A Practical Guide to Evil

Chapter Book 7 ex28: Interlude: Legends II

The Warlord charged, and all that stood before him shattered.

His shoulder hit a shield wall bristling with pikes and blades and he broke straight through, a tide of warriors pouring in behind him as the dead were swept away by the wrath of the Clans. He did not slow. Ghouls burst out of the ground, buried under the rock, but his footing was sure and they were all frail. His axe swung and flesh gave, blood spurted, screams filled the air. Hakram felt his blood thundering in his ears like the beat of a drum. Felt the rhythm echo in the fifty thousand souls trailing in his wake as he roared, leaping up to smash a beorn’s leering maw with his shield. The beast fell and he hacked at its flesh, discarding the shield when it took too many arrows and roaring again as his axe split the beorn’s skull and the creature fell.

Great stones had been pulled into the way as chunks of wall to stop their charge up the avenue, monsters in the shape of massive corpse-fat snails released swarms of poisonous flies from their bone shells and skeletons the height of then men scythed through ranks with massive hammers, but it was not enough. The drow that had broken the gates for him, still shadowing his armies on the sides, filled the air with fire and curses that ate away the swarms. The Warlord’s steel fist hit the stone in front of him once, twice, thrice – and on the third the stone shattered in two. They clawed and pushed their way through, tearing into the dead as swarming the great skeletons until they were toppled down and taken apart on the ground like wounded beasts.

Yesterday he had failed to take the gate, left Catherine and the Procerans to hang, but today the Clans would remind Calernia why it had once trembled at the coming of a Horde.

The world was slowly turning red. The Warlord saw only in bursts, as if he was flitting in and out of consciousness, his Name carrying him like a river. Lead, it sang, and so the warriors of the Clans thundered down the avenue with him. A Revenant stood before him but he shoved his dead hand down the throat and ripped off the head from the inside, its fangs clattering uselessly on his scorched plate. Magic came down from above in curtains but he charged through it, sorcery dripping on armour like rain, and once through he barrelled into the enemy’s retreating ranks. A wyrm spasmed across the avenue, swarmed by the silhouettes of Mighty, as the Warlord and his warriors pulled it down with ropes and harpoons.

Then it was a hulking shape of steel, a great armour held together by the dead remains of a Name. The Prince of Bones shattered the tiles under them with a stomp, but the Warlord only roared as his axe dented the sternly frowning mask covering the Scourge’s face. It was strong as a monster was strong, the sweeps of its broadsword whistling through the air but still too slow. The Warlord stepped around the blows and struck, hacking away at the layers of steel until his axe was little more than scrap, and after that he caught the Scourge’s arm to take its own greatsword. Only when it came to strength he was outmatched, the Revenant unmoving as the Warlord’s feet were pushed back through broken tiles. The Warlord roared again, but from the corner of his eye he saw the Scourge’s free hand moving. A slap, he thought, that would be enough to spill his brains all over the stone.

Until it was caught, a stooped old drow shivered into existence and grabbing a single finger.

“My turn,” Rumena the Tomb-maker said, and struck with its free hand.

The Warlord grunted with effort, holding the Prince of Bones in place so he could not avoid the blow, and there was a great scream of metal before a wet crunch. The orc watched with muted disbelief as the Scourge’s head, a ball of metal, toppled to the ground. But there is no bone, the Warlord saw. The head was a decoy. A heartbeat later a mass of lightning came down on their heads, the Tumult’s hatred unleashed, and even as Rumena formed a sphere of Night around them the Warlord felt the Prince of Bones slipping away. He struggled to hold the Scourge in place but the Prince’s might was implacable and his fingers scrabbled down the steel, until at last they found purchase.

When the storm of lightning ended and the Tomb-maker ended its working there was no trace of the Prince of Bones, but Hakram Deadhand held in his grasp the Scourge’s own greastword as a prize. Dead fingers closing around it, the Warlord began to feel the red bleeding out of him. His breath slowed, and he began to feel the collection of wounds that covered his body.

“They retreated to the inner wall,” Rumena said.

“We’re close,” Hakram replied, and was surprised to find that true.

They had pushed two thirds of the way up the avenue, far faster than he’d believed they would.

“Can your sigils take the rampart, Deadhand?” the drow general asked.

“No,” he admitted with a grimace. “We don’t have the siege for it. Once we hit the inner city we’ll head north, try to link up with the Praesi.”

“I will leave sigils behind,” Rumena nodded.

“And you?” Hakram asked.

The creased old Firstborn grinned, the ochre and gold on its lips pulling up.

“I hunt,” the Tomb-maker replied.

General Abigail Tanner had been looking for the way out since she’d come in and it had been a little disheartening when she’d realized all the possibilities were literal dead ends. With her luck the bloody Dead King would get her, too, and unlike the Black Queen didn’t even have the decency to pay his officers. Stuck fighting forever without even a retirement fund? She’d rather die.

