3
Draevund Heath
Arcanic fire burst over the fields of Hjelvak. Shots shattered on the shields above the Carinth ranks and sounded in reply across the icy air.
Felix stood atop the limestone heights as the artillery lit the midday dark. The tundra rolled away into the distance, a desolate expanse of blood-red lichen amid weathered rock. Two miles across the battlefield, the gray mass of the Hjelvak army glinted in the curse-light.
The Seventh Company milled behind him on the clifftop, arcana humming on the frigid air. Six hundred feet below, the deep ranks of the Carinth infantry awaited the call to march. They stood there, watching the barrages like they might listen to the prelude to an opera.
Wishing it’d hurry up and get to the murder.
The battle wouldn’t last long. Fights against Carintheum never did. Just another colonial uprising to put down, and they’d be on the march home.
A quiet crack sounded from his knuckles. Felix hurriedly unclenched his hand. Pax Carintheus, he told himself. Keep the peace. The Hjelvak had slaughtered a whole Carinth garrison. Fail to answer their transgression, fast and hard, and that violence would turn to anarchy.
He turned back toward his comrades. As he moved, though, something thrilled through his arcana. A silver griffin flared its wings in his mind’s eye.
The centurion. He looked up.
Prima Gloriana Valora strode toward him, six feet, three inches of muscle and arcanic power.
She was the kind of woman they cast in bronze and set in temple squares back in Carintheum, all might and beauty, with her blond hair flowing like some goddess of the sea’s.
He bowed his head over steepled fingers.
“Aurelias,” she said. “Loitering on duty?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he answered, perfectly impassive.
She betrayed a smile and clapped him on the shoulder.
The warmth of her power engulfed him at the touch.
Most centurions wouldn’t have spared a word for a rank-and-file arcani like him, but things were different in the company.
It was the one place in Carintheum where blood didn’t matter—only power. That, he had.
“Ah, well. I’ll execute you later,” Gloriana said. “This patrium spell needs reinforcing. Get to work.”
As she spoke, the shield above him shuddered with another impact. Felix closed his eyes and reached inside.
A deep gold wellspring opened inside him, as warm and powerful as the summer sea.
He called it, and it surged to answer. As arcana went coursing down the channels that curved to his fingertips, he did as he’d been taught.
He glanced it back and forth inside him like a trickster bending light off mirrors, brightening it with each reflection until it burned like a miniature sun.
The power thrummed within him, sweet as wine.
He opened his eyes to a different world.
The patrium spell glimmered before him in a complex weave.
The threadwork of a hundred soldiers’ powers twined tight together, burning away the Hjelvak bolts before they struck.
He set his hands to the shield as Gloriana did the same beside him.
Gold and silver threads came blossoming from their fingertips and joined the spell.
As the power began to flow, his body fell into tune—with itself, with his commander, with the arcanic fabric resonating sweetly about him. In spite of everything, he smiled.
“Not long now,” said the centurion. “We’ll be out of this infernal wilderness within the month.”
“Wishing you’d taken that commission in the Seraph Guard?” asked Felix. “You could’ve stayed in Carintheum.”
The shield before them brightened as he spoke. He took the threads of power and twisted them tighter, until the weave was too close to admit a pin. Arcana flowed as smooth as velvet from his fingertips.
“Mmm. Protecting our noble praetors from the perils of fine wines and pretty girls. Don’t know how I resisted.”
Felix hastily disguised his amusement. Prima Gloriana often went a touch too close to heresy.
“Still, if it appeals to you, I could put in a word to the Praetorium,” she added, eyeing him sidelong.
“Are they after a generalist?” he asked. Certainly, his powers could do anything a human hand could—stitch a wound, break a bone, light a fire—but the Seraph Guard were the elite. They didn’t tend to take in plebeians without a specialism to their name.
“They always need a good battering ram. You’ve got the power,” said Gloriana, “though you’d need to practice being a conceited prat.”
Felix grinned. “Oh, ask Diana. She’d warrant that I’m qualified.”
The thought of his sister lit a pleasant pain inside him.
She burst into his memory at once, kicking her way through the summer olive groves, grinning like she knew some joke she oughtn’t tell.
Come back with gifts, she’d demanded. Empire’s grace, he missed the little sprite.
Come back with honor, said his mother, glowing with pride.
