Abandoned City of Pahko

  30 Miles North of the Tulian Capital

  Two Months Until Spring

  Sara rested against the walls of an abandoned city, enjoying the feel of cool stone through her sweat-soaked clothing. The granite protections of Pahko had been built to lesser standards than Tulian, and suffered greatly for it. The typhoon barrage had ripped entire chunks from the earth surrounding the coastal city, and the wind hadn't much cared if the soil held a segment of wall when it sent the earth skyward. The city had once been surrounded by a barrier wall fifteen feet tall, well suited to fend off beasts and raiders, but that protection was now rendered porous. Dozens of yards at a time were missing, leaving the ruined homes within exposed to see from hundreds of yards away. Ladders wouldn't have been necessary to take the city, much less siege engines, and as far as it might serve as a defensive structure for her army, it was closer to a hindrance than a boon. Trying to defend the entire stretch was impossible, a trap.

  Unfortunately, Sara had to defend it anyway. She caught her breath against the stone while her army ran about in a near-panic, hurrying to complete as many of the measures she'd ordered to be prepared before the enemy came within bow range. Sara didn't think that a quarter of her orders could be reasonably accomplished, but even that quarter may save lives, so she'd set them to the task.

  Unlike the force bearing down on her, Sara's army was uniquely composed. A full sixth of the soldiers surrounding her were noncombatants, despite what their armor and weaponry would have implied at a casual gnce. They were a profession new to this world's military strategy, given the title of "combat engineer". Plenty of armies had siege engineers, naturally, even the Royal Sporaton army, but as far as Sara and Evie could tell, the Tulian Republic was the first military on record to have an entire cssification of soldier dedicated to building fortifications in the midst of battle. Only time would tell if Sara's gamble at so weakening her frontline would pay off.

  Sara pulled herself off the wall and shaded her eyes, gauging the enemy's distance. By her reckoning, they were about an hour out. Her rest done, Sara waved to her guards to indicate what she was doing, then began climbing the segment of wall she'd been leaning against. This chunk of the wall was particurly thin, the remaining ptform no more than ten by ten feet wide, but with a gentle slope of crumbling stone that made reaching its summit fairly easy. A few loose stones nearly stumbled her, but she carried herself to the top simply enough. Now at her new vantage point, she pulled Nora's gift from her bag, putting the magically enhanced telescope to her eye.

  The enemy army jumped in size. Sara twisted the telescope's bands, aligning the lenses to narrow down the focus. Even at two miles out, the instrument was fine enough to distinguish individual ranks of spearmen. It was a remarkable tool, truly, and a greater aid than she thought even Nora appreciated. Fragments of finely carved gems lined its brass case, sporting a faint glow visible only in a pitch bck room. It had been a prize taken by Nora's second ever entanglement with a Carrion Navy vessel, one which had tried to transit the Tulian Republic's waters as its sisters now often did, but with one small difference.

  The Carrion Captain had worn a sve's control band on her wrist, something Nora had spotted as she'd been passing the vessel peaceably by. The faetouched Captain had whirled her vessel about and boarded the Carrion ship without hesitation, much to the Captain's shock. Whether she thought Nora wouldn't dare attack a Carrion ship, or that Sara's alliance with the Carrions excluded her from Tulian ws, Sara didn't know or care. The Captain had been hanged from his ship's mast, the vessel confiscated, her crew returned to the next Carrion ship Nora passsed by. The wealth of cargo that a Carrion vessel carried had utterly dwarfed other nation's, and the telescope was far from the most valuable of acquisitions, in Nora's estimation.

  Not in Sara's, though. She used the fine example of Carrion artificery to her great advantage now, appraised of the enemy's exact dispositions without need of dispatching scouts. The enemy was approaching in two equal blocks, perhaps two hundred yards between groups of two thousand soldiers. Archers presently composed the first rows, so they could fire as soon as possible, backed by loose ranks of spearmen who would rush forward to protect them should the archers be charged by Sara's skirmishers. It seemed that, much like Sara, the enemy commander preferred to soften their opponent as much as possible before coming to grips with their heavier troops.

  Unless, of course, that was what the enemy commander wished her to think. It could be possible that the archers were a feint. They were in a loose enough formation to quickly clear the way for a charge, catching Sara's own archers exposed. Sara licked her lips, running through the scenario in her mind. It was also conceivable that the archer's loose formation was just that, loose, and the enemy commander anticipated Sara to bring her own archers behind the walls to protect them, allowing her ranged forces to reign arrows unopposed.

  Sara blinked and closed the telescope, shaking her head. Around and around she went, ifs and buts chasing one another in an endless cycle. That was the problem, she supposed, with being so familiar with the enemy commander, and knowing the enemy commander was just as familiar with her. Trying to guess what Evie thought was too easy, just as it was too easy for Evie to guess what Sara was thinking.

