Chương 117: The Sword and the Scalpel

I received my soul as a young man, barely more than a boy. Only one of the Eight was among our forces at the time - Zahra Alsaif, the Great Sword. She was a formidable woman, and appeared as a force of nature even to my newly-ensouled eyes. When barriers were crumbling around me, she was my constant reminder that I had a long distance yet to walk. For sixteen years we fought together, shaping the Gharic front. We managed great things together.

I learned much of the world and myself under her tutelage, even as Ardalt's renewed commitment to the War pressed us. Her final lesson to me came when she fell in defense of Azim Alsu. It was not her example of a woman walking her path to its fullness, though I have never seen her equal. It was not the inspiration her death lent to her men, that gave them the strength to repel the invaders, though I have never seen its like.

It was the light that came to me in the depths of my despair, when I heard reports of the man who now bore her soul. One of our enemies, a man without redeeming qualities, a butcher and a boor even before the soul found him. The injustice of it wounded me greatly, and the lack of her guidance left me disconsolate. If not her, to whom could I appeal against an injustice greater than myself? It had not been her practice to coddle me, but she was always there as a comrade and mentor in trying times. No more.

I felt a novel and horrible solitude grip me, and it was then that I realized: this had been her life. Alone, at the apex, she stood against the world. It is a realization that I think every man comes to in one form or another, as he ages, but I flatter myself to think that its form is the most profound for bearers of a great soul. There is no conceit of appealing to higher authority. I am naked beneath the sky, and must contend with the storms as they come.

- Saleh Taskin, On Reclamation, 687 The wind gusted behind Michael as he came up the ridge, blowing chill and damp. It carried with it the sound of feet marching, the Safid making their own advance in his wake. They did not draw too near, though, either wary or respectful of Michael's space; the only men to walk closely to him were Lars and Zabala, with Stenger, Leo, Richter and Brant on their heels.

The tension of the battle bled from them into Michael's mind, their fear and resolve a sharp note against the cacophony of Safid voices around them. These were brave men, for following him here, but that did nothing to stem their fear. It resonated in every footfall, in each rasping breath. He crested the ridge and looked at the Ardans arrayed before him.

None attacked at the sight of him, but he was still far enough away that rifle fire was an uncertain prospect; at this range souls were even less likely to be a threat. The artillery remained silent as well. Michael had a strong suspicion that Sofia had fallen back once their vanguard drew close. The man standing in front of the Ardan lines, though, his mind seething with blood and ecstasy - he could probably attack from where he stood. But Friedrich would wait until Michael drew closer.

The Safid stayed abreast of him as they moved down the slope, drawing within the range of Ardan rifles, then closer still. A ragged volley rang out against them. No men fell. Their ranks were thick with fortimentes, as many as could be spared from the defensive line, and far to their rear Sobriquet was clouding the Ardans' sight. They advanced.

Michael's sight could begin to pick out faces among the defenders, their clenched jaws and wide, frightened eyes - then those faces were lost behind blinding light as lucigentes attacked from the Safid line, crisping the grass around them with frost in their opening salvo. Flame burst from scorched flesh amid the Ardans, and an answering volley of ethereal blades flashed out from the black-clad Swordsmen in their midst. Men began to die around him.

Michael saw all this peripherally, in flashes of sight that came and went with every pounding footfall, for at the first burst of light from the Safid he had pushed forward with all of his strength. His feet strained against the ground, gouging the frozen soil with great divots as he sprinted towards the one man among the enemy who was not attacking. Friedrich watched him approach with a delighted, mad grin, his eyes widening and his head tilting back.

The air shivered as it was torn asunder; Michael twisted to keep himself clear of Friedrich's first attacks. He spun sideways on the balls of his feet, crouched low, and sprang away into every direction at once. Stanza gilded the world as Friedrich lashed out with destructive power. Rocks crumbled to sand around him, then dust; bushes and shrubs vanished. The steep face of a boulder slouched downward into fine, flowing grit as Michael held himself away from the ferocity of Friedrich's strikes.

