get there.

“I won’t blame you if you run,” I told them, “even though there’s nowhere left to run. We’re all a long way from home.”

I looked at them, and I saw in their eyes that they did not want to fight. They loved me, I thought, but still they did not want to fight.

“But if we don’t win here we’ll bring down the world with us,” I said, “so I’ll be crossing that bridge.”

Murmurs bloomed, low and urgent. The shield on my arm was hard to miss.

“And I know it’s more than a queen can ask,” I called out, “but I ask it anyway.”

My fingers clenched, then slowly unclenched.

“You trusted me through Dormer and the Camps, through Maillac’s Boot and Four Armies,” I said, “through Arcadia and the Wasteland and every misbegotten bit a land a soldier’s ever died on.”

Gods, where had I not dragged them? They had even bled beyond Creation, as if Calernia was too small a field for them to die on.

“Trust me once more,” I asked. “Follow me into the breach, through dark and ruin until we come out on the other side.”

Maybe one day they’d call me a soldier queen, but the truth of it was simpler: I was queen of soldiers. I’d spent more time in the saddle than on my throne, pawning off the intricacies of rules to one regent after another as I went off to scatter Callow’s enemies. They might have crowned me in Laure, anointed me and said the words, but my real kingdom stood before me: banners and steel.

The Army of Callow.

“You and I against the rest of the fucking world, one last time.”

In the distance lightning crackles, exploded in a burst of light, and as ash fell from the sky like rain I stood before a sea of soldiers that would not look me in the eye. Silence hung in the air like pestilence, and the longer it lasted the harder my stomach clenched. It would not be broken, I realized. They would not gather their courage, raise the banners and follow me again. All my life I had wondered – feared, hoped for – the moment where I would finally ask too much of my soldiers. When they would at last balk, hold back the loyalty that had kept me on my feet long before I’d begun using a staff. So here it was, I thought, at long last. You lasted until the end, I thought, looking at them. There is no shame in this.

But I had a duty, and I had sworn an oath: whether they be gods or kings or all the armies of Creation.So I unsheathed my sword, slowly, and raised it to them in a salute.

“Be proud,” I told them, meaning every word. “You reached the edge of the world.”

And I turned my back to them. One limping step down the bridge after another, the steel clanging against my boots. Three, five, ten. In the distance a pair of ballistae were aimed, and I saw the flicker of movement. Gritting my teeth, I pulled on Night and let it loose through my veins. I slashed at the air, darkness trailing in my sword’s wake as a streak of Night slapped aside the stones that would have torn right through my body. I squared my shield, straightened my back and began moving again. Simple, I thought, I just had to keep it simple. There was only the enemy ahead, nothing else in all of Creation.

One more step. Always one more step, until I made it all the way to the other side.

“DAUNTLESS!”

My steps stuttered, but I could not let myself be distracted. Far ahead, a nest of mages loosed in my direction a ritual that was as a crawling wave of grey. I pulled on Night again, smashing a pillar of pure black into the spell and twisting my will. The working sucked in the magic before detonating, breaking the spell formula with it.

“DAUNTLESS!”

The shout came again, and this time more voices picked it up. I limped forward, shield up, as the world narrowed in front of me. I walked a span of steel three men wide, without railings or anything that would stop a single misstep from seeing you fall to your death. Lines of it stretched to my right and left, like teeth cutting at the void below us. Sorcery bloomed ahead, cabals of mages that were little more than bones and burning green sorcery shaping mounds of curses or frost. Gods, the numbers were overwhelming and I hadn’t even reached arrow range yet.

“Sve Noc,” I prayed in Crepuscular. “My enemies are many and their wrath is great: grant me ruin, that I may deal it out to them in your name.”

I twitched, Night bubbling up my veins, and let out a hoarse shout as shadows ripped themselves out of my back, fleeing the cover of my cloaks in flocks. Crows that were as shards of darkness took flight by the hundreds, spreading out in a wave that flew heedless into the enemy’s sorcery. My lip tasted of blood and I wiped it with the back of my gauntlet, spitting the rest into the chasm. One more step, I reminded myself. In the distance, the crows plunged into the spells and faded like morning mist – tainting every spell they touched, eating away at them from the inside. How many more of those did I have in me? Enough, I told myself. I would have enough.

My fingers were slick with sweat, my aketon soaked under the plate. Flakes of ash stuck to my face, to the wet cloth covering my dead eye, but still I advanced. My bad leg burned, throbbed with every step, but the pain was an old friend.

The ballistae had been silent, and now I saw why: they had been repositioned, awaiting the moment to fire a full volley. Only it wasn’t on me that the stones and bolts were fired. The machines spat out death at my bridge, but at others too. And I could not resist the glance, even knowing it would shatter my calm. Behind me, the Third Army’s banner flew in the wind and legionaries advanced. Tight ranks, shields up and faces grim. But they had come, marching down the lines of steel that were as a road straight to death, and my heart clenched at the sight of it. Always the Third, dauntless to the end. I would not let that trust go betrayed.

I thrust up my sword, Night already welling up inside me.

“I bring the word of the two-faced goddess,” I said.

Night swirled above me, sweeping up into the sky as a raging wind, and like a blade piercing the Heavens my working pierced the clouds. Arm trembling from the effort, I pulled down my sword and the rest of the sky with it.

“And that word is no,” I hissed.

Wind and clouds raged, a river drawn across the bridges like a stroke of paint, and the projectiles were swallowed whole. I released the working, panting as shivers of exhaustion went down my spine. I’d ripped a hole in the clouds, and through it the light of day shone. The sunlight found the rain of ashes, bathing in pale, and I might almost have thought it was snowing. In the distance I heard hoarse cheers, but there was a closer noise. Boots on steel. Legionaries catching up to me. And with them, on the too-warm wind, came one last sound drifting up to my ears.

“The knights will get the glory

The king will keep his throne.”

I was not sure whether to laugh or weep, so instead I kept my eyes ahead. One more step, I swore, and limped forward.

“We won’t be in the story

Our names will not be known.”

Sorcery swelled ahead, but the sky screamed out and streaks of pale lightning struck down at the enemy mages. No, not lightning – Light. The Blessed Artificer had come out to fight. Cheers sounded again. One more step, I prayed, and through the raining ash advanced.

“So pick up your sword, boy

Here they come again

And down here in the mud-”

“It’s us who holds the line,” I whispered.

One more step and all the Hells opened: arrow range. I was halfway through. They had massed archers and crossbowmen while we waited, crammed every skeleton upright and able to aim in thick lines covering every bit of stone they had to spare. They released all at once, with impossibly perfect timing, and death flew out in a swarm. I pulled deep on Night, blade wreathed in darkness, and slashed away. Behind us a great javelin of Light flew out, and as captains screamed out orders the Army of Callow loosed a wave of massed fireballs.

It wasn’t enough.

I hacked away at the arrows in front of us, even covering the bridges to my sides, but others flew in arcs above and there were simply too many to cover. Steel punctured shields, ripped into flesh, toppled soldiers screaming into the void.

“The Princes take the Vales

The Tyrant is at the Gate

Our crops wither and fail,

The enemy’s host is great.”

The line wavered, I could feel it buckling. But I kept advancing so they did too – voices rising defiantly to add to the song. The storm of arrows was not the danger of a single breath. It was a doom in three beats, as again and again the enemy went through the same movements: nock, pull, loose. The dead did not tire or hesitate, only missing a shot when a string strapped and needed to be replaced. And so death came for us in waves, relentless. A shot skittered off the side of my shield, another grazed my cheek and I could barely move quickly enough to gather Night to me.

“Mages, forward,” went up the cry, and soon shields bloomed in front of us, but like before they attracted attention.

Ballistae concentrated fire on the visible targets that were the translucent panes of magic, shattering them were arrows failed. The line was buckling again, and even for me to take a single step forward was like wading against a river’s current. We were failing again. I was already tired, more than I should be, but what point is there in hoarding power when we were about to lose? I took a step forward, almost swallowing my tongue for the burning pain of my leg, and clumsily ripped at the straps keeping my shield on my arm. Arrows fell, but I had a guardian of my own: a ball of blue flame formed in front of me, spinning and expanding to swallow all the projectiles before it burned out. Masego was protecting me

Then it was on me to protect everyone else.

I threw away the shield, hearing it rattle against the edge of the bridge and vanish into the dark, and I breathed out deeply. In and out, steady. Seizing too much Night when I was exhausted could make me throw up otherwise.

“So pick up your sword, boy

Here they come again

And down here in the mud

It’s us who holds the line.”

I dug deep. Until my breath came out mist for the cold inside my veins, until light began to hurt my eyes and I could hear my heart beating like a drum against my ears. I’d done many a powerful working of Night, in my time, but this one would be different. It was not the First Under the Night walking down that bridge, the highest priestess of Night. I was the Warden, come to bring order to the madness, and so it was not black flame or curses I was calling on. Keter thought to cowing me by unleashing one monster after another, by sowing a field of death.

But I’d brought my own, made of every death I owned.

“Rise,” I snarled, hand pulling up, and for a moment there was nothing at all.

Then the shadows beneath the bridges, the dark nestled beneath the cliffs, began to boil over. Strands of darkness shot out, thick tendrils of Night, and they gathered like a river to the sea. Above my head a shape began to form, and though Keter unleashed storms of sorcery to shatter it the Hierophant allowed not a speck of magic to pass. Watching it was seeing an artist at work: curses turned into flame, which burned acid into smoke, which coiled into tendrils choking out green light. A single will cascaded down a line of spells, breaking them with the same exquisite grace of a duellist’s perfect killing stroke. Again and again, the man who had once been the Apprentice got the best of them. And with every moment he bought me, every ballista the Blessed Artificer shattered in a burst of Light, the shape above me grew. Swelled, until it stood so tall it blocked out the sun.

A river of arrows was fired into the dark, disappearing as if they’d been dropped in a well.

And when the storms of sorcery broke, the smoke scattered and the ash-wind broke, facing the enemy was a behemoth of a monster. Mine, my Beast. It was shaped as a wolf would be, if shadows cast on a wall by a scared child: too sinuous, its impossible large maw bristling with teeth. It was my old companion, the breath of the back of my neck and the laughter in my ear. The monster I’d built out of a hundred thousand corpses, sown across battlefields from the east to the west. I’d built on my throne atop a mountain of dead soldiers but today, just this once, the throne would give back. Monstrous maw opening wide, the great beast of Night breathed in the air of Creation like it was savouring it. Behind me my men had halted, but I turned back and offered them a wild grin.

“FORWARD,” I shouted. “FORWARD AND FOLLOW ME!”

The Beast began to laugh, and Gods though it was a terrible the terror was on our side. I limped forward, breaking into a pained run, and ahead of me the monster charged.

“Man the walls,” my legionaries sang as they followed, “bare the steel.”

Sorcery screamed, ballistae fired and a howling volley of arrows disappeared into the Beast’s body. I quickened my steps, a hoarse shout ripping itself clear of my lungs – as much pain as glee.

“Hoist the banner, raise the shield.”

The Beast tumbled into the enemy, crushing undead with every step and laughing as it swallowed whole a siege engine. We ran, ran as fast as we could, knowing that the opportunity would not knock twice. Two thirds through, and then more. We were so close.

“A free death they cannot steal.”

Rituals bloomed again, and enemy archers began took aim at us again instead of wasting their arrows on my monster – which was tearing them apart with tooth and claw, ravaging their tightly packed lines. Steel broadheads began to fall on us again, taking blood and lives, but the run had taken on momentum. It did not slow even when bodies began to drop.

“When we meet them on the field.”

I felt Masego try to West the enemy’s rituals but there were just too many. Great thorns of sickly green magic were shot in the Beast’s belly, and though it screamed and clawed at all around it I could feel something hollowing out my working from the inside. I was not the only one on the field who knew how to make use of ruin. The Beast began to fall apart piece by piece, howling and clawing at the enemy as it did, and as my boots hit the bridge the heart of it faded into mist. A heartbeat later I took another step, and instead of steel I touched stone.

I had crossed, and my army was mere feet behind me.

“So pick up your sword, boy

Here they come again

And down here in the mud

It’s us who holds the line.”

And as the song died, the Army of Callow followed me into dark and ruin. I laughed and slammed into a skeleton, cutting through bow and string and neck. It collapsed like a stringless puppet. The enemy had been waiting for us, but we’d caught them flatfooted and the Beast had put them in disarray. They’d not had time to redeploy, so as I tore into a line of archers sword in hand I felt the heavies of the Third Army crack those lines like an egg. Heeding unseen orders the skeletons tried to retreat, scampering up slopes and through broken houses, but we swept through them like a tide.

“Mages,” I shouted, parrying a blow and returning a vicious riposte.

The skeleton’s head broke under the pommel, shattering clean and killing it.

“Mages, fire on the ballistae,” I shouted again.

They obeyed and fire burned bright, the enemy’s engines finally silenced. A wave of steel swelled behind me and we smashed our way through archers and crossbowmen until there were none left to smash. Behind there were proper fighters, skeletons in armour with swords and axes and shields, but even charging uphill the momentum was with us. We’d break through, past this breach and into Keter. That was why I could already feel the coming, I thought. The Scourges. But it wouldn’t matter, not a whit, because we weren’t done either. As Keter mustered its horrors and my men drove back the dead, pushing forth the beachhead, long shadows fell on us all. Between us and the sun flew great fortresses, bristling with soldiers and mages.

The last gasps of the Dread Empire of Praes had come to make war.

“Only two things can get a soldier through war: courage or good legs.”

-Queen Elizabeth Alban of Callow

An hour before dawn the camp would begin to stir, but I woke up even before that.

It was almost a mercy. My sleep was rarely anything but fitful – always returning to that night of green flames and red hands – and there were only so many times I could wake up soaked in sweat before I lost taste for turning over and burying my head under a pillow. In the dark before the dawn I found a fire, my still sleepy guards spread out around me, and overcooked a pair of eggs. The bacon rashers were fine, though, and boiling water was transmuted into tea by the twin magics of patience and costly foreign imports. I wolfed down the meal and warmed my hands against the mug, sipping it at it while it was still hot enough to scald my tongue.

My duties had yet to wake up and I wasn’t going to be squeezing into my battle armour any sooner than I needed to, so after I polished off the last of tea I got up so stretch my limbs. A walk around camp would do the trick, and though my guards seemed intent on following I dismissed them. I was now entirely awake, and so I could feel a string of fate pulled taut across the air. Not the battle’s, it was too small for that, but not a small matter either. Best to have a look before someone got around to plucking it, I figured.

My limp was unhurried, as I knew I would not be late. I tread the broad avenues of the Army of Callow’s camp, then the narrower alleys of the Dominion’s all the way into the messy sprawl of Procer’s sea of tents. Past a company of fantassins sleeping in the rough like corpses abandoned on a field, I found a half-broken watchtower – laid low by shoddy workmanship, not the Enemy’s blows – and a silhouette atop stairs. A man’s, leaning against the low shattered wall as if it were a balustrade, and though the cloak was a faded brown I recognized the build well enough. He did not turn as I went up to join him, though he would have heard me coming.

He was, I saw, staring at the dark and distant shape of the Crown of the Dead.

I squeezed myself in at the edge of the wall, leaning my staff against it and my shoulders against the irregular stone. In the gloom before day began to glow, Keter was difficult to make out even to my Night-blessed eyes. It was as some large beast curled up on an island of nothingness, unmoving but far from asleep. No one could look at the Dead King’s capital for long without getting the impression that it was somehow looking back at you.

“How did you find me?” Hanno of Arwad asked.

I glanced his way, having to twist to do so with my flesh and blood eye – the angle was bad. He’d always been a tall a broad sort, Hanno, with a working man’s frame and a working man’s hands. It suited the plain but honest face, which, while not so serene as it had been when he still served Judgement had kept a sense of calm to it. He was not easy to ruffle. Yet this morning, before daylight and other’s eyes caught up to us, he was allowing unease to reach his face.

“I followed a string,” I said. “It’s a thing I do now and then.”

“Mysterious,” he replied, appreciative. “Another ten years of this and you will drive young Named utterly mad.”

“Hey, if I actually make it to old age it’s my goddamn right to mess with the young,” I shrugged. “It’s not like Evil offers a pension or anything. They’re a stingy lot.”

He snorted.

“I cannot tell whether that’s blasphemy or not,” the dark-skinned man admitted.

“I’m getting that a lot these days,” I mused, “which seems unfair, given that I’m the high priestess of an entire religion.”

“One centred,” Hanno said, “largely around theft and murder.”

I cocked an eyebrow.

“And?”

“There’s a saying about birds of a feather that seems appropriate,” he serenely replied, “but I believe you’d never forgive me the pun.”

“You do know me,” I conceded.

I let the silence fall comfortably, settle in a bit. Then I struck with my usual finesse.

“So, glaring at Keter,” I said.

He stirred at my side.

“A roundabout question?”

“If you came here for the view,” I shrugged, “waiting after dawn might have worked better.”

I’d not drag it out of him with a hook and rope, if he did not want to talk, but I suspected that if that were true my feet would not have led me here. I’d been on the other end of this kind of conversation often enough not to mistake reluctance with refusal.

“I never sleep well before battles,” Hanno reminded me.

I didn’t reply. We both knew not sleeping and coming out here weren’t the same thing.

“I find myself irritated,” he finally said.

Huh. Never heard that one out of him before. I cocked my head to the side.

“With?”

“Too many people,” he tiredly said. “Which serves to tell me the troubles does not lie with them.”

“Ah,” I said.

He moved, craning his neck to look at me.

“Ah?” he asked.

“Ah,” I confirmed.

He rolled his eyes at me.

“What you mean, ‘ah’?” he pressed.

“That I’m not surprised,” I said. “You’re close enough to being Named that you can use an aspect and ride providence, but you haven’t claimed one openly. Talking from experience, it’s not a pleasant position to stay in.”

My Name of Squire had died a long death in the throes of Winter, a span of time I’d spent fighting some of the most dangerous heroes on the continent and trifling with lesser gods. I remembered well what it had been like to have the Role without the rest.

“Even a saint with get tetchy,” I elaborated, “if he keeps sitting on a spiked seat for too long.”

“I do not claim sainthood,” Hanno evenly said.

Never stopped anyone from tossing it at your feet, I thought, but true as that was it would be of no help at all.

“Can’t blame you,” I drawled instead. “Laurence was enough to put me off it too.”

He wasn’t quite amused – he remembered the Saint of Swords far more fondly than I did – but the growing tension in his shoulders loosened. Keeping an eye on him, I decided not to prod him any further. He had the look of a man chewing on his own thoughts. If the taste was foul enough he’d spit them back out anyways, yeah? And to think they’d said I would never learn patience.

I’d been patient enough to outlive most the fuckers, so how about that.

“There is a Name there for the taking,” Hanno finally said. “All I would need to do was reach out.”

“But you haven’t,” I observed.

Obvious, but it’d keep him talking.

“I have turned away from it twice now,” he confessed, passing a hand through his close-cropped hair.

My brow rose and I had to repress the urge to let out a low whistle. No wonder he was feeling antsy. He was fighting off his own transition. When he’d become a claimant to Warden of the West he’d ceased being the White Knight, though at least one of his old aspects had lingered. In the wake of renouncing that claim and my rising to fill the Role, what exactly Hanno of Arwad was had remained up in the air. By the sound of it, he’d been struggling with that question just as much as the rest of us.

I didn’t bother to ask what the Name he was shying away from was. I had my suspicions, but in truth it didn’t particularly matter. A Name was just the crystallization of what you were supposed to be, what you were supposed to do. The red, the life of it was in the Role. It was what we struggled with, far more than whether a Champion should be Valiant or Unconquered. So the ‘what’ was an afterthought, really, in face of the question that did matter.

“Why?”  

The word had him scowling. It was a rare sight and I almost found myself staring at it: it was, well… human. Not that Hanno had ever been alien in the way that some other Named could become, all cold and power stripped of everything else, but there’d always been something a little aloof about him. The calm, the serenity on his face and in his eyes, it was fitting for a White Knight. Expected almost. But it was something to admire, not to understand, because who could ever really understand certainty that absolute? And now he was scowling, almost childishly. I smiled.

“And what has you so amused?” Hanno challenged.

“When I was a kid,” I said, “I sometimes felt like the world was caught in amber. Maybe not every part, but those that mattered at least. That nothing important ever really changed.”

I traced the edge of the rough stone with my fingers.

“But we did change it,” I said, almost disbelieving. “It didn’t really feel like it was what we were doing at the time, but we did. And now that I know how to look for it…”

All those years of swimming against the tide, of blood and mud and tears, they’d given birth to the first tremors of a new age. Still fragile, uncertain, but the signs were there. In the way that the Dominion was starting to circle around Razin and Aquiline like they were the sun of Levant, in the way that goblins drew on Night and planned to raise halls as far as the Morgentor, in that the empress of my youth was now a chancellor and a girl I’d once thought was now the heiress to my crown. Gods, these days I counted Procer as a halfway steady ally and looked forward to spending time with Cordelia Hasenbach. Somehow, along the way, we’d changed the world without even noticing.

But now that I could see it-

“… it’s everywhere,” Hanno quietly finished, eyes returning to the Crown of the Dead.

Calloused hands pulled closed, as if he was trying to catch something eluding his grasp. He let out a long, shuddering breath.

“Except me,” Hanno of Arwad said. “It’s everywhere except me, Catherine.”

So my instinct had been right.

“You can be the White Knight again,” I said.

“The same Name,” he said, “that I walked away from.”

I hummed.

“Aspects?” I asked, tone gone professional.

A trick that’d always served me well. Sound like you have a right to ask a question and most people will answer before they realize you’re there to buy fish and there’s really no reason you should be told about how much getting their horse shoed cost at Billy King’s smithy. Too much had been the answer. Brother Desmond had been right, the old bastard had been a swindler.

“One stayed,” Hanno said. “Two faded.”

I grimaced. That poor man. For an aspect to stick through a Name being lost and then being reclaimed, it’d have to be so intrinsic to who he was that it was more about Hanno of Arwad than whatever else he ended up being. I didn’t know what Hanno had gone through for Recall of all powers to end up qualifying for that, but I doubted it must have been singularly unpleasant.

“Then it’s not really the same Name, is it?” I pointed out.

“You were the Squire twice,” he said, with the blithe assurance of someone who’d peered at many of my secrets through dead men’s eyes. “Did you think it a different Name simply for having different aspect?”

“I was a different person,” I replied. “It’s why I didn’t get Learn or Struggle. I didn’t feel like I was so out of my depth anymore.”

In the wake of First Liesse, I had been a victor: over Akua, over the High Lords, in some ways even over the Empire. My plan to claw back some sort of local rule over Callow had been a success and I’d been granted lands by Malicia herself. I’d not felt like I was one misstep away from death at all times anymore, and my Name had reflected that confidence.

“But it was the same Name,” Hanno insisted. “Meant for the same purposes. Changing the horses on carriage does not make it a different carriage.”

“There’s an argument to be made that it does,” I drily replied. “Since you never step in the same river twice and all, but I’ll leave that bit of philosophy to the Atalantians. Why are you so keen on a Name always being meant for the same purposes, anyway? Even if it were true, it wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing.”

“You have to ask?” he tiredly said. “You are the one who forced me to look that mistake in the eye.”

I blinked at him.

“You’re standing where everyone else started and calling it a journey,” Hanno quoted.

