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  For my brother and sister.

  PART I

  True progress has a cost. Few are willing to pay it.

  —Osyrus Ward

  1

  PRIVATE RIGAR

  Dainwood Jungle, Sector Two

  Wormwrot scouts found the mud totems an hour before dark. Lieutenant Droll called a halt.

  The men crowded around to get a look. There were about fifty of the little bastards, pinched from the earth like miniature demons, twisted into positions of suffering, and adorned with all manner of unsettling decorations: Broken fingernails. Shattered bone fragments. Human eyeballs.

  The grisly scene made Rigar’s skin crawl.

  “Fucking animals,” mumbled their sergeant, Grotto. “Just got no decency at all.”

  That meant something, coming from Grotto. Before the reformation of Wormwrot, he’d been muscle at one of Commander Vergun’s gambling dens. Apparently, his favorite punishment for catching men cheating at dice was grabbing their fingers and tearing them off with his bare hands.

  “Wouldn’t say they’ve got zero decency,” said Lieutenant Droll, scratching at one of his wild mutton chops, which had streaks of silver amidst the dirty black mane. “They just don’t dole much out to foreign soldiers encroaching on their land.”

  Grotto gave Droll a cold look. The men didn’t care for each other, that was known. If the enemy didn’t kill one of them soon, Rigar was fairly certain they’d kill each other.

  In that event, Rigar privately hoped that Grotto turned out to be the murdered party. Droll was a strict commander with no tolerance for laziness, cowardice, or panicked behavior during a fight. But he was generally fair with his men, and he’d kept them alive this long. Grotto was plain evil—here for the blood and the violence as much as the money. He’d inflict pain on the enemy when they were available. When they weren’t, Grotto’s ire often shifted to his own men.

  “Should we turn back to an extraction point?” asked a new recruit, whose name Rigar hadn’t bothered to learn. He’d only been with them a week. At this point, Rigar didn’t learn anyone’s name unless they proved they could survive for a month in the Dainwood.

  Given how bad the last few months had been, half the men in the unit were anonymous to him. They’d most likely stay that way.

  “You scared of some mud figurines, soldier?” Grotto asked him.

  The recruit shrugged. “Don’t they got magical powers? Or command forest monsters or something?”

  “Forest gods,” someone down the line corrected.

  Grotto spat. Sighed. “These two idiots.”

  Droll stepped in. “They don’t have magical powers. But the fact those eyes haven’t been stolen by crows means they’re recent. That means we stay on the ground till we root ’em out. We’ll head to Fallon’s Roost for the night. Hunker down with the skeleton crew posted there.”

  “Fuck that,” said Grotto. “I say we—”

  Grotto stopped talking when a long shadow fell over him and stayed there.

  Their unit’s acolyte had come up the line, and now towered over them. Horns made from dragon bones jutted from his scalp. His eyes glowed an unnatural, orange color. Apparently, the earliest acolytes all wore masks that hid their disturbing faces, but the latest war models didn’t need them.

  Strange as they looked, they all had simple, numeric identifiers. This one was 408.

  “What is it?” Acolyte 408 hissed. His voice was raspy and stressed. Reminded Rigar of burnt meat crackling over a fire.

  “More of their mud statues, sir,” said Droll.

  In general, Wormwrot wasn’t big on sirs and salutes. Long as you followed your orders when the steel was out and the blood was flying, Vergun allowed his grunts to keep things pretty informal. But Osyrus Ward was their employer on this contract, and his terrifying acolytes tended to illicit a stiffer response from the men.

  “Figured we’d make for Fallon’s Roost to pass the night, then go searching in the morning,” Droll continued.

  Acolyte 408 surveyed the totems on the road for a moment, then stomped through them, flattening a significant number with his swollen feet.

  He headed toward Fallon’s Roost. They followed.

  The acolytes were a mixed bag in Rigar’s opinion. Terrifying as all hell—and known to murder Wormwrot grunts for no discernible reason. If a man took a piss in a place that an acolyte didn’t like, he could get his head torn off for the infraction. But they were gods in combat. Rigar had personally seen Acolyte 408 send thirty-three wardens down the river—tore ’em apart like chaff with the razor-sharp spikes that popped from his fists during a fight.

  The memory still gave Rigar nightmares.

  They walked for an hour before Fallon’s Roost came into view. It was one of the largest holdfasts along the northern rim of the Dainwood.

  When they got within a hundred strides of the fortress, that same new recruit stubbed his toe on something metallic.

  “Ow, shit!” hissed that recruit, frowning at the offending object, which was a bunch of armor balled up around a skeleton. “What the fuck is that?”

  “Dead Jaguar,” said Rigar.

  The recruit frowned. “How’d he get all balled up like that?”

  “You don’t know?”

  The recruit shrugged. “Tell me.”

  Rigar sighed. The prospect of a night in the jungle behind proper walls had relaxed him enough to tell the story. Which he could do, since he’d been there.

