Skybound

Belka Torm shivered, huddling deeper into his furs to ward off the chill. He looked up past his hood, trying to gauge the sun’s course through the dark clouds above him and the swirling snow around him. The General’s column had marched since daybreak, unrelenting, through an eerie twilight realm of powder, fog, and shadow. The beat of drum and hoof alone held back the unearthly blizzard that had dogged their steps for days. Though none of them could see the path ahead, the General led them, certain and sure. Belka knew that as long as he listened to the drumbeats, followed the wagon ahead of him, and led the one behind, that they would not lose their way. With gentle flicks of the reins, he guided his horses through the tunnel of white and grey, every so often casting his eye skyward to catch distant lightning.

Winter’s chill had gripped this part of the land early, and all the more viciously as a result. At the beginning, Belka had worried that frostbite would claim fingers and toes -- or worse -- but the Worldwalker’s strongly-ingrained discipline had every unit’s leadership checking their men constantly, ensuring their gear was keeping them warm. The punishment for laxity in this regard was swift and uncompromising, usually consisting of such indignities as latrine or kitchen duty. The cold actually made for easier travel than had the wet rains of autumn. So too did the fact that they once again travelled on paved roadways rather than dirt trails.

Belka’s wife, Laren, shifted anxiously on the wooden seat beside him. “It’s almost time,” she muttered feverishly. Her dreams had intensified on the march, leaving her in a state bordering on mania. “They struck at her as if to cage a bird, but she danced like a cat, and the cat made them blind…”

“I wish you could actually speak clearly sometimes,” Belka remarked idly,, putting his arm around her shoulder, as much to share warmth as comfort. She leaned further into his embrace, grinning at sights he couldn’t see. 

“It’s not so hard to understand this time,” she said, baring her teeth in a feral grin. Belka stiffened; normally, she was beyond hearing him or anyone as she drifted in the dream. “They struck the first blow, attacking the City of Prophets. She always stays neutral -- always! -- unless she or the city comes under attack.. She restrains herself to messages and missives, words in this ear at that time.” She shook her head, almost luxuriating in whatever she saw. “She is neutral no longer. Not since the Purple Night, not since…” Her voice faded into silence, and Belka was about to prompt her when she spoke again. “And we are part of her counterattack, against those who dared sting her.”

“But how are they blind? This is an army, and we haven’t even tried to hide…”

Laren shook her head slowly.“They’ve marched so far so fast. They search, they seek, but they see only her face in the mirror…”

“You aren’t making sense again…”

She turned her head then, and opened her eyes, fixing her husband with a piercing stare.“The [Oracle] has retaliated, dear husband. The only thing their scryers and scouts can see is her face, piercing their gaze with eyes full of stars. Nor can they divine, or send messages. They violated that which must not be violated, and now she keeps them blind, as the Lance delivers her answer.”

She smiled, closed her eyes, and laid her head on his shoulder, drifting back to sleep as the wagon swayed steadily to the beat of the drums and the horses’ hooves.

===========================

Jenna Tillersen shivered, exhausted, in the back of the wagon, trying to let the rocking sway of the carriage lull her back to sleep. The [Water Witch] had worked relentlessly with the other mages in the Lance, crafting as many enchantments as they could with the materials they had on hand. Several dozen enchanted rings were complete; pre-loaded with a basic [Icefall] rune, all they needed was to be fed with raw mana, which anyone could provide, given basic training and practice.

In addition to what Duchess Erin had called ‘magic mortars,’ the adepts of the company had also been busy making other types of enchanted items; most welcome among these were flattened stone disks that could be piled next to a fire for a time, and then placed in gloves or boots, or slipped into garments to ward off the chill for hours. Jenna had immediately grasped the theory behind their construction, but her affinities meant she was more suited to work on the mortars. Her husband, Davin, fortunately had more skill with earth magic than she did, and he had made a fair share of the magic stones -- at least, on the rare occasion that his duties let him work near the fire.

