Say what you will about Algrustians, they know how to police their borders.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. It took four days for us to reach Ishmar’s eastern border, and another day to travel along the border to a point that wasn’t being actively guarded by Ishmarian soldiers. It would take another day to reach the Algrustian border, provided we didn’t run into one of their reconnaissance parties through the heart of no man’s land.

No man’s land. The stretch of territory between the established borders of the two nations. A desolate place scarred by centuries of battle, inhospitable and unforgiving. There would be little place to hide there, and it would be crawling with bands of scouts from both sides probing enemy lines, looking for spies attempting to cross over. Traversing it would be no easy task, though once we were firmly within the Algrustian side of the territory, we could surrender ourselves to the first patrol we came across, and that would be that.

Speaking of which, Kuro was not pleased when we informed him of the plan. At first he laughed for two minutes straight. “You shouldn’t kid with me about a stupid idea like that,” he said as he finally managed to regain some control of himself. Alverd waited patiently for Kuro to stop chuckling before he repeated himself. “It’s not a joke, Kuro. We’re crossing into Algrustos. As per the will of our contractor, if I might add.”

Kuro turned livid. “I wasn’t aware we took suicide missions, Alverd. Especially not from people who don’t actually have money.” His sullen gaze fell on me. “All she has is that fancy sword of hers. And even if she did have money, the answer would still be no.” I growled at him. “You don’t have a choice. I’ve made my decision, and it’s your job to do as I say.”

“I don’t care if the Sword of Evros is the most priceless thing in existence. Money is no good if you’re too dead to spend it. We could easily just turn south and head somewhere else. I hear Shardin is nice this time of year.” I gripped the handle of my maul and his eyes grew a little wider. Alverd stepped in between us with his hands up. “Enough! There’s no need for you two to fight. We know where we’re going. No sense arguing about it now.”

The sword in question was hanging from Alverd’s belt like it belonged there. Forged from the tooth of the great Mother Dragon Evros, progenitor of all dragons, its unnaturally sharp blade could slice through steel. When I had used it to pay for Alverd and Kuro’s services, Alverd had reasoned that it was beyond what was owed, and thus they continued to serve me much to Kuro’s chagrin.

“Do you have any idea what Algrustian mages are like?” Kuro was distraught. “Algrustian mages know all manner of dark magics, from necromancy to demon summoning. They treat such magic as common practice, and you want to go there and talk to their Witch-Queen? You truly are insane. She’ll have our heads roll for her dinner entertainment, and that’s actually if we survive to meet her. The border guard all know how to raise the dead, at the very least, and you think we can just waltz past them?”

Necromancy. I was not familiar with the practice. “Necromancy? What’s that?” Kuro had to stop in the middle of his rant to look at me. “Necromancy is the art of raising the dead, but it isn’t as flowery as bringing loved ones back. Instead, it takes dead bodies and infuses them with a mockery of life, making them slaves of the mage who conjured them. Necromantic slaves are nigh invincible and relentless. It takes a great deal of power or the death of the necromancer to stop the reanimated. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.”

Kuro began waving his arms to make himself look bigger and more intimidating, which only made him look more clownish. “Some Algrustian mages can even summon demons. Big, foul-tempered beings from parallel dimensions that crave human flesh. Algrustian border guards are known for feeding spies to demons they summon purely for entertainment, and you want to cross over the border illegally and tempt their wrath?”

Alverd grabbed Kuro’s arms, and the squirrelly mage stopped bouncing. “Peace, Kuro. Hear me out, old friend. We don’t plan on entering the country illegally. If we announce our presence to the Border Guard, then we could be taken before the Witch-Queen. If we say that we have a Princess of Ishmar with us that chance increases. Look, I know it’s a dumb plan, but we don’t really have much in the way of options.”

Kuro visibly sagged at that point. “Very well. But don’t blame me when the Border Guard gets their jollies by watching our corpses dance the Algrustian Tango.” The haggard-looking mage ambled off in the direction of the border. Alverd and I somberly followed.

Between Alverd’s balm and Kuro’s painkiller spell, I found that movement was tolerable, if still annoying. I walked with a noticeable limp, and struggled to keep the bag with my precious dragon egg from bouncing around too much. Alverd offered his arm to steady me, but I refused his offer every time until, at last, I found that I could bear it no longer. I leaned on the armor-clad knight and he braced me with his shoulder.

Being so close to Alverd was… odd. He’s just a mercenary. He fights for money and that’s that. But he was… how do I describe it? I don’t have to have my walls up around him all the time. He’s not like those phony sycophants who tried to earn my favor so they could advance themselves in the court. He smiled at me again and I tried to hide the color in my face as I leaned against him. So why do I feel so conflicted in his presence?

