It was even worse than she had feared. Thousands dead in the ruins of their homes and not one single survivor had emerged from the wrecked sky ships on the training grounds. Trindai had lost over a thousand of his men as well, and in the immediate aftermath farmers no longer dared the roads. Verd ate her stores, and within a few eightdays starvation would come to visit if they couldn't force the influx of food.

Mairild walked in a landscape of destruction. One of selection. Public buildings and palaces were all unblemished, but the poor quarters were a maze of rubble and gutted ruins. She had an escort to protect her from her own citizens. Where she put her steps today few could feel elation. Keen had claimed victory in her first major battle in a hundred years, but to the survivors here it mattered little. Their lives as well as their homes lay in ruins. Most had lost family.

She sighed. For her it had been a choice to enter a lonely home after a long day, but the thought of having that closeness stolen from her like this built a painful lump in her stomach.

Arriving here in spotless clothes, surrounded by imperial guards in equally faultless uniforms made her just another intruder. She didn't need the accusing looks from the sullen faces she passed to know she was gloating. A perverted fascination, a need to see the destruction with her own eyes was as much reason as her responsibilities for coming here. More, she regretfully admitted.

Makarin or Tenanrild, even Garkain had more reason to be here. She traded in information, and those she saw had little to give. They needed food, clothes and homes and she had nothing but words to give them. So why was she here? If not to gloat.

Around yet another ruined corner they walked into a group of outworlders surrounded by children and what Mairild hoped were parents. She stared into tired faces, tired but determined.

It took her a few moments to recognize the New Sweden envoy among them. The others were unknown, but their clothes told a story of different origins. A few from Anita's kingdom but most tourists who had been unable to return home after the enemy general landed with his soldiers.

A stretcher served as a table, and on it a boy, barely out of his first eightyear lay covered in blankets. Somehow Anita must have managed to organize an outdoors hospital of a kind. Machinery of a kind Mairild had never seen buzzed and hummed, and the boy's face visibly caught more colour as she watched.

Anita looked up when she was finished working whatever miracle she had done.

"Left quarters. Give him water and a blanket," she said to a tall woman with an unnatural green haircut and more gold dangling around her wrists than Mairild thought safe to carry in these quarters even with an escort.

Rich or not, she obeyed without question and carried the child away with the help of another female, her daughter possibly, inside the ruins of what had once been a tavern.

"You here to stare or to help?" Anita asked.

"I didn't expect you here," Mairild answered.

Anita smiled. "It's my job."

Behind her a few guards made as if to force a protective circle, but Mairild waved them back before they started pushing people around. She didn't want to create more hostility than she had already earned just for being here.

"I'm safe. These are our own," she said more for the benefit of their audience than to explain anything to her guards. They were paid to obey her orders without her explaining anything. "Your job is to represent your kingdom," Mairild stated flatly. This was a conflict she had to take here and now. "Saving a few lives makes you a hero of the people, but not taking your real responsibility will kill hundreds more."

Anita's face reddened and for a moment Mairild feared the outworlder woman would flare out in rage. Then the anger sunk back and left only a hollow shell. "This is what I do best, but you're right."

That was the reason she had been chosen by her kingdom. Admitting a hard truth in the face of her accuser. That took a lot of strength, and Mairild wasn't sure that doctoring was indeed where Anita's true calling lay.

"First of all I have to give you my condolences," Mairild offered to break the sudden silence.

The words must have worked a spell, because around her muffled voices came alive, and it took her a while to understand that people were wondering about the conversation. They didn't understand English.

Maybe the foreign language seemed more natural when outworlder spoke with outworlder, but Mairild's was a known face, even among the poor. She knew the older recognized her from her days as a celebrated actress. Not all plays had been staged indoors.

Then the lack of an answer finally registered on her. "Won't you mourn your own?" she asked before her shock would show.

"Mourn? Of course, but we've already put our dead to rest."

Mairild stared at Anita. "You call leaving your dead in those metal wrecks putting them to rest?"

"I don't..."

"Why didn't anyone survive?" Mairild interrupted, suddenly suspicious. There was something shifty in Anita's expression she hadn't noticed until now.

"Enemy artillery hit all shuttles."

Now Mairild knew for certain that the other woman was withholding something. "Someone should have survived, and you should at least be busy extracting bodies by now. What have you done?" She voiced the question as a direct order.

"I haven't..."

"Hold them!" That was directed at her escort when the crowd grew restless and started pushing to see what the commotion was all about. The guards lined up and pushed back even before Mairild had given her command.

She turned to Anita again. Now was the time to add ice and steel to her voice. She needed the truth. "How many did you send down. People, not machines?"

Anita's resistance broke as Mairild knew it would unless she represented a direct threat to Keen. "None," she said. "We sent no one."

"You landed empty sky ships and started this war just to make a political statement?"

"No! My friends died the first day!"

That was also true. Mairild forced herself to admit that. Anita's kingdom had taken very real losses earlier. "But why this charade?"

The outworlder paled. "I don't really know," she said. "Counting missiles to know if we can land safely I was told."

Mairild brought the memories of the previous day to her mind. Then she compared them with those from when Anita had arrived. There was a difference. One apart from the destruction of a large part of Verd.

"I saw no ship killers. Your ships all landed before they were destroyed. Am I right?"

"I think so. We will drop a field hospital. Just not where we said. We needed to know it was safe."

"And to that end you had thousands upon thousands of my people killed?"

Anita paled again, but then colour immediately returned to her cheeks. "What difference would it have made if we sacrificed several hundred of our medical staff to show we can die as well?"

