Author's note: Originally this chapter was supposed to be two chapters, but I feel like they would not stand on their own. So I joined them together and it feels much better. Do you agree?
The army was forming up.
Banners aligning, files settling into their squares, the gravel emptying of supply wagons as the last of the loading went onto the ships. Luna stood beside Mila and watched them.
“Lady Lunaris.”
She turned. Mila had something in his palm. Small. Silver, dark with age, etched with the snowflake. “A ring.” His hand stayed flat. “From the Queen’s smith.”
“Oh.” Luna let her gaze rest on it, and the notification bloomed.
[Rimebreak Ring of Shouting]Quality: 3-rareRestriction: Level 25Description: Turns your whisper into a war cry. Based on Queen’s [Ring of Shouting Real Loud].
Her mouth twitched. “She still have the Shouting Real Loud.”
The smile happened on Mila’s mouth again, a fraction further this time before he settled it back. “Put it on, Lady Lunaris.”
“...Why?”
“The army is yours. They have not heard you yet.”
Luna’s right hand traced one small ghost-line through the air. “Mila. I—I don’t—I’m not good at—”
“You are not required to be good at it.” His voice was steady. “You are required to do it.”
She looked at the ring.
She looked at the army.
Four thousand soldiers in disciplined squares, four Banners under one composite mark, every shoulder bearing an emblem chosen by men and women who had reasons of their own for choosing it. Wolves and bronze sunbursts and sheaves of arrows.
And one Banner whose emblem was a chain, broken at the link, drawn in dark iron against pale stone.
Luna’s eyes stayed on it a fraction longer than the others.
“Right,” she said. Her voice had gone bright and small at once. “Right. Okay.”
She took the ring and slid it onto her right index finger.
If I think about this, she thought, I am going to fail.
So she did not think.
She walked forward three paces. Stopped. The mantle settled around her shoulders. The ring on her finger hummed quietly, waiting.
She opened her mouth.
“Hi. Um. Hello. I’m—Luna. Lunaris.”
The ring carried it. Cleanly, evenly, all the way to the back of the formation, and her stutter went with it. She heard her own voice echo across the gravel and almost stopped right there.
She did not stop.
“Right,” she said. “You—you know that. Sorry. Um.” Her right hand made a small movement, and she stilled it. “I’m not going to give a speech. I don’t know how. So I’m just going to tell you what I know, and then you can tell me if you want to come.”
Silence.
She made herself keep going.
“I was already at the wall.” Her jaw set. “We went to talk. The tower’s a Twir outpost, corrupted by a man called Veranthos, and there are people in there who took it for their guild. The Necromancers.”
A murmur ran through the lines.
“I tried to talk to them. I asked them to integrate. I offered everything our Queen authorized me to offer. Land rights. Compensation. Full guild status under the Crown.” Her voice steadied as she got into the truth of it. “They laughed at me.”
The murmur stopped.
“And then they told me what they were planning.” She looked along the lines. “They’re going to push the miasma north. Past the river. Past the valley.” Her voice hardened. “All the way to Altandai.”
The silence had changed.
“They want the magic academy. They want every road. Every farm. Every village in between. They want the whole corridor, dead. A leveling ground. That’s the word they used.”
“I don’t know if you’ve seen what miasma does,” Luna said, and her voice cracked, and she let it crack. “The grass dies first. Then the trees. Then the soil itself. Nothing grows. Nothing lives. It just—stretches. And it eats. And it doesn’t stop unless someone makes it stop.”
She drew breath.
“We tried. The five of us. We failed. I’m not—” Her voice was very small. “I’m not asking you to fight for the Queen. She would ask, and you would go, and I respect that, but I’m not her. I don’t know how to be her. I’m asking—”
Her right hand traced one small ghost-line.
“I’m asking you to come with me. Because we have a problem, and I think we can solve it together. And I don’t want to do it alone anymore.”
She stopped.
She had nothing else.
