* * *

  With a sweep of his glaive, Roskvir deflected another hail of rifle shot, before at last the pace of gunfire abated. The enemy began to draw back, regrouping for the next assault.

  But just that last attack had come within inches of breaking their line. His marines wouldn’t survive another.

  “Reload and brace!” he shouted, as he vaulted back into a foxhole. Banishing his totem, he fell over a prone rifleman taken cover there, applying pressure to the man's bloody wound.

  While a combat medic hurried to apply a tourniquet, Roskvir scanned the distant ridge of the northeastern heights. But still he saw it lacked any sign of Thjali’s arrival. The enemy’s reserve there simply continued to entrench, calm and unperturbed.

  By then, though, he understood it was foolish to have ever even held out hope.

  Had Thjali simply fled at her first sight of the enemy’s true strength? But that wasn’t her style. And the messenger he’d sent to the moored swift had found its crew’s murdered bodies, with the vessel itself untouched, suggesting a more thoroughly-planned betrayal. Which was more her style.

  Bright, arterial blood rose past his fingertips.

  He wondered if it could go beyond Thjali. Could the shogun himself had grown displeased with his performance, and arranged for a politically convenient way to discard someone of his reputation?

  The soldier beneath him expired, and Roskvir sat back. His nose ran as he took in the all-saturating dust of that place, and he wiped it on the shoulder of his uniform coat.

  Whomever was responsible mattered little, he supposed. They were betrayed, either way. He would’ve liked to know why, but he probably never would.

  As the dust settled, more than a few bodies became visible sprawled across the distance to the reforming enemy line. Some still groaned, reached out, or convulsed. Most were motionless.

  So he, too, was to die a warrior’s death.

  He returned his glaive to his hands, standing. Some distant part of him wondered if it would make his enemy feel better, to kill him.

  A volley of rifle fire erupted from afar. Without thought, with his sjaelsvaben he deflected the projectiles sailing toward him, before ducking into cover as their repeaters continued to pelt the natural ramparts of his position.

  A warrior’s death.

  In other words: to die for nothing.

  A pawn in some cold ploy. Betrayed perhaps for political advantage, or as a distraction. Or perhaps for no reason he could understand at all.

  His own troops that yet survived for the most part wore a grim but stoic determination as they regrouped themselves. Their weapons again raised, in that foreign land.

  They’d all held out with courage far more than worthy. Bravery was the expectation, but they’d made a showing braver even than most: they’d all be dying great warriors' deaths, that day. They’d be heralded as exemplars of Albian soldiery, if tales of their efforts ever made it back home.

  He considered that for a long, strange moment. Rifle fire drummed and whistled overhead, and yet the world had turned quiet, as he stared at the flames dancing in his hands, and at the sudden vertiginous chasm he found within himself.

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  The honor and bravery of his command inspired less than nothing within him, he realized.

  The sheer volume of fire over his stretch of the battlefield halved momentarily, as the nearest enemy soldiers reloaded. There’d be perhaps one more five-rounds-rapid before they closed to melee. A presence emerged into his awareness, as a prominent enemy sjaelsvabener approached from the center.

  He rose again above the rampart, twirling his glaive back into a defensive ready, casting sparks across the cracked earth. While deflecting errant rounds, he searched the enemy line for the powerful presence that he knew was searching for him, in turn.

  An officer of his staff ducked along the leeward of their defilade, before falling into the meager cover by Roskvir’s feet. The man fired his weapon once, then twice, before putting his back to the incline.

  “We’re not going to last much longer out here, kaptanleutnant, sir,” shouted the officer above the din of battle. “What’s happened… Where's the vizeadmiral? There must be almost two hundred of them. What’s — what’s going on?”

  Roskvir tried to think of something to say.

  The enemy assault's final volley roared, and bit the air around them. Defending again, Roskvir erred in his rhythm, and a bullet punched through the thin top of the earthworks to his right. The officer jerked.

  Roskvir fell to his knees. Blood poured from a hole below the man’s eye, then down onto the dry and burnt savanna grass beneath his head.

  He lifted the body’s head, looking into its blank eyes.

  He’d tried his best to come to know that man, the night before. While trying to break the ice with the rest of his new staff, Roskvir had made a poor joke, but the officer then in his arms had laughed for his sake.

  He lay dead. Killed in an instant, when he’d been afraid, and wishing to live. But not killed fleeing, or in retreat. Standing his ground, trusting Roskvir and Thjali would lead them to victory. Dying before surrender, as was the duty Albion expected.

  How absurd.

  And so perhaps much the same fate would make a fitting end to his own life’s absurdity, thought Roskvir.

  He dropped the dead officer’s head. It fell to the ground with pitiful leaden inanimacy.

  A soldier of the enemy was almost upon him, less than ten yards away. A band of maroon fire spanned an arc above his temples, and a full suit of plate armor covered his body, as if he’d come from some other, much older war. He advanced bearing no weapon but a massive shield, and the air hummed in his presence.

  Roskvir stood to meet the enemy soldier’s challenge, readying for their duel. The armored man closed to circle him, sizing him up, but waited for him to make the first move. Vague anger and hatred churned behind hardened eyes, but any such passion there seemed muted. Almost as if Roskvir faced a mirror.

  He wondered when last anything had felt real.

  He choked up on his weapon’s grip. The armored soldier’s sjael was likely specialized in protection, he calculated. Direct attacks wouldn’t be as effective, so flames would be best first.

  Roskvir spared a final glance at the dead officer’s body.

  A warrior’s death.

  His sjaelbrand pulsated. The armored soldier braced, anticipating some ferocious opening attack, wary like he might be of a cornered animal. And indeed, Roskvir lifted his glaive of red fire.

  Then, holding it out in front of him, he let go of its haft.

  The weapon fell to the ground, vanishing in a burst of sparks. Drawing his pistol, he tossed that to the armored soldier’s feet, as well.

  The man at first raised his shield, before realizing what Roskvir was doing. Roskvir banished the rest of his vis then, standing tall to face his enemy unarmed.

  Many surviving marines nearby either sensed his vis disappear, or saw him throw his weapons to the ground. Most at once followed suit or cried out in protest, or fell wounded or dead in that moment. By any measure, their last holdouts disintegrated, as if held together until then only by Roskvir's persistence.

  The armored man eyed him, before acknowledging his capitulation with a shallow nod. Roskvir raised both arms above his head as enemy soldiers encircled him, their weapons raised but no longer firing.

  The day was over.

  It was the first battle of his career he’d ever lost.

  Pro patria mori."

  Wilfred Owen