In, uh, a different way.

This whole Keter business had been awful, really. Not only were the soldiers in between her and Revenants dying at a frankly alarming rate, but for some reason the Third Army kept getting into the worst of it. It was like being forcefully saddled to a horse that kept looking for cliffs to leap down from. Even Boots, her perfidious old ass of a horse, didn’t intend to go down with her when it tried to shake her off to her death.

Abigail couldn’t even blame him for that. The horse had correctly figured out she was the reason he kept getting into situations where people shot at him, so in a sense she did have it coming. The part of this mess that absolutely did drive her up the wall, though, was she’d somehow ended up leading the vanguard of the Army of Callow again. How, when? She’d tricked General Holt into taking the lead this time and somehow she was still at the tip of the spear again.

“It must be a curse,” she muttered. “I know I haven’t gone to a sermon in a while, but isn’t that why you bribe the Crows?”

“You said something, ma’am?” Staff Tribune Krolem asked.

The bulky orc looked at her expectantly.

“I was asking about the word from Marshal Juniper,” Abigail hurriedly replied.

“She commends you on the initiative and gives you free rein to lead the Third forward as you please,” Krolem proudly said, flashing his fangs.

Fucking Hellhound, the dark-haired woman uncharitably thought, hanging her a length of rope and surely it was a coincidence she was already standing next to gallows. Abigail had long been aware that the world was unfair – come on, you only had to see how well Ellie Bilkers had married while being such a witch to know that – but it was a little much to find out that even now the world wasn’t unfair in her favour. She was a noble now! Lady Abigail Tanner, even if the name was one she’d come up with in a panic when she’d realized she’d procrastinated until she was due to give an answer to the adjunct secretariat. Not only some noble but a general on top of it too!

She should be going around in goddamn palanquins all the time while people threw themselves at arrows to bring glory to her name. Instead she was stuck going around on a miserable old horse, under a banner like she was just asking to get shot, and-

Panes of magic flared into existence, glowing blue, and caught the three crossbow bolts that would have punched through her skull.

Abigail wished she could say it was even just the tenth time the dead had tried that today. At this rate she’d die a porcupine and they’d bury her as bloody Lady Arrowcatch. Krolem, Gods bless his soul, began shouting and growling until mages blew up the rooftop she’d been shot at from in a volley of fireballs.

“I think it was as a Revenant this time, ma’am,” the orc said with disturbing eagerness. “Think it might have been the Hawk?”

Abigail figured not, on account of her distinct lack of arrow in the head, but she figured she’d let him have his fun.

“Could be,” she grunted. “Now, Tribune, what was it you were telling me about the League’s push again?”

The Grand Alliance strategy for the assault was straightforward, looked at on a large scale. There were four gates, one for every cardinal direction – wait, was that why the Black Queen was naming her mad city out in the mountains Cardinal? Shit, she’d just got that, why had no old told her before? – and there would be four thrusts at the inner city through them. Thrown on top of that was the breach in the southwestern wall that the Ram had built, which was the way through for the Army of Callow to do their own push.

Most of those attacks weren’t actually meant to reach the heart of Keter, in practice. The Procerans through the south gate and the Praesi through the north one were the ‘lucky’ winners that needed to get there, the rest of the attacks elaborate manoeuvres to get the pressure off their flanks. The orcs and the drow were coming in from the west, the League from the east, and the Dominion was to follow after the Praesi and serve as their rear guard.

The Army of Callow’s role was pretty simple: die over the same grounds as yesterday long enough that the Proceran left flank couldn’t get smashed by there.

“They were delayed, general,” Staff Tribune Krolem replied. “They ran into an entrenched position and were stalemated until the Bellerophans cleared it.”

The Bellerophans had cleared it, Abigail skeptically thought. Well, she supposed if you had to throw corpses at corpses you might as well go with the folk that voted on chamber pot schedules.

“So they’re staggered a bit, is what I’m hearing,” she muttered. “It happens. The Warlord’s pissing all over the opposition on the other side of the city, so I reckon it evens ou-”

Abigail’s mouth closed. Beneath her, Boots began to edge closer to the wall hoping she was distracted. She pulled at the reins to disabuse the treacherous beast of the notion. Please, he’d tried to throw her at one headfirst already. Like she’d forget. My memory is at least twice as good as a horses’, you fucker, she smugly thought. Yet the warm glow of her triumph retreated in the face of the ice that was welling up in her stomach as she tried to look at what the assault on Keter would look like from above.

