Damage Report

The skirmishers never found the enemy, but they found the shooting platforms they used to aim over the shields. Nexus had raised pillars in the desert between fifty and a hundred meters from the column. The platforms were only erected near Zaid's part of the army and the disciples' wagons, right under everyone's noses.

The casualty reports were dire: all the disciples were dead, as were many healers and three regimental commanders. The army huddled behind its shield wall, knowing the next attack could come at any minute, but nothing happened. The enemy was content to let them sit nervously under the sun. Zaid promoted new commanders to fill the vacant regimental seats and ordered officers to strip their ranks from their uniforms and mingle with the men when they could. If the Pasha wanted to decapitate his army, he would have to work harder at it.

They always strung up tarps to keep the sun off them during the middle of the day, but now those flimsy spans of cloth counted as an actual defense. Snipers couldn't snipe what they couldn't see. Zaid was torn between resting his men and leaving before the enemy could try something else, but he decided on rest. When the army moved again, he wouldn't stop until they reached Bitter Spring and engaged the enemy there. They had to arrive in good condition, and that meant resting now so they could fight later.

"This is what hit you," said Bassel, handing him an arrow. It was improbably short, with a thick shaft of wood, three vanes in the rear canted to produce a stabilizing spin, and a wide bronze tip. The proportions were less like a normal arrow and more like a scaled-down ballista bolt. Its trip through his body and into the roadbed had curled the once-sharp edges into dull ridges.

Bassel handed him another arrow, similar in length and weight but entirely different. "This is what he used on disciples." The new arrow was a marvel. The shaft was light, and the head was surprisingly heavy for something so thin, both made of metals he couldn't identify. The blades showed no sign they had cut through enhanced monster hide, tirun scale, and killed someone. Flesh and blood didn't stick to it. It looked brand new, ready to be reloaded and flown again.

"Every shot hit its mark except you. One arrow, one kill."

"And Brother Zorda," Zaid corrected him. "He got two arrows. I would have done the same." He tapped the exotic shaft against his palm. The simpleton made others uncomfortable sometimes, but his competence was extraordinary, even among disciples. He was growing to like the peculiar man and his gentle nature. Zaid still saw his face, older than his Tyrant father's but infinitely more kind, instantly gone slack in death. The Princeps thought of himself as a just man, and the disciple's undeserved death rankled him. But Hadith's Destiny ranked higher than justice, so Zaid lived while Zorda died. Fairness was never part of war or destiny.

"I think our young genius has made a mistake. He should have done this days ago, back at Satoma. That would have crippled us. As it is, we have just enough water to get us to Bitter Spring. Summon Guardian Paraskevi."

While he was waiting, Zorda's lead bulwark came to let him know she was leaving with the rest of her team. Their appalons were kneeling beyond the highway, ready to move with Zorda's shrouded body strapped to one of them. A healer was praying over the body, maybe a blessing for the dead.

"Aren't you good fighters, even without prayers?" he asked the woman. "Stay, and get revenge for him."

"That's not what he'd want."

Paraskevi chose that moment to arrive. "What are you saying? You must fulfill your duty to the church and fight the heretic."

"He was our church!" Cold fury dripped from the bulwark's words, as she pointed to the shrouded figure of her dead disciple. "We're his followers, not yours. Our duty is to him and him alone. You people made him take that stupid vow, and it scrambled his head! Good luck rebuilding your church, you stupid cow." The small party was mounted and ready to leave within the minute, and Zaid sent orders to allow them to leave unhindered.

As they rode east at a fast pace, Zaid turned his attention to Paraskevi. "What did she mean about rebuilding the church?"

"There are only three disciples left. The Hierarch, the one you sent scouting, and one other."

"Who's the other?" When she didn't answer, Zaid threatened her with a growl. He was tired of these people hiding things from him. "Where are they?"

"She's in Sand Castle. She's supposed to collect information and disrupt things in the rear. But now we have no way of hearing back from her."

"In all the world, that's all you have?" The bulwark's comment about rebuilding was still fresh, and Zaid remembered: it took three disciples to anoint another disciple. "Pasha Phillip killed more than a few disciples today, didn't he?"

"He may have killed the whole church. He killed me, too," huffed the guardian. "Nobody in Leadership who fails badly lives for very long. Nobody on the council has ever failed like I have."

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"If you can't make disciples without having disciples," Bassel wondered, "how does Nexus do it?"

Paraskevi laughed without humor. "That's the greatest of his many heresies. Why do you think we risked everything to destroy him? You might as well turn around and go home. This expedition is pointless now. Enclave is broken."

"No," said the Princeps without pausing, "your mission is pointless but ours continues. We have to subjugate the desert tribes or die trying. That's our Tyrant's order. We can still win if we engage them with our full force. If they can bleed then they can die; we know they can bleed."

"Can't your Hierarch do something," Bassel asked, "about making new disciples?"

"Maybe," she conceded. "The Hierarch's powers are not well documented."

Bassel grunted. "More secrets."

Zaid felt the scouting disciple was most likely dead. There was no way a good commander would organize a massacre of disciples and not remember one running loose in the desert. If the Hierarch couldn't work around the three-disciple requirement, the entire church might be dead.

