Winter I

“Forty-one: should personalities among your band be clashing overmuch, consider leading the band into grave peril. Either friendship or a corpse will ensue, which remedies the issue either way.”
– “Two Hundred Heroic Axioms”, author unknown

Merciful Gods, it truly was a terrible job but someone had to do it. Today that person was Ernest, and though he’d gone as far as offering up his entire savings to anyone in his company willing to go in his place there’d been no takers. Either he’d not saved up enough to tempt someone into the risk, or they’d wisely decided that a corpse could spend no coin. Captain Noémie – her rank meant she did not have to participate in the lottery, the damned lucky witch – had ordered half a dozen of his fellows to come down to the shore with him, enough that even if the Dead struck there should be at least one runner left to bring back the news.  Ernest’s last attempt to sway one of them into taking his place was met with jeers and one promise to comfort his sister if he did not make it back to shore. Victor, the last one had been. He’d remember that. The rowboat was cramped and uncomfortable, though even in winter it’d been kept oiled and clean so it would remain in good shape. Ernest, by what he intended to claim was a coincidence, smacked Victor in the face with the oar when his companions pushed him out into the lake.

The waters of Lake Pavin rarely froze even at winter’s peak, but they were icy cold and prone to ripping currents that could easily tip over a small boat like this one. Still that was the last of Ernest’s troubles this morn, for he’d been sent out to see if any of the Dead were lurking beneath the waters. Orders had come down from Prince Gaspard himself, it was said, that all forces by the shores of Lake Pavin and the Tomb were to survey the waters every day. Rumour had it that Langueroche, further up north, had fallen after heavy fighting because the undead had massed in great numbers under the surface of the lake before striking just before morning. The people had fled in time, but now the entire northwest was said to be buckling under the weight of the Dead’s offensive. The young man glanced back to the distant shape of Sengrin, the fortress-town on the hilly slope where he’d been born, and prayed once more it was too small a town to be worth the Hidden Horror’s attentions. They hardly had the men to resist an incursion if it came, for many had been called north to the capital where the Enemy had struck hardest.

Yet the siege there had been broken, Ernest reminded himself. The war was not yet lost.

A scream from the shore shook him out of his thoughts, reminding him simply rowing out would serve no purpose. Carefully, he went looking through the cloth bag hung at the front of the boat and took out a handful of small round stones. As he’d been instructed to, he leant over the side of the boat and dropped three in a line. Whatever it was the priests had done to the rocks, it worked as they’d said it would: light bloomed as they sunk deeper, casting a warm and broad glow. Now he only had to wait until it touched the bottom of the lake, repeat this twice more and he could – oh, oh Gods no. Standing in still and silent rows at the bottom of Lake Pavin, hundreds of figures in ancient armour spread out as far as the light was cast. Ernest desperately scrabbled for the oars again and began rowing, screaming out in alarm for his companions still on the shore, but with utter terror he saw from the corner of his eye one of the stones he’d dropped bounce off the side of a skeletal thing’s bronze helmet. It looked up, an eyeless leering skull, and the young soldier nearly pissed himself.

He hardly made it another twenty feet, screaming all the while, before a spear’s tip punched through the bottom of the rowboat and it began taking water. He tried to keep rowing for a few heartbeats, even as more iron spikes went through the wood, but the weight was too much and his arms too weak. There were dark shapes moving under the water’s surface, but what choice did he have? Cursing, he leapt off the boat towards the shore and began to swim in the icy waters. There were things trying to grasp at his feet but he was quicker than they, even though his limbs were growing numb, and he swallowed cold and scummy water but against all odds he made it near the shore. Enough he could find his footing on the ground below the water – which was then spear took him in the back of the leg and he screamed as hooks sunk into his skin and something dragged him back into the deeper lake. Fingers closed around his throat to keep him still, and though he panicked he realized after a moment they were warm. And coming from the wrong way. A large woman in plate, with a helmet shaped like a snarling badger, grinned at him.

“Stupid brave,” the stranger praised. “But this hurt.”

And then he was screaming and flying through the air, blood spurting as the spear that’d been put in him accompanied him still stuck in his leg. He landed half-weeping, the pain and vicious bite of the wind on his wet body too much for him to take. The wet spear broke, though the head only dig deeper into his flesh. Someone wrapped a blanket around him and faces he could hardly make out for the tears hastily brought him up to the fire near the watchtower further up the hill.