“That’s all I have,” she said. “I’m sorry. If you—”
The Broken Chain banner roared. It came up out of them like something that had been waiting years to come up. Not a tactical cheer. The Wolf Doan caught it. Then the Sunburst. Then the Sheaf of Arrows.
Luna did not move.
She stood still, with her hand on the ring and the mantle around her shoulders and her eyes wet, and somewhere on the bank Lola, watching from upstream, was almost certainly making a note.
She did not see Mila beside her tilt his head, just slightly, in something that was almost a bow.
“LUNY!”
Luna nearly tripped.
Katherine came across the gravel like a thrown stone, greatsword on her back, grin on her face that could have been seen from the ships, and the shoulder-clap that arrived was hard enough to rock the mantle off Luna’s shoulder by an inch.
“Cute knight! Big speech! Very good!”
“Kath, I—”
But Katherine was already turning. She did not have a Ring of Shouting. She did not need one.
“YOU LISTEN!” she bellowed at the army, and the army listened, because it would have been idiotic not to. “Small cute Luny, big BIG commander now! I tell you—she brave! She kind! She not lie! She say bad people want take Altandai, want take homes—WE NOT ALLOW!”
Four thousand voices: “NOT ALLOW!”
“BIGGER!”
“NOT ALLOW!”
“GOOD! We march! We cut! We WIN! For Luny! For Queen! For HOMES!” The roar that came back was loud enough that Luna felt it in her chest. Katherine turned back to her, beaming. “Good speech I make, yes?”
“...Yes.”
“Cute small commander. Cute big day.”
“Thanks, Kath.”
“Welcome.” Luna almost let herself laugh. It almost came out. She blinked instead, twice, and the wet at the edges of her eyes did not embarrass her, because Katherine would not have noticed it if it had, and because—
She blinked again. There was an icon over Katherine. Streaming. “...Kath.”
“Yes!”
“Are you streaming this?”
“Of course! Big moment!”
“You’re—” Luna’s voice did a thing. “You’re streaming this?”
“All Earth must see! Cute Luny first commander speech! Big roar! Stupid face Korven not know yet, but soon!”
Boots on gravel behind her, and Lisa and Ian and Fty came up around them, and Lisa was grinning, and Ian’s ears were red, and Fty was watching Luna. “Lola asked her to,” Lisa said.
Luna stared at her.
“I tell something,” Katherine said, with the cheerful confidence of a woman about to share excellent news, “I cannot wait! We test sword on stupid face Korven. Very good face for cutting. Very satisfying face.”
“Kath—”
“Big stupid face. Bigger than helmet. Helmet not fit. Probably why he angry.” Ian laughed and Luna closed her eyes.
When she opened them, Mila had stepped up beside her, helmet in hand. The grim mouth was steady. “Lady Lunaris.” His voice was formal. “The army is ready. We move when you order it.”
Luna’s right hand traced one small ghost-line through the air. She let it, and nodded once. “Then we move,” she said.
—
The Doan moved.
The miasma’s edge was a smudge on the southern horizon.
Fty fell out of the column without ceremony. Luna turned. He had stopped on the grass, staff planted, watching the support file move past him toward the rear. He caught her looking and inclined his head.
“I’m shifting back,” he said. “Support Banner. The ward they’ve drilled needs an anchor at this scale.”
“You can do that?”
“At this scale, with the Banner backing me, yes. Until we’re under the wall. After that—” his mouth thinned, “—the potions take over, and I save what I have for the siege.”
“Okay.”
“Lunaris.”
“You did well.” His voice was flat in a way that meant the opposite. “On the gravel.”
Luna’s right hand traced a small ghost-line. She made it stop. “Thanks, Fty.”
He nodded once and was already walking back along the column, staff tapping the dead grass with the rhythm of a man who did not waste motion.
A minute later, the air changed.
A faint shimmer over the column, a green tinge to the gray, a thin shell that ran the entire length of the formation and curved over the top of every soldier’s head. Luna felt it pass across her skin like a hug from Lisa.
