Older Things (independent)

N.B. This story has nothing to do with anything. I just felt I had to post something.

“Sir – sir! Come with me, sir, please.”
“What is it?” Commander Echaron barked, slamming his food-maniple down on the table. The electric field in which the food was transported stuttered; the young Zedzen quailed back from his elder's rage.
“We're receiving a communication from a Khanati ship, sir.”
“Can't the uptight bastards wait?” Echaron roared, picking up the maniple again and scooping up a lump of egju, dripping in kirro gravy. The egju screamed.
“They say it's urgent, sir. V-very urgent. Black ships that don't show up on sensors” The young Zedzen's crest flushed blue, indicating alarm. Echaron considered his egju, licked some kirro gravy from his maniple field, and thoughtfully bit the writhing creature's head off.
“Keep that warm for me.” he ordered a passing Incongruent.
“Sir.”
Echaron tramped tripedally through his satellite's corridors following the young Zedzen, though he knew the halls of Zaragorazas Exploratory Reconnaisance Staging Point better than any Zedzen alive. For five hundred and twenty-eight Zedzen years – approximately two thousand one hundred and eighteen normal years, as Zedes I was slightly further out in its solar orbit, and orbited slower – Zaragorazas had played host to no less then thirty-one exploratory missions all aimed towards the Gelian Cluster – a vast conglomerate of hot young blue stars far out on the Zedzens' home galactic arm of Galeda, in the galaxy the Zedzen called Bolase. It had been one of these missions that had contacted the Khanati – a slightly older, roughly equivalent-technology space-faring race who were not nearly as pure of morals as they liked to believe.
Some of those expeditions had found other things as well, older things, more powerful things, more evil things, but those expeditions didn't come back. Echaron knew this.
The bridge opened up in front of him, shiny and sleek and efficient. The traditional, obsolete space-view was underscored by bank after bank of silvery monitors, panels, levers, buttons, keyboards, lights, dials, displays, LEDs and one stray egju, which survived long enough to leap happily with its two webbed feet for no apparent reason before one of the Zedzen technicians caring to the monitors absent-mindedly bit its head off.
The young Zedzen dragged a tripodal, saucer-like stand over to Echaron, its tines screeching across the polished floor.
“Mind the floor.” Echaron cautioned absently, squatting down on his three legs – not an easy feat – and using one of his three arms to depress a red button on the holographic projector.
“We recorded this message approximately four minutes ago, sir.” the young Zedzen bleated. Echaron ignored it, and pressed instead the play button.
A life-size replica of a Khanati fizzed into view, blue and marred by distortion.
“Communication to Zedzen outpost Zaragorazas.” one of the two side-by-side beaks squawked in a reasonable approximation of Lingua Franca – Zedzen Standard. “From Khanati Missionary-class exploring vessel The Light of Truth, Brought to the Disbelieving, Ma'arkha Etcaryom Monrov tel'Oristisarisi Bahanka, rank Jahark, Zedzen equivalent captain.” Echaron's crest flushed green in amusement at the Khanati's condescension. “Requesting all available forces be mobilised to come to aid of The Light of Truth, Brought to the Disbelieving. I repe - ”
“Incoming transmission!” one of the technicians brayed in a deplorable Goltafi accent. Echaron winced inside. “It's from The Light of Truth, Bro - ”
“Yes, yes, let it through.” Echaron waved one hand imperiously. The technician with the accent fiddled with a bank of controls for a moment, until the space-view began to buzz with static.
“Communica - ”
“Echaron, archon of Zaragorazas Outpost, receiving. Speak.”
“Did you not hear my request?” the Khanati squawked. The tines on the side of its bullet-like head stiffened momentarily. “I requested - ”
“I know what you requested. Why should I? Ships cost money.”
“That's all the Zedzen care about, is money!” the Khanati shrieked. “You should send ships here because if you don't... you might not be able to stop them again!”
“Them?”
“Archon! The Khanati are your allies! Aid us!”
“Who'll say if we don't?”
“You have to help us stop them! If not for our sake, then for yours!”
“I will consider it.” Echaron ended the transmission. Not one of the technicians looked up; not one questioned his calculating attitude. Ships did, after all, cost money, and the Zedzen were nothing without money.
“Knave.” he ordered. The young Zedzen, which had been crouching in a position of generic abject servility for the duration of the message, sprang onto its three feet.
“Yes, sir?”
“Mobilise the Zaragorazas defence navy.”
“Does this mean you will help the Khanati?” Echaron gave the creature a clout.
“Don't ask questions you shouldn't know the answers to. No word of this must escape.”
Minutes passed in silence. The technicians tapped away at their keyboards and LEDs and displays, and outside the window, the bulky, practical shapes of Zedzen warships began to gather together, awakening from their hibernation since the time of the Second-and-a-Halfth Zedzen-Kyrra War. But no transmission came in from the Khanati vessel.
“Sir!” A technician bustled over, as much as one can bustle on three legs. “We've found the Khanati vessel.”
“Yes?”
“It's sixteen light-minutes to the galactic north of us. But...”
“Go ahead.”
“We've scanned the area thoroughly, almost enough to tell you what each crewman on that Khanati ship had for breakfast, if they ate. We found ordnance: the signatures of plasma-fire, ion trails, micrometeorites, all on a trajectory away from the Khanati vessel, and craters, as from damage, on the Khanati ship.”
“And?”
“That's it. It's as if the Khanati ship is battling with empty space. And – with all due respect, sir – judging from the extent of damage on that ship, it's some battle.”
Some of the expeditions Zaragorazas had hosted had found other things as well, older things, more powerful things, more evil things, but those expeditions didn't come back. Echaron knew this.
“Incoming transmission!” the technician with the Goltafi accent bellowed.
“...chon! Archon! Archon Echaron!” the Khanati commander shrieked. “Help us please! Gods be good, Archon, they've boarded us! The things I saw on the cameras – beasts of indescribable nature – help us, please, Archon! For your own sake!”
“Dispatch the fleet.” Echaron ordered the young Zedzen quietly. It vanished – for once, blessedly, without a word. The Khanati was thanking him profusely.
“...nk you, Archon, thank you. The Khanati Theocracy will be eternally grateful to you - ”
“As you said, aah, captain, it is for our sake, not yours. Goodbye.” Echaron ended the transmission.
“Sir!”
“For profit's sake. What now?” The machinist in question held up a tablet computer for review. “The fleet is ready for neutrino-drive acceleration, except for...”
“Yes?”
“We've got to enter the target co-ordinates.”
“Head for the Khanati vessel. The enemy we seek is likely in the vicinity.”
Minutes passed again. The tablet computer Echaron was holding had changed from a checklist of the fleet's preparatory progress to a map of its spatial progress, showing the blue of the Zedzen ships approaching the egg-yolk yellow of the Khanati explorer. According to the sensor, the Khanati ship was still firing, but some of its guns had dropped silent. Indeterminate objects seemed to have attached themselves to the hull.
“Sir. The target co-ordinates?”
“We can't see the profit-forsaken enemy vessel. How am I supposed to approximate co-ordinates with no input? Tell the captains to look for it by sight.”
A pause of a few seconds. The order was relayed, the flickers of ordnance beginning to fly from the Zedzen vessels towards a seemingly blank spot and then -
“Sir!”
“Sir!”
“Sir!”
A dozen messages popped up.
“ - can see them, black as night - ”
“ - blot out the stars - ”
“ - what is that - ”
“ - profit's sake – fire, dammit, fire! Fire!”
The Zedzen captains' voices melded together into one homogeneous, frightening babble. Echaron leaned forward over his tablet computer.
“ - going to circle around behind, maybe its engines will be vulnerable, if it has engines - ”
“No!” Echaron barked. “No, leave it a route of escape!”
“Copy that, sir. Arraeos, have you - ”
“Sir!”
“Go away - ”
“Sir, no, sir, it's retreating! The anomaly is retreating!”
The Zedzen captains cheered almost as one as their eyes saw what the sensor told them wasn't there accelerate away, blooded. The holographic projector in front of Echaron flickered to life again.
“Archon Echaron!” the Khanati captain cried joyously. “We are saved, and thanks to your intervention! We now have plenty of specimens to study to aid in our search for this new, belligerent race - ”
Some of Zaragorazas' expeditions had found other things as well, older things, more powerful things, more evil things, but those expeditions didn't come back. Echaron knew this.
“Fire.” he said.

The Merest Inkling Contd.

“Zorlac, this is patently ridiculous.”
“No it isn't, Zanticus. I say it isn't, therefore it isn't.”
“Yes, it bloody well is. There are no more dragons in the world.”
“An ancient legend says that they may be found – right here in Erseland, Zanticus.”
“Well, firstly, that's just an ancient legend, and they only come true in computer games, Zorlac. Given the amount of them you've played, you should know.”
“I don't play computer games!... much...”
“Secondly, the ancient legend does not say there are dragons in Erseland, Zorlac. It says that the last dragon came here to live out his days.”
“And rekindle his kindred!”
“How many seven-hundred-and-ninety-eight-year-olds have you known to rebuild an entire race?”
“Years are different for dragons.”
“Obviously. Seven-hundred-and-ninety-eight is still fairly old for a dragon!”
“Don't even think about growing a spine, Zanticus. You wouldn't know how to use it.”
“Shove off, Zorlac!” Zanticus roared, whipping around to vent the full force of his rage on Zorlac. His voice echoed between the trees on either side of the dirt trail and off the distant mountain peaks of the Urglenn Mountains proper, between the ancient bushes and dark valleys that had swallowed up entire Thursian armies without a trace, down the deep caves of the karst regions and up into the upper reaches of Elleria's troposphere.
“And what reason would a fine pair of lads such as ye have for yelling so loudly as to disturb the dead?” a voice asked.
Zorlac looked down.
A pale little face, long-haired, seemingly human, smiled sardonically up at them. The man – an Ersian, clearly – was completely unarmoured, dressed in beautifully woven fabrics of green and red, with a thick torque around his neck. This didn't matter, however, because the little Ersian had a huge sword – easily a hand-and-a-half sword for a human, an enormous claymore for the little Ersian propped against Zorlac's waist.
“And mixbloods as well. Tell me, where are ye from?”
“Kamar. I'm Kamarean.” Zorlac supplied.
“Me too.” Zanticus added.
“Really? How do I know?”
“Well...” Zorlac grimaced.
“Just kidding. Only Kamareans are so pale you shine in the darkness. Ye are lucky that your king sided with the Traditionalist Ersians, and ye are luckier still that you met me before you met Progressives. A lot of Progressive tribes can be very cruel, very cruel indeed. Oh – where are my manners? I'm Cássarix, warrior in the employ of King Trénax of the Dálcash sept. Luckily for you, I was instructed to ask questions first and chop later, otherwise you might have ended up with your head nailed to the ground.”
“That sounds unpleasant.”
“Might I ask what ye are doing here?”
“We're looking for dragons.” Zorlac answered, puffing out his chest.
“I'm sorry, I must have heard you wrong. I thought you said you were looking for dragons.”
“That's what we're looking for.”
“Well... son... you see, in these parts, when something dies, it usually – not always, annoyingly, but usually – stays dead. All the dragons are dead.”
“What about Vaseryx Goldenhide?” Zorlac retorted, referring to the dragon from their mythical guide.
“He's dead too. Now go home and try to keep clear of things that are over your head.”
“Cheek! I could pop a dragon like a pimple.” Zorlac exaggerated.
“Doubtful. Listen, son, go home. For your own sake.” Zorlac sighed, theatrically.
“I suppose I should inform you of who I am and where I want to go...”

ten minutes later

“My King? The heir to the Kamarean throne. And he wants dragons.”
King Trénax leaned forward.
“Well then, you'll want to hear about the Gabolga, the Spear of the Ersians. Or, in Kamarean, Belly-Ripper.”

