When the first tower hit the walls, Sara was there. The bridge that unfolded from the massive contraption seemed to fall like the air was mosses, the dark interior exposed to the world after an impossible wait.

  Sara greeted it with her sword raised before her, bde leveled like the maw of an impatient beast.

  "Boom."

  A bolt of lightning taller and wider than a man shook the concrete beneath her feet, blinding in its intensity. Sara closed her eyes to protect her vision from the fsh, and when she opened them, she saw there was a smoking hole blown through the back wall of the siege tower.

  And Knights charging forward with lowered heads, armor trailing spellsmoke.

  Sara met the first Knight with the middle of her bde held in her left hand, grip in her right. She swung the pommel with all her might into the Knight's knee, taking satisfaction in the brutal crunch of it, even if it didn't get through the armor.

  That first Knight tumbled over her, nding amongst a pile of her soldiers. They wasted no time in raining blows down on the sprawled figure, halberds sounding like hail on a tin roof as they tried to find a weak point in the armor by sheer volume of attacks.

  Sara couldn't help. The other Knights were coming, and she couldn't trip all of them.

  The next Knight vaulted over her, nding on the wall behind her, and then their fellow whirled the armor-piercing tip of a poleaxe into Sara's chestpte.

  Sara released one hand from her sword and accepted the blow to her sternum, staggered by the strength of it even as her freehand shot out to snag the weapon's haft. In an instant she was locked into a brutal tug-of-war.

  Sara had been in fights. More than she could count, and of more varieties than she cared to recall. She had fought gangster, robbers, and Irregurs in equal numbers. Most had been weaker than her. Some had been stronger. She had fought one-on-one, in small groups, and in the midst of a thousand-strong battle.

  Yet this was a new kind of fight to her. It had all the mad fury and mind-numbing qualities of being regur infantry in a line battle, but the combatants were anything but. The best of Evie's Irregurs were to her left and right, facing off against whoever the hell the Sporatons had decided should spearhead the assault on the centralmost portion of the wall, and none of them were purely human in their abilities. Weapons blurred faster than the eye could track, armors and weapons glowed with subtle light, and Skills were activated in shifting motions that savaged the line between reality and impossibility. Sara could barely track what was in front of her, yet the battle extended for hundreds of yards in every direction. The only realm of peace was directly behind her, and that was filled with the shifting blocks of reserves, who would soon be joining the violence themselves.

  The Knight she'd been grappling with finally wrenched his poleaxe free, something Sara rewarded with a whistling swing of her shortsword.

  The Knight raised the wooden shaft of his poleaxe to block, and to her considerable surprise, it worked. Sara's bcksteel bde bounced off, startling her, and so her transition into a stab was too slow to catch the Knight off guard.

  They whipped their poleaxe back around, smming it into her helmet with the axe-side first. Sara's neck was wrenched aside, her shoulder smming into the person beside her.

  And then she was back upright, throwing wild overhand blows one after the other, trying to keep the Knights off the wall.

  It wasn't working. The Knight that had bravely vaulted their lines was chewing through the regur soldiers, opening a gap that her Irregurs were being forced to back into.

  In the first few seconds of the exchange, she determined that the Knights weren't the Sporaton elite, but they didn't need to be. Their armor was enough to allow them to brute force their way forwards, clearing a space for the tidal wave of spears that were sure to follow.

  But only if she broke.

  Sara threw herself forward with a roar, battering her way through the wall of weapons that tried to her hold back. Barely a minute into the battle and she was putting her armor to the test, trusting that her and Hurlish's work would take enough abuse to close the gap.

  It did. Her chest smmed into the breastpte of a Knight six inches shorter than her, both of their weapons rendered useless by proximity.

  Sara dropped her sword and drew her dagger, grinning madly behind her helmet.

  "Taze!" She roared, white lightning peeling itself off the ten-inch length of her rondel dagger.

  "Crazy bitch!" The Knight responded, wrenching their own dagger free.

  She eagerly jabbed for the Knight's chin, but a thigh suddenly wrapped around the back of her knee, pulling it forward, and Sara found herself being taken to the ground.

  A small grunt was driven from her lungs as her back hit the concrete, followed by several more as she began to thrust forward with her dagger. She could feel one hand battering at her forearm, another scraping up her waist, and by the sound of it, that second hand held the dagger. It was looking for a gap in her armor, hoping to find a weaker section of chainmail protecting her armpits.

  Unfortunately, there was one.

  Sara threw herself violently to the left, rolling to leverage her superior height and weight to end up on top.

  Instead she found the Knight's back smming into the creneltions, catching the roll short. They were left ying on their sides, face-to-face, legs interwoven in a struggle for leverage.

  After a few seconds of fruitless grappling, Sara suddenly kicked backward off the wall, sliding a few feet away. She didn't get all the way to her knees before she brought her dagger into a two-handed grip, awkwardly lunging forward.

  Confused by the creneltion at their back, the Knight tried to roll away for more distance. It achieved nothing. It would be the st mistake they ever made.

  Her dagger nded on the Knight's wire-grid portion of their facepte, driven by her fist around its grip, pommel pressed forward by her palm and sternum, so that her entire weight was behind the half-lunge, half belly-flop.

  With a shrill shriek of steel and man, the dagger pierced the facepte.

  The thrashing gyrations of the man's spastic death throes were transferred to Sara through her grip on the dagger, such that she could feel the texture of the man's bone as her dagger briefly skated to one side before piercing his cheekbone, burying itself in the hollow of his sinuses. It would have been a fatal blow in a matter of minutes, but that time was reduced to seconds, her spell pouring electricity into his bloody skull, his body filing without purpose.

  Sara felt something sm into her right thigh. She ripped herself off the corpse, kicking out in the general direction of whatever had struck her, and retook her feet, searching for an enemy through her red-tinged vision.

  The rolling melee had pulled her farther away from the siege engine, and she found only the backs of her own troops. Corpses littered the floor, and only two of them were Knights.

  Sara spotted her discarded sword on the ground, snagged it, and threw herself back in to the fight.

  She didn't know what the fuck was going on. She tried as hard as any of her troops to maintain a cohesive line, but when the enemy was explicitly trying to break through it, things had gotten confusing. She waded back into the battle nonetheless, joining the loose semi-circle line around the enemy Knights, looking for any opportunity to drag someone into hell.

  Just like every other kind of fight she'd been in, the close-quarters melee of Irregurs in a siege was utterly unique. She was constantly switching from brutal, thoughtless swinging, to snapping off complex tactical orders, trying to keep her fragmented line together. The Knights were shouting their own commands, trying to coordinate their assault even while Sara's troops did all they could to break their small bundle open, and both sides were bellowing to be heard over the pitiful screams of wounded.

  Some of those screams were caused by Sara. If one of her own was ying on the ground, she couldn't spare the concentration to move or avoid them. She just stepped on them, trying to keep herself to their breastpte, not because of mercy, but because it was steadier footing. Doing anything less was a death sentence. This was a fight for her life, against a collection of opponents who each very well might be her superior, and she couldn't afford a single slip.

  And her sword wasn't doing very much good. A bcksteel greatsword was an astounding weapon for carving a swathe through under-armored opponents, and it had enough weight to it to be useful in bludgeoning armored Knights, but that required a windup, a rge swing that she didn't have room for. Unlike the other Irregurs, with their axes, halberds, and various polearms, Sara's weapon was proving maddeningly ineffective. The shortsword was about as effective as a nightstick against the Knights. Sure, when she'd wailed on someone for long enough they might go down, but it'd take a while. A proper polearm put enough power behind a small point to pierce metal, an attribute she regrettably cked.

  So she took a risk. Still taller than nearly any human on this world, she could easily see over the heads of the Knights to the dark interior of the siege engine, where levied spears were waiting to rush forward at their commander's order. They were pressed tight in the confines, a tiered staircase circling at right angles leading to the ground below, and they watched the battle between Knight and Irregur in petrified horror.

  Sara pulled back from her test swing, gripped her sword tight, and shouted "Warp!"

  The terrified faces of the commoners jumped in size, Sara appearing just before the tips of their spears. She flicked her sword out to its full extension, falling into a stance meant for wide, sweeping blows.

  The sughter began.

  Wood, then blood, flew. It coated the walls as Sara id into the commoners, shattering the front ranks of spears with the first sweep of her sword, cleaving through limbs with her second.

