Midwich Valley

  Fifth Day of Siege

  Something was wrong. Evie stood atop the wall with Master, watching the enemy army roll forth, and something was wrong. The great siege towers, all six of which had unfortunately been recovered following the prior day's battle, were left behind. The blocks of peasant spears marched forward without them, a wave of thudding boots flowing as inexorably as the tide.

  Evie still hadn't gotten her head around the sheer numbers of the battle. She was a woman of tactics and skill, not the grand picture. She admired Master for her ability to seemingly juggle the incomprehensible scale on dispy. Sixteen thousand people, armed and bearing down on her. She'd been to carnivals and fairs with simir numbers of people, back in Sporatos. Though she'd ridden in a carriage with her mother, she'd still felt herself to be one face in an endless sea, and if there had been a fire, a panic, or anything to stampede the crowd, she'd have been as helpless as an ant on a piece of storm-tossed flotsam. No number of guards or skill with a sword could have stopped so many from running their carriage under. Now she was facing down that number, but as a coordinated mob, one that was moving with malevolence.

  And something was wrong. They should not have left their siege towers behind. The cavalry should not be advancing in column behind the peasants. This was an unconventional attack, and that meant one thing.

  "Is he there, Master?" Evie asked, sounding wheedling even to her own ears.

  "Oldest guy in the world in banged up armor, right?"

  "That would be him."

  "Then yeah, he's there. Riding right beside the King."

  "Damn it all."

  Evie's body unconsciously swiveled to the side, allowing Master to return to shelter behind the wall. She accepted the precious spygss, folding it away. The assault had been brutal the previous day, but ultimately survivable. Master had seethed with fury at the casualties as a matter of course, but all told, it was less than the manuscripts had led Evie to expect. Master's methodology of employing both healers and a far more numerous group of "surgeons" was yielding dividends, stabilizing the wounded long enough for magic to reach them all in time. Of their original five thousands, nearly forty-five hundreds remained. An auspicious achievement.

  Master did not see it as such. She was cursed with sentiment that that had her looking not at numbers on paper, but bodies on sheets. Five hundred of them were id out behind the walls of Fort Midwich, awaiting burial. A small group of volunteers had worked through the night, and yet there were still so many to bury. Evie had physically blocked Master from aiding with the burials, forcing her to sleep the night through. Such a gesture might have been admirable in a ruler, but was dreadfully worrisome in a military commander. Evie did not wish sentimentality, much less sleep deprivation, to get in the way of her better judgement.

  Particurly when our opponent has Graf Urs whispering in his ear, Evie thought. The man may not have technically founded the Knight's Eye, but after sixty years of it under his unquestioend authority, he was synonymous with its achievements. From the the coastal campaigns of the King's youth, Admiral Sinti's three successive rises and falls, and the subsequent colpse of the Northern Empire, not to mention innumerable squabbles in the western and northern regions, Graf Urs had been present in some capacity for every conflict within a thousand miles. Though there were occasional wars in which the party that had hired his forces did not go on to become the ultimate victor, they were the exception, not the rule.

  And now the King is seeing fit to take his advice, Evie mented. What has changed? The King I supped with feared the Knight's Eye. He viewed them as threats to his rule, and despised the insinuation that he was reliant upon Master Graf for his military might. I have been gone from the capital for too long. I no longer know which currents drive his actions.

  It was highly regrettable, all told. Evie had predicated her advice and strategic training to Master on the grounds that she would be combatting King Sporatos, not Master Graf. She knew Master feared failure in the war, feared losing it outright, and that was well and good, but she did not fear for her life personally. She was assured by the thought that Evie's contingencies– of which there were admittedly a great number– would keep her and Hurlish safe, insofar as as their physical health was concerned. Master "knew" she would escape to some distant nd where she could try her revolution again, no longer limiting herself to the small doses of foreign technology she allowed to trickle through in Tulian.

  But if Master Graf was on the opposing side? If he ended up in control of the Royal Army, either directly or indirectly? Evie had no guarantees.

  The crawling mass of the approaching army did not slow to allow her further contemption. As ponderous and inevitable as the tide, it swept forward, burying the seas of Tulian green in tan specks of Sporaton spears. Dotted throughout were blights of silver and color, Knights and nobles herding their peasants forward. Somewhere at the back, Evie knew, he would be watching.

  Master Graf did not leave loose ends. He fought until the conflict was ended, until his opponent would never again rise to challenge him. If he thought Master constituted a future threat, his stratagem would incorporate her death as its central tenant.

  There was little she could do about it, however. The war continued on, and there would be no abandoning it. No matter how much she wished.

