Chapter Book 7 ex5: Interlude: Juniper’s Plan (Redux)

They were wildly outnumbered, surrounded on all sides and faced with horrors most. It was, Grandmaster Brandon Talbot thought, just another day in the Black Queen’s service.

He was already looking forward to the mad caper that would get – most of – them out of this alive. He turned to look at the Black Queen, who was grinning a hard grin that swept the doubts right off the frame of any knight close enough to see it. Confidence rippled out through the Order, passed from knight to knight like a whisper. And why wouldn’t it? How many times had it seen them laugh in the face of death and leave victorious, that grin? Once more, Brandon Talbot fervently prayed. Brandon’s queen cracked her neck then sighed.

“Well,” the Queen of Callow drawled, “isn’t this a right mess, Talbot?”

He swallowed a shit-eating grin. It was going to be one of those, then.

“Positively uncivilized, Your Majesty,” he agreed.

“Ain’t it just?” she said, the Laure drawl rearing up its head. “Now, looking at this situation before us, I can’t help but feel that it’s missing something.”

“So much as a speck of godliness?” Brandon tried.

She snorted, then erupted into a small chuckle like he’d said a joke.

“Oh, Talbot,” she mused, “the things you say sometimes.”

A heartbeat’s pause.

“What’s missing, of course, is more monsters that want to kill everyone,” the Queen of Callow nonchalantly told him. “So let’s remedy that lack.”

Brandon remembered a night when he’d been a boy and he’d snuck out of the manor in Marchford with his sister. It’d been summer and they’d gone out into the hills, bravely defeating sheep-shaped with wooden swords before collapsing exhausted in the grass and looking up at a sea of stars. He remembered the breeze, how warm it had been against his skin. That was what Night felt like to him, when the Black Queen used it – that warm breeze against his skin. There were goddesses behind that power and should they frown upon him he thought it might be a terrible thing to behold.

But they were passing fond, instead, and so he felt a warm summer night’s breeze against his skin as the Queen of Callow ripped open a wide gate into Arcadia.

Just in time, for madness was seizing the enemy camp. Monsters were tearing into men, howling devils flying through in riotous flocks and for some godforsaken reason the Praesi were still fighting each other. On the others side of the gate Brandon glimpsed a screaming blizzard, but when the queen rode into the white he shouted orders to follow. The Order formed into a column and went through in good order, the edges of their formation hacking away at the monsters and devils that were already nipping away their ranks, but it was not long before all had passed through. The grandmaster had run regular drills with mages to be able to charge in and out of gates at the drop of a hat, considering how often it was being used a tactic these days.

The whipping winds almost deafened him as he cross, but not so much that when he approached his queen he could not hear her shouting. Squinting he tried to make out what she was looking at, finding with surprised it appeared to be fae. Maybe a half-dozen of them, riding on pale horses and looking utterly unconcerned by the cold. Was Queen Catherine making a bargain, an alliance? He spurred his mount closer to join her side.

“-and that smirk makes you look like an asshole,” the Queen of Callow shouted. “I could kill you and all you friends with a hand tied behind my back, even if I had no fucking eyes.”

Ah, Brandon thought. The fae were not only pale, they were utterly livid.

“How quick you are to give insult, when still protected by oath,” one of the fae shouted, “yet if-”

There was a flash of boiling-hot Night and half the fae’s face melted off.

“Boring,” the Black Queen said. “Hope you have more friends, otherwise I won’t even be able to work out an appetite for supper.”

The fae screamed, which Brandon thought might be something worth worrying about before screams answered in the distance and he decided it was definitely something worth worrying about. Queen Catherine glanced at him, having finally noticed his presence.

“Ah, Talbot,” she said. “Good, get the Order in formation. We’re going to have get out of here in a hurry, I can feel at least a hundred of them coming.”

She frowned, then cocked her head to a side.

“Damn, that’s a Duke for sure and he feels pissed,” the Black Queen gleefully said.

“I’ll see to it, Your Majesty,” Brandon said. “Are we to be fighting an enemy in particular?”

“We’re going to take the big tent that looks like a castle,” Queen Catherine said.

Ah, the one stinking of magic and heavily defended. He really should have been expecting that. The grandmaster of the Order of the Broken Bells saluted, and rode away to muster his knights.

The storm was getting worse and the fae angrier, leaving soon sounded just fine to him.

It was a graceless thing, this battle.

