The Swords of August

We weren't that lucky. Not only had our ghost returned, it had done so seven separate times over the next two days. We were about nine hours out from the nearest settlement, according to Terath, our guide for the moment.

"Damn it! I keep losing it in the background, one second he's there, then it's like he just disappears."

"He's already invisible, what, did he become invisibler?" Chen chuckled.

"That's not a word—but I think so. He's only been visible for a few seconds at a time. I think you spooked him, Edward."

"We all did, you mean." I scowled.

"Well," Chen helpfully started, "you know how you—"

"Yes, yes, I know." I glanced around, as if my eyes could pick up something my suit couldn't. Not that eyeball mark one wasn't still useful in the age of advanced and compact sensors, but it wouldn't make a difference in this kind of terrain.

"You think he's following us?"

"Well, that or he's following one of our guests." I shrugged. I'd run a diagnostic on the railguns Carver had put together and they showed all green, but I still didn't know how they'd hold up in combat. That thought annoyed me, especially since we would probably be seeing combat soon if this ghost turned out to be the unfriendly sort.

"Hey, Carver, what the hell did you build these things for, anyway?"

I didn't send it over our comm system, but instead my external speakers. It was less power intensive, if only marginally, and I felt the conversation would help to keep everyone less on edge. The mages along with us were pretty dependable, or at least they seemed it, but it was Terath and Morakath I was more concerned about. I wanted them at ease, not jumpy and prone to panic.

I didn't want them getting in the way. I'd assigned Chen and one of the mages to deal with each man, protecting them, or throwing them to the ground to keep them from getting in the way, if that turned out to be necessary.

"To shoot things?" Carver turned around, confusion and annoyance evident as he held his arms out, palms up.

"Right, I get that, but what were your criteria? Are these things going to hold up to the heat out here? Or did you just optimise them to make a really big bang?"

"They'll hold up to anything you can throw at the old rifles, and maybe more besides. Why?" He scowled.

"Okay, what about maintenance?" I pressed.

"Are you nervous? Is that what this is about?"

"I'd just really like to know if something will break under these conditions before I have to shoot something, which could be soon, you know?"

He turned back to the fore, shaking his head. "I don't know, okay? Simulations and the designs say this temperature shouldn't stress them, but I have no idea."

"I thought you said they'd hold up—"

"I know what I said." He snapped. "I'm telling you if everything works as it did in the sims, they'll be fine."

"Okay, so what if they don't hold up?"

"Well, I guess I'll have to design a mark two version, won't I?" He said bitingly.

We'd been openly bickering for a while, with short breaks in between and the constant back and forth seemed to amuse Rovald most of all, though I hadn't missed the looks coming from our travel companions.

My suit displayed a familiar alert, giving me range, bearing and precious little else on our stalker. Always at extreme ranges, and always little more than a shimmer with a barely defined humanoid outline. Though, even that was difficult to pin down.

"There it is again." I shook my head in disgust, reaching for water strapped to my armour as I lifted my helmet.

I had just taken a sip when I noticed the shimmer and red caret, the range indicator counting down steadily. I dropped my helmet and screwed the lid on tight, raising my rifle in a hurry.

"It's headed this way."

I watched as the faded-red caret kept approaching from just off the left flank of our loose single-file formation. Walking pace, or slightly faster than that. It stopped at the peak of one of the swelling sand dunes, probably wondering what the hell we were doing and why we were jumping at shadows.

We'd probably already put whoever it was on edge since the first time we'd stopped, but after that I'd noticed it had been more cautious and it had moved slower. The contact hadn't approached at anything less than a few hundred or so metres, though whether that was a result of caution or was part of its original plan before it noticed we were alerted, I couldn't say. The sand dunes were quite a distance apart, so it might've just been simple geography at play.

"Heads on swivels, boys." I ordered.

Taking my own advice, I swept the horizon, but didn't notice anything out of the ordinary, it looked to be alone. I watched as the faded-red caret trudged down the side of the dune across from us, deep impressions visible in the sand.

"Hold position. I'm going to check it out."

"Got you covered, drone has the contact locked in."

A link with Carver's recon drone, even a standard model, provided a more solid lock on the slippery contact. If my suit lost it, the drone still had a chance to relay the position to my suit. I hoped I wouldn't need it.

I put myself at the peak of the sand dune in the contact's path, as everyone else watched on, spread across the length of the dune. Then, I held my hand out, palm facing forward.

"That's far enough. What do you want?" I shouted.

The contact stopped, then a voice came from nowhere. I could very faintly make out a shimmering outline, like whoever it was was covered in a still pool of water. My suit helpfully highlighted the humanoid contact in the customary red of an unknown but presumed hostile contact.

