Chương 107: The Beachhead

And each of them will stand, because they cannot conceive of a life such as mine, a bent and cowering life. They will stand and soak the world in their blood. And then they will die, Michael, because they oppose you. I know you don't have the heart of a monster. You are not the doctor, as much as I feared that end. I know that you would not use your soul as he did, and that you strive to remain above its temptations. Yet I do not think you are perfect. It will be easier for you if the path is clear.

I write this now on the deck of a ship, bearing down on Ardalt's coast. When I land there I plan to make my power known, and find the men who swarm to it like maggots on meat. I don't imagine I'll have a hard time finding them, not in Ardalt. I know the men who worked with the doctor, and with Claude; and I've heard enough about the Assembly to know that they're not far different.

They will march to the drumbeat of their greed and ambition, and I will face them with like evil until none of them can pretend to be anything but what they are. It is not what you wanted, I know. You would see the good in evil men, and bear a scar on your heart for each of them you killed in necessity. Those scars would twist you, and if you should collapse under their weight I fear that the world could do nothing but burn. - Annals of the Seventeenth Star, 693.

Michael turned to look back at the farm as they were crossing the surrounding fields.

"Do you want to talk about it?" he asked. Sobriquet gave him a flat look.

"I'm fine," she said.

"Is that a no?" Michael raised an eyebrow.

"Because that's not the question I asked."

"You have a long way to go before you can play word games with me, love," she snorted. They walked in silence for a moment, their boots marking the bare winter field.

"I am fine. It doesn't mean that it's easy watching people walk to their deaths, or hearing my dead sister remind me that I'm not - who I was." She let out a long, slow breath.

"Or having all of that wrapped around the man I love, while at the same time being crucial to the fate of the country I've dedicated my life to rebuilding." Michael nodded, pursing his lips.

"You're right," he said.

"Can't understand why anyone would be distraught about any of that."

"I'm certainly not distraught," she retorted.

"Nor distressed, nor whatever else you may be about to imply next. Some days are hard. That doesn't mean the enemy takes a break, nor that I should indulge in self-pity. Nothing ever gets easier except by taking action to make it so."

"So you don't want to talk about it," Michael said. Sobriquet shot him a glare.

"You're horrible at this. Believe it or not, I've had my share of bad days in the past; I managed to survive them without your counsel."

"You had Clair." Michael turned to her.

"You told me she's the one who held you together, that she never lost sight of you." She stopped and turned to face him.

"And now she's dead, and despite that remnant in you I'll never have that in my life again. I fucking know, Michael. It's hard to forget a thing like that. So is there a reason you're harping on that particular point, or is it merely because you're trying to see what will distress me? Because you're perilously fucking close, and I'm lost as to why." Michael turned to face her, noting peripherally that the others in their small column had halted several paces back, trying their hardest to look inconspicuous.

He couldn't blame them; the anger and pain radiating from Sobriquet was palpable, furious. It provoked a stab of guilt. It had been Michael who pressed the point, and it might have been fine if he hadn't. But-"Because you don't think she was right," Michael said.

"You think I should have questioned those two regardless."

"At a certain point it isn't about what I think," she shot back.

"It's about what's going to happen. You know what the stakes are, here. Ghar is going to burn, and I doubt we could save all of it no matter what we do. Even if you charged in and killed Luc this instant, we'd still have plenty of Ardans to deal with - and they won't all go quietly. People will die. The question is how many, and we answer that with our actions." Michael looked back at the farmhouse.

"I had given myself permission to think that way," he said.

"Or I was trying to, at least. Luc is going to keep getting stronger. He's going to keep exploiting my hesitance unless I get rid of it, so I prepared to do whatever was necessary. And all the while, I felt that dissonance building, that friction from Clair's soul within me." He tapped his chest.

"Reminding me that there are some limits that we should hold to."

"Even at the cost of defeat?" Sobriquet threw her hand up in exasperation.

"The Daressa she fought for died a long time ago. I appreciate what she did for me - what she's still doing. But there's nothing that's going to make that come back. I'm not a child anymore, Michael. The blood is already on my hands, and no amount of restraint now is going to wipe that away." There was a cough from beside them; Sobriquet turned to glare at Charles.

"At the risk of getting my head bit off," the artifex said, "I feel like I should point out that we're not walking closer to the Ardans anymore."

"I'm sorry, are we affecting your schedule?" Sobriquet said acidly. Charles smirked at her.

"I've got nowhere to be," he said.

"But while you folks worry over how much killing is too much, the Ardans are out there preparing for a whole lot worse." He nodded out towards the general direction of the coast.

"Seems like we should do something about that."

"We were, until recently." She looked at Michael.

"We could be again, at any point we wanted. Unless we'd prefer to keep having unproductive conversations." Michael raised his hands, but Charles cleared this throat again.