  Master jerked her head to the approaching army. "What do you think they're pnning?"

  "I'm not sure, Master," Evie said, torn from her dour thoughts. "If King Sporatos has taken any element of Master Graf's advice to heart, I only know it will be dangerous." Evie paused, realizing something. For all her training, she still cked Master's natural acumen in reading a situation. "What is your opinion on the political situation that led to this, Master? I cannot fathom why the King has suddenly allowed Graf such authority, considering the tension that existed between them in the past."

  Master blew out a long breath, thinking. "Oh, I don't know. Lots of reasons, I guess. Graf's a smart guy, so it's not like the King's going wrong by listening to his advice. That'd help stave off any criticism, since everyone knows Graf's some kinda badass. And you said that Graf doesn't actually have any interest in rebelling, no matter what the King's paranoia says, right? Maybe the King finally realized that." Master shrugged. "I bet it's more to do with my speech the other day, though. Old Kingy can't look too reliant on his creepy robed fucks, so he's leaning on Graf instead. Which is a damn shame, with the way you've talked him up."

  "A shame indeed, Master," Evie quietly agreed.

  As the enemy army marched forward, Evie forced her thoughts back to the tactics on dispy. To have the cavalry advancing behind the main force seemed to imply they expected a breakthrough to occur, but how? The wall had suffered damage, that was true, but besides the single colpse of the archer tunnels, which had been mined out and repaired in the night, it was nearly superficial.

  To Master, it seemed to imply that the enemy thought their wall would not hold long. That it would be broken open. But Evie couldn't fathom such a thing; the enemy had constructed no siege weaponry, no catapults, no trebuchets. Their mages had damaged the structure, yes, but only after great effort and considerable risk to themselves. After collecting the ballistae crew's reports, it seemed probable that they had severely injured one mage, and, if they were lucky, killed another. It was impossible to be certain, but even if the second mage had survived, the mere fact they had been so severely wounded had to strike fear into the other mages. They were not used to facing their own mortality.

  It was with all this spiraling through her head that Evie stood atop the wall with Master, watching the encroaching enemy. Her mind whirled and whirled, chasing itself in circles, finding no new conclusions. Anxiety built minute by minute, an encyclopedic recollection of Master Graf's innumerable victories floating through her head, until eventually the enemy army reached eight hundred yards, and Master lifted the crystal to her lips.

  "Ballistae, engage."

  Accentuating the wiry tension in her gut, the ballistae loosed in a rippling volley. Evie's ears flicked forward as she tracked their flight, their crews long since having picked their targets.

  The Sporaton forces, lulled into a false sense of security by Master's restriction of the previous day's engagement range, were utterly unprepared. Evie watched four ballistae bolts arc downward into a cluster of Knights at the very center of the enemy army, selected for the greater odds of hitting a valuable target when loosing from such extreme range.

  By sheer coincidence, two of the ballistae bolts flew for the same horse, a breath's gap between their arrival. The first nded squarely on the creature's armored chest, shattering against the enchanted steel, which caused the horse to rear upward in a panic. The second bolt impacted an instant ter, gouging deeply into the animal's exposed ribcage before smming to a stop, prevented from flying straight through by the underside of its armored back. The horse fell limply forward, driving the bolt's rear into the mud, the entire animal pinned in pce like a macabre statue.

  Other bolts began to fall nearby as the Knight riding the sin horse leapt free, drawing their weapon and waving it madly, incensed beyond reason by the felling of their steed. At such a range, none of the other bolts found success, but the effect of felling even one Knight's horse was obvious.

  A vibrant orange pte rippled from the aether, a mage's shield summoned to protect that contingent of Knights. Then, to Evie's surprise, other shields flickered into being right alongside it, multicolored energies reflexively covering the central formation of Knights.

  "One, two, three, four, five," Master counted under her breath, "...seven, eight, nine? Nine shields? The fuck? Do they have every combat mage in the army right there?"

  "It would seem so, Master," Evie said, counting the shields for herself. Realizing the redundancy of so many protective spells, all but two of the mage's shields quickly faded from view. "That would expin the concentration of Knights in that location, at the very least. They are protecting the mages."

  "But mages are supposed to be spread out through an army, so they can attack wherever the enemy ends up weakest," Master said, paraphrasing one of Evie's own lessons. "They really are trying to break down the wall, aren't they?"

  "That would not be an orthodox tactic, Master," Evie said weakly, feeling compelled to reply as such, even if she could not avoid the evidence's implication. "Doing so would mean they are putting into danger the most important and valuable members of their army, rather than allowing the peasants to grind down our defenses. If King Sporatos is as concerned with noble opinion as you surmise, he would not dare ask them to risk their lives in such a manner."

