A Practical Guide to Evil

Chapter Book 7 60: Blood

I’d never seen her wear that armour before.

A plumed conical helm of steel worked with gold engravings led to a sheet of mail covering her throat, all of it above a beautifully worked set of red chain mail covered in parts by segmented plate – pauldrons sculpted like lionheads, an ornate breastplate with a crimson sash for belt and skirted panels that covered both her legs down to her knees. It was all red and gold, save for the sword sheathed her hip. That was pure steel except for the egg-sized ruby set into the pommel. The entire set shone with subtle engravings that reeked of magic. Protective enchantments, I guessed. I made myself stop staring, though not quite quickly to avoid an amused quirk of those full lips.

“You sure you’ve got him?” I asked, gesturing at the Tumult.

He was rising to his feet, magic already ticking around his hands.

“My heart,” Akua drawled, “if I had him any more, I would already have spent him.”

“A yes would have sufficed,” I informed her, pulling at Night.

“Ah,” she smiled, “but where would the fun in that be?”

Tendrils of shadow tossed me up a moment later, even as I smelled a scent like ozone and heard Akua say something in Mthethwa that sounded a lot like ‘how pedestrian’. Well, if she could afford to be that condescending I figured she’d be all right. I landed with a hiss of pain atop the tiled roof just in time to watch the Red Knight lose a few teeth. Even most Named I knew would have died when taking a hit of the Mantle’s mace on the side of the face, but instead the villainess was thrown like a rag doll and spat out a few bloody teeth. The Mantle did not pause to rejoice, instead turning to me without batting an eye as I looked for the other Revenant that’d been there and found him missing. I was not sure whether to be glad of that or not.

I pulled on Night and released most of it, tossing a handful of black flame her way, but just as I’d thought she immediately pulled her favourite trick: the world went black as she drenched the area in darkness. For me, anyway. The worst part of that trick had always been how it didn’t affect her at all.

Fortunately, she’d used it often enough I was not in the least surprised. And, more importantly, I sunk the last of the Night into the tiles of the roof. A heartbeat later I felt one resonate as a step was taken on it, so without hesitation I flicked my wrist and agitated the Night in the tile: it blew up. The darkness faded, revealing the hole the Mantle had just fallen through, and I smiled. The Scourge was twice my size and encased in the heaviest armour I’d ever seen, but those strengths came with costs. Like, you know, weighing enough that you’d fall right through any weakened rooftop instantly. I limped to the side, a cursed turning to powder the tile I’d been standing on a moment earlier, and through that opening tossed another handful of black flame at the Mantle. I’d used the fire on her often enough to know it wouldn’t do shit to that armour, but there was one thing it was quite good at: blinding the Revenant senses that she used instead of her eyes.

So while she put out the fire I’d just thrown in her face, I continued limping away and let the Night rage through my veins. I wove strands quickly, doubling back to strengthen them, and I had just finished the second layer when I felt the Mantle lose her temper. Or so I assumed, because she’d put enough strength into that curse there was goosebumps all over my skin. I kept backing away, but it came to nothing when the entire roof turned into smoke beneath me. That’s a problem, I idly noted as I began to fall. The way she waiting for me below, already beginning the swing that would smash my ribs and rupture my guts, was also something of a problem.

Fortunately for her, I had a secret weapon.

“Know your place,” the Red Knight snarled, and smashed her war hammer into the back of the Mantle’s head.

There was a satisfying sound as the back of the Revenant’s helmet crumpled, but to the villainess’ surprise her blow went no deeper. The real win was my insides staying on the inside, though, as the Mantle had to kill her swing long enough to backhand the Red Knight through a wall. That was two wins, really, when you thought about it. My Name tugged at me and I did not resist, angling my fall. My bad leg gave when I landed, to my swallowed moan of pain, but the way I dropped down ended up ensuring that a boiling curse didn’t end up cooking my brain so luck me. Wincing as I rose, I stepped out of the way of a mace swing. I wasn’t worried up close, at least.

The Mantle had been a priestess in life, not a warrior. Her danger up close came from strength and size, not skill, and I was a few years past being scared of something just for those.

“You know,” I said, “I’ve never heard you talk.”