“All this shady shit they’ve pulled and still it comes down to the melee,” Staff Tribune Ligaia muttered in disdain. “So much for the scheming witches.”

Marshal Nim Mardottir grunted back, noncommittal. Her old friend – as much of a friend as a human could be – wasn’t the first one today to grumble about the plots of the Empress and the Warlock and how they were staining the honour of what should have been a clean battle. She was, though, the first one to complain the scheming hadn’t been effective enough. In both cases, the Black Knight tended to disagree. Malicia’s surgical assassinations and hidden assets had paralyzed both the deserting legions and the Sepulchral rebels, though according to the Eyes even after being framed for an attempted coup Sacker had wiggled back her way to command by swearing to be hard on the Army of Callow. As for the Warlock’s ritual against the Thirteenth, it had done more to improve Nim’s opinion of the woman than weeks of smile and pretty talk.

It had been both effective and restrained, showing regard for the well-being of soldiers that’d served the Dread Empire loyally for decades before being led astray. More regard than the Tower had thus far shown for the legions that served it, one might argue. If one wanted to be hung a traitor.

“If we can rout Sepulchral’s brats quick enough we can win this battle before nightfall,” the Black Knight rumbled. “It’ll cost us bloody, but I can see the writ.”

A casual look at the melee raging across the valley showed only men dying pointlessly on a field. The deserters to the west, aggressively trying to bleed everyone else, while across the valley to the east the Legions of Terror and the Army of Callow lost hundreds every hour struggling over the same two hundred feet of solid ground. Casualties had been mounting all day, the Black Knight had already lost near two thousand. It was worse for the Callowans, though. Sacker was going after them hard with her siege engines and the Thirteenth’s treachery had left them underequipped and tired from the night fighting. The Army of Callow would be the first to break. The Black Knight’s gauntlet closed with grinding sound of metal on metal before she pushed down the swell of anger. She’d thought better of Jeremiah.

What had the Black Queen offered to turn him?

Sometimes it felt like she was the only person in Praes who gave a shit about the Dread Empire. Malicia was scheming herself into the grave, the Carrion Lord was setting fires left and right and all the while nobles were at each other’s throats like the middle of a fucking invasion was the time to settle their grudges. Even the Legions, which should have been a pillar of stability, were falling apart. Thousands had deserted over the mind control hook. It wasn’t that Nim didn’t understand the disgust, the sense of betrayal, but could Malicia really be blamed when half the damned Legions had gone the way of the Carrion Lord a year before? It was not madness, if it’d turned out necessary. Mok had argued it smacked of slavery, though, and not been wrong.

His offered bargain – returning to the fold in exchange for turning on Malicia – had been a damned silly thing anyway, and one Nim could not accept lest the Legions of Terror fall apart entirely. Malicia had given the order to keep stringing him along until Sepulchral was in place and Nim had done it, with a heavy heart but done it anyway. Mok had been a friend, once, but duty was duty. And when all the pieces had been in place the Empress had paralyzed one enemy army and turned another irremediably against Callow, over a day’s span turning the Black Queen’s position from superior to imperiled. No, the Empress had proved over and over that she was an able woman. But she was also one who still had implanted commands in the minds of hundreds of her own officers. They would only be removed at the end of the war. Nim should not begrudge that, given the stained record of loyalty of the Legions over the last few years. Should not.

Her gauntlets ground again.

“Ah, our beloved sorcerous overseer returns,” Staff Tribune Ligaia muttered. “What glamour, what grace, what a stupid fucking thing to wear on a battlefield.”

Snorting in an amusement, Nim turned to follow her subordinate’s gaze. Lady Akua Sahelian, who some already called the Warlock even if the Powers had not yet granted her that in truth, was wearing an ornate red dress on a field where almost all the Named present were after her head. The Black Knight could not think of a goof reason for it, save possibly because Soninke highborn were all fucking mad and this one madder than most. Nim had yet to parse out Sahelian’s game, what stood behind the warning about the pattern of three and that convincingly raw tirade about the Tower. She’d had confirmed the bit about the pattern, asked old friends who’d learned a few pieces of namelore.

Nim would have preferred relying on the learned folk of Husse-il-Ossa, what humans called the Hall of Skulls, but none of the seventeen kings and the thirteen queens had far-lore to share on Names. Unsurprising. She had risen high enough among her people to know more had been lost over the centuries than the old crowns cared to admit. Human learning had been made to serve, instead, and human learning had said Akua Sahelian likely saved her life. This was not a pleasant position to be in, but these were not times for pleasantness. The Black Knight need only look to the three armies in Legion armour hacking at each other like animals on a dusty field to be reminded of that.

