Chapter Nine

Harndon—Queen Desiderata of Alba

Far to the south, on the Albin River’s wharves, a hundred riverboats and barges were loading under the direct eye of the queen and her officers, barricaded by a line of guardsmen.

Ser Gerald Random stood on the wharf, remonstrating with his queen.

“My lady, you are safer here,” he said.

“With the plague?” she said. “Nay, Ser Gerald. There is no safety here. This is the last effort, the last throw. I am too puissant to cower here in my castle; indeed, such is my inclination that I would go if I were the least of my archers, with a bow in my hand.”

Ser Gerald paused. “Then I can only wish that I were allowed to accompany you,” he said bitterly.

“Hold my city,” she said. “Keep my people alive so that they may enjoy victory.”

“A victory so dear won that we will have nothing but the shell of a city and the husk of a nation,” Random said. “There is hunger in the streets. And the plague is spreading again.”

Prior Wishart came up, having overseen the loading of the last of the Order’s chargers. “I leave you fifty knights,” he said. “I cannot spare more. Even that is almost half of my Order.”

The queen put her hand on Ser Gerald’s arm. “I would say this to no one but you,” she said in a low voice. “But it would be better to lose Harndon than to lose everything. You are the rear guard, sir knight. Hold here if you can.”

Behind him, Master Pye called out as an immensely heavy bronze tube was swung up on a network of ropes.

Prior Wishart put his hand on his queen. “Madame,” he said. “Even as you command your rear guard, I beg your leave to ride with my vanguard. We are few but we have remounts and I fear for Lissen Carak. I fear everything: betrayal, siege, battle, magic. Please let me go.”

She gave him a queer look and returned the pressure on his arm. “Bide, my lord. I have a plan for you, and will take care of my fortress at Lissen Carak, too.”

“Belay!” he roared. Two hundred men paused; a heavy hawser was tied off to a bollard. The old master leapt down onto the deck of the barge and eyed the bronze tube. “Cast her off!” he called. The men grunted; the tallow-greased blocks squealed as they took the immense weight. The oxhide and canvas cradle holding the tube seemed to groan, and then the whole contraption swung a finger’s breadth, and then another. A nimble apprentice took a sharp knife and, at a nod from his master, cut a yarn, and the cradle came down a hand’s width, and then another was cut, and another, and the cradle descended in short jerks, a finger or two at a time until the massive thing touched the barge’s supports, and came to rest, pressing the big boat down in the water like a giant’s hand, and the whole vessel groaned, and water came in at several seams.

The queen walked up beside Master Pye, where he stood in the bowels of the barge, watching his apprentices remove the cradle from the massive bronze tube. The tube was decorated from butt to mouth with handles shaped like dolphins and with a muzzle shaped like a dragon’s roaring mouth. Around the breech were cast the words Ultima Ratio Humanum.

“How long, Pye?” she asked.

“Seven more,” he said. “I’m sorry, Yer Grace. This cannot be hurried.”

Her captain, Ranald Lachlan, spoke quietly to Rebecca, his wife. She nodded and approached the queen.

“Your Grace, the river convoy is already very large. Ser Ranald suggests that the advance guard take the tide and go.” She looked down at Master Pye, who was watching the apprentices test the cradle for stress. “And begs you release the good prior.”

The queen nodded. “My very thought, Lady Almspend. Ah! Lady Lachlan.”

She went back to her officers. She paused to kiss her son’s head, and then turned to the city officers. “My lords and ladies. I am determined that we will all march today. Tell me of the cost?”

Prior Wishart pointed at the barges. “There is a real risk of defeat in detail,” he said. “Even as it is, we have to fear that our enemy will attempt to divide us, Ser Gavin north of the river and we south of it, and defeat us, first one and then another. Any division in our forces makes us weak.”

“Weaker still if we arrive too late and find Lissen Carak fallen,” she said. “Gentles all, I find this to be very like the fight of two years ago; indeed, it is almost as if the former contest were a rehearsal. But this time we are better prepared: better wagons, better training. Let us march.” She looked at Becca Lochlan. “Where is the Count of the Borders?” she asked.

“Your Grace, he marched west two days ago,” she said. “On the Market Road.”

“Then he will be at Lissen Carak, or near enough,” the queen said. “Surely his force will cover us.”

Wishart shrugged. “Your Grace, anything we do has risk. It is all … fortune. And the will of God.”

She nodded sharply. “I trust in the will of God,” she said. “The advance guard will march immediately. All the wagons will go now, empty; I expect them to make Lorica tonight and sixth bridge tomorrow.”

Her logistics plan was simple; but the details were complex, as details always were. She was sending the wagons overland, empty, so that they would be at seventh bridge when the riverboats came up and needed to be carried, with all the goods, past the cataracts. Beside the royal guard and the Order, she was out of crack troops; the chivalry was already in the north with Count Gareth and her brother, Prince Tancred. The militias had been summoned; now they had to assemble. Some had only just arrived home from the last effort, and not since the summer of the great battle in the north, thirty and more years ago, could anyone remember the militia being summoned twice in a summer.

“We will have our most valuable assets strung out on the river and road, and no one to defend them,” Ser Gerald said.

“So we will,” she said. Her eyes flashed with her old vitality; her hair burned red-brown-gold in the sun, and she threw her head back. “She either fears her fate too much, or her deserts are small, who dareth not put it to the touch, to win or lose it all,” she said. “Go!”

One by one, her captains saluted. And then they sailed, rowed, rolled, or marched.

When they were all gone, she moved briskly to Prior Wishart. He bowed deeply; in some ways, with Gerald and Harmodius, he was her most loyal servant.

“I beg your pardon for making you wait,” she said. “I share your fears. I have a letter for you, for the royal post houses. You will go like the wind.”

Wishart bowed. “I still might have left an hour before,” he grumbled.

She smiled. “Not with the potent magister I will send with you to the relief of our fortress,” she said. “See that this valuable person arrives alive.”

Less than an hour later, a hundred belted Knights of the Order, their squires, and two hundred great warhorses trotted through the gates of Harndon, their steel-clad hooves ringing on the cobbles. Men and women came out to cheer them in their black cloaks and scarlet surcoats.

A single cloaked figure rode in their midst; slighter than the knights, and unarmoured, but wrapped close in a great black cloak with the eight-pointed white cross.

As soon as they passed over First Bridge, the whole array began to ride faster.

Arles—The Red Knight

Gabriel stood on the battlements of Arles watching the roads: east, west, north, and south. Arles stood at the crossroads.

“The gates open in seven days,” Michael said from behind him. “Or ten, or seventy. Christ.” He clasped his hands and leaned on the parapet.

The plain below Arles was covered in tents and hasty shelters. The autumn air was cool; the smoke of hundreds of campfires rose into the air, and the carefully laid-out camps ran into the distance. Close into the walls, the camps were full, where the Milice of Arles and the phalanx of scarecrows, as Michael called them to their faces, survivors of the Necromancer’s worms, drilled and lived. And there were the Scholae, their own horse lines and fires, their small hospital, and the mess tent of their officers, one of whom was now co-emperor.

But beyond, there were rows of empty tents awaiting Sauce’s army; the company camp with a skeleton crew of veterans living well and sleeping too much; the camp prepared for the Nordikaans, with fifty new recruits who had swaggered in from the north and who had already proven that they could at least drink with heroic prowess; a camp for the casa and another for the guilds of Harndon and their regiment; then more shelters for the Venikans and the Beronese, and then, beyond, in all directions, miles of white linen tape delineating blocks of tents as yet not erected, and lines of fires as yet unstoked, for more soldiers. More and more, lines of white tape that extended as far as the eye could make out their tracery against the black earth.

“Bad Tom tomorrow?” Michael asked.

“Or day after. Every day he stays in the west, we save a day of shipping oats and straw. It will be close, even as it is. And we’re leaving this place to starve unless Sauce brings them supplies …” Gabriel shrugged. “Never mind. She’s done everything we asked and more; her chevauchee has netted another four hundred wagons and she’s filled them with grain.”

“And it is still close,” Michael said.

“Oh yes,” Gabriel answered.

Blanche emerged onto the narrow parapet walk, and behind her was Kaitlin and Syr George Comnena, now Caesar.

Michael watched the horizon. “And Sauce?” he asked.

Comnena settled into a merlon. He produced a flimsy. “Bird,” he said. “Sauce is climbing the San Colombo. She says …” Comnena smiled. “A lot of things about oxen. She says five days.”

Gabriel nodded.

“Perfect,” he said.

Michael turned, so that the setting sun seemed to cast fire across his face. “We’re on schedule. By God, Gabriel, I thought it was impossible. And if the astrologers are right, we only have six days. And we are still on schedule.”

“New motto,” Gabriel said. “We make the impossible seem merely really, really difficult.”

Blanche laughed. “I’ll have it put on the household banner.”

“Food?” Gabriel asked her.

She produced a tablet. It was not, in fact, wax; the plain ebony wood held a smooth substance, like fired clay with a glaze, except that the glaze was hermetical. Mortirmir had made the tablets. There were six sets so far; all of them could communicate with each other, and they had an inexhaustible supply of invisible pages.

She flipped through those pages with one finger. “We’re preparing to use fifty tons of food a day,” she said.

“Fifty tons?” Kaitlin asked.

“With four hundred wagons, we can only carry four days’ rations for the army,” Blanche said quietly.

“Carry where?” asked Kaitlin.

Michael was still shaking his head. “Four hundred wagons …” he said. “And all pulled by horses and oxen who eat—”

Gabriel shrugged. “Don’t worry,” he said. “If we fuck up the numbers, we can eat the draught animals. Thanks, my dear.”

Michael looked back at the setting sun and the plain. “So we have seven days, and a rising tide of soldiers. What do we do?”

“Do?” Gabriel said. “Do? We train like athletes. We practice until every man hates us.” He turned to them, and his smile was broad. “We’re not going to dick this away, my friends. We’re going to do this beautifully. So we will train. For six days. And all our hermeticals are preparing a lovely set of surprises.”