On this day, however, they hadn’t stopped to make camp at all. They marched into the evening, which is why Jenna was trying to sleep in the wagon. As she dozed, her mind wandered. Ever since that morning, since King Geremas left them with embered words and the map which guided their path, something felt different among the Lance. The ambient flows of mana had subtly shifted, and though Jenna would be the first to admit that her provincial education lacked in theory what it had in practicality, she felt certain that even the most learned scholars in the Magisterium would have struggled to put words to what she plainly saw.

Though neither had expressly forbidden it, nobody who had been present for the meeting had divulged what was said, or at least had admitted to it. Nevertheless, word spread like wildfire, and a new sort of intensity rose among them. None were more profoundly affected than the freed Gendarmes: nothing she could point to or put a name to, but dozens of tiny changes. Their ears, perked up and attentive, where before they had been pinned back more often than not. Their gait, crisp and uniform where once it had been plodding and haphazard. They devoted their whole being to the drills they were set to, accelerating their transition from a vast, barely-coordinated horde to small, agile, deadly teams.

Jenna had had no battlefield experience prior to the Deskren invasion, but their new formulation struck her as more fearsome than their previous massed ranks. Privately, Davin had informed her that standard Deskren doctrine had been to use them in a manner similar to human infantry, either not recognizing or not caring that the Luparan body is not built that way. The Battlemaster, he said, had been keen to break them of that lifetime of indoctrination, in order to cultivate their great natural aptitude for small pack tactics -- to reforge them as fast, vicious skirmisher units. To Jenna’s eye, this effort was meeting with resounding success.

Such had been their existence after the High King of Drakenth had taken his leave. March and train; train and march, and Jenna watched and felt the column change. It wasn’t just the Gendarmes; the steady, relentless beat of the drum had changed. It wasn’t just the girl, that frightening figure on the lead wagon: several more had taken up their own drums and followed her cadence. The same change that had overcome the Gendarmes had overcome the drummers, as well as the soldiers who marched to their beat.

As the afternoon yielded to evening, the hidden sun’s warmth faded, night’s chill stealing over them. Time had come to be measured by the beat of drum and hoof; the clouds and fog and lightning made it difficult to track time by any other means. Jenna could feel, as they marched, a growing tension among the Lance, like they were a bowstring, slowly pulled back by some great, unseen archer. Jacob and his officers responded most keenly, growing tense and stern, almost grim. Something felt different about them, as though the force on them had changed from pulling the column behind them to being pushed forward, harried along -- less like we’re going somewhere, more like we’re just waiting to arrive...

A thump on the side of the wagon jolted her from her thoughts, and she pulled back a flap of canvas. One of the farriers that had joined the Black Lance instead of staying at Possibility was walking alongside her carriage, and he nodded with a slight bow without missing a step.

“Sorry to disturb you, ma’am,” he apologized, reaching out to secure a metal ring to the side of the wagon. A metal clasp went over the sideboard, and the ring was slid into position and affixed using a strange tool and a burst of metal-flavored mana. “Just following orders; we’re attaching these to every wagon. We’ve been turning them out faster’n horseshoes every night!” He looped a leather strap through the ring and cinched it tight, before repeating the procedure an arm’s length down the wagon.

“So I’m not the only one being given strange projects,” she said wryly, shifting to the other side of the wagon as he jogged around the back.

“Even as you say,” he replied, dutifully resuming his work. Jenna dogged the flaps back down, and laid back as well as she could, barely hearing the thuds as he finished the job and moved on to the next wagon in line.

================================

Stev Aras leaned back against the wall, chest heaving as he drew in deep lungfuls of scorched air. Mage-fire had poured through a gap in the barrier for what felt like hours before the magical defenses started to recover. The Deskren had had enough time while the barrier was down to inflict severe damage before Stev and his team could bring a trio of mages and an artificer to repair the damaged ward tower, the crystal having shattered under the relentless assault, killing its custodian and destroying a portion of the city’s shield.

The enemy commander had clearly been ready for just such an occasion: shortly after the barrier fell, hundreds of skirmishers had poured into the city, covered by a creeping magical barrage. Fire, ice, and lighting had lashed the walls, pushing the defenders back long enough to permit the advance. His sister and her friend, Taz and Xerrioth, had proven more than a match in open combat, but the assassins and saboteurs among the invaders had melted into the city before they could be dealt with.

