He walked through night, in the waist-high grass, toward the lantern until he could see two men standing near it. Campfires burned in the distance behind them, occasionally obscured by someone walking past. “Hello? I think I’m lost, could you gents tell me where I am?” Neither of them said anything to him, but they carried on a conversation among themselves in lowerd voices. He couldn’t make out what they were saying, and he didn’t understand why they didn’t answer him.
“Hello? I don’t mean you any harm, I’m just don’t know how I got here,” he said, stepping out of the dark and into the lantern’s light. They didn’t so much as glance at him, but continued their hushed conversation. Now that he was close enough, he could tell it was in a foreign language. He tried a greeting in Pustinjalan, to no effect. As he arrived next to the men, he realized they were wearing red uniforms, embroidered with a golden sun. He stopped dead in his tracks, these were Agathocletians!
Strangely, they still hadn’t noticed him. He waved his hand and said the Pustinjalan word for ‘friend’, but it was as if he wasn’t even there.
Was it a spell, or a curse of some kind? Before he could try anything else, four men in grey cloaks sprang out of the shadows, clamped gloved hands over the sentries’ mouths, and slit their throats. One of the attackers grabbed the lantern before it could fall, and held it at the same height his victims had been, while his fellows dashed back into the dark.
“I’m not with them, gents, I swear!” Anselmo promised, but the assassins didn’t seem to see him either. Frightened, he turned and began to run toward the camp. Stumbling and gasping for breath, he managed to make it to the line of cavalry fence surrounding the edge of the encampment. He shouted at the gate sentries and he approached, who also couldn’t see him. He couldn’t hear himself now either, all he could hear was the rumble of approaching horses, then the whispers of arrows passing him in flight.
The gate sentries screamed as they died, and soldiers looked up from cookfires and peeked out of tent flaps. From out in the night came an ugly-sounding blast on a horn, and the first volley rained on the unprepared Agathocletian encampment. Wounded soldiers screamed, or choked, and officers roared orders at subordinates still groggy from just having woken up.
Anselmo spun around, unsure which way to go. It was an absolute bedlam, but drills and discipline began to show their worth; half-dressed soldiers carrying shields, spears, and arquebuses started to form a phalanx nearby, and the Agathocletians began to fire into the night. He took off running into the camp, past the dead or dying sentries.
Campfires and torches burned at irregular intervals, and even well inside the encampment there were long shadows. Anselmo heard galloping horses behind him, and he dove out of the way just in time to avoid being trampled. Twenty grey-cloaked hussars charged past, the ones in the lead striking down surprised legionaries with sabers, the ones bringing up the rear firing black-fletched arrows at anyone they could see. They maintained a steady pace toward the gate at the opposite side the the camp, barely visible unless they were near a light source, or if they came between one and Anselmo.
There came sound of someone running in armor, and he turned to watch as four men and two women in heavy armor inscribed with runes sprinted towards the gate, while arrows glanced off them. He climbed to his feet and chased after them. They had black and red cloaks that fit under their shoulder pauldrons, and their elaborate cuirasses were criss-crossed by leather bandoliers. Each held an identical runed staff, topped with a clamp holding a flat-sided length of wood inscribed with ritual magics.
They spread out in a line near the cavalry fence under direction from their commander, and at her signal, reached for a metal flask in their bandoliers.
The one nearest Anselmo hands shook slightly as he pulled the elixir from its pouch. The visor of his helmet was open, and Anselmo saw the way he looked at the little bottle; like a sailor looks at their lover after months at sea, or like a skinny beggar looks at a fresh meat pie on a vendor’s cart. Suddenly, movement out of the corner of his eye drew his gaze, and Anselmo turned to see some gods-awful thing bearing down on the pyromancer.
It had been waiting for this, the timing was just too perfect. It was like a cavalry trooper, but made of shadows and fog that billowed and rolled off of it before fading away. It bore a long, thin lance in one hand, the pennant streaming back from just below the blade.
