A Practical Guide to Evil-Chapter Book 7 ex29: Interlude: Legends III

First Princess Rozala Malanza sat her saddle, fingers clenched around the handle of her sword, and watched as her people died like flies.

Conscripts, fantassins and the remains of the armies of Procer stormed the last wall of Keter with ladders. Not for her soldiers, the siege towers and ballistae of the easterners: they made do with courage and catapults, the carpet of corpses beneath their fit so thick it was as if a snowstorm of cadaver had blown through. A ram was hammering at the gate below, enchanted by her finest mages, but it was like trying to smash a stone with an egg. However skilled her wizards, they were no match for the Hidden Horror’s arcane mastery.

Yesterday, in that world that was taken back, Rozala and her host had not made it this far. They might not have this time, either, had the Fox not shattered the encirclement they’d charged into and anchored her left flank as she pivoted her lines to the right to face the onslaught. It had been a hard fight but she had won it, driving back the dead and shattering the houses in their wake to make barricades just as the Dead King had done against them as they’d advanced. A third of the Grey Legion had retreated through the gates into the inner city, Rozala having to twice order Prince Otto back so he would not pursue.

The northerners had been pulled back, moved to the rearguard where healers were trying to keep as many of their wounded alive as possible. The First Princess knew the weight of the debt she owed: the Lycaonese had served as her vanguard all the way to the rampart, shattering themselves on every barricade and elite guard so that the rest of the army would arrive in good state. It had been a cold choice for her to make, but a necessary one. If her soldiers were to die by the score with every heartbeat as they tried the inner wall, she would rather send the conscript into that storm than the Lycaonese.

Procer still had plenty of men, for all its horrendous losses, but few of the calibre of the Lycaonese. They were a resource to he carefully spent, not carelessly thrown into the slaughterhouse.

However ugly the thought, it was the price of being in command to have to think it. Rozala’s role on this dark day was not to keep soldiers alive but to win, for defeat now would be the end of them all. And still the princess of Aequitan – and Salia, now that she sat the high throne – felt her gauntleted hand grind against the grip of her sword. Everywhere she looked, men died. They shouted and screamed and fought with desperate strength to take the wall, but the strength of the Enemy was not waning. She was forced to look away from the butchery when her personal guard parted to allow a mounted man through.

“Your Highness,” Prince Arsene greeted her, bowing as much as he could when armoured and ahorse.

“Your Grace,” Rozala simply replied.

She did not ask him why he had come, letting silence do the speaking for her.

“Captain-General Ferreiro has swept the wall,” the Prince of Bayeux informed her. “She has a foothold and requests reinforcements so that she might expand on it.”

The First Princess took a moment to recall where the fantassin captain was fighting – further east, close to Beatrice of Hainaut’s forces – before decisively nodding.

“Then we commit the reserves to her breach,” Rozala said. “The gatehouse still holds strong, we may not have another opportunity.”

“My thoughts exactly,” Prince Arsene smiled.

Even odds whether or not he was lying. The Prince of Bayeux had spent most of the war trying to keep his soldiers out of the fighting as much as possible, but he was not unskilled in military matters. For all that he was averse to risk in battle, he might well realize that Rozala meant every word when she said that this might be the only opportunity for a breakthrough they would get today. Desperation on your part did not mean weakness on the enemy’s, the First Princess knew. She had learned that lesson during the Great War, long before she sat a throne.

“Pass on my compliments to Captain-General Ferreiro,” Rozala added. “I believe the Ligera Bandera might well be the first to take the wall today. A boast worth adding to the histories of their company.”

Should they all survive, she did not add. It was the dark cloud that haunted every sentence spoken these days, like some pettily malevolent ghost. Prince Arsene bowed again, offering three flowery compliments about her beauty before taking his leave. Alamans, she thought, turning her head so that no one would see her roll her eyes. Most of Rozala’s captains were out there, leading the Aequitan troops in assault their section of the wall, but she had kept a few with her under the salamander banner of the Malanzas to serve as councillors and command her retinue.

Captain Salvador had served her house for half a century, first her mother and then her. He’d once saved her life at the Sack of Lullefeuille. So when the hatched-faced man with the great mustache came to her with a grim look, Rozala straightened. Salvador was past sixty now, but there were few men she trusted more.

“There is trouble,” he quietly told her. “Our path back to camp is being cut off.”

Rozala’s stomach clenched.

“The dead are moving in behind us?” she asked.

“Princess Beatrice sends words that her outriders caught companies of Bones circling around her position instead of hitting her flank,” Captain Salvador said.

