returned from the shore of the eye itself and confirmed what we had feared - the array weakens, and where it does something else takes hold. There were no plans for this failure mode, and although we are asking everyone who still responds to search the texts passed down by our fathers I do not have much hope for a solution. He did find one thing that may hold an answer or two for us, a length of bone from the shore with a strange passage in the True

- Unattributed fragment, early Aejha script on unknown material. Not handwritten. Royal archives, Ce Raedhil.

Jyte bulled forward into the onrushing knot of abominations, his armored pauldron cracking sharply into a leathery skull. They went down in a tangle and he began the business of making sure they stayed there, preferencing the sweep over the thrust to sever limbs, hew bones and quiet the malevolent ruud that animated the creatures.

When they stilled at last, he used the moment of respite to survey the field. His halberdiers’ lines had dissolved when the attackers turned to charge the foreign travelers, displaying speed and agility far beyond what he had seen from them before. A sobering reminder that complacency was rewarded with death, he reflected.

Still, relatively few of his men had taken injuries even with the collapse of their formation. None of the abominations that broke through turned to attack their rear, darting instead for the tall, dark man with the gleaming silver sword. He was apparently unharmed despite having collapsed mere minutes into the battle, his amateur swordsmanship barely serviceable even with his surpassing reach and height.

Jyte snorted in disdain. At least the man’s companion was proving his worth. The unnaturally pale warrior was laying about with his absurd glowing hammer like a farmer taking in a crop of jehan, and the scorched pile of bodies around him was growing to impressive proportions. Similarly effective was the diminutive Cereinem woman that had dashed from the chariot to hurl bolts of fire from some tool of Sjocelym scriptwork.

He normally did not hold with the scriptsmiths’ craft, but her precisely-thrown flames had done as much as any eighth of his men thus far. Better still, the pair’s flamboyant attacks were working as an effective rallying signal for the reformation of their lines. For this, he could tolerate even the scriptsmith boy cowering in the chariot with the others.

The moment of reflection was cut short as another cluster of attackers lurched towards him, not yet gripped by whatever madness had taken the others. This meant they still tracked him rather than simply trying to push past - but it also meant they were slow, slow, slow. He smiled under his helmet as he darted his blade out once, twice, three times to slash at their necks, the black-smeared metal shearing through their flesh and dropping them in an instant.

He pivoted to face the next group, leveling his halberd only to have a runner impact it full-on and impale itself through the gut. It writhed and twisted, clawing at the shaft until it seemed to realize the futility of the effort. It stilled, then snapped its gaze up to stare at him with blackened eyes.

Jyte couldn’t help but shiver in the moment their eyes met. He had slain more silent ones than he could remember, but never one with the spark of malicious intelligence and intent that flashed midnight-black from the abomination’s weathered face.

It croaked an enraged war cry and began to claw its way up the halberd’s shaft towards him, pushing itself along the length of wood as Jyte kicked at it in a fruitless attempt to free his weapon. Dry hands grabbed him from the side as the group he had targeted before reached him, and he smelled the fetid stench of them as they clawed and scraped broken fingernails over his armor.

A stab of panic flashed through him as he felt rotten fingers worm their way under his plate. He could not break free. He could not see any of his men through the slits of his helmet, not even the hammer-wielding warrior. The weight of his attackers unbalanced him and he collapsed to the side, flailing against their assault until a silvery flash scythed through them from behind.

Breathing hard under the sudden cascade of black blood, he sat up to see the tall, dark man standing over him with his sword drawn and a determined cast to his face. Wordlessly he extended his free hand to Jyte, who took it and was hauled to his feet with alarming ease. He looked down at Jyte for a moment, then spun to attack a pack of runners charging at him from behind.

Watching him, Jyte stood transfixed in disbelief. The man’s swordsmanship was perhaps even worse than before. His footwork was shoddy, his stance was nonexistent. There was no confidence in his expression and sweat poured in rivulets from his brow, but despite it all the blade of the silver sword sang out to meet each of the abominations in turn with undeniable effect.

A noise from behind him broke Jyte from his momentary stupor and he twisted to impale yet another attacker with his halberd. He pushed the man out of his mind and focused on the battle in front of him. He knew battle, the rhythm and pace of it. The sense. Ever since leaving Tinem Aesvai, he reflected, most other things had stopped making any sense whatsoever.

Nothing was different, but everything had changed. Jesse still had no idea what the hell he was doing, but where his blade had struck at poor angles before it now fell true. The disorientation he had felt earlier had faded, and although he was still overwhelmed and terrified he never found himself losing track of the shambling bodies flinging themselves towards him through the melee or their corpses littering the ground.