Michael began to retaliate, immersing his opponent in darkness and drawing further heat from the rocks of the mountain. Friedrich cut away the flows of heat before they could reach him, though, and the men around him turned their eyes to the dome of inky black that had sprouted in their midst. Swordsmen pressed eagerly inward - and toppled with neat, bloody marks in their heads.

Lars swept in with Zabala behind him, driving the Swordsmen back on one flank; a contingent of Safid potentes barreled through the other as if the dying men were mere gossamer. Distractions fell away around him and Michael redoubled his attacks. He stepped into the space close by Friedrich, murmuring with Spark's voice, but the other man barely reacted; Michael expected that he had not bothered to have his self-inflicted deafness healed after the last battle.

They clashed again with liquid steel snaking out in the dark, and once more with a burst of cold that froze the new-made sand in place. Around them, a long melee had sprung up against the Ardan line. Men strove forward with the strength of their fortimentes; there were fewer on the Ardan side, and the remnants of the obruor-led squads crumbled against the assault.

There were few obruors at all left in their ranks, anymore, the rest dead or withdrawn; some part of Michael's mind noted their absence as he danced and spun between curtains of death thrown forward from the laughing man at the center of the fray. The battle pinwheeled out from the pair of them. Soldiers raged and surged with one eye always fixed on where Michael and Friedrich fought, the tenuous pressure of their mind on the linchpins of their respective formations.

Michael felt it, but never more keenly than when the warm glow of low souls found him. His horror at having missed so many arriving in the last battle had distilled itself into a watchful paranoia, and he nearly jolted himself out of Stanza's protection when the first light bloomed within him. It clung tightly to his heart as he righted himself and pressed towards Sever, trying to focus solely on the other man's attacks. They were increasingly wide and fierce as Michael kept clear of them.

Friedrich's smile had become a snarl, his teeth bared in pure concentration. For all the violent emotion written on his face, Michael felt nothing from the man. The din of the battle seemed to lessen in his presence. It quieted to a hollow, empty resonance that spoke only of power. Friedrich sensed his disquiet and regained his smile, wolfish and bloody. His attacks focused, concentrated, snapping through the air just behind Michael's ceaseless motion.

One swept wide to cut down half the potentes that had come to Michael's defense. He watched the attack scythe through them with mute horror, the blood of men under his command painting the soil. The subsequent spike of pain behind his ribs jolted him free from his fluid evasions; one of the dead men came to Michael, a potens soul hanging bright in his mind like the sun's afterglow.

It burned and writhed in his chest, and for a moment Michael feared that he might fall senseless in the churning sand underfoot - but the burning subsided as he fought past his anger and denial. His inattention cost him a slice through the outside of his thigh. It was shallow, and quickly sealed, but it pained him with each step as the fight spiraled on. Friedrich's eyes had gone narrow, cold; he struck outward again far to the right. Another formation of Michael's troops perished; three low souls fled to Michael.

He coughed, his hand coming up reflexively to his sternum. The burning there was white-hot, searing his mind. He could not help but focus on it, for those men had died following his orders, in his name. It was impossible to look away. The smile was back on his opponent's face, red and cold. Friedrich's attacks began to land indiscriminately among the Safid, and even among the Ardans; amid the sudden burst of agony and the rush of warm souls seeking refuge, Michael saw the reason for that smile.

Friedrich had scented weakness, and he drove at it mercilessly.

"Death, Baumgart?" he cried, sweeping a blade out across a row of Safid regulars; some escaped with light wounds due to a particularly strong fortimens in their squad, but the rest fell in pieces to the ground. Michael's step faltered. It was becoming hard to breathe. Friedrich stepped in front of him, laughing.

"You can't bear it," he cackled.

"Is that it? You loathe it, you fear it. You cringe away from theirs and yours like a mewling child. Death!" He obliterated the sandy pit where Michael crouched, fountaining dust into the air; Michael felt a flash of pain as the attack caught the outside of one foot, provoking his enemy's laughter.