  "What about Graf?" Master asked. "Think he'd give a shit?"

  Evie's ears flicked. "No. He would pursue the tactic that would earn victory with the lowest cost in blood, be it blue or common."

  "Shit."

  Master reached up and lowered her visor, enclosing her face within the metallic scowl. Across the Tulian valley, sourceless drums began to stir. She lifted her crystal once more. "Archers, Irregurs, and siege weapons, all are to focus on the mages as soon as they're in range, bar nothing." Master paused, debating. "Colonel Shale, prepare your contingencies. Once the enemy's close enough that we know where they're going to hit, I want your reserves in phanx on the other side of the wall. If it goes down, they're rushing to fill the gap, and anyone on the wall that's not actively engaged is gonna be moving to reinforce. Understood?"

  A chorus of affirmations echoed back through the crystal, the various Colonels acknowledging Master's orders. Evie, for one, was impressed with the speed at which Master had drawn her conclusions. To rattle off such decisive orders in such a short time required a self-assuredness that Evie cked; she was too methodical, too fond of concrete data and trustworthy reports. It was yet another reason why, despite the discrepancy in their upbringing, that she thought Master was a far better choice for commanding the army than she.

  That, and because Evie simply didn't want to stay behind the lines, giving orders. She watched the cluster of mages and Knights approach while consciously pressing her lips into a thin line, not allowing herself to show the toothy smile that would have come naturally to her. Every step brought the faces of the enemy into greater detail, and among them, she at st counted many who bore the signs of true Knighthood. Battle-scarred armor, unadorned weaponry, and an easy gait that spoke of years spent in battle.

  Real threats. Those that could challenge her. Without realizing it, she licked her lips, feline fangs glinting in the morning sun for a brief moment. For the Tulian Army, she did not know what the day's battle would bring. She only hoped that for her, it would bring a fight worth remembering.

  Later, when sweat and blood soaked her skin, she would remember her wish. And she would curse herself for it.

  ------------------------------

  Sara

  ------------------------------

  Sara watched the enemy advance with bile in her throat. The entire column of spearblocks that had departed camp, numbering nearly twelve thousand, had halted just beyond the range of her ballistae. Then, defying all expectations, an advance had begun, but one utterly unlike the previous day.

  The line bulged forward in a steep V, its tip aimed for the very center of Fort Midwich's wall. At its core was a thick cluster of now-dismounted Knights, their multicolored armor dazzling under the morning sun, and they marched protectively around a huddle of robed mages.

  The first bolts had taken the enemy by surprise, the distance supposedly impossible for a ballistae of that size to reach, but the mages had reacted promptly. Though the first volley of bolts successfully struck down some, the next were met by an array of snted shields, deflecting the projectiles harmlessly into the sky.

  The V of the enemy line continued to steepen, until, to Sara's further shock, the contingent of mages and Knights broke entirely away from the army. They brought with them less than a thousand spears, just enough to protect them should Sara's forces sally out during their advance. The rest of the massive army stayed behind, and they did not close the gap left by the single regiment's advance.

  Instead, the hole in the line was repced with cavalry, the gleaming Lancers at their forefront. They formed up in a column precise enough to belong in a parade, the heaviest armored at the front, with the lighter cuirassiers at the rear.

  Ballistae bolts fell upon the marching Knights like hurricane rain, soon joined by Irregur archers, then by the common bows and crossbows, but none got through. Any time one mage's shield weakened, another rose to repce it, the transition seamless. There was nothing they could do to stop them from reaching the walls.

  Sara realized rather suddenly that she absolutely, utterly, without compromise, loathed sieges. Excellent though her defensive position may have been, she was stuck on the wall, at the complete mercy of whatever pns the enemy had devised. A part of her, a very rge part, itched to unch herself over the wall with all her Irregurs, charging forward, consequences be damned. She could almost convince herself it would work, too. If enough of the enemy Knights and mages fell, the Royal Army's offensive capabilities would be devastated.

  But so would her own troops, and there was little chance the gamble would succeed. No, no matter how much she felt herself pulling at her proverbial leash, she had to stay on the walls. It was the only thing left to her.

  The torrent of projectiles became constant as the mages reached within a hundred feet of the wall. Sara herself joined in, adding her own ineffective bow shots to the hail, even as she ignored the cries of several logistics officers that pestered her on the wall, pleading for her to conserve their rapidly dwindling stocks of arrows.

  She refused to let up. She ordered the troops to abandon volleys, instead loosing as often as they were able. Something deep in her gut told her that what was coming needed to be stopped, no matter the cost.