“Then they’re moving to hit us from the back,” Rozala grimaced.

Which was a potential disaster. When launching her assaults on the walls, she had been forced to cycle her wounded to the back of her formation so that fresh troops could lead the storm. There were fresh Orense men there also, of course, she was not the kind of fool to leave her back unguarded. But it was the most fragile part of her army and the Dead King’s general seemed to have sniffed out the weakness.

“What can we spare?” she asked.

“Not much, unless the reserve is recalled from the storm,” the older man told her.

Which she could not. Not only had she just sent them out, if they were pulled away then the Ligera Bandera’s foothold would be lost and their assault might entirely fail. But if the rear of the army collapsed, then… Fear is what the Enemy wants, the First Princess reminded herself. It is what he seeks with this manoeuvre. Rozala found her calm, laying a hand on the curved breastplate her late pregnancy was forcing her to wear. She knew what must be done.

“Scrape together everything you can,” Rozala ordered. “And raise the banner.”

“Your Highness?” Captain Salvador asked.

“We fight, sir,” the First Princess of Procer said. “I will lead the defence myself.”

Yara of Nowhere did not exist, then she did.

She was the edge of a roof, a handful of Revenants moving below her. There was a loose tile under her foot. She had never been able to feel Neshamah’s little puppets as well as true Named, but the echoes of their authorities gave her just a bit of a hook. It didn’t amount to much, since he could take control of them whenever he wished, but sometimes all you needed was a pebble to start the avalanche. Yara hummed, fingers tapping against the side of her leg, and waited for the right time. It was easy enough to know it even with her sight ripped out, for to Narrate a story was to know how to incite incident. Like, say, by nudging a loose tile forward. It dropped, shattering in the street, and the noise drew the attention of the last of the moving puppets.

The Revenant turned and saw in the distance the glint of the sun on steel.

“That’ll do it,” Yara mused, reaching for her flask.

Sahelian was hard to read, close to Named but not, and that made it difficult to follow her story past a certain point. For this much, though, what Yara could see would be enough. That pretty little trick the Hierophant had cooked up with the Crown of Autumn was not to stay in the game. It was a defeat Nessie might be willing to suffer, being shackled with that, and there would be none of that. The Grand Alliance was going to fight a cornered rat with nothing to lose, not a becalmed King of Death thinking there was still a way out of this. He was losing the Serenity, his great defensive ritual was being cracked open but the dwarves and now armies were about to hit the last of his walls.

“Didn’t I tell you, Neshamah?” Yara said, raising her flak in a toast. “Eat the fucking baby.”

Akua first knew it was going wrong when she saw the corpses.

Two of them, laying abandoned on the ground. The Grizzled Fantassin had been stabbed in the throat repeatedly until there was nothing left there but red meat, and she would not have recognized the Hunted Magician if not for his rich enchanted robes. The Proceran mage’s corpses was shrivelled beyond recognition, a dried-out husk.

“Shit,” Archer whispered. “There go our reinforcements.”

“Only two dead out of the band,” Akua said.

“Sidonia led them,” Indrani said, her tone too casual. “She’s not the kind of woman that’d leave the dead bodies of her people behind if she’s in any state to take them.”

The Vagrant Spear had spent some time under Archer when she led a band of her own, the sorceress recalled. There might have been genuine fondness there, though this was not the time for comfort and Indrani hardly cared to receive that sort of thing anyway. Not from her, at least. Only Catherine and Masego had managed to wedge themselves between the porcupine’s thorns so they would not prick their hand when extending it. Akua instead threw up shields without voicing an incantation even as her Archer nocked an arrow, only then approaching the bodies. There was no telling whether it was a Revenant, a Scourge or even simple dead that’d done this.

The Hunted Magician had been killed by a curse but those were not unique to the Mantle, and there seemed to be nothing magical about the Grizzled Fantassin’s ruined throat.

“So?” Archer asked.

“No telling whose work it was,” Akua admitted. “But I still believe we should change our path.”

“To where?” Indrani replied. “We can’t go east to the Proceran push, the whole point of riding in the shadow of Hakram’s assault was making sure our eggs weren’t all in one basket. We could try to go north to see of the Praesi are getting through, but there’s nothing certain about it.”

“I do not believe Bones did this,” the golden-eyed mage said, pointing at the bodies. “Which means it is also a certainty we will face Revenants, if we continue our path to the inner wall.”

“We can handle Revenants,” Archer dismissed, but Akua’s eyes narrowed.

