Chương 25: The Western Front

The story of Saf is, broadly, the story of the Safid Cults of the Eight. Even when Ghar itself lost its grip on the old Safid lands, their governors held the reins of power with few real challenges until nearly a century later. This was the Third Bulu War, at which point historians begin to mention the name of Salman Ghazali. Some claim that Ghazali bore the soul we now call Spark, others contend he held no soul at all.

Whatever his gifts, he convinced the abbots in Khem to endorse him as the mortal echo of the first soul, thereby enshrining in Saf the precedent that living men might be worshiped as divine beings. Ghazali's purported soul did not allow him to dismiss the internal problems of his fledgling sultanate, but war has ever been the salve which tyrants use to soothe such disturbances.

Though Ghazali's initial attempts to claim more-central Gharic lands yielded only moderate success and were largely reversed in the upheavals after his death, he created the template from which all subsequent occupants of the Eight-Petal Throne have molded their rule: that of divine right to power. Disastrous as this may seem, the progression of Safid governance developed strangely well in the following centuries. The remnants of the Gharic aristocracy settled into a comfortable stalemate with the ascendant clergy.

War with Ghar was no longer palatable, and what aggression was required for purposes of state was largely visited upon the Bulu. Inevitably, however, a structure in which the whims of one man may pass unquestioned is doomed to failure. The Abasement of Ghar and subsequent defense of Gharon by the Tenth Star in 442 left the Safid with but one prominent ensouled - Khalid the Blade, bearer of Sever.

Khalid did not rage further against Ghar's newly-secure borders; instead, he returned south, induced the Cult of the Sword to slaughter the leaders of the aristocratic faction and engaged in a pacification campaign against the Bulu that would span more than a century. Khalid himself did not live to see the end of it, but his successors did not lose sight of that war's ultimate purpose - to clear the way for what we now term the War.

Indeed, it was less than a score of years between the end of the fifth Bulu war and the Safid occupation of Rul. - Leire Gabarain, Annals of the Sixteenth Star, 691. It was on the fourth day that the land began to die around them. The change was slow and almost-imperceptible at first, with a few stray craters or the dark loops of wire laced amid the greenery. Where the signs of battle had been intermittent on the coastal road, however, here they began to cluster.

The land was muddy and denuded where it had not been trampled down by columns of men. Trees vanished. What was left of them rose splintered and dry from the ground, or lay toppled and half-submerged in the omnipresent mud. Their skeletal form saw its echo in the broken spires of chimneys standing here and there along the road. They stopped for the evening in what had been a village, now an eerie brick forest.

One of the houses was still partially standing; the north facade had collapsed into the street while the rest stood stubbornly in the evening's shadow. Vernon confirmed that there were no heartbeats within the ruins, and the ruined chimney once again played host to a small but cheery fire. It was oddly unnerving, Michael thought, watching the shadows swell around their little island of light and warmth. The evening deepened and they slept, with Gerard waking Michael at midnight for the morning watch.

The artifex lingered for a moment as Michael rose and drank from his canteen, blearily rubbing his eyes. The stars shone overhead through a thin blanket of haze; otherwise, the land around them was utterly dark.

"It's quiet," Gerard muttered. Michael took a final pull from his canteen and looked at the other man's silhouette.

"Quiet is good, isn't it?" he asked.

"There should be something," Gerard said.

"Insects, birds. Mice. There's nothing out there to make noise. It's just - quiet." He shuddered, then turned back towards where the others were sleeping.

"I don't like it. I know Clair said we should wake at dawn, but - if we were to wake a bit earlier and be on our way, that would be fine by me." There was little Michael could say to that, so he merely nodded and turned his sight out to the ruined village. Even though the light was poor, his spector's sight was enough to pick out the contours of the crumbling houses, the piles of brickwork spilling over into the street - and the crude chair Gerard had shaped from those near him. Michael sat and waited for morning.

Gerard had been right about the lack of noise; it was mere minutes before Michael's mind began inventing things that were not there. Stone scraped, pebbles tumbled downward to clatter on bricks - or perhaps they did not. The silence that reasserted itself afterward made him doubt his senses. His eyes screamed that a thin, shadowy figure was lurking just out of sight amid the debris, his ears half-heard the brush of feet across the stone.

