The scout crouched at the edge of the huddle with his hands moving, roughing out the clearing's shape in the dirt with one finger.
"Clearing's maybe thirty meters across," he said. "Old growth right up to the edge — big trunks, good cover getting in, but you break that tree line, and there's nothing between you and them." He dragged a circle in the dirt. "Circle's in the middle. There's solid stonework, waist-high at the edges, laid into the ground." He added three marks at even intervals inside the circle. "Three ritualists. One at each point of a triangle. They were working when I left them. Red light over the center of the circle, same as the others."
"How far apart are the points?" the sub-tribune asked. Her name was Lyra, and she had a flat voice and a narrow scar running from her right ear to the corner of her jaw, and she'd been crouched over the dirt sketch since the scout started, not looking at him, looking at the drawing.
"Eight, nine meters. Maybe ten at the far pair."
She nodded once and said nothing.
"Tell me about the defenders," Dalen said.
The scout took a short breath through his nose. He hadn't been through the scout pipeline, but he'd been a woodsman before being recruited by the Landing, and he'd volunteered for this because he could move through the old-growth without stepping on things that made noise, was more than could be said for most of the century. He'd been matter-of-fact about everything up until this point, and the breath was the first sign of anything.
"They're Fu— They're pretty big sire," he said. "Not like their regulars. These are bigger. These ones are close to six feet, built thick, scales on the arms and chest look like someone layered another set on top of the first. They've got halberds and tower shields — proper tower shields, not the little round ones we've been seeing." He looked at the Sub-Centurion. "Seven of them. They're on the inner edge of the clearing, one between each ritualist and everything else."
"So they're spread," the sub-centurion said.
"Spread, yeah. But they know what they're doing. The spacing is deliberate and we know they can move quickly despite being that big."
"And the regulars?" Lyra asked.
"Two squads just inside the clearing. Loose patrol, not a picket line. They're covering the approaches, but they're not dug in, not terribly alert — guessing they think they're far enough back from the action that nobody'd come this way." He paused. "No ranged. I checked twice."
"Right," said the sub-centurion. He was young for a centurion — mid-twenties, maybe, with the square jaw and traditionally attractive— and he picked up a stick and tapped the sketch. "So we've got seven heavies on the ring, two squads of regulars outside them who'll stop us the second we hit the clearing, and three casters inside who are going to start throwing those orbs the moment they know we're there." He sat back on his heels. "And we can't afford to get bogged down because we've got more of these fucking things to hit before this is over."
"At least two," Lyra said.
"Two more."
"We need to hit the ritualists fast," she said. "The heavies are a problem, but they're a contained problem — seven of them, our numbers beat them on the ring if we can hold off the regular squads reinforcing. The issue is the casters are inside those heavies, so to get to them, we go through the heavies, and that takes time we don't have while the casters are putting bolts into our formation." She traced the outer ring with her finger. "If we push a formation straight into that clearing, we're taking those bolts the entire way in. We'd lose—" She stopped and looked at the sub-centurion.
"Twenty-five," he said. "Thirty, maybe, depending on the angle."
"Thirty men before we even make contact with the ring." Lyra let that sink in for a second. "Which means the regulars can reinforce the heavies with numbers we don't have anymore, and the whole assault fails."
"So we need a way to get through the heavies quickly and suppress the casters, or we're fighting with one hand." The sub-centurion flipped the stick end-over-end. "Which is the part I haven't worked out yet."
Henri exhaled through his nose — sharp, clipped, once. Both Lyra and the sub-centurion looked at him.
"Forgive me," Henri said, though his posture didn't suggest he felt the need to be forgiven for much. "But this seems simpler than you are making it. They are dispersed, trying to cover all approaches — yes? The regulars are not in position. The heavies are spaced apart. If we move quickly enough and hit the clearing before they can consolidate, we are not fighting their formation; we are fighting seven individuals and two confused squads." He opened his hands. "Rush them. Use our numbers before they can use their positioning."
Lyra turned and looked at the treeline for a moment. Her face morphed into quiet anger before she looked at her centurion.
The sub-centurion looked at Henri with confusion. "My lord," he said, not unpleasantly. "If we walk a formation into that clearing, we're thirty meters of open ground with three casters ranging on us the entire way in." He tapped the sketch. "Thirty meters even at a run, that's — what — ten, twelve seconds. At a full sprint, eight. We lose thirty people in eight seconds, and that's a good outcome." He set the stick down. "We have more circles after this one. We need to preserve this century and still be able to fight at its end. So we're going to fight smart."
Henri drew a breath to answer.
Dalen put a hand on his shoulder, and Henri glanced down at it with a hostile expression. His chin came up a fraction.
Dalen held the contact one more second and let go, and looked at the sub-centurion.
"It's your century," he said. "We're not here to run your operation. You need something from us; we're here. Beyond that, it's yours."