Anselmo wasn’t even sure it was real, until with practiced ease it couched the lance, which solidified into wood and steel near the end. The Agathocletian’s reverent gaze turned to terror as he finally noticed the advancing creature. He hesitated, unsure if he should drop the flask and dive out of the way, or drain it to satisfy his craving and go on the attack. The fool chose poorly, tipping his head up to pour the elixir into his mouth. It took too long, and exposed his throat to his attacker, and the specter took full advantage, removing his head in one fluid motion. The war mage never had a chance.
The phantom rider moved back toward incorporeality, but for just a moment Anselmo saw a grey uniform, cloak billowing behind, with a cylindrical helmet trimmed in black fur. Monster or not, it was an Ostrogothi hussar.
Eyes wide, Anselmo turned to run and saw another shadow trooper surge out of the night, charging the pyromancer commander. An empty flask lay at her feet, and the tip of the runed length of wood clamped in her staff burst into a brilliant flame that showered the area around her with sparks. Her free hand conjured a roiling ball of fire, and she pulled her arm back to throw it at her attacker.
With a sudden burst of speed, the spectral trooper and their mount closed the distance, seeming to glide four or five lengths in the blink of an eye. The pyromancer commander caught on the end of the lance as it tore a hole in the back plate of her cuirass. The impact knocked the staff from her hand, and flame trailed from her gauntlets and underneath her helmet as she flew backwards, crashing into the ground and rolling as she burned, the staff that protected her from the negative effects of the elixir lying useless in the dirt. The lancer didn’t even drop his weapon, it turned turned incorporeal again after delivering the fatal blow. The front of the fallen sorcerer’s armor didn’t have a scratch on it, the blade was only solid when it cut her. A grey cloak billowed behind the galloping rider before they faded and disappeared from view into the shadows around the camp’s edge.
Fire streamed over the cavalry fence from the hands of the remaining pyromancers, igniting it and the grass beyond, casting firelight out into the night. At the edge of visibility, at least a company’s worth of hussars fired bows into the camp as they galloped past. The light also revealed two more of the phantoms, made solid by the lack of shadows around them, though darkness still seemed to roll off them like wisps of smoke. They abandoned their attack runs, turning back toward the dark and riding flat out, until they once again disappeared into the night.
Four pyromancers had survived the initial ambush, and hussar arrows glanced off their armor as they cast their wardings. A globe of flame appeared above each of them, and the arrows began to be deflected by small explosions as they got close. One pulled something from his bandolier and flicked his wrist, and a brilliant flare streaked out of his hand over the hussars, leaving no darkness underneath to conceal them. The rest began hurling fireballs that exploded when they hit. The phalanx was finally (mostly) organized, and their arquebuses managed a salvo, thundering in chorus.
Suddenly, two of the pyromancers went down, one silently, one screaming, as a volley of ballista bolts fell around three of them. The lucky third began running as he cast a flare out in the direction of his attackers. His spell passed over a low hill, revealing ten flatbed carriages at its peak. Each was pulled by a team of three horses and had a ballista mounted over the rear axle, with some also sporting a swivel gun. Engineers cranked at windlasses, preparing for another volley.
The running pyromancer shouted something desperately and waved his hand, sparks still streaming from the burning tip of his staff. Anselmo followed after him through the smoke of the guns and the fires to see what he was trying to do. The mage burst out of the smoke, screaming orders and pointing toward the tachanka wagons on the hill. Anselmo watched as a cannoneer crew grabbed their gun carriage and began turning it away from the hussars and toward their artillery support. The pyromancer threw his shoulder against the barrel of a cannon and strained to push it around.
The Ostrogothi artillery was ready first. The pyromancer slammed the butt of his staff against the ground as the shower of sparks from the top became a torrent, burning through his body’s protection from his own destructive power. The roar he let out as he strained to boost the warding was hot enough to melt lesser metals, but the steel of his helmet’s visor only glowed orange. Anselmo watched in awe as three, then five, then nine shots reached the invisible edge of the warding and were deflected by a concussive fireburst.