"Boss," he said, "I think there's a conversation to be had."

"You too?" she muttered, turning towards him.

"What, are you going to lecture me on restraint now? You?" He grinned.

"Nope. That would be downright hypocritical. But I knew Clair - better than anyone here save for you, I'd say. We talked sometimes. Well, sometimes she gave me a chance to talk back in between shouting." Charles let the smile slip from his face.

"Sometimes we talked about you." Sobriquet gave him a warning look, but said nothing.

"Not by name, of course," Charles said.

"But it wasn't hard to figure out that she knew you, and that you two were close." He paused.

"One night, we had gotten into some wine, and she mentioned that the whole thing would have fallen apart if you weren't in charge. Nothing to do with your soul. It was-" Charles tilted his head, his eyes still focused on Sobriquet; in that moment Michael caught the faintest glimmer of something from Charles, a brief, agonized spark that felt like weary muscles long disused. It was gone in an instant.

"Be careful what you give the War, boss. You don't get it back. Clair and I, we both gave it our Daressa long ago. But - it was never our country that we were fighting for." He paused for a moment, then nodded and turned back towards the others. Michael watched him go, then turned to Sobriquet. She did not look his way, but her eyes glimmered with tears. For a moment Michael was tempted to say something; after a moment's consideration wisdom won out, and he resumed walking without saying anything at all.

They kept on to the south, sticking to major roads. Absent any concrete guidance on the beachhead, Sobriquet led their march towards those directions that felt most chaotic, most unsettled - most like Luc, and the nebulous unrest he brought to the world. It was not a precise direction, but it was a direction. That did little to salve Sobriquet's mood, however. She remained quiet and taciturn as they walked. Michael dropped back to walk a few paces behind, leaving her undisturbed.

Eventually, though, she paused with a foul look on her face.

"It's not just Luc," she muttered.

"They have Fades up, or I'd have a clearer picture of where they're at." Michael nodded.

"It makes sense; they wouldn't want to have the Mendiko stumbling on them before they're ready." He looked up, squinting into the evening sun.

"Not particularly convenient for us though. Do you think when he said two days, he was including today? That's not some continental thing, is it?"

"You can go back and ask if you like," Sobriquet snorted.

"It's not like it makes much difference. We either find them in time, or we don't." He nodded grimly, turning to survey the landscape; they moved on, and did not stop until the last traces of orange were gone from the sunset, and the first stars hung against a bruised sky. Michael found himself in the numbing tedium of camp work; tasks presented themselves until all that remained was to eat the steaming plate of whatever Richter had managed to cook.

Michael took his and moved to sit beside Sobriquet, who was already half-through her portion. He ate in silence. It was only when he was mopping up the remainder of the meal (a version of rabbit stew, it emerged) with one of their last hard crusts of bread that Sobriquet raised her head. This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"There's going to be space for that same conversation," she said, "once we come up against the Ardans in force." She set her dish aside and turned to face him, her eyes glittering in the firelight.

"I don't think I need to emphasize how crucial it is that we not have it. Not there."

"Don't worry," Michael said, leaning back.

"I know what we have to do. It's not going to be Gharic farmers swept up in it this time. Most of the men in the Ardan ranks are already as good as dead, or were complicit enough in that crime that I don't mind helping them along." She raised an eyebrow.

"What if one of them has a sad look on their face?" she asked.

"Perhaps they're carrying a kitten, or a letter from their mother-""Stop it," Michael laughed, shoving her gently; he was much-improved at making such gestures actually gentle, these past weeks. She stuck her tongue out, and for a moment the two smiled at each other, and saw nothing else. Michael's smile faded first, and he looked up at the stars.

"I've made my peace with death," he murmured.

"More than once. I won't shy away from it, because it will come no matter what I do. I'll even use Spark to that end, if I must. But I'm not going to-" He made a frustrated gesture.

"To erase people. To remake them as I see fit. It's not even that I'd have to destroy Clair, although that alone is enough to stop me. It's hard to explain unless you've felt it. Unless you've realized you weren't you, and had no memory of what you were supposed to be."

"I may understand better than you think," Sobriquet said. She leaned to the side, resting her head on his shoulder.

"I won't press you on it. You're not wrong. It's frustrating to have something within your grasp and stop short. To gamble, when we could be certain."

"It would be easier," Michael agreed.

"But every day the world looks a little different from how I think it should be. It's important to keep some things steady. Stable. To let people remind you if you stray far." He turned his head, kissing Sobriquet's brow.

"And to give you a reason to stay close."

"Sap." She snuggled closer to him.

"Thank you for taking care of my sister." Michael smiled.

"I think you've got it backwards," he said.

