\hypertarget{chapter-59-anacrusis}{%
\chapter{Anacrusis}\label{chapter-59-anacrusis}}



\epigraph{``Peace is a fine thing, but war is the crucible of crowns.''}{Queen Elizabeth Alban of Callow}



There was something oddly intimate about being dressed, even if it was
with steel instead of skirts. It began with the grieves, Hakram kneeling
at my feet to tighten the straps. He was tall enough there was need of
stool to put my foot on, since even kneeling he still reached near my
chin. He had clever fingers, belying their size, and though he was not
gentle he was quite meticulous. Then the \emph{pua}, the long thigh and
lower leg piece with an articulation at the knee. Over my aketon I put
on a shirt of mail in the legion style, six interlocked rings spreading
into a thick cover, and as he reached out for the vambraces I set the
breastplate over the mail myself. The straps were hardened leather,
reinforced with iron, and they creaked as I tightened them. I held out
my arms for him to fit with the vambraces, watching his face crease with
concentration. Pauldrons followed, marked only with the Miezan numerals
of the Fifteenth instead of the heraldry and titles that were gathering
to me like flies to honey. Armguards were adjusted to my comfort and
articulated gauntlets finished the portrait. The fingerbends looked like
fins, I'd always thought. There were usually stained red by the end of a
fight, with either my blood or my opponent's. The gorget clasped tight
around my throat, and though uncomfortable I knew better than to whine.
I'd killed enough people through the throat to know leaving it open was
sheer stupidity.

I'd expected to be presented with my old open-faced helmet as the last
of steel to bear, but what I was offered was different. This one was not
of Legion make, with hinged cheeks and a flat noseguard in front. It had
a long tail to cover the back of my neck, true, but there was a flap in
the back through which my ponytail was meant to go. The cheeks were
fully covered, going into a long angled mouthguard crafted so it would
rest against my gorget. The strip of steel that served as noseguard was
shorter than I was used to, and above it was a ridge of steel meant to
prevent blades sliding down into my exposed face. What had been forged
above the ridge was what had me frowning: it was crown. Black iron set
into the helmet, not jutting, but a crown nonetheless. My eyes flicked
to Adjutant.

``You know I do not wear ornate armour,'' I said.

``I know your teacher does not,'' the orc said, and pressed my palm
against the steel. ``It is not him we follow.''

\emph{This isn't a squire's armour}, I thought. \emph{It is a queen's,
and her crown is black.} For all that I had avoided the regalia of my
rising rank, it seemed it had finally caught up to me.

``Vicequeen,'' I reminded the orc.

``For how long?'' he asked quietly.

I winced. Months, perhaps a year. But Black was not one to go back on
his word, and he'd given it. A crown for me, so long as I readied Callow
for war. Maybe he was right. Maybe it was time to get rid of the fig
leaf. Past a certain point reticence was more arrogance than humility.
Or, even more to my distaste, a form of fear. I lowered my head and let
Hakram set it down on my brow. The cold touch of steel was no burden,
but the promise it bore was different story.

``It is fitting, I think,'' I murmured, and Hakram's eyes met mine.
``That you would be the one to crown me.''

His face twitched at that, a flinch only half-swallowed. My gauntleted
hand reach for his arm and squeeze him comfortingly.

``I have relied on you for so many things, since you were my sergeant,''
I said.

``I did what I could,'' Adjutant replied gruffly.

He looked away, and were he anyone else I would have thought him
abashed.

``We made a deal once, under moonlight,'' I said.

``That was no deal, Catherine,'' the orc said. ``That was an oath and I
stand by it. I called you Warlord then, and I don't regret it. I don't
keep to the old ways, not like Nauk, but it is no empty word. I haven't
used it since because it-``

He scowled, unsure of himself for once.

``It's not the right title, not for the two of us,'' he finally said.
``Too shallow in the wrong places. We are more than war.''

It was times like these I understood how peculiar Hakram truly was,
compared to others of his kind. It wasn't his temperament, or his way
with people. There was an underlying threat to the way orcs like Nauk
and Juniper and every other orc I'd met saw the world, and in Adjutant
it was absent. I thought much of the Hellhound, but never would I
imagine her saying \emph{we are more than war}. It would go against her
nature. To my general peace was the wait between campaigns, rule a
necessary evil best left to the hands of others. Since he'd come in my
service, Hakram had acted in myriad ways: diplomat, steward, tactician
and warrior. A confidant, too, and how many times would my temper have
led my astray if not for his calming influence? It'd been my Name that
gathered the Woe, but it was Adjutant who was keeping them together.
That much was becoming undeniable as the weeks passed. It would have
been easy to dismiss this as part of his Name, becoming whatever I
needed him to be, but Names did not come from nothing. There had to be
will behind them, an intent to fill the gaps I left without ever
realizing it. There were a great many victories to my name, nowadays,
but few of them would have been possible without the tall orc quietly
going behind me and doing the labour I never even considered needed to
be done.