She had no idea how well the Praesi were doing, but most their fortresses were still in the air so presumably not too badly. The Procerans had been doing pretty well too, their Lycaonese vanguard taking the hits for the rest of the army stoically so the conscripts wouldn’t start routing too early. But if the League had been delayed on the Proceran right flank and the Army of Callow was getting stalled short of the avenue on its left, then something was up. And now that Abigail thought about it, weren’t the orcs actually doing a little too well?

“Shit,” Abigail cursed.

The Procerans were getting baited to pull ahead of the protection on their flanks. There was room enough to hide an army in the space between the League thrust and the Proceran one, if you kept the League out of the avenues for long enough, and the little voice that had kept Abigail alive through too many hellholes to count was quietly asking a question: if the Warlord’s been doing so good ‘cause he’s smashing only half an army, then where’s the other half?

Now, if Abigail had been trying to kill all of the Procerans she’d do it like this: bait them up, encircle them, then throw a bunch of expendables in the way of the forces that could relieve them. After that it was just a matter of hammering at the Principate’s back for long enough that the levies routed and their formation went to shit. Considering the League was still far and the Army of Callow closest, that meant… The general went over the positions in her head, jaw tightening.

The Fifth under General Holt was trying to breach the barricades around the avenue head on while the First under General Bishara was going around by the west to flank the position, which meant the flanking force that’d pulled ahead to the east to begin flanking the barricades that way was the one that’d get those expendables thrown at.

“Krolem,” Abigail said with calm that she did not feel. “Have goblins scale the houses to the east. I want to know if there’s a force headed our way.”

There was already fighting there, of course, but those were loose bands of dead. The Staff Tribune hurried off as Abigail leaned over to pretend she was patting Boots’ mane, when in fact she was reaching for her saddlebag and getting out a flask she quickly took a few deep swallows from before putting it away. The brandy burned down her throat, even as panes of magic flared into existence again. Five arrows this time, huh. She was going to find out whatever mage it was that’d made this ward after the war and thrown gold at them until they made one she could carry everywhere at all times.

Krolem came back grinning, a sight that had been the herald of many a misery in Abigail Tanner’s life.

“Battalions of heavily armoured skeletons and some mage cabals,” the Staff Tribune announced. “They’re moving to hold our right flank.”

No, Abigail grimly thought, they were moving to prevent the Army of Callow from intervening when the Procerans got surrounded and butchered to the last. Like pigs in a pen, only fancier because Procer. Wine, maybe. Almost certainly cheese.

“I need someone to get to the Fourth Army,” Abigail said. “General-”

Only, she realized with dawning horror, though the Fourth was behind her Third to serve as a reserve and so it’d only be right they take this on instead of her, they were too far behind. And though they were technically closer to the avenue that went from north to south across Keter, that wasn’t where the reinforcements would need to be. They’d need someone covering their left so they could pivot their entire army to face the enemy coming from the right. Which meant the Third. Which meant her. And she couldn’t even try to pass this off to someone else, because the Hellhound had just granted her permission to ‘lead the Third forward as she would’.

Balls, she realized. If the Procerans all died and she could have intervened, she’d probably get court-martialed for it. Which meant losing her pension, and Abigail of Summerholm had not come out all the way to fucking Keter to lose her general’s pension.

“Krolem,” General Abigail sternly said.

The orc straightened up.

“Ma’am?”

“We’re pushing east,” she told him. “Our entire force. Someone tell the Fourth, we’ve got a greater good to pursue.”

“Saving the battle?” the orc breathlessly asked.

A mansion in Laure and to be drunk every day until I die, Abigail mentally corrected.

“Yes,” she lied.

“Bottoms up,” Catherine said, and after clinking her vial with the Huntress’ gulped it down whole.

The Concocter followed suit without the theatrics, rolling her yellow eyes at them instead, and the Range was already lying on the ‘ground’ that Masego had forged. They lay down, tossing away the vials, and within ten heartbeats Hierophant was surrounded by the corpses of four women. It was a somewhat awkward situation, he decided, even as he reached for the withered stalks of ground set down before him and closed his mortal eye, beginning to murmur his incantation.

He’d met the Silver Huntress and the Concocter in a professional capacity several times, and even once in a personal one when Indrani introduced him as her partner. Alexis had kindly offered him protection if he was being blackmailed into the relationship – which had, bafflingly enough, irritated Indrani – then looked rather irked herself when he’d assured her he was very fond of Archer and not being forced into anything. The Concocter had been much less mercurial, and charmingly learned in matters of alchemy. She’d even read the works of Lykourgos the Transmuter, which almost no one had! The man had unleashed several plagues that turned people into rabid animals, it was true, but that was no reason to ban his very well-written studies on transitive material properties.

Hierophant had not been worried in the slightest when he’d learned he was to be in a band with them, and they had proved to be just as capable as he’d expected. It was the last addition to the band that Catherine was leading that had nudged the situation into awkwardness: the Ranger, Hye Su. Looking at her temporarily dead form, Hierophant’s mortal eye narrowed as he considered whether or not he should murder her.