"I see it now. I see! You couldn't even face mine. Death, death! I walk closer to it than you dare, and you cannot approach - come to me, coward!" Michael could barely keep ahead of Friedrich's attacks. He suffered another slice on the shoulder when his dodge was too slow, then a graze on the hip that left him bleeding freely into the dust. But that blood was nothing compared to the seas spilled around him, as Ardans and Safid died in their hundreds.

He was drowning in it, seized by the suffocating pressure of souls crowding around, filling his vision with black sand and stopping the blood-tainted air from his throat. Death flew from Friedrich and caught Stenger, in Zabala's squad. The taciturn durens fell. Michael held the other man's pain as his own, feeling the soul like a lance through his heart. A man he had never bothered to talk to much past occasional niceties, but who had pressed his life against Michael's with reckless abandon. Until the end.

Flashes of that life melded with countless others, swirling in a torrent of bloody recall around Michael's dimming eyes. At the center of those visions was one man. Michael couldn't recognize him. He was different to each pair of eyes, bright and terrifying in his pull. Behind that radiant figure he saw Zabala cry out and clutch at his thigh, saw Leo fall to a bad blow from a Swordsman. Lars stepped over his body, his lip curling.

Men died clockwork deaths where his wrath fell, tiny marks robbing them of blood and breath.

"WEAK!" Friedrich bellowed, sweeping his arm out. Safid and Swordsmen alike perished. The unbearable clarity of Michael's sight seemed a curse, now. Stanza watched their paths cut away; Spark heard their voices fall silent. And Michael - Michael sank beneath the tempest of death. Each soul that came to him deepened the wound. It was not an accident of affinity that drew the souls to him, after all. He had cultivated these men, drawn their attention and directed them to their demise.

The excuse of his many warnings seemed flimsy now that it was soiled with so much of their blood; surely he could have done more than meekly accept their presence here. Yet he had not, and the bodies piled higher. He fell to his knees. Friedrich's exultant face loomed in his vision, drawing closer with measured steps; he was still laughing gleefully between attacks, harvesting his fill from the crowd around them.

"I was a fool not to see it," Friedrich said, slowly forming an edge in the air between them. It had a weighty finality in Michael's mind; he knew what it had been made to do.

"You never had potential. You never had will. Only stolen power, and with that alone you are nothing." He held his hand out.

"So return to the nothing that you fear." Michael's mind blurred, his heart hammering in his chest. He could not move, nor speak; the flames within him hung heavy on his being. All he could see was Friedrich's form blurring into inchoate monstrosity behind that single bright edge. There was only one reflex left, a small child's frantic defense against incontestable might: he raised his arms, showing Friedrich his father's collection of scars, and waited for the blow to fall.

When a blade struck, though, it was upon Friedrich's arm. Through half-conscious murk Michael watched Lars sprint forward with death dancing from his fingertips. Surprised, Friedrich let his focus slide away from Michael, slicing away the worst of the attacks before they could fall - but they were numerous, invisibly tiny. Blood sprouted from wounds on his arms and torso. Lars redoubled his charge, teeth bared.

"For the dead you'd never remember!" he shouted, opening a fresh gash through the meat of Friedrich's thigh, his shoulder, taking fingers from one hand. It was all the other man could do to turn away the ones meant for his head and neck, and even some of those landed; he was missing an ear, and spat cleanly-shaven fragments of tooth into the dirt where one blade had carved into his cheek. Then he raised his hand, and Lars disappeared in a cloud of red.

Michael's heart fractured, his eyes still clinging to the last glimpse of the affable captain's face contorted in anger. That image faded against the bright glow of a bladed soul, small but potent against the dark. He felt it sear into his eyes, too bright to look at; Michael winced through a blur of tears. He could not accept it. Curses sprang to mind, half-formed rants against Lars for his reckless charge. It had been a pointless, wasteful death.

Friedrich had been wounded, yes, but nothing that an anatomens could not heal in time. Michael was worse off than before. And Lars was dead. He wanted to grab the lambent soul before him, shake it and demand answers, but he could feel the blackness around him pressing inward. He half-expected Jeorg's wizened face to emerge from the dark, but there was nothing. Michael was alone in the void once more, placed there by a cruel blade. Again there was a single mediocre soul before him, asking to be taken.