Per Gerard's request he woke the others when the pale light of dawn was just coloring the horizon. Clair looked backward and touched the house's lone remaining doorframe as they departed, murmuring something Michael could not hear - and then they were once again on the road. Past the village the terrain was no longer churned soil and vast stretches of muddy desolation.

The first sign of the old Ardan lines they passed was a long ridge of shell casings, piled high and spilling backwards down the low slope of the land. It stretched for so long that Michael was not certain of its end, millions of casings stacked in corroding piles that stained the soil beneath them green and black. Earthworks began to appear, berms and long, twisting trenches that snaked before and between them.

They had not been maintained in some time; some of the trenches had collapsed inward, others had become stinking canals after the recent storms. After three sets of berms and trenches they saw people - a small company of Ardan soldiers wandering listlessly around a checkpoint on the road. Their appearance set Michael on edge, but Clair only waved and pulled out a sheaf of papers for the bored-looking guard standing at the gate.

The man glanced them over, then slid the small stack of banknotes from between them into his breast pocket.

"All in order," he said, winking at Clair as he returned the papers. She smiled back prettily, the expression nevertheless somewhat predatory to Michael's eyes; it faded to her usual stony mien once they had moved a step past the gate. Past the old Ardan lines the signs of battle became fresher and more pronounced. The charnel stink of corpses slithered into the wind and refused to depart.

They saw surprisingly few living soldiers, however, save for those at the occasional checkpoint or marching along in sullen convoys. It was not until the sun was once again glaring in their eyes that they began to see the rear of the Ardan advance. The civilian camps came first, massive collections of carts and wagons that churned even the hard-packed roads into muck. A haphazard assortment of tents, pavilions and carts formed avenues across the fields that abutted the more regular grid of the Ardan encampment.

Where the two met, cookfires spewed smoke upward against the evening sun. The camp followers called out to the Ardans with promises of bellies filled, clothes laundered, cups filled and beds shared. After the quiet desolation of the old lines the market seemed almost violently vibrant; Michael found himself looking away from the press of humanity, and as he did he saw Vernon don a pair of woolen earmuffs against the tumult.

Clair led them along the impromptu market street with quiet certainty in her steps, veering to the side only to avoid particularly drunk or massive knots of soldiers. These were a regular occurrence - the mood in the camp was jovial, even celebratory in the wake of their recent advances. At one point the street was almost entirely given over to a mob of black-jacketed soldiers adorned with a single red stripe on their left arm and a saber at their hip.

Michael looked wonderingly at them, having never seen such an affectation in parades at home - and collided with Gerard. The artifex had slowed to stare at the soldiers in black, and when his head turned to the side his expression was pure venom.

"Gerard?" Michael muttered.

"Come on, we should-" Charles siezed Gerard by the shoulder and hauled him roughly forward.

"Not the time," he hissed.

"Dammit, keep your eyes forward." The other artifex twisted angrily out of Charles's grip, wrenching his eyes back toward where Clair had stopped to look back at him with alarm - but not before a member of the black-clad contingent had turned to look at him.

"Hey," the man called out drunkenly.

"Hey, Ressie, you got a problem?" He staggered away from the mob, a few of his fellows turning to follow in his wake.

"You're looking at me like you got a problem."

"No problem," Charles said, holding his hands up palm-outward.

"He's just had some drinks, he doesn't know what he's looking at." The soldier spat into the dirt. As he straightened up Michael saw that he bore a small patch on his shoulder, just above the red stripe - a bloody hand, grasping a bared sword by the blade.

"I think he does," the man slurred.

"Think he don't like Ardans."

"Who doesn't like Ardans?" Charles countered. Absent prior knowledge of the man Michael would have thought him sincere; it was surprisingly unsettling.

"You all keep us safe, we know that. Come on, let me buy you a drink to show my thanks." The man regarded Charles woozily for a moment, then his eyes hardened and shifted back to Gerard.

"I wanna hear him say it," he said, stumbling closer to Gerard.

"Go on, Ressie, let me hear it.

'Thank you, Ardans, for protecting us poor fucks.' Then we can have that drink." Gerard looked up mutinously, a vein standing out at his temple, and Michael's heart sank. The man was obviously furious, although Michael could not guess what had enraged the formerly level-headed artifex so. It didn't really matter; all that was important is that he was about to pick a fight with a whole platoon of armed soldiers in the middle of camp. The soldier and his companions leered unpleasantly at Gerard's defiant look.