Practically speaking, she was no longer necessary. She had some worth as a guide in the realm to which they were travelling but she was not needed. The Ranger had already given the necessary artefact, the stalks of grass, and served her purpose as a guide. It would be bad form and Catherine would be cross with him, but practicalities did not forbid him from killing Hye Su. No particular affection was holding his hand either, his fathers having always been clear that Ranger was not like Aunt Sabah and Aunt Eudokia: she was dangerous and not to be trusted, even if Uncle Amadeus loved her. Masego had only met her a few times, and never taken to her.

He drummed his fingers against his leg thoughtfully, the incantation continuing unabated.

Hye Su was a threat, of this he was sure. Catherine had been very vague as to how she’d convinced the other woman to help, which he knew from experience meant she was hiding something she believed they would disapprove of. Usually an unnecessary personal risk she was taking. Ripping out Ranger’s soul while she was unconscious and casting it into a Hell before burning her body would see to that neatly. Killing out of fear, though, was wrong. People had to give you a reason, not just something you decided yourself. If the Ranger ended up being a threat, he could always kill her later.

Which forced Masego to confront why he was still itching to kill the woman: she had hurt someone he cared for. Indrani still spoke admiringly of Ranger to this day, but as far as Hierophant was concerned she had been unfit as a teacher and a guardian. That would not be enough to deserve death – both arms, perhaps – but Indrani’s claim to the Name of Ranger was. There would be conflict there, possibly combat. And Indrani was not replaceable. His life would be less without her in it, which was a sufficient reason to incinerate Hye Su so thoroughly there were not even ashes left. And still he hesitated, not moving to kill until he finished the first incantation and grimaced.

“She would be angry with me if I did,” Masego said. “Rightfully so. It is her conflict to resolve and it would be an insult to do so for her.”

Which meant the Ranger would live. For now. Besides, he had other concerns at the moment. His task was not an easy one.

Keter was, after all, fortified against extra-dimensional intrusions in ways that no other place on Calernia was. It was not only a matter of wards, though those defending the Crown of the Dead had been cleverly made and were nearly impossible to break. The wards themselves were a sphere that enveloped the city but they fed into a root-like system of escapements that meant overloading them would require so much power as to be effectively impossible. Trismegistus had then taken an additional precaution by having the physical anchors for them deep underground, to the extent that Masego believed them to be surrounded by magma.

Yet not even that had been enough for the lich, who had at some point decided to methodically annihilate every speck of Keter’s mirror in Arcadia. Not only was access barred, there was nowhere to cross from. Masego was unfortunately unsure quite how this had been accomplished – demons were his best guess – but instead of a crossing point in Arcadia all that could be found was interstitial void, an empty liminal space. It was how Masego knew for certain this had been done by the Dead King, as he had fought against the Spellblade inside a liminal space of fundamentally similar principles when he’d last come to Keter.

Accessing the void would normally have required setting foot within Keter, but Catherine said that would have been ‘giving away the game’ and instead they had passed through the broken shards of the Twilight Ways, requiring the Ranger’s guidance to move from shard to shard while avoiding the collapsing ones or those with edges. Remaining forever trapped inside a pocket realm or being cut into several dying but forever aware parts would have been fairly likely otherwise, much as he disliked admitting that relying on Hye Su had been necessary.

Masego hummed, pulling his magic close and feeling out the edges of the Creation with his will. From there it was only a matter of following the outlines and seeing where they connected so that he might find where the Hells – and the Heavens – were adjoined. These were the very basics of diabolism as a practice, because in practice finding a Hell was not particularly difficult. Finding a useful one, or even more difficult a specific one, to open a gate into was another matter entirely. Unless you had several advantages, it was a fool’s errand. Advantages such as, for example, casting from an adjoining liminal space where boundaries were thinned and having in your possession an object from the Hell you were seeking.

The dried stalks of grass in Hierophant’s hand had grown in the Serenity, their connection to the Hell by the law of sympathy running deep and wide.

Masego began to murmur a second incantation, tracing runes in the air to shape the effect of his will – movement, transition, stability – but even as he began his attempt to cut a hole into the Hell he frowned as the resistance to his sorcery strengthened. As the Ranger had intimated, the Dead King had hardened the borders of the Serenity. However sharp Hierophant’s will, a single mage – even Named – did not have the power to carve open a gate. A cabal led in a ritual might, but there would be nothing subtle or quiet about. But that was thinking of the crossing in the wrong way, as Hye Su had grasped.

When confronted with a wall a sorcerer could increase their strength to break it, but there was another way through: lessening the wall’s resistance to you. And the very means the Dead King had used to harden the boundary of the Serenity, millennia of necromancy, provided the way through.