* * *

The bony, tattoo-scalped man hung from the bamboo frame like a sack of potatoes, scarred and pained. He had shouted his defiance, once.
That had ended after the first three days.
Then he'd started talking.
“Tell me.” Ankh said, walking around the bony man. His all-concealing mail clanked gently as he moved. “What was that thing you summoned in the village?”
Vellarion the Demented looked up at Ankh. One eye was fused shut, a scab crusted over the eyelid. He said nothing.
“Don't tell me you're thinking of holding out again?” Vellarion closed his one good eye for a moment, then opened it again.
“Beholder.” he croaked. “Water.”
“Tell me.”
“Can't tell you if my throat's... dried shut... idiot.”
A dribble of water trickled down his throat. He coughed, a wheezing rasp that he knew would kill him if he received no medical attention.
It would kill him.
“It was a beholder.” he forced out.
“A beholder? You mean there's more than one?”
“Uncounted thousands... in the vaults of the Eks Amenur. They were created.”
“Who is the Eks Amenur?”
“Can't tell you that. Nothing you do to me can make me tell you that.” Ankh left it.
“And is – are the beholders the worst these Eks Amenur - ” Ankh tripped over the unfamiliar name “ - can provide?”
“Certainly not.” Vellarion cackled madly. He wasn't called 'the Demented' without reason. “I have seen things, my friend.”
“I am no friend of yours!”
“Ah, friend, enemy... all die. None come back. Despite what you priests preach to the people, there is no heaven to receive the souls of the good. But let me assure you – there is a hell. Oh, there is... there is a hell.” Vellarion hacked, bloody saliva splashing Ankh's mail. “I have seen it. With these two – well, one now... eye. Seen it. Yes, the Eks Amenur are the servitors of Benet – not your feeble Benet, of course, but the true Benet, the dark original. She whose worshippers the Amenurites are.”
“Who are the Amenurites?” Ankh asked.
“Who indeed? You, me, everyone... has a choice, to see the light or to see the darkness beyond the light, the darkness that is coming for us.” Vellarion coughed again and smiled beatifically up at Ankh. His teeth were red with his own blood. “There is a darkness. Yes, beyond the light, and it is Benet. The Amenurites are the disciples of that darkness, those who see the truth.” Vellarion chuckled raspily. It sounded like a death-rattle.
“And what connection have the Amenurites with the Blue Dragons?”
“The Blue Dragons? Aah, you poor deluded fool. Those Blue Dragons, those guerrillas that Shamus of Borova trained to free the poor and help the weak, and establish a state where everyone is equal and there is rich, no poor, no inequality... they are dead. Shamus of Borova lives, but his ideas wither away. The Amenurites have seized his movement and made it their own. We have made it our own! And formidable as the Blue Dragons were - ” Vellarion coughed again “ - the Amenurites are a thousand, ten thousand, a hundred thousand times worse. For in addition to the loyal guerrillas following Shamus, we have all the creatures of the night: beholders, shoggoths, dullahans, demons... and every one of you that falls is another recruit to add to our army.” Ankh leaned closer. The firelight flickered off his polished faceplate.
“Vellarion... are you talking about the undead?”
“Maybe, Ankh. Maybe.”

The Merest Inkling

The wind, cold and parched, blowing from the deep, glimmering sea visible to the south, blew particles of sand past the white, block-like houses of Ruhigicir, into the Ruhig oasis, and through the stands of green-leaved palm trees, sprouting like weeds from a pavement, that characterised this part of Farhight. Ankh, his back to a palm, his armour gone, his square face leaning back, eyes closed in relaxation.
“Ankh! Ankh, sir!”
Ankh opened his eyes.
For a week, they had travelled east, despite the distance between Salkir and Ruhigicir being two days' camel ride. Sandstorms, sloth, numbers, and general bad organisation had contributed to their lack of progress. Half of their two hundred paighans, the peasant levies which the Farhighter Empire insisted on calling soldiers, had had their sandals fall apart halfway through the march, their being made out of wicker, like the paighans' shields and armour. Ankh suspected a well-aimed slice of cake stood little chance of piercing the paighans' armour, but anything else would shear through it. In addition, the two elephants they had brought from the plains around Ur-Qadesh, to the north of Salkir, had been violently sick on the third day; the ten chariots, fearsomely equipped with scythes that jutted out, razor-sharp, in every direction, had broken down, and three of their drivers had cut themselves trying to fix them; and the twenty Lanciars that Duke Scalax had sent from Akar had had to take off their heavy chain armour because of the fierce heat. There were no seasons on Elleria, because there was no tilt in the planet's axis; instead, the weather was ruled entirely by pressure systems. A fierce high pressure had blown north across the ocean from Tydon on the fourth day, bringing with it boiling sun and hardship.
And now Ankh was going to have to face it again.
“What is it?” he asked the paighan who had disturbed him, in Salkiri. A brown, skinny man with a drawn-on moustache, he looked nervous – as everyone in Farhight seemingly did when confronted with the western barbarians.
“Sir,” he answered – in Salkiri, very fast; Ankh had to concentrate to work out what he was saying - “we have found, ah, Blue Dragons, we think. Jurian Pasha said to tell you.”
“Blue Dragons? Where?”
Ankh dressed into his armour – scorching hot, despite the fact that he had left it in the shade – and shouted for the Lanciars he had been given as escort as the paighan told him. Apparently, a group of twenty men had been seen in a nearby village, all bearing wooden shields with a crude blue dragon painted on them, standing in the middle of the village around a man who had been shouting, partly about the communist ideals of the Blue Dragons but – oddly – mostly about some new religion the Blue Dragons were supposedly espousing. The Lanciars, all fiddling their armour into place, gathered around Ankh; his was the only white Pontifex's brush in evidence. The Farhighters had provided three mages, sorry enslaved creatures bent to Jurian Pasha's will by magical leashes, and Ankh suspected that they knew what he was, namely a wizard; but officially, the Pontifexes were only priests. If there was spellslinging to be done, let the Farhighters do it.
“Lanciar Ankh!” a heavily-accented voice shouted, accompanied by the clopping of hooves. Ankh turned, realised his helmet was incorrectly positioned, and banged it. It fell into place, the eyeholes appearing in front of his eyes to reveal a tall, handsome man in bronze scale armour on top of a mare. Behind him clustered the only worthwhile soldiers in the entire detachment: the world-famous Farhighter heavy cavalry archers.
“Jurian Pasha.” Ankh nodded, humourlessly. “You say we have found Blue Dragons.”
“Yes, yes we have.” Jurian Pasha smiled: his teeth were blindingly white, his beard oiled into an improbable Pharaonic-looking style that probably hadn't been in vogue for two thousand years. The spare child, a third son or so of Arkaryan El'satharios Jubal Dacoval naTazihim, the governor of the nome – or province – of Ruhig Oasis, Jurian Pasha naTazihim was, Ankh recalled, and young enough not to have earned any of the ridiculous train of names his father dragged around. He was handsome, brave and dashing, arrogant, headstrong and overconfident, but a good man overall, and many worse choices could have been made for pasha of the little army. Like all the nobility of the current dynasty, Jurian and his clan were descended from the Farh nomads who had descended on what had then been called Kemet. Mounted archers, the lower echelons of the Farh clans had retained their nomadic existence, serving as exclusive mercenaries to the nobility of the then-newly-created state of Farhight. Elite soldiers, they were the only equiv-tech soldiers that Ankh would have bet on against Lanciars.
“I look forward to smashing these peasant buffoons.” Jurian stated, smiling arrogantly. Those paighans present, being peasants themselves, gave him an irritated look. “I assume I can count on your aid, Lanciar Ankh.”
“I'm in the middle of the Farhighter desert, at least a day away from the nearest civilisation, with twenty Lanciars and all their equipment. It's not exactly like I'm doing anything else.”
“So... yes?”
“Yes.”
“Excellent.” Jurian swung down from his saddle, barely avoiding getting his foot tangled. “Now, these Blue Dragons are being suspiciously obvious.”
“Obviously.”
“So that means...” Jurian preened visibly, evidently pleased with his powers of deduction, “...this could be a trap!”
“Oh – well, yes it could.” Ankh kept a completely flat face: Jurian had surprised him. He had been expecting the average noble's-spoiled-brat approach of simply charging in with everything, but obviously Jurian was smarter than that.
“You Lanciars shall charge in, supported by my heavy cavalry. The paighans will take up position on either side of the town, in the surrounding trees; should there be a problem, they will charge in. Any questions? No? Let's go.”