The swing shattered the wall behind me but a half-step took me out of the arc, and she wasn’t quite quick enough with the follow-up curse: I tossed a handful of black flames at her wrist before she loosed it, scrapping her aim. It went through the open door and melted stone in the street. Nasty, I thought.

“I can’t tell if you’re one of those Neshamah had to cut up the soul of badly so they’d obey,” I said, “or if it’s because there’s just no mouth to speak with under that helm.”

It was an impressive piece, admittedly, covering her entire face in lengths of steel save for two downwards eye slits. The spikes that went past the crown of her head almost evoked the shape of a crown. The floor trembled as the blow meant to rip down through my shoulder hit nothing but air and stone while I twisted my will, keeping an eye on her as I took the working I’d crafted earlier in hand. Almost ready, I just needed her distracted. A heartbeat later what looked like a wave of pure heat melted through half the room we were in, forcing her to hastily backpedal away while in the distance I heard Akua call the Tumult a clumsy debutante in Mthethwa. That’ll do, I mused, and pulled.

The string of Night twanged over my head, pulled tight by one of the pulleys I’d formed out of sight, and it caught the Mantle in the chest. The force of the pull slammed her into the wall, where she immediately began to struggle to get out. I took a limping step forward, raising my hand.

“That’s the problem with being so large,” I told her. “Makes you an easier target, and you need so much room to move.”

Another chord passed over my head with a twanging sound, tightening her against the wall. And I didn’t need to bend because she was so tall, not because I was fucking short. I was a goddamn queen, so implying otherwise was treason. The Mantle changed tactics, moving to smash the wall she was being pinned against instead, bit I flicked my wrist and another chord bound her while she was trying to move it. No room, no swing. She could be as strong as she wanted, without space to move it meant nothing. I bound her twice more as I approached, closing in.

“I couldn’t help but notice you usually move when using a curse,” I told her. “Not everyone needs that, but then you weren’t born a priestess of curses were you? While you breathed it was Light you used. It’s not your speciality.”

And undead, for all their strengths in some regards, could not truly learn. If it had been a limit for her while she lived, she would not overcome it no matter how long she existed. I raised my sword, pulling on Night, and dipped into my Name to See what lay ahead. I paused in surprise, which almost cost me my life. When her mace exploded with power, a blind curse of wrath shattering the wall the Mantle was bound to, I froze for a moment as I returned to the here and now. Tearing through the chords of Night she swung down with all her strength, but in the moment that I beheld the present I saw it. An opening. A half step to the left as the mace came down, inclining my head even further and angling my body so that the diagonal downwards swing missed be by a hair’s breadth.

She pivoted, other hand coming to slam a curse into my belly even as she broke the floor with her mace but I pivoted and smoothly, almost gently, thrust upwards. I’d barely even taken two steps, I thought as the point of my sword slid into the eyehole, but then that was the difference between strength and skill wasn’t it?

“Silence,” I said, aspect burning down my blade.

Her power winked out and her limps dropped as I felt steel cut into bone. As I’d thought, she couldn’t actually move around that mass of steel she was encased in without the help of something like an enchantment. I knew deep in my bones that the aspect would only silence the Mantle’s power for a moment, but a moment was all I needed. I pulled on Night as I raised my free hand, moving to slam it onto the pommel of my sword to incinerate everything inside the armour, but before I could sorcery bloomed above my head. Gods, I thought as I glanced up, above everyone’s head.

Storm clouds roiled, but that wasn’t half as worrisome as the lightning I could see rippling inside them.

I hastily threw up the Night I’d been pulling in into a shield instead of a killing stroke, feeling it shudder as lightning struck at it. And then twice more. I backed away, half expecting a mace to be swung at my head, but after I took cover under an arch what I saw was that the Mantle had been blasted as well. She’d dropped her mace. Unlike me, though she was able to walk a lightning strike off. Something she proved by hastily leaving the house we’d been brawling in, turning the corner and out of sight. Fuck. I took a step forward, wanting to pursue, but lightning began to fall again and I had to put up a shield of Night. Cursing, I doubled back to where I’d left Akua only to find her already headed my way.

“That’s the Tumult, right?” I said, pointing upwards.

“It is,” she admitted. “I took off both his arms but he fled and threw that up behind him to cover his retreat.”

“The Mantle’s as well,” I grunted. “Can you end it?”

She shook her head.