My own words, I realized after a heartbeat. From that night in Salia, when I’d had him at my mercy and savaged him with every hard truth I could find.

“I’d thought that rolled right off you,” I admitted. “Like most of what I said that night.”

“Even if you had been entirely my enemy,” he replied, “I would have thought on the words after. It is a dangerous thing to fear self-examination.”

Sounded a lot like ‘the innocent have nothing to fear’ to me, a sentence generally spoken by people who should not be trusted with even butter knives, but I’d sit on that opinion instead of sharing it. He had a right to his own beliefs, and there were more than a few reasons I’d not ended up dressing in white.

“All right, so you self-examined,” I said, distantly glad Indrani was not there to make a filthy joke of that. “How’d that end up with you here and staring down stone walls?”

“Because I fear that you might not have been wrong,” Hanno said. “It was… I struggled with the decision to act, Catherine. To sunder myself from providence and the Tribunal, however silent, and take matters into my own hands. But I did, and I began to act.”

His jaw clenched.

“And now I am to be the White Knight again?” he said. “To return where I began and sweep away al the doubts I wrestled with, the decisions I made, like fallen trinkets fit only for trash.”

He angrily laughed.

“It was not a journey at all,” Hanno told me. “I just walked in a circle so I could put on the same old cloak. All that grief, all these dangers and struggles and deaths, and what do I have to show for it?”

So that was it, huh. He’d thought he was becoming someone else, that he’d learned something. It must have been a bitter pill to swallow, the Creation itself seemed to think otherwise. At least in his eyes, anyway.

“Two aspects,” I said.

He turned to me, frowning.

“You want to use a Name as measure of who you are, like Creation’s some sort of fair judge?” I challenged. “I can’t agree, but fair enough. You’ll have to follow through, though: Creation judged you different enough from who you used to be that two out of three aspects faded.”

“It’s the same carriage,” Hanno flatly said, echoing his earlier words.

“Maybe,” I said. “But it’s not the same horses pulling it, or the same man riding it – so why does it have to be headed to the same place?”

He looked way. Not convinced, huh. I wasn’t fool enough to be disappointed.

“Perhaps it would be for the best if it did,” he finally said. “For all that I chose to act, I have few gains to show for it. The Gigantes have not come, and the claim I troubled the Grand Alliance to press was a trap.”

I hid my surprise. It was the first time I’d heard he’d reached out to the Titanomachy, though that was actually something I halfway appreciated. Cordelia had gotten some goodies out of dealing with the giants, but however skilled a diplomat she was being Proceran had ensured all paths would turn into dead ends. Both Hanno and the Witch of the Woods were said to have deep ties to the Gigantes, though, and a personal connection might have yielded results where formal talks had not. A shame it hadn’t. Mind, you all of this was babbling nonsense.

“Yeah, you didn’t produce enough results to turn around the literal end times in, like, eight months of trying your hand at it tops,” I drily said. “Just terrible, Hanno. Soon children will begin stoning you in the streets.”

He sent me a long-suffering look.

“Must you?”

“Sure, when you’re being an idiot,” I easily replied. “You tried, Hanno. Maybe you didn’t pull miracles out of thin air – more like not enough of them – but that doesn’t mean you were wrong to act. You made some things better and some things worse.”

I snorted.

“That’s better than I fucking managed to pull off, some years.”

Or Cordelia, for that matter. He mulled on that, silent, and I did not interrupt. Instead I looked to the distance, where on the edge of the horizon light was fast approaching. The gift of the Sisters told me dawn was soon to come.

“The world was never simple,” Hanno murmured. “But I do miss them sometimes, the days when my role in it could be.”

“Enough to go back?” I asked.

He did not answer. I stayed by his side, the two of us keeping in a strangely comfortable silence, until dawn rose to find us.

—

The silence was deafening.

Almost two hundred thousand soldiers stood around Keter, a fortified camp encircling that island of stone and death surrounded by nothingness, yet I could hear every cough. Empress Basilia had left with the Proceran cavalry, marching to the plains of the Ossuary to fight the battle that would keep our back clear as we stormed Keter. The rest of us – Levant, Callow, Procer and Praes – were mustered for war, for the slaughter about to begin. I sat Zombie’s back in full armour, perched atop a now-empty watchtower, and below me the ranks of the Army of Callow were splayed out. It was not the last two bridges they were readied for, not this time.

Across the lines of legionaries cut massive, segmented steel bridges. Pickler’s creations. Not long enough to reach across the chasm to the top of the rampart, for the amount of steel needed for it would have been prodigious, but long enough for our purposes. There was a glint of light at my side, which bloomed into a circle when I granted it a glance. Masego’s face appeared within.

“We are ready,” Hierophant said. “When does it begin?”

“On the hour,” I said, “though it will be First Princess Rozala that-”

“FORWARD!”

The air shuddered from the force of the call, which would have been fit to burst eardrums near the source. Still, the Proceran mages we’d trained at the Arsenal had done what they needed to: Rozala Malanza’s voice had been heard by every soul in the Grand Alliance army. Not that the order applied to all of them.

“Understood,” Hierophant said, and cut the spell.

My soldiers did not move, standing there as the wind picked up and the ozone scent of magic filled the air. Across the last two bridges, Proceran and Levantine soldiers began their advance on the enemy bastions. Streaks of roiling darkness shot up past the tall walls of Keter, the first wave of the enemy’s rituals – curses so powerful they were sickening even for me to look upon – howling at our advancing forces. Our answer was well-oiled. Our own rituals shot up: the eerie dust-ghosts of binders, great spears of lightning from the Army of Callow and curses just as vile from the Praesi. Magic collided against magic, power spent to no gain but the stalemate we had been aiming for.

“Now,” I murmured. “Now, Artificer.”

Obeying my order without ever having heard it, the Blessed Artificer at least unleashed the wonder she had crafted in Salia and refined over the months since: the Ram. It was impossible for me to miss it. The wooden pillar sheathed in copper caught the morning sun as it was dragged onto the platform we’d raised for it, then aimed at the wall before us. Adanna of Smyrna laid a hand on her creation, and for the first heartbeat nothing happened. Or rather nothing visible. It felt, to my senses, as if the entire world was breathing in.

And in the heartbeat that followed, as Light began to shoot out from the sides in wild spurts, the world breathed out.

She was knocked of her feet, as were the two soldiers helping her, and the Ram shot out like an arrow swatted by some unseen titan’s hand. The Light roiled, screamed, and as a sudden burst of power came from behind the walls of Keter I felt the Hierophan’s name shiver. Wrest killed their defence in the egg as the Ram flew, right at the heart of the wall before us. The same one where a Praesi siege tower had crashed into the stone, weakening the wards holding the rampart together. Spinning and screaming, the Ram hit Keter’s wall like the very wrath of the Heavens. Light flared, blinding and burning as the Ram fought to pierced into the rampart, and I caught sight of spurts of stone flying like drops of water before I was forced to look away.

Just in time, for the explosion that followed was powerful enough its breath sent tents flying behind us.

Shielding my eye with my palm more by habit than need, I risked a look at the rampart and let out a shocked breath.

“Merciless Gods,” I whispered.

The wall had been savaged. Miles of stone had been slagged down to the foundation, the melted remains trickling down the edge of the cliff and into the drop. The streets behind the wall had been ravaged by broken and heated chunks of stone, looking as if a rain of sharpers had been dropped across them, and though I could see soldiers swarming the sheer amount of damage was staggering. Just as we had hoped, the Blessed Artificer had blown us a path open into Keter. One that would not be the enemy’s narrow killing zones on the bridges, nowhere as heavily defended. And they’ll have to keep defending those while we strike here, else we’ll punch through.

A heartbeat later the Dead King collapsed both bridges, but I smiled against the strap of my helmet. We’d been waiting for that: sorcery bloomed, Akua and the Witch keeping the broken bridges aloft and usable. We’d learned from our first defeat. I laughed, unsheathing my sword and raising high, as all around me the Army of Callow cheered loudly enough to echo across the sky. Keter’s impregnable wall, reduced in a moment. My soldiers felt fires in their belly again.

“Begin,” I shouted, and it rippled out.

The melted stone was not yet cooled, but we did not have time to waste. The longer the Dead King got to prepare against our landing, the more brutal securing that beachhead was going to get. Zombie let out a loud cry, wings spreading as I spurred her on to take flight. I glided over the Army of Callow as the First, Third and Fourth brought forward their bridges. They rose up in their air like poles, carefully aimed to the calculations of the sappers overseeing the effort, and then after a push gravity took its toll. They toppled forward, falling all in a row. Not that Keter was to let us land so easily. Magic bloomed ahead, but those I left to Masego. When I guided Zombie into a glide, staff in hand as I called on Night, it was to meet another threat: the great wyrm that was tearing through houses and streets to get to the breach. The great abomination of bone and leathery skin screeched, but I shouted back.

“Crows take you,” I snarled, “and burn.”

Black fire erupted form the tip of my staff, growing from a trickle to a torrent to a burning river as it struck the massive snake construct in the side. Magic whizzed around me, but none came close: all that would have hit suddenly changed trajectory, Hierophant slapping them away with Wrest. I grit my teeth and kept letting the Night flow through me even as my veins cooled and sweat beaded my brow, Zombie’s long wings taking us into a smooth circling glide. I finally killed the working and lowered my staff, just in time to take my mount into a dive as Keter’s first ballistas were brought into position and began firing on me.

I got a look at the wyrm first, though, and grinned fiercely: it wouldn’t going anywhere.

Even with all the power I’d pumped through I’d only incinerated half of the construct, but it was quite beyond moving. It pissed me off a little that it’d still managed to accomplish part of its’ objective – wedge its body between the falling bridges and the ground – but barely a third of our crossings had been blocked with the move.

“Priests will clean up the rest of it,” I told Zombie, leaning against her neck. “Come one, we’re going with the first wave.”

Some brave souls from all three commands in the Army of Callow had begun the daunting work set out before them: crossing the chasm atop the steel bridges. We’d aimed for a wideness of three soldiers to be able to pass through each bridge at a time, for a total of ninety-nine legionaries at a time across all bridges. Much as Juniper would have preferred more, the amount of steel this had taken was already astronomical. Zombie’s took us under the bridges, layering stripes of shadow and light against the cliffs surrounding me on both sides, and after passing the last I guided my mount into taking us up. What I saw as I turned to look at our assault gave me pause.

It was a massacre.

My soldiers had made it halfway through the bridges before enemy fire began to fall on them, but now that it had… Arrows and scorpion bolts shot out in hails, stones from scorpions and streaks of sorcery smashing through shields like they were made of paper. I wasted no time, spurring Zombie back into the fight, and began striking at the enemy – siege engines first, they were hardest to replace. It wasn’t going great.

“Fuck,” I snarled, dropping low to avoid another curse.

Already a full archer’s volley was falling on my position, the impossibly precise coordination between the dead setting up the sequence perfectly. Zombie was already diving but we had to spin to avoid twin ballista bolts – one skidded off the edge of my armour, another took a few feathers off her side – and we were forced to take refuge under the bridges for the second time before flying back up the other side. I’d torched two ballistas and an archer’s nest, but the enemy was using its mages to shield against my Night workings. I guided Zombie back up and flew through a hail of arrows, swatting them aside with a burst of Night, and hammered at a ballista jutting out from some half-broken temple. The black flames washed over the shield, but a heartbeat later Hierophant wrested the defence away and I let out a snarl of triumph.

Without Masego covering me, though, the swarm of curses had me forced to drop below again.

I rose on the opposite side for another pass, but when we tried the same trick I found the that the flames still didn’t go through: the undead mages had layered the shields into two different spells. Fuck. They’d figured out the weakness of the aspect, then. Hierophant could take from more than one source of magic, but that meant splitting focus. On an artefact that was fine, but when there were other wills fighting him? They’d shut down our trick. I had to drop again, a glance telling me that our assault had stalled hallway through the chasm: soldiers were dying too fast to get further.

Another pass, and I went at it differently: I attacked the grounds around the ballista instead, shattering stone with entropy. Mixed results: knocked the ballista down but it wasn’t destroyed, and Masego had to cover me from a mass of enemy magic as Zombie dove. On the next pass, the dead got even more clever on us. They began holding back the release of their rituals, letting them loose when I attacked so that Masego was forced to handle them instead of help me. I almost let out a scream of frustration.

“This is going nowhere,” I breathed out, forcing myself to calm down.

And it had gotten there, by the looks of it: the bridges were almost clear, the last legionaries still on them try to get off.

Not a single man had gotten to the other side, and my soldiers were no longer trying to pass.

So, some of you might remember that a while back I had a very bad cold that I thought might be Covid and forced me to take some time off. Well, as it happens life has a sense of irony so it turns out that what I believed until this evening to be a very mild cold is in in fact Covid. I’m fully vaccinated so it shouldn’t be much too worry about, and as as I’ve mentioned my symptoms are quite mild at the moment.

That said, I hear the disease can worsen rather quickly so I thought I’d drop a warning in advance in case I do end up bedridden. As of this moment there’s no change to the update schedule, though, and I’ll put up another announcement should there be.

E.E.

“Mind your sentiments, for they have a mind of their own.”

– Proceran saying

It was a sultry night, as Keter’s tended to be.

The heat was poisonous and unease thrummed through the camps like a pulsing vein. The arrival of the dwarves – a story heavily curated before it was released to the soldiers, though Akua had heard the full of it from the source – had given the Grand Alliance hope of victory once more, but all still remembered the last assault on Keter’s walls. Much death had achieved nothing, and none were eager to be the tip of the spear when tomorrow came. It was certain death, all agreed, and even the ever-loyal Army of Callow was balking at the thought of being thrown into the grinder headfirst. None of that, though, was truly Akua’s concern.

Perhaps if she had made different choices she would be leading the Dread Empire into the breach come dawn, or unleashing some horrible sorcery serving as Malicia’s own treacherous Warlock, but it was not to be. Fingers tightened around her cup – a golden goblet set with opals, one of the few gifts she’d received as empress-claimant that she had liked – and she drank deep of the Cantal red. It was about to become a much rarer find, Akua thought. Procer would have better use for good land than vineyards in the coming decades, and that meant many vintages were on the verge of disappearance.

Perhaps for good. The world, these days, seemed set on changing.

“So best enjoy it while I still can, yes?” Akua murmured.

Fingers tightened around the cup again, her lips wet but far from sated. She did not regret making the choice she had in the heart of the Tower, not even now. Her eyes closed, thinking of the sound the match had made as she scratched it against stone, all Akua Sahelian felt was guilty relief. That she had not been trapped on that chair, chained to that fate. Made to go through a lifetime of empty motions, screaming inside. And yet as the days passed, she found that frustration had begun nipping at her heels. She traced the golden rim of the cup with her thumb, absent-minded.

“Vanity,” she told the night, neither quite asking nor stating.

 There was no one else in the tent for her to speak to, after all. The Army of Callow, while it tolerated her presence and many rumours had come from her departure and return to Catherine’s side – some expected, like that it had been a scheme from the two of them from the start, others rather more amusing like Akua having found the Black Queen a better lover than the Empress and so turned her cloak again – would never be comfortable with her tent being too deep in its camp. She had never felt threatened, of course. Dartwick had ensured none would lay had on her few possessions, ever dutiful, and Masego had kindly wards around her tent on her behalf until she gained her own magic back.

But she would never be welcome there, in the beating heart of Catherine’s kingdom of soldiers, and though she was not one to shy from hatred she had found she preferred setting her tent near the edges of the camp. In Keter that was not so far out, given the nature of the siege walls, but it had been far enough that she had been able to obtain a view of the Crown of the Dead looming in the distance.

“And if there was ever a reason to drink,” she snorted, toasting the tall walls and the horrors still lying in wait behind them.

She drank, but it settled the restlessness in her belly no more than the other sips had. Vanity, she’d hazarded, but she was not so sure it was true. Akua was one of the great spellcasters of this siege, treated with the same awe as the Witch of the Woods or the Hierophant without having a Name of her own, but months ago she had been the fulcrum of an ancient empire’s fate. She had been… more than she now was. That night in Serolen had not scratched the itch, only drawing attention to it. There had been a moment where it was all in her hands once more, and she had been able to decide.

It had felt good, returning to Masego what had been unjustly denied him. Of all the Named she had known, only Hierophant had never wavered from that bright, impossibly clear moment that defined your Name. He had, from the beginning to the end, stayed true to himself. If such sincerity was not worthy of a good turn, what possibly could?

But the days had passed and Serolen now felt like a world behind. So now Akua Sahelian sat alone in the dark, drinking wine soon to be as much of a relic and looking at the heart of the darkness in the distance. The Dead King’s subtle, creeping malevolence – so incredibly banal, until the pit of despair swallowed you up. She drank and wondered if it was vanity, to think she should be more than simply a spellhand in this war. Perhaps it was. Before she could be moved to decide whether that answer would be found at the bottom of a fourth cup of Cantal red, there was a whisper in the back of her mind.

Her wards had been set off. Curious, and not feeling particularly threatened, she lowers the threshold to allow for the entrance of they who would enter her tent. The flap was parted and a man’s silhouette – ah, was that the slightest shiver of disappointment she felt? – entered, straightening before sniffing the air.

“Wine in the dark on the eve of a battle?” Kendi Akaze scorned, lighting a magelight with the flick of his wrist. “How very maudlin, Sahelian.”

Akua was not sure what was worse. That he had come, or that some part of her was dimly pleased for it. Kendi was tall man, with a sculpted beard and the pale brown eyes of a mfuasa. Hatred of her never left them, which had learned to find a reassuring weight. It had been the one thing whose sincerity she did not need to doubt.

“That was my very aim,” Akua easily replied. “How kind of you to compliment me so.”

He took a seat across from her, not asking permission, and helped himself to her wine.

“You are growing comfortable again,” Kendi said.

“Is that why you’re here?” she asked.

The dark-skinned man eyed her with distaste.

“Why else would I be in your presence?”

Akua had spent several months being taught how best to use her looks, when she had been younger, and the lessons had not left her. It was the easiest thing in the world to shift in her seat so that her dress would call attention to the curve of her breasts, that the line of her legs would be put in display.

“I wonder,” Akua replied, tone languid. “Can you truly think of nothing else?”

His eyes did not dip and he hardly seemed enticed. Hatred truly was a most useful thing.

“You are wrong, as it happens,” Akua continued, shifting back into a more comfortable pose. “Comfort escapes me.”

It was foolish to tell him as much, she knew. She was no longer as she had been in Ater, dazed and despairing. She ought to know better. And yet, looking at the man whose sister she had gotten killed for… what? She could hardly even tell, now. Looking at that brown-eyed man, she still saw the same thing she had when she had first spared him: her past made into a man. A voice speaking for the long line of sisters and daughters she had led to their deaths and never given a second thought to. No, it was only natural that it was not Catherine who had come to visit her tonight.

This one was an older ghost, with a deeper claim.

“Does it?” Kendi said. “You are returned to the Warden’s side. Again in her service and confidence. What doors are to be closed to you, after this war?”

Akua drank.

“There is no after this war,” she said, setting down the goblet. “She loves me more than she hates me, I think, but that is not forgiveness. Never will be.”

Kendi Akaze smiled.

“Ah, Callowans,” he said. “They do have their virtues.”

“Are you satisfied?” Akua asked.

“No,” he replied.

Her jaw clenched.

“I will have no part of Cardinal,” she said. “That is certain. Or of the Confederation of Praes. And there will be no place for me in the lands of the Grand Alliance. Even if I survive I…”

There would be nowhere to go, she realized, perhaps for the first time. She had known it, deep down, but never spoken the truth out loud and made herself face it. Ashur always took Praesi exiles and it should not be difficult to live in the League, but what kind of a life would those be? An exile, sometimes called upon when of use but otherwise kept in the darkest hole they could find. A shameful secret, kept around only in case she was needed. Everything she was growing to hate about where she now stood, only a thousand times more so. I would have once been satisfied with this, she thought. Seen it as a victory, living to begin another rise to prominence.

Now all the prospect made her feel was exhausted.

“You will not be anything but you,” Kendi softly said. “And I can conceive few curses worse than that, Akua Sahelian.”

“So that is your purpose,” she said, tone mocking. “You come here to remind me that I should live so that your tortured sense of vengeance might be satisfied?”

“I don’t care whether you keep breathing, Sahelian,” Kendi said, sounding honest. “I want the vicious, empty thing that killed so many of us and lit the world aflame to suffer. Whether you are to serve as her prison or her coffin is not so important.”

“So why save my life in Ater?” Akua harshly replied. “If you had not removed Malicia’s killing-”

“She would have snuffed you out like a candle,” Kendi acknowledged. “And what right did she have to that, after all she has done? It took more than a single pair of hands to craft the Folly. It would have been disgusting, for the Empress to pretend to pass judgement over you when all know she helped the deed along.”

“So only you can judge me?” she laughed. “How highly you think of yourself, Kendi.”

“It’s not me either,” the man smiled. “I would just burn you, Sahelian. End it, look for peace among the ashes of you. But my sister’s shade demands better. So I will usher you through this journey until you reach your end.”

“I don’t understand what you want from me,” she snarled. “That I open my own throat? That I leap into a chasm? Would it truly mean that much more to you if I did the deed myself?”

“Is that,” Kendi evenly asked, “what you think would even the scales?”

“There’s no evening those scales,” Akua tiredly replied. “Even a fool would see that.”

He watched her in silence

“Even should I live forever and save a life every morning, it would change nothing,” she continued. “It’s not as simple as lives lost.”

She had seen that in Ater, the cascade of suffering her atrocity had begun. The Folly had been an enormity, the amount of death it represented, but that had only been the tree above the ground. There were even greater roots below, out of sight, and how could those even be tallied for? Made up for? Redemption by number was an empty exercise, meaningful only in the abstract.

“So you do nothing?” he asked.

“I am to be jailor to the Dead King,” Akua said. “Bound forever to keep him imprisoned.”

There were still enough of the Twilight Ways for this to be possible. Liesse, it seemed, was not a city she would ever leave behind. He cocked his head to the side.

“And you chose this?”

She did not answer. It would have been a lie to say that she had, though it would have been another to say she had not. He shook his head, disgusted.

“Then it means nothing,” Kendi said. “Will forever mean nothing.”

He rose to his feet, leaving behind a cup of wine almost entirely untouched.

“Just another fate picked out for you.”

Her heart clenched and she turned away, failing to keep her face calm. The mfuasa snorted, killing the light with a flick of the wrist and making to leave. Akua looked out at the walls of Keter, knowing she should keep silent. She did not.

“What was her name?” she asked.

Kendi’s steps stuttered.

“Do you care?” he asked.

Akua looked down at her hands.

“Enough to ask,” she finally replied.

“Sura. Her name was Sura.”

The name echoed in the silence he left in his wake. Akua’s fingers reach for her neck, finding only warm skin for all that she had imagined otherwise. She had felt as if she would find something, as if her fingers would have been able to tell her which it was.

A noose or a knot.

—

There were not many Rhenians with the army.

Cordelia had only summoned south a quarter of Rhenia’s army at the beginning of the war, leaving the rest to hold the Rhenian Gates and her capital, and of those thousands now only a few hundred were left. The rest were long dead, their lives spent defending people they loved little so very far from home. Cordelia did all in her power to ensure the survivors were all comfortable and provided before she allowed herself to rest. Prince Otto had not neglected them, but the princess felt better for having put a hand to the labour – however scarce the necessity of it.