“There’s a priestess on her way,” someone said. “We’ll take out the spear then. You did good, Ernest. Gods, you did good.”

“Who was that, near the shore?” he croaked out.

“Don’t know the name, but I know what the other one told us what they go by,” Victor quietly said. “The Valiant Champion. Levantine, I gather.”

A Chosen, Ernest shivered. With the warmth of the fire and blanket his vision was beginning to stop swimming. He looked back to the lake and thought he must have gone mad, or been poisoned, but the others breathed in sharply and some even began to pray. All along the shore, for what must have been a mile, shapes began to emerge from the water. The dead walked, garbed in iron and bronze, flesh and bone dripping water. And further from the shore great shapes broke the surface, gargantuan snakes of bone and leather and crackling sorcery. And in front of them stood only two silhouettes, sharply glared at by the morning light. Women, both one in wet plate with a great axe resting on her shoulder and the other in a coarse green cloak-tunic that went all the way to her feet. She turned, revealing that behind the long locks framing her face she wore a mask, and flicked some droplets of blood against the rocky shore. The world shivered and Ernest rose to his feet.

“They’ll die,” he said. “There’s too many, and the snakes-”

“Look,” another man croaked. “Gods, look.”

Lake Pavin screamed and tore back, the waters fleeing the shore as if terrified and snapping up most the undead with them. A few soldiers who’d already reached solid ground strode forward uncertainly as the lake continued to retreat, though any who dared to approach the pair were casually dispatched by the Valiant Champion: she smashed through them like they were glass, never needing more than a single blow and moving with blinding swiftness. The snakes – there were three, Ernest now counted – broke free of the waters pulling back and with sky-tearing screams tore forward. The Chosen in the snarling badger helm glanced at her cloaked companion, who nodded distractedly. Laughing wildly, the Valiant Champion began to run towards the gargantuan monsters.

“There’s a few still loose,” Ernests said, glancing to the sides.

“We can handle those, at least,” Victor said, grunting.

In the distance one of the great snakes struck at the Champion, who slapped the massive maw with the flat of her axe – and after a rippling sound the snake was tossed back like a rag doll, hitting the lake and causing waves.

“That’s the Witch of the Woods, it is,” another soldier said, grabbing his spear. “Heard about her. Walloped the Sovereign of the Red Skies real good when they fought.”

“She’s not even the leader of that bunch, I hear,” Victor said. “It’s some Ashuran knight.”

Before their eyes, the waters that’d been drawn back by the Witch began to ice. Tendrils of frost went through, like ink in water, and thickened as they went. Gods, Ernest thought, what manner of a man could command women like these?

—

Hanno caught her wrist before the blade could claim more than a scratch on the Mirror Knight’s chin. He would have liked to restrain the Painted Knife entirely, for the threats she was screaming in Lunara were not mild ones, but he could not. His other hand had seized the wrist of the Mirror Knight instead, catching it before he could finish drawing his sword.

“You dare?” the Mirror Knight thundered.

Not at Hanno but at the Painted Knife, who snarled back in kind.

“Enough,” the White Knight said.

“The Levantine tries to slay me in broad daylight and-”

“If you do not release your grip, I will crush your wrist,” White calmly said in Chantant, then changed to Lunara. “Kallia, drop your blade.”

“Did you not just hear him call the Scouring of Vaccei necessary?” she hissed. “Thousands of my people killed, children choking to death on ashes and-”

“I will not ask twice,” Hanno calmly said.

Snarling at him once more, she did. Christophe released the grip of his own blade as soon as he no longer felt threatened, though the dark-haired hero found he had little sympathy for the man. In some ways it was a relief that Procer gave birth to so few heroes, for Hanno had known none save for the Rogue Sorcerer who’d not at one point or another stirred black rage in heroes from another nation. The Mirror Knight was a good man, principled and well-meaning, yet his rustic attitudes and insistence that Procer’s wars abroad had been for the good of Calernia were being received increasingly poorly by the heroes of the Dominion. If he stilled his tongue more often, it would be a negligible issue. Unfortunately, Christophe was both opiniated and frankly rather easy to bait. Which he inevitably was, by one of the several heroes who considered him pompous and in need of a good thrashing.

