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Prince Marth watched two infantrymen bury Gordin.
Steel spades scraped against dirt, the only noise loud enough to compete against the war camp's distant murmur, and soon the cloth-swaddled body vanished under a growing pile of soil. Wood remained scarce, too precious to waste on the dead. Siege engines and cooking fires consumed what lumber his army could harvest on the constant march to stay ahead of the Shadow Dragon's pursuing legions. The needs of ballistae and war machine alike had eclipsed the needs of men in more ways than Marth was comfortable with.
His frozen mask of solemn grief and flawless poise, perfected through frequent practice, proved a strain this night for Gordin's burial hurt like no other. Recognizing this brought a fresh pang of shame into his chest. Marth believed he must afford all his vassals the same worth and loyalty—an ideal that provided no salve here.
Not yet old enough to grow a beard, Gordin had been the best bowman in the army. He had fought by his prince's side while they fled the sack of Altea Castle and willingly followed Marth into exile. Gordin had become family to Marth when the prince counted all such bonds lost forever.
Death struck down the hard and the soft, the seasoned and the novice alike, without pity or discretion. The prince had thought himself prepared for these hard truths; in book and scroll he had read often of war's horrors. Fortified by these accounts, Marth reckoned himself worldly. Nevertheless, while on campaign he fell in with a select company of soldiers, a sacred band of brothers and sisters. Over time and subtle degrees, this band grew dear to him. Marth came to accept, through a child's unthinking faith, that Death would not dare intrude into this exalted company. They moved too fast and fought too fiercely for any man or spirit to strike down. Gordin had been one such.
Marth breathed deep and braced himself against the sobs lapping against the opening of his throat. Perhaps these sundered delusions were merely the price paid for quartering a soft heart—the latter a flaw Jagen denounced as a lethal flailing in kings. If the old knight was correct, would the quivering shambles of his core now harden into new strength? The answer seemed obvious, yet the prince felt destroyed all the same.
Jagen's gauntleted hand squeezed his shoulder. The old paladin's sour face had shed its usual ruddy color and become pale in the flickering of wind-whipped torchlight. An impression that this man writhed in the grip of a bottomless, howling grief slipped over Marth. Could it be that Jagen—cold, iron blood Jagen—keenly felt the wound of their shared loss? No, Marth thought, he merely cast his own sentiment onto the visage of another.
Marth turned away from the digging to the vast furrow of the benighted valley below. There huddled the sparse campfires of his army. Though no lit torches strayed outside the camp's perimeter, Marth knew scavengers roved through that pooled darkness, his men among them, defiling the dead for loot. Emptying pockets. Cutting rings from fingers. Prying loose teeth of gold and silver and bone. When this war was young, he had ordered the burial of enemy dead beside his own fallen, thereby preventing such disgrace. Now, it was all he could manage to achieve the internment of his own men, when there was time.
The dark dragon had taught his men real fear. Few entertained fantasies of victory. If only there was a way to restore morale, and thereby preserve discipline. Marth feared without a miracle he would be powerless to prevent desertion, pillage, and rapine usurping their mission of justice and reclamation.
The grave was filled. The grave diggers began setting a cairn of stones over the sunken dirt. Unlikely it would discourage the wolves for long, but that was war—one did what one could and moved on.
Marth trudged back to his tent, Jagen a silent bulk trailing close. Ogma, captain of the 1st infantry regiment, rushed up the slope to meet them. He gave Marth a slight bow. "Commander."
"Captain Ogma. It is good to see that you are well. Will your men be ready to march come the morning?" asked Marth.
"They will march at first light or they will become closely acquainted with the sole of my boot, Your Grace. Preparations are nearly complete, but another matter requires your attention. A man has approached us expressing firm intentions of joining your army."
Marth could not fully keep the bitterness from his voice. "So it goes after every battle. Soldiers come and soldiers go. Direct him to the conscription officer's tent. I am done making a friend of each new recruit. That is why we commissioned a conscription officer."
Ogma fidgeted. "My Lord, he asked to speak with you in person."
"What of it? A sleepless night awaits me, captain, and—"
"He bypassed our two-fold perimeter."
"With our numbers so reduced this is no longer an impressive feat."
"Aye. But then the rogue slipped past seven watch patrols, stalked unseen through the heart of our camp, bypassed my personal guard, and surprised me in my own tent. He strikes me as... a soldier of singular abilities. Your Grace." Ogma bowed his head again, a silent plea for pardon.
Jagen stepped into the space between them.
"Captain, perchance it has occurred to you that this suspicious individual may well be an agent of Dolhr, dispatched on a mission of assassination. That you might, on a whim, so flippantly place our liege within arm's reach of this rogue threatens to destroy my every judgment of your competence."
Ogma leveled a hard glare at the old knight but kept his tone civil. "Yes, such a possibility had perchance occurred to me. I have taken every precaution. All due respect, sir, your terrible agent might have laid his knife's edge upon our commander's throat with far less trouble had he not saw fit to warn me first. 'Sides, what has Prince Marth to fear with you at his side, good Jagen?"
Heavy then was the tiara upon Marth's brow. He pinched the bridge of his nose, summoning the stamina to face still more work. "Father and mother forgive me, I should know by now there's no short cutting some tasks. 'A king should face the man he asks to suffer for his cause, look him in the eye and tell it plain what's expected of him.' Let us be done with this. Where is your shadow, Captain?"
Ogma pointed a calloused finger at the looming black wall of a nearby foothill. "There he waits, Your Grace. He's not trying to hide now."
Marth squinted and could only just make out the barest glint of fire winking on the distant slope.