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The cannons roared while the phalanx fired another salvo, and Anselmo’s vision was obscured by the sulfurous smoke. He looked up in time to see the flash of the warding deflecting another bolt, but this one spun away from its intended target and hit Anselmo. It struck him sideways, knocking him to the ground, but not doing any lasting damage.
POP! WHOOMPH! The sacrificial runed wooden rod clamped in the top of the pyromancer’s staff was used up, and the last remnants of it blew apart like a firecracker, causing the magic to recoil against him. He groaned and held his free hand against his chest as smoke boiled out from under the gauntlet. He turned his staff upside down and struggled to load another sacrificial ‘wick’ into it from the spares hanging from his belt. He succeeded about the time Anselmo managed to pick himself up off the ground.
The wick began to spew sparks from its tip. The injured mage held up his arm, smoke still wafting from under his gauntlet, and pointed it at the cannon, which was almost reloaded. Anselmo didn’t understand what he was doing until the cannon fired. When the ball struck the hillside below the Ostrogothi artillery, flames exploded out from the point of impack, damaging tachankas to either side of the cannonball’s trajectory, and frightening the horses. Two of the wagons had been damaged by the ball directly, one destroyed, and the rest began to move out.
The pyromancer turned and looked at Anselmo. “What are you doing, you fool?! Arm yourself!"
Realizing the order was for him, Anselmo ignored his surprise and turned to find a weapon. He took a couple of steps toward a spear someone had dropped before he felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. He looked up and saw one of the phantoms watching him from astride his terrible steed, only a stone’s throw away. Anselmo turned to run as the rider drew their saber.
“Gods!” Anselmo shouted, “Gods, no!” The black horse, wrapped in shadows, began to trot.
“I’m not one of them! I’m Ostrogothi!” he cried desperately, trying to put some distance between them. The horse started to canter. Sparks flew from its hooves when one of then came down on a stone.
Realizing his words meant nothing, Anselmo sprinted with everything he had. Still, the sound of galloping hooves drew closer and closer.
He looked over his shoulder. The rider had leaned out toward him, his shadowy arm held high. The edge of the saber shone cruelly in the firelight.
Anselmo wailed in terror. The rider struck.
“Ahhhh!” Anselmo let out a scream and sat up, panting and covered in a cold sweat. The fire had burned low, but it was still dark. Rado was staring at him from the other side of the fire, propped up on an elbow, but still in his bedroll. Grimsby gave him a questioning look from where he was sitting in his little cart, with Porkchop lying on the ground next to him. The leader of the commission was wrapping fresh bandages and medicinal herbs around the ends of his legs, which were raw and had bled in places. The old ones he was boiling in a pot over the coals of the fire.
“What’s all that about?” he asked.
“Sorry,” muttered Anselmo with his face turning red, “I dreamt I was trapped on some battlefield in the war, with some terrible ghost or something coming for me, and I couldn’t get away from it.” He seldom remembered his dreams, when he had them, and hadn’t had an actual nightmare in years. "It was like those damned ghost stories about the 4th Army, that Prince Adalfarus summoned a brigade of phantoms from beyond the veil to keep the kingdom from being overrun."
“I was never much for war stories,” Grimsby remarked, “You seem a little young to be a veteran, but unsettling dreams are common enough among our number.”
“I was just a whelp when the war ended, I couldn’t even hold a weapon to fight in it,” Anselmo told him. "I've never dreamed of it before, now I feel like I just spent the last hour running for my life!"
Grimsby’s eyes narrowed. “That’s nothing to be embarrassed about,” he said as he reached down and picked up a small stone off the ground. “Terrible deeds have a way of echoing down to us through time, but it’s best not to concern yourself overmuch with another man’s sins. Try to put it out of your mind.” He turned in his seat toward the shadows outside the firelight, where his horse was tied up far enough away from any of them, or the other horses, to bite. He lobbed the projectile into the darkness with a certainty that suggested he knew exactly where the vicious animal was, despite nobody else being able to see it. A very unhorse-like shriek and hiss followed the sound of the stone striking its target. Porkchop jumped up and barked at it.
