They fled south. Madness, but madness with a rationale.

Ship buster missiles against cavalry. The outcome should have been obvious, but the singing horsemen just shrugged them off and continued charging.

Heinrich groaned. He still hurt where a lance had pierced his body walker. A full burst of needle grenades, enough to wipe an entire company of modern infantry from the ground, had taken down the horseman in the end. They managed to down less than a dozen more. Then several unarmed men suddenly appeared out of nothing with fire in their hands and slaughtered half of Granita's crew. At least one single burst killed all the arriving mages, but it was enough for the charge to break though.

He lost four there. Lances and swords cut through body walkers with little effort. An impossible nightmare, and one they couldn't survive.

Arthur Wallman saved the day by using his unnatural tricks in return, and Ken had been screaming at him time and time again for most of the three days and nights they fled south.

Heinrich didn't care. He had his orders, and even though Arthur seemed fully capable of protecting himself those orders still stood. How he should carry them out with less than half his command still alive was currently beyond him, but he had to try.

He compensated for a slight malfunction in the right leg motors and continued on. Nothing more he could do right now, and he had taken the rearguard. Chang was almost out of munitions and Panopilis was flat out. He served as point anyway. His sensors had taken the least damage, and they desperately needed to know what lay ahead of them.

They also needed to put as much distance between them and the riders to the north as possible. One more such encounter and they would all be dead, and that, he thought grimly, would prevent him from carrying out his orders.

***

Trindai de Laiden sent a few scouts ahead and waited for the phalanxes to get ready to march. He had lost several days and many, many more men. And yet duty called them all. By all rights he ought to be close to Krante with his troops on his way to join General de Markand's forces.

He pondered the reason he'd ordered scouts ahead. Farwriter down wasn't a message he'd expected from the south. Apparently the more militant of the religious sects didn't all rush ahead in suicide attacks. One, at least, must have gone underground while de Markand marched his regiments past their hideout.

And then they came back into the open and burned a farwriter to the ground. Trindai held no illusions about what had happened to the crew manning it. He would tread carefully so as not to lose men before they embarked on de Markand's barges and sailed to Chach. Well on the other side of the Narrow Sea losing troops would once again become unavoidable, more so now as they were already severely understrength courtesy of the outworlder invasion.

Well, they had sued for peace, or at least Admiral Radovic had on their behalf. Trindai doubted his superiors would be especially happy when they learned about that, if they didn't already know of course. Outworlder communications were a wonder to behold.

But, he thought, they had reason to accept the terms set by the council. Keen had crushed the invasion, and as far as Trindai was aware the outworlders had no way of knowing that the disgusting magic tied to Verd was one of a kind. They would have to consider the possibility of encountering defensive magic each and every time they closed on a city or town.

He mounted, rode along the city walls and tried, as much as possible, not to look at the outworlder wrecks littering what could no longer be used to train troops. A year, at least, before they had cleaned it up enough not to pose a danger to anyone entering it. Outworlder shrapnel or deliberately hidden caltrops made little difference to soft soled boots. A few men under the skilled care of Envoy Kirchenstein-Yui had already proved that.

That was possibly the single best piece of news they had received lately. The entire first landing a decoy and after the enemy was crushed several hundred outworlder doctors with vast amounts of supplies landed west of Verd. He grinned at the memory. That Anita had been sly one, more of a diplomat than the doctor she stubbornly said she was.

And something else made him grin even wider. The Krante Highway offered a lonely rider coming at good speed. A messenger of some kind, which meant the way south was far safer than he'd dared hope. He put a hand to his eyes to deflect some of the sun, but the glare was still bright enough he couldn't make out any details in the haze.

As the messenger came closer Trindai saw the brigade ready to march, and with a dull thud spreading dust into the early summer they took the first step to whatever destiny awaited them. With a bit of luck the rider would agree to share her information with him, unless it was for the council, but the only reason he could think of for a messenger coming from the south was General de Markand wondering what took the gherin spawned demons so long, and Trindai was that very demon in person.

If it was a woman, but most messengers were.