* * *

Vellarion the Demented was, as his name suggested, quite, quite mad. He was also fully aware of the fact, which wasn't really supposed to happen, and of the great charisma that it gave him. It came from staring into the face of the deepest, darkest corners of the earth and walking away, though with a new set of priorities.
One of those priorites was spreading his new religion.
“I have seen the darkness!” he cried, spittle flying from his withered chops, the runes painted onto his shaven, pink-gleaming skull glittering darkly in the scorching Farhighter sun. His robes, long and coloured like dried blood, rippled in the breeze; his fingers crooked into an arthritic cage in front of his face. “There is no point in denying it! The dark gods, the gods the Soulforger locked away at the dawn of days, have chosen now to make their return, and have made the Eks Amenur their puppets. Their puppets are the Blue Dragons, and their Amenurite faith. I hear you say: you wish to be no-one's puppet! Well, I tell you, it is better to be the right hand of the devil than in his path and, I tell you true, the devil is coming, as sure as night follows day!”
“What are you blathering about?” An irate voice cut through his hyperbole. The would-be prophet wheeled around from his audience of entranced villagers from the makeshift podium he had erected, over the heads of his bodyguard, to glare angrily at Ankh, who had spoken. The Lanciar stood, arms folded, at the head of his retinue of twenty Lanciars; Jurian Pasha and his heavy cavalry stood off to one side, looking fierce.
“A Lanciar. What are you doing in the middle of the Farhighter desert?” Vellarion snapped.
“Well, I'm not really sure, but that's beside the point. You – whatever your name is - ”
“Vellarion the Demented.”
“Thank you.” Ankh answered drily, but humourlessly. “Very well, Mr. the Demented, you are under arrest for denial of the true gods of the Church of Benet - ”
“You fool!” Vellarion burst into fanatical rhetoric again. “Can't you see your feeble protectors are as nothing compared to the might of - ”
“Benet and the Soulforger are the indestructible shields of humanity, the true divinities - ” Ankh roared in defense of his faith.
“Has no-one considered the Dead God of the Desert - ” Jurian Pasha interjected.
“The Dead God of the Desert is DEAD!” Ankh and Vellarion bellowed at the samed time. Ankh continued.
“I was born a Farhighter! For fifteen years, all through the Pontifexial training, I believed he would show me the way and illumine this false bloody faith the Lanciars were pressing on me! Every day, I prayed to the Dead Bloody God of the Bloody Desert and NOTHING HAPPENED! He didn't reward my faith, he rewarded it with NOTHING!”
An awkward silence settled over the village.
“I apologise. I realise I may have revealed more than I intended to of my personal life.” Ankh said. “Nevertheless! Vellarion the Demented, I place you under arrest.”
“I think not. Blue Dragons! Prove to me your loyalty!”
The village erupted. The Blue Dragon bodyguard jumped forward, wicker dragon-painted shields ahead, rusty swords overhead. Ankh pulled out his own sword, a metre of shining Akarean steel, felt his Lanciars charge in behind him and Jurian Pasha's heavy cavalry thundering. A Blue Dragon, an uncommonly pale, mucky weed of a man with a blue dragon tattooed on his face, charged into Ankh, screaming something in some incomprehensible Farhighter dialect. Ankh took his sword on his own: the blades sparked off each other, Ankh's polished sword biting a nick into the other man's rusty battered steel. They stood like that for a moment, mailed Lanciar against wicker-armoured fanatic, swords straining against each other, before Ankh bulled forward behind his shield and slammed into the man. He careened backwards, still shouting but this time with an overtone of terror. Ankh finished him almost without thinking about it and turned to find another enemy.
Suddenly, his vision went black, stars in front his eyes, a stunning pain in the back of his head. He reeled forward, the world having gone surreal and blue in front of his eyes as the blood rushed away from his brain. He staggered around, bending just enough to take another slash on the shoulder. This man's sword, less rusty than the others, chopped through the mail, grazing Ankh's shoulder. Ankh got his shield up, took another blow on it as he got his bearings. This man was a bad swordsman, just flurrying blows wildly and leaving himself undefended, not using his shield at all. Ankh took another blow on his shield, swung his sword towards the man's legs. A scream: he was legless. Ankh put him out of his misery.
He felt a whoosh, behind him, as of another sword coming – and whipped around, not being caught on the hop this time. But this man was strong, very strong indeed. Ankh was knocked backwards, thudding heavily into the ground. He banged his head – stars flew again – he looked up. A shadow. It must be his enemy. Quickly, he closed his eyes, focused in that indescribable way that magicians must to access their power. Ancient glyphs in the Spelltongue, the archaic language the long-dead Mistocren people invented a thousand years ago to control magic with, flickered in front of his closed vision, circular serrated shapes imbued with concentric layers of meaning. A sentence in the Spelltongue, written on the surface of Ankh's consciousness: into his mind. The shadow stumbled, Ankh saw inside his head, started rearranging stuff, fiddling around, removing the Blue Dragon-ness -
Something else.
A shining beacon, or rather, a shining beacon's reverse: an all-consuming darkness, but outside Ankh's victim's mind, rather in the centre of the village. Ankh crushed the Blue Dragon's mind absent-mindedly, letting the now-infantile creature go limp, and opened his eyes to the real world.
What he saw was not reassuring.
Vellarion the Demented, scab-red robes flapping around his bony frame, the glyphs inked on his head glowing with a chaotic pinkish radiance, was floating spreadeagled in the air, as if the atmosphere had curled a windy fist about him and picked him up. Around him whipped a soot-black tempest, tendrils of blackness curling out and whipping about like a set of dragon's wings, leaving floating black particles in his wake. Central to it was a tiny sun of darkness, swallowing and billowing around the sorcerer. Incongruously, the real sun shone, white and bright, right behind it.
It was the single most evil thing Ankh had ever seen.
“No, no, no,” he found himself shouting, struggling forward – damn armour! It was so heavy - “stop him, stop him, stop him, STOP THE DAMN RITUAL, YOU FOOLS! Come on, come on, COME ON - ”
“Feast your eyes on the Beholder!” Vellarion screeched, a thin reedy pathetic noise whipped away by the intensity of the storm he had conjured. In the heart of the vortex, the world twisted and ripped, the very fabric of the universe itself splitting open in a way that really shouldn't have been possible.
Something came through.
A tentacle, pink and worm-like, tipped with a prehensile pad, quested through. Ankh rushed towards it, tripping over his armour, still screaming to stop the ritual, sword out, cutting his way through screaming Blue Dragons who tried to block him. He had to stop it, otherwise -
Oh no.
An eye, big as a man's head, blue-irised and bloodshot, above a fang-filled mouth, gaping and cruel, roped with slaver. The thing's head, on which the lone, baleful eye and mouth were, looked for all the world like a living human brain, pink and laced with barely-visibly-pulsing capillaries, red and branching. From below its mouth, a spray of tentacles, long and pink and tipped with the same pads that had come through the portal, hung like some kind of amphibian beard. The whole contraption, stretching eight feet into the air, defying every single convention of logicality that ever there was, raked the battlefield with its gaze.
The Lanciars – trained from birth, battle-hardened, brave, brainwashed, Spartan, and legendary – turned and ran. Jurian Pasha's horses shied and bucked, throwing men who ran after the horses shouting. From the trees above the village there came a rustling as the hundreds of paighans hidden there fled, smashing into the trees and shaking their leaves in their haste to get away.
Only Ankh stood, broad dark face impassive, eyes narrowed, standing with his legs braced, shield with the symbol of Akar, the crossed scythe, crook, hammer and sword, in front of him, his hand wrapped tightly about his longsword's hilt. The corpses of the Blue Dragons stacked around his feet, staining his mail with their blood.
“And what do you think you're going to do?” Vellarion smiled, squatting down relaxedly in the shadow of the hideous creature he had summoned.
“We'll see.” Ankh answered.
“Oh, give it a rest, you idiot. Beholder! Kill!”
The eye turned, looked at Ankh. Its pupil narrowed.
Ankh shifted his grip on his sword, watching the creature. Curiously, it extended a tentacle towards him, the fleshy tentacle snaking wavily through the air.
Ankh's sword flashed. The creature yanked its tentacle back, hissing, the rubbery end half-severed.
The single baleful eye narrowed.
The tentacles, three of them at once now, darted towards Ankh from different directions. He lashed out with his sword at one, caught another on his shield, felt another snake around his legs, looking for a way to trip him up – but his mail gown prevented it. He stepped on the tentacle, blocked another tentacle, slashed at another -
And could only watch as what must by now be the seventh tentacle wrapped itself around his chest, coiling and coiling and coiling and dragging him right up to the foul creature. He lashed out with his sword, struggling futilely, but more tentacles wrapped around his arms and legs, and one wrapped itself around his head, a slimy pink worm circling his helmet and blocking his eye-holes with greasy ropes of flesh. Ankh noticed – bizarrely – that the tentacles were adorned with thousands and thousands of tiny bristles. What were they for?
The single eye jerked wide open, the single pupil fixated on Ankh.
Ankh thrashed, hundreds of volts of bioelectricity coursing through his body. As he slowly came back online, he noticed the thing's smell: coppery like burnt blood, but with a chemical overtone to it and more than a hint of dung. He slumped, a few last crackles of lightning lancing between the little bristles and his mail. So that's what the bristles are for, he thought inanely. He felt himself being shifted and he opened his eyes, saw through a gap in the tentacles the beholder -
No! He would not die like this!
But what could he do?
Stupid question with an obvious answer: magic.
Ankh closed his eyes. The circular symbols of the Spelltongue flickered across his mind again, tapping into the fifth force of the universe. He pushed, reaching across into the soggy mass of flesh that was the Beholder's head and initiating a mind war.
The eye closed.
It pushed back.
Ankh swore, in his own mind. The Beholder could use magic! He thought again, diverting a tiny portion of his concentration from the mind war – damn! It was gaining on him! - to initiate a distraction, something bright and annoying. Another sequence of glyphs, and a flare went off in front of the Beholder's eye.
Nothing. He put all his concentration into beating the Beholder, put it was too strong, it was pushing him back inside the confines of his own skull and he was going to die -
Suddenly, the Beholder's concentration vanished. Suspiciously, Ankh probed forward – no traps, no nothing. What was going on?
Equally suddenly, the tentacles holding Ankh up went slack and he thudded to the ground, breaking – no, attenuating; Ankh just managed to keep his concentration – the mind war. He pushed forward – the Beholder was diverting some of its concentration again! He had to work fast – and -
He reached into the utterly alienness of the Beholder's mind. Indescribable images of hellish places flickered in front of his eyes, smells and sounds and horrible things -
He imagined a mailed Lanciar's fist around the Beholder's mind, and snapped it shut. The creature's thoughts squelched into infantile, dysfunctional nothingness, its intelligence reduced to a vegetable state, its usefulness nil. He opened his eyes, saw the creature swaying in front of him, its tentacles drifting. He ran forward, took a running jump – as much as he could in his armour – and rammed his sword through the Beholder's eye.
From behind the thing's settling bulk, Jurian Pasha stepped, without his horse.
“I thought you could use the assistance,” he smiled, wiping blood off his blade, “but my horse disagreed.”
Vellarion the Demented cursed in a language older than life and turned. The rift through which he had summoned the beholder was still open. If he ran, which he did, bony legs flailing out desperately, he might reach it -
A hand grabbed his shoulder and a sword tucked itself under his chin.
“You aren't going anywhere.” Ankh whispered.

A Minor Clarification

For those who came here in search of communists, the Blue Dragons are communist. Just thought I'd clear that up. That's all. Yep.