Last time he had rejected the soul, and been pressed with something far greater in its stead. Every fiber of him yearned to reject this one too. He did not want to have a scalptor soul within him, nor could he tolerate the notion of Lars burning bright next to his heart. That soul writhed with a scorching vision. This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it. Even as he watched, it twisted painfully to show the image of the man he knew it held.

A man with a confident stance and clear sight, who led where another dared not. Who risked himself for others, who challenged the unassailable. Michael found his voice as it took shape, screaming hoarsely at it.

"It's not real!" he screamed.

"You idiot, you fucking idiot! Does it look like I know what I'm doing? I'm no different from any of you. Charles remembered that, at least! I've led us all to our deaths! I'm broken, I'm nothing!" The last word resonated in the black, echoing back with Friedrich's voice, the empty void ringing with his father's harsh tones. Nothing, nothing. And yet the man stood there, a faint smile upon his lips, staring at Michael with steely resolve.

"Jeorg," Michael rasped.

"I could use some help." No answer came. Michael gave an exasperated sigh, throwing his hands in the air.

"Now, of all times? With everything in the balance and a blade at my throat, now you choose to play your games?" Still, there was no reply.

"You can't hide from me! You are me! Isn't that what you're always saying?" Michael cast about in the stubborn dark, finding nothing but the smiling remnant of Lars's soul wrought into his own shape. He clenched his fists, teeth bared.

"But that fits, doesn't it? Hiding safe in your garden. Too afraid to step up, to risk what might happen. Too afraid-" His voice failed him, imprecations jumbling into a wordless groan of frustration and rage. There was still no smiling face in the dark, no words of comfort or wisdom to see him through his trial. Michael knew why. The image of Jeorg had never lied to him, never misled him. He had told him at every step of the way who he was. It was Michael who refused to step forward.

It was Michael who refused to meet the clear, unflinching eyes of his own face shining in the dark. It was Michael who denied what hundreds of dead men felt, because Michael remembered the lesson he had been taught upon the edge of a blade time and time again. Nothing. The garden was there once again, beautiful and at peace. Its warm, flower-scented breeze flooded into him, rich earth and forest pressing in from every side in an enveloping embrace.

Michael breathed it in desperately, gasping until his breathing steadied and he stood upright amid the orchards, the neatly planted rows, the distant tangle of the forest beyond. Yet in the middle of it there stood a shining stranger wearing his face. His hand was still held out, and its soft glow seemed to tear through the ethereal trees where it fell. Michael stared at it, willing it to disappear, but it remained stubbornly present. Because everything here was his, at the end of the day.

His denial, his fear, his pain. But also that which he was to himself. That which he was to others. The greater being that was Michael Baumgart, stretching beyond the flesh of his body into the minds of everyone that dwelled upon him. The trees swayed overhead; their canopies pressed close against each other, interlocking, seamless. And beneath them was a piece of himself, whether he liked it or not.

A piece that had driven men to their deaths, that had drawn its bearer into a suicidal rage - Michael's touch upon a bladed soul, to craft it into something more than a mere sword. Michael knew what he had to do in order to move past it. He had done it with Galen, and threatened Leire with the same. Destroying the dissonant fragment would end the dream that had entrapped him and return him to his life. He lifted his hand and searched for words, but his mind yelled back a resounding silence.

There were no words he could speak to destroy the hopes that Lars had carried. His tongue rebelled against that impulse, his breath stopping in his throat. He would not do it. Lars had been his friend, and Michael would sooner die than desecrate his memory like this. Yet death was the other option. Even now, Michael feared he had been senseless for too long. The garden wavered around him, the trees fraying under the assault from that terrible light.

