"I see you can be punctual after all, sergeant," Elazi said as Kali pushed his way into the command tent. Much larger than even the spacious tents they'd prepared for the men and women of the 13th, the tent's fabric was laced with familiar magic. There were privacy wards, anti-teleportation measures, durability enhancements, and even climate control. The air inside was pleasantly cool after hours spent in the late spring heat, and Alarion saw perspiring glasses already set up for them around the rectangular table that took up the center of the tent's main room. "And who is this with you?"
"This is Specialist Orphan, my second for this meeting," Kali answered.
"Orphan. Orphan…" the officer mumbled the word twice more as he struggled to make the connection.
A tow-headed youth of no more than fourteen stepped up and quickly whispered something. Elazi gave the child a look, then glanced back at Alarion.
"You are two-thirty-eight, are you not?"
Alarion bristled immediately but fought down the emotion just as quickly as he read the officer's expression. There was no malice there. If anything, he seemed pleased to see him.
Though he heard it most often as a slur from his fellow soldiers, the name had originated in the news. Apparently, Vitrian law had prohibited them from referring to him by name while the legal battle around his induction was ongoing. To protect his privacy, of all things.
Sometimes the Vitrian legal system was just absurd.
Regardless, the publication ban had forced the press to get creative in how they discussed him. Some called him the child, others the orphan, but by far, the most common pseudonym he'd been shackled with had been his Aptitude, two-thirty-eight. They'd stuck with it even after the case had been resolved. By then, two-thirty-eight was a household name, while Alarion was not.
"I prefer Specialist Orphan. Or Alarion, if you please, sir."
"Specialist, then," the captain nodded. It felt almost deferential, far more polite than Alarion was remotely used to. "I had not been expecting to meet you in Ashad, much less have you under my command. It is a pleasure."
"Mm," Alarion answered with a nod. He didn't trust himself to be polite under the best of circumstances, which these were not. Alarion squinted at the cross-shaped sigil on the man's shoulder before asking, "You are from the House of Loss?"
"You recognize our crest?" Elazi was both surprised and impressed as he worked his way around the table and offered Alarion the back of his wrist in the Vitrian Tuluus. Alarion stared at the crooked hand for half a heartbeat, then reluctantly raised his own to meet it. "Your patron is a good friend to the House of Loss. I hope the same can one day be said of you."
"Yes, sir." The words were unconvincing, but if the Vitrian was offended, he didn't let it show. To the contrary, the hint of a smirk curled the corner of his lips as he withdrew his hand and returned to his place at the head of the table.
For Alarion, it was an unnerving exchange. He'd had his share of indifference during his time in the Auxilia and more than his fair share of outright hostility. One might think that he'd be happy to be treated with such respect, but Alarion had gotten a glimpse of Elazi's character less than an hour earlier. The man was a snake. If he treated Alarion with respect, it was because he misunderstood the boy's relationship with his patron. Or because he thought he had something to gain from the kindness.
Neither was good.
Alarion had less than zero interest in becoming further ensnared in the labyrinthine politics of Vitria. Ruin was his sword and his shield, the best ally he could hope for through his sheer deterrent effect. Becoming friends with anyone else only risked complicating that relationship and adding even more enemies to Alarion's already substantial list. He knew of at least five houses that had openly called for his execution for his supposed complicity in the Trinity Massacre. It was only Ruin's public declaration of his innocence that stayed their hand from a more formal investigation.
After all, who would dare call Ruin a liar about something like that? The irony was palpable.
A little over a year ago, during his time on garrison duty, Alarion had tried to make some sense of the political situation in Vitria, hoping to learn the names of his allies and, more importantly, his enemies. The experience had almost driven him mad.
The Vitrian legislative body, known as the Curia, was composed of five hundred and thirty-nine seats, seven for each of the seventy-seven Numbered Houses. He'd purchased old newspapers and looked at the voting records regarding his case, at who had sued for his immediate induction and who had demanded a proper investigation of what happened on the Trinity Isles.
Immediately, he ran into a roadblock.
Common sense would have dictated votes along the lines of various houses, but that was far from the case. Split voting was shockingly common, with some houses divided 4-3 or 5-2 against themselves. Stranger still, houses often changed their votes, sometimes radically from one day to the next.
It had taken him months to work out the eccentricities. Houses could not abstain, for example, explaining many of the split votes that had so baffled him. Others were so caught up in the web of patronage that their vote was functionally for sale, even if such a thing was technically illegal. And, of course, houses sometimes disagreed with themselves. He'd stopped his research for a week after he'd realized that two members of the House of Hunger had voted to send him for induction.
To call the system dysfunctional would have been a compliment. The rules of the institution were arcane and ponderous. Relatively simple tasks, such as passing a budget, could drag on for months because of only a handful of objections, and there were so-called Evergreen issues, like land reform, that had been tabled for half a century or more without proper resolution.
This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.
Yet that same cumbersome political system was at the head of an empire that conquered half the continent. Vitrians were not to be underestimated. Not even men like Elazi or the youth at his side.
"This is my second cousin, Dimov," Elazi said as the young man stepped forward.
Dimov had a lanky, unfinished look. Halfway between a boy and a man, though his close-cut blonde hair and wide eyes put him closer to the former than the latter. Children his age were common enough in the Vitrian military, especially those who sought to start their induction early; however, they were rare in Auxilia units. He either had a low standing within his house or was given the assignment by familial request. Possibly both.
"Pleasure to meet you both," the young man said, drawing an irritated glare from his cousin as he bowed and quickly straightened up. "I am my cousin's… or rather, the Captain's equerry. I will join you in the field."