Ah, she thought. Indrani was hoping to destroy whatever undead had assaulted the Vagrant Spear’s band in order to avenge a woman she’d been fond of.

“Whether or not we can beat them is irrelevant,” Akua replied. “Revenants are not like other dead, a part of Trismegistus’ attention rides with them always. The moment we fight even one, he will know where we are.”

Indrani’s face tightened with displeasure. Akua began to muster her arguments – using Catherine tended to be useful but only in small doses, since Archer would rebel at the thought of being ‘tame’ – when the other woman suddenly sighed and spat to the side.

“You’re right, Former Phantom,” Indrani conceded. “We need to make it quietly to the wall. Past Hakram’s lines and north to the Praesi, then?”

“It seems our best bet,” Akua agreed. “We-”

Sudden warmth against her skin as one of the enchanted rubies beneath her armour suddenly heated told her an enchantment was being directed at her, which saved her life. By reflex, she detonated her shields and the burst of it kicked up ash, coating the invisible Seelie’s side with it even as an illusion pretended to stab Akua in the throat. Archer kicked the Scourge in the side, getting a grunt out of her, and Akua hissed out an incantation. She threw a fireball at the Revenant’s head which the illusionist contemptuously cut through only to trigger the second part of the formula, a vicious burst of frost that shattered the blade.

The redheaded Scourged in her vulgar gown snarled, her passably attractive face turning monstrous and sinister, and barked out a word in something that sounded like Chantant.

“Time to run,” Archer grunted, idly putting an arrow in the eye of what turned out to be an illusion.

The Seelie was gone again, no doubt looking for an opening.

“Agreed,” Akua fervently said. “It’s only a matter of time until-”

A wave of pressure pushed at her magic as a ward came down. Containment, the sorceress idly assessed. We are being kept inside a circle.

“That,” she finished with a sigh.

“Cage?” Indrani asked, nocking an arrow as she spoke.

Akua nodded, beginning a trailing cant – the shared beginning of several spells of very different effects, which would let her adapt to the situation as it unfolded instead of being forced to start anew if taken by surprise.

“Bummer,” Archer drily said.

As if summoned by the word, silhouettes crested at the edge of rooftops and walked out into the streets surrounding them. Not a horde this, only a dozen individuals or so, but that was not a good sign. A horde of skeletons, Akua could have scattered easily.

The dozen Revenants converging on them would be harder to deal with.

The Dead King was not holding back, Rozala thought.

The Enemy had assembled a force meant to break her army’s rearguard with poisonous haste since the defeat inflicted on its attempted encirclement. The fangs were first bared before the First Princess arrived with her reinforcements, an attack in two strokes. First a stream of pale slug-like creatures made of corpse fat had swarmed all over the broken gate of Keter, devouring the soldiers there and then allowing themselves to be lit aflame by some undead mage. They burned merrily, cutting off Rozala’s army from the camp and filling the air with poisonous clouds that the wind was blowing her way. The second stroke came when ghouls began pouring out of what she was assured had been an empty house, overrunning three positions before a shield wall could be assembled.

“We faced the same trap yesterday,” the First Princess told the still-befuddled Orense general. “Deep basements were dug under some of the houses and kept sealed after being filled to the brim with undead. The enemy were there all along, waiting for the Dead King’s order.”

At least it wasn’t a maze of tunnels under the city they were dealing with, only sporadic hidden basements – though Rozala suspected that had more to do with a strong mage being able to collapse tunnels than lack of interest on the Dead King’s part. He’d always liked his underground tricks, the old monster. There was a reason Rozala still had to sleep with an ear to the ground no matter how many wards she intellectually knew were keeping the dead from digging underneath the camp.

“I am shamed to have been caught by it,” the dark-haired general replied. “We will earn back our honour with blood, Your Highness. Our shield wall will hold.”

No it won’t, Rozala thought, looking at the clash. Not only was Keter flooding their backlines with every spare undead they had to throw at it but a force had also clearly been assembled to crack their shield wall. It was the only reason the First Princess could think of there being so many ‘mantises’ here. Unlike beorns and tusks, who were meant to shatter shield walls with sheer power, that particular breed of monsters worked in precision. At first look they could pass for strange, carapaced horses but once they closed distance the mantises revealed the reason for their name: long, segmented legs ending in hooked bones blades unfolded.

They went over the shields of shield walls, tearing through soldiers from the back to shred them in moments.