  “This here’s the site of the biggest victory we’ve won against the Jaguars to date. Wormwrot took control of the holdfast early in the war and we’d been using it as our forward deploy. The Jaguars took offense to that, and attacked, which was an exceedingly foolish idea, seeing as we had twenty acolytes on the walls.”

  “So, an acolyte did this?”

  “Well, that’s actually a matter up for debate,” Rigar said, then glanced at Droll.

  “There was a sorceress,” Droll said. “I fucking saw her.”

  “Sorceress?” the recruit asked.

  “Yes. The Jaguars had a woman with them when they attacked. She wasn’t wearing any armor and she wasn’t carrying weapons, but she went charging into the fray all the same. When the first acolyte dropped off the walls, she cast a spell that reduced any man wearing armor into a crumpled ball like the one you just stubbed your toe on. Look around.” He gestured across the field. “They’re everywhere.”

  “Why would she cast a spell on her own soldiers?” the recruit asked.

  “Well, she obviously fucked it up. But before Fallon’s Roost, I heard acolytes were getting their spines ripped out like fish at the morning market.” Droll spat. “Nobo
dy’s seen her since then, so I’m thinking she killed herself.”

  The recruit looked at Rigar. “But you didn’t see her?”

  “I was taking a shit when the attack started. By the time I got up to the walls, all the fun was over. Just a smoking crater and a bunch of dead Jaguars. No sign of a sorceress, alive or otherwise.”

  “Yeah, but she’d have been pulled straight down to hell by the demons she fucked to get her powers,” Droll said, as if this was common and incontrovertible knowledge. “Plus, there was a whole group of Jaguars who retreated into the woods. We went after ’em, but lost the trail at a river.”

  “What happened to the acolyte?” the recruit asked.

  “Huh?”

  “That jumped off the wall.”

  “He was just stunned,” said Droll. “The bitch’s magic didn’t take. A few of those soft-palmed engineers with the dragonskin jackets flew in the next day and brought it back to Floodhaven. We stayed in the Roost for another week, but the Jaguars moved on, so we did too.”

  “And now we’re back,” said Rigar. “Whole war’s just a horrible circle.”

  They finished picking through the balled-up wardens and sounded off to the sentries on the wall. Droll sidled up next to Rigar as they headed into the holdfast and spoke to him in a low tone.

  “I’ll need you with me on double-watch tonight. I want my veterans awake and alert once the sun goes down.”

  That’s what Rigar liked about Droll. He’d pull you for a crap duty as needed, but he was always right there with you, shoveling the shit.

  “You smell trouble?”

  “They use those totems to mess with us, that’s known. Most of the time, when you get an obvious signal like that in the road, whatever savages made them are already two valleys over with no plans to return. But this time…” Droll trailed off. Scanned the hills. “Yeah, guess I do smell some trouble.”

  Rigar made a show of taking a big breath in. “All I smell is this mud and shit and rot.”

  “They tend to be pretty close traveling partners.”

  * * *

  Despite Droll’s premonition, Rigar relaxed once they were inside Fallon’s Roost.

  The Dainwood was swollen with danger at all times, but after a week of patrols in the wild jungle, a decent wall and a big acolyte guarding their crew felt like spending the night in the palace of Burz-al-dun. The men who weren’t on duty set up their bedrolls in little groups and started dicing, complaining about the bugs or the dragons or both, and sneaking sips of booze from secret canteens.

  There were a few hours before nightfall and Rigar’s watch, so he removed his boots and armor, then used a rag to wipe the red face paint from his face. Some Wormwrot men wore that shit day and night, which Rigar would never understand. Not only was it uncomfortable as all hell in the jungle damp, but it brought pimples all over his chin and cheeks.

  When that was done, Rigar ran a quick inventory of his rashes. There were three distinct varieties: a black, bumpy one on his left foot, a flaky situation along his neck, and an angry, red flare up on his upper thigh. The upper thigh area itched like a bastard, and given the location, its potential spread made him nervous.

  He dug into his pack and found the ointment a surgeon had given him before shipping out from Floodhaven. Applied it liberally to all three areas. It seemed to be working for the black bumps, but the others two were more stubborn. When they rotated back to Floodhaven, he was going to have words with that surgeon.

  As he was finishing up, Private Wister came over.

  “Any luck?” he asked with a hopeful look on his face.

  “Huh?” Rigar asked, distracted by his dissatisfaction with the ointment. “Oh, right. The boots.”

  He reached into his pack again and came out with Wister’s second set of boots, which had taken a rough beating during their last patrol. The men were responsible for keeping their own footwear in order during deployments, and the jungle’s dampness had a way of deteriorating them in a hurry. But Rigar had figured out a clever method for waterproofing a few months ago that involved mixing the useless rash ointment with boiled urine. He’d kept the recipe secret and started taking on contract work from fellow soldiers with ruined boots.

  “Good as new,” he said, tossing them over.

  Wister held them like they were decorated with diamonds. “They’ll hold up, like Cinder’s have?”

  “Yep. You have the guarantee of Rigar’s Wartime Cobblery.”