The sub-centurion looked at him, then at Henri, then back at Dalen, and the tension in his shoulders dropped about half an inch. "Appreciated, my lord."
Lyra's gaze moved off Henri. Not forgiving, not yet — but she pulled it off him and put it back on the sketch, and she let out a slow breath through her nose. "Thank you, my lord," she said to Dalen, quieter.
Henri said nothing and settled back on his heels.
"Cover," Lyra said to the scout. "Around the clearing's edge — enough to conceal, say, two squads? Could you route them around without breaking onto the open ground before they're in position?"
The scout turned the question over, looking at the dirt sketch rather than the treeline. His finger moved along the rough outline he'd drawn, tapping once, twice, stopping at the eastern arc.
"East face," he said. "The old growth is thickest there, and it comes closest to the ring — maybe twenty-two meters of open ground instead of thirty. You could move two squads in on the east, keep them tight to the tree line, and they wouldn't be visible from the center until they broke cover." He frowned. "North face is a maybe. Ground gets rocky, it's quieter footing, but the cover thins about thirty meters out."
"East is enough," Lyra said. She looked at the sub-centurion. "All right. Here's what we're going to do."
The plan made tactical sense. Henri could see that, which made being angry about it require a little more effort than usual — so he put in the effort.
He moved through the old-growth behind Dalen's shoulder with his rapier drawn, and he ran two fingers along the edge of the mustache he'd been growing since Gravensend, checking its progress the way a man checks a wound. It wasn't much yet. Hale's soldiers had opinions about it. He found he didn't care. The two squads ahead of them made less noise than he'd expected from legionaries and still more than he would have liked, but the anger kept him warm and focused.
Harold had sent him here to follow. Not to a command post, not to a briefing table where his superior understanding might prove useful — here, in the dark, in the trees, with mud on his boots and a century that tolerated his presence about as warmly as a stone wall tolerates a knock.
And now Henri was here.
Dalen moved beside him without sound, which was irritating in its own right. The man was built like someone who'd spent his life doing hard physical work outdoors, and he knew that wasn't even true. The man was an office manager before. He shouldn't be built like he is now. The man blindly followed Harold with not a flicker of resentment, not a single moment of feeling that this was beneath him. Suppose if Harold saved my failing village, he would be thankful too.
He thought back to the fire two nights ago. Dalen treated him like an equal. Like a peer. Like a man whose past could be set aside if his present was useful.
Henri didn't know what to do with that. He'd spent years building an architecture of social position, and Dalen had skipped straight past all of it without noticing it existed.
Then Harold had been on the wall and fought that massive crowned lizard.
A shiver moved up Henri's spine before he could stop it, and he pushed it down and concentrated on his footing.
He was emphatically not afraid of Harold. He was being cautious about Harold, which was entirely different, and if anyone suggested otherwise, he would — well. He would do nothing because the realistic options were limited.
The optio raised a fist, and they stopped.
Twenty men, Dalen, Henri, all of them compressing back against cover at the tree line, the clearing opening up ahead in the grey light. Henri could see the ritual circle from here — the stonework low and wide, the slow red pulse from the center, three ritualists at their points with their arms extended, the defenders standing their ring. Seven of the big ones. He'd been told they were tall, and he saw now that telling and seeing were different things entirely. His hand found his mustache and dropped.
The optio turned and spoke at near-zero volume.
"My lords." His eyes moved between them — briefly to Henri, longer on Dalen. "We're going to push you through. Get past the defenders, get past whatever comes at you, and kill those casters fast as you can. We'll be right behind you."
Dalen nodded once. Henri rolled his eyes at the general situation — and raised his rapier.
The blade caught what light there was. He loved this weapon. The smiths at the Landing had made it at Harold's request, and he'd received it from Harold's hands with every intention of being politely dismissive about it because he had not needed Harold's charity. He had held it for four seconds before that intention evaporated entirely. Whatever they'd done to it in the forge, in Gravensend, had taken an already excellent instrument and sharpened it into something he didn't have words for. He had yet to find something its point couldn't penetrate.
Il fallait bien que quelque chose soit bon dans tout ça, he thought. Something good had to come of all this.
From across the clearing, a sound rose — boots, formation, one voice that became thirty in a single syllable.
"FOR THE LANDING AND THE EMPIRE!"
The optio looked at the sky for half a second with the expression of a man asking the universe for patience. Then he turned back to his squads.
"Get ready, boys." Just barely sound. "— go on three, we go before those bolts start. One—"
The outer regulars were already moving across the far face, breaking toward the noise, and three of the ring defenders shifted outward on the south face, and the optio watched it happen with the calculating gaze of someone who was getting most of what he needed.
"—three."
They came out of the brush fast and low, twenty men cresting the tree line in a hard, quiet push, the optio leading from the front, and Henri was behind him with Dalen to his left, and the tree line fell away, and they were in the open.