In truth, if one was to speak of neglect the word should be laid at her feet. How very little she had done for her people, not only Rhenians but all Lycaonese, since the war had begun. That no grudge seemed to be held by her soldiers over the fact she’d not so much as stepped foot in Rhenia during the entire war only worsened the guilt. Gods, sometimes she saw the pride in the eyes of her countrymen and it burned.

“You bargained everything to keep us alive,” Otto Reitzenberg solemnly told her when they drank at the wake. “Even your throne. What more could we ask of you, Hasenbach?”

Coming from the man who had so bitterly fought to keep Twilight’s Pass from falling, it had felt like a slap in the face. All the more for the way she knew he had meant every word, for Otto Redcrown was not what one would call a skilled liar. It was like none of them could see she had abandoned them, named them the sacrifice needed to keep Procer breathing through the first black months of the war. Are we truly so used to doing the dying, she thought, that it no longer matters? It was a dark thought, though far from the darkest she had been left to wrestle with.

Worst of all was the increasingly possible way they were about to lose the war.

Cordelia no longer sat in the war councils. She still had the status to, as a princess, but Malanza would rather bite off her own thumb than sit besides her and had instead taken to bringing Prince Otto to keep the Lycaonese bound to her. Wise, considering how estranged her people had grown from most of Procer during the war. It was not impossible for large swaths of the northwest to secede from the Principate, if the aftermath of the war was poorly handled. If there was an aftermath at all, anyhow. For though Cordelia no longer sat the councils, she still had access to several of those who sat them and to the formal supply documents besides. The picture both painted, when placed together, was a dark one. With the arrival of the dwarves starvation was no longer at risk, but that was no promised victory.

They Grand Alliance was, by Cordelia’s estimation, two failed assaults away from collapse.

It was a broad estimate, relying on a number of casualties equal or greater to those of the first attempt – counting both the field battle and the storm – but she knew it to be correct. Another sixty thousand dead would only lessen the army’s numbers around to half of what had first been brought north, but all the forces here were not equal. Or, for that matter, united. Every nation had its own host, but it was worse than that. The League alone fielded multiple different armies, and Procer still divided itself into the hosts under First Princess Rozala and Otto Redcrown. That was not without sense, but it meant that casualties could not be counted as if the force were a single army.

One of the principles of war her uncle had taught her as a girl had been that an army became unable to fight long before all its soldiers were dead. A host was an intricate machine, needing many different parts to keep functioning: horsemen and skirmishers, regulars and outriders. Losing any of those parts – or even too large a portion of one – could be an army’s doom. That principle, when applied to the Grand Alliance forces, became a curse. Which armies would start collapsing into uselessness first, when casualties kept racking up? Cordelia believed it would be League’s, whose individual armies were smallest and so most vulnerable to this, but she could not be sure.

The war had taught her that when a battle went bad levies died like flies, and Procer’s forces still had an uncomfortably large amount of them.

Two defeats, she thought, and the Grand Alliance would have broken enough of its component armies that it would be impossible to take Keter. That was what her investigations had revealed, the ugly truth behind the coming acts of valour: valour alone would not be enough. Even if the broken armies were thrown into the grinder as expendables, it would not suffice. The coalition would fail and when it did Calernia’s days would be numbered. Procer would fall, dragging with it the rest of the continent. Too many undead, no one left to stop them. And that would leave Cordelia with a hard choice, perhaps the hardest she’d ever had to make.

Bet it all on hope, some unforeseen salvation, or kill many to save the rest.

A mug was pressed into her hand and Cordelia almost started. Agnes was smiling at her sideways, the two of them alone in her tent. The Augur patted her arm.

“You think too much about what you see,” Agnes chided.

Cordelia considered herself a tolerant woman, but the irony in that sentence was too thick for even her to swallow.

“You cannot-” she began, then her eyes narrowed. “You did that on purpose. You are teasing me.”

Agnes looked inordinately proud, nodding as she brushed back her hair. The once-short bob had grown a little longer over the last few months, one of the first changes to her cousin’s appearance since she had become Chosen.

“They always said I’m the funny Hasenbach,” she noted.

Cordelia almost winced. ‘They’ had not meant that nicely as Agnes was understanding it. Being from even a branch line of the House of Hasenbach had ensured that none would dare to harass her cousin even when she had still been known as only a young girl overly fond of birdwatching, but it had not kept her safe from rumours. Or being ignored with varying degrees of politeness. Chasing off the memories, she took Agnes’ hand in her own.

“You are getting better,” Cordelia happily said. “For months now you have been growing into the present.”

Away from the past and visions of what might be.

“It’s a little confining,” Agnes admitted. “Things only have one meaning and I have to listen when people talk.”

“The grand curse of civil society,” she drily replied. “You will get used to it in time.”

“Maybe,” the Augur said, wrinkling her nose, then smiled. “But mead is good. I don’t know why they wouldn’t let me drink at feasts.”

Because your father disappeared down the bottle when your mother died, Cordelia thought, and none of us wanted you to follow him down that hole.

“I cannot imagine why,” she lied.

Agnes shot her a suspicious look, which moved Cordelia halfway to tears. For years now she’d been watching her cousin – the last of her blood, now – wasting away, devoured from the inside by her Choosing. Before she’d left Salia, Agnes would not have been able to read a room enough to be suspicious. Much less express it so openly. Guilt followed, as it so often did these days. I asked so much of you, Cordelia thought. Advice to avoid disaster or steer enemies into it. Only now do I begin to grasp how much it truly took from you. Too much. She would never again ask for augury.

 Sometimes it felt like Cordelia had lived all her life taking from others, like some dragon from an old tale gathering all the gold of the world at her feet so she might make a kingdom of her greed.

“Boo,” Agnes muttered. “Boo, Cordelia, booo.”

She swallowed a smile.

“Now you are just going with the fashion, Agnes,” the princess replied. “For shame.”

They both smiled. It had been most of a year now, Cordelia thought, since the two of them only had each other left. Since Uncle Klaus had died, striding out of his life and straight into the legends of the Iron Prince’s last charge. There were still Hasenbachs alive of course, she’d made sure the line would continue. Two distant cousins of hers were in Salia and one more in Rhenia itself, but Cordelia had never known any of them more than passingly. They were not family in the way that Agnes was and her uncle had been.

“Your mood is falling again,” Agnes said.

“I fear I might not be very good company tonight,” Cordelia admitted.

“You’re the one I chose,” Agnes shrugged. “What had you looking so sad?”

“I was thinking of family,” she vaguely replied.

The other woman hummed.

“Prince Klaus, then,” she said.

The two of them had never been close, Cordelia knew. There was no shared blood, Agnes found violence repellant and Uncle Klaus had been uncomfortable around powers he did not understand. It had not been a recipe for deep fondness, for all that the two of them had spent years at her side.

“Death leaves so much unfinished,” Cordelia replied.

She had never reconciled with the man who had been something between a father and a grandfather to her while being neither by blood.

“That’s the wrong way to look at it,” Agnes said. “It’s life where you don’t finish things. Death is always complete.”

The fair-haired princess cocked her head to the side.

“I do not follow,” she admitted.

“Death’s a closed circle,” Agnes said. “A single act. Sometimes it matters and sometimes it doesn’t, but it’s never…”

She grimaced, groping for words.

“Continuous,” Agnes finished, satisfied. “It’s why you can make something so large of a moment so small: you can’t undo it after by acting the other way. The circle is closed.”

“Is that something you saw?” Cordelia asked. “I thought that these last few months…”

“It’s not the Gods,” Agnes said, shaking her head. “And I haven’t seen much since I left Salia. They understand that sometimes to have to save your strength.”

“Do they?” Cordelia asked, almost accusing.

It had been a long few months, a long few years. Perhaps even a long life. The Augur hummed again.

“I don’t think they understand much, actually,” Agnes mused. “Not like people do. It’s why there’s Good and Evil, so there’s rules, because they do understand rules.”

“Good is not an immovable absolute,” Cordelia said. “Above was once worshipped by those who kept slaves, Agnes.”

“The rules change,” her cousin agreed. “But I think that’s part of what they want too.”

“Many have gone mad trying to understand the Gods,” the princess warned.

“I’ll be all right,” Agnes reassured her. “Since I was already like that.”

The utterly inappropriate laugh that got out of her ripped itself out of her throat as her cousin sat smiling and pleased.

“You need to laugh more,” Agnes told her. “It will do you good. Maybe find a lover.”

Cordelia almost rolled her eyes. As if now was the time for such diversions.

“If we are to speak of lovers,” she said, “perhaps I should be drinking more.”

“My mug is already empty,” Agnes informed her, then batted her eyes.

Cordelia would have refused her, but it had been the better part of a decade since she’d seen her cousin act so much like the girl she’d once been. She did not have the heart to tell her no, rising to her feet and going into the back of the tent – where she did keep a few bottles of wine for guests, and mead for family. At the rate Agnes was going through them, she would run out of the mead before the siege – or the world – ended. The blue-eyed princess chose one of the older bottles and straightened, though she froze when she heard a rattling gasp coming from the other side of the tent.

She hurried back to find her cousin leaning over the table, writing on parchment with a shaky hand.

“Agnes?” she called out.

Her cousin did not reply. She set down the mead on the table and knelt by her cousin’s side, finding the other woman utterly absorbed in her writing – and hiding it from prying eyes. She finished writing after a moment, blew on the ink to dry it, and the folded the piece of parchment. Only then did she take her eyes off it and sag into her seat, breath irregular. Her skin had paled and was beaded with sweat.

“Agnes,” Cordelia quietly said, “what have you done?”

The Augur sought out her hand, threaded their fingers together and squeezed it.

“I saved my strength but it wasn’t enough,” Agnes croaked. “I’m sorry.”

She forced her tone to be even.

“Are you healthy?” Cordelia asked. “Should I call for a healer?”

“I couldn’t see everything,” Agnes said. “Just glimpses. But it doesn’t matter.”

The Augur’s eyes began bleeding and it was no longer a question worth asking. Cordelia shouted for a healer, for help.

“If it’s a bet,” Agnes murmured, “then I always make the same.”

“Agnes,” Cordelia urgently said, “stay awake. I don’t-”

“Don’t read what I wrote until you need to,” the Augur told her. “You’ll know when.”

“Agnes,” Cordelia hissed, cold terror in her gut. “Don’t leave me.”

“I’m sorry,” she replied, smiling and bloody and heart-breakingly pale. “I wish we could have gone home.”

A shiver.

“Don’t follow too quickly.”

By the time the healers ran into the tent, Cordelia Hasenbach was holding the hand of a corpse.

“Note: while curiosity did kill the cat, the effect only ensued when it was so strongly imprinted in the mind as to overwrite motor functions. Human experiments reproduced the results, leaving what would set cats apart unclear.”

– Extract from the journal of Dread Emperor Malignant II

The Grand Alliance taken a swing in the face, but we’d get over it. That was the way these things went, really. You rolled with the black eye, threw sand in the other guy’s face come next round and stabbed them good in the belly while they were blinded. I told Vivienne as much when we discussed what should follow our ‘victories’ over breakfast. Her milkmaid braid was undone, falling down her back, and she started blearily at me over porridge she insisted on touching up with honey for some godforsaken reason.

“Have you considered,” Princess said, “that the unreasonable number of brawls you’ve been in might be making your metaphors baffling to anyone remotely normal?”

Indrani, seated between us, finished scarfing down her sausage and licked her fingers before shaking her head at Vivienne.

“Nah, her stuff is always easy to get,” Archer said. “You’re off on that one.”

My successor cocked an eyebrow at me as I winced. Ah, ‘Drani. Even when trying to help, she ended up verbally socking me in the stomach like usual. It was a fair point that if Archer and I were on the same wavelength, there might be a little too much brawl in my metaphors.

“No, Vivienne is entirely correct,” Hierophant absent-mindedly said. “When Catherine gets started it sometimes turns into rather mystifying jargon.”

I grinned, cocking an eyebrow at Princess, whose turn it was to wince. Yeah, Masego was agreeing with her. I wasn’t the only one with a would-be helper tying stones around my feet. Hierophant’s notion of commonly understandable conversation was about three years if magical study removed from any halfway reasonable expectation. Draw, Vivienne mouthed at me, and I inclined my head. I could have tried for the win, but if Indrani caught on to what I was doing she was most definitely enough of a wench to go out of her way to sink my chances.

“Look, my perfectly serviceable metaphors aside the situation’s not that bad,” I said, allowing myself more frankness than I would in a war council. “The hourglass is emptying when it comes to supply, sure, but none of us actually expected our first shot at the walls to win us Keter.”

“I did expect us to land on the walls, however,” Masego noted. “Which we did not.”

I sighed, not arguing the point because he wasn’t wrong. Sixteen thousand dead without a single foot being set atop the walls of Keter was not great for morale. The reports from the phalanges and the Jacks I’d read over while drinking my tea had been pretty clear about that: even the Army of Callow’s spirit had been bruised by yesterday’s battles. It was unsurprisingly worst of all the Grand Alliance in the Proceran forces, which still sported a number of levies. The conscripts had been hardened by the years of fighting, but they’d never be as steady as career soldiers.

“Like I said, we took a swing in the face,” I told him. “But we have a better idea of Keter’s defences now and the next assault we’ll mount will punch through the defences.”

While the Confederation of Praes did not have a Warlock it did have an informal leading mage, Lady Nahiza Serrif. She’d been set to the task of overseeing the Praesi mages during the battle, backing up Masego’s defensive spellcasting to shut down Keteran ritual, but she’d had another duty and she’d discharged it successfully: we now had an estimate of what Legion doctrine called the ‘spellfire volume’ of the Dead King’s forces. As laid out by now-general Grem One-Eye’s Considerations, spellfire volume was the total amount of sorcery than an opposing force was capable of mustering at once.

It didn’t necessarily translate into superior strength in practice, since for example a smaller cadre of casters capable of High Arcana might well overpower a significantly larger group of less-trained mages that could technically deploy more sorcery. What it did give us, though, was an estimate of the enemy’s maximum strike capacity and how much of our own mages we should keep in reserve to defend. In this case, the answer was looking to be a little over two thirds of our casters. That was still a lot of strength loose for us to deploy, which meant a lot of the plans we’d been keeping back were now looking to e viable.

Committing the greater Praesi fortresses, for one, but also Chancellor Alaya’s battlefield applications of Still Water. And since we could deploy these with an expectation that we wouldn’t just be throwing away irreplaceable assets, it meant we could start using our trump cards to make openings for them. No, yesterday had been a black eye but it’d not been a total loss.

“And when’s that going to be?” Indrani asked, curious. “We’re going to be with the besieging force this time, yeah?”

“We are,” I confirmed. “We’ll have to discuss in council who takes their turn sallying out to keep our back clean, but I’m pretty sure it’s going to be the League with some Proceran reinforcements.”

Even after the Principate had spent years being ravaged, it still had by far the largest cavalry contingent of all the nations of the Grand Alliance. After the casualties her cataphracts had taken at the Battle of the Ruins to keep Chief Troke’s flank from collapsing, Basilia was sure to want to use someone else’s cavalry on the field.

“Nice,” Archer said. “Been talking with Alexis about a trick we could use on a Scourge, it’d be interesting to try out. Doesn’t tell me when we’re taking our crack at it, though.”

“I don’t know yet,” I admitted. “Not for a few days at least. We need to see to our wounded and let the soldiers rest for a bit.”

Much as I disliked waiting, given the dire state of our supplies, you couldn’t repeatedly send armies into the meat grinders and expect them not to break. We’d prepare for the assault and get it going as soon as morale had solidified.

“Good,” Masego said. “I have begun studying the damage the fallen tower made to Keter’s wards when it fell through the wall, but it is a difficult matter and enemy interference complicates it further. Time will help.”

“Doesn’t it always?” I easily replied.

It was the most precious resource, when making war, and always the scarcest. I left that breakfast in a better mood, some of the gloom for last night shed now that I some sleep in my body and a semblance of a path forward. I spent two days conferring with Named and generals, laying out the skeleton of the assault to come, and Hierophant even tossed some good news our way. The fallen tower, while it might not have destroyed the wards that made it unfeasible to reduce the walls of Keter by sorcery, had weakened several sections of them. That knowledge allowed me to add some flesh to the bones of the plan, Juniper further refining it.

And then we had trouble.

—

It had now been five days since the Battle of the Ruins, and it’d gotten bad enough that we’d had to call a war council over it. It drew raised eyebrows when I brought General Abigail instead of Juniper as my second, but everyone there had concerns great enough it didn’t even end up warranting a spoken question.

“If we were not stranded,” First Princess Rozala Malanza frankly said, “half my army would have deserted by now.”

I winced. The Jacks had told me it was bad, but not quite that bad.

“I’ve had conversations with the Stygians and the Penthesians that bordered on threats to walk,” Empress Basilia admitted. “And if they do walk, others will follow.”

“It’s not the nobles we have to worry about, it’s the rank and file,” I flatly stated. “We can hang a few aristocrats and the rest will fall in line, but we can’t hang an army into being fighting fit.”

“Threat of death will do little,” Chancellor Alaya agreed, “when most of the Grand Alliance’s soldiery is now convinced it is going to die anyway.”

Which they were, and Gods forgive me but I couldn’t even blame them. Our supply situation had been known for some time by select officers – inevitable, since we were already rationing and there were now about two weeks of food left – but we’d kept a lid on the real sucker punch: the dwarves weren’t going to be supplying us with anything. The deal with the Herald of the Deeps had fallen through and his replacement, Lady Sybella, was perfectly willing to leave us to die until we bent to the even steeper terms she’d offered. Soldiers weren’t always the most learned of people, but most of them could do simple mathematics.

There were two weeks of food left, none more around or coming, and it had taken more than two weeks to get to Keter through the Twilight Ways. Which were, anyhow, shattered.

The realization that even if by some miracle Keter was taken quickly enough everyone the Grand Alliance had brought north was likely to starve to death in the aftermath had been a knockout blow in the wake of the black eye caused by our first failed offensive. Morale had cratered, and even in the Army of Callow some soldiers had refused to leave their tents and attend their duties. We’d come down hard on those, hard enough that it’d not spread, but it was all balancing on a knife’s edge. The Legions had held up about the same, but the less disciplined armies had not. Most of Procer’s fantassins were no longer taking orders and Hakram was so busy cracking heads to keep the Clans in line he almost hadn’t been able to come today.

Of all forces only the Lycaonese had been unaffected, instead throwing a feast they’d called a ‘wake’ where they got drunk and spoke each other’s eulogies before declaring themselves already dead and sworn to fight Keter to the last. Even Cordelia had gotten proper sloshed, I’d heard, which I was rather sad to have missed.

“Our captains are petitioning to know of the terms the Kingdom Under asked and why they have been refused,” Lord Yannu told us. “That part, at least, appears to remain unknown.”

“Have any of you learned where the leak came from?” Rozala asked.

I grimaced.

“I have,” I admitted. “The phalanges found the source.”

That had the entire room’s eyes swivelling towards me, save for one pair. General Abigail Tanner stood like a woman headed for gallows with her name written on the rope, the perpetual dark rings around her eyes standing out even more starkly for her bleak expression. With those watery blue eyes and that frazzled hair she looked like she hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in a year, which might well be the truth. I flicked a glance at her, nodding. She cleared her throat.

“It was the Third Army,” General Abigail said. “I have standing orders for my Supply Tribune to underreport our stocks in food and goblin munitions, which made it stand out more obviously when it was on record we were a week away from running empty and we still didn’t get sent anything.”

It was very much against regulations to do what she’d just described, the underreporting so the Third would be sent extra stocks, but she wasn’t the only one who worked her numbers along those lines. The adjunct secretariat had dug deep and found she and her officers weren’t skimming, just using the extra stocks as a reserve in case supply was shaken, so she’d gotten off light. Some docked pay, a reduction of her pension and Juniper had pretty brutally chewed out. She’d blushed red enough at the screaming it had shown even on those sunburnt cheek, but the pension reduction had actually brought tears to her eyes.

That was the internal discipline of the Army of Callow, though. The problem that’d begun in her backyard had ended up much larger than that.

“How did it spread from there, general?” Razin evenly asked.

I replied in her stead.

“Her Supply Tribune’s subordinates began asking questions and they found out that no space had been cleared in our camps for the arrival of fresh supplies,” I said. “It was a small leap from there, and the shock of the realization was enough that several got drunk and loosened their tongues. From there, it was the simple spread of soldier’s gossip.”

It was unsurprising it’d spread across camps. The Grand Alliance armies were encamped close to one another and shared common walls, turning the fortified ring into something like a city of tents. With soldiers having little to do but gossip given the general idleness of a siege between assaults, the moment rumours began to spread it was a given they’d take like wildfire.

“It was my officers, so it’s my fault,” General Abigail said. “Can’t take that back, but I offer you my apologies and my resignation.”

Her tone had gotten, I thought, slightly hopeful by the end of the sentence. Though I would have liked to simply refuse her offer, it wasn’t that simple. I didn’t entirely have the leverage to make that decision alone, not when it was the Army of Callow that’d leaked the secret that got us into this mess. If the rest of the Grand Alliance wanted her resignation, I’d have to give it.

“It would change nothing,” First Princess Rozala said. “The cat is already out of the bag.”

“It might make things worse, truly” Empress Basilia noted. “Turn her into a figurehead for the resentment to gather behind.”

Yannu was less convinced.

“Is she to escape punishment, then?” he pushed.

Razin shot me a shrew look.

“Has the Army of Callow already dealt out discipline?” the Lord of Malaga asked.

“It has,” I said. “No demotion, but docked pay and pension as well as some other disciplinary measures.”

An argument could be made that under some regulations she should be whipped, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to go there. It’d make the Third Army boiling mad if Abigail the Fox was whipped in front of our assembled soldiery.

“She should be punished for failure of command, not the mistakes of her men,” Prince Otto bluntly said. “That is her crime. Going any further would be unjust.”

The general’s face fell and I suppressed a smile. You’re not getting out of command that easily, Tanner. Yannu Marave remained displeased and Rozala actually seemed like she was leaning his way in practice, whatever her words, so I threw them a bone by having her added to the latrine-digging duty rotation for a week. Neither of them were actually out of blood so they were satisfied with the light humiliation, though they really should have figured out that it would only make her more popular with her men. Soldiers liked seeing generals get their hands dirty. Being born a noble came with some blind spots, I mused.

It wasn’t like a brewer’s daughter would be all that concerned with her lordly dignity.

Crestfallen, General Abigail retreated behind me and we moved on to the thick of the meeting. What the Hells were meant to do about any of this.

“We should make the price asked by the dwarves public,” Empress Basilia suggested. “The anger should turn sentiment around.”

“That’s a risk,” I grunted.

Rozala agreed.

“If despair wins over anger, we might well be forced to agreed to the terms of the Kingdom Under by our own armies,” the First Princess said.

Yannu and Razin backed her on that, the Lord of Alava frankly stating that most the Dominion captains would not hesitate to clamour for the bargain to be struck since Levant was ceding no territory.

“Should part of our army agree while another does not, the discord could get out of hand,” Chancellor Alaya said. “We cannot afford to be fighting each other instead of the dead.”

The problem was that no one really had a solution. Our soldiers were rebellious because, well, we were in a fucking terrible situation. If the dwarves hung us out to dry, we were all going to die whether or not we took Keter. Or even worse, some of the most powerful nobles would make it out while everyone else died. That thought would be like tossing a lit match at oil, if it spread widely enough.