Stev kicked the corpse at his feet before stumbling out of the alley, ignoring the shiny slivers of golden metal that clinked against the cobblestones as they fell away from the body. His sister and her new romantic victim were excellent front-line combatants, but the more subtle work of the night fell to himself and the rest of the Acquisitions Guild. The Huntress was not merciful to the darker trades and those who plied them when she caught them within her domain, so only the most skilled and the most lucky, or both, generally survived to operate within Fort Expedition at all. 

Recruiting them had been as simple as offering amnesty and not asking for names. That would have been enough, but once the first Shackled assassin had been killed and his collar destroyed, all semblance of restraint had vanished. The city council had offered gold for intact golden collars, but gold couldn’t buy levels, especially for the older and more powerful classers in the city. All Stev had found of collars had been ruined pieces until the attack had already been largely repulsed. The less scrupulous guilds and solitary adventurers with the capability of taking on the enslaved killers had done so with extreme enthusiasm. He was sure that much of the destruction near the breach and peppered through the streets away from it had been more from defenders getting carried away than from Deskren intent.

His newly gained level had brought welcome rejuvenation, although he knew he would have to eat to fully recover: a particularly thorny problem, after weeks under siege. Rations were running out, and after the third supply raid, the Deskren had learned to keep their supply wagons and stores well out of range of even Stev’s most daring teams. He made his way through the narrow alleys and walkways, staying out of sight as he approached the spelltower maintaining the barrier. Torn stone and shattered bodies stood as silent testament to the fact that his sister and the gravity mage had passed earlier, and several glints of gold he could see meant an entirely different manner of celebration would befall the unfortunate blind man.

The guard watching the steps leading up to the entrance of the tower nearly shot him in the face when he appeared from the shadows, but she recognized him at the last second and jerked the crossbow back and away. The bolt clattered off a rooftop in the distance as she apologized.

“Sorry, sir!”

He waved away her mistake with a dismissive gesture. “It’s confusing enough out there. They’ve stopped the bombardment,” he said. “Your team’s done good work getting the barrier back up so quickly.”

She looked at him in confusion for a moment. “They haven’t even finished, sir. Mage Varkas doesn’t know if it’s the weather or what is happening, but they’ve backed off from the walls and seem to be regrouping…”

A voice -- Varkas’, presumably -- came from the chamber above. “I can’t see what’s happening!” he called. “Something’s got their attention, though!”

Magic thrummed as the mage finished whatever arcane workings he had been focused on, and blue light pulsed from the stones surrounding the base of the tower. Far overhead, the barrier deepened in color as the repaired tower reinforced its magical structure.

“The stabilizing matrices were damaged,” the artificer explained, leaving the mage in the shield chamber with a satchel of mana crystals. “We had to lay in extra runes to repair the spell--” 

Steve waved his arm. “I wouldn’t understand the details. I just need to know if the tower’s gonna hold if they intensify the barrage.”

“Oh, yes, sir,” the man nodded. “Should be even more resilient than before. The shard only shattered because the buffering layers had not been maintained or inspected in several years. It’ll hold up much better now, at least for the short term.”

“They broke off their assault before we had the shield restored,” said Stev, climbing the steps to peer through an arrow slit. Swirling snows hid the encamped attackers, and only the smoke and faint screams and fading fires gave any evidence at all that they were under siege. “Is scrying still unreliable?” he asked.

“All they get is a sense of confusion and the rumble of thunder,” said Varkas as he looked out through another gap in the stone. The mage had joined them on the second level, but stayed close to the entrance to the shield chamber.

“Something has caused them to regroup,” said Stev. “And we can’t know if it’s good or bad. Honestly...we’re just waiting for it all to go south.”

“Another day and it won’t matter, sir,”replied the mage, a frown tugging at his features. “We simply don’t have enough supplies to hold. We’re down to jerky and bad ale, and the last dregs of crystals from the council stores.”

“Well, something has them spooked,” added the guardswoman.

Stev looked out into the swirling snows as the evening darkened further. “Let’s just hope the enemy of my enemy is in fact my friend…”

Thunder rumbled in the distance, and they all looked to the west.