It flared within, shining through those resolute eyes from a place far down converging paths that Michael could still not bear to look at. Instead he turned to look at the garden. His refuge, his only real home. It was almost exactly as he remembered it, before they had been forced to flee: late summer, with fruit heavy in the trees and the grass growing tall around him. His lowest points had seen him here, taking Jeorg's guidance- But again, it had never been Jeorg's guidance at all.

He smelled the fragrance of apple blossoms, as sweet as it had ever been, and looked back at what Lars had given him. His own face still looked out, calmly waiting. The extended hand did not tremble. Michael reached out his own and took it, searching once more for words of destruction. Michael met his own eyes.

"Lies that blind," he murmured.

"Lies I've made. Lies that bind in blood and blade." His grip tightened on his own hand, pressing against the scarred flesh. It was warm, jittering with energy and light. A pain pulsed deep within his chest; he tore the words from his throat, flowing stronger.

"Lies for one alone, afraid. We go once more. Perish here; in memories of dark and fear, I leave behind what should have stayed." He turned his wrist down to show his own scars, the marks his father had left him. Notes of a lesson learned over long years. The pain within him was blinding, drawing tears to his eyes, but those eyes bored into the shining stranger to meet his gaze with equal steel.

"Your trust," he said,"shall never be betrayed. Your faith shall not have been misplaced. And if a lie must be erased, then let it be this peaceful glade." The glow swelled between them, lancing into the soft loam beneath his feet. It vanished at the light's touch, and Michael felt every mote of it sear like white iron as it passed. Trees, grass and summer sunshine boiled away into harsh void, leaving them both floating in the utter black. Scars hissed and writhed - fading.

But Michael smiled, and clasped the other man's hand tightly despite the agony rippling through him.

"Let the truth be what we've made," he gasped.

"And if I must accept a blade-" Michael looked into his own eyes, shining brightly; the stranger returned the smile- And Michael stepped forward, leaving behind a piece of himself. Nothing he treasured, far from it. But it was part of him that burned, there in the land between moments, and he spared a thought for it as it died. Then the flames guttered away, leaving only quiet. Peace. Harmony. The light rushed towards Michael.

Not only that of the stranger Lars had brought, though he was first and strongest, but a legion of others that had clustered unseen on the fringes. Voices rose in a quiet chorus. Michael opened his eyes. Friedrich stood over him, batting irritably at the shimmer of light from Sobriquet's apparition; it surrounded him with mirror and shadow, but she dared not draw too close to that soul. Michael's face was pressed into the sand where he had fallen; he spat out bloody grit and took a breath.

Friedrich's eyes narrowed, seeing that Michael was still conscious. He took half a step back as Michael raised his head-"It shall be yours," Michael murmured, feeling the warmth pooling molten in his chest. Destruction danced with red promise at his fingertips, and a spike of panic lanced through him at the feeling of blades against his skin. An old fear, the well-worn fear of a boy. But these blades were not the cold knives that swarmed from his father's wrath, nor the dreadful separation that Sever dealt.

Michael knew the feel of a scalptor's soul closely, intimately; feeling it move according to his will was bizarre - but not frightening. To be sure, his mind showed him memories of scars and blood, of a delicate hand slowly dripping crimson to the floor - but the paralyzing fear that should have come with it did not follow, for the refuge of fear had been destroyed.

In its stead were many points of light burning steadily within; one shone brightly as Michael summoned edges that were small and precise, as sharp as intent. He held them close as he rose slowly to his feet, meeting Friedrich's eyes. For his part, Sever's bearer looked with amusement at Michael's slow recovery.

"Is that the weakling's soul I see?" he asked.

"You cling to it. You shy away from the truth of his death, holding on to scraps. A blade that refuses to know death cannot deal it. Watch, Baumgart. Learn one last truth before your weakness kills you." Friedrich's eyes fixed on Michael as the air separated between them; before the fatal blow landed, Michael stepped sideways into possibility. From his myriad vantage he raised his hand. Destruction rippled out into the golden lattice. Paths stuttered and frayed in the dark.