“Lady Black,” the Warlock greeted her, offering a bow. “Staff Tribune Ligaia.”

“The imperial’s courts further south, in case you got lost,” Ligaia scornfully said.

“As usual, Lady Ligaia, your helpfulness is as a balm upon my soul,” the Warlock smiled back with seeming delight before her expression sobered. “I happen to bring more urgent news, Marshal.”

The golden-eyed witch – Powers, that colour was eerie even on humans – turned to meet Nim’s stare.

“The Lesser Breach has been closed,” Sahelian said. “That should mean either Queen Catherine or the Hierophant are in the camp. I cannot think of any other here with the power to so quickly achieve this.”

The ogre shook her head.

“The Hierophant’s still out there,” the Black Knight said.

She could feel him, through Survey. The aspect born out of decades of battles had become like an unearthly sense, an ability to take a single look at a battlefield and know what all the pieces in play were. The Black Knight had taken more than a week to learn to recognize the particular pulls at her instinct as being specific Named, but now that she had it took only a moment to find them. So long as they were ‘visible’, anyway, a nebulous distinction she still sometimes struggled with. The aspect had more esoteric applications besides, she’d learned, pairing with another to turn a simple trick of power into something entirely more deadly, yet such things must be used only with care. There were rules to fighting between Named that she was still only faintly aware of, no matter how many dreams of Amadeus’ life the Powers saw fit to send her.

“Then it must be her,” the Warlock said.

Nim wondered if the girl knew of the faint undertone of yearning that always crept in her voice when the Black Queen was brought up. It was the worse kept secret in Praes that the Queen of Callow and the Warlock had been sleeping together during their years abroad, but while most assumed it had been a coup on Sahelian’s part to prepare her later betrayal the Black Knight believed otherwise. That break hadn’t been a clean one, for all that the Warlock had bound her fate to the Tower’s.

“Take the mage cadres and go support the Eleventh,” the Marshal of Praes ordered her. “The Mirembe remnants pulling together would be trouble. You have my authority to take any measures necessary to ensure they do not, Warlock.”

“How exciting,” the golden-eyed witch drawled. “By your will then, o Black Knight.”

Nim waved her away irritably. Sahelian was a viper, but she was a competent viper. If the Black Knight had to be saddled with a caster of that calibre – which were always trouble, the old Warlock had been too – it might as well be one who knew her business. Her attention returned to the battle in the valley, the bloody melee in three parts. The Army of Callow had edge ahead in the morning, the Black Knight thought, but now that Noon Bell had come and gone it was increasingly on the backfoot. An hour ago Nim had allowed free use of munitions on the front against the Callowans and the difference in stocks was beginning to tell.

Juniper of the Red Shields had clearly stacked the western corner of her defensive line, knowing it was the weak point, but the Black Knight was beginning to think the other woman had made a blunder. Her eastern flank was wavering. Already the Callowans had nearly been pushed back into their own trench and the pressure was only increasing. Had the young Marshal of Callow thinned her eastern flank at the expense of her western one, knowing the latter would bear the brunt of the casualties? The Black Knight could not deny what her own eyes were seeing, what her aspect kept drawing her attention to: there was an opening to take. Nim turned an eye to Ligaia.

“Pass the word,” she said. “The Fourteenth is to mount an all-out assault on the eastern flank. Commit the reserves, mages are to turn to fully offensive fire and the siege to concentrate for a breach.”

It would not matter if Sepulchral’s brat had some sense beaten into them, the Black Knight thought. Not if the battle to the south was already won, and this campaign with it.

Juniper ripped into the dried mutton jerky, swallowing a mouthful of meat after barley chewing it. Gods but she’d been ravenous all day. She bit off another piece then paused halfway through chewing, turning to look at the woman to her side.

“Doesn’t taste salted,” she said.

Aisha wrinkled her nose.

“Swallow, Juniper,” she said.

The Hellhound rolled her eyes but indulged her Staff Tribune. She then turned back an expectant gaze. Aisha smiled, pushing back a strand of that soft dark hair before answering.

“I had it washed and dried again,” Aisha said.