“And what do we do on the seventh day?” Blanche asked, and she was smiling before she finished, aware …

“On the seventh day we have a party,” Gabriel said. “At least, I think there should be a party.”

Morning. Cocks crowed in the town of Arles.

Gabriel lay in bed and looked at the glowing gold in his good hand. He could hold it up in the darkness and see Blanche by it. It was brighter each day; noticeably brighter since his extravagant expenditures in battle.

“Oh God,” he said, and then stopped at the edge of a blasphemy even he did not find funny.

Blanche stirred, frowned, and awoke. “Gabriel?” she asked.

He kissed her.

“My lord?” came a voice. It was Anne, opening the door to the bedroom.

Gabriel kissed his wife. She didn’t respond the way he wanted, but put a hand on his chest and gave him the very gentlest shove.

He tried to insist, and she pushed hard.

“Oh,” he said.

She shoved him hard, rolled over suddenly, and cursed. Then she threw up, spectacularly, all over the bedclothes.

Arles—Empress Blanche

“Pregnancy,” Kaitlin said, shaking her head. “Honestly, women should stick to knitting and good books.” She frowned.

Her husband smiled. “Surely we’re good for something,” he said.

Blanche looked pale. “Nothing comes to mind,” she said. “Could I have some privacy, please? Doesn’t the emperor need you for something?”

Michael sighed and went out into the solar. Master Julius’s quill was flying; the emperor was being shaved. Pavalo Payam had on a magnificent scarlet silk khaftan and emerald green silk trousers tucked into yellow leather boots worked in gold; he looked as if he were the emperor, not Gabriel. The Mamluk was bent over a chart.

Michael pulled a wooden stool from against the wall as the Queen of Arles was announced. She was in men’s clothes: green hose and a plain brown cote and a knight’s belt. Her beautiful red-brown hair had been cut short.

“Your Highness,” she said formally.

“Your Grace,” the emperor said from his chair.

Clarissa broke from a somber look to a wide grin. “Say it again,” she said. Everyone laughed. “I just love hearing it.”

Michael walked to the fireplace, poured himself some rewarmed hippocras, and then walked to Master Julius’s writing table. He took the stack of copied messages on the board labeled Imperial and, with them, settled into his hard chair. He drank off about half of his hippocras.

“Ready?” he asked the emperor.

“Go,” Gabriel replied.

Albinkirk. Ser Shawn. Multiple reports of Odine activity west of Albinkirk. Observed Odine emergence in standing stones personally. Request Magister immediately.

Lissen Carak. Abbess Miriam. Multiple sightings of Odine-infected creatures in townships. Screening process in place. Choir to cast Al Rashidi counter tonight. Pray for us. Four thousand, two hundred and six laborers employed on field works; am concerned for their camp. Request military support.

Harndon. Desiderata in person. Advance guard under Ranald Lachlan on river for Albinkirk fastest route. Harmodius with Lachlan. Plague attacks in Harndon now sporadic. Will accompany rear guard in person.

Southford. Prince Tancred. Allied reserve army moving west …

Michael looked up. “Did we order that?”

“Nope,” Gabriel said. “Gareth Montjoy has a mind of his own and no great love for me.”

Michael looked down again … moving west. South bank of Cohocton, looking to relieve Ser Gavin. Odine-controlled creatures in woods. Due caution employed …Damn it? Is he wode? He could be supporting Miriam at Lissen Carak.

“The Odine are moving,” Gabriel said. “So they think the gate’s opening in six days, too.” He laughed grimly. “You know, the Odine are awakening to a nearly empty landscape, so the last three years of war may have actually been for something.”

“We can hope Miriam will burn them back tonight,” Michael said.

Anne’s razor lifted, and the emperor raised his head. “Think how fast the rebel responded,” he said.

Morgon Mortirmir was cutting an apple on Master Julius’s table, to the notary’s considerable consternation. “The rebel was a mishmash,” he said. “An amalgam. A multidisciplinary entity of men and Odine in rebellion against the will.” He made a face. “Apple, anyone?”

“What are you saying, Morgon?” Michael asked. He seldom understood the young magister, who operated so deep in a web of his own perceptions that he spoke in mysteries.

“Ah, apologies,” Morgon said, raising his head. “I mean that the rebel had … skills, and attributes, and even … capabilities that the will is unlikely to possess.”

“Do you know that?” Michael asked.

Morgon smiled nastily. “I subsumed the last of the rebel,” he said. “I can read its memories.”

As was common when Morgon spoke, no one had an answer.

“Well,” Gabriel said. “We’ll just accept that, then.”

Anne cut away at his sideburns and murmured something, gave him a hot towel, and he sat up, thanking her.

The Caesar, George Comnena, came in, bowed, was bowed to. Took a cup of hippocras, and leafed through Blanche’s and Sukey’s notes on logistics.

Michael went back to the messages. He read:

San Batiste. Giselle. Accepted reparations from Mitla and added them to rear guard. No further news on salamanders. On my way.

San Colombo. Alison. Four hundred fifty-one wagons intact and on the way. Advance guard at the top. Three days if weather holds. No news on salamanders.

“Nothing from Gavin?” the emperor asked.

“Nothing today, my lord,” Michael answered.

“All of those except Sauce must be from yesterday, so we’re two days behind with Gavin and he was facing a major engagement at the fords of the Cohocton,” Gabriel said. “Time to assume he lost. Badly.”

“Pretty much guaranteed,” Michael said. “Tell me again why we let Harmodius and Desiderata go south?”

“Because we can’t lose Harndon,” Gabriel said. “And because the Queen of Alba isn’t really subject to my commands.”

Michael shook his head. “Don’t you find it … ironic that the Sieur Du Corse is a more reliable ally than the Queen of Alba?”

“No,” Gabriel said. “Not at all. I’ve beaten Du Corse twice, and Desiderata still thinks I’m her subject, not the other way around. I am married to her laundry maid, for example. We’re lucky she responds to our messages. Listen, Michael. She is a sovereign queen. Despite which, she sees herself as the head of the alliance. For many reasons. I cannot give her orders, and despite that, she’s taking the right actions. Let it go.”

Michael nodded. “But if she and Harmodius were at Lissen Carak …”

“We’d all sleep better?” Gabriel said. “True enough. But we all have to plan for a world after the gates open and then close again. And there’s one of the questions no one has asked … how long do the gates stay open? Regardless of it all … even if we win, we have to eat and trade and farm and continue to have lives. Or there is no point to winning. Harmodius has his own agenda, and so does Desiderata, and to be honest, so do Tom and Sauce and probably Cully and MacGilly here. Even Blanche …” he said as the door to the bedroom opened.

Master Julius rose. His report was interrupted by the emergence of the Queen of Alba’s former laundry maid, who entered in a purple silk kirtle and a matching overgown of purple wool trimmed in squirrel. “My lord,” she said.

Gabriel beamed at her.

“May I just say of my former mistress that she is absolutely loyal; she is, if anything, painfully aware of who kept her on her throne and saved her from the stake, and nothing short of death would keep her from the coming fight.” Blanche found her voice shaking. She was still, in her heart, a loyal servant of the crown of Alba.

Michael rose and bowed. “I’m sorry, Your Highness,” he said. “I …” He paused. “I am afraid,” he admitted.

“We are all afraid,” Gabriel said. “Revel in it; it is the bond that holds this alliance together. Master Julius?”

“Highness,” the notary said. “I have a report from your astrologers.”

“Go on,” Gabriel said. Anne had his doublet; MacGilly had his hosen.

“Highness, they have repeated their experiments and they wish to report directly to you. But in brief …”

“Thank God,” Michael said, sotto voce.

Master Julius glared. “… in brief, they are more certain of their date and time. They wish to discuss other ramifications.”

“Yes,” Gabriel said.

“When, my lord?” Julius asked.

“Now,” Gabriel said.

Michael poured them both more hippocras.

“I’ll be drunk as a lord,” Gabriel muttered. “Which may be the best way to spend the next five days.” He reached out to take the cup, a plain cup of red-brown earthenware.

Michael could not control his gasp of astonishment. “Holy Mary Mother of God,” he spat.

Against the red-brown of the cup, the emperor’s natural, human hand glowed like hot metal.

Every head turned.

Blanche stood. “Michael,” she said firmly.

Gabriel was looking at his hand, too. “Damn,” he said.

Then he looked at Michael. “Yes,” he said.

“Oh my God,” Michael said.

“Please don’t call me that,” Gabriel said.

There was nervous laughter. Payam frowned at the implied blasphemy while Clarissa laughed aloud. But the laughter was interrupted by Magister Bin Maymum and Magister al-Shirazi. Both of them looked fresh, well dressed. Surprised at all the laughter.

Bin Maymum unrolled a scroll dense with equations.

“Gentlemen, ladies.” Gabriel took his hosen from MacGilly. “You’ll note I still have to put these on one at a time.”

There was further laughter, especially from the veterans.

As Anne and MacGilly began on the laces, he turned to face the scholars. “Please begin,” he said.

“Highness,” Bin Maymum began. “As you requested, we reperformed all of our observations from this point, and confirmed our timing.” He looked at Blanche and bowed. “As Her Highness requested, we examined some of the errors we have observed, and we examined the errors in light of what we now know of gate locations.” He nodded, and looked at his companion. “What follows is more in the line of a theory than an established fact.”

Gabriel was getting a skin-tight scarlet doublet pulled over his torso. He had a variety of small wounds and his left shoulder still burned whenever he rotated the arm in his socket; he made a face as MacGilly tried too hard on the left sleeve.

“Stop!” he spat. “Not you, sir. MacGilly, I am not one of your fool sheep. Have a care.”

The Hillman flushed.

Anne came over to the left side and deftly ran the tight sleeve up the arm without twingeing his shoulder. “Force is not always the answer,” she said.

“Everything I do is wrong,” the Hillman said bitterly. And froze.

Anne pointed. “Out,” she said.