"You told me he was some kind of wash-out with a little charisma. But he's a little more than that, isn't he? I want to know everything," Zaid demanded. "Where is he from? How was he educated? Who taught him the arts? What kind of person is he? Who does he bed with? And most of all, what else is he capable of?"

"Most of what we have to go on is a report from Guardian Maia, who was sent to investigate his alleged death last autumn. She also spent time with him during the Nurr campaign."

"We've seen that travesty, haven't we? Your people blacked half of it out. Please tell me you have a true copy."

"In the wagon, where most of the disciples died."

Zaid growled at her. "Well, go get it"

Paraskevi's face went red. "I am a Guardian of the Faith! Even you have to show some respect. And the carriage is full of blood. Make someone else do it. It's probably ruined anyway."

Zaid's voice began calm but escalated quickly. "Maybe you didn't notice, but there was an order to the attack. Zorda first, then the other disciples and me, then commanders. They did not try to kill you. Do you know why? Because Phillip knows you are a fool, and he left you alive to plague me! The only use you have now is to tell me about that Young Fucker, Phillip! I don't care if that report is floating in a lake of blood, find it and bring it to me, now!"

Paraskevi rode off alone and didn't return for an hour. During that time a great many riders came, talked to Zaid or Bassel, and then left. There was still no word from the forward scouting party.

When she returned, Paraskevi brought one stack of boards with her, and a thin book made of paper. The thin sheets were wonderful to use, but on the expensive side compared to standard boards. Zaid gave them both a thorough read and shared them with Bassel. The first report was about Taylor's outlandish origins and early months in Tenobre, culminating in his murder and sudden reappearance months later. The paper report, again written by Maia, was about the Nexus school and its developments in the arts and natural law. According to Maia, monsters were increasing while Enclave's supply of competent disciples was in rapid decline. Her recommendation to Enclave was to accept the Nexus trainees as disciples and incorporate all of their discoveries.

Most troubling of all was Maia's description of their training methods: it was glowing. She used words like "superior," "ground-breaking," and, "revolutionary."

"Where are his teachers, other than Mobeen? Where is this Lucia, for example?"

"Died. Of old age, I think."

"Leila?"

"She was defrocked and joined Nexus"

"Dean Garsharp?"

"Defrocked and executed."

Zaid tried to think of other disciples he had heard of. "What about that huntress who did the giant eagles, out in Mialta? What was her name?"

"Suzane," sighed Paraskevi, "defrocked. We think she's joined Nexus."

"What about the Hermit of Dace? Barak something?"

"Defrocked. Nobody knows anything about him. That one was never a team player."

Zaid didn't need to ask about Ma'Tocha, who was Phillip's second-in-command. "Sun's scars, woman," he complained, "you got rid of all the useful ones and kept the trash. What were you people thinking?"

"We were thinking," she explained, "we needed to recall all our disciples to preserve the sacred bloodlines. Anyone who didn't agree wasn't loyal enough to be one of us. The rest are dregs."

"Those dregs devastated your ranks last night. Do you think that, maybe, you should have accepted them? Or at least not picked a fight with them?"

"Olyon forbid!" Paraskevi insisted, sickened by the idea. "The first families are the purest repositories of Olyon's light. The church was given to us for a reason. You wouldn't elevate someone without Hadith's blood to be a prince, would you? That's how we feel about disciples."

"So this kid supposedly comes from another world and is filled with strange knowledge. He invents some useful stuff, masters the arts in a few months, discovers prayer songs, survives an assassination attempt that everyone swears was successful, hunts dark monsters, plumbs the lost history of the world, sets up a school, and invents a ton more useful stuff, including a weapon that punches through Enclave's legendary armor. Do I have that about right?"

Paraskevi answered quietly, "He's very prolific in his heresies."

"And then, instead of finding a way to use him, you decide he's an enemy. And when you get into a fight with him, you don't bother to relate any of this information to the man planning your battles! Did I forget anything here?"

"With respect, Princeps," added Bassel, "he killed the unkillable Darkmaw, destroyed the Satomen who were our pawns in the region, and he's had all summer to invent ways to fight this campaign."

"I don't know what's going on in your head, woman, but you aren't thinking straight. I knew you were hiding things, but … " He sent her away, unable to bear the sight of her.

As soon as Silenz rose to give some light, they got the column moving again and wouldn't stop until they reached Bitter Spring. The road was terrible, pitted and trenched in so many places it was faster to stay off of it. Traveling over the desert floor was hard on the train cars, and they broke two axles before the night was done. Some of the load from the immobilized trains was transferred to gurantors and people, while the rest was left behind in the broken vehicles.

Half of the forward scouting party returned with good news: The enemy was massed outside Bitter Spring. The Calique revealed themselves when they pounced on the scouting party as expected. The survivors also had bad news: the disciple sent with them had been the first to die, shot through the heart with the dreaded mini-ballista.

Unless Enclave's Hierarch had a special power no one knew about, they couldn't anoint new practitioners. Without them, Bahram's church, the continent's unifying presence for three centuries, would crumble. It was only a matter of time.