\hypertarget{interlude-liesse-ii}{%
\chapter*{Interlude: Liesse II}\label{interlude-liesse-ii}}

\addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{\nameref{interlude-liesse-ii}} \chaptermark{Interlude: Liesse II}

\epigraph{``There's not a lot of difference between court and a swamp.
Colourful things are poisonous, lots of buried corpses, crocodiles are
often involved.''}{Dread Empress Prudence the First, the `Frequently Vanquished'}



Masego had forged his first dimensional pocket at the age of fourteen,
the gruelling work of six months resulting in accessible space no larger
than a cramped closet. Though the access and retrieval patterns had been
flawless, the result was ultimately flawed: nearly half the power
invested by ritual had gone to waste despite his best efforts. Father
had refused him another attempt until he further improved his craft, as
the costs of such an undertaking were\ldots{} prohibitive. It was only
in the days after the Liesse Rebellion, when he had a mage's tower of
his own, that he'd returned to the chalkboard and tried again. The power
of his Name had granted him perception and control beyond that of any
mortal mage, and though Masego had always disdained relying on those
powers he'd hated the thought of an imperfect product even more. He'd
come within razor's breadth of the Due, and with a weaving of High
Arcana made a full room only he could access. He'd considered it a
worthy effort, then, though still short of the perfection he aspired to.
His horizons had expanded since.

He had tread the grounds of Arcadia since, Winter and Summer and the
hinterlands between. He'd laid naked eye on the silent line between
Creation and other realms, shaped and breached it according to his
whims. His path to understanding High Arcana did not lay in the study of
boundaries, not like his father's, yet he had learned. One could not
witness the seams of what the Gods had sown together without deriving
insight from the act. The boy he'd been, who watched the world end,
stepping into the silhouette of the man he now was and understanding
that, in the end, it was all a lie. An agreement, a lending of form and
function that was by definition temporary. In time, all this would end.
That which was beheld was moulded by the shape of the beholder, and as
runes whirled around him in patterns the Hierophant smiled. The sun had
burned sight from him and so he had made the sun his sight, carving open
the stuff of miracles for his due.

No throne was so great it could not be toppled by madman's writ.

Creation sang under his guiding hand, melody woven and folding unto
itself. The fabric of the world wrapped itself around the demons before
they could flee his reach, forcing them into a realm that was Creation
and yet not. Foam on the wave, for a fleeting instant made a realm into
itself. An instant was all that Hierophant was need, for so long as the
unit existed the span was his to fashion. Masego stepped forward into
the pocket he had wrested from nothing, his lie made truth by will
imposed, and found the realm stretching as far as the eye could see. To
bring strife to demons inside a closed realm, Father always said, was
madness. Yet here he was, watching a shifting maze of smoke and mirrors,
and in his bones he could feel the essences of his foes spreading. The
Beast of Hierarchy wielded its own as a hammer, attempting to shatter
the frame, but it was in a cage beyond its understanding. The realm
broke, but all that did was set an ending. When that ending came was in
the hands of the Hierophant, and he was not yet done done with his
creation.

Madness whispered song sweet and insidious, echoing across haze and
empty spaces, but found no purchase. The strife it sought to sow
reflected upon itself, parted smoke without ruination. It was Apathy
that sunk its claws into the realm, the scars it left wherever it tread
beyond even his mending. No furrows in matter, no, simply\ldots{}
inertness. Matter made so still in all incarnations it might as well
have been void. It had become the most dangerous of the three, yet this
was not beyond Hierophant's prediction. Apathy was the oldest foe of
wonder, and wonder was now the lens he perceived the world through. To
destroy his enemy had always been where the trick of this would lay,
Masego knew. It was the Heavens that granted their own the power to
unmake even foreign essence through burning indignation, for in their
stale eyes there was no place for such contamination in the orderly
world that was to be built. The Gods Below granted no such boon, and had
taught their own different lesson. \emph{Though we all lose in this
summoning, what does it matter so long as the foe loses more?}

To Evil, victory mattered more than the aftermath of that glorious
moment.

Akua Sahelian's cohorts had learned this well, bringing their arsenal of
ruin into the world. The flickering bindings he could see shackling the
beasts spoke not of control, but of direction. A plague unleased with
the understanding that it would bring ruin to all it touched until fear
pulled the leash and ripped them from Creation. It would have been
child's play in this realm, for Hierophant to sharpen his will and rip
through the runes. Yet in doing so he would sunder the means of recall.
Summoning made into true presence, no longer contingent on the consent
of mortal men. To catch the light of the Heavens and shine it a lantern
upon this place would have done well, but Hierophant had seen too
little. Glimpses of Contrition, before he knew how to watch, and stood
witness to the corpse of an angel of which only white dry bones were
left. There was no miracle for him to vivisect and assemble to his will,
not even the shadow of one. He could not dismiss or destroy, and so only
one path remained Hierophant.