  At the end of the day, that was the crux of the battle. This rge-scale practice bout was the sixteenth one in fourteen days, and she was nearly as exhausted as her troops. Both armies glowed an ethereal white, their weapons wrapped by dulling enchantments, but even the protective aura allowed bruises to slip through. The cumutive injuries of the st two weeks, in addition to the exhaustion of constant marching, was as much as part of the training as the battles themselves. Better to learn how to push through exhaustion now, when the enemy was a selection of your comrades, than when a cavalry charge was barreling down on you.

  Doesn't make it any more fun to be sore, Sara grumbled to herself, rolling her arm. An Irregur longbow arrow had taken her in the shoulder two days ago, by pure bad luck, and the pain that the spell had allowed to transfer told her that the blow would have taken the limb off entirely. Even after two days, the bruise persisted. Sara hadn't allowed the healers to tend to it, wanting to ingrain in herself the danger of allowing her shield to slip amongst an arrow barrage. By the rules of the bout, Sara had been forced to py dead, trusting her commanders to take control in her absence.

  Evie had mauled them.

  In fact, Evie had won the ten of the sixteen faux-battles over the st two weeks. The feline insisted that it wasn't due to Sara's incompetence, nor Evie's superiority, but rather the differences inherent to the armies they controlled. Evie was pying the role of the Royal Sporaton army, and accordingly, she outnumbered and outgunned Sara. She had four thousand troops to Sara's two thousand, as well as forty pseudo-Irregurs to Sara's ten. The victories that Sara had managed occurred only when she found favorable terrain during the period of morning maneuvering before battle was met, allowing her to leverage her troop's superior training to wear down Evie's greater numbers.

  That was Sara's primary– and only– advantage. She had been given nearly all the veteran troops, those that had been involved with Voth's bandit clearing efforts, while Evie was stuck with rookie volunteers. The Royal Sporaton Army didn't care for training their peasantry beyond the basics of formations and thrusting a spear, too leery of the danger of an armed and trained popuce. The Tulian Republic was sure to have a general advantage in combat prowess among the common troops as a result. Some of Sara's youngest troops, those that had only one level to their name before joining the army, had now gained a second level, this time dedicated to a combat profession. That didn't make them Irregurs, but it did mean that one-on-one, they were almost certain to beat any half-trained farmer.

  Conventional wisdom held that Sara was setting her nation up for disaster, giving the people the ability to resist and rebel. Sara, however, was relieved. The tenuous democracy she was piecing together shook under even the slightest pressure, too alien by far to the feudal society she was taming. She took quiet satisfaction in the knowledge that, should Tulian backslide into tyranny, there would be those capable of ripping down the new kings.

  She was shaken from her thoughts by a voice hollering up at her from below. Sara looked down at the woman trying to get her attention.

  "Yes?"

  "Sections B through F are completed, General! Commander Shale wishes to know if she should prioritize further reinforcements, or if she should shift the engineers to secondary objectives."

  Sara bit her cheek, thinking. Evie, born and raised a tactician, would prefer precision strikes, but that didn't mean her superior numbers wouldn't be levied, though she knew Sara would be aware of that...

  Sara huffed, pulling herself from the whirlpool of circur reasoning.

  "Have Commander Shale switch to secondary priorities. I understand that they worked through the night, but I still want her engineers held in reserve by the time the lines meet, to patch any breakthroughs."

  The messenger snapped a sharp salute and darted off, carrying the message. Sara watched her leave with thoughts still swirling, then pulled the telescope back up. She had to adjust the focus again, Evie's army having further closed the distance.

  Not long now.

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  Evie

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  Master's forces buzzed about the ruined city with the mad fervor of an overturned ant colony. The scouts, creeping low through the grass, hadn't returned with useful information. Whatever Master was attempting, it was foreign to their sensibilities, belonging to no proper military textbook Evie was familiar with. As was the case any time during the mock battles that Master began to delve into her old world's knowledge, the fur of Evie's tail stood on end. The stratagems Master produced were often illogical, barely effective, yet so alien they had proven maddeningly effective despite their fws.

  "I understand that you cannot state with certainty what the enemy is doing, Private," Evie told the scout, "but I still wish you to describe to me the appearance of their behavior. A literalist description, rather than your own interpretation."

  The scout, a young boy, visibly swallowed. Without Master's comforting presence, Evie found the soldiers under her command had begun to view her in the same nervous light they once did Tulian's nobility. She supposed it was an inevitability, considering the bearing Evie's upbringing lent her, but she still wished she had Master's skill for reassuring her subordinates.

  "Well, ma'am, that's still difficult to say. They're nearly all running about, carrying wood and boxes and all sorts of things, except for some of the archers and the spearmen, who are out in front of the walls. A lot's going on behind the broken bits of the wall, but I couldn't see much back there, what with the way the way they're all lined up in the gaps."

  "Were they running about randomly, as if to give the false impression of work, or were they achieving something?"