Juniper, like most orcs, preferred meat without seasoning. It was a small thing, but it was those that spoke loudest. Juniper felt a sharp swell of fondness, one of those moments that always brought her dangerously close to thinking about biting that smooth neck and a hundred more things after that. Years of control kept her body from moving, though she noticed that Aisha had caught the glance to the neck and her lips quirked. Nothing was said of it, but the shared knowledge hung between them in the air. Dragging her eyes away, Juniper of the Red Shields turned her attention back to the battle in the distance. A look into her Baalite eye confirmed the trend she’d seen forming over the last half hour: the Fourteenth had committed to an all-out attack and the eastern flank was buckling.

As it should. She’d ordered General Zola to thin it.

“It’s time,” Juniper said, licking her chops. “Have the fallback order sent.”

Aisha briskly nodded, rising from her seat to pass the order as Juniper stayed in her own and watched the eastern flank through the Baalite eye. Concentrated ballista fire had torn through chunks of the palisade and the Fourteenth, though green, was well-trained. Their backline was already bringing wooden planks to the fore that’d serve as makeshift bridges to cross the trench and allow legionaries pour through the breaches. Flags and sorcery had Zola informed now was the time to pull out and the general did what she could. Her legionaries had been getting pushed back into their own trench by the Fourteenth and that didn’t leave a lot of room to maneuver. She got out those she could and began pulling away from the palisade.

The Fourteenth, howling and victorious, followed the retreating Army of Callow. Against most armies Juniper’s counterstroke would have resulted into a rout, but this was the Legions of Terror. The young legionaries were not baited into a hasty pursuit, instead getting shouted back into line by sergeants and lieutenants, so when sixty feet behind the palisade they found the Army of Callow reformed into a shield wall the did not get scattered. Instead the Fourteenth formed its own shield wall in time and the lines collided. Juniper sucked at her teeth. It would hold, she decided. The Fourteenth needed to cross a trench and blown-up chunks of palisade to reinforce its own shield wall, effectively slowing its advance to a crawl.

The Fourteenth would be tied down there for hours with little to show for it, should nothing change. Good.

The Baalite eye moved to the northwest, where the Seventh Legion was marching down the road to reinforce. Nim would be sending her legion to back up the Fourteenth, the Hellhound knew, unless she found a better opening. Juniper just have to give her that opening, to heat up that old veteran’s lizard blood and bait her into going after a victory. Juniper rose to her feet to give the order herself, the one that’d most matter in this entire battle. It would be a rider that carried it, not flag or sorcery. Otherwise the Black Knight might smell the trap. And away the rider went as Juniper returned to her pavilion and her seat in the shade, Baalite eye tight in grasp and Aisha returned to her side.

“This is it,” Juniper gravelled. “The knife’s edge.”

The moment that would make or break the Battle of Kala. Even as the situation on the eastern flank stabilized, the breaches stopped cold, the western corner began to waver. It’d been hammered at all morning from two sides by engines and legionaries, assaulted relentlessly. Thrice rituals had been aimed at smashing the palisades, only the Hierophant’s intervention keeping the magic from breaking the stalemate. Bravely the legionaries of the Army of Callow had held, but now they were wavering. Their eastern flank had just been punched through by the Fourteenth and enemy soldiers were spilling around the shield wall, the Black Queen was nowhere in sight and the pressure was only increasing. They broke, first in singles and then in clumps.

That was, at least, what Juniper was trying to sell.

And that was the danger, the knife’s edge, because a feigned retreat could so easily turn into a real one. Once soldiers got running, no matter the reason, it was hard to get them to stop. Juniper had built her box, even though its walls could not yet be seen, but it might yet be blown apart by the same men she meant to hold it. Pickler’s sappers did what they were meant to, carpeting the grounds with smokers that obscured everyone’s line of sight as legionaries ran and legionaries pursued. Not only the loyalist but after a few moments the rebels as well, a chunk of wall in front of them just as undefended. Sacker, Auntie Sacks, would order it. She couldn’t afford to let Nim take those fortifications, else her plan of bleeding both sides would go up in flames.

The last thing the Rebel Legions wanted was to be penned in by the Loyalists Legions, meaning they had to take that palisade so the Eighth could not.

