There is no denying the facts of history that I set him up. He knew it from the moment he saw that sandstorm and there were no lies in the world I could tell to convince him otherwise.

I had done a great deal of conspiring over the preceding months, and one of the most important facets was to arrange for the entire Puerto Faro garrison to be consigned to death in the wastelands. They knew the true Lucius better than most and they were present at the switch. Perhaps some lies could have been stretched over those events to construct a safe narrative, but the damage Tyrion Reed dealt to Lucius’ reputation was too dangerous to ignore. Combining these facts with the certain knowledge that some men must die to win a war, it is only reasonable that a leader arranges for the proper men to die at the proper time. In this case, the only men who had to shed their blood were those that could undermine all of our endeavors and not one innocent soul.

Aside from Lucius’ own blood of course.

The attack that destroyed the garrison came in three waves. First, the sand devil. A remarkably powerful stigmata, but the wastelands are filled with such monsters. They breed and breed and the children starve. Only the strong remain. The sand devil was one such example.

With a sail of cloth tied to his body, pinned to wrist and foot, he rode within the turmoil. Winds buffeted into him, carrying him over the slopes as fast as a charging camel and with him he dragged the magic. Pulling on the currents of wind he twisted them about and brought them to a fine point beneath himself. There the spinning sand was able to cut lines through stone. It blasted more and more sand into the raging torrent that whipped about him like a locust plague.

“Shields! Get your shields. The houses, at once. Protect yourselves.” Lucius’ words scattered the men, but gave them direction as they fled the tornado. Thoughts of anger and hate vanished as they all capitulated to their leader. The mud walled hovels were shoddy things but in their simplicity they had protection. By twos and threes the men snatched up their circular shields and meshed them like links of armor. They thrust their shoulders into the leather clad wood and tucked their faces to the backs.

The force of the wind hammered into them, yanking upon their shields like a panicked horse. Sand ripped at their exposed feet, stripping them of calluses and then of skin entirely. Those unlucky enough to have a crack in their shelter found their bodies shredded by the sand current. The pain was fit for a torturer’s dungeon; stripping them of skin inch by inch and blinding the unlucky. Blood oozed before it vanished into the desert maelstrom. The djinn of sand had no body they could stab, no blood to let, no walls to break.

Only Lucius could face it.

He ran through the decrepit city until he found the provisions of his so-called army. Half-plundered but the weapons were still good. He found an entire barrel of pilums, an antiquated weapon he was familiar with. Casting it over to spill them, he snatched up a half dozen before scrambling to the nearest roof. He had spotted the stigmata user like a bird in the storm.

Even at a distance, the sand lashed out at him. His clothes were slowly ground to dust, the fibers turned ragged in place of his flesh. Before the attacker was in range, blood burst from his hands and face. Only by virtue of his own stigmata was he able to keep his eyes open.

As the wastelander sighted him and closed in, Lucius threw his first pilum. The missile went wide, careening with the winds. He squeezed the second tighter, blood gushing across the shaft. The next missile plunged not into the man but the parachute cloth he wore. Immediately, it twisted with the sail and the man’s position among the winds jerked and leapt. He was shoved into the vortex and spun about.

Lucius put the third pilum into the man’s back, dropping him like a slain bird. The sandstorm continued to rage even after the wastelander cracked upon a wall, but in a chaotic burst. Lucius had to throw himself through the mess and stab a fourth barb though his chest to end the magic.

By then, the jackals had been loosed. Their howling and yipping echoed through the winds.

Lucius spat the sand from his mouth, in a glob of blood. “Form up! Circle formation! Lock shields!”

Beasts of black fur and fang bounded across the sand streets. They trampled dunes and leapt across buildings. The pack master kept his distance, wrapped in enough cloth to kill him from heat, but the sun was already descending. The soldiers with brains dartied to intersections in the city, as the hounds attacked. They yelled and swung their steel about, clipping flesh and shedding blood.

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The jackals moved first on the cowards. Those that hid in buildings or had fallen from the storm were dragged out. The bone crunchers had a habit of fighting over their prey. They sank their teeth into arms or legs and squeezed till they had the bone between their teeth. Then they pulled.

