A Greenbelt
Gardens District, New Sarresant
Stay outside their range,” the brigade-colonel’s aide ordered. Or, more properly, with the golden light, an order given by High Commander Erris d’Arrent. Strange to consider she’d never met the woman in person; in her eyes, it was hard to think of the High Commander as anything but a gruff, balding veteran in a sergeant’s uniform.
The aide continued. “Stay back, but let them see you fortify. Make sure they know you’ll be a thorn in their side when they attack.”
“Sir, are you certain?” Brigade-Colonel Vassail said. “It’s difficult to see what’s going on out there, but I think they’re on the move. My scouts report artillery being brought up from the Basilica.”
“They’re redeploying into Southgate, preparing for an assault across the monument grounds. Just stay in position to threaten the approach and get scouts posted to watch their reserve.”
“Sir, yes, sir.”
The golden light faded, leaving the sergeant sputtering and shaking his head. Vassail had already moved on to deliver orders farther down the line.
Sarine held her place next to a company of musketmen, interleaved with the dismounted cavalry she’d come to understand was the original composition of Vassail’s brigade. They’d picked up the remains of other units broken or otherwise without direction in the fighting. Out of uniform she felt alone in a sea of blue coats, made worse by the stares and whispers she drew from the men and women when she passed by.
Without her Green to stop it, the men would long since have fallen to the Yellow emanating in waves from the north, and west. Somehow the soldiers seemed to know she held their emotions in her hands: fear, pride, resolve, faith in their commanders. The kaas she felt pulling in the distance were stoking the flames of fear, and she pushed against them, keeping Vassail’s soldiers in place, for now.
She needed to go, to find Axerian, to face d’Agarre with him. But abandoning these soldiers meant consigning them to the madness, the same bloodlust that had turned the beauty of the Gardens into a dying ground.
“How is it you go without a winter coat, without gloves?” Acherre asked, a few paces away at the point between one company and the next.
She looked toward the lieutenant, finding warmth behind the question. “I must have forgotten them before I went out,” she said, drawing a laugh from Acherre and uneasy looks from the men around her.
“If it’s a binder’s trick, I’ve no doubt high command would pay well for the secret,” Acherre said. “Or is it related to …?”
She left the question unasked, but it was clear enough she meant the kaas’s powers.
“More so, yes,” she said.
“When this is all over, you’ll have to let me stand you a few rounds of drinks. Let me pry into some of your secrets.”
Acherre smiled, a welcome invitation among a host of mistrust.
Before she could reply, the western field of Yellow vanished. It struck like a blow, a sudden release of pressure she’d been leaning on since they crossed into the Gardens. The northern Yellow intensified in response, leaking to fill a void, somehow grown stronger in the absence of the second field. It was as though one of the kaas-mages had run dry, their stores bled out, leaving them drained, or dead. And the other had responded. A tide of fear and rage pushed against her Green, though Zi still held it away from Vassail’s soldiers.
“Brigade-Colonel,” she called out, “something has changed. One of the fields of Yellow is gone. I don’t know what—”
Her words died as a great cry sounded from the west. Acherre’s eyes went wide, and she barked an order that rang hollow in Sarine’s ears. Climb over. Move, boys, on the double!
All around her, Vassail’s brigade leapt to the other side of the barricade they’d constructed atop the greenbelt, leaving their backs to the Gandsmen massing at the district edge, facing down a horde of screaming tribesfolk pouring from the western Gardens.