The Shai Qadi Ninja I

Constantine fumed. And it wasn't the heat.
For when he had, at last, found Duke Scalax... ha. He remembered it well. He and that hideous would-be ally of his, Kantor, the Nimble Mind, had strode triumphantly into Scalax's command pavilion.
“I am,” Constantine had declared, grandiosely, “the man who brings you Tyrenea.”
“Out.” Scalax had said to Kantor. “I don't care what message of world-shatteringly revolutionary importance you bring, it can wait until I've dealt with this moron.”
“Moron, sir?!”
“How did you do it?” Scalax asked, curtly, and Constantine had explained – slightly nonplussed – how he'd gotten to Tyrene, been captured, and had been on his way to the headsman's block when the people of the city, already annoyed at their being neutral in the Dragon War, had rioted at the prospect of executing Lanciars.
"The Tyreneans are an Akaric people, like us - " he had explained.
"I know that." Scalax had interrupted, frigidly.
"Well, there was this ethnic solidarity movement going on – helped by the corruption in the Patriarchal government. They took over the city – well, the Patriarch gave it to them – and sent me, along with four thousand Tyrenean soldiers as a gesture of goodwill, to ask you to install a native Lanciarial government in the city."
"So you survived by luck."
"Well - "
"Lanciar Constantine, through your reckless foolishness, you could have lost your own life, the lives of ninety of your comrades, and you could have brought the wrath of Tyrenea down on us, leaving us fighting a two-front war!" Scalax slammed his fist into the table, jumping all the cups and inkpots on it. "I should have you farming some bog back home for the rest of your life!"
"Sir, with all - "
"SILENCE!!!" Scalax bellowed. "I don't care whether or not you succeeded. Luckily for you, the rest of the command does – I cannot even strip you of your rank. But I can do this."
And that was how Constantine had ended up in southern Lannding, while the main force moved towards Lanndar, searching for a phantom.
Oh, the Shai Qadi Ninja – as this phantom called himself – was fearsome enough, and the stories circulating about this creature would turn a grown man's stomach, but he was only one man. Why Constantine had been given ten Cataphracts and sent off into the wilderness for one man... He balled his fists unconsciously.
Further north, close to the Urglenn Mountains where the sly little Ersian folk made their homes, Lannding was reasonably fertile, but the landscape that Constantine and his ten Cataphracts pushed their horses through was a dry dustbowl of a place, the dirt beneath their feet too fine even to achieve the status of sand. Blasted, sun-cracked orange cliffs loomed on either side of the ravine through which they passed; the sun, red like a bloody mouth, dribbled its glare on the shattered landscape. To the left, the vast plateau and sun-scorched peak of Barrowmount, Grave of Cities, loomed: not even the Shai Qadi folk of the desert would go near the mountain. There was common sense in that, of course – the mountain was tall, treacherous, and uninhabitable except by rock wyrms and the like – but there was an element of superstition as well.
Constantine felt inclined to note an element of superstition in the existence of the Shai Qadi Ninja also.
"Where did the last villagers say they'd seen him?"
"They said he headed this way, sir."
"Well, I don't see him..."
"That's only because I don't want you to, Lanciar."
There he was. Right in front of them, standing on a rock, black-blue robes rippling in a sudden wind, hand on his scimitar, face wreathed in black.
I hate it when bad guys do that, Constantine thought.
"I imagine you are the Shai Qadi Ninja." Constantine remarked. "Are the stories about you true?" Behind him, he heard the soft whirr and woody wrenching of gastraphetes being prepared to fire.
"I call myself the Shai Qadi Ninja, true. You are called Constantine. You are a Decanus among the Lanciars and you recently captured Tyrenea."
I hate it when bad guys do that too.
"Mr... aah, Ninja, I am placing you under arrest by the authority of the Archduchy of Akar and Tyrenea on charges of membership of the illegal Blue Dragon organisation, assault, rape - "
"Spare me." The man jumped down from the rock and strode towards Constantine. "You are a man of great potential, Constantine of Akar, and my goddess Benet would ardently desire your service."
"What are you talking about? Benet is my goddess."
"The other Benet, Constantine, the other Benet. The one whose servitors are the Amen Ur, whose home is the hellish city of Delirium, and whose worship the Blue Dragons have taken up, Constantine. Membership of the Amenurites is very exclusive, Constantine. Had I the choice, you would be dead right now. But I was, aah, obliged to offer you ingress."
"Rubbish!" Constantine snorted. "I don't want to get into your damn cult. Lanciars, kill him."
That was when everything went wrong.
The rocks came alive. Blue-robed men with composite bows, like the Shai Qadi Ninja save that their faces, lined and brown, were visible, popped up from the canyon all around. And I hate when bad guys do that too, Constantine thought irately. But these were Shai Qadis, longtime allies of Akar.
"Shai Qadi people!" he shouted, holding his hands up and ignoring the Ninja.
"Kill them." the Ninja ordered dismissively in Salkiri. "But leave the leader for me."
A few gastraphetes bolts spat out wildly, someone cursed in Salkiri. There was a whirring sound and a chorus of grunts.
When Constantine turned around, all his Lanciars were dead.
"You should have accepted my offer!" the Shai Qadi Ninja bellowed -
- and stepped back as Constantine's sword snicked through the air where his head had been moments before.
"Come here, you coward!" Constantine roared in turn, his sword held out in front of him, shield forgotten by his side. The black-robed bandit considered for a moment.
"Feather him." he ordered.
One arrow took Constantine in the shoulder, another in the leg, and a third in the small of his back. He jerked forward, his helmet concealing the widening of his eyes as the pain kicked in.
The bandit sauntered forward and kicked the Lanciar off his feet. Constantine hit the ground, rolled over, snapping the arrow in his back. The sun burned down on him until the Shai Qadi Ninja's shadow shaded him.
"You've wasted your first chance." he whispered. "Live and reconsider." Then he was gone.
Constantine gritted his teeth, moaning in the dry dust of Lannding. There would be hell to pay for this, he vowed.
Or rather, hell would pay for this.

The End of the Beginning

Zorlac stumbled blindly through the carnage, eyes wild, fingertips sizzling. He had lost Zanticus somewhere – well, he had lost most of him. There was an arm somewhere back that had looked a lot like Zanticus' -
No! Oh Bopol, he shouldn't think of that! That arm had probably washed Zorlac's smallclothes or something! Oh Bopol! Who was going to wash Zorlac's smallclothes now? He couldn't do it himself! Oh gods...
Maybe he should have taken the arm along. No, it wouldn't be any use to Zanticus now. Oh gods...
"Zorlac!" Could it be... It was!
"Zanticus! Yes!" They ran towards each other, splashing through the reddened muck, as friends reuniting on a battlefield tend to do.
"Zorlac, it's good to see you – ow! Why are your fingers so hot?" Zorlac peeled himself off of his minion.
"Oh, it's magic, Zanticus. Flinging fireballs and all." he answered airily.
"Really?"
"That and that near-miss with the laser."
"Listen, Zorlac, there's someone who wants to talk to you..."
"Mage!" a dry voice roared. "Mage!" Zorlac turned around.
"Duke Scalax. My old enemy." The bony, ancient monarch picked his way through the carrion to rivet his cold gaze on Zorlac.
"I know you don't like me, son, but I trust you have a reasonable head on you. You saw what we just fought – those lightning guns - "
"Lasers. Lasers, we call them."
"Lasers. We need means to combat these lasers and whatever other tricks the Blue Dragons may have up their sleeves, and you know – probably better than I do – how unexplored, how mysterious, Elleria is. I am leaving it up to you to go out and find some way to fight the Blue Dragons. That is a request, not an order."
"Why me?"
"You are the most able." Zorlac puffed up like a preening peacock.
"Well, then, I'll most certainly do it."

* * *

That wasn't all that happened. Days passed.
Ankh closed his eyes, raised his hands towards the statue in the proper position of adulation, and tried to sink into the cool reflectiveness of prayer. But every time he closed his eyes, the visions would come again.
Flashing. Screams. A field of corpses, dotted by bonfires and watered with blood. Men with the swarthy, long-limbed look of the Eastern Duchy about them, chasing down pale Kamareans. Flashing, horizontal lightnings – like the sort thrown by wizards out of tales – striking down Lanciars, and these coming out of strange, pipe-festooned tubes gunned by dark-skinned Lanndings. A thousand ends leaped into his head, grinning Eastern bandits driving axe blades into thrashing Lanciars, Lanndings coolly gunning down dozens of red-coated Kamareans, and every so often, an Easterner or Lannding falling to a Lanciar or Kamarean. Kamareans – and a few Lanciars – turning on their erstwhile allies, shouting the supremacy of the Blue Dragon. Lanndings and Easterners outnumbered ten to one, driving forward into the red ranks and silver-armoured phalanxes of their foes with the savage certainty of victory, the balance tipped by the strange lightning-guns.
Ankh tried to banish the images, but nothing worked. He tried to imagine himself back in the chapel at Magia, the closest thing he had to a home. That almost worked; it wasn't the soft red stone of the walls that gave his pretense the lie, or the ever-present din of Salkir filtering through the walls, in the end, but the heat. The Badlands, where Magia was situated, were hotter than this, but whatever way the Lanciars built their buildings, they were always cold on the inside – like the Lanciars themselves. Ankh was, technically, a Lanciar, but – for having been born outside the caste, for having been inducted in on the basis of his intelligence and magical ability - he would always remain something of an outsider.
And therein, he suspected, lay his problem. He was a magician; not the most gifted, but more able than most to affect that universal force which itself affected all sentient beings. But even though most people couldn't use magic, they were still detectable with it. What Ankh was detecting through his visions was a catastrophe of Biblical proportions.
As if the visions themselves hadn't told him that.
Footsteps sounded behind him, and Ankh turned around to see the Osting ambassador from the north. The corpulent man – or not-quite-man; the Ostings, apparently, belonged to a different subspecies of human – looked at all the statues adorning the walls of the chapel.
"I can't understand you dwarfs at all." he began, but quietly – though Ankh was the only worshipper in the chapel. "What is the point of addressing your prayers to the Dead God of the Desert, like the Farhighters do, if he's dead? What is the point of having a god and not building temples or sacrificing to him, like the Kamareans? And what is the point of this zoo you call a pantheon?" The Osting ran his eyes around the statues.
"Hadr is represented as a human." Ankh answered coldly.
"Every zoo needs a keeper. The gods of the north, though... the world is a conflict between nature and artifice. We understand this in Ostmargue. Animals and the unenlightened thrash around amidst the chaos of nature, drowning themselves in the relentless green tide that can be evidenced in the thousand lost cities of Elleria – consider the ancient, fallen civilisation of Mistocre. Are not her cities swallowed by the greenery?"
"So it would seem."
"The enlightened strive to leave the chaos of nature behind and become artificial. The gods of Ostmargue are beings who have achieved this feat."
"Machine-gods." Ankh extrapolated, flatly.
"Yes."
"At least a zoo doesn't need batteries." The Osting laughed: under normal circumstances, he probably would have had a deep, jolly laugh, but there was a brittle, forced edge to it. Ankh thanked the gods that he had remembered that machines need batteries; there were few enough machines in Akar.
"Tell me about your gods, dwarf."
"Tell me what you came here to say, giant."
"Tell me about your gods, Lanciar, and steel yourself while you do it. You will want to be prepared to take this news." Ankh took a deep breath; he was rarely discomforted, but what with the visions...
"The rabbit? She is Benet, queen of the gods."
"How did a rabbit become queen of the gods?? Surely you'd have issues dividing up your inheritance..." The Osting chuckled again. Ankh didn't laugh.
"Oh, was that a joke? I'm sorry, I have no sense of humour. To answer your question, it was bequeathed to her by Bil, the Soulforger. The Soulforger made the earth and all its plants and animals, and all the peoples that lived on it. Lastly, he created the other gods, each with a specific purpose. Benet's purpose was to rule, even over him."
"That was altruistic of him." the Osting remarked.
"He's a god, he's not like other people." Ankh answered, keeping a completely straight face while saying so. "In any case, he created Muir – the fish – to rule the seas; he created Cera, Bera, and Trichos to answer for the beasts of the wild, he made the Leafscale for the plants and the farmers, he made Gibann – the grinning man – to teach humanity the basics of civilisation and to take care of thieves and rogues; and he made Greenskin Blackeye – it's obvious who he is – to teach humanity magic and mathematics. He made White Pyk and Bathyrax, the Sheltering Shadow, to ward humanity – though against what is never specified. Second-last he made Hadr, the Herald of the Gods, to summon the gods and the faithful should they ever be needed; and last of all, he made Benet, the youngest of the Gods, to act as queen."
"And have you a hell?"
"When the world was newly-created, so the myth goes, it attracted the attention of a horde of demonic creatures, only a few of whom are named – Miclose the Starwyrm; Black Pyk – we don't know of any connection between it and White Pyk; Nightpinion, the Shadow in the Sky; all sorts. Interestingly, a supreme demon is alluded to but not named."
"Fascinating."
"Surely. In any case, Bil made the... aah... place, I suppose... and called it Delirium, locking all the demons away into it. But some lesser demons escaped – the myth goes, they prowl the oceans to this day, sailing on the Scabbard's Whisper, a demon-ship. In response, Bil took the city – Delirium manifests itself as a city, so it would seem – and cast it outside the boundaries of our universe, however you choose to interpret that. Interestingly," Ankh continued in a dry, flat voice, his mind elsewhere, "there was a cult in Mistocre, in an Akarean colony, about a century ago whose stated aim was to free these demons from Delirium. It even corrupted a few Lanciars in the end. When the Lanciars stormed the stronghold, half of them came out raving mad about the 'shoggoth-masters', the 'dark ones from beyond the stars', 'the power of the stone', and all sorts of similar rubbish. There was a gelatinous, acidic mass – apparently dead, if it was ever alive – which the Lanciars identified as a 'shoggoth', and there was a stone artefact as well. I believe the artefact is now in the vaults of Magia." Ankh took a deep breath. "I can't talk any longer. Tell me what you have to say."
"Ah... there was a battle. Twenty-seven thousand Green Dragons clashed with eight thousand Lanndings and Easterners."
"The Green Dragons were slaughtered." Ankh answered flatly.
"It was a Pyrrhic victory." Ankh closed his eyes and thanked the gods whose chapel he was in. A victory! "The Lanndings brought large numbers of... aah... lightning guns, for lack of a better term, with them. No-one can count the dead, but it looks like thirteen or fourteen thousand Kamareans and five thousand Lanciars died. Duke Scalax led the countercharge himself, when the Green Dragons were on the point of breaking; the Easterners fought well, so it would seem, but the Lanndings broke and fled. The entire opposing army was slaughtered, at huge cost in life, and twenty of these lightning-guns were captured. The Kamareans are in a huge fuss over it; apparently they had prophesied the technology but had not developed it. No-one knows how the Lanndings developed it, or if they didn't, who they got it from."
"Another mystery. But Elleria has plenty of mysteries. Where is Scalax now?"
"He was planning to invade Lannding when the message left, so I imagine he must be almost at Lanndar by now." Ankh closed his eyes. They'd won. Gods, it had been a close victory, but they'd won.
"Is that all."
"That is all."
"Do you know if the Shahanshah has given me leave to depart?" His pulse quickened – once they were done conquering Lannding, he might return to Magia and -
"He has not."
"What?"
"In celebration of the news, he has ordered an expedition to Aspherna, to the east. And he wants you to come."