  The scout tugged at his uniform's colr nervously, swallowing again. Evie's request was far from objective. She was asking for the boy's opinion, and that was more pressure than any demand to skulk through enemy territory.

  "I can't be sure, ma'am, but... maybe? I think they were working fer real, ma'am. They looked real tired and sweaty, frowning and stuff, like folk do when they're working." The boy's face twisted up. "I think so, ma'am, I think so. Can't be sure, y'understand."

  "I do. Thank you for your report. You are dismissed."

  The scout saluted sharply and darted away, relieved to be done with the strange affair. Evie turned her gaze back to the abandoned city.

  "What do you think?" She asked, addressing no one in particur.

  Behind her, the entourage of trainee Irregurs looked at one another. There were twelve of them, the core of cadets she'd trained the longest. While their role in this battle wasn't yet determined, their growing prowess meant it would be a pivotal one.

  "...Can you be more specific, ma'am?" One asked. Evie recognized the voice. Tel, a ranged Irregur that preferred crossbows.

  Evie vaguely indicated the entire expanse of shattered wall their forces were approaching. "You've fought her forces a score of times now. What do you think she is pnning? You are free to converse among yourselves, but I want a response within sixty seconds."

  Like the children Evie treated them as, the Irregurs colpsed into a huddle of furious whispering.

  "...she arrived in the te evening yesterday, so she had plenty of time to..."

  "...tends to prefer defense, because she hates taking casualties..."

  "...think she could have built something again? That battering ram was a disaster..."

  Evie listened to each comment, forming her own opinions of their validity. She hadn't a clue what Master was pnning, she rarely did, and put more stock in their theories than she would freely admit. She was by far the most knowledgable among them of Master's habits, but for all the time they spent at one another's side, she hadn't the encyclopedic knowledge of Earth's ways that Master possessed. When it came to evaluating Master's industrial scheming, only Hurlish had a chance at coming close to divining Master's intentions, and their orcish partner had naturally remained behind in the capital. For all her army's numerical superiority, Evie was at a loss regarding the enemy's pns.

  The allotted minute passed. Walking with the army's plodding pace, Evie gnced back at the trainees.

  "Your conclusions?"

  "Fortifications, ma'am," Jaran said, answering for the group. "It's the only thing that would require so many working on a project at once. The problem is, there's no evidence of what they've constructed. Either the work wasn't completed in time, which is why they look like they're panicking, or it's a trap the scouts couldn't spot."

  "A simplistic conclusion, but I see no fw in its reasoning. What task do you expect I will give to you and the pseudo-Irregurs?"

  The trainees immediately began to converse again, but Evie held up a hand. "No. Jaran saw fit to speak for the majority without prompting, and so he accepted the responsibility of answering any additional questions. Leadership, no matter how small scale, comes with responsibilities."

  Jaran paled slightly, but knew better than to argue. He contempted the question for a few seconds, then shrugged.

  "I expect you'll have us doing the same thing as always, ma'am. Charging the points of heaviest resistance, wearing them down until we're nearly overwhelmed, then turning tail. I don't see any reason for you to mix things up from your usual."

  Am I really that consistent in my strategies? Evie wondered. It's the most logical role for Irregurs to py, but predictability is dangerous. Splitting my attention between the Irregurs and the general army has proved devastating to the efficacy of either branch.

  That would have to change.

  "Unfortunately, you are correct. Why unfortunately? There is one phrase that irritates me deeply in your reply, and that is 'usual'. To be anticipated is to be defeated."

  The trainees nodded sagely at that. It was one of many military maxims that Evie had driven deeply into their skulls. As the army marched on past her, Evie halted, turning to scan the faces of those stomping by. The Irregurs looked rather oddly at her, but she ignored them. She would find her lieutenants and give them their new orders, and only then would she offer an expnation for her actions. Master's egalitarian ideals had yielded surprising results when implemented amongst the public, but they had no pce in a military. It was not a soldier's pce to question their commanders.

  Evie found one of her lieutenants, currently riding herd on a scking squadron, and snagged the woman by the shoulder. Enraged at being interrupted, the lieutenant whirled with fury on her lips.

  "What in teh gods fuckin–!" The sight of Evie doused that fme faster than ice water. "You needed me, ma'am?"

  "Halt the advance. There has been a change in strategy." Evie paused, recalling her ranking of the various lieutenants and their skill upon the field. This one, Lieutenant Ese, she held a high opinion of. "Also, for the remainder of this battle, consider yourself promoted to General."

  Evie left the woman sputtering in pce, gathering up her Irregurs.

  ---------------------------------

  Evie did not know if she had made the correct decision on a strategic level. Deferring command to those less experienced should be a recipe for disaster. That she did so just to chase her own fancies? Even more egregious.