Kali tilted his head in confusion. "You will not be joining us, sir?"
"I am more useful here; Dimov will be sufficient," the captain said, his words so confident that they almost made the situation seem normal.
It was not. Leaving Ilvan-Shad without a Vitrian officer at the head of the column was odd. Not unheard of, especially if the officer in question was expected to meet them in transit, but certainly unorthodox. Sending an Auxilia team into combat without a direct commanding officer, but his equerry instead, was unheard of.
"Sir, with respect-"
"This is not a debate, sergeant," Elazi interjected sharply. "Dimov will accompany you, and I will be in constant communication."
As if on cue, perhaps even literally on cue, the boy knelt down and produced a long wooden box from beneath the table. He removed the lid to reveal over two dozen small pearls set into the velvet-lined case.
"We were able to procure just enough simus to outfit the entire section," Dimov said happily.
"More than enough. Given the losses," said Elazi. "We also obtained four larger units that permit communication over a much larger area. You will talk to them, they will talk to me, and I will communicate my orders back to you."
Kali set his jaw. It didn't take a genius to figure out what the big man was thinking, but tact won out over indignation as the sergeant nodded. "Of course, sir."
"With Dimov joining you, we are seventeen strong, enough for three full-strength squads and a fourth over-strength. I will leave the logistics of the assignment to you, but Dimov will accompany you and two thirty... apologies, you and Specialist Orphan."
"Begging your pardon, Sir. I did not intend to accompany-"
"Well, now you are. I am trusting both of you with my cousin's life. Take it as a compliment." Again, Elazi talked straight through the objection, moving on before either man could put together a proper counter-argument. "Where are we in terms of locating the boil?"
Happy to be on more familiar ground, Kali bit down his complaints and turned his attention to the maps spread open on the table. The first depicted most of southern Ashad, covering the area between Ilvan-Shad in the south and Ashad-Veldi in the north, a distance of several hundred miles. The second focused on their immediate vicinity, noting rural roads and townships too small to mark on the first.
"We have a general cordon in place and regular patrols scouring the countryside. Obviously, it is still permeable, given that we were ambushed on the road, but the fiends seem to be largely contained within this area." Kali took up one stencil and marked a thirty-mile circle to indicate the cordon, its back half overlapping with the mountains to the west. "We can't get past them into the mountains, so the infestation may extend further in that direction, but we have them contained out in the lesser giants."
"These are the towns that were lost?" Elazi asked, pointing at the three largest settlements within the circle.
"That is the assumption. A safe one. This infestation hit quickly, likely because of the revenants behind it. There was none of the usual warning, no refugees." Kali drew another, smaller circle inside the first. It covered all three major towns and several smaller villages and hamlets. "This is the rank II territory, roughly. It covers the three major settlements, some of the smaller ones, and a sizable chunk of the Giants. Doctrine would indicate that this is where we'll find the boil."
"You are not sure?" Dimov inquired.
"Doctrine assumes fiends," Kali answered, his voice neutral as he could make it. "Not revenants. The infection typically spreads through soil infiltration and through expulsion. The boil poisons the ground, and the stronger fiends force the weaker ones further and further outward."
"And revenants change this?"
This time, Kali frowned. "Has the boy ever been involved in a subjugation?"
"The boy is your superior." Elazi's tone suggested that he didn't just mean the words militarily. "He has experience fighting fiends, just not revenants or the dead."
A fellow alumnus of the Trinity Isles, or somewhere like it, Alarion assumed. A noble with experience hunting half-starved fiends in a controlled environment. Alarion's already low estimate of the child fell a few notches, even if it was a bit hypocritical of him.
"Revenants are your counterparts among the infection," the sergeant explained to Dimov. "The ruling class, the officers. Fiends can be cunning animals, but they are animals. They hunt, they kill, they struggle for dominance with others of their kind, and they are predictable as a result. Revenants are bloodthirsty, but they have all the same faculties they had in life, and both the fiends and the dead obey their orders. A smart revenant will misdirect and conceal; they'll attack where we are weak, not where we are strong."
"They will set ambushes on the road," said Alarion.
"Exactly." Kali agreed. "It could be that they are letting the fiends run wild, or that they're concentrating their forces around the boil to defend it. But it is just as possible that they will try to conceal the entrances as best they can from the outside."
"So we have nothing to go on?" Dimov asked.
"We have the infection." Elazi reminded him, his voice tinged with annoyance. "They can shuffle their forces all they want, but the dead earth will tell the tale regardless. We have more than enough testing kits. We will hand them out to our squads, spread them out, and conduct a grid-by-grid sampling. With luck, it should only take a few days to narrow down its location for an assault."
It was a classic approach, one ripped almost straight from the pages of a textbook at some Vitrian military college. It would also be slow. Dreadfully so. But that wasn't Alarion's biggest concern.
"You disapprove, specialist?" Elazi asked. Alarion's face colored slightly. He hadn't even realized he'd been scowling.
"They will expect it," he said after a moment of hesitation. "Many of the revenants we encountered were Auxilia. Or Vitrian. They understand the Auxilia and how we operate. They knew reinforcements would come from Ilvan-Shad, and they must know how we intend to search."
"Knowing what we are doing and being able to stop us are two very different things," the officer observed. "But I am open to suggestions, if you have any?"
Alarion had one, but he would be damned if he'd reveal ZEKE's presence to someone like Elazi.
The man waited a few seconds for an answer to his question. When none was provided, he clapped his hands. "Then the matter is settled. Dimov will distribute equipment, and I will have your search areas prepared by morning. Rest well. I suspect an exhausting week ahead of you."
If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.