“Go ahead,” Queen Maud pronounced calmly, gesturing for the messenger to speak.

In the intervening years since the time skip, she seemed to have acquired a calm and steady quality.

She was confident now, not just on the battlefield, but also on the throne and in council chambers.

Rosslyn’s lips curled into a smile as she looked on. Even though she thought she knew the tragedy that was about to unfold, she enjoyed seeing her predecessor more comfortable in her own skin as she confronted a challenge. Rosslyn always enjoyed seeing any kind of excellence, especially from her countrymen. When it was a member of her own family, she felt even prouder.

“Yes, Your Majesty.” The messenger unfurled a scroll and began to read aloud.

“The Demon Emperor’s provocations have at last reached the level of our greatest fears. Despite their recent internal political strife, they have raised a mighty host to crush the Ursabians. The King indicated in his letter that his army was too small to meet a force of that size in open battle. He has withdrawn the population into Stalenton, and he begs for our aid. The High Priest refuses to intercede, as we expected. We have raised our army and are riding to the Ursabians’ relief at once. Please rendezvous with us at your earliest convenience, in keeping with our pact. Signed, Niklas, King of Parmonia, Shield of—”

“You can leave off the extra titles,” Maud said curtly. She turned to Count Brian. “What does the treasury look like? Can we wage effective war without the priesthood’s support?”

Why would they not have the support of the High Priest? Rosslyn wondered. The Demon Empire is a threat to all Goddess worshipers.

Her cousin swallowed nervously. “It is a difficult thing,” he said. “Our finances still have yet to fully recover from the last war.”

She grunted.

There was silence for a few seconds.

“Well, we march in any case,” the Warrior Queen said. “We will not allow Ursabia to fall. Even if we were willing to break our ancient pact and bury our heads in the sand, the Empire would immediately begin eying us or Parmonia next. Niklas thinks it would be them. I disagree.” She turned to the messenger, who had stood in the corner, silently sweating, while Maud and Brian spoke. “Go and tell King Niklas that we will meet him on the battlefield, as soon as we can.”

“Yes, Your Majesty!” The man put a fist to his chest and bowed, in the fashion of the Parmonians. Then he left the room, almost at a run.

“Cousin, have you considered King Titus’s proposal?” Brian asked softly.

Her posture immediately stiffened. “You know I have given it all due consideration,” she said, her expression hardening.

“I know you have discussed it with your other advisors,” he said. “I only bring it up because of the contents of his last letter. He made it a point to mention that he could smooth over relations with the High Priest. And his army is forty thousand strong—”

“Why do you insist on telling me things I already know?” her voice came out sharp and cold.

The Count sighed. “I am simply worried that we are in a fight we cannot win, even with your strength.”

“With mine, Parmonia’s, and Ursabia’s strength combined, though?” she replied, her voice a bit calmer.

“Aye, perhaps,” he said. “Things never go the way you plan for when you march off to war, though. Sometimes they turn out to be much easier than you expected, as in your first battle with Lachlan. Other times, they go much worse.”

“I know,” Maud said. “But even if I agreed to Titus’s proposal, and his forty thousand soldiers started marching today, they would be too late to relieve Ursabia. They would take a month to reach Wayn. Whereas we can march from Wayn today with—” She hesitated—“how many, do you think?”

“Twenty thousand, at most,” Brian said.

“That will be enough.”

The scene faded, and Rosslyn found herself watching the disastrous Third Battle of Stalenton. The Parmonian cavalry charge that broke on an Imperial shield wall. The counter attack that ended in the slaughter of the Parmonian Royal Guard and King Niklas’s impalement on a half dozen pikes. The remainder of King Niklas’s forces fled in disarray.

She saw it all from a distance, as if the details of what unfolded outside the city walls was unimportant.

The vision quickly faded.

Then she was watching the Claustrian military suffer a similar, but much smaller scale, defeat. Having a less numerous force than the Parmonians, they quickly retreated to the Ursabian Woods, where they waged guerrilla warfare. With the Warrior Queen alive and in command, the Claustrian Army achieved a much more orderly withdrawal than the panicking Parmonians.