  As specks of light began to flicker beneath the mage's shields, some hidden working below bubbling to life, she felt that gut instinct calcify into something much more palpable. As she drew back yet another arrow, long since past the point of bothering to aim, she became aware of something she hadn't felt in months. A peculiar reverberation deep within her, a stomach-churning anxiety.

  She'd briefly felt it when she'd thought of taking a swing at King Sporatos a month after her arrival in this world, when he'd told her Evie would be ensved. She'd felt it just before Garen had pinned her to the ceiling, back in Hagos. She'd felt it when she and Ignite had begun their first duel in the old Tulian Keep. Something in those flickering lights aroused a deep-seated instinct, primordial in its origins.

  Fear.

  A deep, abiding terror, an otherworldly certainty pouring into her that if she did not move, now, it would be the end of her. It rose from her core and spread through her like a deadly poison, soaking her limbs until they began to tremble, fingers losing their grasp on the bowstring. She tried to fight it, to shove it down, but the moment she did it fred twice as bright, and it was only then that she realized the sensation wasn't coming from her, but somewhere beyond, the same pce from which the ephemeral guidance that had led her to Evie and Hurlish had risen, which meant that it was not cowardice, but the guidance of a Amarat herself– a divinity– telling her to run .

  "Off the walls!" Sara roared, cutting off her Champion's Inspiration so she could be heard. "Now, now, now! Fucking run!"

  Taking her own advice, Sara turned and vaulted the railing behind her, plummeting thirty feet to the ground below. She heard startled excmations as she fell, then she hit the ground feet-first, and the pain that nced through her ankles and shins briefly blocked out all the sound in the world.

  By some miracle, nothing in her legs broke, and shortly Evie nded beside her, far more daintily, a question already on her lips.

  "Master? What is happening? You have never–"

  She was cut off by great inrushing of air, as if a giant creature was taking its final gasp, then a subsequent outrush, as if an O2 tank the size of a building had gotten its valve knocked off.

  Then the screams began.

  Sara looked up to find a hideous yellow cloud jetting up and over the walls, roaring fifty feet up into the air as a single noxious jet. She couldn't even comprehend what she was seeing for a moment, thinking it was some smoking byproduct of an attack lower down the wall, until her eyes caught upon one soldier near the railing, caught in the densest part of the fog.

  The woman had been retreating in organized fashion, as she was trained, calmly marching towards the nearest dder. Sara watched as she stumbled, months of drill practice maintaining her momentum for only a brief second before she fell to her knees, blinking in confusion. Her mouth opened, her expression dazed, a hand reaching for her throat. Then the hair beneath her helmet began to smoke, bck vapors mixing with yellow, and her eyes bulged from her face. A ragged screech ripped itself from her throat, carrying with it a spray of bckened blood.

  Others began to fall, first confused by their own lethargy, then panicking. Sara watched as a handful became dozens, her troops so disciplined that they tried to maintain a cohesive march through the dense fog even as it killed them. She heard herself begin to scream at them, telling them to get out, to leap off the walls if they had to, but for most that had been exposed to the gas, it was too te. They were already insensible, falling to their knees, vessels bursting in their wandering eyes, hypoxic confusion robbing them of any hope of fleeing to their death.

  Sara felt her breathing sharpen as she watched. In seconds, not even a full minute, there were over a hundred corpses littering the wall where she'd been standing.

  Evie was saying something to her, but she couldn't hear it. There was a violent, unending rush in her ears, a torrent of blood driven through her body by a pounding heart that would, not, stop.

  Gas, she recognized, the newest of Amarat's Blessings appraising her of what the yellow substance was. The hideous list ran itself involuntarily through her mind. Hydrogen chloride, hydrogen sulfide, aerosolized sulfuric acid, and a litany of other, difficult to parse liquids, all acidic in nature. The bodies on the parapet began to smoke, patches of skin peeling away from their skin, turning first red, then a corrosive bck.

  Fucking gas, Sara thought, utterly ignorant of Evie's hand shaking her shoulder. Fucking poison gas.

  "Master!" Evie screamed, bellowing the word directly into Sara's ear, so loud that the pain snapped her from her fugue. "Colonel Ese reports that the smoke is eating through the wall! What will we do?"

  Sara fell back a step, the earth itself seeming to twist and wobble beneath her. She'd made a mistake. She'd made more mistakes than she'd ever known. She'd spent half a year preparing for this war in every way she knew how, save for the methods she knew would succeed. She'd seen and recognized the horrors of svery, of feudal lords, of oppression greater than near any that remained on Earth, but she'd thought the world itself, with its magic, gods, and miracles striding through everyday life, was, somehow, more pure.