It took the better part of a dinner's meal to see the entire brigade on the highway. One cavalry regiment waited behind and would overtake them later. By that time Trindai saw that he'd been wrong. The messenger was a man, and he didn't carry de Markand's colours

Money letter then, or just a spy for the merchant houses? Minister de Verd hadn't shown any reluctance to turn death into money. It was clear that for him war was just a different way of making business.

Trindai hesitated a little but decided to force the rider to stop. Maybe he could be coerced into yielding whatever news he carried. Or threatened or bullied, he thought dully. His right hand still smarted from smashing a fist full in the face of Minister de Saiden. The giant killer hadn't as much as given a word in reply. Just like Olvar to be the one inflicting lasting pain even when struck. Trindai nursed his fist. It would pass. It always did, only a little slower for each passing year.

Then the messenger reached him, and halted.

"Thank gods you're ready! We have to hurry!"

That made no sense whatsoever. "Slow down man!" Those are client colours. Younger nobleman? "Start from the beginning!"

"They've taken Mintosa!"

Whoever he was he refused to listen to advice. "Attention!"

That worked. How he managed to stiffen in the saddle like that without falling off eluded Trindai, but at least he had the full attention of the lordling.

"Now, slowly." Trindai shifted a worst case scenario through his mind and probed. "Did General de Markand storm Mintosa?" That would set relations back more than thirty years.

The messenger exhaled, drew a deep breath and started over. "I am Count Mintosa. Chach invaded us earlier this spring, or rather the papacy did."

The world stopped. "Would you care to repeat that?"

"A fleet from Chach arrived at the harbour, but I saw that most of the ships really belonged to the papal fleet. When their cavalry charged we had to abandon the city."

Trindai blinked. "By all unholy gods, how did you manage to slip flanking cavalry behind you with the city gates open?"

He received a challenging stare in return. "I didn't say that. They came over the water. I don't know what magic they used, but they charged the entire waterfront from the sea. We never had a chance."

Trying to visualize what he had just heard Trindai barely managed to gag down a sharp reply of his own. Trebuchets against cavalry. He could see how futile that was, and ballistaes weren't much better. They would have been swarmed long before they really understood what awful fate had just befallen them. He had to live with everything turned upside down for a while.

"How many," he asked.

"I don't know for certain. At least five hundred horse, the water riding type. Another fifteen to twenty ships. I had to leave to tell someone what had happened."

Trindai's world spun once more. "But why here? Why didn't you tell de Markand, or did he send you?"

Count Mintosa stared back, eyes filled with incomprehension. "De Markand? What good would that do, and where should I have found him?"

"Where should..." Trindai gaped. "He marched for Mintosa almost half a season ago. He should be almost there by now, and he's in command of several regiments worth of cavalry. You couldn't possibly have passed him without noticing if you stuck to the main road from Mintosa."

Trindai received a negative wave in reply. Gods, if the lordling really had made it here without meeting de Markand, where was he, and his army for that matter? "Follow us!" he ordered the baffled lordling. I'm going to need someone who knows the lands from now on. They attacked us? Those sail barges. "Did they...?"

"Yes, we never had time to set fire to those ships of yours. They can transport just about as much as they can produce across the Narrow Sea until the weather takes a turn for the worse."

Trindai swore. No chance to take Mintosa back then. In the worst of worlds de Markand had already been defeated, but that was unlikely as the young count must have had at least a few days head start, and if he hadn't met the army then it was probably not headed for Mintosa at all.

And the day had begun so well. Now he tasted ashes again, but he could do nothing but head south. The question was what troops he should bring.

He decided to continue and sent a few messengers back to Verd. If they wanted to exchange troops all left in the capital were mounted and could catch up with him at will.

Still a lousy way to start his campaign, but then he hadn't experienced much anything but lousy events since the day he received his new orders. He should have stayed the colonel. Life had played its ugly jokes on him last time he held general's rank as well.

They rode side by side, but none spoke much. Young Count Mintosa had reported most of the useful information anyway, and Trindai needed the silence to revise his own plans. A campaign to retake what they had lost rather than a pre-emptive strike to prevent Chach from training battlemages. They should have guessed some were already fully trained.