  On a personal level, however, her certainty was unshakeable. She stalked through the tall grass surrounding the abandoned city with her lips split in a gruesome smile. She reached out with a hand to slowly push aside the foliage, taking great pains to preserve the stealth of her approach. Evie was no Ketch, sporting a Css built from the ground up for hiding in pin sight, but for one with a dedicated combat Css, she was remarkably graceful. The Irregurs she had brought with her followed in her footsteps, doing their best to mimic her approach to the enemy lines, but they were blundering oafs in comparison.

  The sound of battle had long since reached her ears, but now they were close enough that even purely human hearing could pick up the csh of wood and steel. She ignored the tremor of battle, because it was no longer her responsibility. Master Graf, commander of the Night's Eye mercenaries, whispered advice in her ear across the gulf of time.

  The more elite the squadron, the smaller its size. The smaller its size, the greater it must rely upon the element of surprise. Take your enemy unaware, and they will be id low with the barest of efforts.

  She could not see the battle, but the sound of it was crisp. A few dozen yards to the northwest, the lines had met. The Irregurs she had selected for her personal squad were itching to charge into the fight, as was she, but all resisted the urge. The sughter could begin whenever they so chose, skilled as they were, but not all sughters were created equal. If she wanted to maximize the effect on her enemies, she must be patient, picking her moment well.

  Evie came to a stop within ten yards of the ragged fortifications. She had crept to within the battle's extreme left fnk, where the lines grew thin. Most of the effort was in the center, Evie's forces– now General Ese's forces– trying to break through so that they could wrap around to attack the enemy from both sides. The section she had selected was a sideshow, neither army paying it much mind.

  Evie ran the tip of her tongue along her canines, listening to the apathetic grunts and groans of low-scale combat. The wings of either army were usually where the most active and steady of troops were pced, entrusted to guard the fnks, but that wasn't the case in this conflict. Here all the focus was on the center, where the rgest gaps in the wall y, leaving the fnks manned by the most exhausted and disheartened of either side's troops. There was still the ctter of wood and steel as spears tried to find their way around one another, but it was a tepid affair. A measly two ranks of soldiers were shadowed on either side by remaining chunks of the wall, battling for the minor gap in the defenses. The combatants knew their role wasn't integral, and weren't interested in suffering pain for so little gain.

  A shame that Evie would be relieving them of the choice.

  Evie took a knee, waiting. Master's compints at missing Earthly commodities often fell ft on Evie's ears, but at this moment, she could empathize. The "pocket watch" Master had often described would have been a godsend. Synchronizing assaults without the aid of signal fgs was nigh impossible.

  Behind her, Jaran and Taras shifted with equal impatience, gncing between the sun and the shadows it produced. Jaran, still among the most promising of her Irregurs, wore a hideously rge sword. A fmberge, distinguished by the unique wave pattern in its steel, sat at an incredibly awkward angle on his back so that it wouldn't scrape the ground. It was a massive weapon, dwarfing even Master's greatsword, and its length was idiotic in Evie's estimation. The boy was no taller than average, which meant his weapon was taller than him by three hands, and it had taken more than a week of his wearing it before he stopped smming it into the frame of every door he passed through. It was his right as an Irregur to choose his weapon, but Evie regurly exercised her right as his superior to insult his taste.

  Taras, beside him, was another one of the Tulian Republic's true Irregurs. Evie estimated that he was at his fourth level, having been among the very first sves Master had freed upon the Crossed Glory. He fell into svery as a result of being on the wrong end of a Sporaton nd dispute, his Lord's army falling in battle, and that had given him a leg up when Ignite began training the Guard. Evie had recognized his talent and pilfered him from Ignite's forces when she happened upon him at the training grounds, where he was making a mockery of his fellow Guards. He still preferred the shortsword and shield from Ignite's training, eschewing the more-familiar spear that had nded him in servitude in the first pce.

  Together, their trio was equaled only by Master and her personal contingent, and through the Colr's pull Evie knew Master was– as always– in the thick of battle. Should they manage to successfully break through the enemy fnk, they would have their run of the pce for quite a while.

  Evie watched the shadows creep forward. Though it felt like hours, the reality was one of mere minutes, adrenaline accelerating her perception of time. Inch by inch, moment by moment, the shadow of the wall creeped forward as the sun inched across the sky. When it finally reached the edge of the selected tree's roots, signaling the time had arrived, she shot to her feet.

  Three distinct cracks sounded off behind her, louder even then the sounds of battle. Evie broke into a run as arrows whistled through the air above her, loosed from just the distance required to pass over friendly troop's heads. A fsh of enchantment light burst out from the enemy lines, followed by shouts of surprise and pain.

  Evie reached the line a moment ter.

  The rubble of the leftmost portion of the wall was too unstable for the commoners to fight upon, but Evie held no such reservations. She pnted one foot upon a cobblestone and heaved, flinging herself past the enemy lines. Just behind her, Jaran and Taras did the same, unsheathing their weapons as they went, and then it began.