MacGilly looked horrified, humiliated; so upset that Gabriel felt for him. But Anne was right.

He began to lace his own doublet. “Give me your theory,” he said. “You have two minutes.”

“Highness, we think the gates will open in a sequence, at intervals, and not all at the same time. The sequence is not alterable, and is dependent on the constellation that dominates the particular gate.” The Yahadut scholar tugged at one of his side locks and looked as nervous as MacGilly.

Gabriel stopped wriggling in the doublet. “Say that again,” he said.

The Yahadut nodded. “There are at least seven gates, my lord, and you yourself have posited as many as fifteen.”

Gabriel nodded and looked at Morgon, who had his hands steepled in front of him and his eyes closed. “Or twenty-two,” Morgon said.

“Dame Julia’s experiments were aimed at the only gate whose location she knew for sure,” al-Shirazi said.

“Lissen Carak,” Gabriel said with something like satisfaction.

“Yes, my lord. That is—”

“By God!” Gabriel said. “That is to say there’s something like a three-day difference between Arles and Lissen Carak.”

The eastern scholar bowed. “You have it.”

“In our favour,” Morgon said.

“How is it in our favour?” al-Shirazi asked.

Morgon’s eyes were still closed. “It is not as if the opening of this gate leads us to Lissen Carak,” he said, as if this was obvious.

Would you be lord of all the worlds?” Blanche said quietly.

Gabriel closed his eyes and engaged that part of Al Rashidi’s borrowed memory palace that showed him maps. Not really maps. More like pilgrim itineraries; lists of locations.

“Pavalo,” he said. “You say you led the raid on the lost library …”

“Yes,” Payam said.

“You saw these … maps. Charts. Itineraries.” Gabriel didn’t look at him.

“Yes. I saw them. I took pictures of them with my mind, and gave those pictures to my master.” Payam’s voice was rich and low, but somehow it contained a sense of a great fear, conquered.

“How old were they?” Gabriel asked.

“Very old,” Payam said. “As old as the oldest things in the library.”

Gabriel still didn’t open his eyes. “When did the not-dead attack the library?” he asked.

“Before the rebel even existed,” Morgon said. “Yes, Gabriel; I agree. This game has gone on a long time.”

“Is there any way Ash can assume, or believe, or even guess we have these lists?” Gabriel said.

“It depends on whether we think that the rebel had allies,” Morgon said.

“So much to fucking know,” Gabriel said in frustration.

Blanche nodded. “Yes, my lord. But now you have three days, where before you had none.” She smiled hesitantly.

George Comnena shrugged. “Very well, I’m the slow one. Why?”

Gabriel opened his eyes. “Here it is, George. The gates do not all interconnect. That is, you cannot go from each gate to any location. Imagine them as seaports, with a variety of seas beyond. It is easy to reach Galle from Liviapolis, and easy to reach Genua from Harndon. Yes?”

Michael blinked. “Damn,” he said. “I thought we were going to—”

“Yes,” Gabriel said. “I rather hoped we’d just march through and fight, too. But it doesn’t work that way. Al Rashidi had the master lists; now Morgon and I have them.”

Michael took a couple of breaths as the reality of it all hit him. “We’re going to other worlds.”

“We’re taking the largest human army since Aetius won Chaluns to other worlds,” Gabriel said.

The silence was absolute.

“And we will have three days to cross those worlds, locate the correct gate, win it from Ash’s allies, and go through to face Ash,” Gabriel said.

“Oh God,” Michael said. But he smiled, because Gabriel was smiling. “But that’s good?”

“Better than no days at all,” Morgon said.

Michael rose. He looked at the star charts, understanding little of what he saw. “But,” he said, “but … it takes a key, does it not? To open a gate?”

“You are wearing it,” Gabriel said. “Or so we hope.”

Blanche looked away. Clarissa sighed.

“So many hopes,” the Queen of Arles said.

The Inner Sea—Aneas Muriens

Aneas and Master Smythe were the last awake. The dead were buried; the wounded tended as best as could be managed.

“When will Orley come?” Aneas asked. “I do not want to wait.”

Master Smythe was smoking. “He must come immediately, or not at all,” he said. “But either he comes in the next day, or Ash comes in person, and takes back the well; in which case, no power of ours can stop him.”

Aneas nodded, and took the proffered pipe.

“Or he does not come. Once I have attuned the well to me, Ash cannot take it back without coming in person. Orley must strike soon. And thanks to the wyverns, we can watch his approach.”

“He could come tonight,” Aneas said. “We have not scouted him today.”

“You grant him superhuman powers,” Master Smythe said. “Our enemy could come tonight, in which case, I would stand here, half attuned, and probably die facing him in single combat. But in a day or so, I will have a limitless source of power, deeper and greater than my power in the circle of the Wyrm in the Green Hills, and even there, you will notice, our great enemy has never chosen to challenge me.”

“There is a well?” Aneas asked, daring, in his fatigue, to question the dragon.

“Something like one. It is more a coincidence of aesthetics and other forces, but you may think of it as a well, if you wish.” Master Smythe reached for the pipe. “Cover me for another day.”

“I would stay longer than that for the chance of crossing swords with Kevin Orley.” Aneas narrowed his eyes and they glittered in the near darkness.

Master Smythe smiled darkly. “Your people need rest. They have taken casualties; humans spend time mourning, in my experience. And are better for it.”

“Dragons do not mourn?” Aneas asked.

“Dragons, in my experience, seldom have the fellow feeling that would create the necessary condition for mourning. Rejoicing is more usual.” Master Smythe blew an excellent smoke ring at the moon.

“But you will not remain here?” Aneas said.

“I may,” Master Smythe said after a long exhale. “I am still weak, and badly injured. This animation you are looking at is made of catch and clay; I cannot take the form of a dragon, I could no more fly than … than you. Indeed, I came within the changeling’s whim of being unmade. If I did nothing but hold this place, I would still serve your need.”

Irene stepped onto the moonlit beach. “Our need?” she asked. “Are we not your tools, Master Dragon?”

Master Smythe took the pipe and inhaled deeply. And then passed it to her. “I have tried my very best to treat you as allies,” he said. “I fear you, but I do not hate you. Indeed, I rather fancy you.”

“Me, in particular?” she asked.

Aneas looked back and forth between them. He felt a curious jealousy; he knew Irene well enough to know that this, from her, was flirtation.

The dragon laughed softly. “Perhaps from time to time,” he admitted. “I have often admired the daughters of men.”

“So often, that you have spread your fatal seed across all the Nova Terra,” she said, when she’d handed the pipe to Aneas. She took a flask from her shoulder bag, pulled the cork with her teeth, and handed it to the dragon.

He sniffed and drank. “Mmm,” he said. “Candied wine.” He looked at the moon. “Yes, Irene,” he said. “I confess. It has been my pleasure to give humans the weapons they need to survive.”

“Your blood,” she said.

He shrugged.

“Constantly nurtured, and reinforced, especially in the north country,” Irene said.

Aneas was trying not to choke.

“And reaching its apogee in the Muriens family,” she went on.

The dragon took another swig and handed Aneas the bottle. “Bravo,” the dragon said.

“And your rivals never noticed,” Irene said. “They missed your entire ploy, and you’ve had a thousand years to play the game of bloodlines and kings; Ash thought you were raising allies for a war, and instead you were breeding them like racehorses. A race of sorcerer soldiers. Or two or three.”

“How did you fail to make yourself empress?” Master Smythe asked.

“I didn’t fail,” Irene said softly. “You succeeded. You succeeded so well that your finished tool is more dangerous than you are, yourself.”

Aneas stood silently. He passed the wine to Irene, who drank a long pull.

And passed the bottle to Master Smythe.

“It goes so well with the pipe,” he said apologetically. “Irene, even if I allow what you say … still, admit that my way has done men no harm and much good?”

She took the wine, drank some, and said, “Shouldn’t this be empty by now?”

Smythe nodded. “Allow me my little ways,” he said.

She smiled. “I do not think that Ghause Muriens would agree with you. She was harmed; used as a brood mare.”

“My mother was no one’s tool,” Aneas said hotly.

“How many others have been harmed?” Irene went on.

“If I meant you harm, you would be harmed,” the dragon said. “Sometimes people use their own will. Ghause was never my tool.”

“You have manipulated us; treated us like horses in a stud farm,” Aneas said suddenly. “Oh my God …”

Smythe looked at the distant stars. “You do it to each other,” he said. “And I am much better at it. And Aneas, before you launch into a torrent of recriminations because the patricide here has uncovered my little plan, may I note that, without me, the gates would still be about to open, but Alba would have no more talent at its disposal than Etrusca or Galle? Mmm?” He breathed the pine-scented night. “The pipe is almost dead.” The moonlight shone on his pale face and dark beard, and for a moment he looked demonic. “And yes, Irene, I find you attractive. Even your … brilliance.” He bowed. “But I will not interfere further. Aneas, I will remain here until I am healed, or until the alliance is desperate. I beg you to protect me against our common foe while I am weak.”

Aneas glanced at Irene. “What should we do?” he asked. He bottled up whatever he might have thought about the manipulation of his family as breeding stock for sorcery. The thought might have made his mother smile. Or spit.

Irene met Aneas’s eye and for a moment they held eye contact. She looked away first. “Kill Orley,” she said. “I will sleep better knowing he is dead.” She looked back. “Can we defeat him?”

Aneas shrugged. “We destroyed a great many boats, and he must have pursued closely if he can attack soon. And Master Smythe insists that if he does not attack soon, he will have control of the well.”

“So either he attacks soon, at nearly even odds, or never,” Irene said, finishing the wine.

“Precisely,” the dragon said.

“But we have almost no watch set,” Irene said.

“A calculated risk,” Aneas said. “Tessen and Lewen can stay awake.”

“And if he comes, and we defeat him?” she asked.

Master Smythe nodded. “I am ever more hesitant to offer advice, this deep in the entanglement,” he said. “But I’d say, when the danger is past, go south. And find … Tapio.” The dragon took a deep breath, as if he was smelling the air, and he looked south. “Tapio is about a hundred and fifty leagues from here, give or take a swamp. If you go south, you will find him.”