* * *

Nor was that the extent of it either.
"Where are we now?" Constantine asked the commander of the Tyreneans, trying to keep the worry out of his voice. Guilder turned the map upside down, shook it a bit – for some reason – scanned the surrounding landscape – miles and miles of stony, sandy half-desert that could have been in any one of a thousand places in Lannding or the Eastern Duchy – then looked at Constantine, and shrugged.
"Lannding, sir? Possibly?"
"Oh Benet's bones. I've got ninety Lanciars and four thousand Tyreneans the former Patriarch has given and I can't even find Lanndar. Can we find anything??!"
"Ahh, sir..."
"I mean, Benet's bones, it's not a big country, Lannding! In fact, it's actually quite a small country! More of a city-state, really!"
"Sir?"
"It could even be classed as a province if you dispute the legality of Lannding's - "
"Sir?"
"What?"
"I think something may have found us."
Constantine looked at the... the... the thing settling itself comfortably onto the soil and disgorging more things onto the soil as if this were the most natural thing in the world. He rubbed his eyes. He pinched his cheek. He rubbed his eyes again.
"Is this how you humans greet each other?" the towering, slimy-skinned creature asked, in gravelly and heavily accented but grammatically perfect Akarean Mistocren.
"Umm... not traditionally, no."
"Well, I bid you greetings in the name of Kahruisge, the city beneath the waves." the creature said, in what it probably thought was a pleasant voice. Constantine couldn't take his eyes off of it. It was nine foot tall and had slimy skin and a big wedge-shaped head with a little tentacley tuft on its chin and it had black robes like they showed Megas with in the statues. It was alien. "I am Kantor, the Nimble Mind, and this is my nephew, Altyr the Curious. I have studied your endearingly primitive race for many years, and I would like to propose an alliance with the great human kingdom of Akar."
"Aaah..."
"No pressure. Mull over it. I'm sure we have much we could offer each other."
"Aaah..."
"Take your time."

'Pwned' - A Lesson in Literary Pwnage

Today I read the first two chapters of 'Pwned' by Erika Mitchell.
It was good. In fact, it was very, very good.
The title is a dead giveaway, as anyone with a background in computer gaming would know: 'pwned', for all the luddites, is the computer gamer's favourite synonym for 'walloped', 'smashed', 'steamrollered', 'gazeboed', or any other one of those wonderful, weird and wacky words which all mean intense and unrelenting pain for the subject. According to the trailer, the 'pwnage' inherent in the title applies to the protagonist, Sean Boxer – a gamer, of course, and a writer, who spends his life playing Starcraft II and writing mystery books about faraway places. And the 'pwnage' being applied to Mr. Boxer is when he shows up in Korea for a Starcraft tournament – and gets nailed by the FBI. Yikes.
All this I found out from the video trailer, a fascinating link at the top of this page ( http://www.erika-mitchell.com/books/pwned/pwned-chapters-1-2/ ) which features a hilariously appropriate speech-bubble dialogue alongside the voiceover (in my opinion, the trailer's weakest point – the man's voice makes you want to go to sleep), and also a bevy of amusing comments from Ms. Mitchell's assorted friends, acquaintances and minions. The other weak point regarding the trailer would be that it reveals quite a lot of the story – for example, it gives away not only that Sean gets arrested by the FBI, but that his arch-enemy, fellow Starcraft nerd and (in the trailer's wonderfully apt words) 'douche' Norman, has somehow orchestrated this.
And now for the chapters.
There is nothing like being dropped right into the middle of the action, and we surely are here, for no sooner than we open the theoretical pages of 'Pwned' than Sean from the trailer is leading hordes of imaginary computer-screen people against other hordes of imaginary computer-screen people led by a real person somewhere on the other side of the world. The prose is elegant and pleasant to read, yet not opaque or literary (consider: 'Light caught motes of dust drifting through the air, further illuminating the mess that had snuck up on his living room.', or 'People emerged from the void that existed behind his closed eyelids, their conflicts and characteristics wrapped around each of them like cauls.', describing his writing. I don't even know what a caul is!!!) A lot of Sean's character is shown to us, describing a moderately successful geek, slightly bitter at the world, who hides from the real world in his computer games and his writing (and who also insists on spelling perfectly – just like me. I thought I was the only one who did that). We are also introduced to Tabby, awkward yet pretty, and in whom Sean professes no interest whatsoever (I don't believe it for a minute). Therefore, before the first two (very short) chapters have ended, we know two of the main characters and are impressed by the author's use of language. On the negative side, while Tabby gets plenty of description time, it's not obvious what Sean looks like – aside from assurances that he's blond and bespectacled, a category of people including millions.
Personally, I think this book is excellent; in fact, if I wasn't penniless, I'd have bought it myself already. I would certainly recommend it if you are one of Ms. Mitchell's friends, acquaintances and/or minions, although a further general recommendation would be impossible without the rest of the book.
That's it. Can't think of anything else to say.

The First Move, part I

Alaman Shaundaar was not a man who took much interest in politics.
Nor was he a man to match his delicate-sounding, obscure name. A hulking, cruel brute with a surprising intelligent – or at least cunning – streak, he had grown up on an uncivilised planet called Elleria, in a nation called Kamar, though of foreign stock. Through a really quite unbelieveable series of events, he had ended up not only in space, but in charge of his own stolen Deydaan gunship, with a crew of fellow humans, most of them from the human homeworld of Elleria.
So it was he had turned to space piracy. And in the world of space piracy, politics matters not very much – whether the trade lanes are policed by the Deydaans, or the Khanati Commune, or the Arbugadines, piracy occurs nonetheless. His operation was large enough to be lucrative, yet small enough to be ignored by the vast run of the Khanati cruisers whose elegant lines traditionally dominated this area of space.
So he was very surprised when he saw the ship – for that was all the mysterious, star-swallowing black shadow heading his way could be.
He was even more surprised when the sensors didn't see it.
He was even more surprised, when he opened up with the Deydaan plasma cannon, that the ship not only didn't fire back but barely seemed to notice.
The only word to describe his reaction when the black shadow pulled up alongside his ship was 'gobsmacked'.
And when he met the creatures from the shadow ship, surprise gave way to terror.
This made him rather amenable to their demands, despite the fact that they were quite political in nature.

* * *

The canvas marquee's walls shook to the tramping of Lanciars and Kamareans on the soil of East Lain, the two nations' combined hosts assembling to bring wrath to the aides of the Blue Dragons.
"A word is now requisite on the nations of Lannding and the Eastern Duchy," Duke Scalax of Akar croaked, "for the benefit of our foreign allies." A bevy of emissaries – a brass-embellished Thurse soldier from Ostmargue, a bony Markanian Thurse, a little, green-cloaked Erse and a Farhighter – all nodded gratefully. Zorlac debated whether or not he should go to sleep, then decided that Scalax would probably take it amiss – even though he was one of almost fifty people crammed into the marquee. Zorlac was, of course, the greatest wizard known to mankind and all that, but even so he wouldn't like to tangle with Scalax of Akar. The ancient, emaciated – in fact positively skeletal – Duke, bent under the weight of the Lanciarial armour he was never seen without, was far stronger than he looked, and the fevered eyes that glistened in the wrinkled folds of his face were as sharp as they had ever been. Aside from the fact that he was old and sharp, there was something... off about Scalax, something Zorlac didn't think a non-magic user would detect, something dark and potent and mysterious.
In short, Duke Scalax was a funny kettle of fish.
"The people of Lannding and the Eastern Duchy," Scalax began, his reedy voice echoing within the confines of his ribcage, "are a sullen, mongrel lot, jealous of the power and prestige of Akar and Kamar." Well, of our power and prestige anyway, Zorlac thought wryly. "Ethnically, the people of the Eastern Duchy are mostly Akaric, like the people of Akar, Tyrenea, and Old Lain, before the Kamarean... aah... colonisation, with some Farhighter and Shai Qadi elements; Lannding's folk are mongrels, composed of Farhighter, Akarean, Kamarean and Shaiqadian bloodlines. Their right to independence is disputable." Independence from you, you mean. "Lannding is, in fact, the last remnant of the Farhighter empire in the west, declared independent in a moment of weakness for the Farhighter monarchy; the Eastern Duchy, a nation so bereft of identity it remains nameless. Their land is half-desertified and arid, supporting only two hundred thousand souls in the Eastern Duchy and a hundred fifty thousand in Lannding, of which twenty thousand live in Ostia, capital in the East, and thirty thousand in Lanndar. Economically, Lannding is richer than the Eastern Duchy, though neither are wealthy, and, especially in Lannding, the balance of wealth is very inequitable. It should not be diffucult to pressure the peoples of both nations to rise up against their corrupt monarchies. Technologically, both Lannding and the Eastern Duchy are behind Akarean standards by up to thirty years." And behind Kamarean ones by up to two hundred and thirty years. Akarean barbarians.
"Militarily, neither Lannding nor the Eastern Duchy are formidable. During the Lannding War of Independence, a century ago now, Lannding fielded ten thousand soldiers; factoring in her population increase, I surmise Lannding should be able to field around sixteen thousand soldiers. In the Eastern Duchy, there is a long and ignominious history of banditry; mobilising these gave the Eastern Duchy thirty thousand men and women, when she fought against Kamar a generation ago." When you Akareans manipulated the Eastern Duchy against Kamar, you mean. Bloody Lanciar crooks, Zorlac thought angrily. "Factoring in the ravages from that war, I estimate the Eastern Duchy will bring between eighteen and twenty-five thousand to the field. At worst, that gives us a total of forty-one thousand enemies, probably ill-equipped and poorly trained. I imagine that, across the border from us are assembled the standing armies: ten thousand, maximum.
"In contrast, Kallipolis holds almost forty thousand Lanciars, of which I have seven thousand. If my Kamarean, ah, comrades have a hundred thousand as they claim, and twenty thousand of those are here, then we outnumber the enemy well over two to one, and outgun them too.
"With this in mind, my friends, I predict that, on the morrow, when we invade the Eastern Duchy and find the enemy, our biggest problem will be cleaning up afterwards." Scalax nodded, and cracked what might have been a grin. "Thank you for your attention."