[Miasma field negated by allied ward]
“Mass ward,” Mila said, beside her, in the steady tone he used for things that he had calculated and found acceptable. “Support Banner. Over hundred healers and ward-mages, anchored on Fty. We trained for situation like this, but we can’t fight long like this. We need those support members on standard duty.”
Luna looked back along the column. The shimmer held. “How long can they hold it?”
“Until we are under the wall. Possibly longer.” His nodded. “The potions begin when the siege does. Every soldier has one. Four hours from the moment they drink. We do not exceed that window. They will drink on your order, Lady Lunaris. Through me.”
“...Right.”
The mantle settled around her shoulders.
The column marched.
The first contact came forty minutes in.
A scout file came back along the column at a half-run, the Sergeant peeling off to report to Mila. Luna caught: cursed necromancers, five of them, ridge two hundred meters southeast, attended undead in formation.
Mila listened without interrupting. When the Sergeant finished, Mila turned to Luna. “Lady Lunaris.”
“Yes.”
“Five Cursed Necromancers. Each commanding approximately twenty to thirty wild undead. They are positioned on a ridge that overlooks our line of march. They will not stop us. They are intended to slow us.”
“Slow us how?”
“By forcing engagement. We march past, they harass our flank. We turn to engage, we lose time. Either way Korven gets more minutes to prepare the wall. Two options.”
Luna’s hand had gone still.
“First option. The Wolf Doan First Banner advances at speed. They take the ridge in a frontal assault. The necromancers are at our tier. They die. We continue. Cost: estimated forty to sixty soldiers.”
She did not move.
“Second option. The Sheaf of Arrows skirmishers go wide, harass the necromancers from range, force them off the ridge. We continue past without engaging. They will follow. They will harass our flank for another hour. Cost: time. Estimated twenty extra minutes to the wall. No casualties.”
He waited.
Luna’s mouth had gone dry. She was aware that Lola was probably watching this in real time. She was aware that the older generals—the ones Mila had told her about, the ones who would call her soft—would call this the wrong choice.
She was aware that forty to sixty soldiers were forty to sixty people who had marched today because she had asked them to. “Second option,” she said.
“Lady Lunaris.” He turned and gave the order to the aide on his left, and the aide moved off down the column at a fast walk, and Luna watched him go and felt her right hand start to trace a ghost-line and let it.
“Mila.”
“My lady.”
“Is that—” she paused. Made herself ask it. “Is that the wrong call?”
He considered her for a long moment. “It is a call,” he said finally. “The army that returns at four thousand is a Doan. The army that returns at three thousand nine hundred and forty for twenty saved minutes is a number I would have to explain to families.” He let out a sigh. “I prefer your number, but sometimes twenty minutes save more than sixty lives. I don’t believe it is today, but I as a General I must offer that choice.”
Luna nodded once.
She could not trust her voice for a moment, so she did not use it.
The skirmishers went wide. Forty minutes later, Luna saw the necromancers on the southern ridge, harrying the column’s flank from a distance, throwing what they had and missing more than they hit. The Sheaf of Arrows kept pace alongside, picking off whichever of the dead got close enough to matter.
It was, Luna realized, exactly what Mila had said it would be. A tax. Twenty extra minutes and an annoyance. Nobody died.
The column kept marching.
The ward held.
Two hours later they cleared the last ridge, and the tower came into view.
Luna stopped.
Beside her, Mila stopped. Katherine stopped, and even Katherine said nothing for a second. The wall was not the wall Luna had seen three days ago.
The crenellations were lined with skeletons, three deep, four deep in some places, weapons visible against the gray sky. Above and behind them, ranged along the inner walkway and the keep’s tower, were the Death Knights, so many that Luna’s eyes refused to finish, because every time she tried, she saw another one moving along the wall.
And behind them, the players. Korven’s guild, full strength. Mages. Archers. Casters.
“...Oh,” Luna said.
Mila said nothing.
“Doan-Commander,” Mila said quietly, without turning. “Halt the column. Form up the line at six hundred meters. First Banner forward, Second Banner ranged behind, skirmishers wide on the left flank, support Banner center-rear with Fty.”