“Magic was used to make the storm and is still being used to guide strikes, but the lightning storm itself is not magical,” Akua said. “Unless I-”

Lightning struck, but that wasn’t what caught my attention. It was the way it curved back up, then hit another lightning bolt. What in the Hells, I thought, as slowly every speck of lightning within the clouds was gathered into a single sphere. I felt an aspect at work there, but it wasn’t the Tumult’s. I was sure of that.

“Gods behold,” Akua grinned, almost girlish. “It is Masego.”

“Lightning’s not a form of power, though,” I said. “He shouldn’t be able to control it.”

“Unless,” she said, “he copied the Tumult’s guiding spell from looking at it, cast it as well and then wrested that.”

Lightning came down in a blinding wave ahead of us, forcing me to cover my eye and serving as helpful reminder that Masego was still one of the most terrifying people I’d ever met. I was reminded twice over when we linked back up with my legionaries, finding then that the lighting had ended up clearing most of the enemy ahead while essentially razing three city blocks as a collateral. Fucking Hells, Zeze. You’re not pulling your punches today. As I’d expected, Kallia’s band of five had come out ahead in the struggle. I got to hear as much from her, as well as something else I’d spared a moment to wonder about.

“The wizard Revenant retreated with the ragged one,” the Painted Knife told me.

I grimaced. So Neshamah had decided they were useful enough to keep for the rematch that no doubt awaited us deeper in. Good to know.

“Stay with the Army of Callow,” I ordered her. “I need you to cover them from Named. Akua Sahelian and I will go with the vanguard.”

“As you say, Warden,” Kallia replied.

The push to the avenue was staggeringly fast, what with Hierophant having essentially vaporized our opposition. We pushed forward and the moment I set foot on the pavement stones I sent a runner back. We were, at long last, past the first hurdle.

Keter’s avenues were massive things, all of them at least forty feet wide and paved with massive slabs of granite that went deep into the earth. It was needed for constructs to be able to move about the capital without constantly wrecking everything – no matter how careful a giant death snake was being, it did not stop being a giant death snake. The rain of ash made it hard for men to see too far ahead, but my dead eye had become a thousand one of Night instead. I saw far and gave a hard smile at what I found: we’d caught the enemy out of position. The avenue went up in an angled slope all the way to the inner-city wall, a ring of stout bastions bristling with soldiers and war machines, and though there were enemies by the thousands gathering along the length of it there was no cohesive force.

It was half a dozen packs of undead being thrown in the way, not a proper army.

“Secure our position,” I shouted. “I want those alleys blocked off and a vanguard readied for a push.”

Absent-mindedly I pulled on Night and tossed out a ball of black flame, incinerating the head of the beorn that’d risked popping out of cover ahead of my men. The legionaries cheered and got to work with tired professionalism, moving out as the sergeants and lieutenants barked out their orders. Though we’d broken through the Dead King’s barricades, our advance put us in a precarious position. We were like an iron spike driven into a block of ice: all the streets around the grounds we’d taken there were still thick with undead. Right now we were suffering only small probes, but that was because they would be gathering in bands led by Binds so that they could mass enough numbers to be a threat when attacking our position instead of blade fodder.

The relative steadiness of our advance was an illusion whose end was fast approaching. If this were another sort of siege it would have been worth it to try to clear the lower city of Keter before we assault the inner wall, but here it would be suicide: we’d wreck our armies beyond repair doing that. Instead we had to push through and roll the dice, driving deep towards the Hellgate so we might take it and the Dead King with it. I grabbed the shoulder of the closest captain – a dusky-skinned Taghreb with chubby cheeks – and leaned in closer.

“Where has Lady Akua gone?” I asked, lowering my voice.

“She has gone to rifle through dead bodies, Your Majesty,” the captain replied.

There was not a hint of the distaste in his voice that I would have found in a Callowan reporting the same thing. I almost asked him ‘what for’, but I was doubtful he knew and it’d mean admitting that I didn’t. Instead I sagely nodded and released his shoulder after reminding him to send Commander Spitter’s runner my way the moment they arrived. I needed word from the rest of the fight for Keter as soon as possible before deciding whether we should commit to a push up the avenue. The opportunity was there, and soon to fade, but if we were going at it alone it’d be nothing but an elaborate suicide charge. Thankfully, I did not have to wait long.