Aneas blinked. He was falling asleep on his feet; his head had just nodded to his chest. “Ten days’ travel?” he asked.

Smythe’s smile was inhuman. “Perhaps not so much. Ask me in the light of day. You need sleep. Even I need sleep.” He nodded. “Good night.”

Irene kissed his cheek. “Good night, dragon,” she said.

He laughed, but only when he was well up the beach.

“Oh,” he said to the darkness, “what fools we mortals be.”

Behind him, Irene hugged herself. The autumn air was chill.

Aneas looked at her. “You should …”

“Go to bed?” she asked. She tilted her head to one side. “It is odd; three weeks ago, I bathed every day, sometimes twice, and I was very particular about every aspect of my person; fastidious. Cautious. And ruthless, because I thought that was what was required.” She turned and glanced at the stars. “I have learned more from these weeks than from a mountain of scrolls and books. And despite that, this takes every iota of my courage.”

She stepped up to him and he flinched; she put a hand behind his head and pressed her lips to his so hard that their teeth bumped.

Aneas was wide awake in an instant.

His heart hammered away in his chest.

Her mouth tasted of wine and cloves; the cloves told him she’d planned to kiss him, which seemed reassuring. And very like her.

He put a hand on her back as her tongue explored his mouth, and tried not to think.

She had no idea how to kiss. None whatsoever. She was clumsy as his first partner. And brave.

And a woman.

Aneas began to laugh. “No, silly!” he said.

“Oh,” she fell away. “Oh. I’m sorry.” Her eyes were bright. “I had to try.”

He looked at her in the moonlight.

“I am a fool …” she began.

“Shut up,” he said.

“No, it’s alright. I thought perhaps—”

“Irene,” Aneas said.

“I’m sorry,” she said, stepping back.

“Are you,” he might have said, “so very intelligent that you are an utter fool?” but he was wise enough not to need to ask. Instead, he put his mouth over hers, carefully. Her eyes widened. One of her legs rose off the ground and then went back.

She swayed.

“Oh!” she said, breaking free.

Aneas bowed. And grinned.

“Oh,” she said again.

“Now, do we roll dice for Looks-at-Clouds?” Aneas asked.

Irene giggled. “No,” she said. “Ohh,” she said softly. She broke away. “Oh,” she said again, and shook her head. “Shouldn’t we be on watch?”

“I have stood some watches this way,” Aneas said.

“Really?” Irene asked. She kissed him again. “No,” she breathed. “I wouldn’t notice a dragon landing. Oh, what a traitor the body is.” She slipped away. “Watch. I am not going to lose a battle to Kevin Orley because I have discovered kissing.”

Aneas laughed. “I have just discovered something greater than my hatred for him,” he said. “But I will kill him.”

Irene had slipped away, but she paused and looked back. “Not if I kill him first,” she said. “Now we’re on watch. Let’s watch.”

Aneas laughed to himself when she had gone to her post. He tasted her cloves in his mouth, and thought about Ricar Fitzalan. And being Duke of Thrake.

Redesdale—Ser Gavin Muriens

Redesdale was widely considered the western limit of Alba. No king’s writ past Redesdale was a saying, and the words west of Redesdale were synonymous with in the Wild. Sometimes a wag would use west of Redesdale to describe someone who was not quite right, or an idea too mad to be considered seriously.

The wall ran through Redesdale. It was a curious place on the wall; the Rede was a small stream with rust-red water running out of the big iron deposits at Luckhead and down into the Cohocton, out of sight but very close to the north. The terrain west of the wall was rolling hills with ponds and marshes at their feet, and the Empress Livia’s military road, built of layers of stone over a crushed stone foundation, headed west across the ridges on the south bank of the Cohocton, all the way west to Dykesdale, where Livia had lost a battle and a legion and the will to continue conquering the Nova Terra, almost two thousand years before.

The wall at Redesdale had intact towers every mile, which were sometimes garrisoned by the small town’s militia, and a fortified, triple-turreted gatehouse. The gatehouse had been rebuilt twenty times on old foundations, and the great marble statue of the empress herself had been knocked down, re-erected, beheaded, and had the head replaced countless times by various monsters and administrations. Her cloak had been so damaged in the years of the past that the stubby remnants looked like wings, and locals called her The Angel or Winged Livia. Courting couples came to touch her, and her feet, in military sandals of a lost age, were worn smooth. The iron portcullis of the central gate, a huge and very imposing piece of work, had thousands of locks of hair tied to it, so that it appeared furry in the weak autumn sunlight. Enterprising swains climbed to the top rungs to prove their love.

Behind the gates ran the wall road, about thirty paces east of the line of the wall; heavily built with rain gutters, mile markers, and decaying post houses. In times past there had been a great military bridge at Redesdale; the last bridge over the Cohocton. It had been broken in the time of the old king; the piers still stood. And on the other side, the road could be seen, running along inside the wall, and the wall itself still stood almost fifteen feet tall. In times of peace, it made an excellent sheep barrier.

The Earl of Westwall rode up at sunset with Ser Gregario and six hundred knights and men-at-arms at his heels. The rest of the army was strung out for ten miles behind him, and he had ridden ahead to get the gates open and to see if there was anything to be had out of the town, in the way of hot food or barracks space. His people were on their last legs; men shuffled along the road, barely lifting their feet, hollow eyed and slack jawed. In the day and a half since Ash descended from the dark heavens screaming his rage, the army had never stopped moving. Their commander kept them moving, terrified that the great dragon would come back and finish them while they were defenceless.

The towers were manned, and the gate; local Redesdale militia in russet red wool cotes over browned maille; hard men and women who lived on a frontier and saw more fighting than most militia, every year. They numbered in the mere hundreds, but their well-oiled gear and clean swords gave Gavin hope.

“Milett, my lord,” said the grey-haired man at the gate in a nice Etruscan kettle helm. “I’m the capt’n, right eno; hight Ralph Milett. I ha’e six hundred good people; another thousand in my arriere ban, but they’re mostly unarmed and good for digging; small folk, and tenant farmers, and new folk out from the east.”

Milett said east as if it was a curse word.

Ser Gavin looked back out the gate. “I have more than ten thousand soldiers coming in, Captain. My people include wardens, bogglins, and irks. I expect my allies to receive every courtesy …”

“Not past this gate,” said a man in a fine maille shirt.

There was grumbling.

The Green Earl backed his horse. “Listen up,” he said. “I only have an army because the wardens and the bears and the bogglins and the irks fought like lions to keep us in the thing. My people have fought six times in three weeks. Any of you farmers have any idea what that means?”

“No need to insult us,” Milett said. “There’s good men here who ha’e faced the Wild. Good men.”

“No fucking monster is passing my wall,” said another man.

“Stow it, Rob Hewitt,” the captain said.

“We’ll all be kilt,” the man said. Others nodded.

Gavin shook his head. “Listen, gentles. We are allies. We are fighting the enemy together.”

“Monsters are the enemy,” the first man said. “And who are you, any road?”

“I’m the Earl of Westwall,” Gavin said. “And you?”

“I’m a free farmer, Rob Hewitt by name, and I take orders from no man. Monsters are the fuckin’ enemy of man; allies o’ Satan …” He looked around.

Gavin could see that he had some support.

Gavin leaned forward. “Well, Master Hewitt, I’m the queen’s commander for the west, as well as your feudal lord.”

“Feudal lord? I wipe my arse—”

“Stow it, Rob,” said another.

“That’s Jack talk,” the captain said.

“Let him have his say,” Gavin said. He dismounted, and his worried squire dismounted and took his horse.

“You come here, lording it, and I say, fuck off to yer castle and leave us be. We need none o’ ye.” Hewitt stood his ground, hands on hips. Men nodded.

Ser Gavin pursed his lips. “Master Hewitt, I have ten thousand men and monsters who’ve spent the last six weeks fighting so that you can farm.”

“Dogswaddle,” Hewitt said. “We protect our own. Don’t need you.”

“They will be coming down this road,” Ser Gavin continued, “all night and into tomorrow and I expect you to feed them and help them build a camp …”

“Who’s payin’?” Hewitt asked. “Not my food!” He laughed. “Show me yer gold.”

The militia captain looked pained. “My lord,” he began.

“Nah, we’ll have no ‘milord’ here.” Hewitt waved at the men who stood behind him. “Will we? No lords an’ no monsters.”

Gavin pushed forward. There was now quite a crowd of men in the three gates—militia, but also Albin knights and squires. Ser Gregario followed him, and a dozen others.

Hewitt stood his ground.

“I command you to let us pass,” Gavin said formally.

“Sod off. There’s another road north o’ the river,” Hewitt said. “An’ no free farms to mess about.”

“This is treason,” Ser Gavin said in a reasonable voice.

Hewitt shrugged. “War an’ plague is all the kingdom has ever brought us. You want to bring monsters in the gate? You’re the fuckin’ traitor. Everything we have here, we made. None of it is yours.”

“Every knight who has died in the last year died for you, you fool. Every knight, every archer, every irk and bogglin who died fighting for the alliance died for you. And you did not make everything; you have an Etruscan helmet paid for by the king; a Harndoner made your sword; the wall was built by Livia, not by you. Your roads are maintained by the queen.”

“Words,” the man said. “Empty words.”

More and more of the chivalry were packing into the gate.

No weapons had been drawn yet.

Gavin was now nose to nose with Hewitt.

“If I order my knights to take the gate,” Gavin said, “you will die.”

Hewitt drew his sword. “A lot of you will die …” Hewitt raised it, point first, and he put the point threateningly on Gavin’s breastplate. “You first.”

Gavin took his sword away. He grabbed the blade with his left hand and rotated the man’s arm, stripping the weapon with his steel-gauntleted hand, and his right hand shot out, caught the other man’s armoured shoulder, and threw him effortlessly to the ground.

Swords leapt from scabbards.