  She poured electricity into her bde the entire time, Garen's lessons paying real dividends at st. After some experimentation proved to the archmage that Sara really could cast her weakest spells without limit, he'd asked her why she didn't do so regurly. Sara didn't have an answer, and so she'd spent a week honing her skills to the point she could cast "Taze" without an activation word. There was a rhythm to it, requiring her to be constantly aware of the energy cycling in her body and out through her bde. She had to stabilize the loop even as she ripped bloody chunks from the tight-pressed commoners, and the split focus was headache-inducing. Worth it, though.

  Of those she felled, many went down with their gambesons catching fire, and with her killing two or three with every swing, the interior of the siege engine was becoming choked with smoke.

  Sara felt like vomiting. This wasn't fighting nobles. This wasn't fighting bandits. This wasn't even fighting gangsters or robbers, people she might have sympathized with, had she known the circumstances that led them to such a life. She was mowing her way through involuntary conscripts, and she was doing it with nauseating ease.

  There were fifteen thousand commoners in the force opposing her. How long would it have taken for a cadre of twenty soldiers of Sara's caliber to y waste to them all? Two hours? One? They couldn't even run away; even with a hundred pounds of armor holding her down, Sara moved so much faster than the commoners that they might as well have been standing still. If the soldiers were mounted, even those that fled early would be hunted like dogs.

  The panicked screams began to rise in earnest, commoners dropping their weapons and shoving against their fellows further down the stairs in a rush to get away from the bck-cd monstrosity ripping through their ranks. Sara kept on anyway, figuring that if she could get to the bottom, it wouldn't matter if the Knights above took the wall. No commoner would be capable of getting past her.

  Through the walls of the siege engine, she heard a sudden roar of fmes, powerful enough to temporarily overpower Champion's Inspiration, and then the horrific sound of stone grating against stone. Thuds of increasing frequency followed, shaking the floor beneath her, and she recognized the dull roar as an avanche. Some part of the wall was colpsing. She had no idea how much, or how many fell with it, but she knew what had caused it.

  The mages had entered the battle.

  Sara redoubled her efforts, no longer caring if she left some alive behind her in the rush to the bottom. The corpses the stragglers stood amongst were going up in fme anyway, and either the smoke or scent of burning flesh would choke them to unconsciousness.

  She had just nded on the third flight of stairs when she felt a sudden force take her from behind, seizing her and lifting her up and away. She was weightless for a surreal moment, then reality crashed back into her as she smmed into the ceiling, limbs bent askew by the impact. She nded on the floor a moment ter with a wood-cracking thud, staring up at the Knight standing over her.

  "Foul Champion! You avoid honest battle, seeking instead to y waste to those who cannot oppose you! Where is–"

  "Boom!"

  Whatever the Knight was going to say next was subsumed with the rest of his body, a column of blinding white erupting from her sword. As always, the Lightning contained no physical force, but it wasn't cking in pure energy. A six-foot circle of the siege tower's roof was reduced to ash, a thunderous boom echoing across the valley as a pilr two hundred feet long forked out into the clear sky. When the afterimage faded from her vision, Sara was astounded to see the Knight still standing over her, wreathed in unholy smoke.

  "Your honor!" He roared, smming a mace down for her eyes.

  Sara turned her head to the side, taking the blow against the temple of her helmet, which rang like she'd stood inside a church bell. Her vision doubled, then tripled, thoughts and words and tongue turning to mush as a hand reached for her colr, turning her back over.

  "Amarat chose you!" The man bellowed again, winding up for another blow. Sara kicked both childishly and viciously at his shins and ankles, stumbling him just enough to necessitate a readjustment before his swing, and that was enough for her to break his grip, scrambling up to her hands and knees, trying to regain her feet as quickly as she could.

  Then a boot took her in the armor above her ribs, sending her flying. She hit six feet up a wall with a gasp, head swimming, and nded back on her hands and knees by coincidence alone.

  When she opened her eyes, it was to the sight of the Knight rushing her, mace raised high. She brought her greatsword up in one hand, unwieldy in its current form, trying to block as best she could.

  Then she heard a woman scream bloody murder to her left, loud even over the din of battle, and the Knight pulled himself to a skidding stop. With a bitten-off curse, but remarkable ck of hesitation, he switched targets, diving out of the smoke-filled tower.

  Sara took deep, heaving breaths, filling her lung with the smoke of burning corpses. She forced herself into a sitting position, with her back against the wall. That kept her head in the smoke, which was trickling out through the broken roof, and she immediately began to cough, then to wretch, the already-acrid taste of smoke turned to something truly hideous by its morbid fuel. She tried to stand, but the world swam about her, and she dropped back against the wall, stomach heaving.

  Sara barely got her visor open in time before she began to vomit, her stomach clenching in agony as bile spat limply out of her mouth to fall down the front of her armor. The list of what could have caused her to begin puking was long, from head trauma to festering corpses, but the end result was the same. Half-digested chunks of breakfast sliding down the front of her breastpte, nding in the folds of her armored waist.

  Several spear-wielding commoners began poking their heads back up the siege tower, their fear of whatever had turned their brethren to corpses warring with the thought of being punished for disobeying orders. When they saw her slumped against the wall, profusely vomiting down the front of her armor, they fled.

  Though it felt like hours, it was likely only twenty or thirty seconds before Sara's stomach was empty, leaving her gut clenching painfully on nothing. In that time she heard several more wall-rattling impacts from outside, not quite like explosions, but not unlike them, either. The distinct twang of metal-strung ballistae rose in response, trying to suppress the mages, and she knew the rest of the siege towers had nded, the assault begun across the full length of the fort.

  Wiping the vomit from her lips with the back of her forearm, Sara fumbled a gauntleted hand into the protected bag beneath her armor's fauld, pulling out a health potion. She downed the entire bitter thing like a shot, even though she likely didn't need all of it. She didn't have any idea of knowing how bad that mace's impact had been, and she wasn't going to take the risk. With a cool flush rushing through her, she stabbed her greatsword into the floor and used it to stand, stepping through the smoke.

  The source of the scream that had distracted the Knight became obvious when she emerged, seeing the man posed defensively over the limp bodies of two other Knights. The one on Sara's left seemed barely conscious, a single limb trying dragging themselves back to the siege tower, while the one on the right was unmoving. Of the eight or so Knights that had unched the assault, those were the only three she could see remaining. Deep in her emptied gut, she felt a flicker of pride. Her troops had done well.

  The problem was, then, that st Knight. He had thrown Sara around like a ragdoll, which meant none of the Irregurs facing him would be able to achieve jack shit. Sara guessed the only reason he wasn't ripping through their lines that very second was his concern for his injured comrades.

  Another flicker of pride stirred as she realized her halberdiers had taken up a crouched line behind the Irregurs, shoving their halberds between legs to try and use their weapon's back-sided hook to seize the limbs of the injured Knights. Evie had ordered the entire army to try and take hostage anyone sporting enchanted equipment, both because the gear could be used for their own forces, and because noble lives would be a useful bargaining chip.

  Their distraction also left the Knight with little option other than remaining in pce, battering away the encroaching halberds with his legs and mace. The threat of the Irregurs, no matter how much weaker they were than him, meant he couldn't just bend over and carry his comrades to safety.

  Sara had been warned about this. After consulting the veritable library of military manuscripts, battle accounts, and gods knew what else Evie had hauled along with the army, her girlfriend had presented her with two likely possibilities for how the Royal Army would man its siege engines. Some doctrines called for the powerful members of the army to be at the forefront, giving the most certain chance of victory in the initial assault, while others held that the elites should be reserved for the knockout blow, coming in when the gaps in the enemy's defenses had been identified. Which an army's commander chose usually depended on their estimation of the enemy's capabilities; if they thought their foe weak enough to be broken by the chaff, they'd let them have their fun. If not, the big boys led the charge.

  By the fight she'd just been in, Sara guessed that King Sporatos had decided to let the mid-tiers have their go. The Knights they'd just fought were probably third and fourth born, fearful that they were of little use to their Houses. Condemned to a life of ignominy. They'd volunteered for the most dangerous duty, knowing that they were among the least of their army's Knights, facing the greatest of their enemy. Stupid, but if it worked, it had a decent chance of catapulting their status beyond the shadow of their betters.

  Of course, someone had to be there to guide the greedy, arrogant little pricks, and that was what Sara guessed this Knight was. A single member of the Sporaton elite, a genuine life-long warrior. He was a threat unlike any of the others, and even if Sara and the Irregurs rushed him all at once, he was bound to take more than his share down with him.