Friedrich stepped back to defend, cutting away the attacks before they could reach him. The warmth in Michael's chest intensified. The chorus rose. There were a multitude of lights within him now, a swarm - an army. Against the vastness of the world he anchored himself, pulled against what was possible. He had not realized how much resistance there had been to his movement across the lattice until that resistance vanished.

What had been exhausting now came like easy breath, his view sliding effortlessly along his own branching path. Finding the junctions where Friedrich missed was a simple task - simple enough that Michael had attention to spare. The lattice spun past him, ever-changing. Michael watched it for an eternal instant before raising his hand - and stepping forward. Friedrich lashed out to disintegrate his arm. The sand awaited its rain of blood, but Michael was already on another path, and another.

A thousand hands converged upon Friedrich, wielding a thousand blades. Insignificant, small blades, barely worth remarking upon. Friedrich bent his soul faster than blinking, annihilating most of the incoming attacks. But not all of them. Michael stepped back into solidity as Friedrich sank to his knees. Blood dripped down to the sand. The scalptor looked at it, uncomprehending, his eyes glassy and wide.

"One man can only be so strong," Michael rasped.

"I couldn't stand against them either. They etched their truth upon me." His hand came up, and the familiar ache began to pull at his ribs.

"So here is that one last truth, before your weakness kills you: they have named me their captain, and that bond is not ours to end." A small, precise edge flew out to strike Friedrich in the forehead. The world turned to white; a storm pressed inward with lacerating fury. Michael grit his teeth and forged through it, seeking the mote of rage at its center. It denied him, what he was, what he had said. There was no strength but strength. There was no power but power.

But behind Michael there was a great light that shone into the void, transfixing the insubordinate remnants of Friedrich with unbending will. A wind blew that was not wind, shining, scouring, breaking-"Ending." Michael's whispered voice blasted away the tumult until all that remained was a bright orb of radiant destruction. He walked to it slowly, holding his hand near the surface. It was absolute, primal. Michael could feel the promise of everything Friedrich had claimed to be, everything his father aspired to.

A sword to end all swords. But there was more than violence humming against his skin. Friedrich had named his soul Discontinuity, and in that soul lay the destruction of growth, the uncertain chaos of creation. It was vast - too vast for him to appreciate in this half-real moment, but he felt a profound relief as he looked into the soul and found nobody staring back. Not Friedrich, and not Karl Baumgart. Those men had made what they wanted of their soul, nothing more; Michael did the same.

After a while, he opened his eyes. He stood in a vast hollow of sandy dirt that had been blasted outward in every direction. Nothing remained of Friedrich, nor Lars, nor any of the men that had fallen near them. They were dust, now, and memory. Michael held up his hand and drew a single, bright blade from one finger. It was deep and clear, keening against the air - but still small, and quiet. An unassuming blade, meant to cut only what he willed. He smiled and let it fade away, turning over his hand.

On his wrist he saw the same tracery of scars that had always been there. They had not truly burned away; there was no reason they should have. The scars remained. They likely always would. But they were only a mark on his flesh, and he had seen how small that was against the far horizons of his self. He looked up to see Zabala limping down the slope of the crater he had made, Sobriquet hovering at a cautious remove from the epicenter.

The battle wasn't quite over yet, as forces from both sides clashed up and down the line, but the heart had gone from it. Michael began to walk towards the others, somewhat surprised to find his legs obey him without complaint; it seemed bizarre that he should feel so damnably normal after the experience he had just endured. Yes, his wounds ached. His clothing was torn and bloody, the sleeve of one arm annihilated from a thousand near-misses.

But underneath it all was that steady light, greater by far than it had been before the battle. He didn't know how many low souls had come to him, but it had easily been hundreds. That light no longer burned, nor threatened to burst forth from him. Instead it was quiet and hard, as if his bones had shifted to radiant diamond shining within. His grasp on his souls was clearer, faster, effortless - and tinged with what he had taken and remade today. Something still and precise, humble for all that it was effective.