She could see at least four dozen of those mixed in the horde the Orense soldiery was holding back as her retinue came to prop the up, though they had not yet struck. The moment they did, the entire shield wall would collapse in a matter of moments. Rozala’s mind spun, looking for a way through. What mages she had were already busy keeping vultures away, lest the flying pests begin going for the wounded and attack the healers, and though she’d been able to pull away a few priests it would not be enough to hold back the enemy when they pushed. Their defence would not hold, she realized as she went through every trick and tactic she’d learned since she had first taken up command.

There was nothing she knew that would keep the dead from tearing past them and overrunning the infirmaries, sweeping over priests and wounded before consuming the entire Proceran army from the inside.

Then the banner caught her eye. The scarlet salamander on flaxen bed with the Malanza words beneath: Through Peril, Rise. Yes, Rozala thought, laying a hand over the armour beneath which her daughter yet to be born slumbered. I should not have forgot. She could not hold the defences of the rearguard, not with the forces at hand, so she ought not to defend at all. She gave her instructions, sent for the priests and the horsemen, and then reached for her banner to take it up. Rozala spurred her horse forward, heading for the shield wall, and once there shouted the order.

“STRIKE,” the First Princess of Procer screamed. “We were the first wall of Calernia and we will not fail it today, so STRIKE!”

There were not enough priests to make a great wall of yellow Light, the kind that had been first used at the Battle of Camps and one many fighting says since, but that wasn’t what Rozala had been after. Instead she had told them to create oblique lines through the enemy ranks, crackling Light burning the dead whenever they touched it. Their formation suddenly crisscrossed by lines of Light, the undead fell into disarray even as the Proceran foot surged forward. Rozala surged with them, a ring of guards around her as to the sides the last of her cavalry poured into the breach. It was working, the First Princess realized with numb relief. The mantises had come out but they were a precision tool, not much better than any other construct in a wild melee, and as the dead were driven back the priests ended their lines of Light to create fresh ones deeper in.

But the attack was slowing down, ground to a half by the sheer thickness of the ranks of the dead, and Rozala knew her duty.

She went into the press of it, sword in hand and banner in the other. It was a wild thing, the melee, and though she swung through skulls and shattered shields a ghoul slipped past her guards and under her horse, eviscerating her. The undead was pinned by a spear a moment later but Rozala fell off, desperately leaning on the banner so she wouldn’t land on her belly. It was in an awkward crouch she landed, both hands on the banner’s shaft as she had dropped her sword. She groped for it and heard roars around her as she rose, the soldiers burning at the sight of the First Princess fighting in the ranks. Malanza swords all around her, Rozala raised her banner.

“Procer,” she shouted. “For Procer, and every land we lost!”

They charged, Light and sorcery crackling on all sides as steel clashed with steel. The dead were breaking, Rozala could feel it. And soon there would be reinforcements – the Fox was sure to see that there was heavy fighting at the rearguard and move to support them. The enemy lines gave, like gasping lips, but even as triumph swelled in her heart Rozala Malanza saw the Revenant. A tall and armoured form, its rusted plate weeping red as it strode forward and calmly cut through men. Its great two-handed broadsword shattered shields and smashed helms, unerringly cutting down anyone who approached. And the Revenant was coming, inexorably, for her.

“Priests,” Rozala shouted, but none answered.

It would be steel, then. She surged forward with her retinue, unwilling to give the enemy the choice of how to engage. They would flood it with numbers. Only the Revenant kept advancing, cutting through one soldier after another and ignoring the blows that ripped at its rusted plate only to reveal only weeping redness beneath it. Rozala screamed as Captain Salvador’s head went flying past her, thrusting her blade into the Revenant’s visor, but she felt no flesh beneath the steel. Only bones and wetness. The Revenant cut at her, sending her flying back as her pauldron came off from the strength of the blow and her bones creaked.

Leaning on the banner she got back to her feet as the Revenant kept calmly advancing. All around her the charge was faltering, fear spreading through her soldiers, and Rozala Malanza breathed out. It was clear, in her mind’s eye, what must be done. One last death to stiffen their spine and save the army from collapse. I’m sorry, Louis, she thought. We’ll both wait for you halfway there, that we might meet the Gods Above together. The First Princess of Procer lowered her banner like a spear, pointing at the Revenant, and shook her hair free of her helm. She took a step forward, seeing the rising arc of the enemy’s blade and her death waiting within in.

“Forward,” Rozala Malanza shouted, charging forward. “And fear not-”

Before the banner could spear the Revenant’s throat, before its blade could take her head, a star fell. Or so it felt like, for the blinding Light seared her eyes as she glimpsed a man rip out the dead Name’s sword arm and wetness gush out. Rozala stepped back, shading her eyes, and when the brightness faded she saw Hanno of Arwad drive his sword deep in the Revenant’s guts. Light boiled, roiled, and red vapour wafted upwards as the creature let out a silent scream. The hero turned to her, face calm as glimmers of Light turned his eyes gold in the shade of the falling ash, and smiled.