  Evie lunged for the first figure in sight without reservation, striking them on the shoulder with the tip of her rapier. Light fshed as the weapon's enchantments saved the soldier's life, but enough pain was let through that they yelped, recognizing what would have been a lethal blow. The soldier betedly fell to their knees, "dead", but Evie had already moved on.

  Jaran and Taras waded in behind her, swords swinging. Her troops began to cheer as light fshed up and down the enemy line, opponents dropping like flies. Evie moved rapidly enough through her opponents that she grew irritated with how long they took to fall, and began timing her stabs with a shove from her offhand, taking them to the ground before they even comprehended that they'd been struck.

  As the enemy thinned out, Evie expected her troops to come rushing forward, but curiously, they didn't. They cheered, yes, but from afar, taking no advantage of the chaos. Evie grit her teeth, some of Master's anger bubbling up within her. They were better trained than this. They knew how to exploit the openings created by an Irregur assault. As the st of the enemy fell, Evie spun upon her own troops with fangs bared, preparing to unch a furious tirade at the cowards.

  What y between them, however, had her pulling up short. A long patch of gray material, six or seven feet wide, formed a moat that connected the two wall sections. It was the strange "concrete" that Master had introduced to Tulian several months back. Evie understood the basic principles of its construction, just from proximity to Master as she worked on the project, but she hadn't imagined it being used for this purpose. At first gnce it seemed Master's forces had been attempting to quite literally rebuild the entirety of Pahko's walls, which was what the first wave of friendly troops appeared to have assumed. Familiar with the material from the repairs to Tulian's walls, they'd charged in, expecting to easily run across it.

  Now a litany of sucking holes were dotted across the concrete. Many still contained empty boots, the soldiers having been unable to pull themselves out of the unfinished muck. Evie gnced at the sidelines, where the defeated soldiers gathered, and saw that many had chunks of concrete sprayed across the entire front of their body, having been arrested mid-charge to fall ft onto their face. Now, even with the enemy defeated, the muck was effectively impenetrable to her troops; heavy as they were with their armor, there was no chance of lightly stepping across the concrete.

  "Guess we figured out what the scouts saw," Jaran said, approaching with sword resting on his shoulders. The ridiculous thing towered nearly as high as a spear, held like that. He nudged the concrete with his boot. "Nasty stuff. Looks solid, all the way up until you're stuck in it."

  "Indeed," Evie said. She looked once more at the sidelines, where a healer was walking around with a bucket of water. She waved for the woman's attention. "Excuse me! You're not involved in the combat exercise, I presume?"

  "No ma'am," the healer replied, pouring a spsh of water over a soldier's concrete-covered arm. "The Governess instructed me to take care of the sorts that got stuck in the mud. Er, con-kreet. Said that leavin' it on the skin too long might cause burns or some such."

  "Damn," Taras said. "Nasty's right. I wonder how much of that stuff she could pour out?"

  "If she has the requisite materials, as much as she so pleased. She reached the city st night, so I expect the entire frontline is simirly fortified."

  "Doesn't it dry, though? Can't st forever."

  "It takes many hours to dry. Days, if I recall correctly. Certainly long enough to gain a decisive advantage in battle."

  "Well, shit," Taras eloquently intoned. "What're you going to do about it?"

  Evie smiled. "Me? I am but a lowly Irregur Captain. This is a problem for General Ese."

  Jaran rolled his eyes, muttering. "Givin' me lessons about the responsibility of leadership and stuff, huh..."

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  Sara

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  It hadn't yet been an hour since the fighting started, but Sara thought she was looking at one of the rare battles that might end up in her favor. The initial charge had been broken by the faux concrete barriers just as she'd hoped, the trap doing immeasurable damage to the front ranks of Evie's army. Her soldiers hadn't been able to take full advantage of the initial confusion, as they'd had help to pull the "enemy" free of the concrete as a matter of safety, but she was still satisfied. The advance had been ground to a halt, a number of Evie's troops forced to pull back and begin constructing makeshift bridges and dders.

  Several squadrons, naturally, had attempted to use the brief stall to circle around Sara's already thin line. It was a good move, sensible, but easily countered. Sara herself sprinted towards their attempts with a cluster of experienced troops fnking her, shattering the squadrons without much concern. Had the conflict been real, she would've had an even easier time breaking the attempts, freed to use her more lethal arsenal of spells. Fortunately for Evie's forces, Sara had determined that charbroiling your own soldiers during a training exercise was likely to have a poor effect on morale.

  Speaking of morale, Sara thought, where is Evie? The feline nearly always engaged with her Irregurs at the heart of the battle, providing a living banner for her troops to rally around. Sara hadn't seen her at all in this engagement, and that was beyond unusual. It set her on edge, wondering what her girlfriend was pnning. She paid as much attention as she could to the maneuvers of her regiments, but a part of her was constantly scanning faces, her paranoia growing with each passing minute that Evie failed to appear. Sara was trapped by the feline's absence, unable to commit herself to the fight until she knew she wouldn't be needed to counter Evie's Irregurs.