Though I had expected one, it was not a legionary that returned bearing news and I cocked an eyebrow when an unexpected pair approached instead. One I was familiar with, a girl in dusty mages robes with a bony face and a scowl bearing Masego’s old Name: Sapan of Ashur, the Apprentice. The second I did not know as well, save through the words of others. The Page was not all that tall, though his slenderness gave the impression he was, and his chestnut hair was a riot of enviable curls. His armour was too light for my tastes, a cuirass and leather instead of proper plate or mail, but it was still better than the rapier he’d somehow been tricked into thinking was an acceptable battlefield weapon.

“Should I take it there’s no need to wait for an officer?” I asked.

“Commander Issawi decided it would be simpler to send us directly to you, Your Excellency,” Sapan said, offering a short bow.

The Proceran mirrored her perfectly but I barely paid attention to him. Issawi, she’d said, and not Spitter. The old commander was probably dead, I grimly realized, and if I remembered the ranks right his senior tribune was another Callowan so she was probably dead too. Our senior officers were dropping like flies, which smacked of Keter targeting them. Fucking Neshamah, he’d figured out our weakness compared to the Legions of Terror: the comparative lack of experienced officers.

“Then speak,” I said. “How go the other offensives?”

“Lord Hanno had taken his gate and is pushing towards the inner city, Your Excellency,” the Page proudly told me.

Meaning the Lycaonese had once more lived up to their reputation and pushed unflinchingly through the slaughter it’d take to get boots atop a gatehouse of Keter. Good. We’d gambled that they might, sending Hanno and the Kingfisher Prince there on top of a heroic band of five and the Witch of the Woods for magical muscle.

“The other gate?” I asked.

“The Dominion and the Clans were forced to retreat,” Sapan told me. “The Warlord decided casualties were too high and their foothold on the gatehouse too fragile to keep up the storm.”

Fuck, I thought. That meant there was only us coming from the southwest and the Procerans coming from the east of the city. We’d hoped that my army’s push would draw enough dead that Hakram and the Blood would be able to take the eastern gate, but that might have been too ambitious. It might be why we weren’t as badly drowned in soldiers as I thought we’d be, I mused. Neshamah might have decided to focus on keeping the third army out of his city instead of focusing on either us or the Proceran. If that was true, all those reinforcements were about to begin hammering at the Army of Callow’s positions soon. I forced myself to set the speculation aside.

Whether it was true or not didn’t matter, since the choice I had to make hadn’t changed: we were committing to an attack on the inner wall or not?

“How recent are your news about the Lycaonese offensive?” I asked.

“Half an hour, Your Excellency,” the Page told me. “I fought with mercenaries before being sent as a messenger.”

However learned his courtesies, he did not quite manage to hide the resentment in his tone. Would have preferred to stay with the push, huh. The Apprentice did not seem so burdened, I could not help but noticed, as befitting of someone who’d gone through the gruelling campaign in the Wasteland under my commands.

“Half an hour,” I muttered, drumming my fingers against the side of my leg. “And you say they were pushing deep?”

“They were storming barricades up the avenue when I left,” the young hero agreed.

That was the advantage of taking a gate instead of a breach like my army had: the Procerans had been on an avenue from the start. If it went well, I assessed, it was likely that Hanno and the Lycaonese would take a swing at the inner-city wall before my people did. That thought clinched the decision, because the same reason I was hesitating to commit to an attack – fear of attacking the inner wall alone and getting my teeth kicked in – was now also a reason to commit to that very same attack. It’d be the Procerans getting their teeth kicked in, if I left them to hang high and dry.

“Then there’s no room left for hesitation,” I said. “I need you two to carry word back to Prince Otto, assuming he still holds command of the Proceran van.”

“He does, Your Excellency,” Sapan assured me.

“Then tell him I’m taking a run at the inner wall,” I said, “and committing all my reserves to the push. I’ll see him when we’re both through.”

The Page looked split between irritation – at being made a messenger again, no doubt – and eagerness at being able to return to fight with his countrymen, but as far as I was concerned he was just the escort. The Apprentice nodded and I clapped her shoulder amicably before sending them both off. I didn’t offer them an escort. That was the point of using Named as messengers, after all: they could get through the undead-infested city without one. It felt like absurd luxury to used champions of the Gods as messenger pigeons, but if there was one place on Calernia that warranted the absurdity it was the Crown of the Dead. I sought more mundane messengers as well, to send word to Commander Issawi that she was to prepare for a push.