"But - always." Sobriquet paused and frowned, bringing her head up. It was slightly past midday, and they had been continuing south since before first light. It seemed to Michael that they must be almost to the coast; the horizon had a telltale haze to it, when he lifted his sight, the clouds lining up in a neat row where he imagined the wind from the sea met its cousin from the land. If he was right, they were very close indeed. So Michael was not surprised when Sobriquet's eyes narrowed.

It felt like the confirmation of something he had been watching slowly form for hours. The first drop of rain from a storm that had swelled quietly in the distance, and was now growling at them across the clear Gharic air.

"Where?" Michael asked. She shook her head, waving her hand in a southwesterly direction.

"Hard to say. It's nothing clear yet, but it feels like the empty spots are moving around." She made another frustrated gesture.

"Something's up over there, and I can't think of what else it would be, not at that scale."

"As good a lead as any," Michael sighed, lifting his sight up.

"Zabala, I think we may need to move fast, and across country. There's no road that leads us in that direction." Zabala said nothing, but the embrace of his soul rippled out over their small band. The men straightened up under their packs, and Charles bounced experimentally on the balls of his feet, grinning.

"About time," he said.

"Any longer, and I think I'd have forgotten how to fight."

"I've yet to see proof you ever knew how," Zabala drawled, brushing past him to nod at Michael.

"I'm fine for as long as you need me." Michael turned and began to run, gently reaching to Stanza as his feet began to pound across the field. In the next steps they landed surely, quietly, an easy grace settling into his movements. The grasses of the field rippled at the touch of his will. By the time they had reached the treeline, a path had already formed in front of them. It was almost unconscious by this point. He decided on his path, and the world bent out of his way.

It would be nice if it was a metaphor for his life, Michael reflected, but at the moment he found it somewhat less than apt. They ran only a short distance before Michael began to see the subtle signs of human presence. Branches broken, mud churned by heavy boots. The men who had moved through here had done so under the cover of a Fade, undoubtedly, but that didn't erase their trail. Michael watched the mark of those signs on the web of golden light around him, and altered his course slightly.

It wasn't long before the site of the beachhead was obvious. The bland, unobtrusive look of an area masked by souls stood out, especially at scale. Once he saw it, it was impossible to ignore. He adjusted his course again, and before long they had left the treeline to emerge into a broad coastal plain.

"That's a big area they've got veiled," Sobriquet muttered, slowing to a jog.

"And they are moving. Their overlap isn't perfect, glimpses sneak through - there, see?" She pointed at a shimmering distortion in the air, gone before Michael could properly focus on it. It was far from the only one, though; as they watched the muddled vista he saw sporadic twists and glimmers of light. Some of them were formless, others left the impression of marching men, of horses and carts in long rows. Michael clenched his fists.

"They're nearly ready," he said.

"Can you spot anything specific? Any sign of where Luc is?" She shook her head.

"Not while they have it veiled." Michael turned to the others and nodded.

"Then we have our first task. We're not going to bother sneaking in, we have to assume they have Sibyl - she'll spot us eventually no matter what we do, when we're this close. We'll break their perimeter, make a hole for Sera to see through. Once she finds Luc, we move there fast. Sera, Lars, you two take out any obruors or other ensouled that draw close while I'm engaging him. Everyone else, keep the soldiers back. If you can't hold, try to draw them away from me and fall back to the treeline."

He met each of their eyes in turn, then pivoted to face the obscured Ardan camp.

"Let's make this the last time," he said - and began to run. The first Ardans were surprisingly close; Michael felt the pressure of their veil on him before he had truly worked himself up to a run. It was only moments more before he spotted the twist of golden lattice that marked where the Fade stood; he reached for the heat in the earth, the light of the sun - and brought it all to the center.

A short, strangled scream cut through the unnatural silence; a smoldering body dropped onto scorched grass, its hands curled into claws. Stretches of the field shifted, changing to reveal startled men looking their way. A few silent whispers were all that heralded another pair of them falling with thin, coin-slot marks in their foreheads, courtesy of Lars. The air churned before them. Michael blinked away the distortion and saw what had been there all along. Men. An endless sea of them, in their tens of thousands.

Ships steamed close to the shore, disgorging pallets of goods or long, winding ranks of soldiers. There were few tents; those had been taken down. They meant to march, and soon. Michael was momentarily stunned by the sight; even expecting an army, it was larger than any force he had seen in the field. The Mendiko had been a small, nimble expedition compared to the vast expanse of humanity that carpeted the beach.

His contemplation was interrupted as the golden light around him shivered, twisting together and shining with renewed vigor. Michael straightened up and lifted his gaze as a great eye worked itself onto Stanza's fabric, baleful and hot.

"Hello, Sofia," he said quietly.

"Sorry, but I'm not here for you." He whistled sharply and pointed.

"Sibyl has us!" he shouted.