  Perhaps a half hour after the lines first collided, Sara got her answer. It came in the form of her entire right fnk buckling with shocking speed, fshes of light blinking across the field like firecrackers. She snapped her telescope back up to her eye, confirming what she already knew.

  Evie had entered the fray.

  Irregur archers appeared out of the tall grass at Sara's weakest section of the line, arrows loosed in rapidfire to mow down unsuspecting spearmen. Their distraction allowed Evie, who had somehow appeared behind their defenses, to begin scything her way through the distracted soldiers. She was joined by two other Irregurs, who, while not as effective as Evie herself, were making short work of any dregs she left behind.

  Sara pulled hard on Trot's reins, turning her steed towards the Irregur assault. Just as she opened her mouth to order an assault on Evie, a second burst of bright light erupted at the very center of her lines.

  In a dispy of impossible coordination, the Irregurs that had been hiding among the common enemies began their assault mere seconds after Evie had begun hers. Archers snapped off a volley of concentrated shortbow shots, clearing a space for sword-wielding Irregurs to vault the concrete moat.

  Sara bit off her curse, wheeling Trot back around once more.

  "With me!" She roared, charging towards the commotion. Evie may have been the greatest single threat, but the sudden assault at the core of her army couldn't go unanswered. If they broke through the lines, Evie's superior numbers would flood through in droves, surrounding her already too-thin lines. Attacked from both sides, her army would colpse, the battle lost.

  Sara leapt from Trot's saddle mere feet from the rear line of her soldiers, bellowing for them to clear a path. She folded her sword into its smaller form and tucked it close to her chest, shoving anyone aside who was too slow to recognize her shouts. She cleared a path through to the front of the lines, pseudo-Irregurs following in her wake.

  Sara burst out into open space. Six Irregurs had cleared a gap at Sara's side of the moat, then fallen back, forming a protective semi-circle around pnks of of wood that were being lowered to form a bridgehead. Sara spared the briefest gnces behind her, confirming that she hadn't left her guards behind, then grinned.

  The enemy did not return her smile.

  Sara bolted forward with a flourish of her sword, forearm raised to cover the eyeslits of her helmet. Arrows leapt from the enemy lines beyond the moat, but they were fired from shortbows, too weak to penetrate her armor. The rattle of their steel broadheads bouncing off her pte was nothing more than an irritation, and a temporary one, because it took her only seconds to reach the enemy Irregurs.

  Sara lowered her forearm just in time to see a winged speartip unching for her eye. She bowed her head, sending the weapon skating off the top of her helmet, and flung her sword upward.

  The back of her bde caught the wooden shaft of the Irregur's spear, sending it skyward. Sara immediately turned the swing into a stab, the tip of her sword nding in the chainmail that protected the man's neck. He recoiled with a shocked wheeze, stumbling away from her, and Sara moved to the next target.

  The fight didn't st long. Irregurs though they may have been, they weren't anywhere close to Sara's skill. To her eye their swings were lethargic, their dodges ineffective, even the swings that were aimed well almost too weak to be worth blocking. Now that she was engaged, the main line of common troops rushed forward, shields and swords pinning the enemy in pce. Sara and her escort made short work of the enemy Irregurs, save for one, who took only a gncing blow. That woman managed to retreat back over the bridge her allies had pced just before Sara's sword bit into the wood, electric arcs flying. Her spellwoven sword burst the entire thing into a ball of fme. For at least a while, the hole in her lines was patched.

  Sara had no time to celebrate, however. The moment order in the line had been restored, she began barking orders, gathering up the pseudo-Irregurs that had been scattered by the skirmish. Troops practically dove out of her way as she sprinted back towards the rear, craning her neck to look for Evie.

  She found her far too easily. In the time it took for Sara to stabilize the front, Evie had worked her way through nearly two hundred yards of troops. None of the squadrons she savaged were entirely destroyed, that would have taken too much time, but they had been severely weakened. Everywhere that Evie had struck was littered with the "dead", allowing her troops to begin pushing hard. Sara could already see her own lines buckling under the pressure, driven away from the front by weight of numbers.

  In the same breath that Sara found Evie, Evie found her. A hundred feet separated them as they locked eyes. Sara smiled. Evie smiled back.

  "Charge!"

  Sara broke into a dead sprint, her guards forgotten. They couldn't keep up with her, and besides, they were nothing more than chaff. Evie would sughter them as easily as Sara could. There was only one person that could stand against the feline in the army, and that was Sara.

