A Practical Guide to Evil

Yet as the stink of blood and shit filled my nostrils, as the death cries of men and horses joined in a strange elegy, my eyes stayed on the horizon. The Order had not pursued the fleeing horsemen, Talbot had known that it was a fool’s errand and it’d put us as risk of running into an enemy trap. The orders given had instead been to send away the few prisoners taken, execute the dying and change mounts in anticipation of another ride. It seemed, though that there would be no need to send my knights into another melee. Marshal Nim, from her perch, had decided she did not like the growing shape of the battle. Too many risks, especially now that her horse had routed in the dark and the Army of Callow’s reinforcements were marching unhindered.

If my vanguard tried to take her fortifications in the plains with the support of the Order, she might face an outright defeat here. Her forces were still split and I was the one with the cavalry advantage now. So the Black Knight did the smart thing, the prudent thing. What the Legion doctrine she’d helped write would have advised: she retreated.

The assault on Sepulchral’s soldiers in the heights was called off and the Seventh prudently moved to reinforce the two legions already gathering to face my army by the trench. Marshal Nim wouldn’t attack, though, and neither would I. Taking trenches, even only half-finished ones, would be messy. Too risky, given the exhaustion of our armies and the lack of coordination that came from fighting in the dark. Her officers were better than mine, sure, but she wasn’t going to bet on the same army that’d slugged it out with the Dead King for years being the army to break. When the going got rough and the fighting became about who had the iron to pull through? There was no beating the Army of Callow.

So instead of a battle, what we were going to get was two armies standing in battle array half a mile from each other in the dark for a few hours before both retreated. I pulled off my helmet, shaking free my wet hair. I wasn’t great with a lance, but I’d gotten in close with my sword after sowing further panic in the enemy with Night. There was blood on my armour that wasn’t mine. I looked up at the starry sky, breathing out slowly.

We’d made it through one more night.

Aisha had thought that following Juniper’s plan successfully would shake her out of… whatever this was, but the following morning I saw differently. I’d taken it as a good sign that she had headed out towards the frontlines, but it wasn’t to our fortifications she went. She didn’t go to inspect the trenches or the forts. Instead Juniper had headed further west, near the half-road that it would take us days to build all the way to – about six, Pickler believed, at our current pace. I found my marshal’s escort milling about uneasily on the valley floor while Juniper herself stood alone beneath a tall sycamore tree. It didn’t give much shade, its branches skeletal and bare of all leaves.

The Hellhound was one of the tallest orcs I’d met, taller than any in the Army of Callow save Hakram, and she’d always had a presence. Even as a cadet, the broad shoulders and ramrod straight way she stood had made the military in her visible to even a casual glance. I tended to have a hard time placing the age of orcs that were between their twenties and forties – before or after, the signs were pretty distinctive – but I’d known Juniper for years. Seen her grow as I grew, the lines of her broad face harden and her fangs thicken. Her eyes, black like most orcs’, were deeper set than when we’d first met. The skin around had grown greyer, too.

Yet in all these years I’d never really seen her… sag like this. It was a little subtle, could have been taken as just leaning against the tree in someone like Indrani, but to someone who knew her it was plain. Her shoulders were hunched, her expression exhausted. She didn’t greet me after I limped to her side, eyes still on the growing lines of fortifications in the distance. Dawn had passed an hour ago, both the Legions and my army were back to work in the cool morning air.

“There are better places to take it in,” I tried. “If we go near the foot of the hills to the east, we can make out the Aksum camp as well.”

She did not answer. I waited, at a loss. Juniper had never been one to swallow her feelings, so these long silences she’d taken to hiding in had me on the back foot.

“I recognized the plan,” the Hellhound finally said.

“You should,” I said, “it was yours. And it worked.”

Not my subtlest of approaches but sometimes blunt was the way to go. A surprisingly large amount of the time, really. Yet instead of what I’d been looking for, her shoulders further hunched.

“It wasn’t,” she roughly replied.