``To borrow the fang of the beast, and strike the beast with it,''
Masego sighed. ``How very crude.''

Runes flared around his hand and the skin bubbled like water, until it
parted bloodlessly and a drop of ichor flew from it. It had remained
there since Marchford, so weak as to be cauterized and contained yet
never entirely gone. Corruption. A perfect drop of it. The dark-skinned
man turned to the maze of his own making, and felt the weight of his
foes' attention bearing down on him.

``Let us play a game, creatures,'' he said mildly. ``I call it `burning
down the house with everyone in it'.''

The drop of ichor sunk into the ground and Hierophant began.

---

Brandon Talbot, Grandmaster of the Order of the Broken Bell, leaned
forward on his mount. Heliotrope's flanks were covered with sweat under
the armour, but the Liessen charger was still far from exhausted. They
were a hardy breed, raised for war. Once the favoured mounts of many
chivalric orders, when their kind had still been the pride of Callow
instead of the last remnant. But that remnant still stood, under its own
banner if one suborned to the Tower through complicated ties of rule and
authority. That was worthy of pride, if only a little, and today the
last scion of House Talbot allowed himself to feel it. This, he thought,
was the kind of battles he'd been born for. That they had all been born
for. Not bitter struggles with fae or the petty butchering of traitors
in his liege's own camp. Though the foot at the side of his knights was
Legion instead of Royal Guard, against them both was arrayed the old
enemy. Hellspawn garbed in stone, with the fangs and faces of rabid dogs
baying for the death of all men. There was purity to this moment that
he'd sorely missed from his days as a rebel vagrant in the south, a
beautiful clarity. One one side rode knights, to protect the people of
Callow. On the other stood devils and sorcerers, spawn of the vicious
East. It was the manner of battles his ancestors had fought, and there
was honour to be found in this.

The painting was marred by the truth that his comrades were often
greenskins and Wastelanders, but Brandon had been taught patience by the
woe the Liesse Rebellion had brought to the cause. A lesson his aunt had
once known, but discarded when she began to believe she would not live
to see the kingdom of her youth forged anew -- save if she struck deal
with the Procerans, a bargain with the devils to the west who preached
fellowship yet warred as much as the Praesi. Brandon was not so old as
to grow desperate, not yet, and so he had looked to the lay of the
kingdom and made his choice. Better a tyrant born of Callow than the
Empress' own leash at their throat. And he'd been right, he knew that
now. Already so many of the Fifteenth were Callowans, and the further
Queen Catherine broke with the Tower the more she would grow to rely on
her own people. Not rebellion, no, not in the Grandmaster's day. But
there \emph{would} be a day. Where Callow would be kingdom in truth even
if the Wasteland denied it the name. Where a great and fierce army
having learned from the victors of the Conquest would give the Tower
pause should it seek to overstep again.

He would play the long game, and win.

But for that scheme to bear fruit, Brandon mused, he first had to
survive this day. The Order had sallied out at the order of that
scowling orc general, the one they called the Hellhound, and at first
the Talbot had thought it foolishness. A young girl's blunder, for
General Juniper was said to have seen barely twenty summers. The
Grandmaster had once been heir to Marchford and Elizabeth Talbot, once
held to be the greatest commander of the Kingdom of Callow when that
name was more than a dream. He had fought in no wars before the Arcadian
Campaign but he had been taught strategy and war-making, to lead men in
battle as his forbears had for centuries. He'd thought it best to have
his knights stay at the flank of the legionaries, ready to swoop on the
enemy when they engaged the infantry. Yet the Hellhound had oddly
staggered her foot and sent him out into the wilderness to await signal
for a charge. It had seemed an ever-worsening blunder as he obeyed and
impotently watched the devils spill out from the gate and spread along
the length of this oblique formation of he general's. Oblique. That had
been the word that led him to understand.