Michael felt the stirrings of souls around them, knife-edged and whisper-quick; he paled at the familiar sensation. They were perhaps not as strong as his father, but proximity and numbers rendered the distinction moot. Every single one of the black-jacketed soldiers was a Cutter. With this many in close proximity a fight would be bloody, quick and lethal.

Clair was pulling Vernon aside forcibly, retreating as far as they could from the imminent violence, while Charles had dropped his hands to the side - Michael could see the telltale shifts under his sleeves as his bracelets flowed into a single mass along his forearms. Smiling broadly, the black-clad soldier leaned forward - then frowned, stumbled, and kept leaning. He slammed face-first into the dirt without making any attempt to break his fall.

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it. Michael and Charles pulled Gerard away as the soldier's friends bent to see to him; by the time they had straightened up the three men had ducked around another market stall. They ran; Michael had not seen where Clair and Vernon went but he knew the general direction. Before they found either, however, Charles stopped and whirled to pin Gerard against some nearby crates.

Michael stumbled at the sudden motion, turning just in time to see Charles lash out with a fist and crack the other artifex across the jaw.

"The fuck were you thinking?" he snarled.

"Staring down a soldier like that? You trying to get us killed?"

"Not soldiers," Gerard hissed.

"Swordsmen. You know what they are, what they do-" Charles slapped him across the face - not hard, but enough to interrupt Gerard mid-sentence.

"It doesn't matter," he growled.

"Look at me - eyes up, dammit, you look at me." Charles leaned forward and put his face very close to Gerard's, speaking low enough that Michael couldn't make out the words. Gerard's face slowly shaded from rage to fatigue, and he sagged against the crate.

"I know," he said, reaching up to smooth his shirt as Charles released his grip.

"Sorry. It won't happen again. I just…" He shook his head.

"It's fine," Charles said, extending his hand.

"We got lucky, he was as drunk as I've ever seen a man. No harm done, in the end." Michael felt the tension bleed out of him as Gerard shook Charles's hand, then pulled the other artifex into a brief, one-armed hug. For all that Charles was being nonchalant now, they had nearly died back there.

His skin was still prickling from the feeling of those ethereal blades rising up around them; his father had occupied his thoughts lately, and never since that fateful carriage ride in Calmharbor had those memories felt more real. They had scarcely begun to look for Clair when she found them instead. Vernon trailed behind her, along with another man Michael had not seen before. Charles intercepted her before she could speak with Gerard, and after a whispered conversation she made no further move to do so.

Instead, she gave a brief nod in his direction and beckoned for them to follow. The stranger she had brought led them a short distance away to an unassuming cart. It appeared dark, but a quick tug on a flap revealed a well-lit, cozy interior to the carriage. They hastily piled in while the stranger retied the flap, then turned to face them.

"Sorry," he said, addressing Claire with a raspy voice.

"The front's been moving, and the Swordsmen had been staying up at the vanguard. Two days ago they ran up against the first real resistance they've met, and Sever called a halt - they had outpaced their logistics. Ever since then we've been up to our balls in bored Ardans. You were already on the road or I'd have warned you." The man turned to the others.

"My name is Emil," he said.

"I've been working on finding those battalions you lost, the ones out of Leik." He reached past where Vernon was sitting and pulled out a map, which he half-unrolled in the cramped space between the carriage's occupants. It showed Imes and its surroundings, with rough boxes in charcoal drawn towards the east of the map.

"These here are the main Ardan elements," Emil said, jabbing his finger at the boxes, then shifting to hover over one particular mark at the front of the lines.

"These are your engineers. They're sappers, actually - they've been deployed against the Safid trenches while we wait for the supply train to firm up." Clair's brow furrowed, and she exchanged a glance with Charles.

"Sappers," she muttered.

"Artificers, or did they have explosives?"

"I didn't exactly swing by their camp to ask." Emil moved his finger to a different, larger box, back from the front and northward.

"Your infantry and command units are a bit harder to nail down. As best as I can tell, they've been allocated under Sever's personal authority. That means they're somewhere near his camp, but I couldn't tell you where." Gerard's face hardened. He walked over to the map and examined it, letting his fingers trace over the charcoal marks.

"What does Sever want with regular infantry?" he asked.

"He's always insisted on ensouled in his ranks."