“We need to secure our supplies with reliable soldiers,” Hakram said. “Else we risk of deserters attempting to grab food and take their chances with the Ossuary.”

“Wise,” Empress Basilia said. “Though that is only a temporary salve. We need a way to turn morale around.”

And there were some ideas, so we broke up and set about trying them. First was Rozala’s own notion of spreading rumours of our own to flip sentiment: namely that we intended to invade the Serenity once Keter was taken, which was farmland bearing plentiful food. It worked some, but it was an obvious ploy and our soldiers weren’t dumb. There was no guarantee the Serenity would have reserves, that we would be able to reach it and to be honest a lot of the rank and file were wary at the prospect of eating anything that’d been grown in a Hell. It wasn’t enough. Another day passed and the mutters of mutiny only grew.

Mali – Chancellor Alaya’s suggestion was slyer and ended up more successful. A production was made of supplies being brought into the camp from outside even as word was spread that an accord might have been reached with the Kingdom Under. It was pure sleight of hand, the supplies in question coming from one of the larger flying fortresses and having been smuggled out during the night so they could be brought back when everybody was watching. It wouldn’t tide us over forever, I thought, but it might be enough to muster our armies for another assault. Or it would have been, if the news did not then come from further south.

The devils were gone.

The Praesi had seized and suborned the gates before unleashing seven days’ worth of devils on the dead, the main reason we were not drowning in armies as we besieged Keter, but the Dead King had not sat idle. The bindings on the devils had somehow been twisted and they were made to turn on each other, destroying themselves in an orgy of violence. They’d still emptied the southern Kingdom of the Dead of troops so it seemed like only a minor defeat, until one realized what it meant: there was no army left in the way of any deserters wanting to run south to Procer.

That night there were five attempts made on the supply stores, and though none succeeded it soured sentiment. We hanged all who attempted it publicly – two Proceran fantassin crews, a Levantine captain, Penthesians and to my distaste a tenth of legionaries from my own First Army – but however necessary the gesture it only darkened the mood further. We held council again, and this time when Basilia pushed to have the terms of the dwarven deal made public most of the people around the table were in agreement. It was Alaya and I who were the standouts again, sharing the same fear: it was going to give a lot of angry people a reason to get angry at each other.

To Basilia’s honour, she was right about the League’s reaction. Outrage at the demand of Penthes being ceded to the Kingdom Under was so great that there were demands made that the Grand Alliance declare war on the dwarves as well – never mind that the League was not part of the Grand Alliance, or that if the dwarves didn’t feed us we were all going to fucking die. I was even forced to admit that I’d been wrong to fear the worst, at least in the immediate, since it didn’t lead armies to brawl. What it did do, though, was give a halfway decent excuse for everyone wanting to sit out the battles to do it.

Proceran fantassins and levies did it by the hundreds, refusing to take up arms until the terms were accepted, while both the Blood and Chancellor Alaya began to receive petitions to accept the terms even if the rest of their allies did not. Some of the High Lords began to imply that the Praesi auxiliaries, which had until recently been household troops, might be inclined to start following their lead again should the Chancellor not do what was necessary to get them out of this mess. Tensions began to slowly rise across the camps and another council was urgently called.

“We lean on priests and heroes to shame the disobedient into line,” I flatly told them. “As for the High Lords, I’ll take care of it.”

I retreated into my tent and slipped into the dreams of those Alaya had said were most aggressive, inflicting on them terrifying nightmares. Fear did its work: the next morning, much chastened nobles came to reiterate their absolute support for the Chancellor and her wise reign. The other half of that, unfortunately, did not work as well. Some of the priests balked at being given orders by earthly powers, outright refusing to preach as they were told, and though Hanno convinced half the mercenaries to live up to their contract the rest chased him out. It was similarly mixed results with the levies.

The Brabantines that’d wanted to make him into a price rose up, but some of those conscripts had never so much as seen his face until Salia and they were not willing to put blind trust into a stranger. Not even one who was the Sword of Judgement.

“A successful assault on the walls would turn sentiment around,” the Warlord said.

“If we could talk them into that, we wouldn’t be struggling so hard in the first place,” I bit out.

Even the Army of Callow was balking, which was like a thorn in my throat: every time I tried to swallow, it bit a little deeper.

“Hard measures have become necessary,” Empress Basilia said.

And we all knew what she meant by that. All of us had still-reliable troops, soldiers that would obey the order to purge the disobedient if it was given. It would be a death blow to morale to bloody our soldiers into lining up for an assault, but with morale already fucked it was starting to look like the least lethal of the poisons to drink to go through with it. Reluctant agreement began to bloom across the table, but the thorn in my throat had not stung so keenly that I’d accept this. Not against soldiers that’d followed me since I was a girl, that had served unflinching through one nightmare after another until we reached the walls of Keter. I did not agree, and brusquely left the council. Juniper followed closely behind, and when we were out of the tent she took my arm. We stood there a moment, our gazes meeting as her hand stayed on me, and a knot of emotions seized her face. Shame and gratitude, anger and pride.

“Warlord,” she finally said, tone thick.

Gratitude won out. We both knew it was the same soldiers whose butchery had been discussed that had put me on the throne and kept me there, and I was almost insulted that she had thought I would forget it. That I would meekly bend my neck to this.

“They won’t do it without me,” I tiredly replied, passing a hand through my hair. “But we can’t do nothing, Juniper. Time is running out.”

It had not been eight days since the Battle of the Ruins, and we both knew that the closer we got to empty stores the more violently desperate our soldiers would become.

“An assault means losses,” Juniper murmured. “That means our stores last longer.”

We both knew that an assault where the entire force did not participate was just throwing lives away, but that was exactly what she was proposing: getting people killed. I pulled away, feeling my bad leg throbbing. I needed to be alone. I worried at the thought like a dog gnawing at a bone, but I saw no way out. So I sat in my tent alone, a bottle of aragh open as I leaned back in my seat with my eye closed. Trying to think of something, anything, that wasn’t just some variation of a butcher’s knife.

The soft sound of someone entering my tent reached my ears, but I did not open my eye.

“I’m not in the mood,” I called out.

“You are in one,” Hakram gravelled. “Which is why you’re drinking alone.”

“I don’t want to talk,” I told him, leaning forward as my eye fluttered open. “There’s been enough of that.”

He looked, I saw, about as tired as I felt. Ignoring me, he sat on the other side of my desk and grabbed the bottle. He poured himself a cup so full it nearly overflowed before draining it all in one swallow.

“I don’t feel much like talking either,” the Warlord admitted. “It’s why I’m here. For the silence.”

 I stared at him, unblinking, for a long time. Then I nodded. We had known a great many comfortable silences, the two of us. This would not be one of them, given the dark bent of our thoughts, but maybe it’d me more comfortable here with each other than it would have been alone. So we stayed there and we drank, an hour passing and then another. It was me who spoke, when the bottle was empty and my belly too warm.

“I thought I was done with hard measures,” I murmured. “Past them. But we’re never really done with horror, are we?”

Hakram did not answer for a long while.

“I used to wonder,” he said, “if it was something we stepped into, or something we brought with us.”

And now we know, I thought. We parted ways come dark, but I could not sleep. I felt restless, for all that there was nothing to spend my energies against. So instead I found my steps leading me to the tallest watchtower of our camp, watching over the campfires spread all around me. I stood at the edge of the drop, alone and veiled by Night, and waited. The streak of ice was still there, the old fear that would never suffer to be entirely mastered. Fear of the drop, of the fall. An old friend.

I hated it.

“I’ve been fighting you since I was a girl,” I told the night. “Gods, how many times did I face you?”

I had sought rooftop after rooftop, trying to scour the fear out of me, and yet here it was still.

“Even after all I’ve done, how far I’ve gone, you’re still here,” I said. “Still a part of me. You can be bound and blinded, kept in the cellar, but you’ve never been gone.”

And how hateful was it, that even this small thing I had spent all my life trying to rid myself of could not be changed? I leaned forward, boot beginning to give against the wood, and though I knew the fall would not kill me still my stomach clenched. It was how I knew I wasn’t dreaming: when I fell, in my dreams, there was never any fear. I just tumbled into the darkness, not making a sound, and I was swallowed whole. My bad leg throbbed with pain, a reminder this was anything but a dream.

“Is that the lesson?” I asked. “That it’s not about getting rid of you, it’s about continuing the fight?”

I thought of the night I had become the Warden, the dream of it. The faces I had worn, their warnings. Do better, one had whispered. Don’t flinch, the other had ordered. And beyond them, the Beast that had waited. That I felt coil around me now, warm breath against my neck as it opened its maw.

“I don’t believe that,” I murmured. “Maybe there’s never really an end like we want, like you get in the stories – a clean cut, a last light – but we do get to win, sometimes. If we bleed for it, if we’re clever and brave and we don’t bend with the current of the world.”

My fingers clenched, then slowly unclenched.

“This isn’t good enough,” I told Creation. “This place, this end, this taste of ash in my mouth that I know too fucking well. It’s not enough.”

And something like indignation burned in my belly, because deep down I had always wanted the world to be fair – for fairness, for good to be baked into its bones – but it wasn’t. It was blind and brutal, and the only lights you found down there in the dark were the ones you’d lit.

“Maybe you don’t care,” I said. “Maybe it’s a game to you, always was. Fine. But a game has rules, and I swear to anything out there listening that in the space between those I will carve a semblance of fairness. And if you won’t help me, then get the Hells out of my way.”

I had told the Beast I no longer feared it and meant every word. So I closed my eye, breathing out, and left my staff.

Then I took a step forward and let myself fall.

The Beast laughed, laughed loud enough for the world to quake and to drown out the scream of my fear. But it held me tight, warmed me and lent me its strength. My Name burned bright, chasing away the dark, and finally I was able to See. There was an above and a below, and below me I saw them all laid out. A never-ending sprawl of objects in motion, stars in the void. All the stories, the possibilities of them, and though the enormity of it threatened to snuff out my mind like a candle the Beast kept me together. And as I fell, as the enormity came ever closer and hurried towards me, I saw what I was looking for.

An object in motion.

I opened my eye, back cold with sweat, but I was not falling. I was still on the edge of the tower, a step away from the fall and fear coiling cold in my gut. Maybe it’d always be like that. Not the fight, because there would always be a fight – if not this one, then another. Maybe it was about the victories you could steal from fear, the lights you lit. I looked up, breathing raggedly, and above me I saw the clouds of poison had parted. The night sky was a river of stars, breathtaking and depthless. I might never have thought to look up, if not for all this.

Dawn found me sleeping there, swaddled in the Mantle of Woe.

—

“Two days,” I told the war council. “Give me two days.”

“What have you learned, Black Queen?” Rozala Malanza asked with a frown.

“That the world is always larger than we think,” I replied. “So give me two days, and I will give you a miracle.”

They did. They watched me like a hawk all the while, spies and envoys dogging my every footstep and growing impatient as I did nothing more than prepare for a battle they did not think would be fought, but on the dawn of the third day an alarm was rung. An army had appeared south, its trail of dust piercing past the cover of the poison clouds. I sent a single messenger and waited at the edge of the camp while it woke up like a hive, ramparts being manned and officers sent for. But the dust parted, the army approached, and worry turned to surprise.

These were not the dead. It was an army of dwarves, thousands strong. I had seen true, then. Today would be a pivot, for us and for them.

The greats of the Grand Alliance trickled towards me, a war council forming, but I already knew what it would be about. Who was to go speak with the dwarves, they would say. And that I would go was a certainty, but there would be bickering about the rest. Too many could, while few must be sent. So I had sent a messenger for a diplomat enough of them would trust. The conversation died, smothered in the cradle, as Cordelia Hasenbach rode up to our side atop a warhorse.

“Warden,” she greeted me, blue eyes sweeping over the others.

“There,” I smiled at the others. “Does this compromise suffice?”

It did.

—

The Herald of the Deeps received us formally in his tent.

Not in a stiff manner, I meant, but in the same way he had once received me deep below in the Everdark: after a few courtesies were traded, small wooden bowls were brought out. Relics whose grain was left rough, without varnish or polish. Seeker Balasi himself came into the tent with an opaque glass bottle in hand, pouring half a cup’s worth of sudra in each bowl before taking a step back. The liquor looked like wine, but its surface trailed vapour and it looked on the verge of boiling. The Herald had once told me no bottle of the drink, which dwarves used only on important talks, had ever left the Kingdom Under. The Named’s green large green eyes sought out mine and he offered a respectful – though not deferential – nod.

I noticed that the staff he usually took everywhere, crooked wood adorned with metal chimes, was nowhere in sight.

“Warden,” the Herald of Deeps said, “I greet you in peace.”

“Herald,” I replied, returning the nod. “Your arrival is an unexpected pleasure.”

“Creations holds us all prisoner to its whims,” he said, then turned to acknowledge my companion’s presence. “Princess Cordelia.”

“Herald,” she calmly replied, then glanced at the bowls. “You honour us with this service.”

Balasi didn’t sit at the table with us, this time. He’d not approached again after taking that step back, instead standing behind the Herald with a face that might as well have been carved out of stone. It caught Cordelia’s eyes just as it did mine. The Herald had always preferred to let the deed-seeker do most the talking when it was possible. Something had changed.

“If these talks are not to be called of import,” the green-eyed Named said, “I know not which deserve the word.”

A pause.

“I come to fulfill our bargain, Warden.”

My brow rose.

“Has Lady Sybella been recalled as negotiator for the Kingdom Under?” I asked. “I’d thought you replaced.”

For a long moment, the Herald neither moved nor answered. Not so much as a blink of those luminous eyes.

“A sennight ago,” the Herald of the Deeps finally said, “I entered the Hall of Hearths and sought the King Under the Mountain as he sat the Diluvian Throne before the great land-kings of our kind. I demanded of him to summon all dwarves to war and strike bargain with the Grand Alliance, so that we might end the Dead King once and for all.”

My throat caught. A calmer presence in the back of my mind noted a detail: a week ago. Either this Hall of Hearths was close to here, or the dwarves had a way of travelling long distances quickly.

“And did he accept?” Cordelia quietly asked.

The green-eyed dwarf twitched in what I thought might be dismay.

“He refused,” the Herald said. “And in his anger at my presumption, cast me into exile.”

 An exile that’d come here with an army, I thought, but my stomach was sinking even as I kept my face calm. So the Herald of the Deeps had come here with his loyalists to lend a hand to the fight. I would not turn away the help, but it was not the help we’d needed. Food was to be our saving grace, not more swords.

“But I gave an oath on my staff to fight for the terms I accepted with all my might,” the dwarf quietly said. “So I did.”

Cordelia stilled as I leaned forward. Power burned in the dwarf’s green eyes, old and deep and without the slightest semblance of humanity to it.

“I slew the king on his throne,” the Herald of the Deeps said, “and declared all of his line to be without burden or purpose. Unfit to rule.”

I let out a sharp breath. Burden and purpose were the words dwarves used for Role and Name, I knew, but I had heard Balasi use them in a more religious context before. They seemed as much philosophy as namelore.

“And you got out of there alive?” I said, incredulous.

“Snapping my staff of office released the many spirits I have bound over the years all at once,” the Herald said, sounding darkly satisfied. “The soldiers of the land-kings had greater concerns than to hunt me.”

I felt like reaching for the drink even though it wasn’t done cooling. That was, I thought, one hell of a way to resign. Still, for all that the Herald’s act of defiance was impressive I was having some difficult parsing the implications of it. Fortunately, I had brought Cordelia Hasenbach with me.

“You have not come,” Cordelia mildly said, “as a representative of the Kingdom Under.”

The Herald grimly chuckled.

“Princess, there no longer is a Kingdom Under,” he said. “It has been a thousand years since the Kings Under the Mountain truly ruled, but the dignity of their blood kept the land-kings as part of the same realm in name.”

He bared his teeth.

“I murdered that last restraint,” the Herald said. “Twice over, when I declared the bloodline unfit: no brother or sister can be ushered into the seat to serve as a fresh figurehead. Instead every land-king now claims himself the true owner of the Diluvian Throne.”

“Civil war,” Cordelia said.

“Not one of them but thirty,” the green-eyed dwarf replied. “A hundred, even. All of the old wars let loose again, without the King Under the Mountain to call for peace when a side wishes to surrender. It will be to the death, Princess Cordelia, until the Diluvian Throne is filled once more or the empire shatters all the way through.”

I honestly wasn’t sure whether that was better or worse than the Herald coming here with only an army of exiles. It was now a certainty we wouldn’t be getting reinforcements from the Kingdom Under, because its armies certainly sounded like they would be busy for the immediate future. Fuck, I’d hoped- wait, no. Not all the armies were busy, were they?

“It got the impression,” I said, “that neither the lands of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Expansion were under a land-king.”

From context I’d put together that they were under the authority of the King Under the Mountain, at least in principle, though in practice they’d been under the Herald himself. If their throne was empty, though, who did they now answer to?

“Clever,” the Herald smiled. “It is true. Balasi and I rode the Deep River to return there ahead of even the furthest land-kings. They soldiers have answered my call.”

My heart skipped a beat. That was beginning to sound rather more like what I’d hoped to get. The Fifteenth Expansion was the underground of the Kingdom of the Dead, which was filled with fortresses and soldiers. The Fourteenth was the Everdark, which was being colonized with both civilians and soldiers. Together, the regions represented a large number of soldiers. Cordelia narrowed in on another detail, though.

“This Deep River,” the fair-haired princess said, “could it be used by humans?”

My eyes widened. That was a way out our mess, I considered. If our armies could use the Deep River to retreat from Keter after the fall of the Crown of the Dead, extreme rationing might be able to get us back to Procer without killing too many from starvation. We should be able to buy supplies from the Herald as well. Nowhere enough to feed an army our size for long, and I doubted he’d empty his stores for us entirely, but maybe long enough to be able to manage the trip back south without too many dead if we took Keter quickly enough. There would be enough in the Everdark for all of us, but without the Twilight Ways to get them to us there’s no way they’ll arrive in time. From the corner of my eye, I saw that Balasi looked amused.

“It would be death,” the Herald politely replied. “The Deep River is sailed by ship, but it is not water. It is…”

 A frown, a look at the deed-seeker.

“Lava,” Seeker Balasi provided.

The Herald nodded, turning back to us.

“Lava. The ships are sailed empty between cities, using currents made by runes,” he told us. “I could protect myself and Balasi riding one, but more would be beyond my capacity.”

I sighed. Yeah, that’d been a little too good to be true. So we were back at the start, supply-wise.

“Your help in fighting Keter would be most welcome,” Cordelia said, “but I must confess our armies have grown troubled. Being stranded far from home without supplies has hurt our readiness to fight.”

“It would,” the Herald acknowledged. “I will not apologize, for the deeds of the Kingdom Under are no longer mine to bear as burden, but I would make restitution as a sign of good will. We will surrender Lady Sybella to your hands.”

I blinked.

“You captured her,” I said. “Where?”

“She was a mere two days away, waiting for you to bend to her terms,” the Herald replied.

My heart beat wildly and I shared a look with Cordelia, whose eyes had lit up.

“She must,” I slowly said, “have been keeping the supplies close, then.”

“Atop a confluence of tunnels, near the shores of the lake you call the Tomb,” he nodded.

Which was far, but even if they hadn’t moved them – which I doubted – it wasn’t that far. We could most definitely trade for supplies with the Herald to keep our soldiers until they arrived.

“They are in your possession,” Cordelia stated.

“They are,” the Herald of the Deeps said. “And though I am not the Kingdom Under, I come to fulfill the terms of the bargain.”

The supplies and his help against the city of Keter and attendant lands. A cession of claim that Cordelia had already convinced the Sisters to accept. It’s better than if he was still part of the Kingdom Under, I thought. The Herald could make a kingdom of his own out here while the rest of his kind fought it out for the throne, which would ensure his fragile beginnings were not simply annexed by whoever ruled close. And it creates a state that has an interest in keep the Kingdom Under split so it never turns around to gobble them up, which is even better. There was no real way for humans to meddle in that mess, but the Herald and his successors would be a different story.

Some of the drow might push for taking back their homeland when the enemy was still weak, I decided, but that trouble was years down the line and not impossible to navigate besides. I glanced at Cordelia, whose face was calm. She gave me a slight nod of agreement, also thinking it the right decision. So I reached for the bowl and took it in hand, raising it.

“Then I greet you in war, Herald of the Deeps,” I said.

They matched me and we all drank deep, the sudra smooth all the way down and leaving that faint taste of copper behind.

We drank, and it felt like a light being lit.

“Nineteen: always help the treacherous lieutenant to kill your nemesis when asked. Even if it’s a plot they’ll likely stick the knife if it looks like you’re winning.”

– “Two Hundred Heroic Axioms”, author unknown

Tenebrous smashed the last of the dead with unsettling glee, stomping about the undead army until there was no group larger than a dozen moving from the battlefield.

The dead did not rout, but the Dead King had decided to cut his losses and save some of the skeletons for battles to come and so the last two or three thousand scattered in every direction. The sight of it had the army cheering, the signs of victory become unarguable, but for all that that burst of enthusiasm there would be no pursuit. There was no cavalry left in any fit state to run down the enemy, and though Komena wanted to pursue the retreating bands I advised against it. There was no telling what manner of nastiness the Dead King might have waiting for her out there.

So Tenebrous returned to my shadow and the Battle of the Ruins, as General Pallas had suggested it be named, came to an end. It was a victory, but a costly one. From the first charge to the lines of the dead collapsing completely the battle had lasted barely three hours yet it was still one of the bloodier ones I’d fought over the last year.

Part of that was the nature of the armies involved. Orcs and Levantines tended to have inferior equipment to the Army of Callow, with its standard issue armour and weapons. Levantines were armed according to the wealth of the captain who led them in battle, an irregular arrangement, and the Clans were even worse. Equipment and training both varied wildly from clan to clan, though the larger ones all fielded a core of well-armed veterans as their main fighting force. On both sides, though, the average soldier didn’t usually have a full suit of mail and plate was fairly rare. In a bloody, graceless brawl like the one fought today that meant casualties had begun to rack up as time passed.

The other side of the coin was Keter’s forces, who in this case had boasted equipment parity at best but had the one advantage that undead could never lose: they weren’t alive. Sure, the averages Bones was barely better than a Proceran levy in a fight but unlike that levy it would not tire or rout. It made Keteran armies a fucking pain to actually break, because they wouldn’t run if they began to lose and they had an advantage the longer the battle continued. However unimpressive a skeleton wielding a bronze sword might be, when it was facing soldiers too tired to put up their shields in time it was going to start landing blows.

The Clans had been taught that hard lesson today. Holding the flanks against onslaughts all afternoon until Lord Yannu was able to swing around his forces to reinforce had been a bloody business and only gotten bloodier as the hours passed. Though Hakram had not yet put together a system to count casualties like the Army of Callow’s, the rough estimate he’d gotten was that out of the twenty-three thousand warriors that’d sallied out only about fourteen thousand would be coming back. Almost ten thousand dead, a rough day for the orcs. The Levantines had walked away much more lightly wounded, down about four thousand warriors out of their twenty-seven. The worse off were still General Pallas’ kataphraktoi, who’d had gotten themselves mauled keeping the right flank from collapsing. They’d almost half of their three thousand in furious charges,

It would be hours yet before we knew the real count of the butcher’s bill, but there was no time to spend grieving. We needed to get moving, lest we be caught out in the plains come dark. First came the grim labour of taking care of the dead, warriors stripping their fallen comrades of arms and armour – we could not afford to waste any – before dragging them to make great piles. Mages and priests torched those until there was nothing left for the Dead King to use, mounds of bodies crackling bright as the afternoon crawled forward. We then left the field with what some might have called unseemly haste, but it would have been a mistake to linger.

