Thawn stood at the gates of his deliverance.

This was the purpose for which he was created. He was prepared.

He was prepared.

Of course, he was. He already saw the awful mud, and the volley of laser fire between the frigates of the Sign and the Patents above the long grasses. It shattered his ears, but they didn’t ring. His fingers froze, but they weren’t numb. He felt the icy course of adrenaline down his spine, but he wasn’t scared. And he saw with greater clarity than he ever had his terrible purpose. He was infallible. His eyes didn’t even twitch as he stood, shrouded in his armour.

He looked to his right. Squads of Pilgrims were stationed in lines, braced for their release. Thawn stole glances of the machines, the cut of their red glare in the distant reeds. They waited. Thawn’s path was clear, if uneasy: engage the machines and cut out a route for the Icks up to the castle.

Behind, Masster Handall cast a long shadow from the top of the ridge. A blade was raised in one hand, angled at his charges. He shouted something but the words passed over Thawn. An angry chatter filled his helmet; someone might have said something to him, but he wouldn’t know

Then a pair of hands pressed into his back and Thawn was carried forwards and down like a tidal wave. Skirting through mud tracks and plunged into the swamp of reeds thrice his height. To his side, the lines pushed towards each other, like a battering ram.

Thawn plummeted into the undergrowth, and the pressure on his back eased at once. They could scarce see more than a few feet. Immediately, the battle felt distant, as they were cast into an oblique gloom. Thawn’s line of troops slackened. He canted his head and a torch clicked on the side of his helmet. One-by-one, his squad followed, and Thawn drew his firearm from his hip, training it ahead. He twisted, counting each of them with a sharp nod.

He took a single step, and his boot sank into gunky swampland. Every movement was heavy and slow. And so, slow they would have to move. Because there was no chance of a rapid escape if things went awry.

‘Nice,’ Asher Ashtersen said, raising a foot from the marshes to inspect it.

‘Light’s low. Mobility’s low. Visibility’s low,’ Thawn announced swatting some of the grasses down with his blade. ‘So, we’ll move slowly. And don’t shoot each other.’ Every few seconds, there came a barrage of artillery fire from the canons upon the ridge, and Thawn lost his train of thought.

Esther sighed, poking her blade at Asher. ‘Easier said than done.’

‘Ulypses,’ Thawn said and he beckoned over a woman. She wasn’t armoured like the rest of them. Her hair was wet and matted into thick, dark strands. Symmetrical scars drew across her face and there was a delectable mania in her feature

Asher spat. ‘Pikkita[1].’

‘Sir,’ the woman said. She spoke slow and snake-like. Every sound protracted.

‘Think you can clear us a way through?’

The woman hissed, striding in the way of the castle. She pulled a knife from her thigh and wordlessly sliced into the palm of her hand. Her blood almost seemed to shine. She recanted some ritual, and her fingers writhed in a reddish hue. Her skin splintered, and a crimson dust fell through the pores in her fingers. Asher stepped back, aghast.

Esther laughed. ‘You never seen magick before, kid?’

Asher said nothing.

Dust poured from her fingertips like rain. Ulypses extended an arm around the base of a reed, and it was scorched in flame. The Mage directed Asher a look. There was something unsettling about her stare, Thawn had to admit. It felt like she could see right through the tint of his visor.

‘There’s a reason people don’t trust them,’ Asher said eventually, as they began to wade into the swamp, guided by Ulypses, each reed bursting into flame on her bloody touch. ‘Does it hurt?’ he added, dipping his chin in Ulypses’ direction.

‘Interminably,’ she hissed, inspecting her hands. ‘It’s a long death. All magick demands sacrifice.’ She gestured to bandaging all the way up her arms.

‘You can heal yourself though? They say Mages have regrown limbs and brought men back from…death.’ Asher seemed in equal parts enchanted and disgusted.

‘Why would I wound myself in one place, to heal in another? The overall effect is the same. Magick is a bloody and imprecise art. Best not to perform it on oneself.’