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None. It would have made no difference, at least none for the good. Mairild bowed an apology. "When?" she asked. The answer to that question meant the world to her.

"You hammered the bastards to the ground. We saw that. Before noon."

"Before noon!" That was fantastic news. "At noon outworlder doctors will arrive here with help," she announced loudly in De Vhatic. Her part in the council was to trade information, and if she could gain a measure of gratitude for it in return it was only fair.

The crowd silenced, and then the cheering begun.

***

Ken turned and averted his eyes. It was not like he had never seen a deserted battlefield before, but the way the reporters from Red News descended on the broken bodies like scavengers was an experience he wished undone.

"I apologize," Arthur said shamefaced and averted his eyes as well. "I personally apologize. I trained them. Never thought it would come to this."

Ken stared at him. "Thinking first really never was one of your stronger points?" he finally asked.

Arthur didn't answer. Ken saw him staring in the direction where Heinrich had his unit setting up some kind of surveillance post. They were military men, and with so many bodies killed with weapons this close they were probably more than a little nervous. Nervous in their own, detached and professional way.

Ken suddenly wished Arthur could have had some of that in him. So many dangers could have been averted then. But that wasn't really fair. The outworlder, and Ken could think of them as nothing but outworlders, earth born as he was himself, hadn't become with any tutor close by.

What was worse by far was that Arthur saw himself as all knowing when it came to tale telling of any kind. He had made a living of it, and from what Ken knew he really was seen as a godsend by his own. That made him dangerous. Twenty years was a long time for a human, even for one who could expect to live to a hundred and fifty. It was far more than enough to cement the idea of expertise, and Arthur had mastered that specific flaw to a fault.

Ken, he could hardly recall the days when he hadn't lived without the Weave. Whatever Arthur thought twenty years was nothing compared to seven hundred, and those seven hundred was barely enough to understand just how much more there was to learn. Ken accepted that. He enjoyed learning. It made life exciting.

A few steps brought him back to where he could see for himself what the news team recorded. It was disgusting, but in a way they were only doing their own version of what he had done for so long.

"They're not ours," he heard Arthur's voice from behind.

"We watch and Weave," Ken said. How hard could that be to understand? "There is no ours or theirs in what we do."

"And when did you die and grow mold in your heart?" There was equal amounts of anger and resentment in that voice.

"Dammit man. Look at them! Your own crew. They don't care about what side the dead belong to. They report. You should learn from your students."

"They care," Arthur answered. "We don't have sides the way you took for granted before you came here. Of course we have our own fair share of barbarians who just can't give up wars, but most of us only have to worry about piracy."

Ken turned and laughed. "You are too much! Last news was most every damn nation declared war on you because you started slaughtering a rescue mission."

Arthur mumbled something. Then he came up to Ken's side. "What I was trying to say is that I don't think they're from Keen," he said and pointed over the field where the dead lay scattered.

Ken watched where Arthur pointed. A few were. Dot's of coloured linen showed where a De Vhatic soldier had fallen, but Arthur was mostly correct. The vast majority of the dead wore leathers from what could only be the Midlands. One banner especially caught his interest.

"No. Wherdin, Hirgh and mostly Chach I'd guess."

"Never heard of them."

Ken wasn't surprised. "Kingdoms in the Midlands. None strong enough to be called a nation by your definition."

"How can you have a kingdom that is not a nation?"

That lack of understanding did surprise him. "People live there, but they don't think of themselves as part of a greater unit like you do. Just over a thousand years ago it was much the same back on Earth," he explained. From Arthur's blank face he guessed he'd have to turn that explanation into a lecture if he really wanted the message to get through. If Arthur's reality lacked the ever present daily reports of wars and contested borders it would take too much teaching, and he might never understand fully anyway.

Ken shrugged and went ahead. There was watching to do for future Weaving.

"As far as I understood things Keen planned an attack over an inland sea south of here," Arthur called after him. "A lot of dead bodies here means someone on the other side made the same plans, and they set them in motion first."

Arthur was obnoxious, but he wasn't stupid. "Yes, you're right. There's more to it I'm afraid," Ken said after a moments consideration.

"You mean with new gods and superstitious frenzy?"

Sometimes he was just a little too observant as well.

"And if that isn't a cross I never read my history," Arthur continued undaunted.

Ken gave the banner a long glare. What was the papacy doing here? They knew the northern empire was a sanctuary. And since when had they started to employ battlemages? Users of magic were as anathema to them as to Keen, even though for a very different reason. The papacy licensed users of the gift, to work God's miracles they said. To even the balance Ken knew. Battlemages, however, were not among those given a papal license.

Walking further out in the fields he saw the unmistakable burn marks scarring Keen's dead. Fire mages then. Primitive but dangerous. That meant Khanati, or Rhuin.

Another dead caught his interest. He had taken a lance through his chest, but the hoof prints were impossibly far apart. That took a kind of magic he hadn't seen before, and he had seen a lot.

"I think we have a problem here," he announced.

Arthur walked to his side and looked at the corpse. "Spear? Why is that a problem?"

Did it take so short for an overprotected civilian to become so callous? Then Ken recalled that Arthur had spent the better part of a year on the road. He had probably seen his fair share of death and mutilations by now. "Lance, and that's not the problem. Someone is working magic on the horses, or at least one horse."

"And?"

"And I haven't seen or heard of it before," Ken replied. Arthur's last comment made him irritated.

"And just because you haven't... oh, bloody hell!"

At least an admission that had Ken grinning. "Bloody hell sums it up quite adequately," he said.