“Sir.”
The order moved down the column at speed. Mila turned to Luna. “Lady Lunaris.”
“Yes.”
“It is more than the briefing estimated.”
“...Yes.”
He looked at her. “Your call still holds. We are at the wall. The window opens when you give the order.”
Luna’s right hand traced a small ghost-line. She made it stop. “Form up,” she said. “I’m going to talk to him first.”
—
The army formed up.
Six hundred meters from the wall, the Doan settled into the line Mila had ordered. Luna stood at the front of the line with Katherine at her shoulder. “Big stupid face,” Katherine said cheerfully, squinting at the wall. “I see him. On gate. Still big. Still stupid.”
“Kath.”
“Yes!”
“You don’t have to come.”
Katherine looked at her with the genuine puzzlement of a woman who had not understood the sentence. “What?”
“To the gate. With me. You don’t have to.”
“...Why I not come?”
“Because they might shoot at us.”
Katherine considered this for approximately half a second. “GOOD,” she said. “Best day.”
“Kath—”
“Cute Luny. Listen.” Katherine clapped her on the shoulder, hard enough that Luna swayed and the mantle flared. “I Glory Seeker. This my favorite thing. I walk to wall with brave queen-knight, big stupid face shoot at us, we run back, army cut him down. Very good day. Best stream.”
“You’re still streaming?”
“Of course.”
“Kath, this is dangerous, you should—”
“Cute commander.” Katherine’s grin was pure Katherine, a thing made entirely of teeth and certainty. “We go now, yes?”
Luna looked at her. “...Okay,” she said finally. “We go.”
“Excellent! Big speech, big walk, big day! Forward!”
They walked.
Six hundred meters of dead grass, and Luna felt every one of them. Behind her, the army held position. Ahead, the wall was a dark cliff topped by an army of its own.
Two hundred meters out, Luna stopped.
The ring hummed against her skin.
She looked up.
“Korven.”
The ring carried her voice across the dead field, clean and even, and the wall went very quiet.
“You’ve got one chance.”
Korven’s hand was on the hilt of the greatsword slung at his back. His face did not move.
“Walk away,” Luna said. “Take your guild and leave Rimebreak territory. The Crown will not pursue you. The miasma threat will be dealt with, and you will have no part in it, and you will keep your gear.” Her voice steadied. She was almost surprised by it. “That is the offer. There is no second offer.”
Korven looked at her for a long moment.
Then he laughed.
“This is OUR land,” Korven called back, and his voice carried too, some kind of amplification of his own. “We took this tower. We mapped this corridor. We made the deal with Veranthos. We built this.” His hand tightened on the greatsword. “And you walk up here with your toy army and tell us to leave. You. The queen’s pet.”
“Korven—”
“We will NOT be intimidated by foreign invaders!”
The wall roared.
Korven’s free hand came up, and Luna had time to see it, had time to register the gesture, had time to understand exactly what it meant—
“FIRE!”
“RUN!” Katherine bellowed.
They ran.
The first volley came down behind them, arrows, spells, lances of dark energy, a chaos of incoming that hit the dead grass where Luna had been standing a moment earlier and turned the soil into smoke. Luna ran. Katherine ran beside her, somehow keeping pace despite the greatsword and the plate, and Luna heard her laughing.
The second volley hit closer.
Katherine’s aura snapped on without a verbal cue, a red flame erupting from her armor, mantling her shoulders, the heat radiating outward, and an arrow that should have caught Luna in the back hit Katherine’s pauldron and skipped off the burning red into the grass.
“FAST, LUNY! FASTER!”
“I’M GOING!”
She was going. She was going as fast as she could. Four hundred meters of dead grass to cover, and the volleys getting better. She was fast, no she was fast, she had spent the entire time believing that one day she would be the fastest, and today was not that day.
The third volley came down.
Lisa’s fire intercepted it.
