Zel let the gate go, feeling it disconnect inside his mind. It would stay there for another minute if he let it, or if he got distracted. But he didn’t want any of the Gulthurub People wandering away on accident—who knew when they’d get back. So he snapped the gate shut just before it fully disconnected, the bright white-orange circle leaving a searing afterimage on his retinas as it disappeared.
The sun was just beginning to rise on this side of the world.
“Jalnab,” he said, seeing his aide arriving from the side, dark jata hair pinned neatly behind his back, silver spectacles poised primly on his nose, “where are we at with troop formations?”
“Nowhere, sir,” Jalnab said, adjusting his black pinstripe vest. It was a relic from before, Zel knew, back when men had worn something called “suits.” It looked odd, but Jalnab had always been odd. The man was far older than Zel was, but he still managed to treat Zel with respect. It was refreshing. He was no Segena. “The men just won’t stay in formation,” Jalnab continued, “no matter how hard we drill it into them. And we’ve tried.”
Zel suppressed a sigh. This had been an ongoing problem for months, and it wasn’t the only one.
The People just weren’t cut out for war.
“Keep trying,” he said. “Maybe they need more practice.”
They set out walking through Center Square, the sounds of Gulthurub echoing raucously around them. What the city lacked in size, it made up for in grit. Sharp gravel crunched beneath their feet as they headed onto Jenfeb Road, passing cement building after cement building, each one more decrepit than the last. Steel rebar twisted upward from crumbling walls, fading graffiti covering slabs of stone. The city border rose in the distance, great gray barricades of curling barbed wire a dozen feet tall, dotted every two hundred feet with guard towers made of cinder blocks. Big men stood atop those towers, powerful Gatling guns held in muscular, tanned arms.
Relics from an age before.
It was a miracle the People had kept it together for this long.
This city, and all within it, would soon be dust.
Not unless they found a way to improve.
“We’ll keep at it,” Jalnab said. “There’s something else—the weaponmaster had another failure today.”
“How bad?” Zel asked.
“Catastrophic, sir. Nearly lost his entire hand. He’s in surgery now.”
“That’s not likely to go well.”
Jalnab shook his head. “No. Likely we’ll need someone else to take his place.”
“Someone else who knows how to clean and repair guns?”
“It’s not as if Felneg really knew what he was doing,” Jalnab said. “Half of what he did was just playing it by ear. Is it any wonder he blasted his own damn hand off?”
“I thought you said he hadn’t lost the hand.”
“He will. For the same reason—the surgeon has about as much idea how to fix a hand as Felneg had building guns.”
Zel stomped to a stop, spinning to face Jalnab. “Dammit, man, I know we don’t have the skills. I know this city is crumbling down around us. What do you want me to do? The fucking Eldrim killed everyone, or did you forget? If we’d known what they were doing—but no. We didn’t know. It’s amazing we managed to even live this long. How are we to pick up the pieces? How are we to survive?”
Jalnab had a sharp look in his eye. “The People are resilient. You’d be surprised what they can learn, given time.”
“We don’t have time. Segena is impatient. You saw her stalking through the square.”
“She reminds me of the stories,” Jalnab said.
Always the stories. Zel snorted. “What, now you think she’s a god, too? Snap out of it, man. We have work to do.”
Segena wasn’t a god. She wasn’t from the stories.
She was just a petty, insolent woman.
A woman who might just be able to save them from all this…trash.
“Of course, sir,” Jalnab said, snapping forward and stepping down the street like a trained soldier.
He was obviously pissed.
They resumed walking, entering Martial District, where Zel’s headquarters were. The People were loud around them, clinking tools and speaking roughly to one another. The smell of burning meat rose up around them as they walked. Colored flags fluttered in the evening breeze, clinging to the sides of buildings, the first bit of actual life he’d seen in this godforsaken place.
“First,” Zel said, “we find a new weaponmaster. Then, we figure out how to drill these stupid formations into these stupid troops.”
“Quiet, sir. The People will hear. Cruelty is not the way.”
“I don’t care if they hear, dammit. They need to follow fucking orders!”
He was shouting now, his voice raw. Jalnab was looking at him with concern. Zel felt embarrassment coming, but he banished it. He needed to be more like Segena.
He needed to be strong.
“They follow you, sir,” Jalnab said. “They just don’t…they don’t have the skills you need them to have.”
“Then we drill it even further,” Zel said, lowering his voice, the firmness still intact. “And we keep drilling it until they can do nothing else but the formation patterns we designed. In their sleep. I don’t care if we kill them doing it—they have to learn.”
“Why?” Jalnab asked. They passed a weapons range, soldiers awkwardly shouldering rifles. “The Eldrim don’t use formations. Why should we?”
Zel winced as the guns went off, the sound shattering. “Exactly,” he said, ears ringing. “If the Eldrim don’t use it, they won’t expect it. The formations we designed will cut them down—if we can learn the damn things. They’re not exactly hard.”
“They’re fairly hard,” Jalnab said.