I could not understand what this feeling was. Was it guilt? That seemed the most likely. Here he was, doing his utmost to help me, and I still didn’t trust him fully. He was willing to throw his life away for his precious honor, long after that honor should have gotten him killed, and here I was, doubting him. I felt sick to my stomach. But for the life of me, I could not understand why. I shook the thoughts from my head. They were distractions. There would be plenty of time to think about them later.

I lost count of the hours as we trekked slowly through no man’s land. We passed by craters and large ditches, and the remains of fallen soldiers. One such was an Ishmarian. He was little more than a skeleton inside his rusty black armor, leaning against the skeletal remains of a dragon. The dragon’s bones had been bleached white, and its massive jaws and rows of teeth were quite visible. The soldier was still clutching a spear in one hand, as though his last moments had been of defiant resistance. A clean, perfectly circular hole punched through his breastplate told me that he had probably been killed with a blast of magic.

Nearby was a group of fallen scouts. Four skeletons lay in a jumbled heap not twenty feet away from the corpse of the Ishmarian soldier. Their mouths were all open, like they had died screaming, and the bones were charred black like the ash they laid in. Whatever weapons they had had either burned away or simply rotted from exposure into dust. These men were Algrustians. Even without colors or flags, I could tell. A death from dragon’s fire was not something one easily forgets.

Eventually, the blackened landscape started to give way to a less depressing atmosphere. The black ash of Ishmar started to turn into brown soil and overgrown grass. It was the first thing I noticed as we continued walking. I was actually surprised to see anything growing at all. We were still quite far into no man’s land, and I expected that the entire place would just be death and lifelessness.

Alverd had something philosophical to say, which I’d grown accustomed to by this point. “Even in death’s wake, life flourishes…it makes me think that our plan isn’t so foolish. If life can go on even despite this, then maybe our plan to forge an alliance between Ishmar and Algrustos really can happen. Can’t you imagine it, Princess?”

I nodded my head. “Yes. It may be crazy, but I really do believe now that it’s the right thing to do.” A little ways in front of me, Kuro snorted. I didn’t pay him any mind. I wasn’t looking to start a fight, and it was the last thing I needed.

Soon enough, the vegetation grew more diverse. The tall grass reached my waist. Fortunately, a dirt road had been paved through the area, and we were making good time despite my injury. We took breaks every so often so that Kuro could renew the spell he had cast on my leg, since we had long since run out of the paste Alverd had made for me. I felt like a burden. The two mercenaries were doing their best to make progress despite my injury, and even Kuro was valiantly trying not to insult me, even in jest.Maybe I’d lucked out in more ways than I had originally thought.

We only had one incident on the road leading to the border. Despite looking as though he would collapse from exhaustion at any moment, Kuro had extremely sharp eyesight. “The only reason I’m still alive today,” he joked, “is that I’m paranoid as hell. Also I’m pretty smart, but mostly the paranoia bit.” At one point during our trek he stopped, stood up ramrod straight, and then dove off the path and into the tall grass lining the road. Alverd and I followed suit, and the three of us crawled away from the road. Five minutes later, a large patrol came marching down the very path we had been treading.

I had never seen Algrustian soldiers before. I assumed that, like all mages, they wore robes like Kuro, carrying staves and rods and broomsticks. And of course, all the stories I had heard never failed to mention pointy hats. But seeing the mages in person, at the height of their alertness, was another matter entirely.

The man in the lead wore a cuirass of a material I had never seen before. It was too garish to be leather, and it was fastened over the man’s body in ways that differed from the armor worn by Ishmarian dragon tamers. His hips and legs also bore plates of the same material, and his forearms and shoulders had the same armor bent around them and fastened with belts. On his back, he carried a staff that was easily longer than he was tall. He moved with the discipline of a soldier, as though he were expecting to burst into movement at a moment’s notice.

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The rest of his entourage was dressed more in the style I was expecting. There were ten men and women, each wearing long-sleeved robes with a pointed hat, the colors differing from red to green to blue to gold. Each carried a staff with a small jewel embedded in the top, simple weapons that fit the Algrustrians’ pragmatic approach to their combat equipment. On the front of each mage’s robe was an emblem: two criss-crossed staves with a flame hovering over them. The rear of the group was made up of an odd carriage pulled by a team of jet-black horses.The carriage was well-crafted, yet not ostentatious enough to warrant more than a passing glance. It probably belonged to some field commander on inspection. The group continued its solemn procession, unaware of our presence.

We waited and waited, not daring to breathe, until the sounds of the horses and the stomping feet had faded into the distance. I noticed again how close Alverd’s handsome face was to mine and felt the same heat burning my cheeks. Had he turned his head to look at me, he would have seen it plain as day.