The screaming pain of dismemberment fractured the shield formations. Weak men, scared men, the kind of conscript that was merely taken to fill the ranks and not to be trusted; they faltered. When the jackals began pouncing on the shields–slamming their paws against them and leaping off as they avoided the steel fangs of man–it was those weak men who broke. They were cast to the ground and wherever that happened the jackals entered and brought death with them.

The scent of Lucius’ blood drew a fair many of the jackals, dragging their leather and chain leashes. Their animal instincts saved them from death. One whiff of the boy and they backed off. They growled and slathered, even snapped their teeth and danced, but not one tried to nip his leg or pull him down.

He trudged across the fresh-churned sand straight for the pack master. Soon as he was sighted, the wastelander whistled to recall the pack of hounds and to beg for help. A half dozen slingers came running from the desert but Lucius reached the man first. They fought, sword against club and whip. The man had some form of stigmata for training, and was of a fit sort, but nothing was enough to stop Lucius. My pupil pummeled him down, hacking and battering. Even unable to cleave through the club, unable to cut the bite-proof cloth, he persisted with raw brutality.

Before help could reach the pack master, Lucius split his skull upon the ground.

Sweating and panting, he failed to raise his shield in time. One of the sling stones struck him upon the breast, denting the metal. He staggered, but didn’t charge them. Hefting his shield as more stones rained, he barked out, “Tortoise formation!”

As he charged the wave of wastelanders, the northerners were still struggling to dispatch the jackals. Animals kept getting among their legs, tearing them down. The wastelanders didn’t come in one single force that Lucius could face, but in many squads of few. They spread throughout the city, ransacking buildings and preying upon the Vassish whenever numbers allowed. A few valiant fighters stood in the middle of the formation and fought back with bow and arrow; they even felled the cloaked sand people by the scores, but it wasn’t enough.

The men who engaged Lucius were skirmishers. They skittered about the sand with spear and sling and if ever he chased one the fellow scrambled away like a coward. Many did not scramble nearly fast enough. He caught their legs, split their tendons, trampled them and skewered them.

Before long, his shield was too heavy with arrows and dangling splits of board that he dropped it. Blood poured down his face and out of his armor. Breathing was the highest priority. The approach of more stigmata users was as obvious as the setting sun, he just didn’t know what tricks they were going to bring.

Then he realized he stood upon the corpses of Vassish men. For a moment, he reeled and thought a hallucination had been put upon him. He had been fighting and killing, but not by the hundreds. Where had the battle been? It had been throughout the city. The corpses were genuine. Flayed by sand or shredded by dogs, the wastelanders had done nothing more than topple wounded men. While Lucius had fought them off, even the most fundamental of defenses had crumbled for his army.

The thump of more corpses, they were piling the bodies into a heap. In the dusk gloom, shadows stood upon the roofs around him.

With an honor guard before him, the leader of the wastelanders revealed himself. There were no battle formations, no discipline, but he trusted the enormous bruisers between him and Lucius. Thin and bearded, he held his arms to either side and asked, in passable Vassish, “Where is it, Signor Comodante?”

“Who taught you that?” Lucius asked, stalling as his stigmata healed him.

“It matters not. Where are the cannons? You brought them with you, did you not? We will tear this place apart if we must.”

One of the cloaked raiders hooted and hollered, articulate speech beyond him. They all turned to see the noise, expecting a ley cannon to be dragged out. Instead, Golden was marched out at spear tip. He held his hands up, blood across him. Blood of the savages of course, not his own. His grin and shrug was for Lucius, not for those that postured as his capturers. “Don’t worry,” he said. “They’re not going to kill you, yet.”

As Lucius experienced it, something bit the back of his neck. It smacked his head forward and then the world slapped him. The attack had come when he was hardly prepared, and missing his helmet was one symptom. AS heroic as it is to depict someone with their face exposed, their hair flowing, it is not advised by anyone who can actually die. Such a braggart is susceptible to an ax splitting their spine open and even if that doesn’t kill it certainly paralyzes.

Such an injury didn’t confuse Lucius, but them wrenching it out to roll him onto his back did. As per his usual tactic, he played dead as his stigmata healed him because he thought they didn’t know. In the twilight, he thought his eyes were playing tricks on him as a woman–nearly naked save for some straps of bleached silk–straddled him and ripped the armor from his chest. She was healthy and virile, with a wolfish grin on her face as she ran fingers across his chest. Their encounter was that of a lover’s bedroom tryst.

Until she leaned down and bit through his divine sigil.