A few guards bearing torches ran ahead to light the way. Despite the night's chill, Marth began sweating from the hard climb up the steep grade, adding a fresh layer of grime to an already battle-soiled body. If this mysterious stranger desired to foster a good initial impression, then his courtesies had best match his skulking talents.
Marth smelt the would-be recruit before he saw him. The sour aroma of burning tobacco wafted down to greet them. There, ringed in orange torchlight, sat the stranger before a small cooking fire, a worn wood pipe dangling from his lips. A blood red coal glowed in the pipe's bowl. The man reclined at perfect ease—more like a shepherd enjoying a leisurely gaze at the stars rather than an intruder facing the points of ten spears.
Struck by the impudence inherent in the man's bearing, Marth now wished he'd let Jagen hand the man over to the questioners and their hot irons.
"Well, shadow, you have tonight made a prince walk directly from the funeral of a bosom companion, up this damned hill at your pleasure. If I was any less a gentleman I'd have you seized, and your fingers and toes broken for this indignity. Speak, and make it brief."
The stranger plucked the pipe from his mouth and gave Marth the twice over. He grunted. "Heard you were young, but I didn't expect a child."
Jagen tensed. Marth gave the old knight a sharp glare before taking a step forward. Better that he deal with this himself rather than hide behind someone else and prove the stranger's barb the truth. Jengen seemed to guess his thoughts and held his tongue, but he did not relax the grip on his lance.
Marth clenched fingers tight over the grip of his blade and stopped before the stranger's cooking fire. The stripped bones of some small animal glistened in the nearby grass.
"You know my name, shadow, but I do not have yours."
"Call me Snake." The stranger half-growled his words, the voice full of grinding stones.
"A fitting name. You are correct, Snake, that I have seen fewer seasons pass than many would deem sensible for a man serving as their liege lord and general. But my enemies have discovered the hard truth, time and again, that I am no child. Have you come to swear service in my name? Or have you come as foe, eager to learn the same fatal lesson?"
Snake took in a lung's worth of smoke and pushed it out through his nose. "I'm not your enemy. But whether or not I'm your friend depends."
"Upon what?"
Snake at last meet Marth's stare. Marth did not enjoy the way this man's gaze prodded and searched, as if he weighed and judged the weaknesses and shortcomings privilege and regal bearing kept hidden away from the scrutiny of baseborn men.
Marth dared not look away from the piercing blue eyes. Would not, even if he could summon the will. Those cold, burning eyes were the sole striking feature of an otherwise plain face.
Snake asked, "Who's your chief strategist?"
"Your presumption brings you a hair's-breadth away from a long night spent in the company of tongue pincers," said Jagen.
"I am the strategist for this army," said Marth.
"Sire—"
"Enough, Jagen. Gharnef's spies know as much already. What is your point, man?"
The dry voice of Snake grated on Marth's ears. "You may not consider yourself a child. But you command an army like one."
Jagen gasped. Ogma sucked air through clenched teeth. Marth was tempted to forbear restraining his retainers this time. He swallowed his pride and asked, "I am to take it that you have great experience with command? You can organize and operate an army better than I?"
"You sign me up, I'll teach you everything I know about tactics and survival. I'll transform your army. Teach your soldiers new ways to fight. I'll show you how to turn being outnumbered into an advantage. Don't trust me? You'll face dozens of battles before you march on Dolhr soil. Listen to my advice and keep only what you like. Let me command a small band for just one minor skirmish and I'll prove my claims. My methods fail to yield results that please you, then I'm gone and you'll never see or hear from me again."
Marth observed Snake afresh. Over the course of judging uncounted new recruits and marching and fighting besides thousands of men, Marth had become an astute judge of man flesh. Where moments before he saw in the stranger an exemplar of the ordinary, renewed scrutiny revealed new truths. Snake had the build of a ranger long used to braving wilderness hardships. Features scored by weather yet not withered by deprivation. Steely thews, strong but not bulky, agile but not delicate. The prince's eyes lingered on those supple shanks, perfect for striding through the carnage of battle. Perhaps, if the man proved half as competent as he claimed, enduring a little insolence would be a meager enough price to pay.
"And why do you help us? What is your price?"
Snake took another long draw off his pipe, and fixed the prince with an icy glare. There was a sinister cast to the man's mien, but he struck Marth as a hard man, not an evil one.
"Gharnef stole something from me. The success of your war effort will help me get it back."
They waited for more, but Snake kept his silence.
"Well, what is it you seek?" asked Marth.
"None of your business."
"Unacceptable," stated Jagen.
"I accept," said Marth. Jagen made an odd noise as he choked down a litany of objections. Later there would be remonstrations and admonitions aplenty, but for now he must abide. "Are you a soldier when not playing tutor to princes?"
"Yeah. Otherwise I wouldn't have anything to teach you."
"What is your combat specialty?" Jagen asked.
Snake emptied the pipe by tapping it upside down against a rock. "It would easiest for you to think of me as a... sniper." He patted a strange crossbow at his side. Its sights had been fitted with a series of glass lenses encased in brass. The winch and lever were hammered from fine steel. Marth had not seen its like before. "Custom made. I use it to shoot people who ask too many questions."
Jagen and Ogma lurched in front of Marth, jostling each other for the honor of shielding the prince with their bodies. Marth sighed, rolling his eyes. Gordin, I think you chose an opportune time to take your leave of us.
A season passes...
"Sire, I object to the unstinting confidence you bestow upon this uncouth brigand. Bad enough you recruited him into our ranks at all," said Jagen.
"I gathered you felt as such, that fateful night on the hill," said Marth.