I wondered if this was what Scribe felt like to Black: a limb whose
absence left you a cripple in all the worst of ways. I'd made much of my
feelings for Kilian, lately, and the ever-complicated knot that was my
relationship with my teacher, but if I had to name the person I loved
most in the world it was the orc standing in front of me. Because he'd
chosen to trust me when he had nothing to gain, long before a Name came
into it. Because he was a decent man and he still believed in what we
did -- and as long as I had that, that shining truth tucked away in the
back of my mind, it did not matter what horrors I hitched my course to.
Hakram was perhaps my closest friend in the world, but more than that he
was compass. Without him I would be lost in more ways than one.

``Oaths bind both ways,'' I said. ``The part that is mine to uphold, do
you judge it upheld?''

He laughed quietly.

``You've always kept your eyes on the horizon,'' he said. ``On the next
task, the next enemy, the next war. Look down, Catherine Foundling. See
where you are.''

In his deep-set eyes there was something feverish, the fire he always
kept under lock and key let loose for my sake.

``We're winning,'' he said. ``Just by standing here, we're winning.
Because they only rule us only as long as we let them, and the moment
that truth bleeds it dies. They can kill every last one of us and it
won't matter, because as long as the banner's been raised once someone
will rise to carry it again.''

Baring fangs, he met my eyes.

``They wouldn't let us have a seat at the table, so we \emph{broke}
it,'' Hakram said, and there was a savage satisfaction to him. ``That
will not go quietly into the night, no matter what happens today.''

``It's going to get worse,'' I said quietly. ``After Diabolist. We know
her kind, what it can do: rise tall and fall just as hard. It's the
people behind her we need to end, and they've owned the Wasteland since
before it had that name.''

``\emph{How tall the spears, and great the host},'' he spoke in Kharsum,
cadenced and low,'' \emph{This empire's bier, of graven ghosts}.''

His smile grew sharp, and there was not a thimble of mercy to be found
in it.

``They say the last of the Warlords spoke that verse, after the Miezans
destroyed the holy grounds of the Broken Antlers,'' Hakram said. ``We
were great, in those days, great as any power birthed since.''

The Beast stirred under my skin, coiling lazily as it tasted the stench
of death in the air -- death past, and death yet to come.

``That's the thing with eras, Catherine,'' Adjutant said, hard-eyed and
proud. ``They come to an end. So let's bury it together, the two of us
-- this fucking Age of Wonders they built on our backs.''

I clasped the arm he offered, and it felt like an oath.

---

Liesse looked like the gates of some godforsaken hell. The walls of
sun-kissed stone had covered in great runes and the pale blocks had
withered like fruit on the vine. Atop them stood unmoving thousands
facing us, and though this was a fortified city and not a fortress they
were tall ramparts and well-built. Behind them the labyrinth of alleys
and shops would be crawling with wards and undead: we'd bleed for every
street. I'd taken this city once before, fought my way through the Lone
Swordsman and his army, but this was a different kind of threat. This
was Akua Sahelian, and though I bore her no small hatred I would not
deny she was cunning, ruthless and powerful. The Diabolist had called
the last of the Truebloods to her side, gathered sorcerers and warlocks
and every breed of practitioner the Wasteland could boast. The elements
unleashed was the least of what I could expect. There would be devils,
and perhaps even demons. She'd gone too far to flinch at the notions of
what might come if she failed. What made Akua dangerous beyond all that,
though, was displayed before the city.

Thirty thousand undead stood, but not in simple ranks. As I marshalled
armies from every corner of Callow, Diabolist had prepared her grounds
to receive me. A ditch had been dug and palisade raised behind it,
wights with spears massed behind. Three bastions of rough stone had been
raised behind, filled with mages and what few siege engines she had. No
great fortifications, these, but our own trebuchets and scorpions would
be lower on the ground and would have to be brought into range as hers
awaited. To the sides of the ditch stakes had been hammered into the
ground with broad depths, a clear deterrent for my knights. The nature
of my forces was not unknown to her, and she knew that between the two
of us it was me who was pressed for time. There'd been talk of
assaulting the other walls, since this front was so deeply fortified,
but though there would be such an attempt the main thrust would have to
be through this direction. It was where the gates were, the weak point
in the defensive wards. The fortifications facing Procer were the
newest, since that side had once been facing Lake Hengest and had lacked
any fortifications, but since then she'd raised walls atop a sharp slope
of beaten earth and anchored wards in them. The stretch between those
walls and the Ducal Palace had been made into a killing field worthy of
Summerholm.