“And fear not death,” Hanno of Arwad smiled. “Not while I am here.”

The hero cocked his head to the side, as if listening to a voice only he could heard, and then he was gone in a burst of movement. Leaving the First Princess of Procer to look forward at the collapsing ranks of the dead before her, and the victory she had somehow not needed to die to achieve.

The Mirror Knight took the blow on his shield, the beorn driving him three step backs into a swarm of skeletons that hit away at his armour fruitlessly. Even when they found his skin, their blades bounced off. Gritting his teeth, Christophe de Pavanie pulled at the power within himself. Reflect. The beorn’s belly was ripped open as the strength it had struck with was thrown back at it, the hero taking a measured step forward to cut all the way through the side with his blade to make sure it wouldn’t be getting up. He shook off the skeletons, smashing them every which way, and checked that the Severance was still safely loosened to his back. It was.

A Bind had tried to take it earlier only to be cut all the way through without Christophe lifting a finger to achieve this, but this would not be the Dead King’s last attempt. He was out in the open now, it was only a matter of time until harder foes than skeletons and beorns came forward. Absent-mindedly sweeping through a company of skeletons to make it back to the Ligera’s position, the Mirror Knight found most the others had gone further down the rampart to help the fantassins in their bid to reach the gatehouse and wrest open the doors. Attempting to go down into the inner city through the stairs had only served to revealed that the ‘entropy fields’ were already awake.

Only the Knight Errant remained at the foothold, the boy in fair armour wielding a sword that looked like smoke turned into a blade.

“Sir Mirror,” Arthur Foundling called out. “You’ve returned. The beorn?”

“Done,” Christophe said. “There were also a pair of tusks so I cleaned them up while I was there.”

They might have been difficult for the fantassins to deal with, if he’d not been there to take the charge on their behalf.

“You just-” the boy began, then shook his head. “Never mind, I should have expected no less.”

Was the Knight Errant doubting his word? It was an insult, but Christophe supposed he’d been the only one to see the tusks. He would not take it personally. Callowans were not well inclined to him as a rule.

“Have you spoken with Captain-General Ferreiro?” he asked.

“No,” Arthur Foundling said, “but she sent an officer. She’s focusing on the push towards the gatehouse to try to let in the rest of the army, but she’s warned us that-”

A shadow was cast over the two of them and the soldiers all around, for a tall shape had come to stand between them and the sun. The Titan Kreios strode over houses carefully, taking pains to avoid stepping on Proceran soldiers, but he was tall enough even a careful stride was like the wind. Christophe had never quite realized how tall the Riddle-Maker was, taller even than the towering Gigantes. The ancient mage used no ladder to climb the rampart, climbing it as one would a garden fence. He crushed a few hundred dead rising to his feet, standing taller now than all of Keter save for the tower deep at the heart of the Crown of the Dead.

“That the Titan is headed our way,” the Knight Errant faintly said.

“Thank you for the warning,” Christophe politely said.

Which had the boy glaring at him for some reason. Callowans, he ruefully thought. So prickly. The eyes of the Titan found them both, sliding over to the Severance and lingering there for a moment.

“Children,” Kreios Riddle-Maker said. “Prepare yourselves. I will now silence the enemy’s trick.”

The Knight Errant saluted with his sword, but Christophe simply nodded. Satisfied of the acknowledgements, the Titan stepped down into the fields of time that should have wasted him away like a man sliding into a pond. The old god only laughed at the magic lapped at his body.

“A hundred million droplets can be an ocean, Young King, but they can also be nothing more than rain. Your learning is yet shallow.”

The Titan raised his hands, and magic began to pour out of the ground like tendrils.

“Kronia will forgive me, this once, for borrowing her sickle.”

The Mirror Knight watched silent as magic burned, igniting the air, and stone began to turn to dust.

Akua flicked her wrist, a burst of nail-shaped curses flying out and hitting the Revenant’s face.

They punched through the skin and he began to scream as his senses melted, the sorceress hastily backing away as a burst of flame exploded where she had stood a heartbeat before. Tracing a rune in the air, she smothered the smoldering sparks before they could turn into an animated shape again and broke into a run before the javelins began to fall. She turned a corner even as the sound of them crashing through stone tiles sounded behind her, murmuring a curse of thinning as she trailed a finger across the wall she was passing by. A heartbeat later a long-haired winged Revenant in armour dropped behind Akua, her iron spear already halfway into a strike.