They strolled through the cool morning. If the intensity of sunlight blazing from every oak bough and beige clay brick served as any indication of the day to come, the city would soon swelter. Marth considered ordering a noontide break. The grand works proceeded ahead of schedule, did they not?
Marth had brought his faithful lieutenant along to inspect the astounding transformation they had worked on the modest walled city of Druss, in northern Altea. After Gharnef had dealt his forces a sound defeat in Khadein, Marth had reversed the course of his army, turning the rout into a victorious march to reclaim his homeland. The occupying forces had not expected a beaten army to march with its main strength intact, and so quickly, into their midst. With the morale of his troops renewed by the prospect of a long sought victory brought within reach of their grasp, they had washed over Hollstadt's knights and pried Morzas from the Altean throne. The fight through the occupied halls and corridors of his ancestral seat had been long and bloody, and Marth had lost still more friends before Morzas was tossed broken and bleeding from the battlements into a howling mob of the same peasants the self-proclaimed dragon sorcerer had harrowed with such pitiless efficiency.
Marth did not morn his losses for long, promising instead to save his pain for later. There was much work to be done, and no one else who could manage it all.
Around them the clang of many hammers on many anvils beat to the rhythm of passing seconds. Marth had grown more aware of time's passing as he fell in with Snake's ways of preparing for war. Thanks to the clever rogue's shared wisdom, they had managed to plunder the stockpiles of their enemy ahead of engaging them on the field of battle, before the foemen had a chance to relocate or destroy their stocks of wood and metal, thus ending the material shortages that had hampered Marth's campaign from the start. Every forge of Druss had been pressed into service. A number of homes and stores had been newly refitted into smithies to accommodate blacksmiths and metalworkers ranging in from around the countryside, eager for a share of the war funds. There was much to build, all of the designs novel. The struggle to master unfamiliar techniques and shapes would have slowed production down for a year, if not for the makeshift symposium set up in the theater, where the experienced blacksmiths demonstrated and taught the less experienced. Rather than a single master tutoring several pupils, now many experts convened to collaborate and share ideas. Snake had called it an 'academy.' Marth reflected that even if the dark dragon triumphed, the work they did here would forever change the way the artificer class operated and learned.
Teams of alchemists ground and mixed and sorted flammable powders, funneling them into casings of clay and pig iron. They labored in wine cellars and basements where stone reinforced the walls, lest innocent parties nearby pay the price for carelessness. Marth and Jagen did not linger long on this leg of the inspection tour.
Prince and retainer strolled out the gates into the open land outside the city walls, passing by the clearing where Meryl lead her caster's circle in an exercise of concentration. Marth had rescued Meryl Silverburgh from the lair of the Dragons Teeth mountain bandits a year before. She'd since shown out as the best cleric in his army. Under Snake's tutelage, Meryl grew further into its fiercest battle mage.
Every woman and man familiar with needle and thread gathered on the fields skirting the town, where they sewed swaths of canvas and flannel into greater patchwork spreads—each more than three times the height of an ordinary man.
Further out, they glimpsed the figures of Ogma and Abel leading fresh recruits through punishing sword and lance drills. Soon the troops would pair off and the drowsy summer air would fill with the peals of steel beating on steel.
In summary, every operation ran smoothly. Doom no longer seemed so near nor so certain. Of course Jagen must complain.
"In our darkest hours it ill suits you to play this lightly. Do you not see it? The very day we lose our best bowman, a marksman appears. Offering promises of easy victory. It is too convenient to be coincidence."
"Have you listened to his propositions for the new infiltration training?" Marth asked. "There is nothing easy or convenient about the changes he is suggesting. My mind reels from each new tidbit he shares."
"He is an old hand at slaughter, Sire. An assassin for certain. I look at Snake and I see a man long soaked in blood. Take care, for he will never be truly loyal to you, or anyone else. If indeed he was ever familiar with the virtue."
"We are all steeped overlong in blood, good Jagen. If his expertise can finish this war with greater haste I'll name him hero with a light heart. Is this really about Snake's... qualifications? Or do you fear my esteem for Snake has usurped the love I held for Gordin in my breast? I know you and the bowman were close."
Jagen stuttered. "Not as close as you were to the lad."
Marth arched a skeptical eyebrow. "Right. Worry not, good Jagen. Both you and Gordin I will hold as blood of my blood until the day I die. Get your rest, you old war horse. For soon we must march, lest we eat these kind townsfolk into starvation."
Months later...
Marth strode into Snake's tent, flaring the cape over his shoulders for all the drama he could wrench from the gesture. "Gharnef will finally know justice this day. And we have you to thank for it, Snake."
Snake grunted. "Just doing my job." He smeared slate gray paint over his face in broad streaks. The masonry of the drear fortress of Thabes, the stronghold Gharnef had restored from the ruins of that lost civilization, consisted of stones hued odd blue, green, and gray tints. Snake had already donned his customary suit of rags, which he called camouflage. For every theater of battle, the pattern and colors changed. This time, each shred of cloth mimicked a color of the fortress, the scraps patterned to resemble stonework. This helped confuse the human outline, making it difficult to spot against a background, or so Snake had explained it at great length.
While Snake was busy putting on his face, Marth seized the opportunity to admire the rangy, steely thewed glory possessed by the strangest, and many said finest, soldier the modern Altean military had ever known. Snake spiced the customary pre-battle mix of terror and anticipation with an exotic twang of desire.
Snake tempted Marth to once again believe in a soldier who could outpace death. A man who made the impossible possible. Throbs of silent yearning threatened to collapse him to his knees.