He still stumbled, still found himself scrambling to intercept the frenzied attacks of his assailants, but he felt a guiding hand pressed to the small of his back, a gentle pressure on his arm that made his strikes a millimeter or a degree more correct than they would otherwise have been.

More than that, though, was the contagious sense of contentment and joy that radiated from his erstwhile invader as she was welcomed for the first time. It filled him, banishing the anxiety that nibbled incessantly at the edge of his awareness and replaced it with a calm, focused flow. Jesse was not a man who danced, as a rule, but he found himself envisioning the pair of them in a tentative, halting waltz through the melee. He led and she followed lightly after, adding her own flourishes that covered for his missteps and embellished his successes.

Immersed in the novel sensation, Jesse almost didn’t spot a pair of runners that dashed through a gap in the mob to fling themselves bodily towards him. A jolt of the old panic spiked through him as he lifted his sword and swung. This time his focus did not waver, though, and his blade flashed through them with only the slightest of efforts.

He wondered at that pang of sick fear as he watched their bodies fall lifeless to the ground. Why fear this? His life was in danger, yes, but he was far from helpless. He was taller than his attackers, stronger, armed with the sword of a king. The halberdiers sang as they fought, and Mark laughed. Jesse’s hand curled tight around the sword’s grip as he deflected another mindless charge, watching his sword flicker through the enemy - detached, calm, as if through glass. Why fear this?

Did he have a reason, other than habit?

Had he ever?

Zhesi Ce Asaarim stepped out from the battle line and into the oncoming tide of grasping dry flesh, finding it trivial to keep his sword moving in graceful arcs that flowed from one strike into the next. Behind the sound of the battle and the cries of the halberdiers he heard a woman laughing with joyous frenzy, felt the surge of light prickling through his arm with each strike. He spun outward to afford himself more space and avoid the bodies of the fallen, and amid the music of the horde seething and dying around him he danced.

“Jesse!” Mark’s exasperated voice rang out. “Get back to the line!”

Mark’s shout ripped into his focus and jarred his sword to a halt, and moments later the wave of attackers he had been holding at bay crashed over him. He felt the guiding hand press urgently against him and let her drag him back into step, clearing a space with frantic slashes before he jumped back to fire a tight fan of one-handed shots with his pistol that robbed them of enough momentum to allow his retreat.

Jesse fell back behind the line and felt the flow stumble to a halt once more, the roaring of his breath and pounding of his heart filling the calm he had briefly held close. He staggered and hunched forward, sucking down deep breaths and watching the sweat drip to the trampled grass.

“Holy fuck, dude,” Mark observed, falling back from the line to stand next to him. Jesse felt the sudden radiant heat from the Fragment against his side even as Mark held it resting away from them, and he noted several angry red burns dotting his friend’s arm. “I thought the little bastards got you for a second! What the hell were you doing?” he asked. “I was about ready to jump in and pull you out.”

“Just making friends,” Jesse wheezed.

Mark grinned at him and clapped him on the shoulder, nearly toppling him over. “Things always go to shit when you decide to make jokes,” he said. “Come on, catch your breath and let’s finish this up. I think we’ve actually got this.”

Jesse felt an incongruous pang of annoyance as he watched Mark jog back to the front. It was subtle enough that it took him a moment to realize that the feeling wasn’t his own.

...pull you out, came the echo, sounding nettled. Jesse smiled and spun his sword in a neat twirl, noting how the muscles of his arm followed his intent with unearned ease and precision - and perhaps a certain indignant showmanship.

The end of the swarm was in sight by now, with the far end of the clearing only populated by a few slow-moving stragglers. The realization seemed to grant the flagging Aesvain a second wind. Many of them had learned to adjust their strikes to better account for the runners, keeping themselves mobile and resisting the urge to overcommit to a swing.

Jesse threaded his way through a gap in the line, stepping lightly forward with a few quick strikes to push the mob back from the halberdiers. It was easier to slip back into the flow now that he had the feel of it, measuring how much she could assist and where she relied on him to lead. He heard Mark’s concerned shout from down the line and felt the stab of irritation again, but he only shook his head and smiled once more. Somewhere down the line a halberdier started bawling out a new song for the faster cadence, light and merry with ribald lyrics.

“It’s no good whining about it,” he whispered. “Let’s just show him.”

