Wartorn Obliteration

movement violent. The chair clattered off the dais behind him. His hand opened, and the medallion bounced off the table and rolled out of sight.

His eyes widened and shot through Praulth. 'My boy,' he said, voice hoarse and slight. 'He's gone.'

A scout lost. A valuable Far Speak scout. But the pale and sudden loss on Merse's face was something else. This was the loss of one of his children, his son. How incalculable a loss was that?

'How did it happen?' Praulth asked. She reached a hand across the table, took Merse's wrist. She meant it to be forceful, to wrench him back from his shock, to delay it until there was time for it. Instead, her touch was gentle. She held him to comfort him.

Merse's jaw moved, tiny muscles bunching below the ear. Finally he said, 'Fire.'

'Fire?'

'His last word.'

'Wizards,' Praulth said.

Merse nodded solemnly.

The Felk fire magic had been used minimally during the war so far. The Felk had until now only been overrunning villages and invading cities. These were places they meant to occupy, and they wanted these sites left relatively undamaged. Surely fire magic had played a part in U'delph's razing, but here, on this battlefield, there was nothing to hold them back from full use of this offensive magic.

'Find out the range,' she said, and now her fingers did tighten around Merse's wrist.

He wasn't drifting away entirely into the shock and sorrow that was his due. He straightened up and snatched an article from his pocket, gripping it fiercely, with an air of determination. He gave her a last sharp look before the link was established and said, 'I won't fail you.'

Praulth knew that he wouldn't.

He relayed the information to her. Apparently the fire producing magicians could only use their talents within a fairly limited range and at a finite intensity. They couldn't, for instance, hurl great clouds of fire across the prairie at the Alliance ranks. They seemed—Praulth assimilated the rapidly incoming reports—to be able to cause combustion only among the Alliance's most advanced units. Among these had been the one that included the Far Speak scout.

Even within that range the Felk wizards were limited, it seemed. That whole unit hadn't suddenly burst into flame. Instead, an individual here and there had suffered the horrible fate, while the person standing alongside went unscathed.

They could only pick out individual targets, then, like archers did.

'Tell Cultat to advance this unit of infantry,' Praulth said, pointing to a map. 'Draw the wizards forward from the Felk ranks. Give them something to go after. Then send this company of cavalry—it's a strong company—on a northwestward tangent. They'll cut through the wizards before they can retreat. Go. Go.' Her hand thumped the table, but Merse was already passing it to the premier.

It was calculated sacrifice. Some of those infantry soldiers were going to die—and die as bait. But they would serve the greater cause.

It was a pure and painfully profound fact.

Praulth blinked and lifted her head. She quickly and unabashedly swiped a hand across her eyes, blinked more until the tears were gone. She caught a glimpse of the diplomats still watching raptly from the auditorium's aisles. They were silent, perhaps finally and truly aware that they were witnessing a moment of genuine history.

She noticed Xink, too, still standing to the side, still attending her. Ready to perform any task she set him to do. He was faithful. She saw that he had retrieved Merse's medallion from where it had fallen. She would need Xink, later, when all this was done. No matter what the outcome, she realized, she would survive this night and the following day. She was intimately involved in this war, but she wasn't bodily at risk. She had already faced her physical hardships, being assaulted and ravaged on Petgrad's streets. She had survived that.

When this momentous battle was through, Praulth would have Xink; and she would take her comfort there, and he would welcome her, because he still loved her... with a greater depth of authentic feeling than she perhaps deserved. But she would deserve it. Eventually, at least. She would right the wrongs between them, and their mutually inflicted wounds would heal.

Still gazing at him, she smiled, a small sweet curl of her lips. Xink smiled back.

Merse told her the infantry unit was drawing out the wizards. The Alliance soldiers were sustaining casualties, being picked off one by one, erupting into awful gouts of murderous flame.

'The cavalry,' Praulth said. 'Now.'

It happened for her on those maps, with every fresh bit of field intelligence that arrived and with every tactic she ordered. But the human cost was never far from her mind. Later, in the deep night, when the extraordinary and inexplicable event occurred, Praulth judged—gravely and sorrowfully—that the cost had been worth paying.

AQUINT (5)

He had dried flecks of blood in his hair and kept combing his fingers through it, trying to get it out. Abraxis wasn't the first person he'd seen killed, but it certainly was one of the most violent and sensational deaths he had ever witnessed, though Tyber's had been gruesomely spectacular, too.

Radstac definitely knew how to handle that sword of hers.

She and Aquint had fled the marketplace together. They had gone sprinting through streets and alleys, along a preplanned route to shake off any pursuers. Though Aquint had heard the alarm being raised behind them, no Felk soldiers had followed.

Now they had met up at some rooms that were behind a row of smithies and woodworking shops.

Aquint looked around. He saw the Minstrel and the woman who had been with him at that burnt-out granary. A few of the others he recognized as belonging to the Broken Circle were here, plus one new face. It was thin, and wore grey stubble. Also present was Deo, of course.

'Tell me something,' Aquint said, addressing the Minstrel. 'Why did you move your operation here from that warehouse where you were?'

The Minstrel said nothing. Someone else spoke up, 'How do you know about that?'

'It used to be my warehouse,' Aquint said. 'In another life. Isn't that ironic?'

'No one's in the mood for humor,' a large elderly man said. Aquint vaguely remembered his name was Ondak. 'We've lost a good man today.'

That would be Tyber, of course, the one who'd gotten himself turned into a torch by Abraxis before Radstac took the wizard's head off. Aquint had known the old thief from bygone days.

'Funny,' Aquint said. 'I lost one yesterday.'

Though his tone was nonchalant and sarcastic, the truth of what Aquint said still stung. He missed Cat terribly. He did have some cause to think the boy was still alive, but that meant trusting what these people had told him, that Cat's body wasn't there when they had gone back for it.

There was silence in the rooms. Then the Minstrel stepped forward.

'That's the bag?' he asked Radstac.

She had the small red bag under an arm. 'Of course it is,' she said curtly. Having decapitated a man a short while ago, she showed no obvious reaction.

'May I have it?' asked the Minstrel.

She tossed it toward him. But Aquint's hand flashed upward and caught it. He dangled it by its strap.

'There's something in here I need before you do whatever you think you're going to do,' he said.

The Minstrel blinked. A murmur went through the others of the Broken Circle.

'What is it?' the Minstrel asked. It was a courtesy, since there were more than enough here to overpower Aquint and take the bag.

'When I was in the city of Sook,' Aquint said, 'I was assigned to the quartermaster. That's where Lord Abraxis came to recruit me. Never mind why he picked me. But when I accepted his offer to become an Internal