“Juniper, we literally cribbed your notes,” I flatly said.

Finally she turned to me, jaw clenched tight and eyes hard.

“You took my read of the situation and you made it yours,” the Marshal of Callow evenly said, the growl kept low in her throat. “I predicted some decisions Marshal Nim might make, like half our general staff could have had they been asked. You took those guesses and made them into a functional battle plan.”

My fingers clenched but I forced myself to stay calm. It was like she was trying to be obtuse.

“Using the Order was-”

“I wouldn’t have used the Order, Catherine,” Juniper angrily said. “I wouldn’t have fought at all. I would have moved half the army closer to the trenches so that the Black Knight would be forced to do the same and it became too much of a risk for her to attack Sepulchral.”

I blinked, then hid my surprise.

“That would also have worked,” I pointed out.

“Your solution was better,” she growled. “You won the same prize, forcing her to back off from Sepulchral, but the Order’s ambush cost her half her horse as well. If I had given you advice, if you had taken it, it would have been an inferior result.”

I bit on my tongue before I could tell her it would still have been a good one, knowing she’d take it as a slap in the face.

“If you hadn’t predicted Marshal Nim was going to attack none of it would have been possible,” I said instead.

“General Zola believed she would as well,” Juniper said. “You simply never asked her, because you insist on pretending I am something I’m not.”

I grit my teeth. Why was she insisting on embracing the worst possible slant for everything? Fuck, she’d been outplayed by the Black Knight only twice – when had she become so fragile?

“And what would that be?” I bit out.

“A better commander than you,” the Hellhound gravelled. “Someone whose advice you should be taking.”

“That’s-”

I almost said ridiculous before biting down on it. Calling her a fool wasn’t going to achieve anything.

“- the truth,” Juniper said. “When have I ever won a victory, save when you were dragging me along?”

“You beat back Malanza at the Camps,” I said.

“I played for time until you could return,” she replied, “and would have lost if you had not. It’s been like that since the start. Three Hills was your plan. Marchford, Five Armies and One, Dormer – all the way to the Tenth Crusade. And when I did hold the command with none above me, I almost broke the Army of Callow in Iserre.”

“I handle the Named part of those plans,” I said. “The military parts were yours, Juniper. In almost all those battles, I went down in the ranks and fought. Someone needed to actually command the army and that’s always been you.”

“You don’t need a Marshal for that,” Juniper said. “You need a general, and you have plenty already.”

“I don’t agree with that in the slightest,” I harshly said. “And you’re forgetting who built this damned army in the first place, Hellhound. It sure as Hells wasn’t me.”

“Don’t you see how senseless it is?” Juniper miserably said. “We had a single draw when we were kids and it’s all come from that. Every office, every honour, every title. I am a child in marshal’s stripes facing a real marshal of Praes. It can only go one way.”

There was nothing I could say, I dimly realized. We could be at this all day, I could have the silvermost tongue in Creation or the finest rhetoric of the Free Cities and it wouldn’t move her an inch. She’d swallowed the lie, let it settle in her guts. Words wouldn’t fix this. Fuck, I wasn’t sure I could. My eye strayed to the sycamore, the shifting lay of its shade baring what I had missed: it was dead, inside. Through cracks I could see it had gone hollow, dead at the heart and the limbs simply too slow to have caught up to the truth. When I looked at Juniper she did not meet my eye.

“I will refuse a resignation if you offer it,” I curtly said.

I got back on my horse and left her to her tree.

The bruising night battle had changed the balance of power in the valley.

We’d shown we had teeth and the Army of Callow had managed to recover from the exhausting overnight forced march that’d won us Kala Fortress. The Black Knight wasn’t as sure she could take us on a field now. So both my army and the Black Knight’s avoided further fighting, in the valley at least. Zola ordered a permanent night watch on the Legions in case they made another move on Sepulchral’s vanguard, but like us Marshal Nim was focusing elsewhere: the valley between the hills of Moule and Kala had become a race of fortifications. I sent Archer and Huntress out to slow them as I had yesterday, hitting them at different places in the line, but even so their advantage in sapper numbers told.