  Sara stepped up behind him, taking her stance. She was alone on the siege tower's bridge, and would finally have the room she needed for her greatsword. The battle raged beyond her, and she'd heard several callouts from her crystal over the course of the past few minutes, but she couldn't spare the attention. In such a straight-forward siege, her role as her army's most powerful Irregur superseded that of General.

  Though his head never turned to face her, she caught the twitch in the Knight's shoulders that said he'd noticed her presence. He knocked away yet another attempt to seize his wounded comrades, his voice ringing out.

  "Champion! I take it that you've no intention of allowing me to minister to my injured?"

  "Their wounds will be treated in our camp," Sara responded, only her Blessings keeping the bitter snap from her words. To the outside world, her voice was smooth as silk. "And yours will be too, Knight. You're surrounded."

  "By foes who cower before me."

  "You can't kill all of us."

  "You can't afford the loss of how many I'll defeat."

  Sara silently took her stance. He was right, of course. Didn't mean she was going to let him go.

  "Defeat?" She quoted, adding a disdainful scoff to her question. "Have you not the stomach to use the word kill? We're at war, Knight. There is no honor here."

  "If that is so, it is only because you refuse to allow its presence."

  "Is there honor in the blood of the commoners you'll wade through, should you break through our lines?"

  "No," the Knight responded, taking Sara by surprise. "But there is honor in fighting for one's liege, in doing one's duty. That two stand opposite another on the field of battle does not mean the actions of one or the other must be honorless."

  Sara's eyes roamed over the heads of her lines, searching for a spot of ruby. Not seeing one yet, she decided to humor the Knight. "Honor, if it exists, is not found in deed alone. It is found in the cause one fights for, what one's actions seek to bring forth in the world."

  "Honor is an end unto itself," the Knight replied, twisting his mace's grip. "You fight for your people, and I fight for mine. To do anything less would sully ourselves."

  "To seek peace is the greatest honor of all. Stand down, Sir Knight, and I promise on the Name of Amarat that I will allow you and those you protect the opportunity for repatriation at war's end."

  It wasn't a promise Sara wanted to make, but she needed this over. She'd stick to her word, if it meant she could get to the fighting elsewhere.

  "You begun this war with the cim that you hold sacred no truth, bend yourself to none's will, and will pursue victory above all else."

  "And I will. Fortunately, dispying mercy to a surrendering foe encourages others to surrender as well. Keeping my word is as practical as it is honorable, even by your antiquated definition."

  "How I wish I could believe you, Champion. Unfortunately, I know I cannot trust your honeyed words. So long as there is a chance for my victory, I will not bend."

  "Unfortunate indeed, Knight," Sara said, beginning to move forward.

  Just before she took a deep breath to call out a charge, Sara caught sight of a spsh of red moving through the crowd. Evie slipped between the halberdiers with ease, a hand on her colr, following the impulse of Sara's desires. She emerged into the cleared circle.

  Without a word, the feline raised her rapier, meeting the Knight's eye. Sara could not see his face, but she felt the way he looked her up and down, taking her in. Her ruby dress flowed down to her shins, tailored to soften the bulk of leather armor hidden beneath. Her rapier had a ghostly sheen to it as she fell into her stance, right foot forward, knuckles of her offhand pressed to the small of her back. Her feline ears were still as stone, unerringly locked onto the Knight.

  "Lady Eliah," the Knight eventually said, tilting his head imperceptibly.

  "Knight Emeric," she replied, nodding in turn. "The name is now Evie."

  "Lady Evie," Emeric corrected himself. He paused, considering. "Will my Knights truly have their wounds tended to?"

  "So long as their treatment does not prevent the aiding of our own, yes."

  "And they will not be prosecuted for crimes committed before their capture?"

  "Master?" Evie asked.

  "No," Sara confirmed, though she grated at saying it.

  "Then I will accept your offer," the Knight said, taking a step backward, careful to lift his foot over the unconscious bodies he'd been guarding. Though Sara hadn't noticed it, at some point the leftmost Knight had also stopped moving. He continued to take slow, precise steps away from Evie, his focus never wavering.

  When he finally was out of Evie's immediate lunging range, he turned his head just enough to catch Sara in his peripheral vision. "Champion. Will I be allowed to pass below?"

  Taking yet another risk, Sara trusted to the so-called honor of this man. "So long as you give me your solemn promise that you will not rejoin the battle until the sun has risen tomorrow morning, yes."

  "It is given."

  Sara stepped aside on the bridge, lowering her sword. As he began to approach her, she betedly took a few slow steps backward, realizing that a sudden shove from the Knight could throw her off the bridge. When they were both in the smoke-filled siege tower, they paused, staring at one another. Two faceless beings cd in steel, not an inch of skin exposed. Like mortuary statues.

  And then he shifted, giving life to the relief. He continued down the stairs, calling orders for the commoners within to begin withdrawing.

  Sara jogged back over the bridge, meeting Evie, who was jogging to her.

  "Master," she immediately breathed, summoning her handkerchief to wipe at Sara's breastpte. "Half the army saw you in such a state."

  "I really can't expin how little I give a shit," she replied tiredly. They walked back to the lines, and from the siege tower's bridge, Sara got her first look at how the rger battle was progressing.

  Mages had indeed begun to wreak havoc. The remains of the first explosion Sara had heard could be seen two hundred yards to her right, where a deep bowl had been cut from the concrete, exposing the wooden rebar within. Her tests had found that wood, while not nearly as effective a reinforcement as steel, was still some limited aid to concrete's integrity. That aid now seemed to be a curse. Pilrs of smoke were rising in tiny lines across the entire wall. The fires were eating away at the wood, fist-sized termites boring through the wall.

  Sara was about to raise her crystal to order some of the relief force up to staunch the fmes, but stopped when she saw a team running forward to do just that. Colonel Ese's troops, by the look of it. That was probably worth a medal, if she ever got around to coming up with them, for Colonel Ese and the fire teams both. Military decorations weren't a thing here, apparently. Armies usually rewarded commoners with paltry shares of plundered goods from the cities they'd died to take.

  "I couldn't pay attention to reports," Sara said, once Evie finished cleaning the vomit off of her. "How's the battle doing?"

  "As expected."

  "Fuck."

  Sara lifted her visor to rub at her eyes, trying to clear away sweat. How long had it been? It felt like hours, but the sun hadn't moved. Ten minutes, she eventually decided. Only ten minutes. Attempts to take the walls of a fortification usually sted hours. Multiple waves, successive attempts, testing charges and probing attacks... christ, it was going to be a long day.

  "Have we killed any mages?"

  "No, but we have managed to drive off several. Guarded as they are by the Knights, they are easily tracked, and so we have been able to limit their damage."

  Sara looked to her right, further down the wall. Between two of the siege towers was a stretch of wall where no one stood. All that remained was bckened corpses on the ground, smoking. She knew well the damage Lightning could cause, but she had never seen it effect on so many at once.

  Even as she watched, however, the empty space of wall was being filled by reserve troops. The first rank took up positions at the creneltions, the second bending down to unceremoniously shove twisted and bckened bodies off the wall to their own lines, clearing space. She had no idea how the corpses would be identified to be returned to their families.

  Likely, they wouldn't. They'd end up in some mass grave, a humble marker left to honor the intermingled bones below. And that was assuming Sara kept the fort for long enough for even that to be achieved; she doubted the Sporaton forces would bother with much more than shoving them off in a downwind pile. The carrion birds would do the rest.

  "How long are you going to make me rest?" Sara suddenly asked.

  "Five minutes, Master." Evie raised her voice for the rest of the Irregurs to hear. "Five minutes mandated rest! Tend to your wounds, take potion only if a bandage will not stem the flow of blood! Then we will aid whichever portion of the line needs it most!"

  Sara sat down with a groan, leaning her back against the wall. Evie looked at her with no small amount of concern, clearly wishing she'd been present during the fight, but Sara waved off her concern. After one of the most prolonged debates of their entire retionship, Evie had agreed not to follow Sara into the thick of battle. The feline was basically her... handler, she guessed. The arguments Sara had used to achieve that were many, but the most compelling and succesful had been the growing disparity between their Csses.

  As her Css had progressed with Sara's levels, Evie's abilities had leant more and more into those of a duelist, with a minor bend towards body guard and secretary. Sara's "Bindtwister of Amarat" Css had her growing more and more aware of unseen threats, gaining a vague but reliable awareness of danger beyond her line of sight. Evie's "Supplicant Duelist" Css had taken a different course.