Yet, every time the prince faced undulating ranks of foemen across a muddy field, every time he led the charge into those bristling lines of sun drenched steel, his army screaming, thundering, crushing against his back, Marth would consign himself to the hot emptiness of battle fury and uproot the desperate hope Snake would return to camp whole and hale.
And despite his pessimism, no matter the odds, Snake emerged alive through every skirmish, sowing anew hope's seeds in the battle harrowed soil of the prince's heart. Thus the cycle of bitter seasons—blight at the commencement of each new battle. And each battle's end planted within Marth another crop of cruel, cruel hope.
Suffering throughout the long campaign, Marth had at last been inspired to establish a singular ritual in the hopes of threshing out a modicum of joy from this bitter harvest of emotional turmoil. It was well known among warriors that a man's blood ran hot before battle. Passions churned up into a maelstrom, leading men to seek some manner of desperate comfort, whether it be simple drink and song, conversation with brothers-in-arms about the family and home left so far behind, moping over keepsakes, or re-polishing weapons. And if a willing partner made her presence known, frenzied trysts under the scant privacy of a blanket were not an uncommon result. Before every battle Marth would come alone to Snake's tent bearing a gift and an easy smile while the marksman girded for war. And so far, every approach had been met with the same result.
Marth held out the blue glass phial to his chief adviser. "Here, take this elixir. A poor gift, perhaps, but useful."
Snake undid the cork and gave the liqueur a tentative sniff. "What is it?"
"A potable that restores full vitality to even the most direly wounded, provided one is alive enough to digest it. There is no injury it cannot unmake. The secrets of the potion's manufacture are closely guarded. It is very expensive."
Snake handed the bottle back to Marth. "Thanks, kid. That's sweet of you. But I don't need it."
Marth's smile grew brittle as it strained to mask the poignant hurt welling up at this casual rejection. He pushed the phial back into Snake's hand, back against Snake's chest. "Knowing you will be that much safer will set me at ease. A commander possessing a settled mind is vital on the battlefield," said Marth.
"Since you put it that way. Can't have you losing your concentration. Sir Nanny would never forgive me." Snake accepted the elixir and slipped it into the belt pouch that stored his vulneraries.
"You are too hard on Jagen," Marth said lightly. He batted his lashes. "You could go harder on me."
Snake was no longer listening. "Just remember, kid. Your primary mission is to stay alive. Let Meryl and the mage corps take care of Gharnef, no matter how much you want to get your hands on him."
Marth leaned in, drooping well-kempt eyelashes over a smoldering bedroom gaze. "Meryl will outrace wild horses to reach the target before I do, so no worries there. Again, thank you, for everything. Would that I could somehow reward you... adequately."
Marth set a hand on Snake's shoulder. He thrilled to the pinch and pull of corded muscles beneath the fabric. "Snake..."
Snake turned, pulling away from Marth's hand, and bent over to retrieve his crossbow. Marth was so upset his subtle gambit had failed that he missed this prime chance to observe Snake's supple flanks.
"You're a good man, Marth, and a better king. That's something I never thought I'd see. History will know too few of your caliber before it ends," Snake said. His words had a wistfulness to them the prince had never heard before.
Emotion tightened Marth's throat. He tried to speak again but all that came out was a whisper of a croak. Snake brushed aside the tent flap and vanished into the rushing crowd of soldiers.
Less than an hour later...
Marth vaulted over the parapet into a rolling landing. He uncurled, hugging the ground as he'd trained. Hardly dignified, but Snake had taught him displays of poise and grace held a dim and distant tertiary priority behind survival on the battlefield.
An enemy mage turned, face stretched with horror to find an enemy suddenly, silently at his back. The prince's rapier punched a red hole through the pale skin of his throat. The magus fell, trampled under Marth's hurrying boots.
Through the smoke streaked sky above, Caeda led her squadron of pegasus knights in a final pass over Thabes. They flew too high to fling their javelins with any accuracy—instead it was men they dropped from the backs of their winged horses.
The pegatroopers waited only three seconds before unfurling their aerochutes. These ingenious canopies gathered the wind in order to tug against gravity's pull—sewn from cloth, linen, silk, or whatever material could be scrounged from the stores and homes of peasants.
The troopers seesawed on their tethers and spiraled earthward into the teeth of the fortress, short swords and short bows strapped to their backs.
Even as Marth hesitated to watch, one of the pegatroopers took an arrow to the small of his back. The rest of his unit could only watch and listen to his screams as they twirled helpless on the breeze beside him. The deployment method had its drawbacks, but the pegatroopers and pegasus bombardiers had made a night's work of fortress defenses that ordinarily would've required months to break. Just one more life-saving measure for which they had Snake to thank. Marth chided himself for his expositional daydreaming and focused on the battlefield around him. Seeing no other enemies in the immediate vicinity, he resumed his charge into the fortress's center.
"Gharnef, face me!" he screamed over the clangor of mortal combat.
"Here I stand, boy."
Marth spun, rapier sheering a vicious chest-high arc through empty air. Gharnef stood just outside the blade's range, leering. Skin alive with the purple writhing of living enchantments, he reached out with clawed, withered hands. Marth shrieked and whipped the sword up, slashing clean through desiccated flesh and ancient bone before those lethal talons could seize hold of his throat.
Gharnef paid no heed to his sudden lack of arms and instead licked a violet tongue over crinkled black lips. Bringing the trailing leg up to the lead position, Marth leveled the rapier and drove the whole length through the rib cage, throwing all his weight behind the blow, spearing the sorcerer's heart.