Smoke rose into the sky in great swaths and Juniper clutched the Baalite eye so tightly her knuckles paled. What would win out, the Marshal of Callow wondered. The fear, the instinct to run and keep running, or the trust? The Army of Callow had grown to trust its commanders, fighting on foreign fields, but the fear had grown too. Hadn’t Juniper felt it herself, that poison that spread through the veins and blackened everything? More than just felt, she had wallowed in it. She’d glimpsed, though, a light on the horizon. A way to settle it all at last. The Hellhound leaned forward, jaw shut tight as she looked at her soldiers move. Haven’t you ever wondered? Where we stand, compared to the best. We’ve fought Procerans and rebels and corpses, but this? This is the standard. The reigning champion. The mother we must murder to surpass.

“Come on,” the Marshal of Callow murmured in Kharsum. “It can be done. We can beat them. Trust me and we can beat them all.”

Soldiers ran, past the lines and the officers waiting with their whistles and shouts. Juniper’s heart leapt up in throat, but it wasn’t done. The same hard iron that’d seen the Army of Callow through the Camps and the Graveyard, through the Boot and Hainaut and dozen more battles, it told. Some kept running, but some fell into line. And that was all that was needed: a few people standing. Men gathered to them like a standard, lines firming, and Juniper began to laugh. In the distance, sappers began to raise mantlets. A box, formed out of the eastern corner of trenches and palisades and the second corned the sappers were now making of wood. A box filled with smoke, and soon to be filled with only Named and her enemies. Juniper rose to her feet, passing the Baalite eye to Aisha.

“Juniper?” she asked.

“Look into it,” the Hellhound said. “Northwest.”

Aisha did.

“The Seventh Legion,” Juniper stated, “is no longer moving to reinforce the Fourteenth. It’s moving to reinforce the Eighth.”

The dark-haired woman put down the Baalite eye after a moment, smiling.

“It is.”

The Hellhound flashed her fangs at the horizon, triumphant.

“Where’s that wagon with the roof again?” she asked. “I need a nap.”

Aisha started in surprise.

“Catherine is not back from Sepulchral’s camp, we don’t know-”

“She chose me,” Juniper said. “I choose her. She’ll get it done, and that means the last decision that matters in this battle has already been made.”

Juniper of the Red Shields, Marshal of Callow, walked out the pavilion with steps lighter than they had been in years.

“What the fuck is happening in there?”

Ligaia wasn’t asking anything that the rest of the general staff wasn’t silently wondering. The Black Knight surveyed the movement of her own troops, but she found nothing but the obvious. The Eighth Legion had entered the smoke and was engaged in a brutal melee against the Army of Callow and the deserters, Sacker pouring her soldiers into the grinder to make sure she wouldn’t get enveloped by any single force. The Seventh was reinforcing, but the truth harder to swallow was that those reinforcements were needed. Between the casualties of the Thirteenth’s treachery and the brutal blind fighting in the smoke the Eighth was getting mauled. Nim watched the movements of the troops, towering above her officers, and her fists began to grind.

“Ma’am,” Senior Sapper Licker said, catching her attention. “We’re at risk now. The deserters are still hitting our trench but we can’t spare the men to hold it unless we send reinforcements from the Seventh. The flank’s getting stretched too thin.”

“Your recommendation?” Nim asked.

“Deploying goblinfire,” Licker evenly said. “They’ll answer in kind, but it’ll lock down that entire front. We can focus our efforts on the breach in the smoke.”

The Black Knight hesitated. Already she could make out currents in the battle. The Fourteenth was deadlocked, while her legions were pouring their strength into the smoky breach. So was Sacker, and with the main front of contention between the loyal legions and the deserters the tendency would only increase. We have the advantage, Nim reminded herself. The Seventh were fresh and the Army of Callow stretched thin, while Sacker’s rebels were tightly packed – it would be difficult for them to mount a harder push because there simply wasn’t enough room at the bottom of the hills for them to muster. Senior Sapper’s Licker was going to make the breach into the fulcrum of this battle, but it was a fulcrum the Legions were best placed to triumph in.

It would get bloody, but it would get done.

“See it done,” she ordered.

And with all of it resting on one breach, there was only one thing left. Nim would have to head into the smoke herself, lead the Seventh personally. Tempted as she was to Delegate one of her personal guard and guide them through Survey, her instincts ran against it. Half-hearted commitment here would be punished, she dimly felt.

“Ready the Warhammers,” the Black Knight ordered. “I’ll lead the push into the breach personally.”

The Duke of Boreal Lights had been helpful enough to die taking out the Hellgate, but Brandon found the man’s retinue decidedly less obliging.