Thawn heard the snapping of grasses, and he flashed his gun into the thicket. Their convoy of a half dozen halted. Ulypses twisted her hands towards the noise, the fissures in her skin burned in a fiery glow. Thawn held his fist up to halt them.

Gunfire pinged to and fro in the distance. Thawn held his breath.

The reads leapt apart and two pilgrims tumbled through. Before Thawn could think, they were fumbling to stand, throwing the arms to point back whence they’d come. ‘Move!’ one yelled, but Thawn couldn’t think to obey. The whirr of the machines came closer. He could see the water round his feet tremble in tune to invisible footsteps.

Then, a red glow burst through the thicket and Thawn was knocked backwards by a blast of laser fire. He scurried across the marshes, diving from the path the witch had cut and into the maze. The sight of his peers was lost, and he was alone. Closer the machines came and Thawn traded his firearm for the the Argan blade. He held his breath, his body, to perfect stillness. And waited.

He saw the shimmer of their black guises glide behind a bed of reeds. Thawn allowed the moment to pass. Content, he pressed on, alone. Once more, he resorted to swatting at the grasses with his blade. Every now and then he would halt for a passing patrol. Every direction was the same; he could have been going in circles. Perhaps he was. Two more machines crawled through his eyeline, only this time they moved away from him. Maybe he was going the wrong way. He glanced up, guided by the blasts of the frigates.

He stalked his pray, every step subtle. With a surgical blow, the first machine shattered by its waist. The light drained from its eyes. Before the second could strike, it burst on the touch of Thawn’s sword. Sentiment struck him for a moment. These were the first victims of his war. Petty, mindless machines. He stared at the minutiae of their components, bound within glossy plates of black armour. He had never seen a functional one up close; he supposed he still hadn’t.

Thawn used the angle of the Sign’s ship above to orient himself. Still the right way, he thought. Its shadow eclipsed him, as the sun was blotted behind its winglet. It sunk through the sky closer to him, blooming over the fields. For an instant, he almost didn’t realise what was happening.

The belly of the ship burst. Sparks jettisoned down like the devil’s hellfire. Thawn cowed, clutching his helmet as the barrage hailed into the marshes.

When it stopped, Thawn stood, Ellaga ablaze around him. Its oppressive heat never reached through his armour though. If anything, he felt cold. Above, the sky was smitten in a rosy glow, and black fog began to swell at his feet as Thawn’s view choked in fumes. He could scarce see, less hear for the cry of the dying lands that besieged him, as reeds were shredded into ashes. One-by-one, machines grew out of the tempest, their arms extended like celestial undead. Their armour shimmered in the haze, unmarked. For every one that approached, Thawn lunged a wild swing of his sword and the sentry obliged.

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He didn’t move until the blaze subsided. When it did, the land left was struck in contours of black. The ground itself was death and the cloudless sky was an oil painting of sickly greys. Two shots whizzed past Thawn and he dived to the mud. He now had a clearer view of the enemy, whose force lurked half a mile hence.

‘SKIPPER!’

Labban of Harvest Section was lurching through the mud towards Thawn from across the field.

He didn’t see it coming; an artillery shattered the ground at his feet. Before Thawn could think to warn, his peer was thrown by the blast. Thawn bolted, but his legs were sticks of wax. Every step seemed to bind into the mud. A second blast, more distant, knocked him from his stride, and he was sent tumbling towards Labban. The kid’s body lay bent out of shape. Thawn looked around. For someone. Anyone.

No one. They didn’t care. Who would care? He wasn’t meant to care either. So, this was the war, he thought with derision. Did any of the men on this side of the field even know what they were fighting for? The arcane whims of superiors. The destruction of mere mechanicals. Puppets. This was what Thawn had been unmade and remade for. Made to memorise star-charts, a hundred languages, codes and the workings of the Patent war machine for. To be beaten by a rogue artillery shell on the first day of his holy war.

He looked up past the clearing smoke and the silhouette of Castle Bakh, to squads of pilgrims behind him, and the hoard of Icks treading their footsteps through the wastes. None cared. He looked for Esther and Asher, but they were nowhere.