There were still other armies out there, and the last thing we needed was to get stuck fighting them in the dark.

While I could have left the returning army in the dust, flying far ahead on Zombie’s back, I led her into a landing instead and rode to speak with the victors of the day. Most cheerful of them all was the Barrow Sword, who had slain the Wolfhound and so fulfilled his end of the bargain with the Blood. He had earned a place in the Rolls. He’d also picked up another trick along the way.

“Night, huh,” I mused, cocking my heat to the side.

“So you can tell at a glance,” Ishaq replied, stroking a beard matted with blood and dirt. “Useful.”

“I’m still First Under the Night,” I simply said.

That the Barrow Sword had taken the offer did not surprise me in the least, as Ishaq was brutally pragmatic even by Levantine standards, but that Sve Noc had extended it in the first place did. It had only been a matter of time before they began approaching villains, of course, but beginning with the representative for Below under the Truce and Terms was a bold statement. Maybe even more than that, I thought. The most powerful heroes all tended to have use of the Light, so granting Night to the most visible of the villains on Calernia – Neshamah and myself, anyway – was as good as slapping down a gauntlet. There was another merchant of miracles at the market, and this one a lot less squeamish than the Choirs.

If we were not at war and Calernia on the brink of annihilation, I suspected quite a few heroes would have answered that challenge sword in hand.

“I count myself in the finest company, then,” the Barrow Sword grinned.

I snorted. He was in a gloatingly fine mood and I couldn’t get myself to smack his fingers for it. Taking care of the Wolfhound had been solid work on his part: by itself the Revenant wasn’t much trouble for our finer Named, but it was never by itself. It was always a meatshield for another altogether more dangerous Scourge, turning difficult opponents into outright lethal ones. It would have been even better if he’d gotten the Mantle, pain that she was for me to deal with, but I wouldn’t look a dead Scourge in the mouth. I’d praised him enough during the report, though, so instead of reiterating and swelling his head I changed the subject.

“I hear there was a scuffle with the Blood during the battle,” I idly said.

Curious dark eyes studied me.

“If Itima Ifriqui truly died of old age,” the Barrow Sword said, “I will shave my beard and enter a monastery.”

Yeah, hadn’t bought that either. Someone had killed the old viper, though it was hard to tell who. None of the other Blood were kicking up a fuss though, not even her sons, so I was inclined to let sleeping dogs lie for now. It might be worth squeezing some answers out my ducklings later, but I wasn’t inclined to get too involved if the boat wasn’t rocking. Moro Ifriqui, though one-armed since the Graveyard, was popular with the Vaccei captains and on much better terms with the rest of the Blood. As far as I was concerned, Levant had traded up when he got put in charge – informally for now, until his kin Levant pushed through the same procedural trick that’d allowed Razin to become Lord of Malaga without returning there to be acclaimed.

“Not too much to be gained from digging,” I mused. “The army’s holding up well, which is the important part at the moment.”

Ishaq was no fool, so he nodded in acknowledgement of my unspoken warning. He could have a look if he was curious, I’d tacitly told him, but only so far as it didn’t endanger the readiness of the Dominion armies.

“I imagine my duties will be keeping me busy,” the Barrow Sword replied.

“Good man,” I pleasantly smiled.

I stayed long enough to get the tale of the fight told to me by the entire band of five, expanding on the simple report, and handed congratulations where they were deserved. Ishaq, cleverly enough, was unstinting in his praise of the Vagrant Spear and the Harrowed Witch. By doing so he was sharing the glory with a heroine in good odour with the Blood and by far the least threatening of the villains under the Terms, both strikes useful to him in the long term. He was shaping up nicely as my successor for representative, I decided. He’d been the right pick, for all that Indrani had needed to get her hands dirty to put him in place.

Speaking of Indrani, I found she was not in so fine a mood as the Barrow Sword.

“Couldn’t land an arrow on the bastard,” she told me, speaking of the Hawk. “It’s unpleasantly good at running.”

“You kept anyone important from getting shot,” I reassured her. “Which was what I asked you, ‘Drani, not a scalp.”

“Aquiline got shot,” she pointed out.

I rolled my eye.

“Not by the Hawk,” I said. “That girl needs to start using a fucking shield or get better at ducking. If she gets killed by a skeleton, I may not be able to stop from laughing at her wake.”

Which my finely-honed diplomatic instincts led me to suspect at least some Levantines might take offence to.

“You’re all heart, Cat,” Archer drily replied.

I shrugged. Aquiline would survive, the arrow had missed her lungs and they’d gotten her to a healer in time. The light armour preferred by the Slayer’s Blood had its uses, I wouldn’t argue otherwise after witnessing firsthand the skill of Levantine skirmishers during my Wasteland campaign, but it was ill-suited to the kind of battles the Dead King gave. She should order some good plate and get it over with before she picked up enough scars it’d ruin her paints. Gods knew today’s wound was certain to leave one, mage healing or not.  I left Indrani to her mood, which at least seemed to be inspiring her to scheme ways to handle the Hawk when they next met.

Hakram was easy enough to find, and though his chiefs were in a festive mood – a victory had been won today and everyone knew the Clans had done the heavy lifting – I knew that look on his face. It was the kind of calm deliberation he put on when he was trying not to openly disgruntled. I’d seen him put on shades of it more than once after Vivienne beat him at shatranj, though the shade of it today was rather more serious than that. I traded congratulations with a few chiefs, meeting Juniper’s father for the first time in the process. Oghuz the Lame was an impressive sort, all the more for being chief of a clan as powerful as the Red Shields when he needed a cane to walk.

Most orcs saw cripples as barely better than children, so he must still be a deft hand at duelling despite his age.

“I think she has your cheekbones,” I told him.

“She does, the poor child,” Oghuz mourned on behalf of his daughter. “At least she mostly inherited Istrid’s looks aside from that.”

“They make you look friendlier,” I said, patting his shoulder. “Hakram’s might as well be a razor blade.”

The older orc looked rather charmed at that, to my surprise. I chatted with him longest of the chiefs, but he still left with the others when their Warlord implied he needed to speak with me privately. Then outright stated it, when the slower sorts failed to catch on. Eventually it was only the two of us, Hakram’s face slumping into exhaustion as he met my gaze.

“Come to see how I’m holding up, I take it,” the Warlord said.

The tone was a little pointed but was tired enough to fall short of being accusing.

“Something like that,” I acknowledged.

I wouldn’t deny that I had come as the Warden as much as I had come as a friend. Rare were the situations these days where I could afford to be only one of the two. He didn’t look pleased by the reply, but I suspected he’d appreciated I had not tried to pretty it up.

“I will not falter, Catherine,” Hakram said. “But will you begrudge me that I am bitter it was my people who bore the weight of the slaughter today?”

“It’s why you agreed to take the flanks,” I evenly replied. “Levant’s twenty-seven thousand are all that’s left of their armies. You have numbers they do not.”

He’d brought almost thrice their number in warriors, and that hadn’t even been the entire army he’d marched south to Ater. Mind you, orcs fielded a lot more warriors than most other nations since most of a clan except the young and the elderly would take up arms when there was plunder to be had. Considering how many women there were in orc warbands and their age – between twenty to forty – if the force brought to Keter was wiped out the consequences for the Steppes would be disastrous. Much worse than if the Dominion lost the entire army they’d sent to the Grand Alliance

“More died than was necessary,” the Warlord growled. “We fell for the trap. I did not gainsay Yannu then and that is my guilt, but I will not forget we were left to stand alone for most of the battle.”

“That’s fair,” I honestly replied. “I imagine General Pallas feels much the same. The course of the fight ended up going badly for both of you, so you have good reason to resent him.”

So long as they didn’t end up blaming Careful Yannu for malice that did not exist instead of a tactical mistake, I had no issue with some resentment existing. The Lord of Alava was a skilled general, but in this instance he’d not particularly impressed. To be honest, if it had been the Army of Callow dying on the flanks I’d likely be a great deal less gracious about this than Hakram was being.

“Pallas bled her men for us,” Hakram conceded. “It was worth gratitude.”

“She bled her men because if Troke’s flank collapsed we were going to lose the battle,” I said. “Pallas isn’t exactly a bleeding heart.”

She was, however, a talented tactician. She’d even correctly identified that with the Warlord holding the other flank together, it was Troke’s that was in dire need of aid.

“Her reasons matter less than her actions,” Hakram replied.

I shrugged. I wasn’t going to argue the point if he wanted to toss thanks General Pallas’ way, honestly. She was back under Helike and Empress Basilia these days, but I hadn’t forgotten that Pallas and her soldiers had fought up north with the Grand Alliance years before anyone else from the League gave us the time of the day. Instead of arguing, I hummed and took a look at his Name to confirm the subtle difference I’d felt in him from the start.

“I see you picked up an aspect while you were at it,” I said.

There he looked pleased.

“The traces of it were there, but it came together during the battle,” Hakram said. “You can discern the word?”

“My sight’s not that precise,” I admitted. “Not right now, at least. I tend to see more deeply around pivots, when fate is thicker. But I can tell what it’s about, more or less.”

Active authority, in a local and direct sense. Not surprising for a career officer and my former right hand to pick up, especially after he’d stepped into large boots of his own by becoming the Warlord.

“Lead,” Hakram said, not hesitating a moment.

I felt something in me unclench at the offered trust. For Named, aspects were cards best kept up your sleeves: keeping them hidden until they could be used to devastating effect was often the difference between winning or losing a fight.

“Try to use it,” I suggested. “Let’s see if I can help you feel out the limits.”

It would have been a more politic use of my time to ride with the Blood instead for the rest of the way back, but part of me refused to think of that as the better use. We marched together the rest of way back, others flitting in and out but the two of us staying side by side until the camp was in sight.

—

“Fuck me,” I said. “What the Hells happened to the floating siege towers?”

Vivienne looked grim. Given the wreckage I was looking at, she had good reason to. Keter was an island of stone surrounded by a deep chasm that was broken by only four bridges, which were the natural path to take when trying to take the city. Because we weren’t raging idiots, we expected that the Dead King would use them to funnel our armies into narrow killing zones for as long as possible and then collapse them the moment there was a risk of us actually taking one of the gates. We’d prepared for that eventuality – it was not happenstance that none of the three most powerful mages in the Grand Alliance had left the camp – but it’d always been understood that the gates were unlikely to fall to us.

That was why Praes had turned floating structures into great siege towers, so that we might broaden our assault.

“Two were sunk,” the Princess replied.

I grimaced, but to be blunt I was not surprised.

“There’s a reason we didn’t fill them with troops from the start,” I said.

Only enough to secure a beachhead on the walls, no more. Otherwise we risked pissing away a few thousand soldiers to exactly no gain whatsoever.

“Two touched the walls,” Vivienne continued. “Masego kept most of Keter’s counter-magic off them for long enough.”

“That’s impressive,” I said, “but since I’m not looking at a wall flying our banners, I’m going to assume that something went horribly wrong.”

“We still have one tower,” she sighed, brushing back a strand of brown hair.

“I hope to Below you don’t mean that one, Vivi,” I replied, pointing forward.

The outer rampart of Keter had been, in a manner of speaking, breached. Someone had seen fit to smash the floating siege tower into said wall, hard enough that it had gotten embed into said wall. It looked, I thought, a little like a knife dropped into a bloc of butter and jutting out. Except for the part where it was all stone on both sides and several tons of it were involved. The ‘bottom’ of the tower was extending far enough out of the wall that it really should have snapped off or dragged the whole thing into the chasm by now, which meant the enchantments keeping the structure aloft still partially worked. It was an oddly disturbing sight.

Princess sighed again.

“The assault went well at first,” she told me. “We pushed across two of the four bridges, and though Keter spared neither arrows nor sorcery we reached the gates. The siege towers were torched before they could cross, but the ladders and the rams got through.”

“So when we started knocking at the gates, Keter dropped the bridges,” I predicted.

She nodded.

“We sent heroes under the bridges first, to try to prevent that, but Pickler believes that there is no outside mechanism. The bridges were built from the start with foundations under the city of Keter that could be brought down,” Vivienne said. “It was old work, regardless, and played out differently on the two bridges.”

I could see one of the two from where we stood, the fortified camp surrounding Keter as a ring of flame from all the torches and bonfires lit in the night. The arch of stone was missing its forward half, leaving the gate of Keter to stand over a sheer cliff.

“The Witch should have been able to handle that,” I said, nodding there.

“She did,” Princess replied. “She held the stones aloft long enough for our forces to retreat through them. And on the other side Sahelian negated the Enemy’s work.”

I cocked a curious eyebrow.

“Only a section in the middle collapsed,” Vivienne said, “splitting the army in two and stranding the vanguard. She filled the gap with ice.”

I sniffed in disdain. Someone was cribbing from my tactics. I’d started that whole ice thing in Dormer, long before anyone else got famous for it.

“So we kept up one of the bridge assaults and landed two towers,” I mused. “Still a solid enough offensive. I take it that’s when it started going wrong?”

“The Tumult came out to duel Hierophant to keep him from protecting the towers,” she replied. “And Keter counter-attacked with wyrms.”

I blinked. Those were great snake-constructs that’d only rarely seen use out of Twilight’s Pass, being the Dead King’s equivalent of our Praesi floating siege towers. The massive snakes were armoured and had ladders inside, which the dead could climb after the wyrms hooked themselves to the edge of the wall with steel and bone. What use could they have-

“He crammed his siege towers into our siege towers, like a snake forced into the maw of a larger one,” I breathed out, putting it together.

It was both utterly wasteful of manpower, I thought, and brilliant in a twisted way.

“It kept us from landing a beachhead on the walls,” Vivienne said, “and once he had us pinned, the Seelie came out.”

Masego insisted that what that Scourge did was ‘fascination’, a form of enchantment, but it was pretty much mind control whatever he wanted to call it. So the Dead King had kept us contained to small tunnels with no real room to manoeuvre than then unleased the fucking mind control fairy on the people inside. Yeah, I can see that turning nasty. Just for a bit, though. After that, it’d be sure to summon…

“The Blade of Mercy and Daring Pyromancer ran into her,” Vivienne continued. “The Seelie got the Pyromancer, but the Blade cut the spell out of him and they set fire to the wyrm. It made her retreat, but ended up being something of a tactical mistake.”

Setting fire to tightly enclosed spaces full of people who couldn’t easily get out tended to be that.

“How bad?” I grimaced.

“Almost two thousand dead, more from the stampede and the smoke than the fire,” Vivienne said, “and the dead got to the heart of the tower in the chaos.”

“So that’s how it got crashed,” I frowned.

“No,” Princess shook her head. “They tried to make them crash into each other.”

Her description of what came after that was nightmarish. The Praesi mages controlling the other tower had seen the threat coming and tried to withdraw, but the wyrm inside had fought the movement. The soldiers inside panicked as the dead kept pouring in, meanwhile the other tower rose higher could it could be smashed down like a child banging rock down at another. Fortunately, the Black Knight had led a band through daring strike into the grounded tower to remove the wyrm using some acidic creation of the Concocter’s that would dissolve it from the inside. It would have still failed, if Hanno and his own band had not stepped in to settle the other tower.

“How did they even get into it?” I frowned. “It should have been fully in flight by then.”

“The Mirror Knight,” Vivienne said.

“Sure, throwing him is the traditional opening gambit,” I acknowledged. “But after he landed – wait, are serious?”

She nodded, lips twitching.

“They bound themselves to the Mirror Knight and had him thrown by a trebuchet, using him to pierce through the siege tower’s walls,” Princess said.

I paused.

“I know it’s in poor taste to complain when they’re on our side,” I said, “but sometimes I do get a little irritated at how they keep getting away with this shit.”

After that they’d fought their way through the dead and taken back control of the tower, holding it up long enough that the other one was able to get away. The turnaround was not to last, though, since the Tumult slipped past Masego and crippled the enchantments keeping the tower up. It began to crash.

“How’d they get out?” I asked, morbidly curious.

“For a very brief moment the falling tower and the one withdrawing were aligned, with only a gap of a dozen feet between where one ended and the other began,” Vivienne said. “So they…”

“They jumped,” I said, rubbing the bridge of my nose. “They jumped out the falling tower into the other one, like assholes.”

Vivienne’s blue-grey eyes betrayed some amusement at my expense.

“He’s not even really Named anymore, he’s transitioning,” I complained.

“I’ll be sure to bring the matter up at the next war council,” Princess replied, serenely smiling.

My lips twitched, and the two of us stood there in silence for a while. Staring at the dark silhouette of Keter in the distance. The humour slowly melted away.

“How many?” I asked.

“At least sixteen thousand dead,” Vivienne softly replied. “And I hear your battle was closer than anticipated.”

“Fourteen thousand dead or thereabouts,” I said. “The enemy got clever with a sand trap and mauled our flanks. The Clans soaked up the worst of it.”

At least thirty thousand dead between the battle and the storm, huh. I stood there and let myself grasp that, the sheer number of soldiers we’d gotten killed in a day. I had fought entire campaigns where I had lost fewer men than died today. And it was only going to get worse. None of us had truly expected this assault on the walls to work, deep down. It was a first probe, to see how heavily defended the Crown of the Dead was. Almost two hundred and fifty thousand soldiers had come here to break the end times before they could break us. Nine more attacks like this and we’d run out of men.

We hadn’t even managed to set foot inside the fucking city.

“It’ll look better tomorrow,” Vivienne finally said.

“No it won’t,” I murmured.

A moment.

“No it won’t,” my friend admitted.

So we stood there in silence, sharing company, until fear had dulled enough we could crawl into our beds to sleep.

“It is indeed true, Chancellor, that the greatest possible victory is over yourself. My magical doubles proved to be the worthiest of my opponents by far.”

– Dread Empress Gemini (possibly Gemini II, never conclusively proved not one of the doubles)

Razin Tanja watched the distant line of the horizon, sitting the saddle, and wondered about the nature of change. How it was embraced and how it was fought, how it was cursed and how it was sought. It was not, he had come to think, a matter of people being good or bad. Sometimes bad men fought for good causes, necessary causes. Sometimes good women did terrible things, because they did not think of them as being terrible at all.

It was, Razin thought, like standing in a tower. If the inside of it was all you had ever known, the world was divided by the levels of it. You’d think in terms of top and bottom, of stairs and doors, and never consider there could be anything else at all. Only if you’d stepped outside of it, even once, suddenly it would all seem so silly. What did a level or another matter, when you had seen a mountain or the sea?

But then who could conceive of a mountain or the sea, when all they had ever seen was the inside of a tower?

No, it was not about good and bad. It was about whether you had gotten a glimpse of the world outside the tower or not, and what that glimpse did to you. For Razin that journey had begun a bridge outside the city of Sarcella, when the great monster of their age had told him to learn from his mistakes or die in a ditch. It had ended when he’d looked at a woman he’d already been half in love with about to fight Yannu Marave to the death in his honour and seen nothing but futility.

A shameful, ugly waste that somehow everyone around him insisted was honour.

“But it was just blood,” Razin murmured.

But that was Levant, wasn’t it? Blood and honour, two sides of the same coin. The glory and the slaughter, so deeply intertwined they might as well be the same thing. And so Razin would not think in terms of good and bad, today. That was not the bone of it, the vein. It was about the tower, and how many people had stepped outside of it. Been dragged outside of it by this war.

About how far people would be willing to go, to go back in and close the door behind them.

—

There was a trap here, Hakram Deadhand thought, even if he was yet blind to it.

The Warlord was not a general in the way of others he knew and had known, more Nauk than Juniper, but he was a graduate of the War College and had fought in campaigns that would be studied for centuries to come. To his practiced eye the battle line of the enemy was a recipe for a rout, or at least severe defeat since the dead did not flee even when beaten. Keter’s centre was weak a weak half circle, only six lines of skeletons deep, and the sheer weight of a charge from Levantine heavy foot – Alava’s was particularly strong, entire companies heavily armed with plate and hammers – should plow right through.

The enemy had thickened its flanks instead, as much as thirty of the forty-five thousand it numbered split between the two. The rest, four thousand or some, was held in reserve behind the curved centre. Hakram was not as well-read as some in matters of tactics, but the formation smacked to him of the tactics of the Iron Prince at the Battle of Aisne, the overwhelming Lycaonese victory that had won Cordelia Hasenbach the throne. On that field Klaus Papenheim had drawn in a larger coalition of southerners deep past his flanks by letting his centre give ground before halting the retreat and falling around the flanks for an encirclement.

When he told Troke as much, the chief of the Blackspears spat to the side with a skeptical look.

“Won’t work here,” Troke Snaketooth replied. “The Dominion will keep charging and even if the undead send in their reserve it’ll be torn through.”

Which would leave the two strong flanks of the enemy army split and prone to being encircled in turn, a defeat in the making.

“So it’s bait,” the Warlord gravelled.

Hakram was not surprised. He had asked General Pallas to take a closer look at the grounds near the enemy and her riders had found that behind the battle line there were hints of the long-buried city that had once stood here. The thick of the ruins behind the curve of the enemy formation, within the hollow of the half circle. The general the Dead King had sent to command here must want their own centre to collapse, Hakram thought, for the Levantines to continue charging forward right into some sort of nasty trap that would shatter them and turn the battle around in a single stroke.

He’d written as much to Catherine, which was why he had been baffled when he had learned that she’d sensed a few undead under the ground where the city would be but no gathered power whatsoever. As far as she could tell, there weren’t even any constructs: just a handful of Bones. Hakram began trading messengers back and forth with Lord Yannu and General Pallas in the wake of that, their armies slowed to a halt far enough the enemy would not be able to steal a march on them. Not that they seemed willing to leave the ‘defensive’ position they’d taken.

“If we march away,” General Pallas suggested, “they might follow us away from their position.”

It was a sensible enough thought and the Grand Alliance attempted it, but the enemy did not move to follow. It only made the trap more obvious, but the enemy general knew the same thing they did: they could not afford to leave without fighting that army. If they pulled back too far there would be nothing to stop the dead from going around them and striking at the camps from behind while they were trying to storm the walls of Keter, a recipe for slaughter. And there was no doubt at all that the dead would march faster, because unlike the living they did not tire and standing in the sun wearing armour for hours would not exhaust them.

So the army turned back, taking its old position after having burned a little over an hour.

“Our purpose is to keep their army here,” Hakram told the others. “We can achieve it simply by standing here and facing them without actually waging a battle.”

Only, as Careful Yannu sent back in message, it wasn’t that simple. If they stayed too late, they would be stuck out in the Ossuary away from reinforcements in the dark, having no idea about the state of the coalition army that’d tried to storm Keter. Given that Proceran outriders had made it clear that there were still other armies of the dead gathering out in the plains, they would be running the risk of Keter throwing all those half-assembled forces at them from the sides while the army in front of them attacked them in the dark. That was potentially disastrous.

“We fight,” Lord Yannu sent.

“We fight,” General Pallas agreed.

“We fight,” the Warlord conceded.