Gharnef ripped open. Instead of gore, chilling laughter erupted from the hollowness within as his body twisted and dissolved. Marth swore. Another mirage! Would there ever be an end to them? Yes, he told himself. He raced up a broad set of basalt stairs to a nearby battlement. They would end when their creator perished.
The central keep loomed overhead, so grand in scale it could contain the entirety of an ordinary stronghold within its walls. An eerie quiet stalked the high battlements, the sounds of clashing forces fainter here than it seemed they should be. Marth strode into the shadow of keep, the dark heart of his enemy's power, well ahead of his troops, alone.
Around the nearest corner Marth stumbled into a small squad of his soldiers, all of them slain. Faceless bodies. Cinders and putrescence draped their frames where once there had been flesh. Among the tangle of broken weapons Ogma's sliver great sword shone red with dying sunlight though it was yet midday. The corpse which clutched it was little more than ash molded into the crude shape of a man.
Marth's vision blurred. An iron will stilled his head's swimming. He gripped his sword all the tighter. This foul manner of death he recognized all too well. It was the master's mark of Gharnef the sorcerer, second in command to the shadow dragon Medeus. The same devil that had slain Marth's father and now his loyal captain.
As was common of craftsmen who took undue pride in their craftsmanship, the master gloated over his master's work.
Gharnef waited for him atop a hill of dead men.
He was ancient beyond reckoning. Heavy robes of midnight blue and Stygian black made a hulking menace of the sorcerer's decrepit, hunchbacked body. His face was a mosaic of graveworm skin and warty nightmare clinging like a parasite to a lumpish skull. Gharnef beckoned: Approach. Desires too depraved for mere words to contain glittered in the black spear wounds that were his eyes.
"I have no more need of you, princeling. Your armies have sundered the nations and defanged my master. Your sacrifices have made possible my dominion of this earth. The part you play in this has long passed. You have come too far. Too far!"
Gharnef held aloft the dread tome Imhullu, book of darkest magic. Its cover, leather cut and cured from a human face, writhed, whether by air rippling from eldritch magic's heat or by the flesh's own volition it was impossible to say.
Marth flew the distance between them and surged up the corpse mound before Gharnef uttered three syllables. Marth stabbed and slashed, locked in a berserker frenzy. The keen point and blade of his rapier did not so much as fray the hem of the sorcerer's robe. While Gharnef held Imhullu no weapon of man possessed the power to harm him. Gharnef cackled in triumph.
"You've done enough, Your Grace. Stand aside. You'll only get in my way," Meryl said. She had arrived at last, alone. Her unit, as Marth would later learn, had been slain soon after the battle's commencement—ambushed and cut down by a cadre of snipers. Snake's suggestion that all the mages under her command pose as Meryl's body double fooled the assassins, presenting them a dozen targets instead of one.
Meryl held high a book of her own, this one bound in plain white felt. The sorcerer's eyes widened for he recognized well that particular tome. Starlight, the spell of Imhullu's bane, obtained through much sacrifice and despite impossible odds. Gharnef had hoped never to see its brilliance again.
Meryl quickly weaved a spell reading from memory Starlight's glowing verse. So great was his experience Gharnef had only to intone a few phrases from the bleak prose of Imhullu to cast a vastly more complex spell.
Gharnef proved more fleet than Meryl in their contest. Imhullu's blast of destructive power manifested as a visage of black smoke and purple fire. Its countenance radiated an undying hate. A mere glimpse rendered the prince's mind down to a buzzing, roiling cauldron of primal terror. The spell gaped its jaws and hurtled at Meryl. She stood unmoved as a pillar of stone. The dark ethereal waters of Imhullu's terrible face split against her, eddied, evaporated. The spell died with a fading shriek, leaving her untouched. Meryl finished her own chant and sent the perfect incandescence of Starlight's glory crashing through the sorcerer.
Gharnef crushed shut the wormholes of his eyes as the penetrating light seized his core with blazing fingers. His mouth tore apart into a ragged hole from which no scream emerged. The reek of rotting blood and boiled urine clawed its way inside Marth's head.
On his knees, body smoking, rasping what little breath he could manage, Gharnef rolled his eyes up at Meryl, who stood victorious above him.
"This next one will kill you." She opened the book of Starlight.
Gharnef croaked. "Think you've won..."
Marth stood, still wobbling in his boots. "I'd say that is an accurate assessment of the situation."
"Your bondswoman has bested my ancient magic, princeling. But there is no match against the blackest art of them all—the techni. Behold!" Gharnef laughed, the noise of evil excitement growing more and more shrill until Marth was certain the sorcerer's throat would rip asunder. "Your doom sallies forth to claim you. The Steel Gear comes!"
"Give him another blast," Marth said.
"Gladly," said Meryl.
The chant complete, Starlight's splendor overwhelmed the trembling mound of refuse that had once been a man. Gharnef kept laughing, even as the holy magic smote him, burned him, splintered him into a thousand, thousand flakes of light, and blew him away. The ashes snowed over Thabes.
All that remained of the darkest stain on Altea's history was a scorch mark upon the flagstones. The sorcerer's laughter lingered, retreating into the sky like a fleeing bat.
A new, more worrying noise rose above the clangor of war. What began as a low rumble soon shook stone towers to swaying. Marth and Meryl struggled to remain standing as the drear fortress trembled.
The noise and shaking ceased. Stillness and silence reigned for the span of three heartbeats.
Then a nearby section of the central keep's wall crashed to the battlement, revealing what might have once been an emperor's dining hall. Tapestries and tables had made way for snake nests of huge lead pipes, ropes of copper cords, and iron chains. Battered work benches bowed under heaps of buzzing, sparking contraptions the like of which the prince had never seen before. In the dim center of the grand vaulted chamber a greater hulk stirred; its obscure outline defied the ability of Marth's language to encompass or describe its nature.