* * *

"Your biggest problem will be cleaning up afterwards." Janin of the Sand's End Shai Qadi assured the King of Lannding. "Isn't that right, Mr. Shaundaar?"
And the space pirate nodded and smiled grimly, as he handed over the blueprints for all the weapons on his ship, like he had been told, for the Lanndings and Easterners to arm their armies with.
Because the people from the black shadow-ship wanted Elleria very much, and this was how they were going to get it.

Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time

Before we begin... I know. It's crappy. This one just wouldn't come. Such are the vagaries of being a writer and all that.

Constantine watched the Tyrenean Wall, its white shining limestone expanses stretching away to either side, and beneath it the tiled, Kamarean roofs of the crossing-village of Lestraun. Its houses huddled around the only ingress to Tyrenea in the entire wall.
“I don't think the stealth plan is going to work.” one of his Lanciars said, watching the collection of houses that comprised their objective. Constantine looked around. "You're probably right."
Ninety-odd shimmering Lanciars on twenty-hand Kallipolitan horses can be somewhat tricky to hide, especially on the plains of western Lain. All the forests were in the north.
"Yes, sir."
"Well then – Plan B, ladies and gentlemen. If it's any comfort to you," Constantine barked, "it's only marginally more crazy than our previous one."
"Your previous one, sir." one of his Lanciars told him. "I have the benefit of free speech, and I am using it to tell you that I am not taking the blame for this." Constantine pinched the bridge of his nose and wished fervently for an authoritarian, totalitarian dictatorship. One in which he was in charge.
"Fine. Just do it." The Lanciars slipped – well, fell elegantly; it's somewhat hard to slip in full chainmail – off their horses and unlimbered their gastraphetes – huge, powerful Lanciarial crossbows, capable of propelling bolts through walls. They settled the bows against their midriffs, wrapped the ends of the bolts in oily rags, lit the rags, slid back the sliders -
Whump.
"Onto horses! Onto your horses!" Constantine made as good as his word and vaulted – scrambled – onto the back of his huge animal. Ponderously, the Cataphracts began to trundle towards the chaos-stricken town of Lestraun, where villagers and Lain militias were running around like headless chickens, as one does when one's town has just been bombarded with burning crossbow bolts. As the Lanciars drew closer, their hooves churning up the fertile muck of western Lain, some of the villagers screamed, waved their arms, grabbed the militiamen by the arms, and pointed at the Lanciars.
Like any realistic unpaid soldier, the militiamen ran for their mammies.
Constantine could probably have captured Lestraun in that instant. He had a better idea though.
Well, he thought it was a better idea.
Scabbards rattled. Chain clanked. The grunts of men and horses intermixed. Hooves struck sparks off the cobbles of Lestraun's main street – as in actually struck sparks. Constantine tried to balance his gastraphetes against his stomach, shout – "Aim for the gate!" - and aim for the gate himself. The silvery, fish-like flow of the Cataphracts, belied by their awful thundering, cleared the streets ahead of them like boiling water through ice, as militiamen and villagers conceived of better places to be very fast. Finally, his bow was balanced – against his chest, he didn't want to kill his horse – and he ground the slider back -
The bolt flew out and Constantine flew back. The Lanciar behind him was treated to a surprising view of his commanding officer's mailed backside accelerating towards his face. The first rank of Lanciars craned their heads back in time to see Constantine knock his subordinate off his horse in a spray of splintered gastraphetes.
"A hint, men." Constantine croaked from the ground. "Get off your horse before shooting a gastraphetes."
They did so. As the injured parties helped each other up, the rest of the Lanciars trained their bows on the gate.
Eighty-nine forceful bolts simply caved the gates in. Tyrenea yawned before them.
Constantine clambered onto his horse – there was no grace at all in his movements there – uncrossed his eyes, worked who and where he was, and only then unsheathed his sword and waved it forward.
In the Tyrenean half of Lestraun, two militiamen in conical Tyrenean helmets with spears ran out from the gatehouse. They took one look at the Lanciars.
"Nope." one said.
"Not happening." said the other. They ran.
And that was how the Tyrenean Wall completely failed to keep out ninety men and women on a mission. Such is life.

* * *

Constantine reined his horse to a halt. The rising sun highlighted its sweaty flanks; they had abandoned the horses' heavy armour in an abandoned farmhouse not long after Lestraun. They had ridden all night – not hard, just enough to get them to where they wanted to be with the dawn. Everyone was tired, but Constantine was sure his plan would work.
How could he fail to capture the metropolis of Tyrene after all his hard work?
For that was where he was. In front of him, the temple-studded, upmarket, white-alabaster-stereotype Hieropolis district was dropped into the industrial muck and dirt of Low Tyrene like a diamond into a pig trough. The temple domes and spires jutted whitely above the paleness of Hieropolis' walls, looming brightly over the low-slung squalidity of the Low City. A city of great inequality, Constantine knew, of decadence and privilege paid for by the blood and sweat of the lower castes.
Still, it was a fair prize, and Constantine had the advantage of surprise.

* * *

"The Lanciars are attacking!" the woman shrieked, shaking the fruit-seller by the shoulders. He shook his head, his innumerable chins jiggling terrifiedly, but sure enough, the soot-stained people of Low Tyrene were all scrambling through the dirt-paved streets and between the mock-classical hovels to get out of the path of -
The salesman gasped. The woman legged it.
Cataphract.
The faceless mailed warrior on his enormous horse, cloaked in the trademark Lanciarial silence, dashed down the street, waving his sword in the air. He was followed, shortly after, by no less than twenty screeching Tyrenean soldiers in bleached-white lorica segmentata (Google it), in bronze conical helmets, all waving spears.
In fact, similar detachments of men were chasing nineteen other Cataphracts around Low Tyrene, and the rest of the garrison had been mobilised to combat this sudden and unexpected threat.
Which left Constantine able to waltz relatively unscathed right down Low Tyrene's main street and smash in the main gate with the remaining seventy Lanciars' gastraphetes.
"To the Patriarchal Palace!" Constantine shouted, riding dramatically through the splintered gate, his seventy cataphracts behind him, like some avatar of literary improbability. Domed temples and grey-paved streets opened before him, focusing on the great central plaza and – as it happened – the Patriarchal Palace, right opposite him.
Constantine couldn't believe it. The Patriarchal Palace – the center of Tyrene and Tyrenea. The dawn sun's rays caught the glittering white marble, highlighting the exquisite statuary and architecture.
It also highlighted the hundreds of Tyrenean soldiers pouring into the plaza from all sides.
"I told you this was a bad idea, sir - "
"Shut up, please, and start working out how we're going to explain this to Duke Scalax."
A particularly well-dressed Tyrenean pushed out from the front, strutting peacockishly up to the now obviously defeated Lanciars.
"Well well well. Lanciars!"
"Well spotted."
"I am Patriarch Actuari of Tyrene." the man announced smugly. "And we have much to talk about, you and I."

Politics

Compared to the heat of the Badlands, it was relatively cool, but it was the all-powerful, vile humidity that made Salkir so unbearable. Even here, high up on the Ziggurat, there was barely any escape from the cloying heat.
She was beautiful, though, was Salkir. Ankh was not one given to sentimentality, and his sense of humour only appeared when he was being confronted by vicious, ravening ghouls; but even he could appreciate Salkir. The sun boiled down on a riotous profusion of mud-brick homes, all jammed together so as there were no streets whatsoever in the entire city, poked up from the homogeneous mass, sometimes by almost as much as a story. Greens and whites, blues and yellows and reds livened up the muddy terracotta of the bricks, as did a veritable sea of canopies, awnings, and stalls. Bright fruits were hawked by bright people to rivers of passersby; a thousand pickpockets gleaned Farhight's cheap money from careless pockets. The entire city positively teemed with life, thousands upon thousands of people from all nations. Beyond it, the river – the Sphinxwater - lay like a carelessly dropped thread, shining rich and green in its myriad twists, here in the late stage of its development. Beyond the river of the Sphinx's Gift, its fertile floodplains abounding with life all its own: fields upon fields of figs, chickpeas, and grain, all meant for Salkir. To the west, the Dragon's Teeth, the towering mountains that walled the Occidental Basin off from Farhight, stood snow-capped; to the east, the fertile fields petered out into the glimmering yellow wilderness of the south Farhighter desert, haunted by nomads and Blue Dragon rebels.
“Appreciating the view?” a deep rumble of a voice asked. Ankh steeled himself before looking around: Maathotep, the Farhighter monarch's advisor from the Sphinxes, was always unsettling. The stone sphinxes they sometimes found in the Badlands or in the desert always had a comforting, impossible artificiality about them: the human neck always fused onto the spine too cleanly, the wings never looked quite right. It managed to convince you that they weren't real. Maathotep was completely different: whenever his braided, perfumed beard shifted, one could see the fur running and thinning up his neck; his features had a faintly leonine cast to them, and the huge, broad white wings that he usually carried folded up had fur running up their spines, growing into feathers. How such an improbable creature had come about, Ankh didn't know and didn't care to speculate; they were almost certainly magical in origin. There was certainly no evolutionary advantage inherent in being a winged lion with an ape's head.
“The... er... the view is truly excellent from this height.” Ankh remarked. It wasn't a lie: the Ziggurat, whose myriad corridors served as accommodation for the Shahanshah's court. The sphinx nodded sedately; his long, perfumed Babylonian beard dipped with him.
“Nothing can compare with the view when one soars, I think. But I digress!” the sphinx rumbled, turning his sapphire gaze on Ankh again. “The Shahanshah is holding court. I believe a decision is to be made regarding the Blue Dragons. As official representative of the Duchy of Akar, you are expected to be present.”
“Ah... thank you. I will be there presently.”