"Ah, he's come around," Emil said, giving him a grim smile.

"The Safid have been bleeding him ever since he began to push out past the old Leiko defensive lines. Swordsmen are hard to replace, so he's started running a vanguard ahead of them to soak up the fire - punishment detail, washouts and transfers, these days. I suspect there are more than a few prisoners there as well."

"That sounds more like him," Gerard murmured. Charles shouldered in to stare at the map.

"Well, this is a lovely scenario," he said.

"We can either go play at the arse-end of the front or have tea with Sever's jolly murderers." He turned to look at Clair.

"We're understrength for this kind of work, and neither of those places will be tolerant of us nosing around."

"Not necessarily," Clair said.

"The sappers may be deployed to the front, but the battalion staff will be farther back near the local command post. If there are documents, we'll find them there. As for Sever's camp-" Clair glanced at Gerard, then back at the map.

"We'll check out the engineers and see how it goes."

"Well, damn," Charles said, mopping sweat from his brow.

"I admit that I underestimated Safid artillery, I had always heard they were rather poor."

"They held this territory last week," Clair snarled, pressing a cloth to a wound on Vernon's side.

"Keep the pressure on - there, like that. It's a scratch, even if it's a deep one. You'll be fine once it scabs over if you keep it clean." She straightened up and turned back to Charles, who was leaning against one wall of a half-collapsed barn they had found.

"They've had days to set up their guns, they've got every inch of the outskirts plotted for fire. The Ardans will pay a heavy price if they try to advance." Michael nodded, then winced as a detonation echoed close-by.

"And we're sure those were the battalions we were looking for?" he asked.

"Positive," Vernon grated, keeping his arm clasped tight over his bandage.

"I caught a few of them talking before that last barrage took out the medical tent, going over casualty numbers. Near-total losses, thanks to the sapper tunnel collapse." Clair grunted angrily, then kicked at a pile of damp hay.

"Ghar's fucking ashes," she spat. She glared a moment longer at the pile, then turned and sat on it.

"That camp is a total loss. Those documents are gone - if they even had them in the first place." Michael had seen Clair angry before; it seemed a regular state of being for her. It made the note of defeat twisting her voice all the more poignant.

"We still have Sever's camp," Michael said.

"Emil said the command segment was there. They'll have-""We can't," Clair rasped.

"Charles was right. We're not equipped for this sort of mission. Without Sobriquet, we're too exposed."

"So let's get Sobriquet," Michael said.

"If that's what it takes-""No!" Clair snapped.

"You don't understand, we can't risk it. If anything happened - the Ardans would have Sibyl here within a month, and there'd be nothing to stop her from writing lists of names. They'd have all the safehouses, all the weapons, all the patriots trying to push them out of Daressa. It would be the end for us." Michael bit back a question that he had made the mistake of asking once before. Would she really?

For a moment he saw Sofia at a table with Vera's hand on her shoulder, quietly writing names and addresses on a sheaf of paper - yes, she would. If she thought it was right.

"This battle will be the end of Imes," Gerard said, looking up from where he sat resting against the barn's wall.

"If we could stop it, if we could get the Ardans out of Daressa like you wanted-""It's an idiotic risk," Clair shot back.

"We can't involve Sobriquet, not under any circumstances."

"It seems as though I should get a vote in such matters," Sobriquet's voice said, echoing from the dark corners of their shelter. Clair looked up in horror, her eyes widening.

"No," she said.

"No, no, you were supposed to stay behind. You can't be here!"

"I must be here," Sobriquet said gently, its apparition materializing out of the shadow.

"This is too crucial a task to withhold resources."

"They will kill you if they find you." Clair stood and stared at the blur, tears beginning to trickle down her cheeks.

"And then they will kill all of us." Sobriquet cocked its head to the side.

"You would have been dead three times already if I had not come along." It nodded to Gerard, who blinked.

"With my involvement a raid on Sever's camp is a reasonable prospect. I had hoped to avoid this conversation, but it is past time for niceties. We can end this, Clair. Besides, there is little danger in my presence so long as it is brief. I am here, but that does not mean that I am particularly… here, as it were."

"It is still too dangerous," Clair said.

"This is the War," Charles shrugged.

"Being Daressan is more dangerous than it used to be. I'm in favor of taking the chance."

"As am I," Gerard said.