They caught up to my own sappers and then began to overtake us, though not by too large a margin. Across the valley mirrored works were emerging: two lines of trenches facing each other, with palisades behind them. East to west, the both of us hurrying towards the half-road. We even took the same precautions, pulled from the same doctrine. To prevent a night attack overwhelming our positions, we raised walled camps behind our walls where we could keep protective garrisons.

It was in Moule Hills that the fighting continued. I needed all my sappers down in the valley working on the siege works, which meant I’d have to rely on regulars to actually head out into the hills and cut wood. Compared to the goblin skirmishers from that would be shaken loose to harass us, my legionaries would be at a distinct disadvantage. A protective screen had to be sent out, so I sent for the two I believed to be the right people for the job. Lord Razin Tanja and Lady Aquiline Osena came into my tent an hour past dawn, but it was not an elaborate plan I gave them.

“Kala Hills,” I said, pointing at the map. “If it’s an enemy and it’s in it, I want it dead. Keep them off our woodcutters.”

“The plan?” Razin politely asked.

“Pick your men, pick your pace, pick your battles,” I shrugged. “Those hills are yours.”

Aquiline grinned.

“You have us an honour war, Black Queen,” she said, sounding delighted.

“Honour can bite my ass,” I said. “Bring me scalps, Osena.”

The look on her face was somewhere between scandalized and gleeful, which actually did wonders for my mood. At least the lordlings could be counted on not to fall apart, I thought as I sent them out of the tent. By afternoon I had my first reports: the Dominion force was taking to the task with fervent enthusiasm, the Malaga contingent in particular. Fighting the Champion’s Blood in the Alavan hills for centuries had ensured they were well versed at fighting in this sort of terrain. It was a bloody, tribal fight just the way the goblins and the Levantines liked them. Razin himself came back near Afternoon Bell with a fresh scar and a pleased look on his face, just in time for Vivienne to ambush me as I got a cup of wine in him before sending him off to a healer.

“The commander of Sepulchral’s force sent us a rider,” she said, briskly entering the tent. “They want to meet.”

“Finally,” I grunted. “You got a name for me?”

“Isoba Mirembe,” Vivienne said.

I let out a low whistle.

“Sepulchral’s heir,” I told a confused Razin. “Her grand-nephew.”

“Does she have no closer relatives?” he asked, sounding surprised.

“It used to be her nephew, but we killed him at the Folly,” I said. “They have a time for me, Vivienne?”

“Half-past Afternoon Bell,” she said. “South of Moule Hills.”

I grimaced. Would have to saddle up soon, then. And since the young man – he was nineteen, I vaguely recalled, or thereabouts – was technically heir to both Askum and her claim on the Tower I’d have to bring enough high-ranking people it wasn’t an insult. There weren’t really many I could spare, though. Then I shot a considering look at Razin, who was noble.

“Finish that cup, lordling,” I said. “And get that wound looked at. We’re going for a ride.”

Might as well pick up the other kids, I thought. Sapan would be pissy at leaving Masego’s side – or more realistically his grimoires – but it would be good for her and Arthur to get a proper look at Wasteland high nobility. Besides, even though I didn’t believe the call to be a trap that hardly meant I trusted the Mirembe. Two more Named would be a useful precaution. Razin Tanja set down his empty cup on my carved table, standing up, and that was the sound of us getting a move on.

Isoba Mirembe looked a lot like I’d expected Sargon Sahelian to. Tall and with slender muscles, his face a perfect symmetry of high cheekbones under cold golden eyes. He was beautiful, but almost more like a statue than a man. It reminded me uncomfortably of the Exiled Prince, who might as well have been cut out of marble. This one, though, did not have a Name. How many potions and spells had it taken for his dark skin not to have the slightest of imperfections on it? The armour he wore was practical, at least, if incrusted with enough jewels to arm an entire company of legionaries. My escort of knights was a match in numbers for his retinue, but instead of the handful of nobles he’d brought I instead had two Named and a ruler of the Blood.