“Blood was spilled,” the Mirror Knight flatly said. “There must be answer to that.”

“Are you requesting,” the White Knight peacefully asked, “the judgement of the Seraphim?”

The other man’s face shuttered and he curtly shook his head in denial. The Painted Knife, whose Chantant had improved with the months she’d been in Cleves, understood enough to chortle at Christophe’s expense. Hanno’s gaze moved to her, quelling, and she stalked away like a proud cat. A spar with the Vagrant Spear would settle her, he hoped.

“You’ve lost less than thimble of blood, Christophe,” a cultured voice drawled. “Shall you require less than a thimble’s worth of justice to go along with it?”

The Repentant Magister had yet to finish the cup of wine in her hand, for she’d been more interested in spectating the aftermath of the careful barbs she’d sent the Mirror Knight’s way than in finishing her drink. Lounging in her seat in heavy velour robes, the patrician beauty wore a sardonic smile that could widen or dwindle but never quite entirely left her face. Nephele might have renounced the sordid practices and sorceries of the Magisterium, but she’d yet to shed their taste for making a game of others. Even after it had nearly come to blows between two heroes she seemed entirely unrepentant – which might have amused Hanno, given her Name, were he shallower sort of man. As it was, instead he considered to be as much if not more at fault for the incident as the two who’d reached for steel.

“Nephele,” he warned.

“Stygians,” the Myrmidon shrugged from the side, speaking Aenian. “What else can be expected, even from one claiming repentance?”

Bereft of her armour for once, the slender woman was sitting on his cot and polishing the large bronze shield whose holy blessings were as a song to Hanno’s Name. The Repentant Magister’s smile had sharpened the moment she began speaking: neither had hidden the strong and instant dislike they took to each other the very moment they met.

“When the Exarch ran you of Penthes like a whipped dog,” Nephele conversationally asked in the same obscure tongue, “is it true that you were jeered at by the mob on your way out?”

Heroes were not meant to gather in great numbers, Hanno thought, not for so long. Not without a common enemy they could all strive against – and though the Dead King was that, he was simply too distant to fill the need. He could not be found on the field, which left instead a crowd of heroes each itching to fight the war on Keter in their own way without the slightest desire to heed anyone’s commands or any notion of how to remain civil with others just as stubborn. Keeping the peace between them was like trying to teach humility to a cat.

“The Magister does not speak untruth,” the Mirror Knight said, having ignored the exchange he could not understand. “Can the Dominion’s band of heroic killers now cut their allies without consequences?”

“Nephele speaks to stir up amusement,” Hanno flatly said. “And you gave offence with your words that was no less than the scratch of a blade.”

Christophe’s face set mulishly.

“I do not deny that the sanctions visited upon Vaccei were harsh, yet they were hardly-”

“Ah, I’d forgotten,” the Myrmidon mused, still in Aenian. “When Procerans have a massacre, we have to call it sanctions instead.”

“What was that?” the Mirror Knight sharply replied, having caught the tone if not understood the words.

“Is fuck him,” the Myrmidon replied, her Tolesian heavily accented.

“You,” Nephele helpfully clarified. “She means fuck you, Christophe.”

The Mirror Knight reddened. He was a young man, and proud. Too many slights had been offered to him tonight for him, he’d chew on them for weeks. It was the persistence of the Repentant Magister in stirring the pot that bothered the Ashuran, as much for the stirring itself as her persistence in doing so when she’d been confronted about it. She did not usually continue past the first verbal raking of her claws on someone’s back when caught out. The White Knight’s gaze moved to her hands, which he found steady, but then to the cup she was holding. Which was, as he’d noted earlier, still full. So was the open bottle at her side on the table.

“Are you drunk, Magister?” Hanno suddenly asked.

The smile vanished.

“Of course not,” Nephele replied, tone serene.

A lie, Hanno thought. He glanced at the other two heroes: Christophe had followed, but as the Myrmidon spoke nothing aside from Aenian, barely passable tradertalk and a smidge of Tolesian she was utterly in the dark.

“I would ask you for use of the room, Mirror Knight,” he formally asked the Proceran.