"Sera, can you-""Working on it!" she yelled back; her eyes were closed tightly, her brow furrowed. Charles hovered near her with metal clinging to his hands, watching the nearest soldiers.

"Hard to see anything in this mess." Michael turned back to the soldiers - or, rather, to the obruors in their midst who were beginning to realize that something was wrong, even if they couldn't see the cause. He stretched out with Spark, this time, searching for the motes of fear and anxiety amid the dull mass of obruor-touched men. They stood out, glaring bright; he shoved heat at them in artless, crude torrents.

Men exploded into gouts of steam even as the soldiers around them stumbled, their boots frozen to the ground - or crumbling into bloody ice, leaving only the shattered stumps of legs to work mindlessly against the air. Chaos seized the army where the obruors had fallen, drawing yet more attention. Men began to shout, to rush towards the chaos-"There!" Sobriquet shouted, pointing at a cluster of large wagons still being hitched to their horses.

"Someone in there is casting a big shadow. Could be Sibyl, but I doubt it - she never had that kind of weight to her." She looked at Michael, then jerked her head towards the wagons.

"That's our target." Michael nodded, feeling the weight of her words settle onto him. His heart began to pound; he licked his lips - then began to run where she had pointed. Their presence was impossible to miss, now, with hordes of obruor-touched men milling chaotically around the fracas, the corpses of their handlers smoking amid blooms of frost. Zabala and his soldiers were carving a bloody swathe as Michael ran, while Lars hung back to drop targets of interest.

Charles stayed in the center of their formation with Sobriquet, occasionally flashing out a blade of metal at men who drew too close. Gunfire sounded, though it was imprecise and sporadic; half of the obruors seemed to be trying to halt it while the others called for more. It did less than nothing to them, though. Sobriquet's veil saw most of the shots go wide, and those that came their way were harmless against Zabala's soul.

Scalptors and the occasional lucigens were more of a concern, though Michael only saw a few ensouled stride forward to combat. Lars felled them with prejudice as soon as they made themselves known. Even so, the bulk of the Ardan forces was gradually shaking itself awake. It wouldn't be long before they brought some countermeasure against invisible combatants, carpeting the field with dust or smoke - or bringing Sibyl herself out to mark their position. Michael wasn't going to wait to find out which it would be.

He ran flat-out towards the wagons Sobriquet had identified, drawing further ahead of the others. When he was only a few dozen paces distant, he leapt forward into the midst of them, aiming for the largest, best-built of the wagons.

At the apex of his arc he turned his sight to glance at the others behind him, still carving their way towards his position; Sobriquet was waving at him, her eyes wide, an expression of alarm on her face- Michael turned his vision back to the wagon in time to see it fly apart into splinters. Bits of wood and dust filled the air, flecked with glass and cloth that pelted him as he streaked through the space where it had been. He landed hard in the wheel-rutted mud, springing to his feet and turning.

Amid the cloud of fragments falling, in the dust that hung dreamlike against the sea wind, Michael saw a familiar face. Different from when he had last seen him, for there was no more wild beard, no more untamed mass of hair. The eyes, though - they still glittered with the same light that he had seen amid cold winter stone.

"Michael Baumgart," Friedrich said, walking forward through the dust. He was smiling broadly, revealing white, even teeth.

"I had thought I would need to look for you, but events conspire to see our paths cross. I am not a man who searches for meaning in the meaningless, but - it's enough to make one wonder." His smile grew.

"Don't you think?" Against the sudden thundering of his heart in his ears, Michael straightened up to face him.

"Hello, Friedrich," he said, desperately scrubbing any trace of fright from his voice.

"I have to say that I'm surprised to see you here."

"Have I not always followed the scent of blood?" Friedrich asked.

"Why should now be any different?"

"Blood, perhaps." Michael raised an eyebrow.

"I hadn't thought that you'd follow Luc, though." Friedrich gave a low, humorless laugh.

"I follow no man," he said.

"Least of all that one. He came to speak with me, you know. I turned him away twice, but he was oddly insistent on meeting with me in person; I let him in the third time intending to kill him. A sniveling, cowardly man. He thinks he hates me, and tries to hide it, but could not hide his greater hate for himself." His eyes had wandered as he spoke, looking off to the side. Michael took a step in the other direction, but as soon as he moved Friedrich's eyes snapped back to him, the smile returning with greater vigor.

"And yet I did not kill him then, pathetic though he was, because he said something of interest. When I asked why I should join him in his foolish romp, he told me that you would be here seeking blood. That I would find you with resolve and intent, if I came." Friedrich took a step closer; the dust around him was suddenly gone; cleansed from the air as though it had never been.

"And I cannot name him a liar, for here you are." Michael nodded slowly, taking desperate inventory of everything around him. Nothing changed the situation much.

"Here I am," Michael agreed.