They simply needed to be dead.

It was why all the others were lying on the ground around him, having drunk of the Concocter’s elixir of temporary death – save for Ranger, who simply stopped her heartbeat for a fixed amount of time – so that by creational law they would qualify as being ‘dead’. Masego himself would drink of the potion vial he had in his robes as soon as the spell was near being finished, trusting the formula he had crafted to convey the five of them across into the Serenity. It was not long before he reached that point, diabolism being more a matter of precision and power than skill or inventiveness, and without ceremony he drank the substance. It tasted faintly of mint, he appreciated.

Even as his mind began to swim he felt the swirls of magic intensify, casting his will beyond them. He felt out the boundaries one last time, to make sure nothing had been wrong, which was when he noticed the oddity.

There was something wrong with the Heavens. Or at least a part of them intricately bound to the nearby part of Creation in several ways and also… the Serenity itself? It was a Choir, Hierophant realized. There was a similarity to what he was Witnessing and a spell he had crafted with Tariq Isbili’s help. The smiting miracle, as some had taken to calling it. The Choir had been silenced, he saw, and though its power remained intact – angels could not be diminished – it was temporarily unable to be properly expressed. It was, essentially, a pot of paint without a colour. If called forth the Choir’s power would do nothing, he thought, unless additional properties were imposed on it by a third party.

If someone chose a colour for the paint, to continue the metaphor.

Of course, there shouldn’t be anyone able to do such a thing. Even Named would – only there was, he remembered. A band of five had been sent to follow the Dead King’s hint in the depths of Levant and found a fascinating story. The first Grey Pilgrim had once been smote by a Choir, only to survive entirely unharmed. The Intercessor could influence angels. And so Hierophant felt an inkling of dread as he slipped into the shallow end of death.

Because if the Hierarch was still holding back the Choir of Judgement, why was he now able to feel its existence again?

Otto Redcrown took the blow on his shield with a grunt, the undead’s blade sliding across the Reitzenberg sigil even as he shattered its head with a measured blow of his mace. His mount whinnied, hooves sending another corpse flying, and he had to pull her at her reins so she wouldn’t go wild.

“Steady,” he shouted, as much for his horse as his soldiers. “Don’t let them bait you.”

Those of his riders that’d began to pursue the retreating undead pulled back at the call, joining the thick of his men as they finished clearing out stragglers from the holdfast they’d driven the Enemy out of. It was not particularly dangerous work once the Binds were but down, the Bones reverting to the intelligence of mere dogs and lashing out blindly without regard for arms or armour, but the riders went about it with methodical carefulness. They all knew it would take only one mistake, and this close to finally ending the King of Death all their lives must be hoarded until the moment where they could best be spent.

Behind the horsemen his infantry had followed and was already breaking down the barricades to make room for the southern foot to pass, rolling away stones and tossing bodies aside. It had been a brutal slog to get here, but Prince Otto allowed himself an ember of pride as he saw the heights of Keter’s inner wall up above. They were close now, even though every devilry they’d beaten yesterday had been replaced by a fresh horror as they charged up the avenue as they had before the Titan Kreios’ sorcery had undone the battle. Far ahead of what he’d expected, and though his numbers were melting away like summer snow they were but a mile away from the rampart. There, at least, he would pull back let First Princess Rozala lead the assault.

The battle looked promising. Though the League had stalled early, Frederic had led two thousand horse to relieve them and word has since come back that Empress Basilia had broken through enemy resistance and resumed her advance. With the League screening her flank on one side and the unbreakable Army of Callow holding the other, Rozala Malanza would have the opening she needed to pierce through the wall. And once she did, the looming shape at the heart of the Alamans conscripts would do his part. The Titan would snuff out the Hidden Horror’s ritual and victory would no longer be beyond their grasp.

“Your Grace! Your Grace, they’ve come!”

Otto’s captain had shouted loudly enough half the army must have heard him, but the prince did not take her to ask for it aside from a dour look. Instead he followed the woman’s pointing hand and what he saw had his teeth clenching.

“You dragged your feet today, Grey Legion,” Otto Redcrown muttered. “I expected you an hour ago.”

Hainaut had mauled their numbers, for not even the fearsome Grey Legion could simply shrug off having a star and a city pulled down on their heads, but enough remained to be a threat. Two thousand and some, by the latest count. At tide of steel advancing with deceiving slowness, but Otto would not be fooled. He had seen them pass through strong shield walls like they were nothing but mist, each hulking shape a battering ram on the move.

“Form up,” the prince shouted. “Form up!”