“Black Queen, I greet you in the name of Dread Empress Sepulchral,” Isoba said, breaking the silence, “and give you her thanks for your intervention last night.”

“The Black Queen greets her back,” I drily said. “You know who I am. With me ride Lord Razin Tanja of the Grim Binder’s Blood, the Apprentice and the Squire. And, of course, twenty of the same knights that ran down the Legion horse last night.”

The last part was a break in manners, but I regretted it not the slightest when I saw the backs of my knights straighten. They’d earned the praise, as far as I was concerned. Isoba introduced only the nobles he’d brought, each a ruling lord or lady in their own right. He’d not skimped on the rank of those he brought, at least, which was a good sign. With that out of the way, we got to business.

“A truce between our forces would be only natural,” Isoba suggested. “Neither Aksum nor the true empress have any quarrel with the Grand Alliance.”

“A truce is a start,” I said, “but it’s just delaying the trouble. We need to strike at the Black Knight together.”

“My aunt would welcome the official backing of the Grand Alliance as ruler of Praes,” Isoba easily replied, smiling without a speck of joy. “On such terms an alliance could be made.”

“You’re not getting that,” I bluntly said. “And you lending a hand to the business of keeping your hides from being tanned is hardly worth that asking price. Poorly bargained.”

“Why would we pay for what you offer freely?” the young man laughed. “It is in your interest to keep our force from being overwhelmed, lest you find yourself fighting the Legions alone.”

“You’re standing on quicksand, Mirembe,” I warned. “I’m not going to keep pulling you out of the fire if you’re of no use to me. Better then to let the Black Knight bloody her forces killing you all.”

That got his attention.

“Bluster,” he dismissed, but his eyes had sharpened.

I sighed. There was no point to this if he had no grasp on the precarity of his situation.

“This is why children shouldn’t be sent to negotiate,” I said. “You’ve wasted my time.”

He looked like I’d slapped him, which to be fair I pretty much had. His gaggle of nobles were studying him for a hint of his thoughts – or of weakness – but he wasn’t going to walk back his words after I’d insulted him. We’d have this talk again after Marshal Nim put some proper fear in his belly, or she killed them all. Either way, it was no trouble of mine. So long as the vanguard had a proper standing fight instead of being slaughtered half asleep, I figured they could cost the Legions at least two thousand men going down. It’d make the Black Knight’s force somewhat more manageable.

“Back to camp,” I told my people, pulling at Zombie’s reins.

My eye found that Razin, though, was looking at the other young man with an odd look on his face.

“Since I was a child I have been told of the cunning of the Praesi high lords,” the Lord of Malaga said. “And this is the truth of your blood? This is a bitter disappointment.”

“What would a savage from the edge of the world know of anything?” Isoba mocked. “The Mirembe could wipe out your misbegotten bloodline as easy as-”

“I have been on that horse, once upon a time,” Razin said, eyeing the other lord. “So I am not without sympathy for your position, for it is not pleasant. Yet even a savage from the edge of the world knew it was better to swallow pride than perish like a fool. Where is the cunning and power that your people so often boast of? All I see is an arrogant child who would kill himself and all with him out of wounded pride.”

Eyes, amber and dark, studied them both coolly. The nobles were listening.

“You know nothing,” Isoba hissed. “Either of cunning or death. If the Legions come, they will be cowed.”

“If the Legions come, you will die,” Razin slowly said, as if speaking to a half-wit. “I am Blood, Isoba Mirembe. I understand honour, the pride of defiance. But that pride must be rooted in something more than fantasy, else you have saddled a dead horse. When the Black Knight comes you will be slaughtered to the last, and you are breaking off talks with the sole woman who can prevent this. This is senseless.”

Huh. Isoba was looking at him like he wanted to skin him alive and boil him. Shit, now I was almost hoping the heir to Aksum would live just so he’d have to keep remembering that little speech. The nobles had watched it all, and I saw now that looks were being traded. They had come to a decision.