* * *

“The monarchy,” the fat northerner roared, red-faced, spraying saliva over his audience, “must be preserved at all costs! We in the ancient nation of Ostmargue understand this above all else, as our enduring monarchy demonstrates! These communists must be repressed at all costs!”
Ankh sighed and propped his head against his hand. He had never heard of Ostmargue, nor had he any desire to; all he knew that it was somewhere to the north, that it was populated by creatures called Thurse – apparently, just bigger versions of normal people – and that they had sent this fat, pontificating ambassador to Farhight – with which, apparently, the Ostmargue people had a long and enduring relationship – to shout at everyone for the past half-hour about how monarchies were wonderful. As a Lanciar, Ankh had his own opinions on that, but if this man continued on much longer, he would never have a chance to air his opinions.
The court was taking place in a large, well-lit red-brick chamber, near the top of the Ziggurat, with a balcony running around it from about halfway up. All nearby nations – 'nearby'; Ankh hadn't heard of most of them – were represented on the balcony, including this Ostmargue, from whose section the fat man was shouting. Below, a host of courtiers and blow-ins clustered around the sphinx, Maathotep, and the palace guards, surrounding the Shahanshah himself.
The Shahanshah, a hugely-muscular, intelligent-looking man, seemed just as bored as everyone else was by the Ostmargue person's hyperbole. In fact, from the half-lidded eyes and propped-up head, Ankh strongly suspected he was dozing.
“...and with the recent death of the good Shahanshah's father,” the Ostmargue person continued, growing even redder and more salivary, “it is important that our friend the Shahanshah, Nes-Shapur III, realise some powerful and potent allies to help secure his throne from this dreaded scourge. We in Ostmargue believe we can supply such an ally, and as such, Ostmargue declares in favour of the Green Dragon faction!” The fat Thurse bowled backwards into his seat, mopping his forehead and looking pleased with himself. Finally, Ankh thought.
Maathotep trotted up from beside the Shahanshah's throne. “We thank the Osting - ” Ah, Ankh thought, that's what you call an Ostmargue person... “ - delegation for sharing their wisdom with us.” He reared up, regally. “The Shahanshah will hear the delegation from Markan!"
Another Thurse, this one a small, ratty creature almost as tiny as a normal human, stepped up. His delegation was small, from all the court gossip just like his nation.
“The people of Farhight have always been kind to the traders and merchants of Markan. We wish to preserve this fruitful relationship - Markan declares in favour of the Shahanshah!”
A courtier – Stafu, Ankh thought his name was - next to Ankh leaned over. “Markan used to be a Kamarean colony.” he whispered conspiratorially. “They still maintain strong ties. The Kamareans often fly a kite by getting the Markanians to announce something.”
“Thanks.” Ankh murmured, and returned to his perusal of the assorted nations. Ostmargue had been the first; the nations of Grailin, Kamar, the Eastern Duchy, Tyrenea, Akar, Lannding, and Camranova had yet to be heard, in addition to two conglomerates from the Urglenn Mountains – wherever they were – that nobody really seemed to know what to make of.
“The Shahanshah thanks the Markanian delegate, and will now hear the Camranovaean ambassador.” A tall man – a human, not a Thurse – stood up. Metal plate armour – the lorica segmentata, the Camranovaeans called their armour – shielded his body, but his greying head was uncovered.
“As all here know,” he began, “ever since Jinn II of Kamar led his armies east and founded New Kamar – Camranova – in what had been the untamed steppes of north-eastern Farhight, the Camranovaeans and the Empire of Salkir have been struggling for domination of Farhight. All know us to be bitter enemies. Yet we are honourable ones. While we will not attack Salkir in her time of weakness, neither will we lend her the strength of our sword-arms. Camranova abstains.”
Stafu whispered again. “That's unexpected. Camranova is very powerful – they could have dealt Salkir a killing blow with this rebellion. The Dead God now only knows how things will go.”
“The Shahanshah thanks the Camranovaean ambassador. We will now hear the emissary of Grailin.”
A hush settled over the hall, and every eye turned towards a small section of the balcony, where a few Thurse in grey uniforms and armour were surrounding a tall Thurse, wrapped in furs despite the heat. Slowly, the tall Thurse looked up, revealing a face of hard planes and icy eyes, old before its years, and stood.
“I am Sanric te Eleazar te Baldwin, Grand Marshal of the Grailinese Army, foremost military power... in the world, if I may be so modest.” He smiled condescendingly. No-one took offense – no-one dared to. “I am sure you have all heard of Grailin.” No, Ankh thought, feeling more ignorant by the minute.
“For those of you that haven't,” Sanric continued, “allow me to explain. Grailin is the future.” He paused to let that sink in. No-one stirred.
“We, in Grailin, have observed the state of this world. The once-mighty Kamarean Empire wastes its resources fighting southern barbarians - ” Ankh bristled “ - the equally fallen Farhight is torn by a pathetic rabble of rebels, and the lands of the Thurse are occupied by decrepit scholars, greedy merchants... and us.” Sanric smiled, predatorily. “We believe that the only way to keep this pathetic world from disintegrating into total war is to induce just such a war... one in which Grailin will be the victor. One in which the great cities – Orlan, Salkir, Orlanova, Caragean, all of them – will fly the wolf of Grailin. One in which unity, under the name of Grailin, prevails. It makes our Emperor's heart bleed to see nations still pretending to glory without Grailin. Grailin is, of course, ready to accept all submissions to our unstoppable power... but until that time, it is in our best interest to destabilise all established regimes. As such, Grailin declares in support of the Blue Dragon rebels!” he shouted.
The hall sat in stunned silence. The Grailinese orator sat back, a sharp smile playing about his lips. Then, into the silence, one of the human delegates jumped up and shouted:
“It is clear that, for the Eastern Duchy, the only logical choice is to side with our friends in Grailin and support the Blue Dragons!” The hall burst into a shocked murmur. Even the Shahanshah had been woken from his slumber: he watched the Grailinese ambassador, green in the face.
“Not one word that Sanric said was untrue.” Stafu said to Ankh. “Grailin is the next great empire. I suspect this will sway many of those undecided. As for the Eastern Duchy...”
Ankh knew the Eastern Duchy – well, as it happened. It was a neighbour to Akar, but its population was miniscule, its lands, right next to the Badlands, half-desertified, and its independence based on the fact that it had nothing worth stealing. He wasn't worried about the Easterners, but this Grailin lot would bear further watching.
“The Shahanshah will hear the Tyrenean ambassador.” Ankh leaned forward – Tyrenea was another neighbour of Akar's. The Tyrenean, a robed priest, was looking green in the face after Grailin's announcement.
“The Duchy of Tyrenea... aah... abstains.” He smiled weakly. Another human jumped to his feet, on the other side of the hall.
“The citizenry of Lannding will never condone the cowardice that the people of Camranova and Tyrenea have displayed! We must help our oppressed friends in the east, and declare for the Blue Dragons! Ye who have not declared, hear me and free the oppressed people of Farhight!”
“How dare you!” The Camranovaean delegate surged to his feet amid a chorus of roars, shouting the impertinent Lannding delegate down. “Had we the will to, we would march across the deserts and burn your pathetic country to the ground!”
“Silence!” Maathotep roared, a leonine sound that cut through the shouting. “The Shahanshah will hear the delegate of the Progressive faction now.” A tiny little man stood up, dressed in green tartans and a cloak cinched with an ornate golden brooch. No dwarf was he: he was an Erse, apparently a much smaller version of a human.
“For long years... ahem. Excuse me. In the Urglenns, we are not much used to public speaking. In the Urglenn Mountains, things don't change very fast. No.” The little Erse cleared his throat, growing redder with every minute. “In fact, it would be safe to say that tradition strangles every new idea born in my home. It is the goal of the Progressive faction to remove these stultifying traditions and thus free the Erse to claim their destiny. Considering...” The little man glanced nervously at the Shahanshah. “Considering... our rather similar goals and the fact that one of our number, Shamus of Borova, is so regarded among the Blue Dragons, the Progressive faction of the Urglenns... sides with the Blue Dragons.” The Erse sat down. On the other side of the hall, another Erse – this one with thick grey whiskers and moustache, and almost no head-hair – stood up.
“Given our intrinsic opposition, it can only be that the Traditionalist faction of the Urglenns, which I represent, supports the Green Dragons.” Maathotep nodded at the grey-haired, dignified little man. He sat down with nose in the air; the other Erse stared at him venomously.
“We thank the Traditionalist emissary for his support. The Shahanshah now calls on the Kamarean delegate to clarify his support.” The Kamarean delegate, across from Ankh, stood up. Pale and chubby, and dressed in a Kamarean suit and fedora which would have been stylish on anyone else, he cleared his throat nervously.
“L – ladies and gentlemen... my name is Isambard Hercules.” He looked around, and for a moment, his gaze and Ankh's crossed – and Ankh sat back in shock. In those eyes, he had glimpsed an intelligence so vast it beggared description. Despite his appearance, this man was clever enough to be Akar's worst enemy.
“It can be observed,” Isambard Hercules noted, “that a similar relationship exists between Kamar and Farhight as between Farhight and Camranova – that is, two great empires struggling for control of numerous provinces. We have fought long and hard against Farhight, but honourably too. But at least we are familiar with the Shahanshah's regime. These rebels, they are something new, something alien. And it may be that old enemies fight each other so long, they become allies unknowingly. Kamar declares in favour of the Farhighter monarchy.” The hall's murmuring started up again, and the Eastern and Lannding ambassadors looked distinctly uncomfortable. Ankh's eyes were on the Grailinese contingent – they looked delighted, for some reason.
“This is most unexpected.” Stafu whispered. “Kamar and Farhight are ancient enemies...” Ankh nodded. Stafu paused a minute. “I believe you're the only one left.” Ankh nodded again, considering.
“The Shahanshah would hear the Akarean delegate now.” Maathotep called. Ankh swallowed the lump in his throat, and – haltingly – he stood up. Every eye in the hall was on him; he could feel the Osting's eyes drilling him, imploring him to do the right thing; he could feel the Kamarean, Isambard Hercules, wondering about the ongoing war; he could see the Grailinese man's gaze weighing him and measuring him... and finding him lacking?
“I believe,” he began, then stopped. He cleared his throat, wondering what the people below were seeing – one of the legendary barbarian Lanciars, with their face-obscuring helmets and inhuman discipline, their famous prowess in battle, their lack of technology, the rumours of eugenics that floated about them. Akar's image was resting on him.
“I believe that the Kamarean ambassador's statements were, in essence, correct.” He swallowed – why was his throat so dry now, of all times? “Kamar and Farhight were and are ancient enemies, and traditionally, Akar has supported Farhight in these conflicts. Yet now, we find ourselves faced with a dilemma. Kamar and Farhight share a side. What, I ask you, am I to do?” He paused, this time for dramatic effect.
“Well, let it never be said that Akar is not forgiving. We will side with the Green Dragons, with the Kamareans, with whom we are currently at war. Akar will abandon her campaign against Kamar to pursue this common threat. As of this moment, Akar and Kamar are at peace.” The hall was silent. Ankh sat down. He could hear the murmurs: Akar and Kamar taking a side? Even the Grailinese wasn't looking as confident as he had. With the exception of Grailin's declaration, things had gone overwhelmingly in favour of the Green Dragons.
“The Shahanshah,” Maathotep bellowed, “thanks all his new allies. Ye of Grailin, Lannding, the Eastern Duchy, and the Progressive faction, leave here in shame. Farhight welcomes her new allies, Kamar, the Traditionalist faction, Ostmargue, Akar, and Markan to her bosom.” The hall erupted in applause, as the Grailinese and their new cronies swept out, spurned. Ankh released a sigh of relief: this rebellion should be over by winter.