There was no other way but to give battle, so all that was left was to find a way to do it without giving the Dead King what he wanted.

—

The wait was getting to them all.

Ishaq had chosen his band with care, knowing that he might never get an opportunity like this again, and he was still pleased with the plan he had decided on. It was a simple thing, as most functional plans tended to be. The Grave Binder to find the Scourge and reach them, the Vagrant Spear to close the distance, the Stained Sister to hold them down, himself for the killing blow and the Harrowed Witch to handle their retreat. Lord Hanno had been generous in releasing the two heroines to his service for the battle, seemingly uncaring that the deed of killing a Scourge today would see Ishaq added to the Rolls. The once-Knight appeared interested only in the end of one of the Dead King’s finest Revenants, indifferent to all other consequences.

A hard man to grasp, Hanno of Arwad. He acted weak where he should be strong, acted strongly where he should give. The Barrow Sword had refined his understanding in Salia, when he’d crossed swords with the Ashuran, but even now he was often unsure whether the hero was being clever or not. This band, for one. Ishaq had fought at the side of Sidonia and Aspasie before, facing the Drake together in Hainaut, and knew them well enough. So he’d anticipated that Sidonia would hold the Grave Binder in contempt, for the man in tattered robes was visibly rotting from a barrow-curse. A contempt that would be returned in kind, as Idris saw her as a hound of the Blood.

But he had not thought, however, that the Stained Sister would be as oil and water with the Harrowed Witch. Both Procerans were survivors of the Dead King’s advance, but neither cared for the way the other had survived. Aspasie had only disdain for the Sister staying among the living only because she had been buried among so many corpses the dead had forgot her, while the old heroine had not been shy in castigating the Witch over the sacrifice of her own brother to power an illusion that would let her flee unseen. Ishaq had twice been forced to demand silence as the bickering escalated towards thrown hands, wondering all the while if somewhere Hanno of Arwad might not be laughing at him.

Now all stood in sullen silence among the throng of Alavan armsmen, their faces hidden by simple soldier’s cloaks. Warriors gave them a wide berth, as much out of respect for Bestowed as the stink that came from Idris’ rotting flesh. It really was an awful smell, Ishaq thought to himself. The Grave Binder had told him that being ever dying deepened his hold over death, but even Idris admitted that the barrow had exacted from him a deep price for the rings that taught him his learning.

“I hope people will stop marching all around soon,” the Harrowed Witch muttered, breaking half an hour of silence. “I’m getting a headache watching them.”

“How little it takes to-” the Stained Sister began, hands folding into the sleeves her red-stained garments, but Ishaq’s hard look put a stop to that.

Like children, sometimes. As if just standing in the vicinity of each other was enough to drive each other mad.

“The hosts are getting in formation,” Sidonia told them, sounding distracted as she spoke.

The Vagrant Spear was looking at the same ‘marching around’ that Aspasie had complained of. Ishaq was no captain of warbands himself, but he too could see that Careful Yannu and the Warlord had been moving around their armies in preparation of the battle. The Clans had split in two, taking the flanks, while Levant tightened the centre. Why he was not sure, and it was not his trouble to bother with. The Barrow Sword had come here to hunt.

“Movement?” he asked Idris.

The Grave Binder was picking at his wrist, gazing off in the distance, but when addressed returned to the present. The Bestowed’s fingers went to the glittering bronze rings on his left hand, a small shiver of power touching the air.

“Four Revenants in the army,” Idris said. “In pairs. And the two out in the field haven’t moved for the last hour.”

“Could be the Hawk and an escort,” Sidonia facing Ishaq directly and refusing to acknowledge the other man’s existence.

It was a grim source of amusement to the Barrow Sword that though he too had stolen from a barrow, a few hard fights back-to-back had seen this offence to honour forgiven while Idris would be scorned to the grave and likely even beyond. Sidonia was not from a noble line, not having any of the Spear’s blood even though she had inherited the Bestowal, but she had been welcomed warmly by the greats of the Dominion and so eagerly adopted their hypocrisies. Idris had done little that those of the Brigand’s Blood had not surpassed in horror a dozen times over, but a darkened Bestowal and enmity with the Binder’s Blood meant he must be deserving of death.

That would change, after the war. Ishaq would see to it. And that change would begin with his being the first villain to ever added to the Rolls.

“It could also be bait,” the Barrow Sword replied. “We wait.”

Some dissatisfaction at that, but none challenged him. He was representative for the champions of Below, though the title in his hands did not command the same respect as it had in the Black Queen’s. No matter. Soon the Scourges would reveal themselves, trying to snatch some great name’s life, and then his time would come.

Like all Bestowed before him, Ishaq would write his entry in the Rolls blood-red.

—

Aquiline Osena shaded her eyes with her hand, peering at the enemy as the sun pounded down on her helm.

By habit she glanced through the ranks for a head worth taking, some great captain or Revenant, but much as she hated to admit it the days where she could wade into the thick of the slaughter were past. She was only twenty-two, young enough that there should still be many years for her to slay great names and bring back their skulls to the Silent Shrine, but as Razin kept saying if either of them died then all hope of change for the Dominion would die with them. It was still frustrating to hear, and if he had not been clever enough to save that kind of talk for when they were naked and sated she might have quarrelled with him for it.

The Grim Binder’s Blood made for canny men, it was known.

No, now her eyes were meant for different prizes. As the years passed she had become the leading captain of their host, her betrothed taking a step back and to instead hold command of reserves or the camp. Razin was not without talent as war captain, Aquiline believed, but she would not deny he did not have the knack for it that some were born with – like Abigail the Fox or Rozala Malanza. Yet in the Dominion none were held as Yannu Marave’s equal when it came to leading warriors, which was part of why Razin had stepped back. If it comes to war, Razin had said, it will be you that leads our captains. Best you and they get used to it.

He really was sweet, Aquiline thought, still pleased at the memory. She toyed with a strand of hair, smiling, but was brought out of the reverie by a cleared throat. Captain Elvera was looking at her, worn face pulling into a cheeky grin.

“Not even wed and already losing your head,” the old captain said, shaking her head. “What would your father say?”

“That at least I had the sense never to fuck a Proceran,” Aquiline replied, entirely unashamed.

“I just taught him how to handle an axe,” Elvera lied.

The Lady of Tartessos still found it wildly entertaining that Elvera had slept with one of spymasters of Procer back when they were young. She’d also been relieved it wasn’t the dead traitor or the one that looked like a skeleton with dry skin hung on it, since it would have called her old teacher’s tastes into question. In the distance a deep horn sounded – deeper even than those of the Army of Callow, which Aquiline knew well – and the sound called them back to order. Her eyes returned to the enemy’s ranks, still find the same conclusion laying there to be found.

“If we charged we’d tear right through them,” Aquiline Osena stated. “Their centre is thin and thin on shields.”

“Which their captain wants of us,” Elvera agreed. “That formation is too odd for it to be otherwise.”

By the count of the outriders, the dead numbered over forty thousand. Likely closer to forty-five, the kataphraktoi had claimed, but they could not be sure given the way the enemy kept some of its troops hidden at the back. That meant the numbers of the Grand Alliance were higher: fifty-three thousand had set out with down and marched to this field, all in all. Twenty-seven thousand for the Dominion, twenty-three thousand orcs and three thousand kataphraktoi under General Pallas. It was rare for the dead to fight when their numbers were the lesser, given that Bones were hardly better than even Proceran levies as soldiers, but rarer still for the dead to stand on the defence.

And that was what Aquiline’s eyes were telling her: the dead were still preparing to defend, not attack.

“I can’t see the sense in it,” Aquiline admitted.

“A trap of some sort,” Elvera replied. “It’s why Careful Yannu sent orders that we are to hold the centre but not break through.”

“He didn’t thin our numbers, though,” the Lady of Tartessos replied, frowning. “Which he means he’s worried about them breaking through us.”

There could not be many reasons for that. Both their gazes moved to the Crab as their thoughts flowed down the same path. The monster was gargantuan, as were all of its kind, but this one was not like the others Aquiline had glimpsed. It was not a city on great spindly legs, workshops and smithies and dens of sorcery protected by walls, but instead entirely a creature of war. The mountain of death belched trails of smoke from great bonfires that looked like a thousand eyes, the air wavering from the heat around it, and from all sides extruded paired and massive folded tusks of steel. Aquiline could see in her mind’s eye how they would unfold, turning into cutting lines that would carve through a man’s height across the length of half a mile as the monster advanced.

“We have our own monster, my lady,” Elvera finally said, nodding upwards. “And if it comes to a scrap, I’ll bet on ours.”

Aquiline refrained from looking up, looking for the silhouette of the crow and her rider. It would have felt childish, like a child tugging at her mother’s skirt. A feeling she resented all the more for knowing the Warden was not much older than her. Not that one would know, from the way she carried herself: halfway between a sage and a lunatic, but ever a step ahead of her foes.

“She said she would handle it, so she will,” Aquiline simply said.

Her worries had to be on the ground, where steel would clash. The orders had come from Careful Yannu and the Grand Alliance army had at last finished taking a formation of its own. The captains of the Dominion had taken the centre, Aquiline’s own armsmen and those of Malaga in the middle while Alava stood on one side and Vaccei the other. The Clans had agreed to hold the flanks, Warlord Hakram taking the left flank while an orc by the name of Troke Snaketooth took the right. General Pallas’ kataphraktoi were being kept in reserve at the back, along with eight thousand mixed foot from the Clans and the Dominion – the four thousand Levantines there under Razin’s command, while Oghuz the Lame held it the orcs. 

It was a large reserve, but Aquiline approved of the caution. There was something afoot. In the distance the deep horns of the Clans sounded once more, soon after answered by the beat of Levantine war-drums. Aquiline breathed out, rolling her shoulders, and straightened her back. Her sword left the sheath easy as a breath and she raised the steel until it gleamed in the sun’s light.

“Forward,” Aquiline Osena shouted, and across the dusty plain warriors began to march.

—

The Warlord was not in the thick of it when the lines collided.

For now he was still of more use behind, watching the greater currents of the battle. Time for the axe-song would come soon enough. Instead he watched as the shield wall of his flank collided with that of the dead, his warriors smashing through the dead with axe and sword. Orc were larger than human, heavier, and found it easier to land the kind of blows that shattered skeletons. The other side of that, which became visible soon enough, was that the Clans lacked the discipline of the Army of Callow. The line became uneven in moments, finer warriors digging deeper into enemy lines, and the disorders gave room for the dead to bite.

They would kill more of the enemy, Hakram thought, but more would die as well.

“The centre’s doing well,” Sigvin opined. “The Levantines aren’t pushing further than they should.”

They had pushed back the enemy some, the Warlord saw, but not much and their captains were holding back the men. It had blunted the head of the half circle but little more than that. Lord Yannu’s plan had been simple enough: since they were certain that what the dead had planned laid in the ruins, then to avoid the trap all they must do was avoid taking those grounds. The enemy centre would shatter itself on the Grand Alliance’s, and then the majority of the Dominion army could swing around to take from the side the flanks that Hakram’s warriors would have nailed down. And, in case a mistake had been made, a large reserve was being kept back.

Mitigated risk, Hakram had thought when he first heard it. A plan worthy of a man called Careful Yannu.

Movement drew his attention to the side. He and Troke had ordered their shield walls to be ten men deep, to stretch the line and prevent easy encirclement by the larger undead flanks, but it wasn’t the Bones that were worrying him. Against these, Hakram would send his warriors all day without a second thought. It was the constructs, which had been waiting patiently to the sides as the shield walls impacted and the troops committed to the clash. And now, the Warlord saw, they were beginning to move.

“Fuck,” Sigvin whispered, “but ghouls are quick.”

“Keter uses them as replacement for cavalry,” Hakram replied, eyes following the same curve as hers.

Thousands of flesh abominations ran on four legs, circling around the orcish shield wall to hit it from the side, but Hakram’s chiefs had been warned. They back lines pulled away and formed another shield wall facing the ghouls. It was the larger constructs that drew his eye, though. Beorns and Tusks, great bears with bellyfuls of dead and boar-like abominations instead filled with rocks. The enemy seemed to lack drakes, save for a few circling above as watchers, and there had been no swarm unleashed. There were no insects to kill and raise, out in the Ossuary: all life had been snuffed out centuries ago.

“There they go,” the Warlord grimly said as the larger constructs began to move.

The enemy’s plan became obvious soon enough. The ghouls were keeping the new, thin shield wall pinned while Beorns circled around towards it. Though Hakram’s warriors were holding the ghouls at bay handily, returning the favour in kind when throats were torn out by fang, the line was not steady. The Beorns would blow holes into it and then pour out skeletons in the holes. As for the Tusks, they slowly began to advance but their destination was not yet clear.

“Are you sure we can trust them?” Sigvin suddenly asked.

“Against the dead? Always,” the Warlord replied.

On Troke’s flank, the assembled shamans of the Clans unleashed their sorceries onto the approaching Beorns. Waves of fire and frost, withering curses that turned flesh to stone or exploded in waves of bronze sorcery. But there were only so many mages among Hakram’s kind, not enough for both flanks. So the Warlord had bargained for reinforcements: as the great abominations approached the line, small bands darted out of the orcish shield wall. A heartbeat later blinding flares burst as the lodges of Lanterns did what they did best: savage giant monsters with the most warlike applications of Light on all of Calernia.

Blinding beams and pale fire, spears and axes and javelins. The priests of Levant, singing the same war hymns they had for centuries, tore wildly into the Dead King’s monsters.

“Good priests,” Sigvin reluctantly conceded.

Hakram did not answer, eyes on the Tusks. They had yet to charge, still moving around without clear purpose. Held back for now? It would make sense. There were no better constructs in the arsenal of Keter to shatter shield walls, best to use them when they would strike the hardest. But that meant his use as a watcher had come to an end. The tall orc reached for his helm, pulling down on his head and tightening the clasp. The shamaness sent him a bright look.

“Into the fight?” she eagerly asked.

“It’s time,” the Warlord agreed. “I’ll lead my warband to-”

Hakram did not finish the sentence and came close to never finish anything ever again. The arrow had fallen down in utter silence, grey and unseen, only for the middle of the shaft to be hit by another arrow five feet away from his throat. He went very still, for a moment, but no other arrow came.

“I owe Indrani a drink,” Hakram Deadhand said, and reached for his axe.

—

There was no hiding where the arrow had come from.

“I have them,” the Grave Binder said.

Ishaq drew Pinon, the blade keening eagerly.

“We move,” he ordered.

Sidonia laughed, Aspasie moaned and the Stained Sister’s face hardened. With the collision of the lines they had been forced back behind the Alavan shield wall, but now the passed through it and into the thick of the dead. Ishaq and Sidonia took the lead, the Barrow Sword smashing through the shield raised in his way while the Vagrant Spear deftly leapt over another and scattered the dead into bones with a burst of Light. The two of them kept making room, clearing the dead in a storm as the rest of their band crossed the shield wall and it closed behind them. They had been quick, but they were fighting a sea and within moments the dead were pressing against them.

“Idris,” Ishaq called out.

“Eyes, ears, tongue,” the Grave Binder hurriedly chanted in Lunara. “I who hold dominion over the dead claim my tax: let none with eyes behold me.”

There were many among Bestowed who thought Idris worthy of mockery, for like other sorcerers of the Dominion his magic could not destroy swaths of foes like that of Praesi and Callowan mages. He was a maker of curses and a necromancer, which had only earned him further mockery as his skill proved inferior to the Dead King’s and he failed to steal control of undead from the Hidden Horror. That was missing, Ishaq had found, the true strength of his Bestowal. His mastery over death was not simple necromancy, it was a deeper power – and that truth was expressed by the way Idris, alone of all the sorcerers of Calernia, could wave curses that affected even undead.

Such as hiding from their eyes a band of five Bestowed as they snuck through an entire army of the dead.

The Barrow Sword had known from the beginning that fighting his way to the Scourges when they hid in the middle of an army would see his band spent by the time the clash began, so he’d ensured they wouldn’t need to fight at all. The Bestowed wove their way through the packed ranks of the enemy, elbowing skeletons and ducking the shadow of great abominations as they heeded Ishaq’s order not to destroy even a single one – lest the Dead King be able to find them through the destruction. They hurried as much as they could, the sensation of moving unseen oddly empowering after the Barrow Sword grew used to the vulnerability, and the Grave Binder guided them straight to the Revenants.

“The three Revenants are clustered together,” Idris whispered.

“What happened to the fourth?” Ishaq frowned.

“Suddenly destroyed while it was trying to join the others,” the Grave Binder replied.

The Barrow Sword traded a look with Sidonia.

“The Lady’s in fine form today,” she cheerfully said, openly pleased.

Was she ever not? Ishaq still remembered her methodically taking the Red Knight apart with knives, making a show of a woman capable of cracking stone walls with her bare hands. He knew well he would have lost that fight in her place, one of the many reasons it paid to remain on good terms with the Woe. The Warden required so little of her allies that Ishaq was frequently baffled she did not have more villains in her service – refraining from excesses was a cheap price for her friendship. Keeping to her rules had seen a cordial truced brokered between him and the rising force in Levant as reward.

The Black Queen hadn’t been subtle about making them work together, but then why bother when she had the authority to do as she wished? He’d have that too, one day. The power to give an order going against centuries of custom and rightly expected to be obeyed. Some mornings he woke up so hungry for it his belly ached.

“There,” Idris suddenly said. “Behind the beorn. Get ready.”

“Sidonia,” Ishaq called out.

“Honour the Blood,” the Vagrant Spear shouted back, leaping atop the massive bear.

She was gone in a moment as the Barrow Sword went around, Aspasie and the Stained Sister following closely.  The Grave Binder was further behind, already whispering his next spell. Idris’ curses could not fool Revenants, who the Dead King empowered beyond his ability to trick, but he would keep all other undead away from them for as long as he could. They had until the Grave Binder faltered to make their kill and ready themselves for retreat. Ishaq turned the corner a moment later, watching as Sidonia struck at their enemies in the flash of Light, and counted three.

In the back, the Hawk was fleeing.

In front of them, two identical silhouettes in armour stood. Iron from head to toe, the helms shaped like the heads of wolfhounds. The Wolfhound, then, and a fake. The strongest defence of the Scourges, covering the Hawk’s retreat. Ishaq rolled his shoulder, Pinon singing as she cut through the air. The Hawk was for the Archer to handle anyhow, he would make do with this one.

“Honour to me,” Ishaq the Barrow Sword grinned, and stepped into the fight.

—

Yannu had taken the time to consider how he would do it, if he were Itima Ifriqui, and decided it would be a man from Tartessos.

Though the Lady of Vaccei was taking a black gamble by attempting Razin Tanja’s assassination during a battle, she was a fool. She was, he had mused, simply used to getting her way. How many dozens of times had she rid herself of foes using the cover an honour war or a hunting day? How many had she poisoned and ordered slain in the night? Itima Ifriqui had killed Blood before and gotten away with it. Her failure was that she had not grasped the danger courted by breaking the treaties of the Grand Alliance. Razin’s death would not be pursued by a few spies or a single Bestowed: the Warden herself would look into such a killing.

And there was no telling how far Catherine Foundling was able to reach for answers.

Still, Itima would know that if she were blamed for Lord Razin’s death she would be facing the bitter vengeance of a widowed Aquiline Osena and a furious Binder’s Blood, whose armies would both come for Vaccei to scour it as harshly as the Principate once had. So Itima must set Tartessos against Malaga in the aftermath, and there was opportunity for that. Several captains in Osena service had been bitterly disappointed by Aquiline’s betrothal, having hoped to win her hand through honour, and there were even more who had lost kin fighting against the Malagans over the rich lands between the two cities. A grudge would not be too difficult to forge as a reason for the killing.

As the two betrothed kept their warriors in blended companies, finding a hand to do the deed was as easy as finding a Tartessos warrior foolish enough to think they might get away with it and greedy enough to believe the riches promised would be given. No doubt Itima had given out some gold as proof she would pay the whole, using the coin to tie the killer to whichever Tartessos man she wanted blamed for the deed. Yannu’s first trouble was that there could be no telling who it was that the Bandit’s Blood had bent to their purpose. It could be any of hundreds, and Razin’s command in the reserves meant he was near too many warriors to count.

Yannu’s second trouble was that he did not want Itima Ifriqui to be caught.

The Lord of Malaga had no doubt she would follow through on the threat Moro had carried, that she would drag him down as well if she was to be killed. And even if she was not, recklessly as she was acting Itima was still his only ally in checking the rise of his enemies. She must then be stopped without being outed, else it all come down on both their heads. Fortunately, though there could be many assassins there was only one life they were after. There lay Yannu’s opportunity, and the way he could yet turn this to his advantage.

“I need you by Razin Tanja’s side,” Yannu told his cousin.

Rima blinked in dismay.

“Now?” she replied. “Yannu, we’re fighting a battle.”

Only half true. The two of them were well behind the lines, with his sworn swords, and not likely to fight until the enemy centre was broken and the Clans were to be reinforced.

“Now,” he agreed. “Itima’s being rash. She wants to kill Razin Tanja.”

His cousin let out a low whistle.

“That’s going to get a lot of people killed,” Rima said, sounding impressed in the worst way.

“Too many,” Yannu agreed. “So I’m sending you to him, as a veteran to help him decide when to send in the reserves.”

“But not to kill him,” she tried.

“Keep him alive at all costs,” the Lord of Alava replied. “I believe Itima’ll be using a Tartessos man to do the deed, so watch them closely.”

“So I’m to constantly keep my hand on my sword for an hour or two around a gaggle of jumpy Tanja armsmen,” Rima grimaced. “There’s a pleasant fucking time in the making.”

“Yes,” Yannu said, unapologetic. “But most important is that when the assassin is revealed, youmust seem them killed.”

Silencing the hand being used was crucial. With no tongue left to wag and no dead Tanja to prompt a deeper look by the likes of the Warden, the only trail left to follow would be the one Itima was sure to have laid pointing towards Tartessos. Rima might even win the Champion’s Blood some honour by saving Razin’s life, if she was quick enough.

“And when the armsmen ask why I looked at every Tartessos man twice all afternoon just before an assassin tried his luck?” Rima asked.

“I will settle that,” the Lord of Alava said. “Simply tell them I had heard there might be an attempt and sent you to make sure he would live.”

He’d have to create a believable way as to how he might have caught out a treacherous Tartessos captain, but it should not be impossible. Especially with Lady Itima’s help, which she would be forced to give him if she did not want to get caught out having had a hand in any of this. Rima slowly nodded.

“You’re sure?” she quietly asked.

“We still need the Brigand’s Blood,” Yannu admitted. “If we lose Vaccei, it is finished.”

Alava could not win alone. It could fight, and might even follow him into that fight to the bitter end, but that the end would be bitter there was no doubt. That meant Itima Ifriqui must live through her blunder, even if he had to cross her to see it done.

“Then it’s done,” Rima said, clasping his arm.

Yannu clasped it back, pulling her close before releasing her. He was not pleased to send her away, but there was no one else he would trust this two. She had trained her right hand to serve as captain of his sworn swords in her absence, should it come to a fight, knowing she might be sent away on duties such as this. As she left his sight, vanishing into the crowd of armed men, the Lord of Alava turned back to the unfolding battle. It was, to his eye, going well. The enemy centre was teetering on the brink of collapse, having spent itself on his people’s shield wall, and though the dead were mounting among the Clans they were holding strong.