“This is not what I expected in the first chartered town of Alba,” Gavin said. He had the farmer’s sword at the prostrate man’s throat. “Treasonous talk and ingratitude.”

“They’re just a faction,” Captain Milett said. “I’m sorry, milord.”

“Behind us on the road,” Gavin said, “is an army of a million monsters, led by a dragon as big as your town. A million, Captain. When the morning comes, look west. See the columns of smoke rising there. The arch enemy raised volcanoes, mountains of fire, from the ground by magic. That is our foe. All free peoples stand together. The world teeters on a razor’s edge.” Gavin looked at the man at his feet. “I will not hesitate to put the entire population of your town to the sword to prevent defeat. Do you understand?”

The captain shook his head. “It don’t ha’e to be this way—”

“Apparently it does. So let’s understand each other, gentlemen. My people will take control of the gate. Then we will lay out the ground for a camp, and you will bring food. If we do not receive enough food, we will come and take it. I don’t have the time to be nice, so I will kill anyone who gets in my way. And Captain, if you tolerate any more of this treason, you will become my enemy. I hold you responsible, personally, for your people. I will keep Master Hewitt, and these twenty men with him, as hostages.” He turned to Gregario. “Take this man.”

Ser Gregario nodded. “With pleasure,” he said. “On your feet, traitor.”

Alban and Brogat knights moved rapidly through the gate. It was clear that the militia contemplated resistance, but they thought too long about it, and there were armoured men-at-arms everywhere.

Gavin stared down the militia captain. “I had hoped to find friends here,” he said sharply. “Do not make me treat you like a conquered populace. I need food for ten thousand men.”

“Milord,” the captain said. “No one will give their food willingly. Folk could starve come winter.”

“This will be a hard winter for everyone,” Gavin said. “Harder still if Ash wins.”

“You’ll eat well eno’,” spat a disarmed militiaman. “Grow yer own food, ye fuckin’ noble.”

Gavin ignored him. “Food,” he said. “About twenty tons of it.”

“Twenty tons?” Milett paled.

“Five hundred head of cattle, and five tons of grain,” Gavin said.

“You will beggar us!” Milett protested.

Gavin tried to keep his savage reaction at bay. He was too tired to shrug. So he looked back, where his two surviving squires and Ser Gregario’s household had a dozen militiamen who’d stood with Hewitt under guard. “Food,” he snapped. “Now.”

The army’s baggage arrived next, and then the army itself. Despite the losses at the fords, the baggage had escaped; tents sprang up, and fires were lit from firewood provided by scared-looking yeomen with heavy wagons of their own. With the baggage came the militia of Brogat and Albin and the Morean spearmen; Thrakian veterans who had marched with Demetrios and were now doing their penance for former treason in the Army of the West. The guild bands of Lorica were in once-gaudy purple and gold, so faded from the long campaign that the hues almost matched the leaves on the trees.

Behind the Moreans came the Long Dam bears, now led by Stone Axe and Elder Flower. The bears were footsore and dull-eyed, although they gave great growls when they could smell the cooking from over the wall. A small huddle of locals watched them come in, and there were jeers.

Then came the wardens, led by Mogon.

No one jeered. The wardens projected fear, and the crowd simply melted away. Mogon accepted an armoured embrace from Ser Gavin and saw her people into two stone barns seized for that purpose.

The N’gara irks marched in, heads high, in their shining maille of bronze links, with Tamsin riding at their head, but there was no crowd to see or greet or curse. The irks went into tents; enough men had died to leave a surplus of them.

“Thirty days of retreating and we haven’t lost a wagon,” Gavin said bitterly.

Ser Gregario was out of his harness for the first time in weeks. He shrugged and swallowed more roast beef. “Grumf,” he said around his fourth plate of food.

They were sitting in Ser Gavin’s great green pavilion, lined in green wool and heated by braziers full of charcoal. “Grumf?” he asked.

Gregario wiped his mouth. “What I meant to say is, we haven’t done so badly.”

Gavin nodded. “I have lost almost half the army,” he said.

Gregario gave a wry smile. “Looked at another way, you’ve preserved more than half the army,” he said. He rolled more beef in good white bread and ate it. “My clothes are dry,” he said. “What happens now?”

Gavin stretched out his booted legs. “We have to take a day,” he said. “We only have Tamsin and some minor university types for hermetical defence, so we can’t fight. We need to get under the defences of Lissen Carak as soon as we can.”

Gregario nodded. “Over the bridge at Lissen Carak?” he asked.

“Yes,” Gavin said.

Gregario nodded. “So we need to beat the enemy to the bridge,” he said.

“Yes,” Gavin said. “And we need to find Tapio. I was hoping to convince the militia to put boards over the piers at the river; the old bridge piers.”

Gregario frowned. “That seems unlikely,” he said.

Ser Gavin nodded agreement. “Give everyone a few hours of sleep and another meal, and we’ll march,” he said.

He was still yawning, but he took a pen case and began writing a dispatch. It occurred to him that he was almost thirty hours late in writing about the Battle of the Fords, and that there would no doubt be panic in some quarters.

He had a thought and woke Griatzas. “Sorry, lad,” he said.

His Morean squire looked like an eyeless mole resisting the light. “Mmm?” he mumbled.

“I need you to find Lady Tamsin,” he said. “And one of the imperial messenger officers. Quick as you can, and then you can go back to sleep.”

If Tamsin had been asleep, she showed no sign, and if she was worried that her powers were all that stood between the army and extinction, she showed no sign of that, either.

“Gavin?” she asked in her low voice and she straightened from entering the pavilion’s low door.

He rose and bowed. “I’m sorry to wake you, Your Grace,” he said. “Can you magick a messenger bird to find Tapio?”

She considered only a moment. “Yes,” she said.

Gavin nodded. “If you do this,” he said, “Tapio will have a bird. And once he has one, he can start communicating with us. And with Alcaeus and Gabriel.” Gavin was tapping his teeth with a quill.

Tamsin laughed. She reached out a motherly thumb and wiped ink and spit from the corner of his mouth. “You look like a child who has eaten too many berries,” she said.

“Damn,” Gavin said, looking at the ink, and then he subsided and allowed the Faery Queen to use her powers to remove it. “I’m glad I can still be funny,” he said.

She smiled. “A little sleep and the world will be bright again,” she said.

“Really?” Gavin asked.

She shrugged. “It is better to think so, is it not?” she asked. When the messenger arrived, a great black-and-white bird on her fist, Tamsin talked to the bird at length, and B.13 cocked her head to one side as if listening intently.

“Does she understand?” Gavin asked. “What does she say?”

“She says, ‘More chicken,’” Tamsin answered. “That’s mostly what they say, to tell the truth.”

Grazias entered and bowed. “Captain Redmede to see you, my lord.”

Gavin sat back.

Harald Redmede came in. He didn’t bow. “The enemy has passed the fords,” he said. “He is moving the whole host east. Some bogglins crossed the ford this morning and probed the rear guard.” He smiled. “They found something they like; they’re all with 1Exrech now.”

Gavin sighed. “And the dragon himself?”

“Not a sign,” Redmede said. “I’m the last, by the way. We’re all inside the wall. I hear you had trouble with the locals?”

Gavin managed a smile. “Jacks,” he said.

Redmede didn’t smile. “When this is over,” he said, “without the enemy looming over us … do you think there will be change?”

Gavin frowned. “What kind of change?” he asked.

“Justice,” Redmede said. “Justice for the poor. An end to slavery.”

“These men didn’t want justice for the poor! They wanted to keep their grain and pretend that they didn’t need the rest of the world.” Gavin looked at Redmede. “You and I have more in common than either of us do with the likes of them.”

The captain of the foresters nodded. “It’s always funny,” he said. “I have passed this frontier fifty times. The men in the towns will join my brother and be Jacks and fight you nobles, but the men here on the wall are the most like Jacks. But they won’t call themselves Jacks.”

Gavin sighed. “It just makes me tired,” he said.

“Imagine how a man who works behind a plow all day every day for some other man must feel,” Redmede said. “Listen, my lord. You are a good leader; men follow you right willingly. I say this to you, man to man. Even friend to friend. When this is over, do you think that all these men and women—the militia of Brogat and Albin, the town guards, and the guildsmen—do you think that after three years of fighting to free themselves from a tyrant, they’ll just lie down? Do you think that my foresters will ever see the Jacks as enemies again? Things will change. You and your brother can lead it, or you can … be swept away. The militia here? Certes, they’re foolish and pigheaded and hidebound. But what they say …”

Gavin leaned back. “Christ,” he said, “I’m not working you hard enough if you have time for all this political blather.”

“It’s not blather, my lord,” Redmede said. “We’re not fighting Ash so we can go back to being serfs.”

Gavin put his head in his hands. “Alright, Harald. Point taken. Can we go back to the war now?” He shook his head. “No. Go sleep. We have rested men on the wall and gate. But we’ll march in the morning.”

“One night o’ sleep?” Redmede asked. “That’s all? I could sleep the clock round.”

“One night,” Ser Gavin said. He paused. “Listen, I do hear you. We ain’t Galles. And my brother … has plans. For real change.”

Redmede the elder grinned. “Now that’s a better tune. We ain’t just fightin’ here, my lord. We could be building something. Something new.”

Gavin nodded wearily. “If we survive, aye.”

After the forester was gone, he finished his dispatch, and sent it off by F.34.

F.34

F.34 rose into the rainy darkness of a September night on the Cohocton, attuned to all the dangers of air, and flew east, skimming north of the river at times, passing abreast of an endless flood of bogglins sprawled carelessly in the mud and sand, asleep; passing above cave trolls and swamp trolls, wights and wardens. Just before dawn she sensed something larger flying to the north and she turned south, away from her goal, which burned before her like a beacon, and she saw the two wyverns in the first light of a cold, wet day and easily outdistanced them, untroubled by their alliance. F.34 was not trained to discriminate; she merely avoided potential danger, flying well south into the Albin and passing, by coincidence, over the great manor house of Weyland, where, in happier times, Lord Gregario had given great feasts and dispensed justice.