Just in time for the wall to collapse on top of her armoured form.

Akua tossed back a minor jinx of slipperiness on the pile of stones to slow her down, knowing that the formula was highly responsive to separate surfaces, and lengthened the strides of her run. Archer was meant to be covering her, but… The thought was interrupted by a familiar silhouetted being thrown through a bronze grid a mere ten paces before her, Indrani let out a curse as she tumbled into old dust and landed in a sprawl. The golden-eyed Soninke dipped into her magic again, crafting a quick and loose illusion of the two of them running away as she ducked into the house and dragged Archer out of sight.

“Hey, Akua,” Indrani groaned. “You found that ward anchor yet?”

Until it was destroyed, neither of them was getting out of the glowing circle in which they were being forced to fight. They’d tried, and while people and objects seemed able to come in nothing seemed able to come out – not even dust, which was coating the side of an invisible half-sphere instead.

“I believe I have,” she replied, “but you won’t like it.”

“It’s under that fucker in the golden armour, isn’t it?” Archer sighed.

“I narrowed it down to a city block and within it there is a house whose entrances were all sealed by magic,” Akua said.

“The one with the golden fucker on it,” Indrani pressed.

She nodded in agreement, offering a sympathetic grimace.

“At least it’s not a second Scourge,” Archer said. “That’d be a little much even for me.”

Which was, naturally, when lightning struck the roof above them and the Tumult made his entrance into the battle. Akua cursed, throwing up a shield as the two of them made for the door under collapsing stone, only to find two Revenants bearing swords and shields already there. The Twins, Akua had taken to calling them in her mind. Neither of them were all that difficult to deal with, but so long as one stood the other would keep repairing itself. They were not a great concern, but if they were here… Archer grabbed her by the scruff of the neck, throwing the both of them to the side as javelins began to fall like rain. They were simple bronze rods, but each hit with the strength of a ballista’s bolt.

That Revenant only had one trick, but it was a decent one.

Akua landed on her back, Indrani’s elbow digging into her face, and as the other woman got up longknives in hand she idly bespelled a cloud of smoke to blow into the face of the Twins. Knees aching, she began to rise. If she lingered, javelins would follow.

“I’ll take Ugly and Ugles,” Archer said. “Can you blow open that closed house?”

“I can,” Akua agreed, but her eyes strayed above.

Storm clouds were gathering above their head. The Tumult had learned better than to fight her face to face, but its ability to so easily serve as magical artillery remained a thorn in Akua’s side. If she’d not been looking that way already, the sorceress would never have seen the roof tile bend. As if there had been weight on it. She began to trace a shield, but even as Indrani turned at her alarmed shout and the Seelie flooded both their sights with illusions, Akua knew the Scourge’s knife would strike true. The timing had been too good.

Or so she believed, until the Seelie came back into sight as her knife-wielding arm was snatched out of the air and she was smashed into the ground.

“You move loudly,” the Lord of Silent Steps chided the undead.

Akua’s heart soared at the sight. Ivah of the Losara was a powerful ally, for all that it usually disdained head-on fights.

“Ivah,” Archer grinned. “You took your time.”

“Apologies, Mighty Archer,” Ivah idly replied. “I had to shepherd children.”

“HONOUR TO THE BLOOD!”

Akua blinked away the burn of the Light as the Vagrant Spear tore into the side of one of the Twins, deftly kicking the other in the face as she pierced through the other’s stomach. Akua flicked a spell of binding at the feet of the one getting kicked, ensuring he fell, and Indrani shoved a knife through the throat of what should have been the Seelie but was instead a bed of wilted flower petals. Twice now the Scourge had pulled that trick and it wasn’t getting any less annoying. The sorceress smoothly transitioned into the incantation for a triple-layered shield that would be able to withstand the javelins soon to follow, but it ended up unnecessary.

A spectre leapt out to devour them as they howled through the air, the Harrowed Witch recalling her brother’s bound shade to her side afterwards.

“The third?” Akua asked the Lord of Silent Steps.

“Listen for the shouting,” the Firstborn drily replied.

There was a blind scream of rage somewhere ahead, followed by a house collapsing and the storm clouds above their heads calling down lightning there instead. One the torrent of lethal magic had passed and smoke began to rise, mocking laughter came from that direction.

“Should have put your back into it, Tumult,” the Red Knight taunted. “I’ve had worse from Cleven weather.”