His aunt had once spoken it to him when he'd been a boy, in her solar at
Talbot Manor as she sat him in a chair and placed iron figurines on a
drawn map. The Fields of Streges, she'd been showing him. It would have
been a lie to call them the first ones, for that stretch of field had
seen a hundred battles between Callow and Praes, but the battle she
showed him had been the one before the Carrion's Lord massacre on that
plain. When Dread Emperor Nefarious, fresh to his throne and cocksure of
his might, had attempted an invasion. Good King Robert had met the old
legions and their hordes of greenskin auxiliaries on flat grounds, and
staggered his advance much like this. Even as the Wizard of the West
fought the Emperor, the Black Knight of those days had ordered
greenskins to pour down the staggered side and sweep it aside. It'd been
a bloodbath, though not the one the Wastelanders wished for. And now
Brandon stood in the place of the old knightly orders, under banner of
bronze and black, ready to unleash death at the end of a thousand
lances.

The stage General Juniper had crafted them went like this: at the back
lay the Hellgate. From it flood of devil still poured, but that flow was
slowed for lack of space. In the face of the approaching Fifteenth the
dog-devils had formed ranks, at least in part. The Fifteenth was
staggered in three sections. The rightmost was most ahead, followed
after beat by the centre and a beat after by the left. The hellspawn
stood steady before the right tip of that oblique line, but they were
pouring unheeding down the left. Without line or formation, without even
the semblance of orders. From where his horse stood, Brandon could see
the shape of it as a long diagonal line. At the bottom of which was the
Order of the Broken Bell. Before the the Hellhound ever sounded the
horns, the aristocrat prepared his knights in three wedges. Three blades
ready to plunge in the enemy's flank. The Grandmaster raised his lance,
and within ten heartbeats all the knights had gone silent at the sight
as he cantered ahead of his riders.

``Knights of Callow,'' he said, voice pitched and clear across the
field.

\emph{Truth's not the point of a battle-address, Brandon}, Aunt
Elizabeth had taught him. \emph{Put fire in the bellies for the fight
ahead.}

``You all know it was Her Grace, who named us,'' he said.

Silence, to heighten what was to come.

``The Order of the Broken Bell,'' the Grandmaster said slowly,
enunciating precisely. ``Long have I pondered the sense of this, for our
queen is a woman of few words and deep meanings.''

He raised his lance high, steel tip shining bright even under this
shadowed sun.

``It was no slight, my knights,'' he said. ``It was a reminder, that in
years past we \emph{failed}. The fracture across our banner is warning,
remembrance of that dark day where our weakness broke Callow.''

There was murmur across the lines, but no denial. They had all been
raised to the truth of this, that for all the might of the old kingdom
the might of the Praesi had been greater still.

``But there is still a bell on our standard,'' he shouted. ``We have a
people still, if no kingdom. And now before you stride forth the hordes
of Hell, to destroy even that.''

He raised his voice.

``Knights of Callow,'' he said. ``Will you fail them today? Or will you
redeem the truth of your standard?''

Lances struck shields, a thunder crafted by the souls and hands of men.
\emph{No}, the shouts came. \emph{Redemption in steel}, the calls went.
Once, twice, thrice the horns sounded. \emph{All knights charge}, the
call old as the soul of this ancient land. Lances lowered, shields rose
and horses swept across the field as the last knights of Callow went
forth to meet their ancient enemy. Brandon Talbot laughed the laugh of a
man who had finally found his place in the world.

---

Istrid smashed the head of a boy who'd been one of her own until moments
ago. One of the fucking wights ran him through, and within a heartbeat
of hitting the ground dead he'd risen as one of the enemy. The rebels
had pulled a new trick. Raising legion dead was no great innovation:
they'd done the same half a dozen times, during the civil war. But back
then it'd been a ritual, one sweep and done. Enough for the protocols to
be amended with sappers watching corpse-piles, but no great worry. The
orc had thought this to be the same old trick, and one wasted -- her
goblins had munitions breaking her dead within moments of them rising.
But the ritual had not ceased. The wights had turned savage, and now
every legionary they killed rose. It was grinding at her frontlines
brutally, every death twice as costly. The Sixth had gotten its shit
together after Black went to murder his way to an ending, consolidated
the grounds and brought the sappers to bear, but now the tide was
against them. If this were a raid, Istrid would have called for a
retreat. But it'd been a long time since she'd gone out to kill her kind
for cattle and glory, and this was a battlefield. Retreat here would
mean casualties in the thousands as they tried to disengage from the
undead horde.

So her men stood, fought and died.