Then, a pair of footsteps came trudging at him over the ashes. ‘Aye,’ the witch Ulypses called. Her rags were sodden, and Thawn stared at her naked feet. There was no hint of a burn on her. ‘He’s broken good and proper.’

Thawn yelled for her to look out but she flippantly raised a reddened hand, and a bolt of laser fire turned to vapour. She knelt at Thawn’s side, inspecting Labban, where the shell had splintered his spine. Every time a shot whizzed close, it evaporated to her touch. Her very presence was as if she were a shield.

‘Can you fix him?’ Thawn whispered.

‘Do you want me to fix him?’

‘We are inevitably disposable, Thawn. That you might outlive colleagues on the front is inevitable in kind. Even for a pilgrim of Winter, the casualties of war are no less certain. Try not to dwell on it. Much less sacrifice your orders for it.’ His Priestern’s words were clear in his mind, even now. He looked at Labban, unmoved but for the tilt of his neck. He searched for a Masster’s judgement across the marshes, but they were alone. There was surely no harm, he thought.

‘Save a man and you become obliged to him, and he indebted to you. Like any favour, salvation is transactional, and digresses both parties from the task at hand.’

Thawn growled, banishing Priestess Jaho’s lessons to the recesses of his mind. He could pay the debts of his failures later. ‘Yes. Save him,’ Thawn uttered. Labban could not be left. He knew what would happen.

Ulypses bowed. With one arm outstretched, the other held against his tortured spine. She incanted in the tongue only witches knew. The dust at the tips of his fingers erupted, flowed like water across the contours of Labban’s armour. It surrounded him like a shroud, and glowed. The witch muttered through the exchange of laser fire, as if elsewhere. Her work, undisturbed. She grabbed the knife stashed at her hip and cut into her shoulder, snapping her jaw around a strip of fabric that swung from her neck. Then, tied it across her wound. Her garb was a mess of loose fabrics and tightly wound bandages. Thawn studied her with quiet disgust.

A moment later, Labban strained, turned in the mud.

‘Skipper!’ he panted. ‘Skip.’

Thawn pinned him against the dirt by his wrists.

‘Whaddidyou—’ Labban looked at Ulypses. ‘Oh hells. I died.’

‘No—’

‘I’m dead.’

‘You’re not dead, Lab.’ Thawn glanced Ulypses. ‘He’s gonna be alright?’

The witch shrugged, wiping her hands of her blood. ‘I know of a man who has died a great many times, but for a mage’s hand. It never held him back. He’ll be fine, eventually.’ She ushered him to his feet, her frame hiding a quiet strength.

‘I don’t want to be cleaved,’ Labban spat.

Ulypses laughed dryly. ‘A cloven pilgrim would be something, but there’s life for you in this world yet, before the next gets its hands on you, little one.’

Thawn looked out. The machines had gathered in a glossy haze, the edges of their armour glinting like diamonds. Behind, the line of the Sign drew closer to them, and Thawn helped support Labban from his surgeries. They shuffled backwards, Thawn’s laser extended in one hand. He fired of errant shots, unsure if they caught their target.

‘Skipper!’ another one of them called.

He looked back; Esther and Asher were peddling the mud towards them. They nodded at Thawn, hastily shared the load of Labban, and their squad sank back into the line of the Sign’s forces. He looked across; from the lower lying lands to the right, he could see the chained Alika: hordes of Cloven, undead Icks pressed together like grains of sand, flowed in their motions, and the Pale Crow. Its albino wings were clipped across its back, with talons pegged by chains. A quartet of speckled Icks, a fifth its height or more, were dragging it across the dirt. Thawn had never imagined he might see a real one so soon; he was caught by the redness of its eyes.

Labban brushed them off at last and pointed his gun ahead. Someone important shouted something and the ground shook with a flurry of shots, like the footsteps of giants. Thawn followed the crowd. Distantly, the enemy dug into the fields, entrenched. But the Sign’s relentless forward motion was unimpaired. Every few seconds, another cry, and another blast of fire. The other mages blasted projectiles of bloody power from their fingertips, but Ulypses walked quietly, her attention defending them with her invisible shield.