  Gas. Poison gas. Do those mages even know what they've done?

  What had Sara said? That this world didn't know war? That it was ignorant to what humans could do to one another, when all the power of an industrialized society was brought to bear? How na?ve had that been? Here she'd thought she was being the hero by holding back what she had. Had she really thought that she was preserving some doe-eyed innocence of this primitive society?

  She ughed again, a little louder, and this time she saw Evie put a hand to her colr, eyes widening, another step taken backward.

  Her pulse was pounding. She could feel her heart racing so hard that the tips of her fingers throbbed, as if the force of her racing blood was threatening to burst through her skin. Something rushed to her head so hard she swayed on her feet, the edges of her vision filling with static. It was almost like a high, some distant, fizzled part of her mind noted, an airy sensation that made her body feel so light she might float.

  "...Master?"

  She didn't hear it. With white-knuckled fingers, she lifted her crystal to her lips, then was startled by the way her knuckles bumped into her visor. It was difficult for her fingers to grab the edge. After two attempts, she lifted it, taking a breath, but was stopped by a hand on her wrist, soft fingers slipping beneath her gauntlet to touch her skin.

  "Sara," Evie spoke quietly. Her expression was stern, even her ears and tail frozen. "Calm yourself."

  "I. Am. Calm." Sara spat the words out, biting each one off at its end. Before she could say anything further, she and Evie stumbled, as if struck from above.

  A certain tightness gripped her gut, some great external force bearing down on her. The grass about them was pressed ft, crushed by the sheer weight of an unfathomable being's attention. Beings. A multitude of somethings crawling around her, unseen, unduting in the space between atoms. She couldn't tell what they wanted of her. It was as if a hundred thousand eyes stared at her, their fanged masses breathing down her neck, draining color and sound from the world beyond.

  They wanted something from her. They wanted her to stop, she realized. They didn't want her to say the words that rested on her tongue.

  She looked back at the wall, where the hideous yellow eruption still roared. Chips of concrete were being visibly lifted up and thrown skyward, and the corpses that remained were being eaten away. Bone and skulls were already exposed on many, made all the worse by the way the bodies still twitched. She didn't know if they were dead.

  Fitful spurts of smoke began jetting from her armor, blood red steam hissing into the open air. Blood pounded. Pounded. POUNDED in her ears.

  Without so much as a blink, the moment ended, omniscient presences fading away.

  They knew there would be no convincing her now.

  The crystal moved to her lips. "This is a message for all who know its meaning. Open powder, covered eyes. Repeat, open powder, covered eyes."

  ------------------------------

  Hurlish

  ------------------------------

  She was directing her apprentices on how to properly haul in a load of iron, a hand resting comfortably on her belly bump, when she heard it. As she had every day since Sara had left the city, Hurlish kept the crystal in a chest pocket, muffled just enough so she was the only one that could hear it. Hearing the proper battles start up had done a number on her, but she'd forced herself to keep calm, because Evie and Sara both had cimed that stressing out would be bad for the baby.

  "Open powder, covered eyes. Repeat, open powder, covered eyes."

  Hurlish's guiding hand slowly fell, a distant expression appearing on her face. The apprentices, red-faced and sweating, looked expectantly at her for her next order. When it didn't come, they set their load down, coughing politely.

  Hurlish shook her head, blinking. "Change of pns, kids," she said, then repeated it louder, to be heard throughout her forge. "Change of pn, kids! Get the shutters closed, we're workin' on something different today."

  Of the seven prospective smiths she'd thought worth tutoring, six were present today. More than she'd like, but at least the one that mattered was there.

  Though they shared confused looks, her apprentices obediently drew down the storm shutters so that they'd be closed off from the rest of the courtyard. Hurlish began whistling a tune as she walked towards the door, which was now the only way in or out. She closed it, then locked it. That done, she turned around, scanning the faces of her apprentices.

  "Alright, kids," she said, a diminutive which always earned a variety of reactions. The oldest of her apprentices was two decades her senior. "Just got a message from the Governess. Looks like it's time to bust out the big guns."

  "The big what?" One of her apprentices asked. She looked for who said it and found Tarnil, the catfolk girl that she'd taken under her wing three or so months back.

  Perfect.

  "Exactly, Tarnil. You don't know. None of you do. Follow me for a second."

  Looking nervous, the girl moved with Hurlish over to an anvil. Hurlish bent over it, as if she were about to trace out a diagram, as she often did, but this time she put a hand on the girl's upper back, just below the neck.