Six, seven, eight fireballs, arcing up from the army’s line in coordinated trajectories, meeting the incoming spells and arrows in a pattern that looked too clean to be improvised, and the volley detonated in mid-air in a series of bright orange blossoms that rained ash onto the grass.
Luna did not have time to process it.
The fourth volley came.
Lisa caught that one too. Half of it. The other half kept coming, and Katherine was already pivoting, her greatsword sweeping up in a vertical arc that batted three arrows into the dirt and her aura flaring outward and a spell hitting her chestplate and skipping off and—
Katherine grunted.
A spell had gotten through. Katherine’s aura was paying for the others, and one had landed. “KATH—”
“GO, LUNY!”
The fifth volley came.
It did not reach them.
The Wolf Banner had advanced. A polearm wall, fifty meters forward of where Luna had left them, plate gleaming gray under the dome’s shimmer, and as Luna and Katherine reached it the line opened; a single file’s worth of space splitting in two and then closing behind them, the soldiers stepping back into formation.
Luna stumbled.
A hand caught her elbow.
“Steady, Lady Lunaris.”
Mila.
He had moved up to the line. Helmet on now, visor open, his three aides at his shoulders, the Doan-Commander beside him. His face was as calm as it had been on the gravel.
“Kath—” Luna gasped. “Katherine, she got hit—”
“Of course I fine!” Katherine said brightly, and then winced when the healer prodded the dent. “Mostly fine. Big stupid face has good archer. Excellent day. Now we cut him.”
Luna stared at her. She looked back, at the field she had just crossed, at the wall.
She looked down.
Her hands were shaking.
Her right hand was shaking, and her left hand was shaking, and her legs were shaking, and her chest was heaving.
She blinked, twice. Did not let it become anything more than that.
Mila was watching her. He gave her one second. Then another. Then his voice came, clipped and clean, exactly the way it had on the gravel. “Lady Lunaris. First option. We close the distance immediately. Wolf Banner advances under the ward, the Second Banner provides covering fire, we engage at the wall. Cost: significant. The wall is held in depth. We will take losses on approach.”
“Right.”
“Second option. We hold position. We let them come to us. The organized undead at the tower base are already advancing for the gate for some reason. We let them reach our line, we break them in formation, and we use the wall’s overcommitment against them.”
“Mm.”
“Third option. We open with the mage Columns. Six Columns of fire mages. Coordinated volleys. We bombard the wall, thin the skeletons and Death Knights before either side commits, and shape the engagement before it starts.”
Luna’s right hand traced a small ghost-line through the air.
She did not stop it.
She thought about Korven on the wall. Korven laughing. Korven calling her the cave girl. Korven giving the order to fire on her under a flag of negotiation, with Katherine streaming, with the people watching, with Lola and Charlie watching.
Korven had decided that diplomacy was a weakness to exploit. Korven had decided just now that he could shoot at her under parley because she was the cave girl and the cave girl had run.
Luna was tired of being the cave girl.
“Third option,” she said.
“That will be the choice.” He turned. The Doan-Commander was already moving. The order was already going down the line, every File-Sergeant relaying it to the next, and Luna heard it ripple back through the formation like a wind through grass.
“Potions,” Mila said. “On my mark. My lady. The clock starts now. Four hours.” He turned to face the Doan, and his voice carried.
“DRINK.”
Four thousand soldiers drank, the ward shimmered overhead.
Mila turned back to the wall. “Second Banner,” he called, and his voice had gone hard. “Mage Columns. By Lieutenant. Standard volley pattern. Wall as primary target.”
The Lieutenants down the line acknowledged.
“On my mark.”
The mage Columns’ staves came up in unison. Six Columns. Two hundred and fifty mages each. Fifteen hundred staves rising into the gray air at once, fire kindling at every tip in a slow, coordinated bloom of orange light, and the wall went very quiet because the wall had finally seen what was about to happen.
Luna’s right hand traced one small ghost-line.
She let it.
Mila glanced at her. One last check.
She nodded.
“FIRE!”
Fifteen hundred fireballs left the line.