That, and to send for my personal standard and the people bearing it.

Akua returned not long after, what she’d been up to during her absence quite evident. She was riding what could generously be called a horse, at least in shape. It was a necromantic construct, made out of stripped parts from ghouls and larger monsters. Sloppy in some ways, I mused, since some muscles had clearly been melted together – a brute force method – and the sections that’d been sown together sported shining thread. An enchantment, not real thread, and so vulnerable to being dispelled. Still, I could only be impressed that she’d put together what looked like a leathery horse-shaped golem in what could only be half an hour. It was moving pretty well, too, its bone hooves clacking light against the stone.

“Expecting to need a horse?” I idly asked.

She cocked an eyebrow at me.

“The enemy up the avenue are in disarray,” Akua said. “Knowing you, you will want to strike while the iron is hot.”

She did know me, I thought with the usual mixture of pleasure and dread. Enough that a glance at what lay ahead had been enough to figure out what I intended, apparently.

“Can you reach the flying fortresses?” I asked. “I need to send word.”

“I already have,” she said, “but another was ahead of me.”

I blinked in surprise.

“Marshal Juniper has ordered the Old Mothers to move to support the push towards the inner wall and the rest to protect the Army of Callow’s flanks,” Akua amusedly said. “It seems I am not the only one who can see through you, dearest.”

Gods, Hellhound, I thought, still awed after all these years. Any report you get should be at least half an hour behind me and confused, on top of having a lesser read than I on what’s going on at the front. And still she’d been a step ahead of me. I closed my eye, sinking into Night to find Zombie and have a look through her senses, only to find that below the hippocorvid two banners flew. I jostled back into my own body, lips twitching as I corrected my estimate to Juniper of the Red Shields having been two steps ahead of me. I turned to glanced behind me, Zombie large black wings folding as she plunged down through the sky and landed on the stone behind me at a run, circling around me as legionaries hastily got out of her way. Further back, more of my soldiers were moving.

Parting to make way for the same people I’d sent for now knowing my marshal had already sent them out: banners high, the Order of Broken Bells came forth.

Cracked bronze bells on black flew by the Sword and Crown, under them the first order of knights raised since the Conquest advancing in good order. Horses and men barded in steel carved with hymns to the Heavens as my people had done for centuries, killing lances raised not yet lowered for the charge. There was not a man or woman among them whose armour was not scuffed and dented, who’d not had at least a horse killed under them. Grandmaster Brandon Talbot rode at their head, the raised visor revealing his strong jaw and neat black beard. The once-heir to Marchford had gone from my prisoner to one of the few nobles I actually liked – if not trusted – over the years and led his knights through many a battlefield in my name.

Too many, perhaps. The Order of Broken Bells now numbered eighteen hundred, a respectable number given the losses in the Wasteland and on the plains of the Ossuary, but that was a fragile thing. When the siege of Keter had begun, I’d given a permission to Talbot that I had denied him throughout my entire reign: he was to knight his squires as he wished, without regard to age or training. The Broken Bells fielded eighteen hundred knights because there were no longer squires in the order, and barely any spare horses left for that matter. The strength mustered today was the last they had to wield, and should it perish the riders of Vivienne’s own knightly order would be the last cavalry left in the kingdom.

The Army of Callow had fought too many battles, too many wars. Even after draining my kingdom dry of manpower as fee queens before me had dared, we were running out of war bodies to put in suits of armour – much less the likes of knight, costly to arm and train as they were.

“We come as called, Your Majesty,” Brandon Talbot greeted me.

I held out my hand and Zombie nuzzled it, rubbing her feathered cheeks against the gauntlet. I patted her until she purred, only then moving to hoist myself onto the saddle.

“I have work for you,” I said.

He glanced at the avenue, the dead gathering there in throngs of thousands and beginning to raise barricades. The nobleman spared a look for Akua as well before returning his gaze to me.

“To ride into the jaws of death,” Sir Brandon said, sounding rather pleased.

There was, I thought, such a lovely madness to my people sometimes. I rolled my shoulder, limbering my sword arm. I was getting cramps, the costs of not spending enough time on the training field these days.