  Wister smiled, then tossed him a canteen. Rigar sniffed it and approved.

  “Decent stuff, smells like.”

  “That’s top-shelf juniper liquor outta Burz-al-dun,” said Wister. “Enjoy it.”

  Rigar nodded. He might. Or, he might sell it off in a few more days when the rest of the men had emptied their canteens.

  Wormwrot paid well, but price-gouging liquor in the gloom of the jungle paid better.

  Rigar ate a quick dinner of half-rotten rice and a scrap of salted pork. The skyships had spent the last year making a concerted effort to deprive the enemy of food and forage, but a side effect was limited rations on their end, too. There were rumors of some major resupply coming in from Dunfar, which between the wars and the famines was the last country in Terra with viable farmland. Rigar liked Dunfarian cuisine. Lots of spices. But he wasn’t getting his hopes up until the food was in front of him.

  He took a nap after dinner. Droll came through near dark and tapped him for the watch. Rigar grabbed his gear and made his way to the wall where he relieved the current sentry. He scanned the field ahead, keeping an eye out for the enemy as best he could in all the darkness. Moonlight glinted off the balls of dead wardens.

  The night passed without incident. By the time the gray-light of early morning arrived, Rigar had succumbed to his baser instincts and been itching at his thigh rash with a purpose.

  “Stop jerking off on watch, Rigar.”

  Rigar turned around to find Droll approaching. “Hey, Lieutenant. I wasn’t jerking off, it’s these damn rashes.”

  “Ointment not working?”

  “Not really.” He forced himself to stop itching. “By Aeternita. Why would anyone ever live in this wretched, rash-inducing place on purpose?”

  Droll shrugged. “Probably because the locals aren’t afflicted. Their forest gods protect them.”

  Rigar grunted. “Very funny.”

  Droll motioned to the field.

  “Anything out there?” he asked.

  “Just fog and a few Blackjacks in the distance.”

  When they’d first arrived in Almira, the lizards hadn’t returned from the Great Migration yet. Gods, but those were good times, which was saying something because even without dragons, the Dainwood was still a horrific place, full of a thousand different slithering and crawling critters that could kill you with a single bite or sting. Their second day under the canopy, one newbie grunt accidentally set up his bedroll over a nest of giant jungle scorpions who’d stung him dozens of times.

  The pain was so bad his nerves went all toxic. He turned delirious and shot himself in the face with a crossbow.

  Now, Rigar longed for a time when the scorpions and ants invading your sleeping situation were the primary concern. The dragons of the Dainwood were more common than rats outside a butcher’s alley. In the last week alone, the great lizards had eaten five soldiers he knew personally. Three got scooped up while scouting ahead for fresh warrens, which is known to be dangerous work. But the other two got plucked straight out of camp on their way to breakfast.

  How are you supposed to protect against that? A man needs breakfast.

  “Hmm,” Droll said, still looking out in the fog. “I don’t like it. The Jaguars could be anywhere.”

  “Think it’s true that the Flawless Bershad is fighting with ’em? You heard about the head thing, right?”

  Three patrols in Sector Four went missing without a trace two weeks ago. Five days later, their heads turned up in a pile way down in Sector Twelve. A f
ew days after that, the lone survivor turned up at a random extraction point in Sector Five, face swollen to hell with mosquito bites. He said the Flawless Bershad had massacred the patrols, along with some crazy man in white armor.

  “I heard,” Droll said. “It’s dragonshit. That soldier was delirious.”

  “But—”

  “Vallen Vergun killed the Flawless Bershad back in Taggarstan,” Droll interrupted. “I saw that shit myself.”

  “What, then his ghost killed the emperor of Balaria afterward?”

  “Fuck no. But if you were the Horellian guard who let the emperor take the long swim during your shift, wouldn’t you make up a dragonshit story about how a legend like the Flawless Bershad was responsible?”

  That notion had some merit, but before Rigar had a chance to say so, Acolyte 408 approached and sent a cold, silencing shiver down Rigar’s spine. Droll stiffened as well. They both turned around and saluted the hulking, gray-skinned man behind them.

  “Report.”

  “All clear, sir. Just fog and lizards out there.”

  The acolyte’s void-like gaze shifted out over the tangled wilderness.

  “Might be those totems were just a diversion,” Rigar said, trying to get the scary bastard to leave.

  The acolyte turned to him. “Stay, vigilante. Stop fraternizing.”

  “I’m patrolling the perimeter and assessing the morale of my men,” Droll said. “Not fraternizing.”

  As far as standing up for your troops, that comment wasn’t much. But seeing as the bastard was two heads taller than a normal man and could pop sharpened bones out of his thick arms, Rigar thought that Droll had summoned some real stones to push back a mite.

  The lieutenant scratched at his mutton chops with one hand, but he didn’t break eye contact or back down.

  “Assess morale faster,” Acolyte 408 said. Then he hopped off the rampart, landing in the muddy yard below. A jump like that would have sent a normal man’s kneecaps on long and independent journeys, but 408 marched back toward the holdfast without a hitch in his step.