The destruction of the plow and the scalpel, of roots rending stone, of wind and rain and rivers. The decay of old trees making way for the new, of obstacles falling to dust. Michael clenched his fist and walked the rest of the way to the crater's rim. Zabala, Richter and Brant were there, looking thoroughly weary; Zabala bore a wicked gash on his leg, while half of Richter's face was a mask of blood. Michael bent down to seal Zabala's wound, looking up at where Sobriquet's apparition hung in the air.

"How are we doing?" he asked. She cocked her head.

"We're doing better than I would have hoped. How are you doing?" she countered.

"I'm surprised you're still upright."

"You and me both." Michael gave Zabala's shoulder a quick squeeze, then straightened up.

"I'm fine. I had to - make some decisions." The apparition had no face, but Michael knew Sobriquet; he felt her skepticism, her narrowed eyes. He turned to walk out of the depression he had made, towards where the Safid officers had set up their forward command. Sobriquet moved to float along with him.

"Ominous," she said.

"Anything you want to share?" Michael's breath held, then came out in a rush as he shook his head slowly.

"It's nothing profound," he said.

"Something that had to be real, and something that couldn't live beside it. Nothing more than - waking up. Recognizing who I am and what I can do. What I have to do." He pressed his lips together.

"There isn't any safety in isolation," he said.

"Retreating into peace only works if someone forges that peace first, and there isn't - isn't anyone else." Sobriquet moved to block his path.

"Michael," she said flatly.

"You can't say you're fine and then spout off some fatalistic bullshit like that. Lars is dead. Stenger and Leo are dead. Sever is yours, and I saw what happened before that - the Safid, they came to you too." She floated closer.

"It's not wrong to be affected. I don't see how you could be anything else." A smile bent his lips.

"Neither do I," he murmured. He raised his eyes to Sobriquet, then resumed his walk towards the command post.

"We have to deal with what comes next."

"And what's that?" she asked, still sounding nettled. Michael shrugged.

"Not sure yet. Whatever presents itself." He ducked his head to walk under the hastily-erected canopy, nodding to the Safid officers that had clustered there. Their gazes came up to rest on him, then slid away, uncertain; a few of the men gave a sharp, compulsive genuflection.

"The Sword is dead," Michael reported. One of the officers raised his head to look at him.

"We saw," he rasped.

"My soul to the One." Michael felt the weight of it, the pressure of edges coming together. He met the man's eyes and nodded, once, not letting himself look aside from what had been said. Then he grinned, and gestured towards a map on the table.

"Not today, I hope," he said.

"How are things progressing elsewhere?" The officer gave a quick, relieved smile in return and bent to answer Michael's question, pointing to crude stone tokens scattered across a map.

"The bulk of the Ardan forces are in retreat; those that aren't are on the brink of a rout. They began their withdrawal almost as soon as we engaged, here." He tapped on a collection of tokens that was already halfway to Gharon.

"The Seer, and most of their corps of petty Speakers."

"The obruors." Michael looked at the map, feeling his heart quicken with realization.

"Shit. We need to dispatch the remaining Ardans and prepare for a march. We're going after them."

"Holy one?" the officer asked, looking confused.

"The bulk of their force has been defeated, and the Sword destroyed. If we fortify the pass-" Michael shook his head, looking up at Sobriquet; she seemed to have come to the same realization.

"Michael's right," she said.

"That lunatic isn't retreating, she's recruiting. The Gharics used their city as a defense against the Mendiko, but there's no hiding from Sibyl. She'll find them all, bring them in front of her obruors - and lead them back here." She turned to Michael.

"You saw how many of them there are."

"Everyone has been pouring into the city for days, for the celebration of an independent Ghar." Michael tapped the city on the map.

"She'll have access to tens of thousands of men. More. Fewer weapons, but that's never stopped them before." The officer paled, then nodded.

"Then we should prepare to march," he said, sharing a look with his colleagues.

"How long do we have before her army is ready?"

"I can't imagine Marcus will take this lying down, but at best he'll be able to delay; she's the only person that knows his city better than he does." Michael turned to look south, across the diminishing melee to the mountain pass.

"We shouldn't waste any time. Rout the Ardans, reform our column - and then south, to Gharon."