"To talk, of course." A thick brogue, covering a man's voice greeted me. I couldn't quite place it, though, it sounded familiar but ancient, like I was talking to some prehistoric cousin of the Irish.

"About what?" I asked.

"Mind letting me stand on flat ground before we go asking questions?"

"No, no I think this is good enough. Answer my question, and drop the spell." I scowled. "I'd rather be able to see you."

"I wouldn't. Besides, it's devilishly hot out, isn't it?" I could hear the laughter in his voice.

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"Have it your way, then, but if you move before we're done speaking, I put a hole in you. Now answer my damned question."

He held up a hand, chuckling. "What would you say to a job offer?"

"A what?" I glared.

"A job offer." He repeated. "I've heard of your unique talents, bending solid steel and the like? I know you're not just swords for hire, but something truly unique."

"How would you know about that?"

"You're not nearly the secret you believe. People talk—and listen. How about you promise to do a job for me, and in return, I'll help you out with your current quest?"

"Let me guess, you want us to steal something for you?" Chen called from my right.

The man's laughter returned.

When he finally stopped, he was smiling, and oh so casually his next words slipped from his tongue. "I want you to help me kill someone. Don't worry, I've already done my research so I've purposefully chosen a job that won't go against your moral compass."

I scowled. "Kill who? This witch?"

He chuckled. "If I thought I could, I'd do it in a heartbeat, but no, she is one person I'm not ready to slay. The target I want your help with is a Kerrenium baron who controls most of the shipments coming out of Graywatch. I have a… personal grudge against him."

He paused, and the silence stretched out.

"That's it?"

"For now." He confirmed.

"I'm not promising you shit based on information that thin."

Another pause. "He's a mid-level bureaucrat named Dyrian Estoval in charge of overseeing the transport and security of Kerennium shipments coming out of the 'Watch. He's corrupt, but the stuff is so valuable that very few are willing to take a stab at him, if they even had the means."

"So, what, you're the good guy?"

He smiled as he corrected me. "No, I'm the 'guy' with a client willing to pay me in several shipments of Kerrenium alloy plates for a job well done. Are you interested?"

One of our junior mages walked up to me, leaning into whisper in my ear, or well, the side of my helmet.

"My lord, that is a fortune. He's a common thief and a killer. We should detain him now and force him to tell us what he knows."

"Jordan, right?" I asked the mage.

He nodded.

I knew immediately that wasn't going to happen. We wouldn't detain him, he wasn't our mission for one thing. For another, a fight with a mage wasn't something I was confident in coming out of without casualties or serious injury. Just killing him would probably be easier, but that wasn't a surety, either.

If he escaped, he'd be gunning for us and I didn't think it would be a risk worth taking. I'd much rather have him owe me one. I preferred building local contacts who could get things done rather than making enemies, no matter if those contacts were well-blooded assassins or politicians. In all honesty, I'd prefer the former over the latter and I was thankful I didn't have to make the choice.

I looked over to the mage and shook my head. "I'll explain later."

"If you're thinking of capturing me, you should know—"

"Just settle down, would you? No one is capturing anyone. What do you want our help for—specifically?"

"Assuming strength isn't the only thing you bring to the table, I want you to help me kill this Kerrenium baron, and dismantle his corrupt subordinates."

"And what do we get?"

"You get everything I have on Sefira, what little there is."

"Stay sharp." I said, over the suit comms. I received two affirmative signals shortly after.

I was tempted by his offer, as were going into the situation blind. We had some very basic ideas, but practically zero solid intel to speak of. We knew where she was, but only down to a city, and we knew what intel she had to offer us, but past that? We didn't have a whole hell of a lot.

"We accept your terms, and by 'we' I mean us three Marines. The mages here are not part of our deal. Got it?"

"Understood. I'll find you again when I need you."

"You're leaving?"

"Of course. Everything I have is on this." He reached into the folds of whatever he was wearing, the pocket of some robes or a coat maybe. Regardless, I couldn't even see him properly—all I had was a composite scan of him, filtered through half a dozen different technologies—so I was already on alert.

"Hold it!" I snapped, my railgun coming up to press against my shoulder as I aimed at him.

With one hand high and open, the other slowly reached in to retrieve something. I tracked him with the muzzle of my gun, keeping it trained on his centre of body mass.

When he held his palm out with a small scroll on it, I let him stand there for a moment.

"Drop it."

"Drop it? It'll roll down—"

"I'm not getting close to you. Drop it."

He sighed. "You aren't the trusting sort are you?"

"Neither are you."

I swear I could hear the ghost of a smile touch his lips. "I think we'll get along just fine." He flipped his palm, letting the scroll fall away into the sand below. "See you soon, Edward."