The monstrosity's waking yawn was the agonized screeching of a thousand trampled banshees. White steam clouds billowed out from the stronghold's unseen depths. Yet even these blinding vapors failed to fully shield the stricken eyes of man from the groaning horror heaving forth from its shadow haunted stone crib. In great plodding steps the thing emerged into daylight and marched towards the massing army. The impact of its footfalls upon the battlement rattled Marth's teeth.
Armored all in lacquered steel it was. Vents and nostrils of hammered bronze gushed steam. The gears of its namesake wheeled and gnashed their teeth in well-greased grace, driven by the pressure of steam. Escapements and drive arms and pistons and flywheels labored with shuddering fury, cranking the thing's legs, powering its weapons. The Steel Gear possessed a lopsided form, one bulky shoulder-like structure hosting a single red-tinted glass lens leering from is center. Marth gazed into that lens and fought vainly a creeping horror which said the Gear could think, reason, and most of all, hate.
By now every surviving unit had mustered around Marth on the wide battlement surrounding the keep. There had been no plan to deal with this contingency; they had supposed the death of Gharnef should end the struggle for Thabes. None gathered knew how to proceed.
A few soldiers closest to the thing, having formed a wedge to charge the newly opened breach, stood frozen before the advancing Gear, unable to tear their eyes away from the machine's unspeakable majesty. Too late came the instinct to flee. The Gear split wide its maw and spewed a withering hail of barbed quarrels into retreating backs and exposed faces.
Hatches in its underbelly slid open and out rolled searing orbs of fire growing hotter the longer they remained exposed to air, setting aflame all they encountered with fires no water could quench or cloth could smother.
The attacks of the Steel Gear wrecked a soul wrenching carnage among the massed fighting forces. Losses rapidly grew severe. Panicked troops began to shove and trample their comrades. More than a few were pushed over the battlement's edge to fall screaming to the courtyard far below.
Marth clenched a fist. This monstrosity must not be allowed to claim more lives! A blow had to be struck before chaos subsumed all military order.
Marth waved forward the grenadiers. Grim and sweating, the bomb handlers inched forward and began lighting fuses. Marth felt quiet and small in their presence. A man or woman had to be brave indeed to volunteer for the grenadier unit. The grenades were temperamental explosives with a one-in-fifty chance of detonating prematurely in the hands of their wielders.
The grenadiers hurled the bombs in white-eyed fervor, unable to decide if they feared their weapons or the Gear more. The round metal and oblong ceramic jackets (packed with explosives whose formula of manufacture was yet another of Snake's many secrets) pelted their target, but the lobs had been mistimed. Those thrown too soon bounced off the Gear and rolled harmlessly away, or exploded midair if thrown late.
The first line fell back, the secondary row stepped forward. They had observed the errors of their comrades and attempted to adjust the timing of their throws. No longer combating massed forces of flesh and blood, here their timing had to be perfect if the blasts were to touch the murder engine loping ever closer. Squinting, panting, murmuring prayers, they ignited their fuses and hurled away.
This day the grenadiers displayed skill and daring that would live forever in verse and ballad. Many of the hand bombs ignited upon the Gear's frame. No one lost a hand. For a moment smoke and swirling dust obscured the horror. The Gear groaned and a cheer rose up from the ranks.
The black powder smoke blew clear and the Gear emerged scorch marked but undaunted. The explosions but pocked the perfect sheen of the metal hide. The Steel Gear marched forth with nary a hitch in its gait.
The first line of grenadiers stepped forward once more and lobbed their smoldering charges for dear life. The Steel Gear endured the blasts. Grenades exploding beneath the machine's feet as it completed a step were not enough to knock it off balance. A trap door unhinged from the Gear's underside, where issued forth a cloud of yellow vapors. The miasma swept over the grenadiers, and in seconds they were rolling on the flagstones, clawing at their throats, their eyes. Many began vomiting blood.
Those on the periphery of the cloud were able to run and leap to safety, for the gas quickly dissipated, but for Marth's brave grenadiers it was too late. They had met an ignoble end, to the last man.
Meryl led what few battle mages remained in a flanking maneuver. Their spells, even the legendary Starlight, reflected off the armor, returning to their point of origin with flawless accuracy. Meryl and the rest bore the brunt of their mirrored wrath with minimal damage, for their resistance to mystical harm was far above that of a normal man's. That same immunity crumpled under the Gear's counterattack: a hissing rain of steel shot sparking blue lightning—a swarm of slaying metal. Marth lost sight of Meryl in the chaos. Mages and soldiers fell broken and bleeding, twitching bodies crawling with arcs of lightning.
What discipline and courage remained went out of his army then. Letting out a great collective wail they turned heel and ran, yet found little space into which they might flee. Struggling bodies clogged every set of stairs and ramp.
Marth seethed through gritted teeth. The reek of blood filled his nose and smoke burned his throat. "Oh, horrible and damnable day!" What weapon remained to them? What stratagem could deliver them from the relentless evil of the Steel Gear?
And then Snake stood among them.
He lingered a mere second, brow furrowed in concentration, then broke ranks, running full tilt towards the Gear. A cylinder of blackened steel thrust out from the machine's side and drew aim on Snake. From this new protuberance's perforated nose shot a stream of miniature spears. Snake leaped sideways, out from the path of the torrent and continued to advance on the Gear, running a serpentine rout. The tails of his headband flapped out behind him—the tattered battle standard of a one man army. He reached the crushing foot, mounting it before the Gear's blast of darts chased him down. Marth and his army watched on in silent awe as Snake climbed to the knee and began cramming the spaces between the knee shield and joint with bombs plucked from the bunches of them hung, plentiful as grapes on a vine, from various belts secured around his body.