“It was not known to us that Marshal Nim had become the Black Knight,” one of them idly said. “The situation has changed. Named are not to be underestimated.”

“Perhaps talks should be had, after all,” another said, smiling pleasantly.

Neither were looking at us. All of them, amber-eyed vultures, were looking at Isoba Mirembe. I saw it sink in, the truth that if he did not bargain Sepulchral would have another heir by nightfall. And it was hard pill to swallow, but still better than dying, so he turned to us with a mild smile and talks began anew. I sent Razin a fond look. Sat in that horse before, had he? Sarcella had not been so long ago, and still it felt like a lifetime. What did the man I was looking at now have to do with the boy I’d fought in that city?

So very little.

Isoba Mirembe would not concede to joining us in battle unless his position was assailed, and on that the nobles seemed to back him. Orders from Sepulchral herself, I suspected. We did strike a bargain, though: he would harass the Legions from behind, slowing their works, and in return I promised to intervene of the Black Knight tried to wipe him out again. It wasn’t what I’d wanted from him, but it was still better than them staying holed up in Moule Hills twiddling their thumbs. The second day rose to much the same arrangements as the first: in the valley walls raced east, while in the hills trees fell and blood spilled.

It was all ambushes and raids in there, not a single standing fight to be found. War parties came back with trophies or never at all. The Dominion was better up close and with javelins, it became clear from casualty reports, but the Legion skirmishers were hardened veterans with full stocks of goblin munitions. We pushed them back far north by afternoon, but it led the Levantines into a series of vicious ambushes on mined grounds that forced them into full retreat. Aquiline captured a prisoner that shed light on the turnabout: the Legions had sent for volunteers from Risas, the town by the lake, so that they might have native guides in the hills. The losses earlier in the day had been bait for the trap.

In the valley the Legions were still ahead of us, but Isoba had been true to his word: he sent out his horse to harass the enemy. Quick hit-and-run attacks on companies between Marshal Nim’s camp and the walls, burning a few carts and killing a few isolated tenths. He retreated immediately when the Legions sent out their own cavalry, returning to the safety of the camp. The Black Knight hadn’t made it a priority to bottle up the Askum troops before, but that changed with them making it clear they were willing to go on the attack. Sappers were pulled from the valley to begin raising a ring of forts near the foot of the hills where Isoba was encamped.

Good, it’d slow the Legions where it mattered.

On the third day, the situation in the valley and hills stabilized. In Kala Hills, the chastened Levantines established a cautious stalemate slightly to the north of the lines of fortifications. It left the greater part of the Kala Hills and its wooden bounty in Legion hands, but the Aquiline had sent her slayers to secure a few hidden glades to the east that kept us sufficiently provisioned in wood. Considering the disparity in numbers, I was more than satisfied with the performance of the Dominion forces and made that plain to both lordlings. It was in the valley that we pulled slightly ahead, our wall and trench passing the Black Knight’s. The Legions had carts full of what I believed to be siege engines brought to the front, though, and I ordered the same of my men.

No battle ensued, though. When trouble came it came from elsewhere. Scribe found me near Afternoon Bell and led me to a tent where two men were bound and gagged under guard.

“Who am I looking at?” I asked.

“Trusted servants of Lord Sokoro Abara,” Eudokia said. “I’ve been keeping an eye on him. They were sent to take the long way around Moule Hills and get in touch with Marshal Nim. Some information would be passed as a gesture of goodwill, ties established.”

Well, he hadn’t struck me as a particularly trustworthy man. Hadn’t expected him to try to play both sides so quick, though.

“What kind of information?” I asked.

“Minor,” Scribe said. “Troop numbers, camp gossip.”

Mhm. So nothing too drastic. He’d wanted to establish credentials, not outright jump ship. Not yet.

“He’s still got his half-brother in a cell?” I asked.

Scribe nodded.