The shield wall on the right flank was bending after having been thinned by the Beorns that had survived the sorcery of the orcs, but it looked in no danger of collapse. On both sides the ghouls were being thinned and it looked as if the Warlord had rallied warriors to go on the attack against them. He’s to curve around the shield wall after, Yannu saw. Using on the dead the very same manoeuvre they had wanted to use on him. The Bestowed’s very presence seemed to light a flame in the orcs, he saw, and not only the well-armoured ones he used as his sworn swords.

Wherever the Warlord stood vigor seemed to bleed back into tiring warriors, and they chewed up the dead like a closing maw.

It was worth keeping in- Yannu threw himself down from his horse, his armsmen closing around him with shields raised, but as he landed in the dust and his mount whinnied he saw there had been no need. The arrow he had glimpsed mere feet away from him had been shot out by another, taken in flight.

“Archer,” one of his sworn swords said, and there were murmurs of agreement.

That and respect. The shot that might have killed Yannu had been madness, but it was madder still to have shot it. The Lord of Alava declined help to climb back the saddle, more bruised in pride than body, and returned to watching the battle. The centre was slightly further forward than he would prefer, but it had been too much to expect a fighting line to be too strictly observed. He was more concerned by the Tusks that still waited behind the enemy’s flanks, not yet engaged even though on both sides the orcs were no longer losing grounds. When were they to strike, if not now? An instinct born of long experience had his eyes straying back to the centre, and there he saw it.

Just a moment too late.

The ground collapsed. The entire hollow he had been so wary of, the ruins under ground, had been nothing but a great sand trap. As the handful of dead the Warden had senses below brought down some pillar or another the entire cavern collapsed, turning into a massive pit. A few hundred of the warriors too far forward fell along with the entire enemy centre, though unlike the undead they would not be getting back up from that fall. And now he understood the trap the Enemy had laid, at long last. It’d been too obvious from the start, but that had been the trick: Yannu had never been meant to walk into the collapsing grounds.

He had been meant to keep his army in the wring place because of it.

Already he saw it laid out before him. Two flanks, the orcs holding but slowly losing to the dead on both. His centre, the Dominion forces, had been meant to reinforce the Clans by attacking the flanks once the enemy centre was broken. They would have gone both through the freed centre and through the back, preparing to encircle with the orc warriors as the anchor. Only now half the path was a pit Yannu’s warriors could not march through, and the back path meant circling all the way around the orc shield lines while most of the Dominion army was facing the wrong way.

And he couldn’t even do that, Yannu Marave realized, because behind him the reserves had yet to be committed and they were still in the way.

On the other side of the pit, the enemy reserve – which had stood right outside the edge of the fall – began to advance. On the flanks the Tusks turned as one, facing the shield walls of the Clans, and began to charge.

And over the entire army, for the first time since the battle had begun the Crab took a step forward.

—

“Hold,” Aquiline Osena shouted. “Hold.”

The shield wall wavered despite her screams, despite the way she had left the saddle and gone to stand with her warriors. And though Aquiline kept a face of calm, she was glad that the paint she wore from head to toe hid the sheen of her sweat. The fear that was seizing the shield wall was in her blood too, ice pooling in the belly. What else was she to feel, watching the Crab walking towards them one sickening step at a time? The great abomination’s spindly legs, as repulsive as the scuttling legs of some vermin for all that they were taller than towers, crossed the great pit with ease. All over the carapace of stone and bone the fire-eyes burned, spewing out ever-longer tongues of flame that kept burning on the ground after falling in droplets.

When the Crab got close enough, dozens would be incinerated in a heartbeat with every plume of liquid fire.

Yet it was not the fire that had her warriors inching back, bending away from the sharply inclined pit where hundreds of their comrades had fallen to their death mere moments ago. It was the husks of steel, the strident grinding sound they made as they unfolded and slammed down. The Crab was only hallway through the pit, but already the razor-length hung in the air before the shield wall. At head-height. What shield could possibly hope to turn back such a massive blade? It would pass through the shield wall like a knife through butter, making mist of men. Three hundred feet. Two hundred feet. One hundred feet.

“Hold,” Aquiline shouted again, but her voice wavered.

Her weight was leaning back as well, her body eager to flee even if her heart still hesitated. What had once been the enemy’s centre was digging itself out of the ash and dust, the dead crawling out as they began to climb the slope towards her warriors, but worse than them was the enemy’s reserve. It was proceeding down the slope of the pit in good order, staying in formation as it moved. The broken centre to hold us, the reserve to break us, she thought. All the while the dead tried to break the flanks and collapse the entire army. Dread seized her heart. A defeat, it would be a catastrophic- the sun was botted out by the beat of great wings.

Her shield wall split, like fish around a shark, and a form leapt down from her mount. The crow-horse let out an eerie cry before flying away, leaving the Warden standing alone in an empty circle of warriors. The Mantle of Woe flapped at her back, the many colours of the foes defeated by the Black Queen of Callow a warning against any who would defy her, while her dreadful staff of dead wood dimmed the sight of any who beheld it – as if stealing the light of the world from your eyes. Catherine Foundling cracked her neck, and the Lady of Tartessos did not begrudge the three dozen warriors who widened the circle by taking a wary step back.

But Aquiline Osena was Blood, and Blood did not flinch. She stepped into the circle, coming to stand by the Black Queen as no other dared. A coolly amused brown eye found her before flicking away.

“Aquiline,” the Warden greeted her. “Clever little plan Keter cooked up against us, isn’t it?”

“The Enemy’s wiles run deep,” the Lady of Tartessos replied, forcing calm.

Catherine Foundling was dangerous as a sword was dangerous: not to be feared, save when turned against you. Aquiline had learned much from her and the Army of Callow, enough to be grateful even knowing it was a boon the Grey Pilgrim had bargained for. But the fear would never entirely go away. The Warden was a graveyard made into a woman, her ghosts so many a second kingdom could be made of them for her to rule.

“Ours too,” Catherine Foundling grinned, all teeth and malice. “And the Dead King will need to do better than this if he wants to get the drop on me.”

The air cooled, the sun’s warmth chased away, and Aquiline realized with a start that behind them the Black Queen’s shadow had grown. Lengthened, broadened, until it was as a sea. Her warriors fled the spread of it, and not a moment too soon. From the shadow a massive hairy leg began to emerge, then another, as if some gargantuan creature was climbing out of the darkness.

“Ashen Gods,” Aquiline croaked. “What is this?”

“An old tyrant,” the Warden said, “ridden by a new god.”

Roiling darkness in a gargantuan spider’s shape, dripping rivulets of Night, rose to cast a shadow over them both.

“Keep your shield wall steady, Aquiline Osena,” the smiling madwoman ordered. “I’ll handle the rest.”

—

The Tusk passed through the shield wall like it wasn’t even there, turning orcs and steel alike to crumpled paste without even slowing. Light lashed out at the thick hide in a hook but though it burned through the flesh it scrabbled harmlessly against the stones below. They were just bloody stones, Hakram irritably thought. Nothing for Above to take offence to, so Light was about as useful against it as it would be against a real rock: not at all, unless a great deal of it was used. Skeletons in bronze and iron poured in the gap the Tusk had torn as it shook, turning around for another pass, but there would be none of that.

“Spears,” the Warlord shouted.

They were moving before he even gave the order, Lead pulsing with his heartbeat and whispering through their veins. It kept his warriors up, quickened them, strengthened them. And it left them exhausted to the point of collapse when he left. Nothing was without a price. Two dozen spears tore into the Tusk from the sides, scraping against stone as they found purchase and the screaming monster tried to shake them off. It would not. Hakram’s axe bit in the back of the beast and he used it to hoist himself up on its back, crawling through filth and rotten leather.

“I broke the gates of Okoro,” Hakram Deadhand recited.

He struck. The beast screamed.

“My name echoing three rivers,” he said.

And he struck. The beast’s knees bent.

“And though I died an age ago,” he sang through bared fangs.

And hestruck again, through bone and flesh, until his axe touched stone and stone cracked.

“I live still through your shivers,” the Warlord snarled, striking one last time with the might of his name in his hand

The stone split under his axe like dead wood, the Tusk’s hoarse scream ending abruptly as half its body was carved straight through. Hoarse shouts of approvals, almost howls, and Hakram slid down from the felled beast. He raised his hand in an unspoken order and Dag saw to it, leading champions into the breach to close it and restore the shield wall. It was like holding together a dike, the Warlord thought. Every holed he plugged was followed by another erupting. And still his flank was doing better than Troke’s, which had been so close to collapse that General Pallas had led all her kataphraktoi into a charge to stem the disaster.

Razin Tanja and Oghuz had led the foot behind them, as much because Troke needed the reinforcements as to get out of the way of the troops Yannu was shifting to support Hakram’s shield wall. Already the right edge of the wall was bolstered with Alava armsmen, but the rest would be here late. So fucking late. Hakram’s warriors were fighting like devils, but even with his aspect burning in his belly like a piece of coal he was not sure it would be enough. At least, though he was not the only one buried neck deep in a nightmare.

In the depths of the pit, Night warred with liquid fire and howling sorceries. Tenebrous, stolen from the ruins of Ater and granted to a lesser god as a mount, was fighting against the Crab as Catherine flew on her mount’s back and hammered at the great monster’s back with burning black flames. The heat of the fires was so great he could feel it on the wind even from a mile away and bursts of lightning blinded the unwary, but the smaller spider had cracked open the carapace of the larger Crab and it looked like it was trying to devour what its mandibles tore into.

Hakram was not sure what struck more horror in him: the chorus of screams that came from the Crab, or the demented screeches – which somehow echoed of a crow’s caws – coming from Tenebrous. Either way, he did not envy the Dominion shield wall left behind to hold the centre. They were close enough that eardrums must be bursting from the noise.

Setting aside the thought, the Warlord returned to the fray. His battle was here, holding back the sea lapping as his wall of shields, and he had no time to spare for anyone else. It was all a whirlwind of blood and screams, steel flashing as the dead ripped out shields and threw themselves at warriors. The crawled under, ripping at flesh, ghouls leapt above shields and tore into formations. The Warlord went where the line broke, where strength sagged, and breach by breach his warband dwindled to nothing. Dead or sent to plug holes, none of the faces around him the same he had begun fighting with.

But his mind was cool, clear. His body was dripping with sweat, muscles aching and his limbs itching where they had been cut, but so long as his mind knew clarity he could make himself move. Another cut, another backhand breaking a skull, another ghouls taken by the neck and crushed. There were always more enemies, and it was with utter surprise that Hakram suddenly stood with no one before him. He turned, seeing only awe in the eyes of the warriors behind him, and found he stood alone in a ring of death.

“Report,” Hakram Deadhand croaked, his voice raw from songs he did not remember singing.

“The Dominion has come, Warlord,” a woman with the colours of the Graven Bones on her mangled shield said. “We stand.”

The Warlord looked around. How many had died? Too many, he thought. Thousands on his flank alone. But wherever his gaze went he saw the dead losing ground, fresh Levantine armsmen tearing into them.

“Let Levant handle the rest,” he said. “Pull back in good order.”

The Clans had done enough bleeding for the day. From the corner of his eye he noted that the shield wall left to hold the edge of the pit had pulled back and sneered. They had not even held back that paltry amount of dead, while his own faced the sea and won?

“What happened in the centre?” he asked.

“Aquiline Osena was hit by an arrow,” the same woman told him. “They say she had to be pulled back and may die.”

Hakram grimaced. Well, she wouldn’t be the only one today.

—

Merciless Gods but the Wolfhound could take a beating.

The other Revenant had died in moments, fending off Sidonia’s assault but falling to a single blow of the Stained Sister. Barehanded, she crumpled the helmet and the head behind it. Pinon did not like the taste of her in the air, Ishaq had noticed, which meant it was likely true the Choir of Endurance had taken an interest. Regardless, that aspect of the Sisters’ that lent her such brute strength was proving well worth her attitude. If only the Scourge had proved as easy a prey as the other.

A simple iron shield should not have been able to take a blow from the Barrow Sword’s blade without a scar, but not a single one of them had yet to leave a mark on anything the Wolfhound wore. Ishaq had been told that the Scourge had the finest defence of all in the Dead King’s service, but he had not expected to be dealing with the Keter’s answer to the fucking Mirror Knight. At least, unlike Christophe de Pavanie, the Wolfhound did not strike as hard as he defended. That would have made this fight impossible instead of merely unlikely.

And Ishaq always trusted his luck to get him through unlikely, for good or ill.

“Pierce,” the Vagrant Spear snarled, lunging forward.

Slower than before, though. It was her third time using the aspect, and like the last two it skidded across the side of the iron shield. Ishaq had stepped to the side as Sidonia struck and he moved to flank the Wolfhound, but the Scourge calmly took a step back and kept his sword high. Ready for a parry. The both of them continued circling each other as Sidonia panted loudly, the Stained Sister coming up to take her place. The old woman in the stained priestess garb moved like the wind and leap, but not so quick that her attempt to smash down the shield with both hands was not taken on instead. Ishaq risked a strike, a quick lunge near the neck – he was getting frustrated at never having pierced deep enough for Pinon to drink of the soul – but the parry was waiting.

The surprise came when he saw the Harrowed Witch sent her brother’s ghost trailing behind the Sister and the specter threw himself at the Wolfhound’s legs.

“Go,” the Barrow Sword hissed. “Everyone.”

The Grave Binder was looking unsteady on his feet, which meant they were running out of time to finish this. From the corner of his eye Ishaq saw movement, an arrow, but the Archer once more shot it out of the air before it could get anywhere close. Three more shots followed in quick succession, the Hawk being forced on the run by her opponent for what had to be the fifth time since the fight had begun. Ishaq put it out of his mind, trusting the Archer to cover him, and struck at the Wolfhound’s back. The iron armour held but the blow broke the Scourge’s poise, allowing Sidonia to slap away his shield and the Sister to land a hard blow on his helmet. It bent, ever so slightly, but the Wolfhound himself was slammed down into the dust.

The Barrow Sword, eyes wild, stabbed through the eye and to his triumph felt flesh.

“Drink,” he snarled.

Pinon was every thirsty, but with his aspect behind her pull it was more than soft pulls taken from the soul. The Revenant imprisoned soul ebbed, pulled into his sword, but Ishaq’s eyes widened in utter surprise when he felt the slightest ripple. An aspect. A moment later he was flying, blown off his feet, and Sidonia had a cut across her face that bled red trails down her face paint. He landed on his back, letting out a pained gasp. Pinon did not leave his hand. She never did, unless he made the decision let her go.

Ishaq rose to his feet in time to see the Stained Sister take a shield smash in the face, breaking her nose. For all her strength, she was not a trained warrior. Not like he and Sidonia were. The Vagrant Spear quickly made the Mark of Mercy and struck, bare feet padding across the dust as she used her spear to vault herself above the Wolfhound and strike at his neck form the back. But the shield was in the way, once more, as the Scourge calmly pivoted.

“Ishaq,” the Grave Binder croaked out. “Not long now. Hurry.”

It was slipping out of his fingers, the Barrow Sword realized. It was all so very close, and he was going to end up with nothing because his aspects were a poor match for the Scourge’s. Because too many of his band had been brought for the talent that would get them out or in the fight instead of help during. The rage, the indignation, burned in his belly like acid.

“No,” he hissed, even as Sidonia burned another aspect to move quickly enough to avoid being skewered.

He took a step forward, then two.

“No,” Ishaq repeated, even as the halo of Light forming around the Sainted Sister was snuffed out by mere closeness to the iron armour.

Close now, close enough the Wolfhound was keeping him in sight.

“No,” the Barrow Sword bit out, as Aspasie’s brother was carved through and dispersed.

The spectre would reform, but not for some time. It did not matter, because now Ishaq was on his enemy and there would be no quarter. He took the shield bash on the face head on, his helm of bronze ringing, and though his nose broke he grinned through the blood and caught the Wolfhound’s shield arm. The Scourge began pulling away, its strength implacable, but Ishaq smashed his bloody head int the Revenant’s helm and broke the effort. He smashed Pinon’s pommel into the faceplate of the helm, rocking back his foe, and in the heartbeat that followed felt a blade slide into his guts.

“No,” the Barrow Sword spat into the Scourge’s face, spit red, and slammed his blade through the eyehole again.

Drink, he thought again, with all his greed and rage. The aspect bit deep, bit hard, and for a glorious instant the soul came loose. Only then there was that fucking ripple, and it was all going to – Ishaq felt a faint touch on his shoulder, light as feather. He could not look, could not move in this frozen moment, but if he turned he somehow knew he would see a crow.

The offer went unsaid, but it might as well have been screamed.

“I have sold more of me for lesser prizes,” Ishaq laughed, and saw in his mind’s eye a pair cold smiles under silver eyes. “Take all you want.”

Night flooded through his veins, blazing ice, and he tossed it blindly at the Scourge’s soul. The heartbeat passed, the ripple finished, and the Barrow Sword was once more thrown off his feet. He landed roughly, bleeding ad pained and well on his way to death, but he was laughing. Because the Wolfhound took a staggering step, then another, and then on the third that fucking helmet blew up in a burst of black flames. Still laughing wildly, Ishaq pulled himself up.

“How does it go again?” he said, wiping tears. “Ah, yes.”

The Barrow Sword raised his blade to the sky in a salute.

“Chno Sve Noc, my darlings,” Ishaq grinned though his bloodied beard.

Behind them, in the distance, one colossal monster finished ripping apart another. A great Crab reputed in a storm of flame that blotted out the sky, glassing the ground, while a gargantuan spider wreathed in Night let out victorious screeches.

“Best we get out of the army before the Warden starts stepping on it,” the Barrow Sword noted, smiling back in the face of the wary looks from the heroines. “Aspasie?”

“Oh Gods I would have left like an hour ago,” the Harrow Witch replied, and her sorcery snapped into place.

The same trick that had let her survive the dead, Ishaq thought with satisfaction, should be enough to get the five of them out of the army unseen before he finished bleeding out. It would be a poor end to his first deed in the Rolls, the Barrow Sword mused, to die.

Even if he got back up afterwards.

—

Lady Itima Ifriqui blinked at the messenger.

“You’re certain?” she carefully asked.

“Hundreds saw it, my lady,” the man replied. “It was too deep a wound for it to be cauterized by a Lantern, she had to pull back to get a healer.”

Itima’s mind raced. Was this Yannu’s doing? Cleaning up the other threat now that the battle was turning into a victory? It was not her that had given the order. It was Razin she had in her sights, having laid a trail to have a jealous Tartessos captain who wanted Aquiline’s hand blamed for it, but it should not yet have been carried out. Perhaps it was the Enemy’s work and not that of the Lord of Alava, she decided. The two of them slain in a single battle would be too obvious, certain to have the Warden taking a closer look at the matter. The Gods were having a laugh at their expense, it seemed.

“Will she live?” the Lady of Vaccei bluntly asked.

The messenger hesitated, coming closer, and Itima frowned as she leant in. There were only armsmen around her, trusted Ifriqui men, but it paid to be careful. Still, it felt like theatre to – the knife moved in a blur but Itima was of the Brigand’s Blood. She caught the wrist before it did more than scrape her cheek and she had a dagger sliding in the man’s belly before a heartbeat had passed, twisting to make the assassin gasp in pain.

“You fool,” she hissed. “You think you’re the first to try? I’ll keep you alive for days before you get the mercy of death.”

“Honour,” the man gasped, “to the Blood.”

Her stomach tightened and she dropped the assassin, taking a step back and touching her cheek. A single cut. Poison.

“Healer,” Lady Itima barked at her armsmen. “Get me a healer now.”

Thirty men and women stood around her, the tabards over their coats of mail in the colours of the Vengeful Brigand’s Blood. Loyal warriors, the finest in the service of the Ifriqui.

Not one of them moved.

Itima Ifriqui beheld the circle of steel around her which she had thought a shield a heartbeat ago but now recognized as a cage. She did not ask who, because there was only one man they would have betrayed her to: another Ifriqui. A spasm shuddered across her body, bringing her to her knees. A quick poison, Itima dimly thought. And almost painless.

Within thirty heartbeats she was dead.

—

The messenger whispered into Moro’s ear and Razin watched as the man’s scarred face convulsed with grief.

“Sad news?” the Lord of Malaga asked.

“It appears that my mother’s heart gave, Lord Razin,” Moro Ifriqui sadly said. “They think it was the hours in the heat wearing armour. Her health has been getting worse for years, but she insisted on taking the field today.”

The way he said it, it almost sounded true. The woman who had murdered three of Aquiline’s brothers was dead, the Lord of Malaga thought. A feud would be buried with her.

“She will have passed seeing us victorious, at least,” Razin gently said. “Take comfort in that.”

“There is no comfort to take in any of this, I think,” Moro said, tone too raw to be a lie.

It was not, Razin reminded himself, about good and bad.

“Then why?” he asked.

Why come to me, why take my deal, why refuse to return to the tower and close the door behind you.

“I told my brother,” Moro Ifriqui softly said, “that I get him home to his family.”

Razin met the other man’s eyes.

“We all want to go home, Razin Tanja,” the man who was to be Lord of Vaccei said. “And not to fight another fucking war. So I’ll do whatever’s needed to get us there.”

“Eyes like poison, heart like stone,” Razin softly quoted.

Moro finished the verse from the Anthem of Smoke, changing only a word.

“By my hand a thousand graves sown,” the Ifriqui murmured.

Silence held between them. Soon enough, a man that Itima Ifriqui had paid to kill Razin would try to do so. Rima Marave would silence him before he could speak. And when the coin was followed, it would be revealed that Careful Yannu had been the one to pay the assassin, that he had planned to kill an ally in the midst of a battle against the Dead King himself. But Razin would keep the secret, keep the Lord of Alava from being called a traitor by all of Calernia and the Valiant Champion’s Blood from being dishonoured beyond repair.

He would do this so long as, when they all returned to Levant, Yannu Marave did not take up arms.

Razin Tanja watched the distant line of horizon, sitting the saddle, and wondered about the nature of change.

“Reputation is in the hand of others, but honour only in yours.”

– Levantine saying

Moro Ifriqui squinted through the Baalite eye at the horizon, then put it down to pat the neck of his Segovian shortmane. A beautiful beast, though he had never named her, and from a breed that the Brigand’s Blood had been riding for more than a century. The Segovians were Procerans, but they were also old allies against the princes Orense. They had long traded fine horses and steel to Vaccei at generous prices so that their common enemy would continue to suffer raids at the southern border.

“Anything?” Siraj asked.

Moro’s younger brother looked wary, as he often did these days. It had not yet strayed into cowardice so he had not spoken of it, but he would have to if the men noticed. The heir to Vaccei felt for his brother, who only wanted to return to his wife and daughters, but the Brigand’s Blood could not show weakness. Theirs were a hard people, and those who ruled over them must be harder still.

“Not yet,” Moro said. “The dead send no vanguard.”

None that he could see, anyhow. The poison clouds obscured much of the view.

“Would that Yannu Marave did the same,” Siraj sighed.

Moro sent his brother a sharp look and the younger man – only by two years, but younger still – hurriedly straightened. None of the riders come with them had been close enough to hear, but it had been a risk.

“There will be honour to be found in the shield wall, vanguard or not,” Moro evenly said.

“I await it eagerly,” Siraj replied just as evenly. “Mayhaps I will even take a Revenant’s head, tug honour my way instead of yours for once.”