The Gear kicked its leg, trying to jostle the offending particle loose. Snake lit a fuse. He dropped to the flagstones to escape the conflagration, but was not quick enough.
The bombs detonated before Snake reached safe distance. The Gear's knee vanished into a cloud of shrapnel and gray smoke. The shock hurled Snake across the battlement. He rolled to a stop and did not move.
"Snake! No, Snaaaaake!" Marth ran for the fallen soldier. Jagen's shouted plea for him to turn back went unheeded. Along the way Marth snatched up a brace of grenades from one of the felled grenadiers.
Snake, coughing and twitching, staggered to standing just as Marth reached him. Blood slicked the entire left side of Snake's body, oozing from dozens of small holes punched in him by exploded metal shards. The left arm hung limp, and still Snake turned his smoldering gaze to the Gear, his breathing shallow and rapid.
Everything reeked of campfires and blood and scorched copper. Steel Gear, spurting black ichors, hobbled onwards, dragging its ruined leg under it, filling the world with the shriek of tortured metal. The Altea Liberation Army continued to fall back before it, entire lines of men crushed back into parapets, crammed into blocked stairways.
Snake groped for the brace of bombs as Marth sprinted past, but the prince refused to let go and yanked it from him. "You must not die," Marth told him. "For once it shall be I who completes the mission."
"Don't be stupid, kid. Just... just give me something to eat..."
"Drink the damned elixir!" Marth shouted over his shoulder. He heard not the wind in his ears nor the breath scraping through his raw throat, only the shriek and thud of the Gear closing on his cowering army. Marth gritted his teeth and pulled a bomb from the brace.
The chill of the machine's shadow draped him. Steel Gear pivoted on the remains of its limb faster than seemed possible and gaped wide its jaws. A flicker of color fishtailed through the air. A strange, irresistible pressure shoved Marth backwards, pushing into the soft space below his lungs.
Marth landed, feeling feather light, coming to rest sprawled on his back. He could not move. The sky looked unusually dim and brown. Shouldn't it be blue?
He experienced a vague, blurry sense that the world continued thrashing and cracking and shrieking around him. Mostly, though, he felt a cool satisfaction. Finally, a moment of relaxation stolen from the unceasing grind of leadership. At one point a great warmth rolled over him and the sky dimmed further. A great hammering racket pummeled him with clubs of feather down and silk, but, Marth had to confess, he wasn't really paying attention anymore. Sorry, lads, I simply must go napping.
Shock snipped out a span of memory's ribbon. Foggy at first, the world drew near again with increasing clarity. Marth had no sense of how much time had passed. Panic and confusion seized him. Years, what if years had gone by?
"You're going to be fine. Just hang on." A face he didn't recognize hovered far above. A face covered in stubble. The man wore a fine pair of seeing glasses. Those must have cost a fortune, Marth mused, his mind loose, his grip on reality tentative.
"Wh—who?" Warmth of a different kind than before surrounded and hoisted his spirit up from the welcoming darkness, hauling him back into an ungrateful body.
The stranger wailed. "Please! Don't die on me."
"Stop your fretting. He'll live," said Meryl. The staff in her hands ceased glowing, the healing spell complete.
Marth found he could rise to sitting without dizziness or hemorrhaging.
"My head nurse I recognize," he said, smirking as Meryl rolled her eyes at the hated nickname. "But who might you be? A bishop?"
The stranger wore the white robes and peaked, vaguely phallic hat signifying high-ranking membership in the order of priests, but he blushed and stammered like no holy man Marth had ever met.
"I'm just glad you're all right. I'd never forgive myself if my creation had killed you. It's already destroyed so many," the bishop said, voice quavering.
A fully healed Snake butted in. "It's not your fault. Gharnef would've enslaved someone else to carry on the work. Once he'd stolen your designs it was already too late. Your death would've accomplished nothing and the world still needs you. I still need you."
"Oh Snake, I'm so glad you're—" Marth stopped short as Snake and the bishop embraced. The two men held each other for a long, lingering moment. The gesture held a wealth of information. It told Marth everything he needed, but never wanted, to know.
"You wanted to know why I joined, why I wanted to take down Gharnef," Snake said to Marth. His voice still grated, but much of its usual tension had eased. "This is my best friend Hal. Saving him is the whole reason I joined this war. Gharnef held him captive, threatening to kill hostages if he didn't comply in building the Steel Gear. With his ultimate war machine operational, Gharnef—"
Snake kept on for a while, explaining with one of his characteristically tiresome monologues (marred by the occasional interjection from Hal) Gharnef's nefarious plans and recounting how he was able to finally destroy the Steel Gear. Marth heard none of it. It was difficult to recall why he had previously enjoyed listening to Snake's speeches. Marth suddenly hated this supposed holy man with all his might, uncaring if the contents of his heart earned him the eternal disfavor of the gods.
Saving him is the whole reason I joined this war.
Marth wheezed an indignant huff. Some secrets were better left a mystery.
The following morning...
"He knew his business," Jagen said with unhindered respect. The tone vanished immediately. "Generations yet unborn will read how we waged war against impossible odds, and won. They will likely never learn who was truly responsible for victory. War. War has changed. And for good or ill that man used us to do it."
