"It's better than them ordering an attack." Stewart put his mailed hand against Penelope's neck. "You can lower back down now. Thank you, again." It was a delicate relationship, he felt, but he didn't want to make it an uncomfortable one for Penelope, and she had put on quite the show of strength for the opposing army to see.

Dropping to all fours, Penelope spared a glance out of one eye, backwards, to see Stewart still using his legs to smooth the ride. She managed to suppress the urge to point it out after the flight to the capital. "Don't jump down yet. If they ride a horse out to meet you, you can ride me out. The horse won't freak out, you needn't worry."

"The horse is the least of my worries. They only presented a white flag, not a surrender. I think I know what is coming." Turning to the side, Stewart shouted, "Show them a white flag!"

Penelope waited while both armies calmed down and the word was passed that there would be no shooting during the parlay. Finally, Stewart asked her to advance. "You understand what the downside of riding me out there is?"

Trying his best to hold his tongue, Stewart caught an edge of humor to Penelope's words. "The waddle?"

"The waddle. So, I'll take it slow, try to make it look more like a stately slither. I think this is why dragons have wings." Penelope started as she had said she would, walking with a slow deliberation that made the wobble of her hips reduced enough that she didn't look like an overweight rat trying to get some dripping.

They reached the middle of no-man's-land after the other army's delegate. The woman sat proud on her dun-colored horse. She had chain mail and some fancy plate pieces over her upper chest and shoulders, but otherwise wasn't remarkable except for the tabard with a coat of arms emblazoned on it. The horse seemed completely at ease with standing within ten feet of a dragon—its rider less so.

Stewart didn't need to think too far to remember her name. The woman sitting opposite him was older than he, but she had been at his father's court several times during his life. "Lady Knight Charlie Downs." He dipped his head slightly, if for nothing else acknowledging her willingness to meet under a white flag before the battle.

"Your Majesty." Charlie remembered the new king, of course, as the young man that she'd seen repeatedly at his father's court. "My condolences on your father. You escaped the Mar—" She couldn't help but smile. "You escaped David's plots?"

Penelope shifted her stance, even made a show of drawing her lips back from her teeth. She waited for Stewart's hand to pat her neck to calm again.

Fighting back the immediate urge to flee, and more than a little impressed to see Stewart's apparent control of a dragon as a mount. "I'll stop asking the bloody obvious and skip the small talk. I can't surrender, lad. I've sworn more oaths in my life, to bigger idiots than—that man—and I've kept them all."

He sighed. "I had hoped he would have sent an idiot with less honor than his sons. He isn't completely a fool, though. You swore to hold this ground?"

"This very hill. No army from the kingdom will pass us by."

Stewart cursed the former Marquess under his breath. "And neither of us will break the truce once called. Can you at least allow any soldiers who don't wish to fight to—?"

"Any that have had a sudden crisis of faith, you mean?" Sitting more relaxed now, Charlie nodded. "If they cite that demonstration, they may withdraw—on one condition." When Stewart nodded, Charlie continued, "You don't have that dragon fight for you."

Reaching up to rub his chin, making a show of thinking about it, Stewart finally nodded. "She has hunted an army into the ground, or so I'm told. How about it, Pen, a fight here and now, or you can be the one to kill the former marquess?"

The malice that shot through Penelope's face made Charlie sit up straighter. The dragon's eyes seemed to glow, and a green mist leaked past her teeth and from her nose, confirmation that the earlier display of fire had been a ruse by a god. Charlie shuddered at the thought of an acid-breathing dragon—not the kindest of beasts to fight. "Then negotiations are at an end. Shall we give the day an hour after returning to our lines before we start… this?"

"That's amenable." Stewart paused before giving Penelope the signal to turn. "Charlie?"

"Yes, sir?"

"Please keep your head down, and surrender when winning is impossible." Stewart caught a wince on her face. "You have my word that I won't allow any of my people to be mistreated."

"Even a stupid old woman?" Charlie asked.

"Especially a woman with more honor than her lord. Come on, Pen, you won't be fighting today." Stewart tapped with his foot and Penelope turned, beginning her slow walk back to his forces.

"You tried," Penelope said, when they were out of earshot of Charlie. "You've given as many soldiers as you can a way to refuse to fight."

Stewart snorted a laugh. "You and Elanor, you mean. All I did was talk a weary soldier into doing something she would have done anyway. I was never going to ask you to fight. It's too—too brutal. I've heard stories of what you left behind in the field after the goblins fell." Letting loose a shudder he couldn't stop.

Before Stewart could say more, Penelope snorted. "I would have refused unless you were absolutely losing and in danger. If you think third-hand accounts of what I did to the goblins was bad, imagine being the one to do it. I turned the air to acid and rained it down on them. They died, but not cleanly. And, remember, talismans aren't reliable when attacked with acid." Nearing their line, she said one last thing on the matter, "Also, I can't judge which way the wind is blowing when flying. I can aim for your enemy, but you might not come away clean."

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Looking at their lines of artillery, Stewart sighed. "I still have one more card to play. I hope this fight can be stopped before more than a few shots are fired."