Get a hold of yourself! I thought to myself. You are a princess of Ishmar, not some smitten child. I shook off my embarrassment and strained my ears to listen for the carriage. A few seconds later the rumblings of the wheels disappeared from earshot. Only then did we emerge from the grass and resume our journey into the heart of the lion’s den.

The quiet became unsettling after yet another hour of following the road, counting my steps to keep me sane. I decided to break the ice by appealing to Kuro’s pride. “So, Kuro, what kinds of magic do the mages of Algrustos practice? Other than necromancy and demon summoning, I mean?”

Kuro didn’t even turn to face me, which caused a short flare of anger in my chest, which I held down with some difficulty.

“Well, I would imagine that every mage learns to use the five cardinal elements of nature. Those are the basics of attack magic. All mages learn that the elemental forces of wind, lightning, water, fire, and earth can be called upon to grant a mage strength and focus. I did it multiple times back in Ishmar. That’s elemancy, or standard attack magic.”

He turned around and started walking backwards, in order to emphasize his lecture with hand gestures. “Then, there’s alchemy, although technically that’s not really magic. It’s more like science, which is magic that is accomplished through the manipulation of the laws of reality. After that, there’s shamanism, which teaches people to seek insight from animals and nature. There’s also narcomancy, which allows the user to see into and manipulate other peoples’ dreams.”

Kuro began counting on his fingers. “There’s also good old-fashioned healing magic, which can cure anything from the common cold to gaping wounds. Shapeshifting allows mages to change their physical appearance, and finally there’s what I call ‘ambush magic’, or runecraft. It’s pretty amazing stuff.”

I had never realized that there were so many different types of magic. My knowledge of magic was limited to what I had seen Kuro do, and he mostly favored his “elemancy”, which I knew was beyond destructive. A brief memory of the Ishmarian Arena being torn apart by a tornado crossed my mind. I brushed aside the memory, focusing on the now. “Ambush magic? Why would you prefer that name over its actual name?”

Kuro grinned mischievously. “Ambush magic is a far more fitting term to refer to magic that has to be set up waaaaaay in advance. Usually it involves sigils or glyphs, which can take hours to trace, in order to entrap their victims. A mage has to cast the glyph like any other spell, and then the spell itself only activates if certain requirements are met or if the caster triggers it. It’s basically a big magical booby trap.”

Suddenly, the smile on Kuro’s face vanished. He motioned for us to stop. I prepared myself to jump into the tall grass again, but this time, Kuro held his staff forward over the dirt road ahead. At first, I thought he was just being stupid again, but then his staff pushed against something in the air. I could see what looked like ripples in a pond emanating from where the staff had touched, and the air distorted slightly, as if I were looking at a heat mirage.

Alverd grimaced. “Speak of the devil. One step further and that spell would have gone off.” Kuro began muttering some sort of incantation under his breath, waving his staff in the air in circles. “Heavens know what kind of nasty effect that kind of spell would have, but this close to the Algrustian border, I imagine it would have been… unpleasant.” As Alverd finished his sentiment, Kuro swept his arm across the obstruction. There was a sound similar to breaking glass, and a blast of wind shot out from nowhere. I braced against it, and it washed over me harmlessly.

Kuro laughed manically. “Hah! You’d think the Algrustian Border Guard would have better guard spells this close to the end of no man’s land, or at least do better in hiding them! That spell would have blown us to smithereens if I hadn’t caught it!” He began dancing a weird little jig in place. “So long as we go further up the road, we should be fine. The border shouldn’t be any more than a few hours away. Then we find a patrol, surrender and then we meet the Witch-Queen. And hopefully, we don’t die.”

Kuro began goose-stepping forward while laughing uproariously. We followed suit, shaking our heads. I hadn’t seen him in such high spirits in a while, and it was oddly refreshing to see him not sulking or pouting or just being…him. We were having so much fun; it was hard to believe that we were on our way into enemy territory with an uncertain plan that was practically doomed to failure.

It was enough to distract us from the next ambush.

There was no deafening explosion, no flash of light, no disorientation or trauma. One moment there was empty space and the next, there were walls of translucent light all around us, boxing us in. The sparkling walls of light quickly began forming a dome over our heads, attempting to trap us inside. Kuro reacted quickly. In a blast of wind, he lifted Alverd and I up and out of the shrinking hole at the top of the trap, and we barely made it out before the magical cage sealed shut. We landed just outside in a heap.

As if to compound our shame, the earth outside the prison erupted. Eight beams of light burst from the ground, and from each leapt a staff wielding mage, each wearing the same colored cuirass as the soldier we had seen before. The leader, a severe-looking woman with long blonde hair tied in a braid, wore armor similar to the one I had seen on the patrol leader earlier. She also carried an air of authority, which set her aside from her peers. She motioned to her allies, and they surrounded us methodically and without hesitation. Four of the mages took up position around us with their long staves pointed at us.