“Take him out,” I decided. “Stash him somewhere in our camp.”

“And these two?”

I eyed them.

“Put their heads on his bed,” I said. “With a written note: no second chances.”

That should remind him in whose hands his leash was. It better, I had plans for tomorrow and wanted no distraction from them.

On the fourth day, I decided it was time to try to kill Marshal Nim.

Not here and now, unfortunately. I was unlikely to succeed with a nascent pattern of three nudging coincidence in her favour. But I could, at least, solidify that pattern. The veil over that knife was to be the Army of Callow going on the offensive: we were only two days away from our trench reaching the road, half the valley’s length already fortified, so the time had come to test the enemy’s defences. The Legions had mounted their siege engines, as had the Army of Callow, but neither side had begun firing. We’d not wanted to begin that slugging match too early. Until now.

My ballistae began hammering at the enemy palisade at the turn of Morning Bell. Within eighty heartbeats, the enemy returned fire.

They had us beat in numbers for traditional Legion siege weapons like ballistae and scorpions, but by doctrine a legion didn’t usually carry trebuchets unless an actual siege was planned. That gave us an edge in range and power with the three we had, but as the sky filled with stones I saw the margin was much thinner than I would have liked. On both sides mages had been brought to the fore, using shields to prop up our palisades so they wouldn’t break under hits, but the enemy’s superior volume of fire was hammering harder at us. We had fewer mages, too. I had an answer to that, fortunately: Archer and the Silver Huntress began using their proper bows.

Javelin-sized arrows began killing the siege crews and breaking the engines, our own ballista fire forcing their mage lines to stay and protect the palisades instead of covering them. The Black Knight had other mages to call on, though, and they intervened before my Named could do too much damage. A whirling wind formed over the enemy position and I grimaced. That looked simple and easy to maintain, which was bad, but worse was that neither my archer Named could land an arrow through that. Magic like shields they had arrows that could go through, but not wind. And it was exactly that, just magically induced.

Time to gamble, then. This might turn around on us if we didn’t. I gave the order and the signals went up. In the Kala Hills to the east, through a path the Levantines had found, a strike force of a thousand emerged past the enemy defence line. There was a fort in the way, the Legions had known of the path’s existence, but suddenly the wind in the sky stopped whirling and instead formed into a great spear. It hammered down into the fort, killing an entire company in a moment as Hierophant reminded everyone on the field why people avoided fighting mage Named of his calibre.

The legionaries rushed past the wreckage, heading straight for the enemy engines with two silhouettes at their head: Squire and Apprentice. Come on, Black Knight, I thought. You need to keep those engines, otherwise digging out the vanguard in the hills will get a lot more complicated. It’s only a thousand, and you can handle a mere Squire can’t you? Take your swing. Come on. A surge of power in the distance reminded me why I wasn’t with the assault, a ball of poisonous green clouds beginning to form above my own siege engines.

“Hello, Akua,” I coldly smiled, and unleashed the Night I’d spent an hour gathering.

My work was here. I’d asked Masego to keep the kids alive if this went south, it would have to do. And it was looking pretty good. The force with the Squire got to the engines and set two on fire in quick succession while I maintained a stalemate with the mage nobility and arrow fire began picking off Legion mages. Only the Black Knight wasn’t showing. Not even in a possessed body. Shit, she wasn’t taking the bait. Worse, even as my attack force began running into entrenched opposition and was forced back I found out where the Black Knight actually was: there was smoke coming from the Aksum camp. Had she hit them with an ogre line like she’d done our camp near Wolof?

Sepulchral’s men didn’t make fortified camps like the Legions and the Army did, a raid like that would go… badly for them.

Cursing, I have the order for a retreat. We’d broken at least half of the enemy siege engines, those deployed here at least, but it’d been costly. Even with Hierophant covering the retreat, we lost a little over half the thousand we’d sent. And Marshal Nim had not shown. I’d not finessed fate into killing her before the campaign was over. How had she known not to show? My fingers clenched, then unclenched. Akua, had to be. But why would she tell the Black Knight? If she was going to make a play for the Legions, and she must if she was to attempt to overthrow Malicia, she could not keep Marshal Nim alive. The Black Knight was a loyalist, the marshal that’d stayed true.