It was worse for the others. Afolabi's legion had taken rough beatings
in the Arcadian Campaign and even worse making a go at the central
bastion, and the sudden turn had found them bloodied and overextended.
Now they were being torn apart company by company, every break hastening
the next. Sacker and her Ninth were giving pitched battle over the
fields of stakes north of this mess, but no amount of sharpers would
allow her boys to break through in time. The Ninth was too light on the
offense, they weren't built for a hard brawl. It took off the pressure
some, wights moving there to ward them off, but not enough to pull them
out of this mess. The Fifth Legion, she could see even from where she
stood, had it even worse than the Twelfth. Orim was retreating back to
the palisades he'd taken as Marshal Ranker hurried to his aid, but she
was too far and the wights were in close pursuit. How much of the Fifth
would be left, by the time they had the palisades protecting them? Half,
maybe less. Unlike the Twelfth, they had no other legion to hold one of
their flanks.

Istrid spat phlegm on blood-sodden ground and left the frontlines,
legionaries filling the gap she'd left. She needed better vantage before
making a decision, or better yet Bagram's take. Her legate would have
been watching the whole time. Making her way through closely-pressed
ranks took too long for her tastes, though it was no fault of her men's.
The more the wights pressed around them, the tighter the shield wall
became to compensate. She felt the current of it as she moved, the way
ground was being lost inch by inch. The Sixth was no longer fighting
forward, it was trying to hold its grounds -- and \emph{failing}.

``General,'' Bagram saluted when she found him, arriving blood-streaked
and tired.

``Legate,'' she rasped. ``The Twelfth. How long do they have?''

``Every legionary will be dead within an hour,'' he said, not mincing
words. ``General Afolabi's own standard went down not long ago. He may
very well be dead.''

Fuck, Istrid thought. She had no love for the arrogant Soninke, but
commanders of his calibre didn't grown on fucking trees. There were few
better generals to hold a fortress than him, and they were going to
\emph{need} men like that when Procer came knocking. She turned to watch
the battlefield, and her lips tightened when she watched another of the
Twelfth's companies shatter then rise howling at their comrades. The
only good news, as far as she could tell, was that the godsdamned demons
were gone. They'd just popped out of existence after the warlock's get
let them out. The Deoraithe were marching forward to fill the void, or
at least some of them. Their army was a fucking mess, the left half of
the foot and and bowmen being pulled down to the Hellgate. Where her own
daughter was trying to face down an entire Hell with less than ten
thousand men and no help from Ranker. Gods, this had all turned into a
fuckup faster than you could blink. The entire army was falling to
pieces, and no one was in a position to do anything about it than her.

``I'm taking our reserves,'' she told her legate. ``We're backing the
Twelfth, then withdrawing behind the palisades.''

Bagram grimaced.

``We'll be thinly spread, general,'' he said. ``If the wights punch
through our lines the enire formation will collapse -- we'll have no men
to plug the gap.''

``We'll be surrounded on three sides if Afolabi's boys break,'' she
growled. ``Better bloody than buried.''

And so she went, near a thousand with her. Heavies and regulars,
sweeping through the dead at her command. Advance was slow, slower than
she would have liked or the Twelfth could truly afford, but what choice
did she have? If she hurried she was handing her men to the enemy as
fresh fodder to spend against her own. They hammered into the wights
pressing down on the other legion, buying enough time for them to
retreat with a semblance of order. \emph{Holdfast}, a cognomen earned.
Even with half the Twelfth gone terror did not rule its ranks. The
sorcerers guiding the undead struck back at the reverse, the horde
turning on them like a pack of hounds. Her Sixth was made of sterner
stuff, but the centre of the Twelfth crumpled like wet parchment when
wights threw themselves over the shields and Istrid had to lead
berserkers to prevent the whole formation coming down on her head. Howls
filled the air as Red Rage held back the tide where Legion discipline
had failed, and she screamed until the Twelfth fell back in line and the
retreat was shored up. Elbowing men aside, Istrid of the Red Shields
moved like flame through the ranks and hardened resistance. She was
tiring, she knew, but far from done. Neither was this battle, if she had
anything to say about it.

Tumbling through a knot of legionaries too slow to withdraw she slapped
a man upside the head and swatted down a wight too eager for the kill
with a backhand, barking order for them to pick up the pace. She'd taken
wounds, she felt as the red haze ebbed low, but nothing that would kill
her. More scars with stories for the telling. Yet one stung. She passed
a steel-clad hand over the throb and her gauntlet came back with yellow
as well as red. Istrid blinked, and twisted to look at the cut on her
flank. Shallow little thing, she thought as her heartbeat slowed. Just
deep enough to get the poison in. Istrid Knightsbane fell to her knees,
but her last thoughts were not of her husband or daughter. Goblin steel,
she rasped as the world went dark.

Goblin steel had made that cut.