  Tarnil said she's what... seventeen? Eighteen? Hurlish mentally shrugged. Shit, I don't care. Old enough to know better.

  "So," Hurlish said, slowly moving her hand upward. "A gun's just about the most powerful weapon you'll ever get to see, and it's what the good old Governess has been keeping in her back pocket in case shit goes south. You interested in learning how to make one of those?"

  Tarnil nodded rapidly, her eyes bright with greedy excitement.

  "Figured you would be," Hurlish said, in the same instant that her hand lurched forward, seizing the back of her neck. The kid's neck was thin enough that her fingers wrapped all the around, squeezing a wheeze from her windpipe. "See, the funny thing about having a chat with the Champion of Amarat is– well, there's lots of funny things, love that girl, but mainly for you– is that there's no real way to lie to her."

  Tarlin began to struggle, trying to free herself Hurlish's grasp. Hurlish slowly lifted her, until her feet were swinging uselessly above the cobblestones.

  "She's real, real good at sniffing out people bullshitting her. And y'know, since you're around the forge so much, y'all have had a good few chats. Not long often, she's a busy gal, but often enough." Tarnil could only gurgle helplessly in Hurlish's grasp. "So I got a question for ya: you wanna go in easy, or hard?"

  In the corner of her eye, Hurlish caught a glimpse of something bright and metallic emerging from the girl's pocket.

  She shoved Tarnil's head down, hard, aiming her forehead for the anvil's edge.

  The catfolk twisted, turning what was mean to be a skull-caving blow into one that smashed through her teeth, iron embedding itself in the meat at the back of her jaw. The catfolk shoved off the anvil with everything she had, tearing her own skin so that Hurlish was left holding chunks of bloody fur.

  Before she could do anything else, Hurlish's boot came up, steel tip embedding itself in her gut.

  Tarlin was flung backward, crashing through tool-filled aisles. Several of the younger apprentices began screaming shrilly. Hurlish had never got that, why people screamed when something bad was going down. It wasn't like it was doing much to help anybody.

  Ignoring them, she reached a fist up to a wooden panel on the ceiling, smashing it open and grasping something within.

  Across the room, Tarnil– or whatever her name really was– cmbered to her feet, blood pouring from her her broken jaw to spatter wetly on the cobblestones. She fumbled in her pocket once more, drawing out a health potion, and tilted her head back, pouring it down her ruined throat. As the catfolk's jaw reknit, Hurlish drew a long, mahogany-wrapped length of steel from the roof compartment, looking it over with a critical eye. All seemed in order.

  "This war is hopeless!" Tarnil hissed, her childish demeanor repced with ragged, blood-dripping vitriol. "You think you can win against the might of a Kingdom? Against the might of a King? Your pying at independence has been tolerated too long, and the mad creature you hold so dear will be brought to heel beneath–"

  Hurlish put the rifle's stock to her shoulder and pulled the trigger. Viscera coated the back of her shop, chunks spread in a six foot radius around one neat little hole in the wooden wall. Tarnil's body flopped to the floor, lifeless.

  "This, kids," Hurlish said over the ringing in her ears, "is a gun. And we're gonna be making a whole hell of a lot of them."

  ------------------------------

  Windless Grass

  ------------------------------

  Deep in the Artificer's Union, locked in a sound-proofed, padded room, Windless had been on crystal duty when she'd heard the Governess's voice come through.

  "Open powder, covered eyes. Repeat, open powder, covered eyes."

  Thinking little of it, she'd immediately readied her tools, preparing to adjust the attenuation. The half-witted soldiers the Champion had entrusted with her store of crystals cked any form of communicative discipline, and it was only through great effort that Windless had thus far prevented the contraption from becoming a shockwave of deadly shards.

  Frankly, the device would have failed long ago if Windless had properly limited herself to the skill expected of an Apprentice. Thankfully, the risk of showing a little bit of prowess had paid off, and she was now the defacto head of the Artificing Union's military contingent. That unfortunately meant she was under too close of surveilnce to send her reports thus far, but she knew she'd eventually have her chance, and what she'd learned would be of incredible value to the Admiralty.

  Perhaps this is that moment, she thought. Though the occasions on which the Champion had bothered to use code words were few, they often prompted a flurry of responses and orders, and the entire matrix would shake and shudder, threatening to detonate.

  Yet, for once, there was no response. The code phrase, whatever it meant, prompted only silence. Windless waited several seconds longer, tools poised to dampen the energies, perhaps mute it if needed, but there was nothing. Whatever had occurred was obviously uniquely significant, and if she could determine what it was, she might discover an opportunity to finally send information back to the Admiralty.