“I feel useless,” Jackie complained. “Not that I particularly want to be out there either, it’s just…” She threw her hands in the air helplessly and looked back out the window at the battle raging outside. The halberdiers had been pushed close around the truck by the runners as they tried to get at Jesse, and while their condensed lines were holding they looked hard-pressed.

Even worse, a large portion of the horde had yet to succumb to whatever influence caused them to run towards Jesse and had continued shambling slowly toward the fort and its hastily-reinforced encirclement of buildings. The noise of the battle with the runners drew most of them towards the halberdiers, but a few had strayed to attack the barricaded refugees and were being variously pelted with rocks, sticks and anything close at hand.

“This is a battle,” Arjun pointed out. “You are a geologist. Your expertise on the impact of model upscaling on assessed reservoir heterogeneity will go sadly unappreciated by the mindless horde.”

Jackie blinked and looked at him incredulously. “You read my dissertation?” she asked.

“Of course I read it,” he said, looking mildly affronted. “I was the team lead, after all. You can rest assured that I feel equally useless sitting in the car, but there’s little we can do at this point besides wish our friends luck.” He squinted through the window at the battle. “Mark seems to be enjoying himself, at least.”

The Fragment had been increasingly easy to spot as the fighting dragged on, its glowing head sending out cascades of sparks with each blow. Mark’s relentless attacks had been instrumental so far in relieving pressure from the halberdiers. Gusje was nearly invisible until she struck, but her occasional blasts of fire were unmistakable and devastating.

Jesse, however, was maddeningly difficult to discern at range. His height made him stand out, but against the seething mass of the enemy he seemed to disappear until an echoing pistol shot or the flash of sunlight off his silvered blade revealed his position. Wherever he stood to fight the horde would surge towards him with mindless fury. Mounds of withered corpses were obstructing sightlines and giving the remaining attackers troublesome high ground from which to hurl themselves down upon the defenders. More than once they saw Mark frustratedly bashing the fallen aside with his hammer to even the terrain.

A rhythm emerged in the fighting where Jesse would advance and draw focus while Mark battered his way towards his position through the frenzied tangle of enemies that resulted. The halberdiers quickly learned to capitalize on their momentum, charging forward over the fresh corpses to fill the void the two soldiers left in their wake.

Before long the ranks of the enemy thinned and the halberdiers grew boisterous, shouting and singing louder with each forward rush. Small groups peeled away from the fighting to run down any remaining walkers in the refugee camp as the main battle line bent to form a half-moon around the last of the horde.

“Looks like we’re just about done,” Jackie said. “Damn, our boys really cleaned up out there.”

Arjun nodded, looking thoughtful. “I was surprised to see how effective Jesse was,” he agreed. “Given our initial reception I was a bit worried, but the mood seems to have warmed significantly.”

The gold-cloaked soldiers were growing louder with each felled enemy, tightening their encirclement until at last it was Mark and Jesse ringed by halberdiers with a spare handful of the surviving swarm. With each hammerblow and sword strike the Aesvain cheers grew, and when Mark ended the last with a burst of steam and sparks the circle dissolved into an exhilarated mob around them.

“Wow,” Jackie remarked. “Yeah, that’s a reversal.”

Arjun nodded. “Seems that way,” he agreed. “Come on, we should go over and join them.” He looked back towards where Tasja was reporting the battle’s end over the twinplate. “If we’re ever going to convince them not to kill Tasja, now is probably our chance.”

Jesse’s legs nearly buckled with the relief of seeing the last of the silent ones crumple under Mark’s hammer. The glowing weapon twirled in a showy overhand swing, feeding the halberdiers’ frenzy before whipping downward to a gruesome impact. The soldiers erupted with cheers as Mark left the hammer to sizzle on the ground and turned towards Jesse with a contagious grin on his face.

“Dude!” he shouted, pulling him into an exuberant, sweaty embrace. “That was the most badass thing I’ve ever seen!”

Jesse smiled back wearily, the fatigue of the battle reasserting itself as the warmth in his arm subsided. “Just following your lead,” he demurred, and then the gold-cloaked halberdiers were around them, slapping them on the back and shouting excitedly as they reveled in their victory. A pair of soldiers hefted Gusje onto their shoulders like a festival queen to parade her around, ignoring her shouted protests and half-hearted attempts to break free. The delirium lasted for a few minutes before a shouted command from the Aesvain captain stilled the group - though the smile on his face was as broad as any of his men.

“Before us, they came!” he bellowed, spreading his arms.