“Why-”

He hacked into the flesh but the blue-skinned fae turned into ice, shattering and reforming.

“-won’t-”

Even cutting the bastard thing’s head off didn’t help. It turned to mist and reformed, and then it had the gall to stab at him. Brandon slapped away the spear with his shield and stabbed it in the eye because, really, where was it getting the bloody nerve? It should have been dead six times over by now.

“-you-”

Oh and now the devils wanted a piece of him as well. The grandmaster slice through the wing of the howling monkey-creature and deftly led his charge to kick it after it fell, turning to parry a spear blow and smashing the fae’s face with his shield with a grunt.

“-bloody-”

Oh, the broken nose didn’t even come back even after it turned to mist. Brandon snarled, smashing its head repeatedly with his shield as the fae rocked back in pain and dismay.

“-DIE!”

The bottom of his shield went into the creature’s skull with a wet squelch and finally it dropped to the ground. Panting but vindicated, Brandon turned to have a look around. The rebel Praesi had finally stopped fighting each other, after only half an hour of still hacking at their kin while the world went to the Hells, but the Eleventh Legion had reached the camp and even with the truce the defence was too disunited to drive it back. Outnumbered almost four to one, the legionaries were still making meat of the rebels – though it helped that the devils flying around everywhere avoided them like the plague and it’d started raining acid on their foes. That wasn’t Brandon Talbot’s problem, though. Now, where was the queen?

Ah, there she was. Near the castle-tent, fighting what looked like a pitch-black land octopus with suckers that spat out an acidic goo. A tower of black flame took care of that as Brandon rode to her side, pulling back his knights with him as he did – there was danger in stretching themselves too thin even of the rebel Praesi seemed to be avoiding fighting them – but by the time he arrived she was tossing a dead fae in the path of a devil belching vivid red flames while trying to fend off what looked like… a hippogriff? No, not quite. He might never have seen one of those outside heraldry, but while the creature had horse’s legs and tail it instead of a hawk-like appearance it had great crow’s wings and head.

It also bit off the head of the queen’s horse, before she stabbed it in the neck.

Brandon rode at a gallop, smashing into a devil that tried to fall upon the queen as she leapt with a loud grunt of pain from her dying horse to the monster and Night bloomed like a sickly wind. With a satisfying crunch he smashed the bloody thing’s skull with the pommel of his sword even as another clawed at his armour with screams of pain and the hymns burned bright. By the time he was done, the queen was sitting astride the dead crow monster with a smugly satisfied look on her face. No, not dead Brandon saw. Undead, for it blinked and let out a happy screech that had him wincing in pain.

“This is mine now,” the Black Queen happily announced, and a heartbeat later she was aflight.

Godsdamnit, Brandon thought, that was going to be just as bad as the damned fae flying horse. It’d been impossible to catch up to her when she rode that one, and at least that bloody thing hadn’t had claws. He looked up, saw she was still headed for the great pavilion and rode after her with a sigh. Some Praesi household troops were in the way but it was nothing lances and a gallop couldn’t disperse. He saw the queen disappear into the pavilion, which was a relief until he heard the fighting in there. He charged in with a wedge of a hundred behind him, smashing into what looked like a three-way brawl over a corpse. Sepulchral’s squabbling heirs and a company of Legion heavies, led by-

Oh, the most beautiful woman Brandon had ever seen in his life. Would ever see in his life. He ought to dismount and kneel, to pledge service and love and-

“General Lucretia, if you don’t stop glamouring my knights I’m going to feed you to my horse.”

The warmth went out of the world. Brandon came back to himself, sweat drenching his back, and realized with shame that he’d been halfway out of the saddle. Many of his men had been no better. His fingers clenched around his sword. Another abomination best put to the sword, this smiling woman among the legionaries.

“Black Queen,” the general spoke in a honeyed voice, “there is no need for-”

“I warned you,” Catherine Foundling said, voice echoing of distant caws. “Bite off your tongue.”

Power rippled out, and while the dark-skinned general shrieked and fled in a flap of dark wings as she spurted blood many of her legionaries ended up struggling with the same order. Brandon looked around and smirked. Some of the Praesi seemed to be struggling as well, but not a single knight of the Order had been affected.

“Forward,” he shouted. “Forward and drive the Legions out!”