Passing over the Albin River, she turned north and followed it to the ford at South Ford, and she flew over the chapel that had been Amicia’s where a surprising number of pilgrims had, even in those dark times, or perhaps because of them, virtually buried her altar in flowers and offerings.

She flew on, in the new day, and landed with a rush of wings on the waiting perch in the citadel’s north tower, where a black-and-white-clad imperial messenger fed her a whole chicken and detached her tube. Her work was done, but the messenger took the tube down a floor, opened the flimsy, and copied it twice. The original went into a new tube, carried by I.31, who rose into the morning air, helped by a warm current, and raced east even as the sun rose to meet him. The first copy went to E.49, who made the shortest trip of his week, a one-hour flight to Lissen Carak, where his message was read immediately by Sister Miriam.

But F.34 flew on, wings beating, riding a thermal higher and higher into the air so that she climbed over the passes into the Green Hills and then, in late afternoon, a long, fast glide over the western plains of the Morea; Middleburg grew in the middle distance, and she passed directly over the fortress, one of her waypoints and often her destination, but today she had a mightier mission, and she flew on, tired now, but she was fortunate in her weather, and before the September sun fell into the ash clouds at her back, lighting the sky a livid orange, she glimpsed the sea, and stooped, a long, last dive into the waiting arms of a handler in the imperial messenger aviary in the stables of the imperial palace, Liviapolis. She was exhausted, and she’d lost weight; a handler weighed her and passed her to the rest cages, where birds who were not fit for immediate duty were kept.

The tube was taken from her leg by no mere messenger, but by Ser Alcaeus himself, the Regent of Morea. Alcaeus read the dispatch, and was seen to smile.

“Three copies. Ready a bird for Arles; the emperor will need this immediately,” he said.

F.34 didn’t care; she was already gorging on chicken.

But E.2 cared. She was a long-distance bird, one of the fastest; she was almost never sent on short trips, because of her powerful build and extreme stamina, and now she seemed to quiver with joy; the sense of urgency in her lord’s voice was itself cause for joy, because she was going to fly!

The messenger officer brought her a pellet. She knew the pellet meant a mission; it looked like a solid gold bead, although the gold leaf was merely the conductive element for the hermeticist who set the parameters of the flight.

E.2 ate the pellet, and instantly understood. She nodded, bobbing up and down expectantly while her message was prepared.

The imperial messenger took her from her perch and stroked her black-and-white head. “You’re eager as a child for Christmas, aren’t you, my honey?” the messenger crooned.

“Who is that?” Alcaeus asked.

“E.2, my lord. One of the best.” The messenger bowed.

“Such a smart bird,” Alcaeus said in a crooning voice. “Will she be well enough, launching into full night?”

“All the star patterns are in her instructions,” the messenger said. “She’s probably better off at night than in broad daylight.”

Alcaeus took the great bird on his thumb while the messenger affixed the tube and checked the seals.

“Ready,” said the messenger.

Alcaeus nodded. “You are the heroes, my dears,” he crooned to all the messenger birds waiting on half a hundred perches. “Without you, we wouldn’t have a chance. Fly fast, my friend.” He raised his fist, and E.2 leapt into the air.

She rose from the tower of the stable block to spiral up over Liviapolis, using the warmth of the city to rise against the cool of the air coming down from the mountains to the west, and then she started out over the sea. The sea was an endless pool of spilled ink, the moon just eight nights short of full, waxing, casting a path of light across the black water, and she went fast, her wings beating powerfully; she crossed over the islands, nine thousand feet in the air and with a powerful wind behind her; ignored a handful of lights on the islands where terrified fisher folk stayed high on their hills to avoid the monsters that dominated the deeps. No sea monster gave her the least concern, nine thousand feet in the air, and she raced on into morning, which found her well up a great river valley, passing over Lucrece in the grey light and then turning south and east, straight into the rising sun at two hundred miles an hour.

Before the cocks of morning had ceased crowing, she was eating chicken in the tower of Arles, undisturbed by the triumphant whoop of the Emperor of Man.

“You’ll want to read this immediately,” Anne said, waking her master. She wondered if she would ever sleep with her head on a man’s shoulder; Blanche was curled against her husband in a way that made Anne smile, and yet a little sad.

Gabriel sat up. “Bad news?” he asked. He’d been ready for it for two days. Silence was very bad at this point. Lissen Carak fallen? Gavin dead?

All too possible. So much risk, so few certainties …

“Good news, Your Highness.” Anne handed him a steaming cup of warm cider.

He sat up. Blanche raised her head. She was already turning green.

“Bucket is there,” Anne said.

“God!” Gabriel crowed. “Oh God. Oh damn,” he said, ripping his legs out of the entangling embrace of his linen sheets and leaping onto the cold floor. “Gavin is alive! He passed south of the Cohocton and he has the army, rallied, at Redesdale.” He walked out into the solar in his nightshirt. MacGilly was ironing; Master Julius was smiling from ear to ear.

“Chart?” Gabriel asked.

Master Julius had the northern Brogat and the Albin maps open, and he had marked positions on Kronmir’s master map in coloured pins.

Gabriel drank off his cider and took a pair of dividers from Master Julius, measured the distance, and pumped a fist in the air. “Damn!” he said again. “On the wall. That was—”

“Almost exactly a day ago,” Master Julius said. In the town, the cocks were crowing for the dawn.

“There’s more good news,” the notary said, handing over a flimsy. “I haven’t copied this yet.”

It was from Aneas. “Master Smythe is not dead?” Gabriel said. “It’s fucking Christmas, that’s what it is.” He embraced his surprised notary. “Christmas!” He walked to the window. The sun was rising in the east, and the day promised to be fine, and perhaps even warm. Below him, almost directly under the high tower of Arles, perhaps seven hundred feet below, a man the size of a pinprick was moving very slowly. The sound of his activity—rapid hammering—gave away what he was doing. He was driving in stakes.

“Four days,” he said to the sky. “Julius, at noon today we start a full-time, armed watch on the gateways.”

Master Julius made a note.

Three hours later, Gabriel was washed, shaved, and dressed in plain arming clothes. He went into the lowest levels of the great castle of Arles; down a ramp wide enough for the march of an army. At the base of the ramp stood an interior courtyard. A week before, it had been a hand’s breadth deep in mouse shit and dust and spiders and dead beetles, but now the whole floor, the size of twenty ballrooms, shone in the blaze of a hundred mage lights. The floor had an elaborate pattern worked in mosaic: star fields and astrological signs, thousands of years old.

“Jesu Christe,” Michael said, and crossed himself.

At the far end of the vast hall with a roof hundreds of feet over their heads, soaring like all the cathedrals in the world run together, stood a huge surface like the rose window of a great church, but dark, the panes of glass unlit. The portal stretched one hundred and twenty imperial feet from side to side; Mortirmir and Gabriel had just measured it. The portal had petals like an enormous flower; close examination showed each of them to contain scenes and words, like any religious stained glass, but in the darkness of the deep, even the mage lights could not illuminate the petal-shaped panels that spread like inky wings and arches away over their heads.

“Big enough for an army,” Michael said in awe.

“Or a dragon,” Gabriel said. “You know what we haven’t thought of?” he asked.

“Everything?” Michael asked.

“Yes, that,” Gabriel said. “But there must be some gates under the sea.”

“Of course,” Mortirmir said. “Why didn’t I think of that? So there are more than twenty-two gates. We don’t even know of the sea gates.”

“What else don’t we know?” Gabriel said. “A hundred and twenty feet wide, and sixty feet high at the center.” The three of them stood and contemplated the darkling gate.

Gabriel put a hand on the central panel, where the stone tracery that supported all the glass came together in a gold medallion with a keyhole.

“Damn,” he said. “It’s cold.”

Mortirmir reached out a hand and snatched it back. “Interesting,” he said, and snapped his fingers.

The underhall was cast into utter darkness.

“Hey,” Michael complained. And then he was silent.

Because, as his eyes adjusted to the unrelenting darkness, the darkness itself relented. A very, very faint radiance came through the great rose window.

“Oh damn,” Michael said.

“It is starting,” Gabriel said. “Assign troops, and casters, to guard it on a strict rota.”

Michael wasn’t looking at the gate. He was looking at the captain, whose skin emanated a glow slightly stronger than that given off by the gate.

“Don’t even mention it,” snapped Gabriel.

They stood in the barely lit darkness, watching the gate, which appeared like the sky at the very first hint of day.

“Have the astrologers given us an estimate of how long the gates stay open?” Gabriel asked.

Michael looked away, because he didn’t want to look at the golden radiance of Gabriel’s skin. “No,” he said.

Mortirmir was still looking at the gate. “It’s one thing to plan and scheme,” he said quietly. “Another thing to see this. Gates to other hermetical realities. Think of it. Who built them? The power … unimaginable.”

Gabriel frowned. “Really?” he asked.

Mortirmir tugged at his beard. “Well, perhaps not unimaginable. But incredible.” He paused. “Harmodius has a theory that when we cast a summoning, we may actually be connecting to other realities. But this …”

“You like a challenge,” Gabriel said. “Any idea of how they were made?”

“None,” Mortirmir said. “I suppose that if you had a caster at either end in perfect cooperation, with staggering levels of power and near instant access to potentia …”

“When?” Gabriel asked.

Mortirmir shrugged. “I have been down here every day,” he said. “What you see, the stained glass and the stone, is about a thousand years old. It is massively reenforced. And it was meant to be seen … from either side.”

Gabriel started.

“I think that the gates remain open for quite a long time,” Morgon said. “More than long enough that the light of another world lit this hall.”

“I see,” said Gabriel, who wasn’t sure he saw. “And how old?”

Mortirmir shook his head, his dark hair just visible in the near- darkness.

“This hall,” Gabriel said. “Can we have the lights back?”

Mortirmir snapped his fingers, and the room was flooded with light. Gabriel blinked, looking at the vast, high-ceilinged room.