“Before us, they died!” the soldiers roared back. Their halberds pounded on the ground in unison, sending a low thud tickling through Jesse’s bones.

The captain waved his hand again for silence and surveyed his men, who clustered around tightly. “Once again, the abominations prove they cannot match us,” he thundered. “Once more, we hold the land that others so readily yielded. This was a Sjocelym city once, but now it beats with an Aesvain heart!”

There was another chorus of cheers, but he kept talking before they had a chance to drown him out. “Our people, cruelly torn from their homes, sleep well thinking of your blade. The gold cloak shelters them!” he cried, renewing the cheers. He walked over to stand beside Jesse and Mark. “We do it gladly, asking for nothing! But that doesn’t mean we don’t appreciate some occasional fucking help!”

The crowd erupted with raucous laughter, and the captain reached out to clasp arms with each of them in turn before waving his men to silence once more. “All right, all right,” he said tolerantly. “Settle down. We’ve got work left to do before these rotten bastards stink up more than they do already. Start the pyres, check for wounded, you all know what to do.”

He turned to Mark and Jesse, then motioned that they should follow him as he walked back towards the truck. After a few steps Gusje fell in beside them, her face smeared with dirt and dark blood. All of the crystals on her gauntlet were dull.

“So,” the captain said. “Call me Jyte. We’ve started off a bit poor, I admit, but after all that I don’t think you’ve got aught to worry about from anyone in a gold cloak.” He peered at the truck, noting Arjun, Jackie and Tasja filing out to meet them. “Although I’d recommend your little scriptsmith take off his reds. No sense in tapping the tari on the beak.”

Jesse nodded, looking up at the truck. “We’ll tell him. My name is Jesse, by the way. This is-”

“Ai now, wait on,” Jyte said, frowning and holding up a hand. “I always forget with you foreign sorts. While you’re here, you’d be best keeping your name to yourself.”

Mark blinked. “You gave us your name,” he objected, bemused.

“I’ve told you what to call me,” Jyte clarified. “Only Sjocelym go around with the name their mother’s given them hanging off their tongue, slapping on drabs so much that you’ve got to take a breath before you can even start in listing off all their get.” He shook his head. “You call an Aesvain what he is, and both keep your names to yourself.”

“I was wondering about that,” Jesse said, looking mildly embarrassed. “Jyte, then. ‘Conviction,’” he translated for Arjun and Jackie, who were looking a bit lost. “That would make Izho ‘storm’ and Rusve, ah…” He smiled, shaking his head. “I suppose he’d be ‘good enough.’”

Jyte peered at them. “Others of our folk you’ve met?” he inquired.

“Yes,” Arjun replied. “Near the entrance to Sevai Sazha, far to Sun’s Height. They had fled there from Idran Saal to avoid-'' He paused, grimacing. “A number of unpleasant things. We met them on the road and shared a meal before they departed for Utine.”

“We’ve heard some rumors,” Jyte said grimly. “Enough to have made us wary of traveling past the wall, even if they’d have let us pass.”

“They’re probably true,” Arjun confirmed, briefly describing what they had seen outside of Idran Saal.

Jyte’s face darkened ominously. “Thin-blooded bastards,” he spat. “Best thing they’ve ever done was leave us to die.”

“Yes, well,” Mark said, scratching his neck awkwardly. “About that. The Sjocelym expect this city to be overrun. Somehow I doubt our little skirmish today was the end of it.”

“Not even close,” Jyte confirmed. “The abominations bunch up and swarm every few days. This lot was actually smaller than what we’ve fought before, since you’ve drawn them in early. Might consider that as a practice if they’re going to start up running now-”

“Hey, look!” Tasja interrupted excitedly. Jyte scowled darkly at him, but the scribe was holding his twinplate in front of him with rapt attention as its bronzed arm ticked back and forth in smooth arcs. “They’re finally responding back!”

“Oh, joy,” Mark drawled. “I can’t wait to hear whatever nuggets of wisdom they’ve got for us.”

Jackie chuckled, but Tasja had shrugged out of his satchel and was obliviously paging through his codebook on the ground as the message continued. “Confirm receipt of previous message,” he muttered, scribbling down his transcription as he worked. “Request intelligence… Aesvain civilian numbers, Aesvain military numbers…”

Jyte’s face darkened, and he turned to face Jesse and Mark. “We’ve fought together,” he said grimly, “so I’ll be plain about it: if you’re here to report on us to the bloody scriptsmiths, leave now or ready your arms.”