A shout forty years too late, but better that than never. Even the Praesi rebels gathered themselves long enough to attain usefulness and they helped push out the legionaries, which retreated out of the pavilion after heavy losses. That did not, unsurprisingly, end hostilities. Brandon’s queen had led her… mount near a corpse on a table made of solid gold and pearls, which seemed to rile up the Praesi. Two nobles – they had the look, the attitude and most of all the golden eyes – led the charge, loudly arguing though they refrained from violence.

“The succession of Aksum is no matter for outsiders, it is-”

“It is already decided,” the boy lord shouted. “It was made official years ago, Sanaa, that I am heir. Your grasping attempts to pretend otherwise-”

“You are the creature of Nok, not a true Mirembe,” Lady Sanaa scoffed, “and-”

“Gods Below, this might be the most terribly tedious shouting match I’ve ever heard,” the Black Queen said, Night billowing around her. “Here’s a solution: neither of you are in charge.”

The staff of yew she always carried was lightly tapped on the corpse, which Brandon now saw was that of an old woman. The pressure of the Night went out and the body shuddered. This did not, unsurprisingly, seem to please the two squabbling nobles.

“It is against law for undead to hold any noble title,” the young lord scoffed. “Do you think putting strings on a corpse will make it otherwise?”

“This is absurd,” Lady Sanaa hissed. “For once, Isobe speaks truth. By what right do you meddle in our affairs?”

The Black Queen smiled, pleasant and mild, which had Brandon tensing. That was usually the smile that preceded corpses beginning to drop. Beneath her the crow-winged chimera stirred, looking up with cruel eyes, and in the magelights of the pavilion the dark fringes Mantle of Woe seemed to meld into the creature’s feathers.

“By what right,” the Queen of Callow softly said. “You lot keep asking me that, don’t you? Nobles and officers and even Malicia herself. By what right do I meddle in the affairs of Praes, which is not mine to rule and a sovereign state beyond my reach?”

Her sole eye burned with feverish light.

“By what right?” the Black Queen hissed. “You dare ask me that, you pack of jackals who bleed Calernia as it struggles for its very right to exist, who writhe and bite and have a thousand times turned the east into a madhouse?”

The Praesi flinched away, but Brandon leaned forward with an eager smile. His knights too. They knew it well, that weight in the air. Had learned to love it, for though it was the herald of terrible things that terror was ever turned away from them. She was a queen in black, adorned in wrath and dread, but she was their queen to the bone.

Let all the world fear her, save the sons and daughters of Callow.

“You made yourself my mess to handle,” Catherine Foundling snarled. “That is my right. The east is your prison and I am your fucking warden, rattling the cage until you fall in line.”

Brandon felt it then, the… pressure. It was suffocating and ever soul in the pavilion seemed to be choking on it. The queen through them all with her gaze, and wherever she looked knees buckled.

“So what will it be, Mirembe?” the Queen of Callow said. “How many of you do I need to butcher before the lesson sinks in?”

Silence was her answer.

“I thought so,” Catherine Foundling quietly said. “Get up, Abreha.”

The corpse did, looking around blearily. As if she’d just woken up from a long nap.

“Your Majesty?”

“Yes,” the young woman smiled, “I am that. Now let’s get this army moving, yes? We have work to do.”

“I await your orders,” the corpse said, bowing her head.

“First we’re going to slap away the Eleventh,” the Queen of Callow said, “but after that? Well, we’re going to march.”

“Where to?” the corpse of Abreha Mirembe asked.

“We’re going to visit my old friend General Sacker,” Catherine Foundling coldly smiled. “And remind her what happens when people cross me.”

The hammer went down, pulverizing the sergeant and the legionary next to him. The Black Knight withdrew the weapon, shaking away the pulp as her Warhammers fanned out around her. The melee was turning to their advantage, as much as Nim could tell in this maze of smoke, but her instinct was pulling at her. Something was wrong. An arrow streaked through the smoke, which she tried to swat down but missed by an inch. One of her retinue screamed as it went through his eye, dropping to the ground and twitching.

“Archer,” the Black Knight snarled.

She and the Silver Huntress had been scything through her soldiers and her personal guard alike, taking lives and then melting away before they could be caught. The sole time Nim had thought she’d caught the Huntress she’d run into the Barrow Sword instead, who had somehow managed to scar enchanted armour straight out of the Tower’s vaults with a bronze sword. The Black Knight stomped through the smoke, sweeping away another handful of legionaries with a blow but finding no trace of the Archer. In the distance someone died in a flash of silver Light, the Huntress’ signature.