Still, their activities were like pinpricks trying to bleed a bear to death.

The vision gradually faded out before Rosslyn found herself in Wayn again.

The city walls had been fortified since she last saw them—perhaps even stronger than they were in present day, to Rosslyn’s eyes—but Queen Maud’s expression was grim as she stared off into the distance from the top of the wall. Before her, the approaching vanguard of the Demon Army was rapidly closing the distance to Wayn. Fresh from the conquest of Stalenton, their enthusiastic war whoops were audible even from over a mile away. Count Brian stepped up beside her, his face similarly bleak.

“What more is there to do, Your Majesty?” he asked, his tone strangely formal.

“Nothing more we can do,” she replied. “We must hold them off, or they will enslave everyone in the city.”

“No possibility of terms, then,” he said glumly.

The Warrior Queen raised a hand and pointed off into the distance, beyond the vanguard, at something Rosslyn could not perceive.

Count Brian’s followed the gesture, and he strained his eyes, trying to see what his cousin saw. After a few seconds, he gave up.

“What are you showing me?” he asked a little impatiently, turning back to the Queen.

“Oh. I forget sometimes,” she said. “Beyond the vanguard, near the center of the enemy’s mass, there is General Vizzini. Beside him, I see cousin Lachlan.” She swallowed a lump in her throat. “You see, there is little point in my trying to negotiate terms. They already have my replacement right there. Their puppet.”

Count Brian nodded. “I understand. I will say no more about terms. It is victory or death.”

“You do not suppose they would accept a duel to decide the outcome?” she asked sarcastically.

Single combat to decide a battle was an ancient tradition on the continent. There was a special blue flag that could be raised by either side of a battle to propose such a duel, though traditionally, the aggressor tended to do so more often.

Claustria had secured its independence with single combat twice in its history. The Empire had used it as a tool of aggression. Their borders expanded more quickly via single combat than any observer had predicted, due to the tendency for demons to be naturally stronger than humans in general. The Empire had grown from a marginal power in a desert to an upstart nation to the menace of the continent.

But a duel to decide the outcome of a battle had to be agreed to by both sides. Where the battle seemed one-sided, it would not be offered.

“Given your reputation and their numbers, that seems unlikely,” Brian said gently.

The Queen suddenly turned and gripped her cousin’s arm with what Rosslyn could see was a frightful strength. The Count winced until she loosened her hold.

“Sorry,” she mumbled, eyes downcast. Rosslyn could see the overwhelmed young girl that Maud had been in her face as she spoke. “I never thought my reign would end this way. Those are a hundred thousand men out there. And no one is coming to the rescue. If you wanted to, you could hand me over to them. I have always taken a capsule of poison into battle with me. What if you promised to be their puppet in exchange for turning me over. I could take the poison and—”

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Brian shook his head angrily, cutting her off. “No more of that! If you want to die in defense of this city, I will die beside you. You know that any one of the men who has fought alongside you would do the same. Do you think we want to see slaves shuffle down the streets of Wayn? Our mages and knights castrated? Our daughters trafficked as concubines? The palace turned into the Emperor’s bordello? Our houses of worship desecrated? Do you think any loyal citizen of Claustria would ever choose the Emperor’s mercy over you?” He turned to face the outside of the wall and hocked a thick glob of saliva in the direction of the Demon Army. “They advance this far, and no farther! We will have peace with honor or none at all. Rest assured, neither I nor any true man of Claustria will betray you here.”

The Warrior Queen inhaled and exhaled several times, then nodded and withdrew from the wall top. Archers took their places on top of the wall.

In a matter of minutes, the enemy army stood outside the gates.

A rider approached and tried to read a message out, but the soldiers on the wall threw stones at him and cursed him out loudly so that no one could hear what he had to say. None of them fired arrows, since he was merely a messenger, but they were all united in their resistance.

Negotiations having failed to get off the ground, the Siege of Wayn began.