  Evie bared her fangs and mirrored Sara's bullrush, leaving her own Irregurs scrambling to keep up. Several of Sara's backline troops bravely attempted to intercept the feline, but the effort ended predictably. Evie darted easily past the first group, a white blur felling two, then simply wove her way between the second, leaving weapons swinging through the empty space she'd occupied a moment before. The distraction didn't slow her by a single step, but the crowd that formed in her wake blocked her Irregurs, who began swinging their way through the obstacles. Evie reached Sara alone, just as Sara was.

  There was no pause as they met. Months of duels had passed between them, giving them a familiarity with the other's fighting style that precluded the usual sizing up of an opponent that might happen on a real battlefield. Hundreds of duels fshed through Sara's mind as their bdes met.

  Most had ended in Sara's loss.

  They slowed just enough to avoid colliding, ignoring the sudden quieting of the army behind them. Sara's greatsword was held before her waist, tip aimed towards her opponent's center of mass, while Evie faced Sara side-on, rapier held loosely at an upward angle.

  Sara entered the duel with a low lunge, aiming for Evie's chest.

  The feline's rapier dropped just enough to leave Sara's sword cttering against its base. Sara immediately twisted her wrists into a follow-up, spinning for Evie's neck, but was blocked just in time.

  Sara battered the rapier several more times from alternating sides, trying to slip past her guard, but it was no use. Evie stepped into a calm backpedal, gaining distance until suddenly she lifted the hilt of her sword up and over a swing. Sara hadn't realized the range had opened so much, and was shocked to find her greatsword sliding through open air.

  Evie's rapier swung.

  Sara could only flinch as sparks flew along her right arm, the rapier's razor tip drawing a line across her armor. Pain throbbed, the spell signaling to her that the enchanted weapon would have pierced the steel, but it wasn't a disabling blow. Sara desperately scrambled backward, throwing out a random series of sweeping blows to prevent Evie from pressing the advantage. The feline was forced back, panting nearly as hard as Sara.

  Four seconds had passed.

  Dimly, Sara became aware that the sounds of battle had faded to nearly nothing behind her. Their duel had happened to occur on a small rise, visible to almost the entire army. She'd snap at them for gawking ter, emphasizing the danger of distraction, but for now she had to heed her own lessons– taking her eyes off of Evie would be lethal.

  Now that they were no longer charging at one another, the pace of the duel slowed. Both caught their breath, freed for the first time to give the duel conscious thought. Sara slowly sidestepped in the opposite direction of Evie, both combatants circling an invisible point between them. The tips of their swords clicked and ccked against one another, little taps as they felt one another out, trying to draw out a reaction that could be taken advantage of. Neither fell for it, too experienced by far with one another's habits to fall for a feint.

  As they circled, Sara's focus was once more tested. Some voice, somewhere, calling her name. Some rookie officer, she guessed, not recognizing the importance of the exchange. Evie and Sara were their army's most powerful Irregurs by a considerable margin, and with both sides fully committed, whoever survived the exchange would likely tip the scales.

  The voice shouted again. Sara ignored it. Evie's right foot slid forward across the dirt, white steel flying through the air. Sara just barely deflected it, then unched her own riposte, but she'd been thrown too far off bance– her bck sword swiped harmlessly over Evie's white. Both retreated briefly, the stakes too high.

  "Governess Sara!"

  Evie's light feet padded across the soil, leaving small imprints in the churned mud. Usually their duels were close affairs, ending with both panting hard, drenched in sweat, but not from the combat. It could be said, perhaps, that Sara might have a thing for girls with swords, and that her preferences could be a distraction. Evie even sometimes exploited it, tugging her shirt low, or sparring in nothing but her wraps, like the very first time they had traded blows. None of that could happen now, however, not in front of the army, and Sara was both relieved and disappointed by that.

  "Governess Sara, please!"

  Sara darted forward, shifting suddenly from a low guard to a hanging overhead, trying to stab down into Evie's exposed colrbone. She caught the feline by surprise, eyes widening in a fsh, but it wasn't enough. Evie barely managed to nudge Sara's sword aside just before it would have embedded itself in the meat of her neck. Instead it skated off her leather armor, producing a wince that told Sara she would have bitten a superficial wound from her opponent.

  "Your highness, Lady Sara!"

  She whirled around, eyes wide.

  "The fuck did you just call me?!" Sara roared. For a moment her anger even overruled the duel, and she trusted Evie to allow her to discipline such a brazen mistake. For some civilian to mistakingly pce her among the ranks of royalty Sara might forgive, assuming ignorance, but here? The Tulian Army? The very ones she was training to kill nobility? Unacceptable.

  To her surprise, however, rather than some hapless officer promoted beyond their capabilities, she was spitting fury into the face of a cringing young girl. Fourteen at the oldest, she wore the uniform of the army's message runners. She had a letter clutched tightly between her fingers, which she quickly held out in a trembling hand.

  "S-s-sorry, ma'am! Governess! It was just, ah, they told me I was supposed to give this to you 'no matter what or who she's doing, the very moment you find her', and I couldn't get your attention, so–"

  Sara snatched the letter from the girl's hand, swallowing her anger. "Fine. Don't call me that again, not ever, but it worked. Clever." Sara took a deep breath. "Sorry for yelling."