“This hall was built as an entry point. It is defensible, but elegant.” He looked at Michael.

Michael was looking at the floor. “These stones are huge,” he said. “Perfectly fitted together.”

Mortirmir bent down and looked at the floor. “Yes,” he said. “This is very old stonework,” he agreed. “Probably not human.”

“Why?” Gabriel asked.

Mortirmir shrugged. “It is all theoretical,” he said. “But I don’t think humans have been here for more than five or six thousand years.”

“How old do you think this is?” Michael asked. He’d found a corner in the stone; it was five paces by eight paces. Huge.

Mortirmir shook his head. “I cannot speculate,” he said. “Too old for any hermetical resource to read.”

“How old is that?” Gabriel asked. “I hadn’t thought of using a detection.” He looked at Mortirmir. “We’re not going to try to hold the gate, are we?” he asked suddenly.

Mortirmir smiled wickedly. “Not if you take my advice.”

Michael looked at the huge ramp. His smile was as wicked as Mortirmir’s. “You mean, let them in?”

“And unleash hell,” Mortirmir said. “The hall is subterranean, the blocks of titanic stone. I can cast anything here.” He looked around, and his voice echoed off the stone walls despite the decorative baffles.

“Anythinganythinganythinghereanythinghere …”

He glanced at Gabriel. “I took a lore working and retooled it for distance back,” he said. “I don’t have enough confirmed data points to make my measurement exact—dates of buildings, artifacts …” He glanced at Michael. “I’d kill for something that I knew was twenty thousand years old.”

“But?” Gabriel was leaning forward.

Mortirmir went and put a hand on the great basalt column that rose from the left side of the gate to the magnificent arches supporting the roof and the whole weight of the castle above. “I would be surprised if this was less than twenty thousand years old,” Morgon said.

Conversationally, Michael said, “I am not as well educated as a magister, but I was nearly certain that the Bible told us the earth itself was about seven thousand years old.”

“Foolishness,” Mortirmir said. “The earth itself is incalculably old. I’m very interested in the matter; our astrologers have some incredible calculations …”

Gabriel shook his head. “This is interesting, Morgon. And yet, I fear, I must prepare for the future. The immediate future.”

Mortirmir nodded slowly. “I worry that our ignorance of the past will be our undoing,” he said. “Why are there gates? Who built them?” He looked around. “Killing our enemies seems so banal by comparison.”

“Not to me,” Gabriel said.

Gabriel rode out of the castle of Arles in armour with Michael and Cully and Morgon and his squire, and met Count Zac on the field of Arles, the great parade ground that he and Michael and Cully had paced off in person.

Zac gestured with his golden mace. His regiment, three hundred sabers, maneuvered from a column of fours to a line four horsemen deep, every man and woman wearing a scarlet khaftan, a dark fur hat, and deep soft boots. Under their khaftans they wore maille; every horse had a pair of heavy quivers; every rider had a long saber and a bucket of javelins.

And two spare horses.

The Vardariotes opened their ranks, and the emperor and his staff rode in among them. Kriax, the most famous of their warriors, saluted her emperor, unnaturally rigid. Mikal Dvor, the left squadron commander, saluted, and the two horsetail standards dipped. Gabriel rode slowly down all four ranks; looking at buckles, and bruises, horseflesh and arrows. He stopped before a very small man with a flat nose and high, slanted eyes.

“Arrows,” he said.

Dvor had to translate. The man nodded, swung a leg over his horse, and dismounted. Then he pulled both quivers off; one economical movement, untying the laces that held the quivers in one pull, the way he would have to do if required to fight dismounted. He knelt, laying out the quivers; sixty arrows, points up, fletchings down. He began to draw them from the quivers. Anne Woodstock leaned forward, fascinated.

Gabriel flashed her a smile. “Let’s take a closer look,” he said, and dismounted. MacGilly, the page, sprang forward and took his horse, and then took Anne’s, and Gabriel, armoured head to toe in his old harness, went down on one knee as the small easterner told of his arrows.

Mikal Dvor, a different kind of easterner, with high cheekbones and pale eyes, dismounted, slipping easily to the ground and nodding back over his shoulder at Count Zac, who looked pleased at the man chosen; better him than almost any other man in the third rank …

“He says here are forty arrows for men or horses. He says they have no soul, but they are fine arrows.” Dvor held one up: a Liviapolis Arsenal manufactured arrow, with a cane shaft, a light steel head, diamond cross-section, armour piercing point, goosefeather fletch.

“No soul?” the emperor.

The small man spoke at length.

Dvor shrugged. “He is Klugthai, a nomad from so far to the east that it is as far from his homeland to mine as it is from mine to … Lucrece.” He spread his hands and winked at Anne.

She flushed for no reason and was annoyed at herself.

Dvor waved at Klugthai. “He says when a warrior makes his own arrows, he gives them something of his soul. But he says he rides far, and eats the emperor’s salt, and kills his enemies, and he admits that the emperor’s sorcerers make arrows that kill.” Dvor met the emperor’s eyes. “I find him hard to understand, and I have ridden with him ten years.”

“Show me the other arrows,” the emperor commanded.

Klugthai held out a handful of arrows. “These five are for very long shots. He made them himself,” Dvor translated. “These two are signal arrows; they shriek. Every rider must have one. It happens that he is one of my squadron’s best men and has a spare.”

Morgon took the arrow. He moved his hand over it. “Is louder better?” he asked.

Dvor repeated the question.

The little man grinned. “Da,” he said.

Morgon released the working and handed back the shaft. “It will be very loud,” he said.

The small man bowed, clasping both hands and tapping them to his forehead.

“And these?” the emperor asked.

“One for killing horses. One for killing very big things; monsters.”

“Just one?” the emperor asked.

Dvor shrugged. “Most of us shot away all our monster killers facing the Umroth, Your Grace.”

“Got it,” Michael said. He made a note on his wax tablet.

“And that’s why you have inspections,” the emperor said to his squire.

She nodded, fascinated by the row of arrows left.

“And that one?” she asked, greatly daring.

Dvor smiled at her. “It holds a line. For shooting a rope, or starting a trap.”

“This one?” she asked.

The emperor looked at her.

Dvor smiled and the small easterner laughed. “Bird hunting. It is his own, for knocking down game. To eat.”

She smiled.

Gabriel reached over and took the easterner’s hand. “Tell him that I believe that of all the men who serve me, he has come the farthest, and I treasure his service,” Gabriel said.

Dvor spoke. The easterner’s heavily wrinkled face, windblown and bright-eyed, broke into a brilliant smile.

“Rose Leopard,” he said to Anne, and she fumbled in her purse and produced one—the most valuable imperial coin, solid gold, worth five Leopards. The easterner took it and dropped it inside his khaftan and nodded his head.

All of them remounted. The emperor noted that the easterner retied his quivers while he was mounting.

Gabriel raised an eyebrow to Michael, who caught the direction of his attention. “The value of veterans isn’t just that they understand war,” Gabriel said aloud. “It is that they know how to do everything.”

The Vardariotes were merely the first of the regiments of the casa to return from the campaign in Galle, and as the day wore on, the Nordikaans rode in, and then the guildsmen, and then Ser Thomas Lachlan himself leading the lances of the imperial bodyguard, as they had taken, somewhat mockingly, to styling themselves. Some wag had painted a small banner on silk, the black silhouette of a tusked Umroth with a red line through it per pale on an ivory ground.

The man under the Umroth banner was Ser Tobias, and he couldn’t keep the grin off his face, and neither could Francis Atcourt or de Beause or any of the other household knights.

The emperor’s inspection was detailed and personal, but it was clear that the men were ready; horses groomed, kit clean.

The emperor reined in by Kessin. “You’ve lost weight,” he said.

“Vittles was poor, Cap’n,” Kessin said with a smile. He was still a big, broad-shouldered man with a heavy gut, but his eyes no longer vanished when he grinned. He dismounted and produced fifty-two arrows, a long coil of rope, his section of a portable scaling ladder and a clean, rust-free shirt of maille and a brigantine, a steel bridle gauntlet, and a fine storta, a curved Etruscan saber. His hardened steel basinet was polished like a mirror and had a fine red and white silk turban woven around it in an intricate pattern.

Kessin saw the emperor looking at the turban. “Which Ser Pavalo showed us a better way o’ windin’ her,” he said. “Cap’n. Sir. Highness.”

The emperor walked around Kessin’s horse, looked at the shoes, and then back at Bad Tom. “Are all the horses in this good shape?” he asked.

Tom nodded in satisfaction. “The Venikans gave us the best horses,” he said. “And I bought some remounts from the Ifriquy’ans. And we just had almost a week on good grass wi’ oats.” He nodded. “Lookin’ good, Kessin.”

“He needs a bath,” Gabriel said with a smile. “And some food. He’s starving away to nothing.”

“I am, that,” Kessin said.

Gabriel gave him a Rose Leopard and rode over to Ser Tobias.

“Me?” Ser Tobias asked. He dismounted, and began to strip out of his harness, and his squire came forward to help him strip his kit. In a minute, it was laid out on the ground: armour, maille, cloak and eating kit, purse and sword and dagger, a small Ifriquy’an war hammer, and a heavy wool hood.

“You’re the newest,” the emperor said with a smile. “Who taught you to clean armour anyway?”

“You,” Ser Tobias said. “And Jehan.”

Gabriel swatted his former squire on the back. “Tom? Any other awkward sods I ought to examine?”

Tom shook his head. “Not a one.”

“Ser Michael has your tent assignments. Gentlemen and ladies, the gate is waking up. We will be fighting in four days. Eat well and rest.” He mounted up.

“Just like hisself.” Kessin nodded to Cully.

Cully made a face.

“What?” Kessin hissed.

“He’s worried,” Cully said. “I never like it when Cap’n’s worried.”

Dawn.

There were two stakes in the ground; each stake was six feet tall, and they were planted on the field of Arles, exactly one hundred and twenty feet apart.