With a feral scream I rushed blindly at the closest man. I swung my maul at him, all the while feeling the stinging pain in my leg. He deftly parried my attack with his quarterstaff, moving with speed equal to my own. He pushed me back with a double-fisted thrust and blasted me with a bolt of lightning that emerged from the tip of his staff. The bolt hit me in the knee, and I fell to the ground screaming in pain. My entire leg then suddenly went numb, and when I tried to move it, it didn’t respond.

That didn’t just happen. I couldn’t make sense of it. Everything I’d been led to believe about Algrustians was that they were our martial inferiors. Yet this mage just outmaneuvered and disabled me in seconds. What just happened? This warrior mage had taken me out of the fight faster than any Ishmarian berserker or even Black Scale Legionnaire could’ve hoped. As my head made contact with the dirt, I lay there, still trying to understand what had happened.

Alverd ran to my side, fending off the mages by pointing the Sword of Evros at them. At this point he was more concerned with defending me than attacking them. “Please!” He cried as he waved the Sword frantically, putting his arm around my waist to pull me closer to him. “We don’t mean any harm. We came seeking help. She was just startled, that’s all.”

Once we were contained, the woman spoke a single word. “Disperse.” With that, the walls surrounding Kuro fell away, and the mages closed in, taking Kuro by force and throwing him in with me and Alverd. Alverd placed himself squarely between me and the leader, lowering the Sword of Evros to make himself look less threatening. There was no way he could take all of the mages, but it was good to see him prioritizing his defense of his comrades rather than just taking a swing against bad odds. But I guess Alverd knew that force was no longer a viable option, because he lowered his sword. Instead, he tried to appeal to the leader again.

“Please, we are not here to cause trouble. If you allow us, we can explain everything. There’s no need for further hostilities. On this, I swear.” He gestured towards me. “This is Alicia of the royal family of Ishmar. She has procured our services in order to be brought here, to Ishmar.” The leader furrowed her brow, although the confused look on her face faded quickly.

“There will be no more talk while you have weapons. Lay them down, and we can have palaver. It’s either that, or I leave you here for the carrion birds.” She clucked her tongue impatiently, her gaze still fixed on Alverd’s sword.

Alverd and Kuro immediately put their weapons on the ground, and I reluctantly did so as well. As much as I hated the idea of my weapon being taken, I had to do what I was told. This was what we expected, after all. Several mages stepped forth to take our weapons. When they had done so, a look of disgust spread across the woman's face when she spied the tiara on my head. I saw her eyes narrow as she counted the eight sapphires set in the small headpiece, verifying Alverd’s claim for herself. When she spoke, her voice was dripping with venom.

“Wonderful. And to what do we owe the unexpected pleasure of a visit from Ishmarian royalty? If I’m not mistaken, the Eighth Princess herself?” The jewel embedded in the handle of her staff glowed ominously as she planted it firmly on the ground. Some of the mages chuckled to themselves. I was surprised that the Border Guard knew how to identify me, although it might have made sense in hindsight. A target like me would make a fine prize for her superiors, and now she’d probably get a promotion for turning me in.

Alverd stepped forth, his arms still up in the air. “Good ser, we have business with the Witch-Queen. We seek an audience with her, and would be most grateful if you would take us to see her. It is a matter of grave importance.” His face was completely serious.

The mage soldiers all laughed in disbelief, but the woman didn’t bat an eyelash. She made a chopping motion with her hand, and the soldiers’ laughter ceased immediately. Then she stared at me again.

“That’s Captain Irina McFarlane to you, outsider. You have strange companions, lizard princess. It is within my authority to kill you all and be back at the barracks in an hour for afternoon tea and crumpets, but the presence of a mage changes things.” She gestured at Kuro, who let his mouth fall open dumbly.

“There may yet be truth in what you say,” she continued. “I’ll take you back to the forward operating base. Lord Albrecht can decide what happens to you from there. Personally, I hope the lot of you are all full of it. We haven’t had a decent execution in years.” McFarlane waved her hand at her troops, and they stepped back into a flanking position. Her soldiers boxed the three of us in, cutting off any hope of escape. Not that I’d get very far on my injured leg. And with that, we began our slow march to the Algrustian border with our new escorts.

So far, everything I had heard about Algrustian mages had proven true. They were smart, cunning, tenacious and capable. Many of the finest strategists in Ishmar were stymied time and time again by the utter chaos the mages could unleash on their well-thought-out battle plans. I could only hope that the Queen herself was different from the mages we had just encountered.

If not, the negotiations were going to be very short indeed.