Just come back alive, his father would’ve said. In the end, the man had managed less himself.
Then something shifted in the weave of the world beneath. Across the field, a faint arcanic signal thrummed out into the dark of Hjelvak. The enemy stirred. Gloriana severed her spell and stepped back.
“They’re on the move,” she said. “It’s time.”
The company was mustering close by. The troops bowed to Gloriana and drew the pair of them into the fold.
“Ma’am. Felix. Thank the Pantheon you’re here,” said Aquila, the oldest arcani in the company, a veteran soldier and inveterate flirt. “Vital military business. Wagering’s almost closed.”
“We’ll win within the hour,” said Felix.
“But Aquila perishes. Tragically,” Galla added.
“Excellent. Count me in,” said Aquila. “Can’t lose, can I?”
“Putting in a wager, Aurelias?” asked Junius, his old schoolmate, flicking a snow-sprite at him. Felix batted away the little spark and smiled wryly. He hadn’t the money to stake—not that there was much doubt of the outcome.
Break the Pax Carintheus, and you’ll be broken. His right hand twitched again.
Gloriana looked to the Hjelvak. They were in motion now, shuffling into wedges and columns.
“Into formation,” she said.
Discipline extinguished their frivolity at once. The company spread across the clifftop in a staggered line. The centurion took a satchel from her belt and started down the ranks.
“Incandaeum,” she said, snapping a length of crystalline white stick into each soldier’s hand. “Use it only if you have to.”
Felix took his ration. It glimmered like salt against the black of his glove. He’d only had the drug half a dozen times, but the memory was branded into his body. It sped arcana like wildfire. While it was in his blood, he could have melted diamonds with a thought.
The centurion reached the end of the line and strode back to the center.
“Pierce the Hjelvak shields,” she said. “Once you’ve broken through, head straight for the arcani. Start with the ones fueling their defenses and artillery. With them dead, the way should be clear for the infantry to finish the job.”
She turned and strode to the precipice. The company followed, taking their posts across the jagged heights.
Felix drew breath as the dark land rolled out before him. Foreign scents whipped past him on the wind—moss and woodsmoke, earth and pine, and the brine of a dark sea in the distance.
The earth shuddered as the Hjelvak troops took their formations.
The arcanic dome above them shivered in the night, and their artillery bristled from its posts.
Anticipation seized him. Some soldiers spoke of battle fear, but it was needless with Gloriana Valora in their ranks.
The woman had the power to freeze the sea. She’d never lost a battle yet.
Her signal flashed through his mind. Forever the company! came the wordless call.
“Forever the company!” they chorused back.
The horns rang out. It had begun.
The Hjelvak troops moved off in one great tramp, and Felix gathered his arcana. Golden brilliance dashed to his fingertips. The power built like tension down a bowstring.
Then it loosed in an exhilarating thrust. An incandescent river of arcana bolted from his hands. It spun into a phoenix, trailing golden flame, and shot into the open sky.
He closed his eyes and opened them again a thousand feet above the earth. His body fell still on the clifftop, already half a mile behind him, as his mind locked itself inside the spell.
The world streaked past him as the firebird raced across the plain. He flew wing to wing with his comrades, eating up miles by the second. For a moment, he felt nothing but the liberty of flight and the racing pulse of his power, all boundless, sun-bright exhilaration.
Too soon, they struck the thunderhead. The enemy’s frontier curses boiled up around him, glimmering and dark. Felix trimmed his wings and speared straight into the hostile magic.
The copper fire of their defenses burst ahead of him like firelight out of fog.
He plunged into the shield. The weave of the spell flickered before him, threadbare and loose knit.
He plunged claws of pure arcana between the fibers and ripped.
The centurion’s silver griffin struck down beside him, tearing at the gash he’d opened.
In a blink, the way was cut. They surged on through.
Felix fixed his sights on a knot of men in black furs. They encircled a glass column, hands pressed to the brass panels that ran about the edge. An arcanic generator.
Atop the cliff, his hands twitched. He poured power into the phoenix, setting it thrumming against the fabric until it turned white hot.
Then he dived for the machine. The Hjelvak had no time to look up. A swell of pity seized him as he cut through them like a blade through butter. One circle, burning bright, and all five men fell dead. The generator shattered, loose power spraying out like magma.