Jagen shrugged and set down a bottle of Talys red and two wine glasses. "Life continues on for the rest of us. Only the dead find the peace we fight for. Snake knew we will carry on nearly as well without him." The corners of his mouth curved up by the slightest degrees as the hard, flat line of his eyebrows softened into a shallow arch. This was the closest Jagen came to smiling and Marth twisted inside to see it. The paladin poured out two full glasses of the wine.
Marth's voice creaked as he muttered into goose down pillows. "He chose a sniveling knave in a gown over me. I should have made Snake bend the knee and swear fealty when I had the chance. Better his Prince than his cuckold."
"Regrets are like vultures, Your Grace. Reluctant to depart if one should be foolish enough to offer them an easy meal. A future king has no time to tend such as they."
Marth threw a pillow at the paladin. The shot flew wide to such a degree that Jagen didn't bother shielding the wine.
"You are full of splendid advice. Do take it with you when you jump into the nearest stream, I beg you."
"I'd rather be full of wine. Come. Drink." Jagen carefully placed the glass in his prince's hand, closing Marth's fingers around the stem.
After downing the unrelenting torrent of spirits at last night's victory feast and paying indulgence's due price this morning, Marth swore never to imbibe again. Healing magics removed the worst of the suffering, but no sorcery could vanquish the sensation of sand grinding behind the eyes, or fully dissipate the souring of one's belly. And so Marth had returned to his bed, cursing Gharnef for researching engines of death instead of hangover cures.
Yet, the small weight of the wine glass in hand beckoned. The first warm sip carried the tart notes and half-forgotten accents of a long lost island summer. Marth felt an inkling of a fraction less sorry for himself.
"You are happy he left," said the prince.
"I admit to betraying a scant degree of relief, Your Grace."
''Indulging a heaping measure of petty satisfaction, you mean.''
Snake's departure had come as no surprise. Marth first cultivated suspicions early in the victory celebration when he witnessed Snake guide his bishop friend, flushed and laughing, towards his tent, one supple arm draped across Hal's slim shoulders.
Before first light, Marth infiltrated Snake's tent, braced for the worst. When he pulled aside the flap and saw nothing but a tidy cot, empty but for a single scroll of paper, fresh pain stabbed through the center of him.
Snake and Hal had vanished, stealing two bags of gold for severance pay.
The letter now sat unfurled on his desk. It displayed a few terse lines of spidery handwriting, the black ink blotched and whorled where tears had fallen and dried.
Despite the grim acceptance Marth labored to cultivate within, some portion of his hardening heart failed to fully petrify. This weak spot bore spiderweb cracks, for a seed of hope still germinated there. The rising weed sprout strained against the softer stone of his heart. The hope that Snake would make the impossible possible, one last time. Just for him.
Jagen slurped the wine with relish. "Nonsense. If my spirits seem especially lifted this morning it is because happier tidings give them wing. A new recruit appeared in the early hours and has offered his service at a modest price."
Marth sighed and sank back onto his cot, throwing a quilt over his head. Gordin. He recalled the funeral with a pang of guilt. How quickly they had forgotten. Marth rued ever trying to replace him. "Allow me a guess: yet another master of the bow. Goddess, spare me this plague of archers."
"Myrmidon, actually."
"If he pleases enough to set you prancing about my tent, sloshing wine hither and yon, his worth is assured. No need to bestir myself until a late breakfast has been deployed."
"'A king should face the man he asks to suffer for his cause, look him in the eye and tell it plain what's expected of him.' A slogan you authored, if I recall correctly."
"You recall in error. It's a quote from my father. I only heard it say it once, yet the words stayed with me."
Jagen cleared his throat. "I think, in this case, adhering to your father's advice will reward you well, Your Grace." His voice held a knowing, conspiratorial tone Marth did not find at all reassuring.
Marth collided with the hard truth. There would be no rest this morning. The war against the dark dragon continued. He shoved out of bed and made himself ready for the day. Washed and clothed, last he donned a mask of regal stoicism. He was finished with betraying interest. Done with leaving his defenses down. If need be, he would greet what remained of life as a series of funerals.
"Why is this man's career more important than my breakfast again?" he asked Jagen. They marched past tents pitched in straight rows. His men busied themselves with packing up for the next march.
"During the strike on Thabes this swordsman was seen slaying three wyvern riders in turn. We have the confirmation of no less than a dozen reliable witnesses."
Marth yawned. "Three wyvern riders in single combat? If you expect me to believe that you should first let me down another few glasses of wine."
"It's true," said a foreign voice. It did not grate and grind as Snake's had, but nonetheless held a trace of his old snarl. Marth spun to face its owner. He gasped. His mask of indifference cracked.
"Sire, this is Raiden, the myrmidon," Jagen said. The paladin's stony face betrayed a hint of smirk.
Marth swept back an errant bang of hair. "Rye-den. That's a... well, that name is... unique?"
"It's not a real name, but it's all I have," said the young man. He was slender, as was common with sword masters. Whipcord muscles shifted under his tunic—thews that did not relax so much as lie in wait. A sword long and lean like its master hung in scabbard from his left hip. A sleek otter fur hat with a double-fold brim tamped down a wild hay-blond shock of hair. This soldier of fortune was a man of taste, a quality which had eluded Snake.
Marth swallowed and besought his heart to be the hell still. He said, "I do not wish to impugn you as a liar, good sir. If it is true you slew three wyvern riders in single melee then you are indeed a blademaster of preternatural skill. Tell me, do you consider yourself immortal?"
"No. Not immortal," Raiden rasped. "I just don't fear death."
Marth's mask shattered. A smile rushed the breach in defenses to seize control of his lips. Jagen was right. This was worth a whole week of forsworn breakfasts. "Then we must cross blades sometime, if only that I may learn something of your... deft touch."
The End