"You said it yourself, we can't do it without the boss." Clair skewered the artifices with a betrayed look, then turned her gaze to Vernon. The auditor held his hands up.

"Not about to contradict one of the Eight," he said.

"Sorry, Clair." Finally, reluctantly, she turned to Michael.

"You're the only one of us here with something Sobriquet wants," she said. The apparition pulsed once, quickly, then stilled.

"Stop this. It will be the end of everything if we fail." Michael met her eyes for a long moment. There was desperation there, and fear - boundless fear, far more than he'd seen when her own life had been threatened in the past.

"I can't," he said, watching Clair's face harden with his words.

"There's always a choice. If this is Sobriquet's will, to intervene here and try to end this piece of the War - I can't stop that."

"Idiots," she spat.

"Fine. Then let's be quick about it, and be off home. Every day we linger is an unacceptable risk." Clair glared around the barn once more, then stormed out towards the road. After a few more moments to tend to Vernon and gather their supplies, the rest of the group followed. Once more Michael trailed in the back, and once more he saw the telltale shimmer of air that heralded Sobriquet's presence beside him. This time, however, the apparition did not speak. Michael glanced up at Clair's distant form.

"She loves you," he said.

"Doesn't she?" There was no response for several paces. Finally, the blur shifted.

"Do you know what the saddest part in all of this is?" it asked.

"We're all fighting for Daressa, to restore what was taken. It's a lie. The Daressa we remember is gone, swept away under something much - greater than it, much more profound. Subsumed under what came after." There was a shimmer, and the voice took on a bitter tone.

"Just a memory of something comfortable and safe that probably never existed to begin with. Daressa is what you see now, and regardless of what we remember - it must proceed from reality. From today."

"And you?" Michael asked.

"What's your reality?" Another pause.

"It's simple. I am Sobriquet." The blur vanished, and Michael kept walking forward. It was not until the next day that they felt prepared to begin their reconnaissance of Sever's camp, allowing fatigue and nerves both to bleed away as they slept close and fitfully within Emil's cart. When morning came they proceeded under Sobriquet's protection towards the Ardan camp, to the sprawling mess of tents that Sever claimed as his own.

"Stinks," Vernon muttered.

"Ardans normally keep their camps cleaner than this." Charles shook his head.

"These aren't regulars - look, they're not all even Ardan." He gestured to a swarthy man with a festering sore on his cheek.

"Safid, that one. Emil said they were using prisoners." Michael raised his sight up and looked around. The disorganized mass of prisoner tents was neatly ringed by Ardan soldiers, and now that he was looking properly the sentries were obvious - regularly-spaced, and facing inward. More guards patrolled the edge of what Michael presumed was Sever's actual compound, a collection of tents that clustered tightly around an old, crumbling manor house.

The gardens and grounds that had once lain around the house were trampled into mud, statuary broken and defaced. On one wall, someone had daubed the blade-and-hand of the Swordsmen in lurid red. The edge of the manor's property had been fortified with several layers of wire, as well as assorted debris and scrap that jutted out from the dusty remains of a hedge.

"Going to be tough getting in," Michael said, stretching his sight higher still.

"Doesn't matter how invisible we are, we can't get through that barrier."

"I fall somewhat short of omnipotence," Sobriquet's voice murmured.

"Please accept my heartfelt apologies." Clair grunted and waved them towards a less-traveled stretch of the camp boulevard.

"We'll observe for a while and see what we can learn about the camp," she said.

"No sense rushing in. Tell us what you see, milord." Michael winced at the hostility in her voice; siding with Sobriquet over Clair had likely erased any scraps of goodwill he'd managed to build with her. He did not reply, however. He kept his sight high, and trained on the compound. The border fence was porous, for the right people - groups of Swordsmen were waved in without a second glance, and a small stream of Ardan regulars came and went in their wake.

Even the prisoners were permitted entry, albeit in closely-herded groups. Labor, perhaps, or some more twisted amusement for the Swordsmen. Michael focused on one of the departing groups - and froze. Amid the dirty castoffs and rags of the prisoners, there was a faded blot of red. The shirt was torn, dusty, but not so far gone that Michael could not recognize the uniform of Spark's control group. A second later, its owner raised his head to look out across the camp.

Despite a black eye and a crust of blood on his cheek, Luc's face was unmistakable.