He drove his mount forward to join his horsemen, but had to pull his reins when trumpets began to sound behind him. What was Malanza doing? It was still too early for her to join him out- the thought froze in in his mind as he saw that in the distance the banners of the rearguard were turning. The army was being attacked from behind. Trumpets to the east, trumpets to the west. Oh, Otto dimly realized. So that was the truth of it. They had danced to the Enemy’s tune, and now they were surrounded. Their path of retreat had been cut and neither the Callowans nor the League would get there in time. Prince Otto Reitzenberg breathed out, finding his calm did not waver in the face of certain death.

It surprised him, though perhaps it should not have. Some days when he closed his eyes he found himself back at miserable afternoon, watching his father and his sisters died until the reddened crown was brought form him to wear. The least of the Reitzenberg had survived that day, he’d often thought, but perhaps he hadn’t. Not really. Enough of him had stayed behind that he felt little fear at the sight of the steadily advancing Grey Legion. No, not even a little. It was only trepidation, the nervousness that came with finishing something your started long ago. Otto breathed in, looking at the darkened cloud. Ash was falling, but the sun shone through.

Before him there was a road, an enemy and a wall. He’d fought this battle before, as the last in line. Today he would be the first instead and there was fairness in that.

“Unravellers at the ready,” Otto Redcrown called out, voice steady.

The horsemen reached for the sheaths at their sides, sliding out the weapons. The artefacts made in the Arsenal before it ended were as wooden lances, though shorter and partly hollow. They would shatter on impact, but that mattered nothing: they were artefacts, not killing lances, and their purpose was not to punch through armour but to unravel the sorcery keeping undead bound in servitude. A simple touch was not guaranteed to do this, not against the Grey Legion, but landing a blow in the right place had a halfway decent chance of destroying the undead. It was starkly better odds than any other weapon had ever offered.

They would die, Otto Reitzenberg thought as the riders lined up without a word. They would die in droves, screaming and clawing at the dark, and perhaps those deaths would allow the rest of the army to make it to the wall. That was the last gift they had to give. The last prince of the Lycaonese held his unraveller tight and straightened his back, eyes fixed ahead. His sisters would have known what to say to comfort the soldiers now, he thought. His father would not have needed to say anything, beloved as he had been.

But all Otto Redcrown had to offer his people was silence and the spear in his hand, and so that was what he gave them.

“Oh mother, I held your sword.”

It was a boy who sang out. The voice was too young, too light, for him to be a man grown. The prince’s heart ached of it, as much sorrow as pride. Grief for another boy too young to die. Pride for the boy staring death in the eye and finding it in him to sing.

“Oh mother, I held your sword,” the boy sang again, and voices joined him.

He’s one of mine, Otto realized. The Farewell Sword was a song from Bremen, and though it was known beyond its borders it was his people who love it most. It was not like hard-eyed Hannoven pride, like the desolate boasts of the Neustrians or even the famously dark humour of Rhenians. It was a sad song, the Farewell Sword, for Otto’s people had an old sadness in their bones. How strange, that to hear it sung would feel a comfort now.

“Oh mother, I held your sword,” voices rose, Otto’s among them.

He reached for his mace, pointed it forward and without a word needed the riders began to advance.

“As I rode north to settle score

And bade farewell to the stone.”

The thunder of hooves on pavement almost drowned out the song as the trot turned into a gallop.

“Oh mother, there is no lord

To bring back the blade I wore

For I went and died all alone.”

The distance, so long when they had begun, was now so small. Swallowed in an instant until Otto could see dents and scrapes on the armour of the Grey Legion’s steel-clad dead. Unravellers were lowered, wood whistling in the air.

“Oh mother, I held your sword.”

For a heartbeat the world hung still, the fragile wooden length snaking forward as he leaned against his mount’s neck and the enemy moved to knock it aside. Too slow, he thought.

“And I come now to return it,” Otto Redcrown screamed.

The unraveller shattered even as it hit the undead’s shoulder, screaming against the steel and digging in. Not deep enough, though, as the mass of steel kept moving and swept through the legs of Otto’s horse in a single blow. The horse screamed in pain, bones shattering, and the prince was thrown against the stone. He tasted blood in his mouth and his knees were throbbing, but he rolled to the side before his ribs could be caved in by a hulking step. He rose, moving behind the undead so he could strike at the knee joint with a two-handed blow of his mace. It dented the steel, enough that it crumpled inwards and began grinding against itself when the soldier moved.

He stepped back, but not quickly enough to avoid the blow entirely. The hammer clipped his shoulder, smashing through his pauldron as he was tossed to the grown like a ragdoll. All around him horses and men were dying, a thin wedge of riders passing through the Grey Legion’s ranks but most of them dying. Before the momentum had entirely passed the infantry joined them, half a dozen different accents in Reitz screaming themselves hoarse as they hurled themselves at the steel-clad monsters. Otto got back to his feet, jostled by men passing him, and dragged his armour back in place while swallowing a scream. He could have pulled back, he knew. Called for a change of armour.