I didn't pick up the scroll, instead waving Jordan back over. "Can you grab that from here? Hold it up a ways away. I want to make sure it doesn't have any nasty surprises."

"I can." Jordan nodded, lifting it without hesitation until it hovered in the air in front of us.

It was by all appearances, just a rolled bit of paper with a string to keep it from unfurling, but I knew better than to trust appearances.

"You are so paranoid." Chen snickered.

"Hey, I'd rather be cautious than have an IED take my hand off, or some kind of poison. He's a self-proclaimed assassin. How long do you think before someone takes a shot at us?"

"Did I say paranoid? I meant extremely paranoid." He amended.

"You meant cautious."

Scanning indicated no tampering, explosives or anything dangerous of any kind.

"Check it."

Jordan looked at me funny.

"For explosives, poisons, any kind of trap. If there's a scrap of magic on it, that'd be good to know, too."

"Ah, I understand. A moment."

Jordan took his moment and we soon determined it was safe to open. After opening it and reading it, we all found ourselves wondering if this Sefira was just a monster in human skin, or the devil himself. Either way, she probably wasn't someone we wanted to be trying to bribe for information, if we could help it, which we couldn't.

"Collects organs in jars, studies the effect of including blood in Kerrenium and the effects on runes—Does this mean she's a blood mage?"

"Catchy." I deadpanned. "I guess so. What do you all think?"

I turned to the mages who'd arrayed themselves shoulder to shoulder on one side of our little circle. They each looked like they'd seen a ghost.

"Unholy—" Rovald started, before devolving into cursing. I didn't understand the words, but his tone was unmistakable to me.

I reached over and took the note, reading it once, then twice. Personal friendship with a Majordomo Anwyn, rumor that she wiped out an entire village for refusing to treat her injured companion and a single line that simply said 'rats', whatever that meant. The note was extensive, but it did give me an idea. It mentioned that new security was scouted for on a regular basis by her subordinates in a monthly tournament.

"Rovald, what's wrong?" Carver asked.

"She's a harvester." Distaste—no, utter disgust—warped his voice.

"Which is?"

"Hey, how much further?" Chen asked.

"Six hours, give or take." Terath replied.

"What's a harvester?" I repeated.

"You don't want to know." Rovald said.

"He's right. You don't." Terath agreed, settling into step behind me.

Similar sentiments came from all the non-Terrans.

Rovald continued. "The practice of harvesting is outlawed, it has been for several hundred years. I can see why it was needed though."

Carver sighed. "What exactly is harvesting? Why are you all so…"

Rovald explained. "Harvesting is the practice of taking a mage's power from them. It's not pretty. Blood is power when it comes to magic, quite literally in this case."

"You mean they take a mage's blood?"

Rovald nodded, sighing. "They bottle it like rum, and not just for power. They rip fragments of memory from the mage in question."

"Memory fragments?" I wondered.

"Flashes of memory, yes. I'm sure there's more to it, but the practice was outlawed. I only know what I know because I used to hunt them."

"You hunted them?"

"I was a Hunter. My job was to find mages that had broken our laws and bring them in, sometimes dead, sometimes… not. It'd surprise you how many Empire-born mages think they can wield magic the same way they do out here in the Empire."

I was starting to put the pieces together, but to me it sounded like this Sefira was a practitioner of a taboo, or at least, a taboo in most of the world. The picture I was building of her was growing clearer with each scrap of new information I learned, though.

"What makes it all worse is that it's usually done while the mage is still alive so the mage's power remains intact during preservation. The Empire has long used it as a method of execution, and its prisoners are very rarely not executed when they are no longer useful."

"Unreal." Chen muttered.

"If only that were true." Rovald sighed.

I spent the next few hours learning more about the city Sefira lived in, the crown jewel of an Empire that was both barbaric, and remarkably passionate and artistic. That dichotomy intrigued me, but while there were many things to adore about the place, there were just as many that made me despise it. Our cover as mercenaries wasn't airtight, so I needed some way to establish ourselves and gain an introduction to the woman. That was the tricky part, the one thing we didn't have plan for yet.

I was glad none of us had magic so we would never have to experience such horrors. I couldn't say the same for all the men around me though, just us three Marines. I hoped for the sake of the mages among us that we did this clean and right the first time.

The sands changed around us, not the colour, but the feeling. It no longer felt like we were being watched. Perhaps that was my imagination, or perhaps it was that our visitor who'd given us his offer was gone.

I thought about it, his offer, and concluded that we'd need to be ready when it came time to keep up our end of the deal. Considering the dearth of information we had on anything, let alone a reclusive witch of a far-off Empire, I was glad of the information we had, but the final butcher's bill wasn't something I was sure about.