The man was still furious, but now he was also confused and aside from it all his natural manners won out – when politely asked a minor favour by someone he considered a social superior, Christophe would feel the need to grant it with aplomb. He acceded to the request. The Myrmidon would require better reason, so instead Hanno asked her to see if the Painted Knife had calmed – and if not, if she could be talked into a spar with the Vagrant Spear. The Penthesian was quite taking with the latter, if not in a romantic sense: their very public matches had become one of the favourite entertainments of the army in Cleves.

“Am I to be punished now?” the Repentant Magister smiled. “I have been a bad girl, and since we have the use of the room…”

“Would that help you?” Hanno frankly asked.

She blinked in surprise. He thought it a little sad, that she had grown so jaded of her own life she no longer genuinely sought companionship in others.

“If all it takes is asking, it is cruel no one has told Antigone,” Nephele chuckled.

That brought out no reaction from him. Hanno understood the Witch of the Wilds perhaps better than anyone not of the Gigantes could, for the silent tongue they shared had a hundred thousand nuances but not a single lie. They knew where they stood, and what could and could not change from it. Insinuations thrown against that were like an egg tossed at a rampart.

“No, then,” Hanno frowned. “Drink is not a remedy, Nephele.”

“A remedy for what?” the Repentant Magister asked.

“Your hands shake without it, I think,” the White Knight said. “How many bottles have you drunk?”

The heroine’s face tightened, and so he knew he’d been correct.

“I am not weak,” the sorceress said.

Hanno sat at her side. How many times did it make now he’d been in this position? The strain was getting to all of them, one way or another. They were far from home, drowning in death, and forced to stand shoulder to shoulder with people they might otherwise draw blades on. The exhaustion they felt was making them all quarrel more than they would have otherwise, for though their bodies were often kept rested by their Names the same could not be said of their minds.

“When you left Stygia, you renounced the sorceries you were taught,” Hanno gently said.

“Not all,” Nephele said. “Enchantment and clairvoyance, healing and strengthening. I am still mistress of these, for all I have cast aside.”

But the curses and destructive sorceries the Magisterium was fond of unleashing on its enemies – or had been, before Hanno and the Ashen Priestess personally slew its finest sorcerers – she had renounced. The magics she used were useful, for all that some of their companions had expressed regret she was the one to come north with them instead of the Rogue Sorcerer, but in the face of relentless tides of death they would not save her life. Fear, Hanno thought, was at the heart of this. That could not easily be mended, but in sharing its hold could be lessened. So they spoke of many things, the two of them, for once pressed the heroine seemed almost eager to speak. They always were, when they searched his face and found no castigation there. Why they could expect it he did not know, for while Hanno often diverged in belief form his companions he had never once thought them his lessers. He, too, knew fear. Still remembered a corpse and a trick, words wielded like knives. Certainty and blindness, the monster had said. I have ever wondered at the difference. The sorry song of doubt, for a monster’s curse in defeat might be dismissed but not so a gloat in victory.

“We must seem so petty to you, White Knight,” Nephele bitterly said. “With our doubts and our failures.”

“You have come a very long way to fight for the sake of people you never knew, against an enemy some claim cannot be defeated,” Hanno gently said. “Even at the worst of the casual cruelty you have offered, never once did I think of you as petty.”

Why do you all hold me in such esteem? He could not help but wonder, for even those among the heroes in Cleves that had never once obeyed his commands still seemed to consider him as a figure of authority – though not one to which they were beholden. It was as if they all knew something he did not, something that set him apart from the rest, and he knew not what it was. So instead he stilled his tongue and held Nephele when the bottle was empty and she wept for the home she loved as much a she hated, for the golden life she had left behind because she could not stand to see men in chains. He held her as she broke and helped her rise when she put herself together again. She’d not needed him, not truly. The woman she’d been the moment she spurned everything she was raised to embrace was the true face of her, not the malice that came out when fear and exhaustion won. They never seemed to understand it, Hanno had learned, that every single one of them had a light in them that was not so easily put out. He put the Repentant Magister to bed, after, and took his leave. It was not yet too late to call on Prince Gaspard and Princess Rozala, to discuss where the Dead were striking.

There would be no rest for the wicked if he could have it otherwise.