Well, Akua thought as she rolled her shoulders and cracked her neck – a terribly uncouth habit, but exactly as satisfying as she’d thought it would feel when she had first seen Catherine indulge – now this ought to be a rather more even fight. She adjusted the box holding the Crown of Autumn on her back and reached for her magic.

“Let’s begin this properly, then,” the Doom of Liesse said, her smiled showing all too many teeth.

Cordelia had always hated battles.

An ironic thing, considering that for all her politicking it was victorious battles that had enthroned her as First Prince of Procer, but no less true for it. One of her predecessors, First Princess Eugénie of Lange, had once called diplomacy ‘war without all the clumsiness’. For all that Cordelia was inclined to think well of the woman’s record otherwise – most of her reign had been spent repairing Procer after the wounds inflicted by the Dominion throwing out its occupiers – in that particular matter she disagreed. Diplomacy was simply not as arbitrary as war, where an empire could be doomed because it had been a misty morning or the wind was blowing the wrong way.

Under the intellectual disliked, though, the fair-haired princess knew that her hatred came from the source of helplessness. All her life she had sent other people to make war on her behalf, sitting miles away behind tall walls and fighting the urge to bite at her fingernails until she could knew whether the day’s horror was to be the mother of victory or defeat. She was hardly the only royal, even among Lycaonese, who did not take to the field themselves. Yet she had always felt it as a manner of failure on her part. Her mother had fought in the ranks, sword in hand. She’d died there too, though, leaving Cordelia to rule Rhenia alone all too soon. It still reeked of sending people to die in her name, a feeling she guiltily despised all the more for the way it held a grain of truth.

And now here, at the edge of the world, she still sat behind wards and walls as she waited for news of the battle unfolding inside the Crown of the Dead.

She had done her best to ensure that she could get swift word. At each gatehouse she had a group of messengers and a loose net of them through the entire ring camp that would serve as a relay to get developments to her quickly. It was how she’d learned that the League’s offensive had stalled, only for Basilia to break the stalemate after heavy losses for the Bellerophans. She had learned of it too late for her tastes, though, and the further the armies got into the city the less she heard. Marshal Juniper had allowed an observer in her command tent as what Cordelia would like to take as a gesture of goodwill but was most likely Catherine’s order, which helped, but only so much.

Messengers now had to venture into Keter, following the armies through besieged lines and dangers. Half of them never returned and those that came back did not always have much more information to share than what their eyes could gather: officers on the ground had more important duties to handle than speaking to her messengers and Cordelia was no longer First Prince. She could be ignored, now, dismissed. Her displeasure no longer had the old sting to it.

What she did learn came in waves. There had been an attempt to encircle and destroy Principate forces that’d been beaten back with General Abigail’s timely help. The Clans had broken through all opposition coming in from the west and reached the walls. The Dominion, serving as the Black Knight’s rear guard, had seen some heavy fighting. The last word she’d gotten was that the Titan had reached the walls, though she had no real notion of whether or not the ancient mage had silence the Dead King’s magical defences as he had promised to. Still, in at least one regard Cordelia had learned in advance of generals and officers instead of the other way around.

Out in the Ossuary the dwarves had sent up the first of two agreed-upon signals: the Herald of the Deeps had reached the ritual site below the city. The second signal, which would signify the site had been destroyed, had yet to follow. No doubt the Enemy had fortified the position thoroughly, so it could be some time yet before it fell – the very reason Kreios’ presence was necessary, since the ‘entropy fields’ were certain to activate before then.

Cordelia could only imagine, the very reason she was sitting at the table with sheaths of papers before her and trying very hard to think of anything except the possibility that the Grand Alliance would lose. Armies had made it to the inner wall, she knew, and even broken through. But the fighting would only get harder from there, with little room for retreat as the dead still in the outer city tore through the rearguards. Yet she had not wanted to spend the entire battle reminding herself she had been better raised than to bite her nails, which was why she’d brought out a quill and inkwell so she might lay out proposals for the tax system of Cardinal one it was built.

The attendant territory of the city, after all, would be much too small to sustain it should the seat of the Accords grow to the expected size. The princess had been considering the respective merits of tariffs and whether quarries might be a possible source of revenue for some time, but even as she tried to make herself look at the papers she found her attention straying. In the margin of a section on the dangers of imposing punitive tariffs when a trace crossroads was just beginning, she’d found that her hand was tallying losses. How many soldiers dead, how bad were the odds getting? Cordelia’s attention was failing, the only saving grace being that Brother Simon had been too polite to comment on it.

