Revision – 2026.6.29
“Ro… Rolf!” gasped Emilie. “Good grace, I feared the worst!” And coming quickly, she bent down by my side as I strove to bring up a knee.
“I’m sorry, my Lady,” I said, panting still. “But, I’m all right.”
“Not to mine eyes you are,” observed Tiselius. Very fair: if a man so broken and ablood should be called “all right”, what might we say of the dead? But dash that; I’d got life in me yet, and a pressing tale to tell besides.
“I’m all right enough,” I said, becoming more serious. “Nay, never mind me. Mareschal, pray withcall our left wing!”
“With… call?” said Tiselius, though whether doubtfully or recollectively, I could not tell, for—
“Faugh!”
—there next stabbed a voice into my ear.
“Know thy place and flit off, thou fly!”
That vehement noise, of course, belonged to none other than Lindell, Tiselius’ Owlcrane lieutenant. It must’ve raked his nerves to see Emilie so concerned for me, as much as it admittedly surprised me to see him on this side of the Erbelde.
Heeding him little nonetheless, I went on. “Madame, out of these cliffs cuts a gully at the rear, which I’ve seen and taken myself to infiltrate this place. That is the enemy’s retreat, their single lifeline, in case this garrison fell—a lifeline I see our left wing now bars.”
“Then all the more reason to press the offence!” Lindell debated.
I shook my head at him. “That is not well,” I returned. “Make cornered rats of our enemy, and their desperate thousands shall bite back unto the bitter end. We cannot chance attrition; they must be allowed their retreat!”
“Then allow it we will,” Tiselius said firmly, before turning aside. “Boris! Leash in the left wing! Have the 2nd Centuria stay to enforce the centre; the rest’re to reform at the rear!”
“Aye, madame!” answered this “Boris”, whom I guessed to be the field adjutant for this fight. Promptly, he began running the order to the leftward knights. Meanwhile, I could but watch on in amazement. Here had I been dreading to see my counsel fall on deaf ears as was so usual, only to see Tiselius accept it swiftly—just as she’d done back at the bridge, as I then remembered.
For their parts, Emilie and Lindell blinked with no less bafflement. “But why, Mareschal!?” the latter burst out objecting. “This… vermin, his vile tongue deserves no ear, surely! He is a lackwit, I tell you! An ungraced!”
“Lieutenant Erik Lindell,” Tiselius said, adamant of mien. “Has this past month, this day, taught you naught? The foe is keen, their use of clime and land clever. Strive now to destroy them, and we shall swell in turn the war-cemeteries with our Londosian dead. Nay; save the tears, I say. Let the enemy retreat; that shall be triumph enough for us.” The mareschal’s eyes, golden and now very grave, pressed heavily upon her lieutenant, even as battle raged all about. “You have mine order, Erik. Heed it.”
Lindell grimaced. “…As you will, madame,” he relented.
Content, Tiselius held aloft her shining sword and cried aloud, “Centreguard! The last push stands afore us! Form together, and send the foe to flight! Forth now, ye knights! Forth!”
And in a great chorus, the whole of the knightly host resounded in answer, shaking earth and air. And seeing them stir with new spirit, Tiselius turned to Emilie.
“’Tis done. Left and centre are joined; this front should now suffice,” she assured her. “I shall retire myself to the gates, therefore. Lieutenant Mernesse, pray join me—along with your swain.”
“Very good, my Lady,” I said.
Mending magicks may remedy enough a cut, a tear, or, to an extent, a tired body. But as a rule, it takes a seasoned surgien to deal with more dire damage like the broken bones I bore. Having me “seen to” thus didn’t exactly get my hopes up, to be frank; but if it would cure even some of Emilie’s concerns, I had to go along.
Presently, there appeared again the field adjutant. “Boris, this battle is yours,” Tiselius spoke to him. “Exhaust the enemy; push them aback; make them choose retreat.”
“Mareschal!” he saluted.
“And you, Rolf Buckmann,” said Tiselius, seeming to me softer now in tone, “when the day is won and the dust is waned, I desire to hear much from you.”
I gave a salute of my own. “Yes, madame.”
Before long, the mareschal’s personal retinue of knights gathered, and together they began falling back through the Nafílim garrison. And following them closely, Emilie and I put the battle behind us.
♰
Across the encampment we went. Rubble and bodies were strewn everywhere; the first clashes must’ve been bitter indeed. And with many a brazier upset and snuffed, and night having fallen fully on top of that, it was altogether unsettlingly dark.
“My Lady, if I may ask,” spoke I along the way, “what has brought you hither? To this side of the battle?”
“Why, you, of course,” answered Emilie. “You hurried off in such haste; what choice was there but to give chase?”
“…Chase?” I echoed in honest surprise.