  There was little precedent for Evie to draw upon for this new heading. It seemed very few people reached the true upper echelons of a Css dedicated to pure dueling. The very idea of seeking out and engaging equal opponents in single combat did not, as a rule, lend oneself to living a particurly long life. Perhaps if she still had access to Sporaton records Evie would have known better what to expect, but she didn't. All she knew was that her ability to deal with a single opponent had continued to grow, while her talent for fighting in a mob had withered on the vine. She had no senses beyond the mundane for noticing things beyond her peripheral, and that was a deadly disadvantage on the chaotic battlefield that was borne when Irregurs fought.

  This lopsided difference had forced a recalcitrant Evie into admitting that her following Sara into certain kinds of battle was too dangerous to tolerate. She could still mow through commoners as easily as any Irregur, but the tight press of the fort's walls was too risky. If a Knight got behind Sara, she would either notice, or her armor would take the blow. Evie would just die.

  "Five minutes is up, Master," Evie said, holding out a hand. Sara took it, standing with a grunt.

  "Which part of the line is looking the worst?"

  "It's difficult to tell from here, Master."

  "Yeah." Sara lifted the crystal to her mouth. "Priority message from the Governess to Colonels, do not speak until I am silent. We've succesfully driven off the central siege tower, and our Irregurs are now avaible to reinforce where necessary. Report your portion of the wall's status, beginning from easternmost to westernmost, and explicitly state when your report is finished, so the next may begin. First report, begin. "

  Colonel Sarig, currently in charge of the section of wall which abutted the valley's eastern perimeter, began to speak. Sara listened intently, standing on tiptoes to try and see the various damages he was reporting, and waited for him to finish.

  During this second report, Sara's concentration was unfortunately ruined by a very bizarre sight. She'd idly noticed over the past few minutes that the siege tower had started to retreat, then stopped, and thought little of it. Seeing as no second assault had come forth, she'd hoped it was because the troops within that propelled it had abandoned the structure. The true reason was far more bizarre, and perhaps even better for her.

  "Evie, can you pay attention to the reports for me?" Sara asked, tossing the her crystal in her pocket while she went back to the creneltions, lowering her visor. Through its vision-slits she saw several hands emerge from the stairwell, frantically waving... papers?

  "We surrender!" Came a cry, immediately echoed by several more. "Don't shoot! We surrender!"

  Sara suddenly recognized the papers for what they were. The propaganda posters she'd had made, working Vesta's poor secretary to the bone with her ink-copying spell. On them she'd had printed a great number of things, but among them was the instruction that if the enemy wished to surrender, but cked a white fg to fly, the papers themselves would suffice as a repcement.

  "Come out unarmed!" Sara shouted back, her voiced attenuated strangely from within her helmet. "Helmets and spears off, not even a knife in sight!"

  The papers retreated for a moment as the commoners hurried to follow her instructions, and in that time, Sara's mind whirled. She'd hoped, practically prayed, that her offer of clemency for the Sporaton commoners would be taken, but she hadn't expected it during the very opening stages of the battle. She hurriedly began to think of how best she could modify her appearance within her beastly armor, which had been designed explicitly to be as intimidating as possible.

  She decided on resting both hands on the creneltions to either side of her, leaning against them as if she needed the support. She began to raise and lower her shoulders, as if she were panting and near exhaustion, and kept herself bent slightly forward, so she would seem a little bit shorter than was average in Tulian. She was tempted to open her facepte, which would do wonders to ruin the effect of her helmet's metallic scowl, but she didn't want to take the risk of being shot.

  "We're coming up!" A quavery voice called, belonging to a man that slowly stumbled into view. His hands were over his head, and as instructed, he'd shed his helmet and spear.

  "Slowly forward, into the light, all of you!" Sara called, adding a faux gasp between her words. Either her apparent willingness to show vulnerability would endear her to the commoners, or would bait out whatever betrayal they had in store. "Now turn around in a circle!" Sara called when a solid-sized group was in sight. "I want your gambesons untucked and anything you have dangerous on you gone! If none of you have a weapon, you'll be allowed forward, but if I see so much as a pocket knife, you're getting shot full of holes!"

  Sara didn't actually have archers up on the wall, they were all down below in the murderholes, but that hardly mattered to the panicked commoners. They obediently followed her instructions, untucking their gambesons so that any hidden weapons would hopefully fall out, then spinning slow circles, confirming none had a weapon strapped to their belt. After all that was done, Sara waved them forward, and was surprised by a second group emerging.

  They began to follow the first, not wanting to be separated, forcing Sara to draw her bde, hollering the same instructions for them that she had the first group. The sight of her sword had them freezing like she'd just pulled a gun, which reassured her at least a little bit that this wasn't some coordinated ploy. Some among their number may have been spies, but after seeing such terror on their faces, she thought the bulk were genuine.

  She processed several more groups in simir fashion, shepherding them into the waiting embrace of her halberd-wielding troops, who then marched them down the nearest set of stairs, one sergeant calling for rope to bind the prisoner's legs together. A bit inhumane in Sara's eyes, but understandable, under the circumstances.

  When the fourth group had begun to cross, the siege tower suddenly lurched, pulling back from the wall. Whatever debate had been occurring down below had apparently been resolved in favor of leaving. The bridge began scraping off the concrete creneltions, and many of the commoners were frozen by indecision.

  Several, however, already half across the span, broke into a run. Just before the edge of the bridge fell from the wall, they leapt, screaming bloody murder.

  Sara lunged forward, hand outstretched, and snagged a woman's forearm. She smmed chest-first into the wall, her grip sckening on Sara's own forearm, but it didn't matter. Sara easily hauled her up and over the wall, setting her down on the concrete.

  To Sara's immense surprise, she saw Evie right beside her, dragging a second commoner back to safety. She didn't know why, but seeing Evie lunge for that woman's hand shocked her. Something to dissect when they weren't in a battle.

  Unlike the strange decision to surrender so promptly, which Sara wanted to inquire after immediately. She set the rescued woman down, but didn't release her arm. Instead Sara stepped behind the protection of a creneltion and lifted her visor.

  "Alright, you're safe now. On with the rest of your buddies, alright?"

  "Y-yes m-m'dy," the soldier stuttered. Sara released her arm, allowing her to move towards the halberdier she had indicated.

  "Just ma'am is fine," Sara said. "No lords or dies here in Tulian, I promise. You're free of them."

  Sara had meant it as a grand statement, a moment of revetion for the woman that she was finally free, but it didn't seem to be taken that way. The former Sporaton commoner nodded again, wrapping her arms around her shoulders. She was just gd to have escaped the battle with her life.

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  One PM

  Carpenter Ese

  Colonel Ese stood behind the ballistae, looking down the long shaft of its bolt. Sweat dripped down from her brow, stinging her eye, and she blinked it away with an irritated growl. Silhouetted at the end of the bolt's steel tip was a robed individual, outline warped by the energies gathering about their raised hands.

  "Loose!"

  Colonel Ese's hair was sucked forward by the release of tension, a steel cable as thick as her wrist propelling the projectile forward. She'd cut it awfully fine; the bolt impacted just as the light shining about the mage's hands had begun to color, taking on a sickly and ominous green.

  Instead of releasing an unholy spell upon the walls, the mage's hands jerked to one side, whatever permanent wards they had affixed to their robes warning them of the oncoming threat. A great orange shield blocked them from view just as the bolt nded, its incomprehensible power checked by an even greater shield. The bolt shattered, piercing the flesh of many a peasant around them, and then faded away.

  The mage was looking at them. At their ballistae. They began to raise their hands, energy gathering once more.

  "Back! Back, back, back you fucking mongrels or we're all dead!"

  Colonel Ese felt the jolting shudder of the rail-mounted ballistae's brakes being pulled none too soon. Just as her hair began to float off her skin, the air itself tugging her body upward, they began to scrape backward. She and the rest of the ballistae's crew clutched its wooden expanse tightly as they accelerated away, metal wheels throwing sparks as they flew back down the ramp that had brought them into position.

  Above them, in the space they had just occupied, erupted a torrent of beastly fire. Green as pond scum it was, boiling and bubbling up into a thick ugly stew, and it lingered in the air for far longer than any fme rightly should. The concrete underneath it began to jump and crack, heat it wasn't meant to take shattering it in yers.