It was the most direct way to the heart of her ritual, but the
casualties we'd taken forcing our way through there would be\ldots{}
staggering. That knowledge, about the anchor of her ritual, had come
without any need for spying. Above Liesse, Akua Sahelian's madness was
laid bare for all of Creation to witness. Pillars of darkness rose from
the roof of the palace half a dozen leagues into the sky, where their
true nature was revealed: a cage. Like claws the darkness clasped a
gargantuan orb of roiling smoke, ever-moving and testing the confine.
Only a handful of people on the field knew the true nature of it for
sure, though I suspected the Warlock would divine it after a closer
look. He'd helped design the containment wards about to be activated
around the city, after all. The souls of the Deoraithe cast a heavy
shadow on the morning sky, becoming more a stormy dusk the closer one
came to the city. Millions upon millions, accumulated since before Praes
stood a single nation or the Miezan so much as caught sight of
Calernia's shores. It was, I thought, almost as deep a desecration as
Akua's casual slaughter of a hundred thousand innocents. Almost.

``Not impressed,'' Archer volunteered. ``Now if she'd set the sky on
\emph{fire} that would be something, but this is just decorative.''

``Shut your fucking mouth,'' Juniper spat. ``Lord Black is about to
speak, and if I miss a single word because you're whining you'll regret
it.''

The Fifteenth, for once, would not take the vanguard of the fight. That
would be the duty of the veteran legions, with my men serving as a
mobile reserve to be deployed when the city was breached. The field
outside was not ours to take. I'd gathered most my people regardless,
since the Woe would have duties before it came to the fighting in the
streets. Thief was the most glaring absence, come to camp only for a few
hours when we'd first arrived and then disappearing into Liesse again.
She'd given me priceless information, though, and though she would not
be fighting there was one last task ahead of her. Hierophant was clearly
bored out of his skull, impatient with anything that did not involve
toying with the wards he'd spent several weeks designing, and Archer was
even worse. She'd gotten restless the moment she saw the armies
arranged, spoiling for a fight. Juniper's general staff stood with her
and as usual Hakram was the lone isle of serenity to be had. As for
Robber and his cohort, they were my knife in the night. What I had in
mind for them did not involve being out in the open.

``Archer, don't assault my general,'' I said absent-mindedly. ``I don't
have a spare.''

Juniper sneered in my direction, but did not comment. She'd been telling
everyone to be silent for a half hour now, long before Black was even
close to making an appearance. He was out now, though. Atop his dead
horse barded in steel, in bare plate from head to toe and black cloak
streaming behind him. He'd offered me the right to make the address, but
I'd declined. Speeches had never been my strength -- I worked best with
small numbers. I would have to learn the skill, eventually, but this was
too important a battle for fumbling. Horse passing before the armoured
ranks of the Legions, my teacher slowed his mount and came to rest. When
he spoke, it was with sorcery behind his voice: there was not a soul in
our host that would not hear him.

``We have fought this war before,'' he said, and his words washed over
us like a wave.

There was pause, but not long enough for stillness to set in. I could
admire the skill of it -- his fame as an orator was not unearned.

``Forty years ago, we fought it from the Steppes to the Hungering
Sands,'' he said. ``Twenty years before that it was fought as well, and
again and again all the way back to the days of the Declaration. A
thousand battles spanning a thousand years.''

The Black Knight's power filled the air like a haze, and even where I
stood I could feel it whispering to me.

``\emph{Legionaries},'' he called, a bone-deep shiver giving answer.
``Look atop those walls and know you face a millennium of blood and
arrogance staring down at you. You know that banner. Your fathers and
mothers fought under it, against it. Under that standard Callow was bled
a hundred times. Under that standard, Praes tore itself apart at the
whims of the mad and the vicious. Are you not tired? I am.''

He laughed, a thing of dark and bitter anger.

``I have fought this war since I was a boy,'' he said. ``And so have
you, in every shop and field and pit there is to be found in this
empire. There is no peace with this foe, only struggle from dawn to
dusk.''

His voice rose.

``Legionaries,'' he called. ``You of Praes and Callow, of Steppes and
Eyries, you have fought this war before and \emph{won it}. Forty years
ago, we broke the spine of the High Lords. Yet here they stand before
us, fangs bared. Will you let this challenge go unanswered?''

It was the orcs that begun. Feet stamped the ground, swords were
hammered against shields. It came and went like a summer storm,
deafening in sudden fury and sudden absence.

``I will not tell you our cause is just, for justice does not win
wars,'' he said. ``I will not tell you victory is deserved or assured,
for Creation owes nothing. If the world refuses you your due, then
\emph{declare war upon all the world}.''

His sword cleared the scabbard, the sound of sharpness and steel a call
to war.

``On this field, on this day, two truths rule,'' he said. ``There is
only one sin.''

``DEFEAT,'' sixty thousand voices screamed back.

``There is only one grace.''

``VICTORY.''

Shields rose, swords unsheathed, horns sounded and with that last word
filling the air the Second Battle of Liesse began.