One of the legionaries ahead of Henri drew back and threw a javelin at the nearest ritualist in a clean overhead arc, and the point cracked against something invisible just over the caster's chest and rebounded hard. Another javelin, same result.
"Shit," someone said.
The three ring defenders on their side turned, hissing — a sound like three large kettles announcing they were done — and planted their tower shields and leveled their halberds. Henri had known they were going to be big. Merci, how big.
He kept running.
The optio hit the first defender shield-first, putting his whole weight into the check, trying to throw the halberd wide, and the defender absorbed it and didn't move, and the sword that came around the edge of the shield found the tower shield, and then the rest of the squad was there, eight men onto one target, and the fight became different. The defenders were strong and coordinated and fought the ring intelligently, pivoting to protect each other's flanks, and two legionaries went down from halberd impacts that Henri heard, wet impacts through armor, and the defenders were still on their feet.
He was too slow. The casters.
Henri cut left, and Dalen cut right, and they went past the defenders' flanks and toward the circle.
The ritualist Henri was aimed for saw him coming and the red orb above the stonework started to gather color and focus. Henri was aware of his own breathing in a way he usually wasn't, of the ground under his boots being uneven, of the orb growing and pointed at his face.
Fear and fury arrived in him at the same time, and he ran harder.
At the extreme edge of his range he lunged — dropping into it from the shoulders, the form his fencing master had spent years drilling into him until he could do it half-asleep, every joint in sequence, heel up and leading hip forward and the point extending along the line his entire body was making — and the rapier hit the barrier at full extension and slowed, and he pushed mana into it, and the point punched through with a sound like a soap bubble the size of a house, and went home.
He landed on his front knee, breathing. The ritualist was down.
He pulled the blade clear, turned, and found Dalen.
Dalen had his shield up and was driving into the second ritualist's barrier, shoulder behind the shield, short chopping blows, and the ritualist had launched a bolt — Henri saw it go, saw it connect with the forward face of Dalen's shield and the way Dalen had sheathed the rim in mana, a thin bright edge that Henri had never seen anyone do before, and the shield cut through the bolt like it was dispersing water, breaking the force of it — but not all of it, and the edge-scatter clipped Henri across his left side.
Dalen broke through finally, and his sword came down.
"Watch out, Sire—"
The shout was behind Henri, and it was already happening before he could turn — a young legionary was getting a shield up in front of Henri as the third ritualist launched its bolt from the other side of the circle, and Henri had been focused on Dalen's fight.
The bolt hit the legionary's shield without any of the mana dispersion that had broken the last one, and Henri watched the man go white. Just white — the color draining from every visible piece of him at once, and then the blood came, from his nose and the corners of his eyes and from under his fingernails, and the man went down, and his shield hit the ground next to him, his face frozen in soundless fear.
The optio's hand caught Henri between the shoulder blades with enough force to move him a step. "Move!"
Dalen was already running.
The last ritualist had the orb up, and a mana-clad javelin came from the centurion's direction at close range with a crack that split the barrier, and then Dalen was through it, and his sword went down, and the circle went dark.
Henri stood in the quiet that came after and looked at the legionary on the ground.
Dalen's boots on the dirt. He was coming back, and his nose was leaking blood and the fury in his expression wasn't something he had seen before. Henri saw it distantly, along with the pain in his side and the blood in his mouth where he'd bitten the inside of his cheek, landing the lunge.
"What the hell was that?"
"I—"
"Your eyes were off. You had your head in the fight you just finished and my fight and you didn't look for the next one." Dalen's voice was controlled and absolutely furious. "This isn't — you don't get to be distracted here. You are not from some big family in a safe country; you don't have century-old money keeping you insulated from the results of your own mistakes. Here you make a mistake, and someone dies." His jaw moved. "That man made a choice and paid for it because you lost focus!"
Henri's mouth had closed somewhere in the first sentence.
"Look at him!"
Henri looked down.
The legionary hadn't been old. Nineteen, maybe. The blood had pooled dark under his head and was still spreading.
"That is your fault," Dalen said. "Not the ritualist's fault. Not the system's fault. Yours. You could have seen it. You should have dodged it. You were thinking about something else."
He didn't say anything. Qu'est-ce qu'il pouvait dire? What was there to say?
"Lord Harold wants to reform you," Dalen said. "Fine. I hope he succeeds. But right now you are still worried about yourself, about your dignity, about whether you agreed with the plan, and you can’t do that here!" He held Henri's gaze for another second. "Get your head in the game or get behind me and stay there. You're a child."
He walked away.
Henri looked at the body for a moment longer, then looked at his rapier, then sheathed it.
The clearing around him was full of the century cleaning up, checking the circle, calling to each other, ignoring the two arguing lords. No one looked at him. Dalen was already across the clearing talking to the optio.
Henri wiped the blood off his face with the back of his hand.