He was a Reitzenberg: he would fight until the Enemy broke, or he did.

“In Iron Forged,” he shouted, and returned to the fray.

They charged the monsters and they died. Otto helped a bearded man smash the back of one’s knee and laughed in triumph with him when they brought the soldier down, a fair-haired girl that could be no older than fifteen smashing a hammer into the neck joint until the head rolled away and it stopped moving. A heartbeat later the bearded man was bloody mist and Otto pulled the girl out of the way, the two of them going back in as rider shattered a lance in the monster’s face and an opening was made. There was always another steel-clad monstrosity no matter how many were brought down, and as his people died around him Otto felt rage well up in his throat.

They wouldn’t even get through, he saw. They wouldn’t even clear the way for the others. They’d just die.

He screamed himself ragged as he smashed his mace into a steel soldier’s face, avoiding the swing of its sword but taking a backhand to the torso. He fell down, feet slipping against a pavement made slick by the blood of his people, and even as the sword rose above him in a blow there would be no avoiding, he grit his teeth and swung his mace as the sun shone down into his eyes. One last gesture of defiance. The steel soldier’s knee gave, but the sword was still coming down and-

“Audace,” someone screamed in Chantant, and the tip of lance nudged the sword aside with impossible precision.

The sun blinded him still, but he knew that voice. Struggling to stand in the blood, Otto forced himself up in time to see the Kingfisher Prince plunge a sword burning with Light into the steel-clad undead’s neck. Prince Frederic Goethal of Brus laughed, his blond ringlets shaking as he ripped his sword clear of the falling soldier’s body, and raised his sword to the sun. All around them, Otto realized, the horsemen that’d gone to relieve the League were smashing into the side of the Grey Legion with their own unravellers.

“Audace,” the Bruseni madmen called out, cheering as they drove deep into the enemy’s flank.

Throat dry, Otto reached out for his friend.

“Frederic,” he rasped as he caught the other man’s knee. “Leave us. You have to open the way for Malanza, else they will-”

“Peace, Otto,” the Kingfisher Prince gently said, catching his hand. “If there is a field where you die, my friend, I will not be far behind you.”

“We have to save them,” he croaked. “I can’t let them die again. I can’t, Fred.”

“And you won’t,” the Prince of Brus promised. “Look east, Otto. See what you missed when keeping us all alive.”

And he saw, then what it was Frederic meant. On the army’s left flank, where before there had been fighting, now instead there were fresh banners. Blue with silver Miezan numerals, a three. And with them, another banner he knew well: the Crown and Sword. The Black Queen’s arms. Reinforcements had come. The Third Army was here.

“How?” he finally asked.

“The Dead King might have tricked us, Otto,” Frederic grinned, “but he didn’t trick the Fox.”

Hanno’s steps stuttered to a halt.

“We’re here,” Christophe said, and immediately winced.

Likely castigating himself for having stated the obvious. The two of them had gone around the Proceran vanguard’s brutal fight with the Grey Legion, the Mirror Knight’s gaining turning more reluctant every time he had a look at the Lycaonese losses. Christophe had proved once that he could hold back the tide when fighting that same host, and now every time it fought without him being there to face it he thought himself responsible for the deaths. Hanno had sometimes been questioned for his defence of Christophe de Pavanie since the man took his fingers, but he could not think of a better or simpler defence than that.

Before them stood the second wall of Keter, the rampart that the armies would have to breach to reach the inner city and reach the Dead King himself. Though Hanno could not know how the Praesi were doing in their thrust from the northern gate, he could see how the Procerans had done and they were nearly there. It would not even take half an hour before First Princess Rozala began storming the walls and the Riddle-Maker could begin the spell that would silence the entropy traps. Once that was done, Named were to converge towards the palace where they would assemble in bands before going after the remaining Revenants and Scourges so that the way could be cleared for the Crown of Autumn and the Severance. Catherine, meanwhile, was supposed to be striking at the enemy from the back.

“Do we stay hidden until Her Serene Grace strikes at the walls?” the Mirror Knight quietly asked. “We’re here, Hanno. We could help them with the last of the Grey Legion.”

He had been debating the same. Though they were meant to remain hidden so that Christophe could not be targeted by the Scourges, would they really be able to converge here in time if they lent a hand? Hanno had his doubts. On the other hand, revealing the Mirror Knight’s position early was almost certain to warrant the Dead King’s attention: Christophe was, after all, carrying one of the means to kill the Hidden Horror. It was hard to justify anything to posed a risk to the Severance getting to that throne room. Before Hanno could consider the matter more, footsteps on a rooftop behind them had both heroes reaching for their swords.

But it was the Knight Errant who leapt down past them, that strange sword of his in hand, turning only at the sound of Hanno sheathing his own blade. The younger man looked surprised but pleased.