Rosslyn tried to estimate how many soldiers she could see waiting outside the gates, and she arrived at somewhere around a hundred and fifty thousand. The historians had never been certain of exactly the odds Queen Maud faced in this battle. Now Rosslyn felt as if she knew the answer to that question, even if this was merely an elaborate dream.

The Demon Army set to work surrounding the castle, felling trees to construct tools of war, and pursuing the other arts of siege warfare. Rosslyn could see a distant crew of men at work tunneling underground, while another group put together ballistas from parts the army had brought with it from their last siege.

Through the night, work went on. The Claustrians maintained a perimeter around Wayn by keeping the area around the walls brightly lit and shooting down any soldiers who stepped within range.

The Queen slept peacefully for the last time before the battle began in earnest.

The next day, the city awakened to bombardments of stone and ballista bolts aimed at the city walls. Since they were not as formidable as those of Stalenton, Wayn’s walls were deemed a viable target.

Maud had already been roused on Brian’s orders, and she stood at the wall and performed an act that Rosslyn had always assumed was mere legend. She poured Mana into the stones of the wall and reinforced the entire perimeter of the city with her own power.

Rosslyn simply stared without being able to react for a moment. Not only was this something she was far from powerful enough to do, it was something she did not believe her father could perform for more than perhaps a quarter of an hour.

The normal use of Mana in a fight was to reinforce one’s body, one’s armor, and one’s weapon. The reason for this was that Mana was a limited commodity for everyone. It could not be stored. Each person’s body could only produce a certain amount daily, even accounting for food to refuel the body. Occasionally, fancier usages of Mana would come in handy—setting fire to one’s enemy or blinding them with light were abilities Rosslyn might employ—but the basics were usually most practical. The idea of dispersing one’s power to reinforce a wall that encircled an entire city was mind-boggling. It showed seemingly limitless resources.

The Warrior Queen was truly more than human. It was no wonder people had composed songs and poems to honor her after this battle.

The heavy stones and ballista bolts struck the walls and ricocheted off with supernatural force, landing among the Demon Army and killing a few dozen of their men. None in the Demon Army had reckoned on the Warrior Queen being so unreasonably powerful.

The day continued with more such attacks from all sides of the city, as the Empire looked for any weakness in the walls and spent soldiers’ lives cheaply to find such a hole. But every projectile, and even charges with battering rams, was repelled with greater power than it had begun with. Hundreds of soldiers died in some of these incidents, but it was obvious the commanders were not concerned with losing a tiny fraction of their number.

Rosslyn thought it could make a difference by the end, but this was already going far differently than she had imagined. The Warrior Queen was holding steady inside the city walls, reinforcing them via her constant presence, rather than stalking the battlefield like a specter of death, chopping off heads. The presence of her cousin Lachlan on the opposite side of the battle was also something that had not gone down in the history books. And of course, the role of the commoners had been grossly understated.

This was not a war of knights’ charges or mages raining death from the sky. The common soldiers—and civilians pressed into service to face the common emergency—were the ones doing most of the killing, aside from Maud with her deadly ricochets.

It was the ordinary soldiers who shot down enemies who got too close to the city walls, including those who carried battering rams, forcing a great part of the Demon Army to hang back and its engineers to construct siege towers and additional shields for those who advanced closer to the walls. It was the ordinary soldiers who dug their own tunnels and attempted to counteract the sappers trying to dig under their walls and collapse them.

Perhaps most impactfully, the ordinary soldiers burned some of the siege towers, shot many of those who manned them with arrows, and then fought in close quarters with those of the Demon Army who nevertheless reached the top of the wall. The knights participated in this last conflict as well, causing the Demon Army to lose ten soldiers for every one defender killed.

But the city was still on the wrong side of a battle of attrition.

Rosslyn could not see how they would win. Even the histories of the siege were muddled on how Wayn had survived.

By nightfall, Maud was visibly exhausted, and a squad of three dozen elite mages and knights relieved her, pouring Mana into the walls from evenly spaced positions all around the city so that the Queen could rest for a few hours. Even with all of them giving their all, the wall was weaker than it had been under Maud’s reinforcement. Rosslyn could see the difference.