========================================

Claire Descroix wheeled her horse, turning to race through the rear echelon of the encampment. Horns and mage-light flares had gone up from the section of tents where the seers were stationed, and she rushed to see what was wrong with her own eyes. The main camp stretched in an arc that spanned almost three miles, closing off the valley south of Fort Expedition and sprawling out into the hills that led westward to the Eastwater. The river had been a critical pipeline in their logistics, ferries and barges keeping a steady supply of food and materials and troops as they had arrived on the coastline northeast of the Dead Sands. She crested a low hill and let her horse drop to a canter as she approached a section of tents far more comfortably furnished than most of the infantry were afforded. Seers were a rare commodity in the Empire, and those who served willingly were treated far better than any that served in chains.

“Report!” she snapped, pulling her horse to a stop and swinging down to the ground as a steward took the reins.

“Maréchal!” Approaching her was an officer, wearing the golden tassel that marked him as a lieutenant. He clasped his fist to his chest. “We were attempting another scrying, when the seers collapsed, screaming of thunder.”

“All of them?” she asked curtly, her voice clipped and short.

“Yes, Ma’am. I had the flares sent up and messengers dispatched immediately. None remain standing, and they babble gibberish.”

“You did the right thing, even if it has nearly caused a panic and delayed today’s assault,” she said, her tone slightly softer. The man visibly relaxed as he realized he had escaped immediate punishment. In truth, she had not expected the barrier to fail so early, and the push against the walls had been a hastily-assembled force of skirmishers to take advantage of the event. 

Though unplanned, the breach had demonstrated just how effective the newer amplification arrays for her mages’ artillery spells could be. Even harder to move than trebuchets or catapults, the arrays were more akin to stationary siege engines that allowed her spellcasters to focus power to a far greater degree and unleash it to devastating effect. Her nephew, Kavnerrin, had provided the latest designs. However weaselly and distasteful she found him to be as he skulked in the shadows, his projects and laboratories were occasionally useful, even if she knew it was the work of his underlings and not his own intellect.

Putting such thoughts aside, she pushed past the tent flaps and strode into the scrying tent. Three seers, two women and a man, lay on the ground. Another woman was sitting, but held her head in her hands as blood dribbled from her nose and ears. Claire knelt close to the woman, handing her a cloth to clean herself as a servant brought a basin of water.

“What can you tell me, Seeress?”

“Your Highness,” sputtered the woman, wiping her face.

“Appearances can wait for a better time,” said Claire. “Just tell me what you saw…”

The diviner nodded in relief. “Only her face, for months on end, with glimpses in between,” she said. “It has made all but the deepest dreams impassable until now.”

“What has changed?” Claire asked intently.

Instead of speaking, the seeress held up the white cloth, now stained with blood. That blood drew a dark, almost black slash down the center of the cloth.

“A lance, and thunder. She hid them from us until now.” Who that she was needed no explanation. Only one could disrupt magical sight on such a grand scale.

“Do you know what it means?”

“Yes, Highness…” She looked up at Claire. “He is here.”

“Who?”

The woman turned and pointed, out through the wall of the tent. “To the west! Look to the west!”

It was then that something broke through the sound of the wind, muffled by the snows that swirled in the air. Claire rose, striding from the tent. She ignored the questioning looks of the Lieutenant as she continued past the row of tents, leaving her horse and retinue behind. The sound was low but steady, a rhythmic pulsing in the air that stirred the blood. She could feel it in her chest, growing closer.

As she reached the top of the hill, she pulled a scry-glass from her belt pouch and raised it to her eye. The enchanted monocle was made of the finest imperial glass and almost flawless, set in a silver band inscribed with runes. The drifting flurries had let up, the evening settling into slightly better visibility than the earlier part of the day. She scanned from the northern bridge along the riverbanks, seeing nothing out of the ordinary.

It was the lightning that revealed the truth. A grim flash, punctuated with a rumble as the snows parted above the ridge that overlooked the far side of the river. In that momentary gap, she saw a mass of shadowy figures on horseback, and over their heads…

A vertical pike, with a stained white banner that hung in defiance of the gusting wind, as if by its symbolism alone. The splash of dark red looked black in the fading light of the overcast evening. 

The Black Lance had arrived.