He shook his head. There was a lot of things they should have known. Not sending two full regiments east would have been a good beginning. Not cleaning out Vimarin and Erkateren of food so the population starved would have been a good way to continue, but they had failed there as well. Now, what they didn't have to guess was that the papacy would get directly involved and lead an assault on the northern shores of the Narrow Sea, because that was unheard of.

With holy warriors suddenly able to ride on water and the unholy gods knew what more demon spawned surprises they had waiting he was at a loss how to proceed, but proceed he must. It was all beginning to resemble the awful running tax collection mission Mairild had set him on a few years earlier, and what a nightmare that had been. The difference was of course that he knew and trusted each and every of the thirty odd men he'd led that time. Now he was responsible for five thousand trained and half trained men.

When the daylight finally gave way to dusk he still hadn't decided on a plan, but he knew he'd have eightdays of worry ahead of him during which he could imagine one disaster after another and plan for it.

***

"He struck you?"

"He did," Olvar grinned back. "I won't hold it against him. We put him through an indecent amount of pressure, no, I did, not we."

Mairild nodded. Whatever Olvar was, craven was not one of those things. He was so honest she sometimes mistook it for stupidity. She didn't repeat that mistake often though. A great brain on a huge body. The brain of a brilliant killer.

She watched him from the corner of her eyes. A brilliant, deadly child was probably closest to the truth, but that thought scared her more than she wanted to admit. They couldn't afford a child in the council, at least not a vengeful one.

They walked down a flight of stairs and emerged just outside the tavern where the outworlder taleweaver had allegedly taken refuge during the riots. At least a hastily written sign said so, the part of it that wasn't riddled by cuts and holes from the shelling less than an eightday earlier.

"Is there a reason you didn't tell General de Laiden we've known of the attack?"

"Yes," Olvar agreed, "a good one. We didn't."

"We didn't?"

"No. I believed there were irregulars terrorizing the countryside south of the highways, maybe even a baron or count who had grown megalomania, but a full scale attack by Chach? No I didn't know that."

"Neither did I," Mairild admitted. She hated doing it. She was supposed to know. It was her job to know, even when it was obviously impossible for her to do so. The council took for granted that she should deliver the impossible on schedule. She gave Olvar a long stare before she voiced her opinion. "Someone paid good money, very good money for silence. I've never been overpaid before." That was as close to admitting she used forbidden sources she dared go.

He just shook his head. He probably didn't care the least. He wanted her information so he could send his soldiers to do the killing. In that way he was refreshingly simple-minded, and dangerous.

"I think Lady Kirchenstein-Yui will agree to lend us a few of their self moving wagons with the crew to man them."

"You think or you know?"

"I know I'll be able to convince her in the end," Mairild answered.

"I don't know how you do it, but go on. Play your magic with your words and I'll put the vehicles to good use."

Mairild shivered at Olvar's choice of words. Magic was the last she could afford to use now. Too may eyes were directed at her now. Magehunting's not the least worrisome of those. That minister was about as much of a fanatic as any of the sect leaders she'd encountered since the last deity showed it's ugly, shining face in the night sky.

How many enemies had she made since then? Or even before? She shook the emerging suspicions away. Always keeping an eye over her shoulder was no way to gather information. Paranoids made bad spies.

They made their way down a few streets—the boulevards were busy with carts and wagons emptying Verd of rubble. For once manual labour had to be used to move debris out of the capital.

Just on the west side of what had once been the crossing between Artists Street and Runaway Alley she found Anita. Even though the outworlder still had her duties as official envoy she were most often found among her own giving a hand wherever one was wanted.

The problem, as Mairild saw it, was that too often it was. Not that she was about to say so, not when she was going to ask a favour or in worst case demand restitution from the very people who had saved them.

She bowed when their eyes met, and from then on the haggling started, and to Mairild's enormous surprise she found herself enjoying the entire episode almost as much as she'd loved taking the stage over thirty years earlier.