  Colonel Ese grunted as they were thrown to a bone-jarring stop, the ballistae ptform's bumpers smming into wooden stops. Ignoring the hellish spell, she immediately hopped off while the crew began to crank the ballistae's bowlimbs back into position, inspecting the bumpers themselves for any signs of cracking.

  Fifty years a carpenter, fifty fucking years, and what do I do with? Go and get in charge of godsdamned army. Fucking stupid, Ese, fucking stupid.

  Her self-pitying harangue was unending as she moved along the ballistae's support ptform, running the pads of her fingers across the points of greatest stress. Senses she couldn't define told her that the structure was suffering, but wasn't yet close to breaking. It had more punishment left in it to give.

  "Good girl," she whispered, giving it a pat. "We've got more killing yet."

  With a hand on her lower back, she jerked herself back up into a standing position, armor visor lifted to make sure the ds could properly see her scowling at them.

  "Hurry it the fuck up! You think that mage just wants to kill us, huh? No! They're winding up to gut every prick they could, and if you ever want to feel something hot and heavy 'tween your legs again, you'll damn well do something about it! Nobody fucks cowards!"

  Colonel Ese didn't wait to see if the troops responded. She was already marching up the steps to the ballistae's ptform.

  The mage's spell had passed, yet the concrete radiated waves of heat beneath her feet. She felt a sweat break out as she hauled herself up the st few steps, surveying the damage.

  The leftmost rail was warped beyond use, curled in on itself like a roasted insect. The right rail was still cooling down, but looked like it had been heated to a cherry glow and was only now returning to its original hue. Only the concrete itself was mostly undamaged, but that wasn't likely to st long. She had to shift her feet constantly, lest the heat soak through the soles of her boots.

  Ese turned back to the stairs, lifting the crystal to her lips. "Colonel Shale, the third ballistae empcement suffered spell damage. Need a rail repced before we can get back into the fight."

  "Damnit," came the response, sounding out of breath. "I'll send some folk over. Do what you can, in the meantime."

  Dropping the crystal, Ese rolled her eyes. "No shit, 'do what I can.' Think I'm just gonna sit here suckin' my thumb?"

  She reached the bottom of the stairs and began barking orders for the ballistae to be tuned while the crew waited, figuring they at least ought to be doing something useful with their time, too. When she had the crew working as she liked, she snagged a crossbow and headed for a different set of stairs.

  Really, the hell am I doing? 'Colonel' Ese. Not like I'm commanding jack shit.

  She entered the narrow hallway hidden within the wall's confines and was immediately met with a wall of smoke even more acidic than her self-recrimination. Her eyes watered as she coughed out a few curses, bending low to be under the acrid scent.

  "The fuck's going on?" She called angrily, heading for the nearest murderhole. She stuck her head into the narrow slot, searching for the occupying crew.

  They were both kneeling on the ground, too busy coughing into their arms to respond. The smoke was even thicker in the slot than it'd been in the hallway.

  "It like this all the way up the wall?" She demanded. Blinking watering eyes, one of the archers nodded. "Shit! Why'd no one tell me?"

  Before the archer could point out that Ese hadn't been at her station, having gallivanted off to take control of one of the ballistae, she left. She dropped the crossbow near the entrance and pulled a rag from her pocket, pouring her canteen's water over it and holding it over her face as she continued down the hallway.

  All throughout the interior of Fort Midwich's walls, the archers were suffering. They were supposed to fight in pairs, one to loose as rapidly as they were able, the other feeding them arrows until they were too tired to continue, then they switched. Now each team was crouched on the floor to avoid the smoke that poured from some hidden source, only occasionally popping up to loose some shots. It was probably why the enemy archers had managed to stick around for so long.

  Ese began shouting at the archers she passed, half encouragement, half insults. She wanted them back at their posts, poking holes in Sporaton pricks, and if they weren't going to do it, she at least wanted them to know what she thought of them for it.

  Eventually, after crouching her way under nearly two hundred yards of smoke, she found the source. A colpsed portion of the wall, blown in by some mage's spell, was absolutely pouring smoke into the air. Though she couldn't see any fire, it didn't change the fact that she felt heat wafting off it in waves, and the amount of bck smoke it oozed was more than a bonfire of equal size should've been putting off.

  She pulled away from the heat, ripping her crystal out of her pocket.

  "Got some mage bullshit in the wall interior, 'bout... three hundred yards west of center, I'd say. That portion of the wall that fell down is shittin' smoke like nobody's business, and it's chokin' all the archers out."

  The Governess's voice sang out of the crystal almost immediately.

  "What do you mean, choking out the archers?"

  "I mean it's chokin' out the archers! Most of it's pourin' out the murderholes, so it's not filling the whole pce up, but it's real nasty shit. Not normal smoke. Can't breathe it in for more than a few seconds before you start hacking up a lung."

  "God-fucking-damnit," The Governess growled, a guttural curse that Ese doubted was supposed to be sent over the crystal for all to hear. "Alright, we'll try and figure something out. Colonel Shale, see if you've got any artificers with bright ideas. If not, try and evacuate the nearby archers on either side of the colpse and board up the wall, see if we can't stop it up."

  With that task luckily delegated to someone else, Ese awkwardly crouch-walked back the way she came. This time she yelled at the archers that someone was coming to do something about the smoke, which was probably better for their morale than the insult-slinging she'd been doing before.

  When she emerged where she'd started, she was immediately rushed by one of her lieutenants. Merra came up to her with a furious look on her face, halberd gripped like she was readying herself to take a swing at Ese's head.

  "Godsdamnit! Where have you been?"

  Ese stopped wiping smoke off her face for a second to jab a thumb at the wall. "Figurin' out why in the hell our archers weren't doing their jobs."

  "You've got a job to do!" Lieutenant Merra roared, shoving against Ese's breastpte. "I'm not supposed to be in charge of this shit! That's your job!"

  "The fuck am I supposed to do?" Ese countered, waving to the wall. "It's a siege! You stand there, you kill as many as you can, and if you can't kill no more, you let someone else take your pce! Every damn soldier's got enough brains in them to know that! I'm ten times more useful with the ballistae than I am up on the wall, hollerin' myself hoarse tellin' everyone to hold steady!"

  Lieutenant Merra shoved her again, fury on her face. "But it's what you're damn well supposed to be doing! Not me!"

  "You're a fuckin' Lieutenant!" Ese roared, shoving her back, far harder. "Your job is to do what I goddamn tell you to do! Now get back up on that wall, or gods help me I'll throw you up there my fucking self!"

  Merra was stumbled backward several feet by Ese's brutish push, looking enraged. Her fist curled and raised toward Ese, ready to start a proper brawl, but at the st second, the young Lieutenant thought better of it. Instead she whirled, putting her back to Ese with as much hostility as the movement could hold, and stomped back up to her post.

  Ese watched her go, grinding her teeth with anger. The Lieutenant was half-right. If you wanted to get technical with it, Ese should be up on that wall. She was a Colonel, in charge of a fifth of the entire army, and that entailed a whole helluva lot of responsibility.

  Problem was, Ese was right, too. This wasn't a field battle. It was a siege. She'd hand-picked her every st one of her Lieutenants, plenty of the Sergeants, too, and she trusted every st one of them with her life. They were too smart to need her breathing down their necks. If they'd been in the field, things'd be different, as they'd need one voice and one set of orders keeping them in line, but not here.

  Lieutenant Merra was a smart gal, but she was the sort that was reassured by someone looking over her shoulder. She was great at drills and routine, but improv scared her half to death. Unfortunately for her, she was going to get have to get used to it, because she wasn't going to get her hand held forever, especially when her task was so simple.

  No, Ese was doing more good on the ballistae than she'd ever have achieved on the wall. She returned to it now, inspecting the tuning job the crew had done in her absence.

  Decades of woodworking experience let her feel the mighty beast's grain with an almost intimate intensity. She ran her hands along the length of its bowlimb, plucked and tapped at its steel string, and gently twisted the gears that let the crew pull it into tension beyond any human strength. To an outsider, Ese looked damn strange. Like she was molesting the poor ballistae, probably.

  She wasn't, of course, but that didn't mean she wasn't opposed to the idea. She loved the damn things more than was proper, that was for sure.

  Satisfied that the crew hadn't screwed anything up, she moved to the rails that it slid along, walking the length while looking for any sign of imperfection. The unmarred sections of the track were predictably fwless, and didn't require much attention. It was when she got near the top that she bent a bit lower, feeling the metal grooves.