Moro nodded, satisfied, and guided his horse closer to his brother’s.

“Mother will have you commanding the archers,” he murmured. “You will hold them in your arms again, Siraj.”

The younger man grimaced, twisting his face paint: umber brown and basil green, the Vengeful Brigand’s own colours.

“It is not the dead that worry me,” Siraj said, leaning closer and lowering his voice. “What Mother plans…”

Moro’s jaw tightened.

“It is too late to hesitate,” he replied. “The order has already been given.”

A small cut and a quick poison. In the chaos of the fight neither be noticed. It is necessary, Moro reminded himself. For our Blood, for our family. It was a grim business, but grim was the business of the Brigand’s Blood. Doing anything it took was how they’d survived without bending to Tartessos or Malaga when both were stronger. Poison, night ambushes, killings without honour. Sometimes even bargains with dark powers. Mother had never admitted outright, but she’d hinted enough he was sure the rumours about having paid the Marauder to kill Aquiline Osena’s older brother were true.

“If we’re caught, it is the end of us,” Siraj murmured.

“If we do nothing,” Moro tiredly said, “it is the end of us as well. Or do you think the Osena will end our blood feud after they claim the Tattered Throne with the Tanja?”

Siraj grimaced again, a silent concession. Razin Tanja was no enemy, but neither was he a friend. And with him so obviously taken with his betrothed, the old Ifriqui game of playing Malaga against Tartessos would find no purchase.

“Stay out of it and keep your silence, brother,” Moro said, leaning close. “I’ll do what needs to be done so you can go home to your family.”

“You’re my family too, Moro,” Siraj softly replied.

Part of him ached to pull his brother close, to let him know it would be all right, but he knew he could not. Eyes were watching. Eyes like poison, heart like stone, the Anthem of Smoke went. By his hand a thousand graves sown. Honour to the Blood, Moro reminded himself. He was a son of Vaccei, and there weakness was death.

“Then listen to me,” he replied.

Shaking his head, he carefully returned the Baalite eye to its leather sheath before glancing at his brother.

“Return to Mother,” Moro ordered. “Tell her the dead advance without vanguard and I am riding to report this to Lord Marave personally as a courtesy.”

She would know what it meant. He was, after all, following Itima Ifriqui’s plan.

—

Yannu hated the smell here.

Even after the Lanterns burned the poison out of the air, even through the cloth mask, the Lord of Alava could smell a residual stench in the air. One not unlike the smell near the hill mines, the kind that stayed against the roof of your mouth and tasted of blood. He glanced at Rima, seeing that under the cloth she was scowling as well. Of all his cousins he had long liked Rima best, ever since they were children playing together in the grass. Though a Marave in name she was too far from the main line to be considered as his successor, but he had brought her up as much as he could when he came lord of Alava. She was the captain of his sworn swords, now, and the many scars she’d taken guarding his back had proved his trust to be without error.

“Do you remember,” the Lord of Alava said, “the first time we ever saw the mines?”

Rima’s scowl deepened, pulling at the scar that went through her left eyebrow. The red of it was just a shade different than the red of the Marave colours, though she was careful never to paint the ashen stipes close so it would not stand out.

“I remember thinking they were foul as Below’s asshole,” Rima said, “and that only a devil would send anyone in those pits.”

“That makes me a devil, then,” Yannu grunted.

“We are what we are,” Rima shrugged, unconcerned.

He’d hated those mines too, as a boy. The sight of men and women going down into the pits to break their bodies breaking stone so ore could be ripped out of the earth had disgusted him. Yannu had never thought to inherit Alava as a boy, for though his great-aunt Sintra had named his father heir he had an older sister. But he had thought that when she became Lady of Alava he might speak to her of the mines and quarries. Of closing them, perhaps. Then a wound gone bad during an honour war with Malaga had taken her a year before his father fell to old age and Yannu Marava, Lord of Alava, had learned a bitter lesson.

His lands were known for orchards and cattle, but they alone were not enough for Alava to stand. Malaga had cattle herds as well and Levante’s orchards almost as fine. It was the wealth hidden in the hills, the ores and the stone, that kept Alava’s warriors in steel and the people fed through cattle-fevers and lean seasons. Mines and quarries were his blood’s backbone, and to close them would be as breaking his own back. He had done what he could, sending prisoners to work instead of men of honour, but never closed a single one. The memory of that added an intimacy to his distaste for the scent, though the smell was not the only thing lately that had left a foul taste in the mouth.

He glanced to the east, where the banners of Tartessos and Malaga were raised together. The eastern flank of the column was shared by the warriors of the Slayer and Binder’s blood. Rima followed his gaze without difficulty – she was even taller than him, though slimmer in build.

“The banners are nothing,” his cousin said. “A gesture. It’s the shield wall that worries me, Yannu. No one else has blended companies in our lifetime.”

“They do the same with their skirmishers,” Yannu grimly said.

Before going east into Praes, the betrothed pair had kept their captains separate. Malaga’s warriors under Malagan captains, Tartessos’ under their own. No longer. Warriors of both lands served under captains of either. Though Razin Tanja had claimed the measure had come from the losses in the Wasteland, that it had been simpler to blend companies than be forced to disband some by insistence on keeping sworn warriors separate, Yannu knew it to be an excuse. The two youngbloods were tightening their alliance, getting their warriors used to fighting as one host.

And so those banners raised together to the east were one of the most dangerous things Yannu Marave had ever seen.

“You could have split them,” Rima said. “You have the right.”

He did. Lord Yannu Marave held command over all captains of the Dominion in this battle, twenty-seven thousand warriors marching in a loose column across the great dusty plains around Keter. Land that men called the Ossuary, after the many armies had had died here only to rise again as a host of bones.

“It would have been a mistake,” Careful Yannu said. “I do not hold the only command on the field, Rima. The Warlord and General Pallas would have seen through my reasons and word spread. That is more dangerous to us than leaving them together.”

Too many people already had eyes on the Dominion. Yannu had been pleased of Rozala Malanza’s coronation as First Princess, for their years of sharing a front had ensured he was closest to her of the Blood much as Itima Ifriqui had once been closest to First Prince Cordelia, but it was clear she had no intention to involve Procer in Levant’s affairs after the war. It was the League that troubled him, for Empress Basilia was already making advances. She wanted the League of Free Cities to fill the void the Thalassocracy had left as the Dominion’s closest ally and sign defence pacts against the Principate.

For such pacts to be signed there needed to be someone seated on the Tattered Throne, and that meant Basilia Katopodis had to gain in securing a quick succession should she be given an opening – and it would not be the Champion’s Blood she backed, if it came to that.

Yannu would have liked to bargain with Callow, but he could not. The Black Queen was said to be fond of Razin and Aquiline, even rumoured to call them ‘her lordlings’ in council. She had even ensured they stood for Levant at the talks with the Dread Empire, an honour that had once belonged only to those of the Pilgrim’s Blood. If she was brought in, where her favour would lie was clear as springwater. No, Yannu must keep other powers out of the matter at all costs: the only one likely to aid his cause had no hunger for getting involved. And that meant giving no excuse for the rest to involved themselves.

An excuse like weakening the Dominion’s fighting strength because of internal matters.

“They did not fight me when I sought the command, Rima,” Yannu continued. “That says much.”

It meant neither Razin Tanja nor Aquiline had thought it worth a quarrel to have either of their names attached to a great battle against the dead instead of his. Worse, Yannu found he did not disagree with their decision.

The two of them had accolades enough to their name they did not need to take risks to earn more. They’d fought well before and during the great offensive in Hainaut, ending in the battle at the capital where Lord Razin – the weakest reputation of the two – was said to have faced a Scourge and lived. Since then the Black Queen had dragged them east into her campaign to settle Praes, where it was said they had fought with distinction at the Battle of Kala. After they had stood for Levant at the Tower’s fall and the talks that followed, speaking for all of the Dominion as neither the Champion’s or the Brigand’s Blood ever had.

 Most unsettling, though, was the distant amiability with the Barrow Sword. They’d pushed hard for the Bestowed to be given a chance to earn a place in the Rolls in the service of the Dominion, which looked to Careful Yannu like an alliance in the making.

“They’re looking past the battles here,” Rima grunted in agreement. “The boy, that. Aquiline’s a fine killer but she thinks in blood and prize heads. Tanja’s as clever as his father was.”

And nowhere as proud, Yannu thought, which made him more dangerous. As Rima had grasped, they were preparing for the days after Keter, he understood, for what would come after the war. When the captains and their warriors returned home and the truce birthed by Cordelia Hasenbach came at an end. There would be blood, that much was certain, for the Tattered Throne stood without any Isbili left to claim it for the first time since the founding of the Dominion, coming with it the prize of rule over Levante: the largest, wealthiest city in all of Levant. Yannu knew it would come to war, for the heads of two great lines of the Blood were set to wed and with the Isbili dust there could be no better bid for the Tattered Throne than such an alliance.

And he had no intention of letting them make of the Dominion their kingdom.

There was noise behind him, so Yannu reined in his horse and glanced at Rima. She snorted and went to have a look, leaving the Lord of Alava to stare at the western flank of the marching column. There his own warriors and Vaccei’s marched, distanced and under their own captains. Further west the great glittering snake that was the Clans under the Warlord was keeping up with his own host, while the thick of cataphracts under General Pallas screened the sides of both armies as they advanced. Rima returned quick enough he did not have time to grow bored by the sight.

“Moro Ifriqui’s back from the scouting trip,” she said. “Coming to report in person.”

“Not necessary,” Yannu frowned.

“The report, the man or the entire lot of them?” Rima drily replied.

He did not answer. Like most Alavans his cousin cared little for the Ifriqui, even less so now that his talks with them had come to nothing. His attempts to bind the Champion’s Blood to the Brigand’s in answer had been frustratingly unsuccessful. Yannu himself kept only to men, a preference shared by none of Itima’s sons – the oldest of which, Moro, was over a decade younger than him anyhow – and though both lines had other kin the ages did not align. Itima’s eldest granddaughter was three years old too young for any of his nephews, and though her youngest son was still unwed he was in his twenties while Yannu’s oldest niece was twelve.

Matches further from the main line could be made, but to what purpose? They could not bind an alliance or hope to eclipse the prestige of a wedding between the Lady of Tartessos and the Lord of Malaga. That left their alliance one of circumstance, held together only by common enemies.

“They are allies still,” the Lord of Alava finally said. “And have reason to remain so.”

Itima and Aquiline hated each other like poison over the matter of the deaths of the Osena’s brothers, so the Lady of Vaccei had much to fear from her enemy’s ascension. Yannu himself had slain Akil Tanja in an honour duel, which would make Razin his enemy until death, though that was not the reason he opposed the youths.

“They’re Ifriqui,” Rima scathingly said. “They have no cause, not like you do. It’s not hunger or fear that sets you against the married banners.”

Yannu had no intention of seeking the Tattered Throne for himself or the Champion’s Blood. He would prefer it if neither Itima nor her sons sat it either, though he might not get that choice. His preference would be for the Painted Knife or the Valiant Champion to be raised to rule of Levante as a reward, though he knew Rafaella would not be a popular choice. Though the Valiant Champion had gone as far as eschewing face paint to distance herself from the Marave even after Yannu had executed everyone involved in the betrayal, she was still a Champion. It would be seen by other lines as Yannu reaching for the Tattered Throne through a cheap trick. In truth, Yannu did not much care who sat the throne so long as it was neither of the betrothed.

They would be too strong, that was made their claim unacceptable. Malaga was second in wealth only to Levante due to its canal while Tartessos controlled the access to the Brocelian Forest and its treasures. If they gained Levante and through it mastery of the Gulf trade, they would hold the entire Dominion by the throat.

It was even worse than it looked, he had realized over the year of war. Alava traded the ore and stone of its hills to Levante for grain from its fertile fields, while Vaccei traditionally imported cattle and steel from Malaga and Levante. If the Tattered Throne fell into the hands of the betrothed, they would not need war to bring the rest of Levant to heel whenever they wished: they could simply close their doors and let their foes wither on the vine. The Majilis would grow meaningless, no longer a council of equals guided by the Holy Seljun but instead a court with a king and queen ruling over it. It would be the end of the Dominion, the dream sung of in the Anthem of Smoke.

Let neither queen nor prince rule over our dominion, the Grey Pilgrim’s daughter and successor had pleaded, and for that plea Yannu would go to war. He was not certain, however, that he could win that war.

Though the alliance of Tartessos and Malaga was surrounded, to the north by Vaccei and to the south by his own Alava, it had strong bones. Malaga was wealthy and the home of the binders while Tartessos strengthened its forces with free captains and adventurers that tried their luck in the Brocelian. Even if Itima Ifriqui could be counted on to stand against them – which she could not, the Brigand’s Blood were snakes and Itima the most cold-blooded of the nest – it promised to be a long, brutal slog of a war. The kind that broke realms. Better to kill one of the betrothed and snuff out the alliance before it took flight, Yannu had thought, and Itima had unsurprisingly agreed when he brought her into the plot. She’d already killed enough Osena not to balk at one more.

But, after Moro was brought forward and discarded the excuse of the report to carry a message from his mother, Yannu’s heart clenched with the cold fear that he might have made a mistake.

“This is drivel,” the Lord of Alava flatly said.

Moro Ifriqui, eldest child to Lady Itima and heir to Vaccei, had a hard face that life had seen fit to further scar. The redness of them was striking against his brown and green face paint, as another stripe of colour.

“We must act now, Lord Yannu,” Moro said, speaking his mother’s words with his own mouth. “They will wed when Keter falls and killing them when victory is won will only draw more attention.”

They were not yet married, Yannu thought, precisely to discourage knives being sent after them. Aquiline likely meant it a deed of honour, not beginning the fight when the Grand Alliance bound them all still, but Lord Akil’s son had grown canny as his father. He had done it so that any attack on them would be seen as so thoroughly unprovoked it would draw the ire from all the world. And that was the very trap Itima was stepping into now.

“Neither can be killed while we war against the dead,” Yannu said. “There will be trouble when we kill Tanja after the victory, but it will only be a stain on our reputation. To kill him now would be betraying the Grand Alliance.”

“Only,” Moro Ifriqui said, “if we get caught. We have men who-”

“Enough,” the Lord of Alava harshly replied. “I have refused, Moro. There will be no arrow loosed.”

The heir to Vaccei shrugged.

“That choice is no longer in your hands,” he said.

Yannu considered killing him, then and there. The Ifriqui had come with only a small escort of riders and Yannu’s own sworn swords were closer and better armed. None were close enough to overhear them speaking, which meant none would be close enough to stop him from slaying the other man should he strike first. It would cause much trouble and solve little, the Lord of Alava decided after a moment. Anger was not enough of a reason to kill.

“Should I warn them,” Lord Yannu said, “your entire line could be ended today.”

“You won’t,” Moro replied, appearing unworried. “If you try to bury us, we’ll drag you into the grave with us. And it won’t even matter if it’s true: they’ll use it to get rid of you regardless.”

That was, the lord grimly thought, likely true. He had slain Akil Tanja in an honour duel, and though his son had forsworn vengeance that did not mean there was no enmity between them.

“We’re in the same boat, Lord Yannu,” Moro smiled. “So let’s not fight, else we’ll both end up in the water.”

“This is not what we agreed,” Yannu insisted.

And, to his shame, his eyes drifted to the side. Past the column of warriors, up in the sky where a lone silhouette flew in lazy circles. The Warden, on her black-feathered mount.

“She has greater worries than us,” Moro said, following his gaze.

“Pray that she does,” he replied.

It was a dismissal and the younger man heeded it. Too many risks, Careful Yannu thought, as he watched Moro’s back and Rima returned to his side.

He would have to act.

—

Map of the Kingdom of the Dead had remained largely the same over the last three centuries, though few of them extended far to the north of Keter itself. The most comprehensive extended all the way to the shores of the lake some called the Chalice and the outskirts of what was now known as the Duskwood, but rare were the maps that went any further. Mostly Ashuran ones, as the Thalassocracy’s sailing ships sometimes circled the north of Calernia and their captains were particular about chart-making. The heartlands of the Kingdom of the Dead, though, were as much known territory as any land that was death on all who tread it could be.

It was why Hakram had several fine maps of the large plains surrounding Keter, the so-called ‘Ossuary’, coming from different nations.

He had halted to consult them atop a low hill, in particular an Arlesite map from the Ninth Crusade that bucked the reputation of Proceran maps being horribly unreliable by proving to be by far the most accurate of the lot. An hour past they’d marched across a long-dry riverbed that had been marked on it and no other parchment, which had only reinforced Hakram’s trust in the mapmaker’s work. The northwest of Keter had been fertile lands, once upon a time, and there were still traces of that. Dry riverbeds now only ever filled by rain were one, but there’d been more than grass and fields here during the days of Sephirah.

“That,” the Warlord muttered, “could be trouble.”

Sigvin leaned over his shoulder, peering at the parchment. She wore good chain mail that went up to her neck, hiding her ritual scars, and there was an axe at her hip. Unlike a warrior, though she had no shield. As a shaman, she was not to join the shield wall.

“What does the symbol mean?” she asked.

“Ruins,” Hakram said. “The remnants of a city.”

She looked understandably skeptical. Poison clouds obscured sight over long distances on the Ossuary, but a city so close to Keter would have been noticed. Troke Snaketooth, standing to the side of them and listening closely, looked as if he had an inkling.

“How old?” the chief of the Blackspears asked.

“Old enough there’s no one left that speaks the language,” Hakram replied. “There’s almost nothing left and what remains is largely buried. I doubt anyone who notice the ruins without walking over them.”

“And yet they are to be trouble,” Oghuz the Lame said, frowning.

The chief of the Red Shields had come out in warrior’s mail, though he was unlikely to fight in the shield wall. Juniper’s father was yet an able champion, though, and might choose a worthy fight to step into so that his clan would continue to hold his name in high regard.

“General Pallas sent word the dead are marching our way,” the Warlord said. “At our current pace, in two hours we will clash over the ruins or close.”

Hakram spat to the side, into the dust.

“The Hidden Horror does not deal in coincidences,” he told them

Word would have to be sent. General Pallas and Lord Yannu should be told, he thought, but his eyes moved to the sky to the third in need of telling. A cloud of green hid away Catherine’s distant silhouette but she was out there. Had been since dawn when they set out to march. The ruins were not from any of the thirteen great cities of ancient Sephirah, Hakram knew as much from their walk through the shards in Arcadia, but there had been other cities and towns in the kingdom – and there was no telling what the Dead King might have hidden in their ruins, buried under ash and dust.

And what the Warlord could not sniff out, the Warden might.

It would take more than a shout to reach her, but fortunately, Hakram had the means at hand. His gaze swept down the hill, where his warband had halted to wait for him while the rest of the warriors continued in the column led by Dag Clawtoe. A ring had formed, warriors leaning close as two people struggled, and the Warlord almost sighed. Hidir Bearkiller, a champion nearly seven feet tall with muscles like tree trunks whose favourite thing to do while drunk was be thrown into a pit with a steppe razor bear and kill it with his bare hands, yelped in pain cursed as Archer caught his thumb and began to bend it back. He gave in after there was an ominous crack, to the cheers of half the onlookers as Indrani beat her fourth consecutive challenger to the finger-game.

None of them had believed a human would have the strength to beat an orc at it, Named or not, which was why Hakram was now owed several bottles of Sleeping Bonesaragh no younger than five years.

“She is a menace,” Oghuz complimented.

Juniper’s father looked genuinely impressed. It was only a game, but the sight of Indrani twisting the arms of warriors with at least a foot on her repeatedly had made an impression.

“So far only to my champions,” the Warlord drily replied.

He had assembled a warband of champions from all the clans as his retinue, since it would have been an insult to keep relying on the Howling Wolves and the Red Shields forever – if not to them, then to all his other followers. They were not as well trained as a Howling Wolves warband, even after regular drills, but the warriors had markedly improved. The heavy armour bought from Praes and reforged by clan blacksmiths had only made his warband of a thousand fiercer, though apparently only so that Archer might better maul them.

The devil in question was headed his way, strutting triumphantly after having clapped Hidir’s back with affection, and Hakram rolled his eyes at her.

“Aren’t you supposed to be with the Levantines?” he asked.

All the Blood had retinues to protect them, but there were enemies sworn swords could little again. Worry had been that the Hawk might try to bag one of the great lords of Levant during or after the battle, Archer had been brought along as much to keep the Blood alive as to face the Scourge. Losing any of them would be a hard blow to the Dominion morale, on top of a headache to sort out – neither Razin Tanja nor Aquiline Osena had clear successors to their title.

“They’re all over anyways, except for the lovebirds,” Indrani easily replied. “Better to be out here where I can watch over the entire lot at once.”

There was some sense in that. There was no telling when or from where the Hawk would loose its arrow, so taking the Scourge out before it shot was unlikely. Better for Archer to take a defensive posture and aim for the arrow instead of the Revenant. It was still, Hakram thought, a decision she would never have thought to make a few years ago. You’re changing, he thought. It was a bittersweet thing, for it to happen only after he had left. The Warlord cut through the thought.

“I need you to send a message,” Hakram said.

Indrani pointed upwards, cocking an eyebrow. He nodded.

“You know I’m always game for an excuse to shoot at Cat,” Archer cheerfully said. “What do you need to say?”

Sigvin shot her a warm look, charmed by the romance of it. The mage from the Split Tree Clan had not met enough humans to know that violence did not usually take much of a role in their courting. Mind you, Hakram was not entirely sure she was wrong in this case.

“I’ll write it down,” the Warlord replied. “Wait for me.”

“Sure, sure,” Indrani dismissed, then slid a sly look at Sigvin. “So, Siggy, I hear tell you’ve been riding the Deadhand.”

“I have,” Sigvin nodded, then flashed a grin. “There are worse ways to pass the time.”

Indrani laughed. He should, Hakram only now realized, never have allowed those two to meet. A tactical mistake of some weight had been made. One obvious enough even Troke shot him a sympathetic look.

“So is he any good?” Archer asked. “’cause Tordis said so back in Callow, but she was sweet on him I think and when a girl’s sweet she-”

Hakram tactically retreated in search of ink and parchment before he could hear more. The quicker he was rid of Archer the better.

—

General Pallas whistled loudly, her escort smoothly coming to a halt around her as they joined with the riders that had been awaiting her. The word from the outriders had been interesting enough that she had decided to come in person even as word was sent to the other commanders. Her kataphraktoi had told it true, she saw with her own eyes. The dead had ceased their march. Across the plains an army of the dead stood in silence, arrayed in a firm battle line with a reserve at the back and constructs to the side where a living host would place cavalry.

Behind them all, looming tall as a mountain, the Crab belched out smoke that filled the sky,

“They do not advance when provoked?” Pallas asked, turning towards Captain Dion.

The young man led the outriders, and had been the one to first send word.

“Not even when we enter bow range,” Captain Dion confirmed.

It seemed, General Pallas thought, that the dead had chosen where they would give battle. In the distance behind her, she saw the trail of dust from the advancing columns of the orcs and the Levantines. Less than an hour away now. The Warlord had not mentioned what the ancient city said to be buried near here was called, if Deadhand knew at all.

“A simple name, then,” Pallas mused. “The Battle of the Ruins should do nicely.”

This is a placeholder post.

As of April, extra chapters are Patreon-exclusive until the end of the book. Become a patron and you can read it ahead!

Here is a link to the Patreon.