So what was her game?

It was beginning to slip out of my hands, I realized. I’d thought I had a handle on the path Akua would take, and I still believed that I did, but I had to wonder… I pushed aside the worries, attending to the here and now. With our retreat, siege fire petered out on both sides and ended entirely by Afternoon Bell. Sappers on both sides began repairing the chunks of palisade that’d been blown away, and that strange air of truce fell over the valley again. There was no more killing over the fourth day, not even in the hills.

All knew better than to believe it would last.

On the fifth day, Scribe brought news.

“Sepulchral’s army is getting close,” she told the war council. “If she keeps up the current pace, by evening in six days she will reach Moule Hills.”

Opinions were divided on how we should react to that.

“We should delay until the greater army arrives,” General Zola pragmatically advised. “Sepulchral will likely attempt to use us to destroy the Legions at the least cost to herself possible, but she will still broadly be on our side.”

“Or she could sit it out entirely, waiting for someone’s supplies to run out and desperate decisions start getting made,” Aisha pointed out. “We should not assume cooperation of Abreha Mirembe, she is well aware that we do not wish her to climb the Tower.”

“Even if we do want to finish off the Legions before Sepulchral arrive, can we?” Vivienne asked.

“If her vanguard helps, I believe it’s possible to win a field battle,” I said, then hesitated. “I’m not sure how decisive a victory it would be, however.”

“That would strengthen the position of the pretender empress when she arrives,” Lady Aquiline said. “Give her power in bargaining with us.”

She wasn’t wrong, I admitted. If Army of Callow and the Loyalist Legions bloodied each other just before Sepulchral arrived with her fresh force, it swung the balance in her favour. On the other hand, should we really wait six days just for this to still be true only with her camped in the hills over the battle? Aisha wasn’t wrong either, when she’d said that Sepulchral might just try to live up to the vulture on her banner. No decision was made, in the end, though I knew one would have to be soon. If we were going to attack, it would have to be somewhere over the next three days. Otherwise the margin to rest and regroup before the empress-claimant arrived would be risky.

The trenches and palisades in the valley kept steadily stretching east, and by tomorrow Pickler was certain we’d reach the half-road. Fortifications were not, unfortunately, a goddamned plan. That was our trouble here: we didn’t have a plan to beat the Black Knight, even if we could force her into a pitched battle. Which was looking less and less likely by the day.

Both sides extended their defences to the road on the sixth day, the skirmishes beginning again in earnest in Kala Hills. Weather blew in from the north-east that forced everyone to retreat by early afternoon, though with the warm morning sun being covered by clouds as the air cooled. What begin as a hard rain that sent everyone running to fill water barrels turned into something altogether less pleasant before the hour was out: rain turned to snow, and then the kind of hard hail I would never have expected of the Wasteland. Everyone was stuck in tents for the rest of the day, until the storm passed halfway through the night.

When the seventh morning rose it was to still-wet ground, the hail having melted overnight, but also to General Zola bringing me a worrying report. Two lines of scouts send to the south of Moule Hills were hours late in reporting. We hadn’t seen movement from the enemy, but the Black Knight might have moved troops under cover of the hail.

“Battle formations,” I ordered Zola. “And prepare a force to handle our eastern flank in case they went around Moule Hills unseen.”

Yet I learned, not even an hour later, that I’d been wrong. It was not the Legions that had caught our scouts. Well, in a sense I supposed it actually had been. In the middle stretch of Moule Hills, well to the south of Sepulchral’s camp and about the height of the mirroring fortified lines, banners had been raised. Legion banners: the Second, Third and Ninth.

The Rebel Legions had arrived before Sepulchral could, and the balance hadn’t swung against us so much as swung down on our heads.