“Hey, whoa,” Mark said, holding up his hands placatingly. “Like we said, we didn’t even know you were here. The scriptsmiths did send us to Sjatel, but our instructions were to watch the Sjocelym defend the city and observe any special tactics the enemy used. We were to use our chariot to report those to Idran Saal so they could better defend their wall when the time came.” He looked down at Tasja, who was still muttering through his transcription. “He hasn’t told them anything about you that the departing Sjocelym didn’t already know. I’m not inclined to send them more, at least not about you and your people.”

The Aesvain captain gave him an evaluating look before nodding. “Then don’t,” he said. “No good will come of it.”

“I think we should all sit down and have a discussion about the scriptsmiths later,” Arjun said. “We don’t know much about them, not really. If you have a cause to dislike them that much then we would want to know what that is.”

Jyte laughed gruffly. “We’ve got three days or so before the next attack, most like. That should be enough time if we’re quick about it.”

Tasja stood up, holding his notes out to Mark. “That’s the last of it,” he said. Mark raised an eyebrow and stared at the scribbled aejha glyphs until Tasja flushed and withdrew his hand. “Sorry,” he mumbled, “I keep forgetting. They asked for the information on the Aesvain, as well as the state of the city. They’ve confirmed that there’s no updates from Sjan Saal or Idran Saal about the Emperor’s advance.”

He shot a quick look at Gusje, who glared back. “No news about the arriving cereinem either,” he added hastily.

“Do they know anything?” Jackie grumbled. “Why even send a message?”

“There is something at the end,” Tasja said. “The last sequence was: specialist intelligence resource’ then an instruction to ‘extract requested strategic equipment.’ The message ends with the sequence ‘city docks three, Sun’s Height three, Sun’s Birth one.’” He looked up and shrugged. “This codebook is a general military edition, so it’s light on specifics. I presume they’re asking us to find something in the city before it falls.”

Jyte snorted. “Of course that’s what they’d care about,” he grumbled. “You’ve asked why we take issue with the scriptsmiths, they’ve answered you as well as anyone. Thousands of us fighting for our lives in the city and they’ve asked you to fetch a trinket.”

“It could be something important enough to justify the effort,” Jesse said, his tone uncertain. He stared past the group for a second before shaking his head and shrugging. “I’m not sure, though.”

Arjun tapped his chin with a finger, looking thoughtful. “Vumo did say he would send out a request for information to the other scriptsmiths,” he muttered. “Perhaps one of them came up with a lead.”

“You think this is about the portals?” Mark asked. “If they had a lead on something like that why didn’t they pull it from the city ages ago? They’ve had a base here forever, they had a whole bunch of troops here before the Aesvain showed up. Waiting until now makes no sense.”

“The old city is dangerous,” Jyte grunted. “We’ve kept our people away from it as best we could, but even as things are there are those who’ve gone searching. Those few who’ve come back found nothing, which says to me that all those who’ve found something haven’t come back. It’s no small thing to open doors in a place like this.”

His ominous tone quieted the group for a moment, and Tasja shifted uneasily. “What should I say?” he asked.

“Don’t say anything,” Mark said. “Not until we know what it is.”

“You actually want to look for it?” Jackie sputtered. “It’s a deathtrap, Mark - your words, not mine.”

Mark shrugged and looked around, his gaze taking in the refugees pouring out of the fort amid rushing patrols of Aesvain who were directing them towards the scene of the battle. Crews were stacking wooden debris and bodies together in great pyres near the leeward side of the clearing. “Well,” he said, stretching his shoulder. “I don’t trust that Vumo cares much about us, but he seems to give a shit what happens to Jesse and he’s got way better intel. If he’s suggesting that we do something we’ve probably got a shot at making it work. I say we go for it. Jesse?”

Jesse sighed. “I agree,” he said reluctantly. “Vumo wouldn’t send us after something trivial. If it’s enough to interest him, it should interest us as well.

Mark looked at the others in turn. Arjun and Jackie both nodded, while Gusje shrugged noncommittally. There was a long silence before Tasja realized everyone was looking at him.

“I get to choose?” he asked, surprised. “I wasn’t going to say anything...”

Arjun chuckled. “We’re very fond of voting, where we come from,” he said.

“If you don’t feel up to it,” Jyte said lazily, “you’re more than welcome to stay back here with me and my men. We’ve always got need of more hands to burn corpses, and I’ve no doubt they’d all love to meet our new scriptsmith… comrade.” He grinned toothily at Tasja.

“Actually,” Tasja said, “I’ve always been fascinated by the broken cities. I’m going.”