  A group of combat engineers were working at the top, protected by a group of halberdiers that had exchanged their weapons for oversized shields. They finished wrenching off the ruined bit of iron track just as Ese arrived, heaving it aside. A straight length of steel was dropped in its pce, the angle hurriedly checked, and then they began to work, pinning it in pce.

  Ese watched their work with a lust that nearly equaled her love for the ballistae. Lots of people had lots of ways they liked to sum up the Champion of Amarat's leadership, usually involving words like brilliant, crazy, naive, shocking, or whatever else, but Ese only ever thought of one word:

  Standard.

  The iron section of track the combat engineers dropped down was standardized. It was the same height, width, and shape as the tracks that ran in the revitalized mines across Tulian, the same that every ballistae on the Tulian walls rolled along. When the combat engineers brought out a handful of nails, patching over a broken section of the wall with thin pnks of wood, Ese recognized that the nails were called two-inchers, of a length, width, and design perfecetly identical to every other two-incher in the new nation.

  Anywhere you went in Tulian, so long as the Governess had a hand in building it, the parts were the same. You never needed a different tool, never needed to ask a local what the funny-looking joint was there for, never needed to worry about finding something you'd never seen before. Shit just worked.

  And if most people couldn't understand the value of that, Ese sure as shit could. She watched the combat engineers pin the new track into pce in a matter of minutes, a repair only possible because they had a stockpile of identical repcement parts waiting in the wings.

  That kinda perfection wasn't as beautiful as the ballistae, but it was damn close. Once she assured herself that their work was good, and that the ballistae wouldn't founder when it was hauled up the tracks, she went back and rejoined the crew.

  "Ready below!" She cried, gncing down at the reserves. At her shout they lunged for the ropes, taking hold of the rope pulleys that would drag the ballistae up into its loosing position. "Pull!"

  The ballistae lurched forward, dragged forward by dozens of strong arms. She licked her lips as they went, feeling the rumble of the wheels grinding over the track. All good, so far.

  There was a far more noticeable cck as the ballistae rolled over the patched portion of rail, but nothing worse. In seconds Ese was looking down the length of the bolt, searching for a target. At her side, one of the crew began counting aloud, down from thirty. That was the ballistae's limit for how long they were allowed to be exposed. Spending too long atop the wall was sure to end up with a mage's attention drawn to them, and if one of the bastards managed to cast a spell unimpeded, that would be the end of them.

  When the count reached ten and Ese still hadn't found a mage to target, she cursed and swung the ballistae around. When the count hit five, she aimed for some important-looking prick sitting atop a horse.

  "Loose!"

  The bolt ripped forward, disappearing between blinks. It reappeared in the side of the man's horse, steel armor buckling as it lodged itself through the animal's lungs. The horse dropped, throwing its rider, and Ese began shouting for them to be drawn back.

  The ballistae lurched backward before she could see what happened to the armored rider themselves, and though that pissed her off, the lightning bolt that flew over her head a moment ter did a whole hell of a lot to mollify her. Her hair once more stood on end as it deafened her with a violent boom, so bright that the world around her was briefly robbed of its shadows.

  Too close, she thought. Gonna have to get quicker at it.

  "Reload!" She cried as the ballistae smmed against the bumper, jarring in its intensity. Once again, she began the ritual of checking the assembly for damage, but when she turned around, she realized one of the loaders was missing.

  She craned her neck about, confused, only to find them ying on the track above, the entire right side of their body bckened. They were shivering with pain, moaning deliriously. With how they were trembling, it didn't take a healer to know they weren't going to make it.

  Too goddamn close.

  "Someone get that poor bastard off the tracks and to a healer!" She roared. It may have been obvious the soldier was going to die, but that wasn't her call to make. Best to give them every chance they could get.

  Twenty-five seconds, next time, Ese decided as she watched someone haul the trembling soldier away.

  Before they'd taken more than a dozen feet, the soldier's shivering stopped. A single gurgling breath left their lips. Ese hadn't known their name.

  Only twenty seconds, she amended. Twenty seconds should be enough.

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  Three PM

  Evie

  Evie watched her Master near the bottom of the stairs, armor thudding and cnking with each overburdened step. To have repelled an ensorcelled siege tower in the opening minutes of battle was an achievement beyond reckoning, but not one Master had taken any joy in. That it had been followed by hours of futile, half-started attempts by peasants to re-empce the siege tower was even worse. Without their Knights to support them, the sughter Master had been forced to bring down was considerable.

  For one so bright in demeanor throughout her life, Master had a brutal tendency towards pessimism in the face of war. Master did not see the lives she had saved; only those who had died in spite of her efforts. Evie thought it a shame that she cked the ability to disassociate the realities and abstractions of battles and their casualties. She did not count them as figures on a paper, neat tally marks banced against the marks on the Sporaton sheet, but the faces she had seen throughout their camp. Evie watched as Master reached the bottom of the stairs, taking a moment to put a hand against the wall for support. Remnants of the battle's wear seemed to cling to her like Nora's hated algae, every drop of blood shed by her bde collecting into bulging protrusions, clogging her pores until there was too much dragging her down to allow another step.

  But, as was Master's nature, the Champion of Amarat lifted herself with a deep breath. With her eyes closed, she shook herself like a dog, the detritus that threatened to choke her scattering off like bark from a felled tree. Her Master may stagger, but she did not stagger for long.

  Evie cocked her ears, listening to the shifting tune Master's abilities sent spiraling through the skies.

  "Lauren Bousfield, Master?"

  The monstrous bck helmet turned to her, only the colr's bond telling Evie of the smile it hid. "You're getting better at recognizing them."

  "Perhaps I am, but Bousfield's works have a... distinct aura to them, it could be said."

  Master snorted indelicately. "Probably, yeah. Still wish she'd stuck with her old stagename, though."

  Evie's brow crinkled, trying and failing to recall. Had Master told her of it, before? She shook her head, unsure. "I am unfamiliar, Master."

  "Emperor Nero's Day at Disneynd."

  "Ah," Evie said, as if it were enlightening in anyway. She vaguely recalled that "Disneynd" was the nexus of one of Master's much-hated corporations, and while the specific name of Nero held no historical weight, Master's opinion on Emperors was well known. A musician whose name was a mockery of hedonistic wealth, she supposed? Most likely. Generally speaking, if she assumed any one of Master's offhanded comments were an indictment of the wealthy or powerful, the odds of being correct were good enough as to be assured.

  And if one had to wage war to a song, this mechanically altered wailing was as good as any. It whipped and cracked over the field of battle like the howling wind of a banshee's scream, its erratic drumming sending pulses of adrenaline through the hearts of the troops. Evie could only imagine how it was received by the enemy peasantry. Not well, that was for certain. At the very least, it would be actively wounding any with a passion for music that was restrained, elegant, or in any way refined.

  Not that Master was much concerned with the peasantry. No, the smile she had fshed Evie and the redoubling of her music spoke to that.

  She trailed behind Master as they jogged along the wall, allowing the half-trained Irregurs to take Evie's spot at Master's side. For all she wished to protect Master, there was little to be done on the field of battle that Master could not handle for herself.

  Particurly when she was not running to kill peasants, where empathy may overwhelm her. When Master had sunk herself into the sughter of the siege tower's occupants, Evie had briefly worried. Worried that Master was going to allow her sympathy to get the best of her, a distraction that could prove lethal. Master had persevered, but Evie was unable to shake the worry. Thankfully, that wasn't something she needed concern herself about at present.

  They were moving to one of the siege towers, near the eastern valley wall. A fresh attempt upon the walls, bringing fresh Knights. Nobility. Against such an opponent, Master was perfectly willing to delve into violence. She even picked up into a light jog as they went, growing visibly eager to reach the site of battle. Evie followed easily, comparatively unburdened next to the heavily armored Irregurs.

  At the siege tower, another chaotic battle had formed. The Knights were trying to break out to rove among the common troops, while what Irregurs had been able to respond desperately held them back, all their training leaving them barely able to survive, though they outnumbered the Knights three-to-one. Evie saw one Knightly weapon fall, taking a halberdier's arm off at the shoulder. Master's jog turned into a run.

  Evie watched the bck-cd Champion hit the lines of her own troops like a musket ball, blowing open a hole in her feverish desire to reach the conflict quicker.

  Put frankly, Master enjoyed this kind of combat.