Clash of Kings

Zorlac belched idly and tossed a crystal goblet somewhere behind him, spraying droplets of wine everywhere. Quick as a flash, Zanticus plucked it out of the air, set it upright, and wiped up the droplets of drink. Zorlac, being the self-obsessedly egotistical, lazy, decadent, and otherwise typical human that he was, never noticed.
“I say, Zorlac.” Zanticus began.
“Two things.” his rightful, thank you very much, sovereign cut across him. “Firstly, you say 'Zorlac'. You say 'Zorlac' very well. Secondly, remember that the last conversation you began with 'I say, Zorlac' ended with your swearing eternal bondage to me.”
“I didn't swear!”
“Well then don't make me make you. Savour what little freedom you have, my minion. And now, what do we do today?”
“Kill Lanciars.” Zanticus answered sulkily. No grown man should ever be sulky. It didn't become grown men. Zanticus was still sulky, though.
“I know that, Zanticus. I mean: kill what Lanciars, and when?”

* * *

Constantine watched the surrounding Kingdom of Lain through hard, suspicious eyes from the convenient woods. All around him, his Lanciars – mounted, this time; he was leading a force of Cataphracts – also watched the fertile fields. Considering that their helmets walled off all but a small circle of the world, this wasn't much good to them; but it was the thought that counted.
More specifically, Constantine watched the little train of wagons that bumped and rattled their way east along the vast, cobbled road known as the Lain Cross. Connecting the cities of Ostia, Kallipolis, Tyrenea, and Trapezus to the Lain capital of Caragean, it was an artery of trade in peacetime, which meant just about never. Once again, though, it was the thought that counted, and the gratuitously capitalist Lain Kamareans kept the road in good shape, for the use of trade caravans.
Such as this one. Coming from the Duchy of Tyrenea, a decayed Akaric state whose monarch was also the head of the Church of Benet – to which the Akareans ascribed – the city of Tyrene was important for more than its temples, and that was its factories. Almost as advanced as the Kamareans from whom they maintained a frail independence, the Tyreneans could produce wagonloads of cutlery, farm implements, industrial tools... or weapons.
This cart sold weapons.
Oddly, though, it seemed very lightly defended. Constantine had led his Cataphracts all the way through Lain to intercept this caravan – only to find that it was practically deserted, only its drivers and a few token guards to keep away the numerous bandits that the ongoing war had created. Considering the danger that the Kamarean army was in if the Lanciars should get their hands on gunpowder...
Well. It wasn't like a whole contingent of the Legio Magica was going to spring out of nowhere and ambush them or anything insane like that.

* * *

Zorlac watched the pretty fields from above. The aircraft circled silently, its engines muted as much as possible. Across from him was Zanticus, holding a sword with the conviction of an especially brave squirrel; also in the craft were nine other Legio Magica trainees. Only Zorlac had a squire, which was what Zanticus had ended up being. Technically, he shouldn't have been allowed, but, as Zanticus could attest, Zorlac wasn't easily refused.
“Just a raiding party to sharpen your swords, metaphorically speaking of course.” the commander had told them before sending them off. “Zorlac, I'm putting you in charge. Try not to die! Haha!” Most Kamareans' humours were feeble, but they were better than the Akareans. And it wasn't even worth going into, what Farhighters found amusing.
A voice crackled over the radio. One of the wagon drivers' voices came in.
“Tango One! Is that Tango One?”
Zorlac's commander wasn't the most imaginative of men.
“Tango One to Bait One.”
In fact, he had very little imagination indeed.
“Hook, line and sinker, Tango One. I repeat, hook, line and sinker!”
The radio went dead. Zorlac knew what 'hook, line and sinker' meant: he knew it well.
Sure enough, the Akareans Cataphracts burst out of a copse. Zorlac counted them: twenty shining, silvery knights, glittering like a miniature school of fish as they flowed along the ground in their mail and blue-and-red Akarean barding, Cataphracts' maces at the ready and circular Lanciar hoplon shields held before them. At their head rode their commander, distinguished from them by his red helmet-brush compared to their blue ones. The wagon drivers made a not-unconvincing impression of running as fast as their stubby legs would take them.
“Take us down, pilot.” Zorlac ordered, smiling. “It's been too long since I killed a Lanciar.”
Zanticus, as usual, spoiled the moment.
“You never killed a Lanciar, sir!”
“Shut up, Zanticus.”

* * *

Constantine looked up presciently and, with a relaxed surge of fear, saw the Kamarean aircraft, red and doom-laden, descending from the sky on wings of defeat. It wasn't that it was large that was bothering him – it was because it was small.
To Constantine's knowledge, there was only one way to fit a worthwhile ambush in ten men – and that was the Legio Magica. Sure enough, the men piling out wore the ebon-and-gold uniforms of the Legio Magica.
“Legio Magica, sir! Do we abort!” one of the Cataphracts shouted, not out of fear. Lanciars weren't afraid of very much, but they died like other men, and no-one knew that like they did.
“No! Ride them down – wait a minute... what the hell is that on their banner?”

* * *

Zorlac watched with a smile as Zanticus unfurled their banner.
“See, Zanticus? I told you those pictures of the Civitate of Thraxion near-naked would unsettle them, just like their brethren in the Akarean Quarter.” Zanticus looked up at the artists' impression of the grossly obese old Civitate hanging from the banner.
“That's as may be, sir, but it still isn't very nice.”

* * *

Constantine did his best to ignore the revolting banner and instead focused on the Legio Magica. To their credit, they were much more professional than the chaff he had previously been facing: they stood their ground, black uniforms shimmering in the weak light, drawing their weapons of choice. Constantine ignored them, focusing instead on the horse beneath his feet. One of the great Kallipolitan warhorses, from the level land around the Lanciars' capital, the sheer weight of armour and mailed man on top required them to be enormous – and enormously strong, if at the cost of speed.
Not that that mattered much on a downhill charge.
Constantine picked his target, a pompous-looking young man with perfectly primped hair and a stick he probably thought was a sword, shadowed by a pale, nervous sidekick. He felt the horse course beneath him, its hooves churning up the muck, its breath labouring out between its nostrils, its sweat oozing through the mail and the pretty blue-and-red barding. He wrenched out his mace, spinning it around to gain momentum – if it flew out of his hand, he always had his sword – and turned again on his foe. Downhill he was, most certainly, and the slope was certainly in Constantine's favour, he on his tall horse, whirling his mace, teeth gritted in determination as his helmet hid his thoughts, a solid tonne of man and horse bearing silvery doom down on the prissy lad -
And then the fight began in his mind.

* * *

Zorlac picked his target, the commander in front with the aura of determination, and faced him with the kind of confidence only Zorlac could muster when facing a tonne of angry Lanciar and armoured horseflesh barreling towards him. Unlike, however, most insufferably overconfident people, Zorlac had a very, very good reason for confidence.
This reason was magic.
Zorlac closed his eyes and refocused, opening the metaphorical third eye that one needed for magic. All the universe's dimension, fourth and fifth and sixth and eleventh, opened up to him and he existed in a transcendent state where he could see past the fragile three-dimensional shell of flesh that shielded the oh-so-confident Lanciar commander to the pulsating brightness of the mind beneath. Zorlac operated his magic – a natural force, akin to gravity, attracted to sentience as gravity was to mass – and reached into the man's mind.
And staggered back in shock.
For this was no normal man – no, no normal Lanciar, even. Nor was he some prophesied hero. He was simply a man who would do great things, a man who was courageous and honest and clever, a good man and a great one.
But he was no magician, and he was certainly no Zorlac.

* * *

Constantine's grip on the reins slackened and failed as a torrent of consciousness impacted his own. He felt an otherness, a person made of confidence, humour and a great, almost overwhelming intelligence, a dominating and righteous creature – but no evil one.
Evil or no, though, he was still inside Constantine's head. He concentrated, pushing the man out to the best of his ability -
And then he had bigger concerns, such as the ground.

* * *

Zorlac, linked with Constantine as he was, felt the pain of Constantine's head impacting the ground as keenly as Constantine himself did. He staggered for a moment, his perfectly primped curls going awry as his eyes boggled. He raised his hand to his head and nearly poked his eye out with the sword in it.
“Zanticus!” he called, for no particular reason. He was answered only by a frightened whimper.
“Zanticus!” he hissed at the craven squire, cowering behind a rock that did precisely nothing to hide him. “Get off your backside!” Zanticus whimpered and looked at something now behind Zorlac with white eyes.
“What are you so scared of – oh.”
It was Constantine.

* * *

Constantine wasted no time getting back up, clambering ungainly to his feet as his horse slowed in confusion at the lack of his rider. Pain lanced up his neck and back as he scrabbled upwards, his mail clinking and sliding, but if anything were broken, he'd be dead already. His shoulder had, thankfully, taken the worst of the blow, and the shoulderpad had taken the worst of that.
And Zorlac was still downhill.
He was less his mace, but not his sword, so he replicated his previous maneuver, without the horse this time. Oblivious, the boy squawked at his minion, who cowered terrifiedly – smart boy – behind an overgrown pebble. The minion squawked something in Kamarean and the boy turned around, surprise etched all over his pretty face -
Constantine brought his sword down confidently.
The boy met it just as confidently, and with a surprising strength in his wiry limbs. He danced back – typical prissy Kamarean! This is war, not ballet – and darted around Constantine's defenses. Constantine lumbered around, suddenly all too aware of the short-comings of his heavy armour, his own blade searching, seeking, slicing -
Thin air. The boy was gone again and -
Ack! Constantine grunted as the lad's sword glanced off his damaged shoulder. He tensed himself, pretending to huddle up in pain and the child advanced confidently -
And Constantine lashed around. His sword swept through the air, fast as lightning, lethal as a wrecking ball. The lad, taken off balance, just got his sword up in time -
The lad's blade snapped. Constantine's sword carried on into his stomach. He screamed in agony, his lifeblood bleeding out between his fingers as he grasped his side in an upwelling of gory dark redness. Constantine moved in for the coup de grace -
And Zanticus took him from behind.
Constantine almost didn't notice. Huge as he was, Zanticus barely knocked him off balance. Constantine simply batted the squire away with his shield – but it provided the requisite interval for Zorlac to regain his concentration. He looked at the towering Lanciar, an avatar of justice bedecked in shining mail and faceless helmet, and looked into the two circular eyeholes that were the helmet-visor's only feature.
Zorlac's brown eyes locked into Constantine's blue.
Both of them thought at the same instant, This is the man who will kill me.
Then Zorlac invaded Constantine's mind. Constantine had only a moment, and he used it well.
“Up the reserve!” he bellowed, an instant before a magical wedge delivered Zorlac's consciousness afresh into Constantine's skull.
Then the other eighty Cataphracts of Constantine's contingent burst out of the trees. Zorlac swore something foul, the mind-wedge retreating, and Constantine chuckled hoarsely.
“You didn't think I'd be sent to capture an armaments train with just twenty men, did you?”
Zorlac weighed up the options. The eighty Cataphracts thundering towards him probably equalled death, damnation or pain – possibly all three.
Then he did something unexpected.
He laughed.
“Damn you, you sneaky conniving old man.” And he set off towards the aircraft, Zanticus in tow, the other seven surviving members of the Legio Magica following him. Five Lanciars and three horses also lay dead – not bad odds against the wizards.
Constantine paused to take stock. For a skirmish of thirty men, it had been hard-fought but relatively bloodless, and now they were in possession of an armaments train.
One of dozens that flooded into Caragean every day.
“Do we head back towards Kallipolis, sir?” one of the Cataphracts asked. Slowly, Constantine shook his head.
“No. No, I have a better idea.”