  The messenger scampered off as Sara turned the letter over, finding no indication of who it was from. A wax seal with the emblem she'd chosen for official Tulian correspondence– that of a broken chain and broken colr intertwined, because Sara was anything but subtle– was easily broken by her thumb. She slid the paper out, turning to shade it from anyone close enough to read, and scanned it through.

  If she didn't have an audience, a very, very deep scowl would have overtaken her face. Instead, she remained impassive, her emotions noticed only by Evie through the colr's bond. She read the note once more, committing it to memory, then crumpled it and tossed it into her bag of holding. That done, she picked her sword back up, returning her focus to Evie.

  All across the ruined city, the armies had fallen silent. No one bothered to even fake fighting anymore, too enraptured at first by the highest ranking members of their army dueling, then by whatever was important enough to interrupt them. Sara gave no answer to the second question, but merely raised her weapon, resuming her stance.

  A silent understanding passed between the two women. The letter, whatever it was, was important enough that they really ought to drop what they were doing and focus on it.

  But no matter how much either of them liked to py at it, Sara and Evie weren't purely practical creatures. Sara pretended her government was built upon utilitarian principles alone, mathematical formu designed to optimize the quality of life of Tulian's citizens, but the truth was there was a great deal of sentiment. Sara had values and beliefs she couldn't define, much less expin, and they held a greater sway over her than she would readily admit. Evie, in turn, liked to imagine she was a sve of cunning and violence, dedicated to the satisfaction and protection of her Master with regard for nothing else, but that was no more true for her than Sara's cims of impartiality. In reality, that selfish exterior was a facade. She had been infected by Sara's idealism as surely as the most fanatic of the army's soldiers, and even if Sara vanished off the face of the pnet, there would be at least one woman continuing the crusade she'd left behind. Even if they were in the midst of a duel, one that would determine the fate of a battle, it didn't make sense for them to continue it.

  Sara twisted her grip on the sword, a dangerous tilt entering her smile. Evie returned it, lips peeling back until her teeth were exposed. This next exchange wouldn't be a testing of wits. It would be a brutal, brief csh, with the only objective being the other's death.

  The entire army froze. Wind ran over the fields. In the armies, someone coughed, and another elbowed them. Sara and Evie stopped their circling, staring into one another's faces.

  Evie lunged.

  Sara swung.

  Their swords collided with a grating screech, steel against steel, both deflected. Sara brought her sword back around without pause, aiming high, while Evie simply repeated the lunge, aiming for Sara's neck.

  A fsh of light briefly blinded Sara from below, followed by pain radiating out from the hollow of her throat. An instant ter, she felt a deep reverberation thud its way down her sword.

  Sara was dead.

  As the magic cleared from her vision, Sara found her sword bouncing off the top of Evie's unprotected head.

  Evie was dead.

  The army erupted into a violent roar, cheers and shouts of all kinds sounding. The cmor almost immediately devolved into impassioned jeers, soldiers of every rank and profession arguing with one another of who had struck first, and therefore who won, or if a mutual kill counted as a draw or a victory for both. With the debates intensifying by the second, even the Regiment Commanders getting into it with the common rank and file, Sara suddenly realized there must have been money riding on the result of their duel. A lot of money. The st two weeks of practice battles had, clearly, given the soldiers plenty of time to argue over which commander would in a fight.

  Sara shook her head and rexed her stance with a fond smile, one mirrored by Evie. The feline sidled up next to her, rapier vanishing as she leaned into Sara's side.

  "Think they'll believe you got me first?" Sara had to speak up to be heard over the crowd.

  "Even if they did, Master, they would rightly argue your strike had the momentum to fell me regardless. A mutual loss. The most common result of combat between two who care more for killing than living."

  "Yeah, well, I wouldn't have done it if lives were on the line. If I died on the battlefield, you'd kill me."

  Evie rolled her eyes. "What an original sense of humor you have, Master. Now, what was in that letter that poor child risked her life to deliver?"

  Rather than repeating the words, Sara retrieved the crumpled paper and handed it to Evie. The words were recorded in a cipher, but Sara knew Evie could read it as well as she, even through the page's wrinkles.

  Sporaton party spotted crossing border. Estimated number between twenty and fifty. Traveled with horses but do not appear to be knights. Mounted scouts determined most likely. Location listed below. Forces are suspected to be evaluating invasion routes, many mapping supplies seen among equipment.

  Night's Eye mercenary corp uniforms present. Have ordered all picket forces to forgo engagement. Unsure of time forces can remained concealed. Enemy is covering considerable ground in unpredictable patterns. Assume by time of letter's arrival that losses have been sustained.

  Repeat, Night's Eye mercenaries present. Requesting permission to retreat. Request considered Urgent