  She looked to her so-called colleague on crystal duty with her, an artificer by the rather unimaginative name of Breeze. She disliked the boy. Too many Carrion parents these days named their children Breeze, thinking it would bring good luck for them to receive commission upon a ship. That idiotic superstition had clearly been characteristic of his parents, and she saw that trend in his upbringing constantly. She did not enjoy his presence, and looked forward to the day she could be done with him.

  Still, he was not a complete fool, and her role as a supposed apprentice had to be maintained.

  "Check the code book to determine what that means," she instructed. "I am capable of tending the matrix alone for a few short minutes."

  "Alright," he said, sloughing off the stool beside her. He yawned as he went to grab the book from a nearby drawer, zily flipping through it as he returned to his station. "Let's see," he hummed, "Code phrases, military phrases, alphabetized, so we're looking for O..."

  His words trailed off, fanning the fmes of Windless's growing irritation. "Well?" She snapped. "What is it?"

  "Hold on," he mumbled, "I'm still reading."

  Windless blinked. Seeing as the matrix had remained silent, she allowed herself a brief gnce at the book.

  The entire page under the entry for 'Open Powder, Covered Eyes' was filled to the brim with text. It in fact spilled onto the next page as well, paragraph upon paragraph of clinical instructions listed, and it didn't seem to stop there. From what she gnced at, the majority of it was situational contingencies, complex flow charts of decisions to be followed depending on the circumstances one was in when the command was given.

  Her eyes tched onto one part in particur however, near the top. As she understood it, it was a prerequisite step, one that would be taken no matter what.

  The City gates will be sealed for twenty-four hours, and those in positions of authority will be provided the list of confirmed foreign spies operating within the bounds of the Tulian Capital. Their arrest will begin immediately upon receipt of the order, prioritizing the listed individuals as indicated by the provided instructions...

  Windless threw herself back from her station, dropping her attenuation rods to the floor. She swept towards her personal work desk and began shoving her tools into a bag. Muffled by the Artificing Union's walls, she heard bells beginning to ring throughout the city.

  "Windless?" Breeze asked. "What's up? Something spook you?"

  Thank whichever god partnered me with a fool.

  "No. I have a role to py in that order, Breeze. I must leave."

  "Well, shit," he said, putting the book down. He looked nervously at the matrix. "Are you gonna get me a repcement? I don't know if I can handle it all on my own."

  She bit back her spite, still pying the role of an apprentice. It was possible she hadn't been identified, after all. "You are more than capable of asking someone for help, Breeze. I am leaving."

  She tucked the bag over her shoulder and headed for the room's exit, shoving it open. She marched nervously through the hallways, the city's bells growing ever louder as she neared the streets beyond.

  She abruptly changed paths, thinking better of using the main entrance. She headed for a side door instead, nodding hurried acknowledgements to the others she passed. They seemed interested in the bells ringing outside, but none had the sense of alertness to them that she imagined would go along with their comprehension of the significance. Thus far, she was safe.

  As she walked, she began compiling her report in her head, intending to send it as soon as she was able. Details of the crystal matrix were pre-prepared, easy enough to summarize. It was the other, more nebulous hints she had uncovered that would require consideration.

  The Champion had very clearly been constructing some kind of magical tool of war. The hints were there, all across the city. Her smith partner, Hurlish of Hagos, constantly disappeared throughout the day, reappearing covered in the soot of exhaustive bor, and she was often spotted emerging from the fledgling University headed by the Tiger of Sacia. Multiple guards Windless had plied with drink and cleavage had spoken of strange rumbles coming from the building, which they attributed to the Tiger's own practice of spells. Windless knew of his oath against violence, however, and so surmised that the truth was more complex. Between the hiring of Carrion artificers like herself, reports of a Vanara alchemist, and the Champion's own experiments with spells in her partner's forge, it was clear that she was attempting to hone some artifical superweapon.

  But what? Windless asked herself, reaching the side exit at st. She has no mages beyond the Tiger, and most of her artificers have been busied with pointless tedium. It must be a magical weapon, but what, exactly? She cursed silently. She would simply have to report what she knew, and hope for the best.

  Before she could open the door, it swung inward, smming loudly against the wall. Windless jumped back, looking at the trio of steel-cd Tulian Guards, who themselves looked back at her with equal shock on their faces. A moment passed, all of them frozen.

  Then Windless reached for her bag, the lead Guard swung the wooden haft of his polearm, and there was a crack against her temple.

  The world went dark.