Shouts bounced around them. ‘We are Unyielding! Unbreaking!’ incanted in chorus. The machines replied in nothing but laserfire. Their communication was silent. Their taunts absent. Theirs was the truest pragmatism, Jaho had told Thawn.

Still, they matched forwards. Thawn was eased for his colleagues’ presence. He wasn’t meant to be. But he was. There was a whistling and an artillery shell sailed overhead. Then, a blast from the enemy and the shell shattered. The sky fell awash in fire, the pop of explosions. Again. Shells whistled above them. Each antagonised by a laser bolt. Thawn’s eye was caught by the heavy rain, of shells and bolts, the battle played out above its players.

Above the castle, another case of whatever the Patents were mining jettisoned into the sky. Thawn was sure he felt the line’s stride hasten; the grip on their weapons tighten. Then, a woman’s voice called them to hold. Wisps of energy fired at them, but the witches swatted them away. They held. ‘On three!’ she screamed.

Silence, then:

Canon fire shattered the sky, and Thawn was carried. The lines broke into waves, and suddenly he was sprinting over the ashes. The pilgrims led their charge, Icks gravitating towards their gigantic bodies like moons in orbit. Thawn ignored the weight in his legs; adrenaline pushed him. Through potted craters and grassy crests. Every few seconds, he paused to fire off a shot, then his chase resumed. His squad circled him like an escort, rotating him from front to back.

Above the smear of the machines, knots of energy pelted from catapults, devastating the fields. More craters, and more ash. What was the point? he thought. There wasn’t one. All the practiced days of intense study, of concentrated thought. All the lessons and beatings. It was less than academic. In war, Thawn felt without purpose, a guard guarding statues. This was beneath him, truly.

Another knotted well of energy fired towards them and Thawn dived. His face planted the ash. When he looked up, it was raining, but he wasn’t sure what. He rolled onto his back and felt the ground churn around him. The top spoil scattered into the air like a grim haze. There were shouts and the lines of the Sign paled. Someone yelled to move, but Thawn could only turn himself over. He crawled; his arms outstretched to the trench line a couple hundred metres hence. He could see the machinens clearly now. Every few seconds, the ground erupted and Thawn would steal a few metres.

‘Run!’ a distant voice said.

Two arms reached around Thawn, and he was hauled to his feet.

‘Run, pilgrim!’ Masster Handall’s stare pierced Thawn, pushed him to a canter. Around him, Icks were marauding over the field. Every second, third, submitting to a laser bolt. Where the men and women fell, mages rushed to their sides, cleaving them into less than themselves, making them hollow; undead. And they were drawn to their feet again as if by a puppet string. Thawn paused every few strides again, slipping to his knee, firing a shot, continuing. It was a rhythm. Labban, Esther, Ulypses, Asher were with him somewhere.

Then, Thawn didn’t see it coming; a knot of Patent-fire, and a damned hole in the ground twenty metres wide.

It was just there.

Before Thawn could think to move, he was upended by the blast at his feet, and the ground gave way around him. He tumbled into its blackened embrace and hit the cold underground somewhere between a broken spine and death for normal folk. His eyes strained open, and he heard sparse screams. Behind him, Labban, Esther and Asher had landed in his place. Ulypses was stood over their slackened bodies with sly amusement.

Esther swallowed deeply. ‘Shit.’

Thawn scoffed, clicking on his torch from the side of his helmet. Light struck them from the hole above at a narrow angle and the way was dark enough to be treacherous. They were in a tunnel of sorts. Thawn extended an arm; the walls were contoured by heavy ridges, uneven, twirling around each other. Above, flecks of leaves hung from the roof of the cave and Thawn traced them to their source, twigs emanating from the ridges.

It was a tree root, he realised, contorted into the shape of a tunnel to allow safe passage, but to what end?

The others said nothing, and Thawn glanced his torch in the direction of Castle Bakh, then nodded to him comrades that they follow.

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[1] Pikkita – an Old Azon word meaning ‘witch’.