  Perhaps concerningly so.

  Evie stood behind the melee with her rapier unsummoned, watching Master wade into battle. Over the course of the battle, Master had sheathed her greatsword, a bde that had achieved near-mythical status among the troops, and taken a simpler halberd from a fallen soldier. That bloodied weapon now flew through the air with wild abandon, whistling all the way to its inevitable camitous bang, bouncing off some poor fool's helmet.

  Master's ughter turned hideous as the struck Knight fell forward in a daze. She twisted her halberd on its side and thrust it between the Knight's legs, then wrenched it backward. The spike opposite the weapon's axehead took the Knight's calf out from under them, then continued to drag them like a hooked fish until they were sent skidding across the concrete, flung behind the line of Irregurs. The armored projectile sparked to a stop a short distance before Evie, freeing Master to turn her attention to the next target.

  She watched the Knight stir to life, shocked by their sudden ck of foes. Still recovering from Master's titanic blow, they were slow to get to their feet, and even slower to recognize that Evie was standing there, watching them.

  If you could not yet take a blow to the head with grace, you shouldn't have gone to war, she thought, stepping into a lunge.

  The Knight saw her at the st second and tried to duck, which was useless. Evie's wrist twisted ever so slightly down, rapier tip sliding through the slit of the Knight's helmet.

  Evie felt her bde sink several inches into something soft, then catch. The Knight's duck had caught the bde in a bind against the eye slit's metal, stopping her a few inches short of an immediately lethal blow. The Knight began to shriek.

  A woman, then, Evie determined. The screams were too shrill for a man.

  Using the caught bde, she levered the woman onto the floor. The blinded woman began to fil about with all her limbs, screaming the entire while, trying to knock away her unseen attacker.

  Irritated, Evie pced her heel on the woman's chestpte, pinning her in pce, and adjusted the angle of her bde until it could be rammed home. It hit the back of the woman's helmet with a dull metallic thunk.

  With that done, she wiped her bde clean and grabbed the corpse's ankle. She dragged it to the wall's edge, heaving it under the railings to the soil below. It nded with a jostling crash of metal against metal, limbs shattered and twisted, but she wasn't concerned. The armor was enchanted. Such a fall wouldn't damage it beyond salvaging, and the reserve troops had been instructed to stay away from the wall to avoid such falling debris.

  Evie returned to her position behind the line, frowning. The so-called Knights they had faced thus far, save for Emeric, were barely worth the name. The Sporaton Knighthood was a vaunted institution, famed for their martial prowess, trained for centuries in the same tactics that had successfully brought the Kingdom to its current prodigious heights. Their youths were forged in Fort Lament, their adolescence ground away upon the fields of battle. They were the pinnacle of warfare, a force that even Master Graf had feared. Evie knew King Sporatos would not be sending his best, due to a mixture of politics, his underestimation of Master's forces, and the inherent inelegance of mounted troops engaging in a siege, but had they really thought they'd take the walls with such paltry examples of their Knighthood? Equipment aside, the girl Evie had just killed was barely a squire, much less a Knight.

  She hoped Master would not kill whoever was in charge of this particur contingent before Evie found a chance to test herself. Emeric's concern for the fools at his feet had been awfully anticlimactic.

  Evie watched the greater battle through the left of her peripheral vision, taking note of the way the blocks of spears had begun to move up, shields raised. She could see dders being carried among them, and realized that King Sporatos must have finally realized that six points of contact with the enemy were not going to be enough to force a breakthrough. Small though the Tulian Army may be, with only six siege towers, they could easily rotate the tired and injured out of combat. If the walls were to fall, the Sporatons would need to bring as much pressure to bear as possible.

  Thus, the dders. Evie contempted pulling Master out of the melee to inform her, but decided against it. By the conversations she overheard from the crystal, it seemed the Colonels were reacting appropriately. Calls to reinforce the lines, hold steady, archers to focus upon dder-bearers, the usual fair. Master's direct involvement was unnecessary.

  While still keeping an eye on the melee Master had embroiled herself in, Evie joined those at the wall awaiting the dder's impact. She took a halberd from one of the soldiers and aligned herself with where she thought it most likely for the dders to arrive. Though she was hardly as familiar with a spear and its derivatives as she was her rapier, it had been part of her training fundamentals to practice with it. The spear was, ultimately, the basis upon which all weapons were born, and its longest form, the pike, an exempry illustration of battle's core philosophy: kill the enemy from where they cannot kill you.

  When the first peasant reached within reach of Evie, they died, the speartip of a halberd passing through their eye. She reset herself behind the creneltion, preferring to avoid being in sight of archers as much as possible, and counted breaths until the next peasant should be in pce.

  Evie rolled to the side, leaned forward, and pierced the skull of a second peasant. It would be a long while yet until they were anywhere near mounting the walls.

  A series of shouts sounded from her right, redirecting Evie's attention to the melee. It seemed a second Knight had ended up behind their lines, this time due to legitimately forcing their way through. Evie returned the soldier's halberd she'd taken.

  The Knight had been readying themselves to dash away, bowling through the unprotected common troops. They paused when they saw her step forward, and after a moment's consideration of her appearance, took their poleaxe into a defensive stance.

  Evie licked her lips, a smirk rising. This Knight had started on their feet. Perhaps they would be more entertaining than the st.

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  Five PM

  Graf Urs

  Graf stood beside the King, watching the battle's progress. Unlike all the other nobles present, Graf was alone in matching the King's height, both of them sat on horseback. In fact, the crown of Graf's head may have very well been above the King's. An minor sign of disrespect to a very important man, but one that Graf was perhaps unique in all the world for being able to do without consequence. Graf Urs sat level with the King of Sporatos, and neither thought it worth remark.

  Of course, the occasion was not without subtlety. Graf was not the first choice of advisor for King Sporatos, who would undoubtedly have preferred to have one of those masked strangers at his side. Even before the Champion's accusation that the masked strangers were subverting the King's rule, Graf had tasted the smack of the occult upon them. After the Champion's pronouncement, King Sporatos had been forced to do away with the counsel of the strangers, at least in public. Even if their stated role was as anonymous foreign consultant experts on the history and behavior of Champions, which well expined their high level of involvement in the conflict, the implication that King Sporatos's decisions were being suppnted was damning. The anti-war faction had seized the notion like a dog with a bone, and had even begun to quietly discuss the full breadth of the word "heretic" used by the Champion in her indictment.

  Thus, to keep up appearances, it was Graf who was serving as the King's sounding board. Not that the King had done much in the way of utilizing Graf's vast experience throughout the day. Assaulting a straight line of castle wall was perhaps as unsubtle a task as a military force could encounter, and once the initial pn was finalized, the King had done little more than ride up and down the rearmost lines, tweaking only minor aspects of the battle throughout. It was only when hours had passed without a single successful breach, several siege towers being forced to withdraw before being unched forward once more, that the King finally spoke to him in earnest.

  "It seems we will not take the wall today," King Sporatos said, as if it was a casual observation. Of course, Graf knew well these games, and recognized it as the question it was.

  "So it would seem, my Lord," Graf agreed. "Now the question remains as to how long we shall maintain today's assault. The damage wrought upon the enemy is great, and could perhaps grow greater, but our own losses might in turn are considerable."

  In fact, Graf thought that the cost of assaulting the wall had been hideously foolish. He had advised the King against it as strongly as he dared, but to no avail, and now they were witnessing the consequences. All across the eleven hundred yards of white stone the peasant blocks were moving forward, suffering under a withering hail of arrows that they could not suppress. Though the siege towers were naturally the most effective means of breaking through the enemy's lines, sending them alone would have allowed far too great a concentration of defenders. The peasants were being driven forward at spearpoint to pce long dders against the wall, cmbering up them to precariously assault as many points at once as they could. Doing so helped prevent the full force of the enemy from falling upon the Knights within the siege towers, but the cost in blood was considerable. Against such heavily armored defenders, the peasants had no hope of achieving a breakthrough. Their bodies had begun to pile beneath each dder.

  "You speak of withdrawing before being forced to?" The King asked, raising an eyebrow in surprise. Another comment, another game. The King could not be the first to suggest retreat, which was dishonorable. It fell to Graf, a cutthroat mercenary, to propose the coward's way out.

  "I do, sir," Graf said, a little louder than was necessary, so the King's entourage could hear. "If we wish to break the enemy, I would rather it be all at once, rather than piecemeal. Even if the glorious charge of cavalry may not be realized in a siege, its ultimate effect of shattering our foes could still be manifested. Now that we have taken the enemy's measure, tomorrow's fortunes may shine brighter."