  -----------------------------------

  King Sporatos

  -----------------------------------

  The assault upon the walls was proceeding as excellently as Graf had promised him. The spell that the archmages had conjured up was proving remarkably effective at wearing down the strange white material. According to his aide, the wall was suffering at an identical rate to the samples they had brought back for study and testing. At the current rate, it would not be long before a suitable section of the wall had been eaten away.

  And yet a peculiar irritation prickled at his consciousness, nagging him without end. He could not figure out why.

  Perhaps it was the so-called "music." Shortly after the mages had begun their spells, the Champion's abilities had briefly faded, then were repced by the most degraded example of her twisted mind he had yet heard. It was a sepulcher composition its only recognizably human elements alternating between a funeral's mourning choir and the pitiful wailing of a man put under the torturer's knife. More than anything else the Champion had forced his senses to endure, it was as divorced from the concept of music as he could conceive.

  Still, he did not think that the music itself should have been capable of raising such anxiety in him. An alternate expnation was his proximity to the wall itself, and the spell his mages were unleashing upon it. He could hear their ritualistic chanting even now, maintaining the link to the far more powerful archmages in camp, who were the true nexus of the spell. To prove to the nobility his faith in the bizarre method of attack, he had joined his Knights for the Assault, standing proudly at the front of his own forces.

  But that could not be what so bothered him, either. He was no squire, new to the battlefield, and with the armor he wore, he was in very little danger himself. He had led assaults like this a half-dozen times, all without an ounce of fear, trusting the skill of his bde and the temper of his armor to carry him through the day.

  And yet he still had to suppress the urge to anxiously twist his hand around his sword's grip, every fiber of his being taut with anxiety, and he still did not know why.

  To distract himself from this baseless anxiety, he walked up and down his line, surveying his troops. They stiffened as they saw him approach, standing at attention as he passed them by.

  These were not the fops of the initial assault. Many were men and women King Sporatos had worked with for years, veterans of conflicts and skirmishes that had characterized the earliest years of his rule. While he had grown apart from many of them in the years since, their political leanings drawing them to one distasteful faction or another, he remained confident in their martial capabilities. No matter what they thought of his decisions as King, he was confident that every one of them would do their duty, if only for the love of the fight. One did not reach the heights they had without a passion for the art of battle, the dance of combat.

  Yes, he decided. There is nothing to worry me. We will sweep them aside.

  King Sporatos finished his appraisal of the soldiers and returned to the center of the formation, keeping a careful eye on the hissing fumes which ate at the wall. A nasty little concoction it was, and remarkably effective for it. He was gd that the archmages, unlike most of the nobility, were willing to take the advice of the Tenth God's adherents without compint. For all their eccentricity, when it came to learning new techniques, there was nothing more practical than a curious mage.

  The wall began to crumble on its own, chunks of its uppermost portion falling down, knocking more pieces off as they tumbled to the soil. King Sporatos drew his sword, its enchanted hum filling the air. It would not be long yet.

  When Graf had presented him the pn, he had been shocked by its simplicity. With such a reputation for tactical genius, he had expected some convoluted attack, involving many simultaneous elements that would collide in a single perfect moment, shattering the enemy at once.

  Instead, King Sporatos would be joining his fellow soldiers in a straightforward charge, battering aside the paltry peasants no doubt forming some panicky defensive formation within, clearing a path for the cavalry to charge through. Once they had the wall surrounded, it would be a simple matter to mop up those that remained, and the Champion could be collected at his leisure.

  Simple, but elegant. He respected the pn, even if he disliked the political goodwill it was costing him to endanger so many people, rather than peasants.

  No matter. Their compints will fade once the war is won.

  King Sporatos raised his sword as the chips of stone began to fall ever more rapidly, forming a waterfall of broken stone. The top of the wall went from twenty feet, to fifteen, to ten. He stepped forward, readying himself to charge, and watched for the moment the mage's spell faded.

  With a final, sputtering gasp, the yellow smoke stopped erupting from their conjoined hands. What remained drifted through the air for a time, a thick fog that was slowly picked up and blown away by the wind.

  King Sporatos had been intending to charge the moment it dissipated, but a strange sight caused him to hesitate. Where he had expected to see a wall of bristling halberds and stalwart Irregurs, there was something utterly alien.

  Four wheeled contraptions greeted him, surrounded by crews of barely armored peasants. The devices were long bronze cylinders of some kind, hollow in the center, a dark tunnel pointed directly at him and the rest of his troops. Nearly all of the peasants were holding their hands over their ears, save for one individual, dressed in bck armor, who held a long string in her hand, attached to one of the devices. The Champion herself, it would seem.

  King Sporatos raised his sword and called for the charge.

  The Champion pulled the string.