“Momentum’s still on our side,” I said, “but we need to prevent the enemy from consolidating before the Third Army can begin its push. That means trampling…”

I trailed off, flicking a glance at the gathering horde.

“All of that, more or less,” I idly finished.

“An afternoon’s work,” one of the knights called out.

There was grim, satisfied laughter. I indulged them with a smile, because if they hadn’t earned the right to a few harsh boasts then who on Creation had? I caught Grandmaster Talbot’s eye.

“Do you remember the first time we met, Brandon?” I asked.

The bearded man smiled.

“I could forget my name, Your Majesty, and still remember that,” he said.

“You thought I was too young,” I teased.

“The world’s gotten older,” Brandon Talbot simply said. “So have we.”

True enough. Flakes of ash crusted at the edge of the banner first raised from a cell, the cracked bells on imperial black that I had chosen as much as a warning as an emblem. I felt the warm breath of the Beast against my cheek, just as I had that day.

“Do you regret it?” I suddenly asked. “That you knelt that day, struck your bargain.”

The brown-eyed man studied me for a long moment, his face grown hard to read.

“There were times I did,” the grandmaster admitted. “Lows and long nights, when the bodies piled too high.”

I did not dare interrupt, breath caught still in my throat.

“But here we are,” Brandon Talbot softly said, gesturing at the horror around us. “The end of our road, Catherine Foundling. Perhaps of all our roads.”

The knight smiled.

“It has been a long ride,” he said, “but I regret nothing, Queen of Callow.”

The breath I’d been choking on left my lips, ragged, and I offered a stilted nod back. Sometimes you didn’t know you’d wanted to hear something until after you’d heard it.

“Then come on,” I said, voice steadying as it rose. “All of you. It has been too long since the Dead King last heard the horns of the knights of Callow.”

My sword cleared the scabbard, rising to catch a glint of sunlight.

“Let us remind the Enemy,” I said, “why so many learned to fear the sound.”

I guided Zombie with my knees, leading her forward into the avenue. Talons scraped against the stone, her wings folded close to her side, as behind me men began to move. The banners flew high, catching wind that shook off the ash, and the knights of Callow sounded the old defiance. The horns sounded once, twice, thrice.

All knights charge, the call went, and charge we did.

It was like a clap of thunder, the sound of a wedge of heavy cavalry going through a shield wall.

I hacked down half-blindly, smashing open an iron helm as Zombie barreled through the undead and all around me heavy lances tore punched through shields and corpses alike. I hacked and hacked, like a farmer reaping wheat, until suddenly there was nothing but stone pavement before me and my mount let out a cacophonous caw. I led her forward, only slowing when knights began to catch up. Half of them had discarded broken lances, unsheathing swords to replace them.

“REDEMPTION IN STEEL,” Grandmaster Talbot shouted.

A hard cheer echoed him, and we gathered into a wedge again. Ahead of us, another shield wall was forming even as behind us the shattered remains of the thousand skeletons we’d just trampled into dust fled the avenue. The Third Army’s banner was on the move, I saw. The push was beginning, we needed to clear the way for it. The horns sounded again, and we began to advance at a trot. Akua pulled close to me, her necromantic mount keeping pace as she held her sword like someone who’d not used one in too long. The enemy brought a few spears out in front of the shield wall, maybe half a hundred, but it was not them my eye sought.

I felt sorcery at work, and soon found it: cabals of robed mages, skeletons with burning green eyes and not a speck of flesh left, stood at the back of the shield wall shaping eerie cubes of what looked like smoke.

“Akua,” I shouted.

I heard her snarl out an incantation even as the Order of Broken Bells quickened, going from trot to gallop. We began to close the distance, the smoke cubes rising in the air even as Akua’s fingers traced runes in the air and tore through them, but it was not to be so simple. On the streets that flanked us on both sides I saw movement, creatures looking like pale white – the pale of foul flesh, of creatures from deep water all wet and shining – hounds rising from crouches to break into a run. There were hundreds of them, and with an angry hiss I pulled on Night. I scorched our left flank, the abominations fleeing the black fire, but those to the right got through.