But the attacks were fewer at night too. The soldiers most familiar with siege engines were tired from the day’s activities, and those who were active now could not manage as high a rate of fire. The catapult barrages came once an hour, and though they were not repelled with the same great force as they had been, the walls held firm.

Brian awakened Maud midway through the night, so she could resume her duties, and a miracle happened.

Underground, the soldiers who had fought repeated engagements with the enemy sappers encountered the largest group of sappers yet. And the Claustrian soldiers began to die by the handful despite the tight space. Word somehow reached the surface that General Vizzini was below, supervising the digging of this tunnel himself. He was responsible for the high rate of casualties.

Upon hearing this, most of the knights gathered under Count Brian, and they split into two groups. Count Brian led a small contingent of knights disguised as normal soldiers underground to confront General Vizzini, and the rest of them dispersed through the front gate and sallied forth to distract the Demon Army, aiming to cut through to the other side of the tunnel and cave it in, trapping the General underground.

The knights of Claustria fought like demons that evening, killing and maiming dozens as they rode forth. The main body of the enemy force roused slowly, then mobbed the knights, picking them off one by one from the edges of the formation.

But the knights continued charging forward, an arrow aimed at a precise target.

Only a handful reached the hole—too few to collapse the entrance with sheer force while being attacked, but they killed those who defended it and then charged in to cut off General Vizzini’s escape route.

In the ensuing underground melee, the General was killed. He died of half a hundred stab wounds, fighting Count Brian and a half dozen other knights armed with swords, daggers, halberds, and mainly knives.

The surviving knights managed to return above ground and collapse the tunnel.

And the next day, to Rosslyn’s bewilderment, the Demon Army camp disintegrated into arguments about what they should do next. The great strength of the Claustrian army had been stretched to its breaking point, in her mind, yet the surviving officers appeared to be unwilling to take responsibility for ordering further attacks.

Gradually, they agreed to pack up their gear and go.

All but one commander. Maud’s cousin Lachlan had been only a nominal leader in the war thus far, but he had a brigade of several thousand men under his command. He demanded that the attack continue.

The officers narrowed their eyes, looked away, or spat, and continued their preparations for retreat.

As the sun began to set that day, the Demon Army officers had pulled back with almost their entire force. They had withdrawn so far off into Wayn’s horizon that Rosslyn could no longer see them. It seemed they were truly going home.

This left Lachlan and five thousand soldiers to face off defiantly with Queen Maud and her numerically superior force.

At sundown, Lachlan led a suicidal charge at the walls, and for some reason that Rosslyn did not understand, instead of simply allowing the charge to fail, the Queen opened the gate and led a mass of soldiers to confront him. This was true to the history books, aside from their failure to mention Lachlan specifically, but the histories had never been clear on the reasons why.

Now Rosslyn understood why the histories were speculative and ambiguous, even if she still did not know the underlying cause.

Whatever the reasons, before her eyes, she saw the spectacle that had defined the legend of the Warrior Queen.

She loomed larger than life. A single, towering figure who charged ahead of her soldiers and cut down enemy troops, four at a time, five at a time, killing everyone who stood between her and her objective: Lachlan.

And to his credit, for once, her rival for the throne did not run away. As if trying to recover his lost honor, he stood and fought.

The two of them entered a duel in the middle of the melee. They exchanged three sword slashes apiece, and the would-be usurper’s head tumbled from his shoulders.

The enemy began to break and run, recognizing they were beaten. Many of the Claustrian soldiers chased after them, but not Maud.

She strode back within the gates of the city, standing straight, head held high, confident and poised.

She stepped to the side of the gate, out of sight of the enemy, and she collapsed.

Count Brian knelt at her side, cradled the Queen’s body, and tried to pour healing magic onto her, but she waved for him to stop. Rosslyn knew what had happened. She had overloaded her body with her expenditure of Mana, shortening her lifespan in her defense of the city.

Even the Warrior Queen was not invincible.

“Rule well,” Maud said, her voice a croak. “I updated my will before the battle.” She caressed her cousin’s cheek. “You will be a wise king.”

Then Claustria’s most notorious Queen passed away.