  The king only grunted his acknowledgement, staring out over the field of battle. Graf Urs was not a political man. He had picked up quite a fair bit of experience with politics, as a matter of necessity, but it was by necessity only. He did not know if the King was genuinely considering his advice, or if he was affecting the appearance of deliberation, to mollify those who would have thought him a coward for withdrawing. If it was the former, Graf despised it. Wealthy though he'd become, he'd been born a poor apothecary's son, and he ached for the losses incurred while the King remained silent. No amount of the clever genealogical forgery which justified his current status could alter his true upbringing.

  "The mages have had more success than was expected in assaulting the wall itself, my Lord," Graf said tentatively. "Perhaps a final push, focused more upon the wall than the defenders, would be advisable? It is clearly not enchanted, nor even as strong as normal stone. If the wall continues to erode at its current rate, we might well be able to remove the very ground upon which our enemy stands."

  King Sporatos cocked his head at this, like one might when hearing an interesting songbird. "An intriguing suggestion, Graf." After a moment, he nodded. "Signalman!" The King's bark startled to life one of his innumerable attendants, who went to attention. "Send a note to the archmages in camp. I would like them to confer on the appropriate methods for removing portions of the wall as an obstacle. If they think it possible for the battle mages to do so, I would like them to begin preparing for such an assault. Inform them that we wish a gap rge enough for Knight Emeric to lead his Lancers through in a charge, if at all reasonable."

  The attendant began raising the appropriate fgs, informing the archmages to expect message runners, who scattered to rey the King's words. Graf allowed himself a silent sigh of relief. Perhaps this final assault, of a new tactic, would satisfy the King's vainglory. He doubted it would be an immediate success, but at least the peasants would be out of danger, and perhaps in the nightly conference, the King may become more amenable to the original tactics Graf had suggested.

  Of course, as was always the case, no pn went off without a hitch. This one was particurly early in its foundering. Stepping forward as if from thin air, though he had just been hidden within the mass of attendants, appeared none other than Knight Emeric.

  "I cannot, my Liege," he said, bowing from the waist.

  "Emeric?" King Sporatos asked, so startled he did not even address him by his title. "What are you doing here?"

  "I arrived some time ago, my Liege, and was waiting for an appropriate time to report. Having now been ordered to lead an assault, I must regretfully interrupt your work to inform you that I am unable."

  As he spoke, Knight Emeric moved through the crowd of attendants, until he was standing directly beside the King's horse.

  "Have you been injured so grievously?" King Sporatos asked incredulously, looking the Knight over. His armor was unmarred.

  "I am unwounded, sire," Emeric replied sharply, "but those under my command were not so fortunate. As you no doubt noted, the siege tower I escorted was the first to retreat. We encountered the Champion and what I assume to be her core of most experienced troops, who successfully drove us off. As the st Knight standing, in order to spare the life of those that had already been wounded or captured, I offered my temporary parole in exchange for assurances of their safe conduct. I am therefore unable to further join battle until the sun rises tomorrow morn."

  Graf watched several reactions fsh over the King's face. First, surprise, likely that Emeric had been defeated, though Graf had warned him that a single experienced fighter per tower was not enough, followed by bemusement. The King seemed delighted that the Champion had been so foolish as to trust the word of his Knight that he would not rejoin the battle, and clearly didn't care about the inexperienced fops that had been lost, beyond the expense of their armor. Thankfully, sparing them all from witnessing an embarrassing public argument, a final reaction settled onto the King's face. He realized that the young Emeric was serious. The cavalry commander very clearly intended to honor the terms of his parole.

  "Did you find some way to ensure that the Champion would provide the promised safety of our lost?"

  "She gave me her personal assurances, my Liege."

  King Sporatos barked an ugly ugh. "Her assurances? The Mad Champion offered you her assurances?"

  "She did not seem so mad," Emeric whispered, and Graf was shocked by the bitterness to the words. He said them so that few could hear, but it nonetheless was a difficult blow to recover from for the King. His Royal Highness's shock was evident.

  "Knight Emeric," he said, at a volume difficult to overhear, "you cannot allow the words of a snake to slither between your ears. That she is clever is undeniable, perhaps even intelligent, but not mad?" The King leaned over in his saddle to be closer to Emeric, waving towards the great white wall. "Look what she, who cims to work for the providence of peasants, has constructed! Expending such resources upon an artifact of war is easy proof of her hypocrisy, of her inability to reason."

  "Yes, my Liege," Knight Emeric said, eying the castle, not looking at his King. "But my word has been given all the same. Now, I must go gather my cavalry. Even if I shall not ride with them, I will prepare them for the role you wish of us."

  And with that, the Knight retreated. King Sporatos straightened in his saddle, shaking his head like a parent confused by the machinations of their child.

  "The shock of battle does strange things to a mind," the King said, speaking as if to the open air.

  "Indeed, my Lord," Graf said, taking the risk that this was a comment he was allowed to reply to. "I have seen many permutations of battle and its effect on its survivors. It seems to me that Knight Emeric is the sort to grow contemptive after an ordeal. That is an admirable trait for a commander, I feel. Ensures the boy is thinking of what can be done better, next time."

  King Sporatos chuckled. "'Boy', Graf? He is nearer to forty than thirty."

  "At my age, there aren't many left who don't seem like children."

  "I suppose that would be so, wouldn't it?" King Sporatos adjusted his position in his saddle, watching the peasants begin their retreat from the wall. A simir expression of contemption fell over him. "Very much so, as a matter of fact. The years I have spent at war were by far the longest of my life."

  The King gnced at Graf. At his threadbare hair, which had faded to white decades ago, and at his armor, which sported more dents than smooth surfaces. At the sword by his side, named for a wife fifty years gone, the only bcksteel in all the world which had a chip taken from its edge. At the way he sat in his antiquated saddle, worn smooth by untold years spent atop its comfortable leather.

  "Yours must have been a long life indeed, Graf."

  "Longer than I ever thought it would be, my Lord," Graf replied, dipping his head.

  King Sporatos turned back to the wall. Graf did not know what consumed his thoughts, but it was clear there was much on the King's mind. Graf had known that look on the boy's father, and on his father's father, as well. A familial trait, that furrowed brow.

  "You wish to concentrate our forces, Graf? Attempt to batter the walls themselves down?"

  "I do, sire. I think it not only our best chance for victory, but our best chance for victory without an undue cost in spilled blood."

  "Hm." King Sporatos held his hand up to his chin, adjusting the trimmed beard he kept folded within his helmet. "Then we will do so, should the next few attacks not break them. For now, we will continue in the original pn. Signalman!" King Sporatos rattled off a series of orders, effectively countermanding his earlier set, returning to the original pn of successive attempts to take the walls with siege towers. "Best not to rock the boat in the midst of battle, I believe," he said to Graf, by way of expnation. "Your advice is well appreciated, but I do not think the peasants capable of so readily adapting to a change. They need time to adjust their thoughts, to let the new pn disseminate among their ranks. Seeing as Knight Emeric is unable to lead an assault, we will dey the alternative approach until tomorrow. Now, I assume there is a story to go with your advice? Some long-forgotten battle from which your conclusions are drawn?"

  "There almost always is, my Lord," Graf said, hiding his distaste at the wasteful attacks being allowed to continue. "There is no greater teacher than experience."

  "And your experience outstrips all but the elves, Graf. Yes, I think it best to dey. Not only would I like to pick your mind about its strategy, but it will also allow the mages time to develop their efforts."

  Graf ground his teeth, but said nothing. On his point about the mages requiring preperation, the King was rather right. But Graf had never been the sort to view battles as a chess match, and did not think it necessary to so deliberately pn each minute step. Haste was often as sound a tactic as prudence.

  The King continued on, oblivious to his thoughts. "I would like to hear that story, Graf, and take from that distant day what lessons I may."

  Graf felt a stiff smile crackle up his face. "That strikes me as wise, my Lord."

  Perhaps, if Graf could convince the King to further this uncharacteristically thoughtful streak, the war would not be nearly as bloody as he'd first feared.

  As soon as the thought struck him, a winter wind whipped down the back of Graf's neck, blown in from the south. Compared to the bastard heat of the Tulian fields, even the mild chill was brutal. He shivered involuntarily, looking back at the white wall of alien stone.