“Why did you-” Anselmo began, but Grimsby cut him off.
“Enough, Porkchop! Nevermind that,” the older man said, “you haven’t been bothering my horse at all, have you? Or maybe just staring at him? He's a sensitive type, and he seems a bit out of sorts tonight.”
Confused, Anselmo reached into his pack and pulled out a few scraps of paper and the charcoal pencil he’d borrowed off Grimsby. One of the pieces had a drawing of the horse on it. He’d started sketching hoping to pass the time without attracting any undue attention, but that plan seemed to have backfired. He should have just tried to whittle himself a set of dice. If he wasn’t going to be able to sleep, he’d at least rather have the extra coin. Though now that he thought about it, he didn’t have any lead to weight them right. Some people said you could use iron, but it just didn’t work as well.
“That’s an excellent likeness,” remarked Rado as he sat up.
“Indeed,” Grimsby murmured as he took the paper from Anselmo’s outstretched hand. “You even managed to capture his particular... temperament.” He glanced over the sketch of a hateful-looking stallion, front and back, before returning it. “You can keep it, but try not to pay Cruelty too much attention going forward, he’s... bad luck.”
This conversation was too strange to be the product of sober minds, and Anselmo didn’t care for it. “If he’s back luck, why do you keep him around?” he asked.
Grimsby went back to bandaging his legs. “My ill luck is all used up, Cruelty’s no threat to me.”
Anselmo nodded; that made sense enough for him, especially when he was tired and would rather be sleeping.
There was a croak, croak, croak from the young corvidian. “His name is Cruelty?” Rado asked incredulously, before letting out another few croaking laughs.
“He did his best to earn it,” Grimsby replied, as he tightened his bandages. "I think he's bit nine folk in ten who've come near enough." He checked on the pot boiling over the embers.
“Do they always bleed so?” Rado asked, pointing at Grimsby's legs. “If you’d don’t mind talking about it, of course!” He belatedly realized the man might not want to discuss his problems with him.
“I don’t mind,” Grimsby smirked at the young corvidian’s awkward question, “and no, they usually don’t. The long hours with the wooden prosthetics on can cause pressure sores and blistering. They’re not designed for horseback riding, but I can’t be taking them off and putting them back on again every time I get on and off my horse. I had a set made once to try and solve the problem, but they were so awkward to walk on, I decided they weren’t worth the trouble. Using this chair and having Porkchop pull me around avoids the problems with the wooden legs, but it’s too difficult to pull myself up into the saddle from the seat.”
“So there’s no good solution, then?”
“No, sometimes you don’t get a solution, you just have to pick the set of problems you’d prefer to deal with.”
“Can I ask what happened?” Rado inquired. “Is that rude?”
“It’s a poor way to introduce yourself to someone, but I’ll talk about it with people I know. It was a cannonball. All things considered, I came out of it fairly well, though you couldn’t say the same for my horse.” Somewhere in the gloom, Cruelty snapped his teeth. Porkchop growled and barked at him again.
“Like I said, out of sorts this evening,” Grimsby said, then turned to Anselmo.“You’ve got another two hours before your watch, try to get some more sleep. Depending on what information Tavin comes back from town with, we might have to cover a lot ground tomorrow. ”
Anselmo thought about the awful dream from the war he hadn’t fought in. It was horseshit, if he was going to loose sleep, it should at at least be for things he’d done himself! He snorted in disgust and decided he’d figure the whole damned thing out in the morning, there wasn’t anything he could do about it now. He turned his back to the fire and laid down again, pulling his blanket up over his shoulders. His halberd lay next to him, and he patted it with a hand to reassure himself, then closed his eyes and waited for sleep to take him. He tried to forget that Grimsby rode with a cavalry saber on his belt.