“Ah, I thought we’d have to look for you two for longer,” Arthur smiled. “Lucky us.”

The meaning of ‘we’ was swiftly expanded upon when the rest of the band followed suit and came down from the roof. Hanno’s brow rose when he saw there were only two more instead of four: the Painted Knife and the Harrowed Witch, the latter of which took her time to shimmy down the side of the house rather than leap. Kallia, leader of the band, offered him a grimace.

“We lost the Poisoner to the Hawk while the Prince of Bones distracted us,” she told him.

“And the Myrmidon?”

“We’re not sure she’s dead,” Kallia said. “She fell into a trap while killing a Revenant and the Tumult dropped about a ton of rock over her, but we never saw a body.”

“We haven’t seen a single Revenant on our way here,” Christophe told her, “much less a Scourge.”

The Levantine eyed him with distaste. Though the Mirror Knight had made efforts to mend bridges him, the Painted Knife was not of a forgiving nature and it was not in Christophe’s nature to keep his feet out of his mouth for too long.

“The Dead King is going after bands,” Hanno said. “He’s trying to thin us out as much as possible before we reach his palaces.”

“We figured,” Kallia told him. “I heard through Apprentice that Sidonia’s band got hit as well. I haven’t gotten word about deaths, though, only that there was fighting.”

Hanno’s stomach clenched.

“Did they get to the crown?”

“That would require taking the Archer by surprise,” the Painted Knife snorted, “and good luck to anyone who tries.”

Hanno was not anywhere as convinced, but he let it go. Neither of them could know for certain, arguing was pointless.

“Shall we go reinforce the Procerans?” the Knight Errant asked. “They could use the help, and the sooner we get the Titan to the wall the sooner we can seek out the Dead King.”

It was a simple enough question. And yet Hanno stilled to hear it. He knew what he was supposed to answer: they were all to wait until the Proceran assault on the wall began and only then intervene. That was what the plan called for. Getting the Severity to the Dead King was the most important thing, and though Hanno rankled at the thought he recognized the sense in it. Saving even a thousand lives out here on the battlefield would mean nothing if the Dead King won and everyone on Calernia died for it. And Hanno, looking at the same man who he was to protect at all costs, could not help but think back of the Arsenal.

They’d argued, there, about right and wrong. And though Christophe had been wrong about many things that day, he had been right about others. What single thing can we not be made to swallow, when it is put to contrast with the end of days, the Mirror Knight had challenged. What as a principle, if you did not keep to it in the dark? What’s a principle, when keeping to it kills everyone, a voice that sounded uncomfortably like Catherine’s argued back. Hanno found himself reaching for an old comfort, for the coin the Seraphim had once given him. Justice at the tip of his fingers. He missed that still, sometimes. Not having to rely on his own blind eyes to parse it all.

His fingers closed around the silver coin, the feel of its edges rough against his skin.

“Lord Hanno?” the Knight Errant said, tone hesitant.

Part of him wanted to tell them to do as they wished, but that was an abdication of responsibility. He had put himself forward to remain representative of Above under the Truce and Terms. He was to be the enforcer of the laws of the Liesse Accords under the Warden. To tell them they could do as they wished would be moral cowardice. In the end, he realized, it came down to a choice. Was it irresponsible to take the risk, or was it cowardice not to? Lives could be saved if he acted, but lives could be lost as well. Possibly much more than were saved. But was that really a reason not to act?

What had he cast away his own Name for, his place as the Sword of Judgement, if not to do something?

Hanno breathed out, looking at the sky, and felt a calm settle upon him. He rolled the coin between his fingers, and with a deft flicked of his thumb flipped it. It arced upwards, silver shining in the sun, and looking at it Hanno knew which side he wanted it to land on.

And so he knew what to do.

“Follow the plan,” Hanno told them. “Stay hidden and protecting Christophe until the assault on the wall has begun.”

Mutinous looks answered. The Knight Errant was the one who answered.

“We could-”

“I will settle it,” the dark-skinned hero simply said, “so follow the plan.”

He felt Creation quicken around him at the words. It had been waiting, hadn’t it? For his resolve to take shape. And now it had: if it was a risk to do the right thing, what you should be doing, then you simply had to be powerful enough it was no longer a risk. Hanno of Arwad slowly unsheathed his sword, feeling the first motes of his Name begin to coalesce. It was not there yet, he thought. But it would be by this battle’s end.

“Go,” he said, his voice echoing in a way that had them shivering.

Not even the young knight argued with that. They went, disappearing into the maze of houses, and the hero slowly turned his gaze south. He had work to do, he thought, and began to walk. Hanno did not look on what side the coin had fallen, leaving it down there in the ash.

He no longer had a use for it.