They entered Zel’s command tent, his other two aides standing up and bowing when they saw him. “For the Mother,” Zel said, bowing back, the religious greeting grating in his ears.
“For the Mother,” they echoed.
There was a table in the center of the tent, covered with maps and figurines which would be used to indicate troop movement, if their troops ever moved. And if they ever figured out how to use the figurines.
“Felneg is dead,” the first aide said. His name was Agblad—a terrible name.
“Goddammit,” Zel said, feeling his temper rise once again unchecked, “why can no one do anything right?”
“He was doing his best,” Agblad said. “Sometimes munitions are unstable.”
“Bullshit,” Zel said, pounding his fist on the table, sending figurines flying. “You and I both know that Felneg couldn’t build a gun better than I could throw one.”
“That…doesn’t make sense.”
“Shut up,” Zel said. His cheeks were heating. Why was he always losing control like this? “Who do we have to replace him?”
“Well, there’s Galfrag,” Jalnab said.
Another stupid name. “Galfrag is an idiot.”
“He is the best sharpshooter we have.”
“All the more reason for him to be a shooter, and not a weaponmaster. I need someone back here, someone who is skilled with building the damn things, not shooting them.”
“Maybe Segena can suggest someone.”
Zel slammed his hand down on the table a second time, harder. Everyone in the tent stopped, motionless, looking at him with fear in their eyes.
Zel’s hand stung. Nothing was going right.
Segena had trusted him to do this, and he was failing.
“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice quiet in the chill morning air. “I haven’t had a lot of sleep.”
“Stromboli isn’t going well, is it,” Agblad said.
Zel peered at him. “You know about that?”
Agblad dipped his head. “We all know about it, sir. What we don’t know is why Segena is spending so many resources on whatever it is she’s looking for out there.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Zel said. “We have to prosecute this war, and then we’ll be done.”
“If we win.”
Zel bowed his head.
“Sir,” Jalnab said, touching Zel lightly on the elbow, “have you ever wondered why we’re doing any of this?”
“It is not my place to wonder,” Zel said.
“But you’re our leader.”
“I’m not the leader. I’m not the Warlord, am I?”
“No one has that title. Not for some years, now.”
Zel looked around the tent, staring at the faces of his aides, the most important, most trustworthy people he had. They were against him. They doubted him. He doubted himself, for that matter. His tantrums were unbecoming of a leader.
He couldn’t do this.
“Everyone knows that Segena is really in charge,” Zel said.
He couldn’t do this anymore.
“She trusts you,” Jalnab said. “You’re the one we take orders from.”
“But why?” Zel asked, feeling a pulsing behind his ears, thunder rising in his mind. “Why does anyone listen to me? I try to do what she—what we—want, but nothing good ever comes. If we can’t get our act together, those damn elven bastards will make mincemeat of us. They’re good, Jalnab. They’re too good.”
“We’ll win. The People are strong.”
Zel could feel his heart beating even faster. The room was beginning to swirl in his vision. He reached down for his broadsword—it was lying on the table, waiting for him. He strapped it on, but the familiar weight of it didn’t help.
“And what if we don’t?” he asked. “What happens if the People fail? What will become of our legacy then?”
Nobody had any answer to that.
“We’re clinging to hope,” Zel said, his voice quiet. “We’re clinging to Segena’s plan.”
“She will see us through,” Agblad said.
“You see?” Zel said. “You admit it. You follow her. Not me.”
“We haven’t attacked the elves before,” Jalnab said. “Not ever. We don’t know what we’re up against.”
Zel turned to him. “I’ve studied them from a distance. They’re good, but they’re not that good. We just need practice. We need efficiency. Ruthlessness. But most of all, we need skill. The elves have been training for hundreds of years.”
“They live ten times longer than we do.”
“I know, Jalnab,” Zel spit. The world was crashing down around him, the sound in his mind rising to a fever pitch. “They’re better than us in every way. And all we have to go against them is Segena—who you think might be a god—and me. And our weapons. And our formations. And our crumbling cement and wretched gravel and our dirt and disease and lack of knowledge of anything. And all I have are these stupid gates.”
He let one form in front of him, swirling orange in the dark tent. Everyone shielded their eyes.
“You two are our only mages,” Jalnab said, eyes glowing golden in the gate’s light. “You will see this through, even if the People cannot be taught.”
But Zel felt fear overwhelming him.
His grip on reality was faltering.
“I can’t do this,” he muttered, eyeing the gate. Its outline swirled seductively, calling to him in the darkness of the morning. “I need to leave. I need to find a way to fix all this. I’ll be back…soon.”
He stepped through the gate, snapping it shut before anyone could follow him. He felt the ice of it rush over him as he transferred, taking in a deep breath as he reached the other side. Relief flooded him to be away from there, away from the expectations and the probing eyes.
But then he took in a breath, and almost gagged.
Mother, it stank. It smelled like shit and piss and who knew what other fermenting things filled the air.
He almost threw up right then, but managed to keep it together. Mother. No.
He knew this place.
He recognized this smell.
Shit. He hadn’t meant to gate here.