Bodies of archers were drawn up facing inward on either flank, their file leaders touching the marker stakes. The casa was drawn up facing the area between the stakes: forty knights wide. Behind each knight was a squire, and behind each squire, a fully armoured page.

And behind the pages, ten ranks of scarecrows with fifteen-foot pikes, formed so close together that there didn’t seem to be room for men to breathe.

Cully and Tom Lachlan walked up and down; Cully had archers loft blunt arrows and played with the angle of his supporting wings, and Tom Lachlan moved the casa and its supporting block of spearmen back and forth, back and forth. He formed it and unformed it, ordering every man to run for his life, sounding a whistle and ordering them back to the ranks. He did this over and over, for hours, until his knights hated him, sweating through their arming clothes and rusting their newly polished armour despite the chilly autumn morning.

Cully did the same with the archers: run, re-form, run, re-form.

“There’s Sauce!” called Francis Atcourt, and every head turned.

The Army of Etrusca was marching onto the field of Arles. And there was the emperor, with a guard of Vardariotes around him, and six Nordikaans in constant attendance.

“I hope she gave the poor bastards a day to polish their kit,” muttered Kessin.

“Eyes front,” roared Bad Tom.

They broke and re-formed again, facing the gate.

“When do we go through the fuckin’ thing?” muttered Atcourt.

“When we’ve stopped whatever is waitin’,” Tom snapped. “Ever think o’ that?”

Atcourt shook his head. “Tom, I’m a tired old man. And I know how to form on the marker.”

Tom Lachlan didn’t snap. Instead, he smiled. “Right ye are,” he said. “One more time and we can go and see the company.”

He blew his whistle. Then he leaned over to Cully. “Practice shootin’ o’er our noggins, Cull. Imagine somethin’ as big as a dragon.”

Cully went back to drilling the archers.

The Army of Etrusca was preceded by almost six hundred wagons and carts, six traveling forges, a herd of remounts, and a second herd, a vast sea of beef. Dozens of Vardariotes in working clothes came up on their spare ponies and began to drive the cattle into fields and pens already marked, and Blanche could be seen, with her ladies and Master Julius, riding from pen to walled field, counting and marking, inspecting the food supply.

Behind the baggage and the wagons and the food and the remounts came the army; led by the company, hundreds and hundreds of archers; Iris and Elaran, northern irks, and Urk of Mogon, and Cat Evil and Tippit, Jack Caves and Half Arse, sober and polished within a whisker of perfection. No Head grinned at Cully and he and Smoke saluted the emperor for their ranks and then arrayed the archers as Ser Danved led the men-at-arms onto the field. Ser Milus saluted with his lance and the Saint Catherine banner dipped, and Gabriel found that he had tears in his eyes.

“I feel as if I’m looking at my youth,” he said. He hugged Sauce.

Behind him, quite spontaneously, the casa was mounting their horses and forming ranks, as if, after four hours of ruthless drill, they wanted nothing more than to stand on parade.

Tom Lachlan rode forward. He, too, embraced Sauce.

She grinned.

“I hear you won,” Bad Tom said.

Her grin now split her face ear to ear. “That I did,” she said.

The company was in a long column, formed by sections of sixteen—four knights, four squires, four archers, four pages—four wide by four deep.

Sauce raised her baton. “Company will form line from column by wheeling to the right by sections!” she screeched. “March!”

The whole column flowed, every section wheeling as little doors all together, to the right, and the column became a solid line, hundreds of men long, faced in armour, tipped in steel.

“Halt!” Sauce roared.

Silence.

Sauce drew her sword, held it up before her eyes, and flashed it down by her side.

Conte Simone’s chivalry began to enter the field of Arles behind the company, riding to the left. Behind them came more troops, and more: crossbowmen, spearmen, Venikan marines.

But among the company, discipline was breaking down; men embraced their friends; wives threw themselves into the ranks; men and women from the company dismounted to embrace their comrades in the casa.

The emperor watched them, beaming, and when Sauce’s face grew stormy, he put a hand on her shoulder.

“Let them have their day,” he said. And with Michael and Bad Tom and Sauce at his back, he rode down the field to congratulate Conte Simone, to shake his hand and inspect his knights before meeting all the other officers.

That night, a dent was made in the army’s supplies of wine and ale, as the two armies renewed their acquaintance and told their stories; tales of the Patriarch’s sorcery locked horns with stories of the Umroth; Long Paw regaled his old messmates with the story of the salamander, and had to tell it again for Gabriel, slightly worse for drink, and Morgon Mortirmir. The rear guard, under the Duchess of Venike, marched into a riot at twilight; they had marched all day to keep the timetable, and found not food but drink awaiting them.

Cattle were slaughtered and new fires built, and men and women went from fire to fire, talking and listening. Long Paw found himself standing with one arm around Cully and another around No Head, listening to Duke talk about loading a cannon in the face of a charging not-dead mastadon; Conte Simone sat on an armour basket with a horn cup of wine and listened to Philip de Beause talk about jousting. Sauce spent time with Count Zac, but then found that she wanted to wander and enjoy the moment of triumph, and he wanted to drink with Nordikaans, so she left him to it and walked about, wearing her old arming coat.

She was fairly drunk when she found Tom Lachlan standing alone, looking at the stars.

She thought of walking by, but by then he’d noticed her, and he turned, stumbled, and grinned.

They looked at each other like wary predators.

“I hear you killed an Umroth with a lance,” she said.

“A’weel.” Tom’s grin widened. “Ya’ ken, he was already dead.”

Somehow, that seemed really funny, and the two of them roared together.

“An’ ye warred down yon Patriarch,” Tom said.

“He was eashy.” Sauce made a face. “Easy.” She frowned. “That’sh bullshit, really.”

Tom nodded. “Oh aye,” he admitted. “It’s never easy, is it?”

“They just fuckin’ die,” Sauce said. “People die.” She looked at people around a fire. “I didn’t even like Kronmir. And he’sh dead.”

Tom nodded.

“Don’t fuckin’ die, Tom,” Sauce said.

“Nor you, lass,” Tom Lachlan said. He kissed her, and she stumbled off. The evening was warm, and she shed her arming coat and headed back to one of the fires where wine was being served.

Sukey emerged from her wagon and put her arm through Tom’s. “Somehow I always think you two will end together and I’ll be left at the post,” she said.

Tom looked after Sauce, and then down at Sukey. “Na,” he said. “I don’t e’en think o’ her that way.”

“Not e’en drunk?” Sukey asked.

Tom was just discovering that Sukey was wearing a kirtle with nothing under it.

“I’m nae that drunk,” he said. He ran a hand up her bare leg to her bare thigh. He growled.

“I hoped not,” Sukey purred.

Ser Michael spent the next day passing orders. He had meeting after meeting, most of them in the open on the vast parade field, while a dozen other officers conducted inspections, while armourers tinkered and arrowsmiths passed out sheaves of arrows and horses were fed and shoes repaired and every magister in the host put in a share of time magicking arrows. Michael drew up lists, and passed them: orders of march, subordinate appointments.

By the time the church bells were singing out the midday, there were thousands of men and women facing various problems at pairs of stakes one hundred and twenty feet apart. More than a hundred practitioners, led by Mortirmir and Petrarcha, stood in another field, casting and casting, working potentia, passing ops, sharing palaces in the aethereal. The whole army was treated to a spectacular display as they raised a set of layered shields powered as a choir, each shield like a snakeskin armour, composed of thousands, tens of thousands, of scales that interlocked, and moved, flowed, layered up, and thinned out at the will of the conductor.

The emperor moved from meeting to demonstration to drill, watching, coaching, joking. He watched the mamluks of the Sultan of Ifriquy’a ride into camp; he saluted them graciously.

“No one has done this in two thousand years,” he said.

Tom Lachlan shook his head. “What do we ha’e? All told?”

Michael raised a tablet. “Fifty-six thousand, two hundred and seventeen,” he said.

Tom stood in his stirrups. “And ye’re takin’ ’em all?” he asked.

“Every blessed one,” Gabriel said.

“Ye’re a loon,” Tom said. “How many fights?”

The emperor shook his head. “No idea. We have to pass through at least three gates. I’m fairly confident it’s three. It might be four. Or five. At least two fights.”

“How do you figure?” Michael asked.

“The rebel and the shadow expect an ally to come through this gate,” Gabriel said. “So there’s someone on the other side right now.”

“Aye,” Tom said, brightening. “Who is it?”

“Little green cheese eaters,” Gabriel snapped. “How do I know?”

“Ye generally pretend that ye know everything,” Tom said. “I just like to see ye squirm.”

“And the second?” Michael asked. “Is whoever Ash expects to find at Lissen Carak?”

Gabriel shrugged. “I don’t know. Is Ash trying to conquer or defend?” He looked around. “But assuming that the will is concentrated there, and Ash is there, then they might have an ally waiting on the other side of the gate. Or one or both of them is leaving, bent on the conquest of other … places.” He reined in, looking over the vast, flat field. As far as the eye could see, tens of thousands of men and women were eating, polishing, building, drilling, shooting, wrestling, cursing. The breeze raised little dust devils. The sun shone down, still fierce enough to burn Tom’s nose.

“… or …” the emperor said. “Damn.”

He turned Ataelus to face his staff. “It doesn’t matter. Morgon and I have a plan for the first moments, when the gate starts to open.” He shrugged. “And after that we play it by ear. This is as far as the plan ever made it, really. Fighting—a lot of it—and then, when we come through that tunnel, if we win, there will be another set of plans, for rebuilding. For feeding the Albin and the Brogat from Etrusca. And eventually, for preparing to face all this again in some hundreds or thousands of years.”

Tom Lachaln nodded. “A’weel,” he said. “I plan to get drunk tonight, and perhaps chase Sukey around a tent if she doesn’a move too fast. That’s as far as my plans go.” He looked across the plain. “An’ that’s all your notion o’ wha’ waits for us?”

Gabriel nodded his head. “Yes.”

Tom made a face. “A’wheel, then.” He smiled.