They leap with unnatural agility, baring half a dozen mouths full of curved teeth, but that was not the nastiest turn. Those that were cut or pierced took the blows like butter, staying stuck. It was fat, I realized with dim horror. The fat of corpses, riddled with teeth and unleashed like hounds. Men and horses tumbled down where the abominations caught them, biting into our wedge, but moments later I could spare no more thought for it: thunder clapped as I slapped away a spear and Zombie trampled the shield wall, tearing into the enemy. I hacked and hacked, arms burning from the toil as my Name steadied my hand and whispered lovingly in my ear. We would win, it promised. We would get to the end.

The cubes of smoke were brought down on us, exploding into clouds that smelled of death, but though a handful of knights choked to death in their armour the worst of it was blown away by the burst of wind that Akua smashed into the enemy, blowing away soldiers as much as the smoke. The hole it made relieved pressure enough for the Order to finish breaking through, barrelling through the undead and continuing down the avenue. We slowed, formed up into a wedge again as I tossed fire behind us to keep the fat hounds away – they were vulnerable, a spark was all they needed to light up – and our eyes moved ahead. There the enemy had gathered up, dragging up chunks of wall to make a barricade as archers and javelinmen massed behind thick lines of skeletons.

And beyond them, I saw, it was worse. Three more large knots of enemy, getting larger and better dug in. Half a dozen smaller ones at least. How many knights were dead already? Too many, I thought, and it would only get worse as we tired and began to slow.

“REDEMPTION IN STEEL,” Grandmaster Talbot shouted.

They shouted it back and we broke into a trot, advancing unflinchingly. Curses shot out from the enemy formation but the knights laughed, the sorcery sliding off their armour like water off a duck’s back. Akua screamed an incantation, throwing at the enemy a swirling ball of darkness that exploded into drops. All of the undead they touched twitched and began to turn on each other, hacking away. The Order of Broken Bells cheered, cheered the deed of a woman they had hated an hour ago and would hate again an hour from now. There were hardly any lances left, all of them left in broken bodies, but the handful remaining were lowered as we broken into a gallop.

I watched the flanks, and my vigilance was not for naught: I caught the movement first. Ghouls that had crouched atop rooftops suddenly rose, leaping down and running towards us with howls, as something altogether more sinister rose behind them. They looked like great worms of bone, though the tail ended looking like a lizard’s and under their ‘neck’ two leathery, spindly arms ending in claws jutted out. It was the lungs that drew the eye, though, two bulging great sacks like a bullfrog’s stomach with the appearance of muscle that were pumping in air and swelling. Using the clawed arms to drag themselves into position atop the roofs, the creatures all turned to face us and unhinged their ‘heads’ to reveal teethless maws.

The spat clouds of some foul black gas at us, filling the air.

Akua incanted again as we tore through the ghouls in our way, hacking at the flesh, but they’d not been meant to win, only to slow us. Volleys of arrows fell in a thick rain, the gas drifted towards us on a lazy wind and the enemy mages began their rituals. I pulled deep on Night, ignoring the gas – Akua would have to take care of it – as Brand Talbot shouted for the knight to form up, to prepare a charge anew at the enemy ranks. It was turning sour on us, I realized, and… and a shadow was cast over us all. Wind screamed as the flying fortress approached and lightning began to fall in the enemy’s ranks. A heartbeat later, the bottom of the fortress let out a burning light that tore through half a dozen houses in a heartbeat.

And then ladders were lowered.

“Forward,” I shouted, “forward!”

We cut through the last of the ghouls as Akua blew black the gas, tightening ranks as we broke into a gallop again. An arrow slid off the side of my helm and another sunk into Zombie’s skull, which annoyed her more than anything else. The Order smoothly split into two wings, one for each opening in the enemy barricade, and we thundered through. I screamed myself hoarse, hacking away at a sea of skulls and rotten faces, hands and blades coming at me from all sides. From the corner of my eye I saw a scythe hit Akua’s armoured wrist, slapping her sword out of her fingers, and with a shout of anger I torched the Bind that’d dared. We pushed at the ranks of the enemy, the momentum of our aborted charge now gone, and knights began to drop.

But even as legionaries began to land on our side I found that the undead before me no longer bore swords, only bows and javelins and crossbows. I had reached the back.

“Almost through,” I shouted.

“Callow,” the shout came back. “Callow and the broken bells!”