She sighed, giving it up for a lost cause, and set down the quill.

“The waiting is always the worst part,” Simon de Gorgeault quietly said.

“I sometimes feel I have done nothing else all my life,” Cordelia tiredly admitted. “Just years and years of waiting in between a few days of haste.”

The once-spymaster sympathetically nodded.

“I have found prayer a comfort in moments like these,” Simon said, “but I suspect you’d not share the inclination.”

“I like the Gods to stay in their Heavens,” Cordelia smiled. “The Highest Assembly’s floor is crowded enough without them taking up seats.”

“Blasphemy,” the lay brother said, though his tone was amused.

It was not that the princess did not believe in the virtue of the Gods Above and the worth of their teachings, but rather that she’d never thought of miracles as a solution. Miracles were passing things, beautiful but ephemeral, and you could not build on such a foundation. Prayer was good and worthy thing, but Lycaonese knew better than to rely on it when spring arrived and the Chain of Hunger came calling. Or perhaps that was only a conceit, Cordelia Hasenbach thought as she touched the bracelet of ratling teeth digging into her wrist under her sleeve, as she felt a folded parchment burning against the warmth of her breast.

Perhaps it was just a different kind of prayer, to wear the last gifts of those she had loved and hope they would see her through the storm. Friedrich Papenheim’s small act of kindness had stayed with her since she was fourteen, and now Agnes Hasenbach’s last words were to remain against her skin until she knew it was time to read them. One last augury from another cousin she had loved, another kin devoured by this black war. Deep down, Cordelia was relieved she would be abdicating Rhenia and Hannoven to Otto Reitzenberg. She feared returning north and seeing only a land of empty seats and silences, the expression of everything and everyone she had lost.

“They will breach the inner city soon, if they have not already,” Brother Simon told her, looking past the entrance of the tent and into the emptied camp around them. “The first inklings of victory will soon arrive.”

Or defeat, she thought, but the former spy was a hopeful man at heart. Cordelia rose to her feet, moving towards the carafe of water at the other end of the table, and cocked a questioning eyebrow at her companion. He shook his head so she poured a cup only for herself, debating whether or not she should force herself to attempt working again, when the sound began. It was a small thing, at first, like a faint chirp. Only it swelled and grew, turning from whisper to word to scream, and the princess abandoned a half-empty cup to walk out of the tent. In the distance, past the edge of the camp, she saw only the heavy smoke rising from the chasm.

It had been this way for hours, the magics of the dwarves lighting up the foul emanations as if an entire Hell had been unleashed far below. Yet Cordelia’s cool blue eyes narrowed as she realized that it was not only smoke she was looking at now. There was movement there, half-hidden by the obscuring curtains.

The first to come out was a bird, a simple sparrow that flew out of the smoke, but the sight of it had dread pooling in her stomach.

A wave followed, dead birds and insects pouring out of the depths of the chasm like a tidal wave that swept over the camp. It was so thick it cast a shadow, hiding away the sun, and hulking shapes began to swim in the sea of death like great whales. Winged wyrms and flocks of vultures, but also creatures shaped like boxes of bone kept aflight by balloon-like breathing lungs. And not so much as a single fly moved towards Keter, towards the fighting in the city and the armies coming for the Dead King’s head. They all converged in one direction. Cordelia Hasenbach breathed out as the Enemy’s hordes came for the weapon she had kept as a knife to his throat.

“Bring up the battle wards,” the princess ordered, voice eerily calm. “And get into position.”

Fear had frozen her soldiers at the sight of what was headed for them, despair at numbers they knew they could not beat, but her voice woke them. There were salutes and captains began to shout orders, sorcery flaring as mages put up every layer of defence they still could. The Hidden Horror feared the ealamal, Cordelia thought. He was coming to destroy it. Even if her life had not been in the balance, it would have been as fine a reason as any to fight to the last defending it. Her fingers reached for her heart and the parchment folded against it, but the fair-haired Lycaonese forced herself to pull away. It was not yet time. She tore her eyes away from the swarm, turning to Brother Simon.

A brave man, the spy, who was looking at the tide of death much as one might look at inclement weather.

“I will have to trouble you, Simon,” she said.

“What for, my lady?” he asked, sounding surprised.

“A sword,” Cordelia Hasenbach grimly said.

If the ealamal was overrun and the battle about to be lost, she may well have no choice but to pull the trigger. But she would not let fear own her, not when she bore on her the last wills of her cousins. She was, for all her years in the south, still Lycaonese.

She’d fight until the end of the world.