Lifting one leg to make an intermediate step for Stewart climb down, Penelope said, "Seeing everything you're doing to resolve without killing makes me want to fight for you more, you realize? Also, it's weird how easily I can react to your body language and voice. Not bad, but I don't think I want to get too used to it. It'll be hard enough trying to tell Fife that she can't have a ride."

Pulling a device from his pocket, Stewart checked the dial on the front and nodded to himself. As his two bodyguards approached, he found the least churned-up ground he expected to see and lowered himself into a kneeling position. Even so far from where the kingdom now dwelled, the old lines of power where it linked to the western cities still pulsed a little with memories of the bond it once carried.

"Thank you," he said, softly. Only Penelope and the kingdom heard him, and he didn't mind the former hearing his words. "I'm going to need your power soon. Please, when you—?" He didn't even finish his request than power poured through him. City after city of the now-reduced kingdom supported and added their strength. "Thank you, again."

Stewart remained there. He worked through his plans for the coming battle, for the war it would usher in, and ran the plans through their paces. So many things could go wrong and so many needed to go right—or it would be a protracted mess that would leave the kingdom open to raids by any other nation.

"Your Majesty?"

Penelope's deep and gravely voice cut through Stewart's meditation. He opened his eyes and looked up at her. "Has something happened?"

"There are five minutes until the hour's up," Penelope said. When he looked at her in surprise, checked his timepiece, and looked further surprised, she explained, "I counted."

Almost surrendering to the urge to ask if she was joking, Stewart reined-in the desire. Standing up, he ignored the mud clinging to his sabatons and walked to the hill where the artillery stood ready and primed for the fight. The gunners looked nervous, and he knew why: they were exposed. Normally, cannons and their sibling field pieces were guarded jealously by heavy infantry. They were spread out along a line to keep them from being a juicy target for the enemy's own guns.

He walked among the big guns. Many of the weapons were so new he almost expected to feel the forge's heat still in them. So many thin-walled adamantine cannons that it would have made his father weep for joy. Down the hill he walked to the twenty-squad of riflemen at the front.

They had been a personal request, when Stewart had heard the guards on the wall of Northridge saying they had the best riflemen in the kingdom. He'd dug a little, found out that the boast was well-supported by both the skill and weapons provided, and so he'd invited Northridge to send them.

The guns, he could see, were the same dull metal as the new cannons. Each of them had a stack of the advanced ammunition that Elanor had showed him, and by the color each was painted—they were all explosive.

"This is going to start in a minute. You understand who I want you shooting?" Stewart asked the squad.

Clearing her throat, Tammy replied, "We're targeting anyone with a fancy uniform and anyone giving commands, Sir." She had no idea why she'd been made the squad's sergeant, but she intended to take the role seriously.

A piercing whistle sounded, first from the other side and then from his own. Stewart knew what that meant—the guns were about to start firing. "Kingdom, grant me the power to protect these, our mightiest defenders, as they brave the battlefield for us."

The first sounds of cannons barking their violence shook the battlefield. Behind him, Stewart was relieved that it wasn't any of his—they were following his orders. He had made a huge target for his enemy; whoever still had cannons firing at the end of a battle generally won. Grouping his together hadn't failed to draw Charlie's eye, and Stewart was relieved when every shot collided with his golden shield.

Charlie swore. She spat out as many foul words as she could, then made a few new ones up. Her intelligence on Stewart's use of city magic was greatly deficient. "Tell the cannons to sight on the infantry formations! Don't bother shooting at that golden sphe—"

Raising her rifle, Anichka cracked the chamber open and removed the spent casing from the barrel and dropped it in the bag at her side. Slotting another of the explosive rounds in, she closed the gun and cocked the hammer. She bit back a curse at having her spotter stolen to be a commander for the squad, but selecting targets was simply a matter of finding someone shouting orders.

Even though he'd given the order himself, Stewart still felt terrible that the knight he'd only just spoken to had been felled. He scarcely would have believed they were within rifle range, but still the Northridge woman had felled Charlie with her second shot. "An army without leadership is a mob."

Regular rifles were still far from within range of each line. The enemies' cannons kept sounding, and every one of the big guns plowed their shots into Stewart's barrier. With fewer and fewer leaders, the guns slowed their firing and eventually fell silent. Of the two armies, only one knew what they were meant to be doing while the other turned to officers and commanders that weren't alive anymore.

Elanor, who'd been recovering from her invoking of Sandwalker, nonetheless watched as the last few leaders tried to rally and make a stand, but the moment anyone with authority managed it—another long range rifle shot would rob them of their life.

When the Western forces couldn't seem to rally enough to even withdraw, Elanor had had enough. Walking through the front lines of the kingdom's forces, she prayed to her goddess and to the kingdom for her own protection so she could end the farce the engagement had become.

Both lines froze as they noticed the woman walking across no-man's-land, her own golden aura—far smaller than the King's—protecting her from stray shots until no guns sounded.

She ignored Stewart's calls for a ceasefire, for the white flag to be raised, and marched across to where disorganized soldiers stared at her—begging for a miracle. "Put your guns down. Sit on the ground! This battle is over!" Relieved when they nodded and followed her instructions, Elanor continued her walk.

Relief flooded Stewart as the enemy began falling to the ground like a wave. They weren't dead, but he could see defeat in the faces he could make out among the Western soldiers.

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