But we were slowing, dying and I had begun to pull on Night again when a spell hit the middle of the enemy formation and crushed half a dozen soldiers with a projectile. No, I realized a heartbeat later, not a spell. High Marshal Nim, the Black Knight of Praes, rose from her crouch and swung her warhammer with a great cry.

Undead were scattered likes leaves in a storm.

And just like that, it began to turn around. I could feel it in my bones. The sky filled with thousands of tons of stone and arrogance and they gathered again, my ragged Order of Broken Bells. Spells fell on the dead like summer rain. Fire and lightning and frost, acid and darkness and smoke that moved and swallowed men. Wind blew up in geysers, sand heated almost to glass was thrown in sheets half a mile wide. And curses, curses of the likes Calernia had learned to fear: iron rusted and bent, flesh melted and bone turned to powder. Souls were ripped out of Binds and turned into streaks of weeping flame, skeletons exploded into shards. And worse, curses even Keter stood in fear of.

And as the mfuasa unleashed a millennium of learning on the enemy, the lords of ladies and Praes came down to fight.

The Legions of Terror were forming, steel ranks spreading out in every direction with my father’s cold ghost smiling through their eyes. Legion mages torched ghouls with methodical and concentrated volleys, sappers disappeared entire ranks of the enemy with sharpers. The heavies smashed through the enemy ranks like they were made of paste, regulars following behind: orcs locking shields with Taghreb and Soninke and Duni, the shadow of an empire dogging their footsteps. And yet it was not them I my eye was called to as the Order formed up again. It was the splendid few, the beautiful monsters in armours glittering of gold and jewel who stood out among drab and smoky Keter like a flock of birds of paradise in a gutter.

The nobles of the Wasteland, household troops standing around them like a fortress of steel, reminded the world why the Dread Empire of Praes had ruled Calernia from sea to sea.

Devils filled the sky, winged and shouting in the darktongue, as an empire’s worth of hidden vaults was emptied at the hosts of Keter. The air filled with fire and blood dripped from the sky, the wind itself turning red as the High Lord of Okoro rode it on a chariot and sowed burning seeds of fire like a farmer on the field. Storms roared in wrath as the High Lady of Kahtan unleashed the old spirits bound by her house, colossal things of ruin and wind striding the field. Ghouls fled before the unleashed bestiary of Aksum like whipped dogs, tides of fouled water swept hundreds as the High Lord of Nok commanded the waves and at the heart of them all Sargon Sahelian was laughing, baring his crooked smile like fangs.

He wielded thirteen pillars of stone large as towers, crushing enemies beneath them like a child hammering down at ants with a pestle.

But beyond them all, behind them all, the woman who had once been Dread Empress Malicia struck deeper still. For with the falling ash from the sky now fell paler motes, spread about by the fortresses. Still Waters, refined and turned into even more terrifying a weapon. Wherever legionaries fell, now they rose again with empty eyes as eights. Unflinching, obedient, unrelenting. And the enemy buckled as well, for the ritual lighting up within the fortresses were not only for the Praesi dead: they were also for Keter’s. Stealing dead from the King of Death was perhaps too much, but to shatter his hold? Oh, that they could do. Wherever enough of the compound fell, the dead went wild.

Turning on each other, maddened by wrath and despair as the behest of the last empress of Praes.

And we sat the saddle at the heart of it all, the worn survivors of the Order of Broken Bells. Redemption in steel, the cry went up, and we charged. We went through bone and ash, a ray of fire from a fortress opening a path. We cut through towering abominations that looked like the bones of giants trailing ribbons of flesh, shattering knees as the rope-like flesh tore men off horses and ripped them apart. We carved through apes of rotting flesh and the wriggling worms of spoiled blood they burst into, faceless horrors of sown flesh that oozed sickness.

The further we got the harsher the fight, skeletons bearing shells full of burning oil throwing themselves at us as broken bones rose together into drakes mad of soldiers’ remains and acid began to fall from the sky, burning at armour and searing flesh. But we got through, Merciless Gods. We smashed and hacked and died, until before us stood the heights of the inner wall and the iron gate barring the way past it. Enemies bristled atop the walls but Grandmaster Talbot shot forward, hammering at the gate thrice with the pommel of his sword, and I laughed myself hoarse. We’d fucking done it. Behind us, flanks covered by the Legions, the ranks of the Army of Callow approached.

We’d gotten them to the wall.