Nim wouldn’t fall for that again. Going hunting for them only ended up in her swinging at smoke while she took one arrow after another. None had penetrated the armour so far, but the Light would shatter the enchantment fully in time.

“Forward,” the Black Knight shouted.

Her soldiers shouted back. There were more enemies ahead, full companies now, and the sound of sharpers in the distance. The fighting grew harsh but they broke through, Nim leading the charge, until she made out distant shapes ahead. A wall? A few more steps forward, slapping away an arrow from the Archer come for her neck, and she realized it wasn’t a wall. Not exactly. Mantlets had been placed as some kind of rough palisade, and before them she saw a sea of blood and flesh. Munitions and crossbow bolts shredded anyone that came close. What was this? She took another step forward, but she felt sharp pressure from her left. Nim backed away and a spell of blue light passed through where she’d just stood.

The Hierophant?

No, she thought as pressure came from the right this time and she caught a blade with her gauntleted hand. The Squire looked up at her through his helmet, blue eyes burning, and the Black Knight felt her stomach drop. The boy had come for her, as Sahelian had warned. She tried to crush the sword but he ripped it free, dancing away from her hammer blow with speed he’d not had last the fought. Another arrow needed swatting away, and then as she tried to smash the Squire darting close a swirling spell of darkness seized her foot. She was pulled off her feet, and while she backhanded the Squire away he landed on his feet with his sword up. This wasn’t a good fight, she thought, they had her swinging at ghosts and-

The Black Knight breathed in sharply. When had been the last time she’d slain a legionary with the marking of the Army of Callow? Often it was hard to tell in the smoke, but she couldn’t recall. There’d been a few at first, isolated, but she’d been fighting for hours in the smoke now and it had been long. But no, that made no sense, why would Sacker commit so thoroughly to this breach if she was losing so many men? The Squire came for her from behind but she smashed her hammer into the ground, bumping him up and backhanding him away. An arrow wreathed in Light streaked for her side but the Black Knight screamed, smashing through it, and when a spell that was a blue drill of light struck at her armour it dispersed against the enchantments.

In the distance power bloomed, once and then twice, and though one disappeared the second struck close. Nim was half braced for a betrayal by the Warlock, but the magic that descended was not treacherous: a massive gale of wind blew, cutting through the smoke. Suddenly half the obscured battlefield was revealed, and what Nim surveyed with a single glance had her freezing. The Rebel Legions were being routed. Not only were their corpses carpeting the ground where the Seventh had broken their push, but in the distance smoke rose from where they camp was in Moule Hills. Had someone hit them from behind?

Oh, Nim thought. That was why Sacker had been committing to the push her. With her back aflame and only one way out – the goblinfire had closed the other – if she did not break through here her legions were at risk of being surrounded and slaughtered to the last. An arrow flew but this time the Black Knight saw it come from far and simply stepped out of the way, then punched through a wavy spell and swung at the Squire. The boy ducked out of the way and then slid under her, scoring a blow against her leg and cutting into her greaves, but she kicked him away and he went tumbling. She pursued, trying to end this even if lore said she might not, but he ducked behind a blood tree of all things.

Nim’s hammer went right through, wood flying as the rotten thing half-collapsed. It was hollow, and though she was already aiming another blow at the Squire her aspect tugged at the corner of her eye. Inside the dead tree, words had been carved in Lower Miezan.

Marshal Juniper wins here.

Nim breathed in sharply, the Squire retreating as she slowed her steps. Looking around, the Black Knight could not see a single company of the Army of Callow on the field. Only manning the mantlets to the south and west, and in front of them piles of bodies were piled so high they were almost a second wall. It suddenly fell into place and marshal felt like she was going to be sick. The Marshal of Callow, Nim realized, had baited both her and Sacker into pushing their main offensive here, through this… box. And then she’d withdrawn her own soldiers to the edges, and let her enemies slaughter each other under the cover of smoke. They’d been fighting each other all afternoon, ruining their armies against each other as the Army of Callow mopped up the edges and waited. The Legions had lost, Nim thought. Rebel and loyal alike, they had lost – and they would continue losing as long as they fought.

There was only one word left to speak, she knew, before this day could end.

“Retreat,” the Black Knight shouted, and it tasted like ashes in her mouth. “Retreat!”