Emilie then related to me some of her tale. In that while, I threw my mind back to my breaking away from Tallien and the Owlcranes, when I’d spotted the subtle swelling in the Erbelde. By her words, Emilie hadn’t been far behind me; I must’ve been very desperate not to have noticed. And as she soon revealed, she herself had been there at the bridge, bounding over the blast-crates behind Tiselius before everything went up in flames.
“So yes, ‘chase’,” Emilie ended emphatically. “You are my charge, after all. My swain!”
And grinning rather proudly, she puffed out her chest. But at that moment, Lindell slackened his pace and came near her with a grin of his own.
“Lady Emilie,” he said. “The day is indebted to you, as are our forders. Absent your courage, we could not have safekept them as we have done. Also, I say it is a brilliant spellblade indeed that you wield; brilliant and beautiful. Truly, I thank the Deiva for letting me battle by your side.”
Ever as he fawned, Lindell looked upon Emilie with a certain fire in his eyes. The object of his interest, however, returned nothing so warm.
But now were things beginning to clear up: it was three that’d followed my flight down the Des Ailes, Lindell included. And thereafter, it’d been by their blades that the bankward braves were halted from harrying our forders any further, and a safe passage consequently cut for them.
I shudder to imagine the mobs that must’ve thronged upon the three. But with one being the mightiest in the 5th, and another in all the Realm itself, perhaps it wasn’t so fantastical a feat after all, at least given the short time till the dam blew and the river abated. The pandaemonium must’ve helped that purpose a great deal, too, no doubt, between the broken enemy command and the general turbulence brought upon the battle by the blasting of the bridge.
At any rate, the sum of it all had seen Felicia and forders gaining the enemy banks at last, though not without casualty, surely. And employing what mettle and armatures remained them, our knights had rallied and fallen upon the fracted foe, and over slow, bloody hours, pushed the battle into this very garrison.
Such news and accounts did Emilie share with me, till at length we found ourselves at a place not far from the garrison gates. Hereat was another company of knights posted, being charged to look after the wounded, contrive what illumination that they could, and keep watch over the path.
“Lieutenant Mernesse, 5th Order Owlcrane Brigade, reporting,” Emilie saluted to the knight-surgiens there. “I request immediate mending for my subordinate, Buckmann; he is badly wounded.”
A stooping surgien turned up to me and gaped. “Good heavens… ‘badly’ is right,” he said. “Come, come. This way, quick.”
But he’d scarce inspected and removed the stanch about my arrow-wound when a red light burgeoned abruptly above our heads. Shadows swung. A flame long and blinding flew. It was the spell Sċīmæsċ, sent at great speed—to smite unto Tiselius.
—Bshaarhh!
The air hissed; fires flashed whence she stood, and fell in a flurry of fumes. For an instant, it was brighter than day. The knights startled, but showed little fear. For when the rutilant light receded, so was another revealed, one of a different hue. And lo! it was a lucent paling protecting Tiselius’ person, conjured by her knight-sorcerer in the nick of time.
“Ambush, ambush!!” cried Lindell, who, drawing his sword, trained it eastwards. All eyes followed. And there, out of tents at a mirky corner of the camp, emerged Nafílim in force.
Swiftly, Tiselius bared her blade. But the look upon her face was severe. “…How blindfold am I,” she uttered, “to’ve missed an ambuscade!”
“We’re all of us so blind, madame!” Lindell tried to soothe his grimacing mareschal. “It’s dark; we’re deep yet in the enemy’s den. They know too-well this land, as you’ve said!”
“An ill excuse, that!” disputed Tiselius. Her harshness, however, was not without warrant: for we then found these ambushers to doubly outnumber our total of just thirty able bodies.
These were bad odds, no question, though made even worse by the wounded in our care. Albeit if things weren’t going as anticipated on our end, neither were they on these Nafílim’s: to judge by their position, they’d likely been intending to strike the backs of our host instead who were yet fighting behind, once the fray had pushed along far enough. But before it ever came to that, who to step into their view was the commander to the knightly forces herself: the Mareschal and Hero-Dame Tiselius.
Plans are ever first to perish on the battlefield, they say. And nothing more hammered that home to me than this horrible day.
“Surgiens, fall back!” cried Tiselius. “I’ll deal with th—”
But then, like lightning, alarm lashed through my nerves. The moment stilled. My senses roused. A presence somewhere was searching, snarling. And no time was left to look before it sprang upon us.
───────── ♰ ─────────
Notes
Sċīmæsċ
(Language: Latin; original name: “Heat Lance”) “Bright-spear”. Fire-elemental battle magick. A spell in the form of a long spire of flames, shot towards a target at high speeds. Pierces and explodes on impact. The sċ consonant is pronounced with a sh sound, as in the words “shield” and “shine”. The æ vowel is pronounced with an a sound, as in “apple” or “angry”.