As the forces of Aus Argentum continued to break from their marching column and array themselves across the fields, Airka saw a trio of riders break away.  One held a large banner and with a sudden sinking in her stomach Airka realized it the was the banner of General Odelipen.  His sight was not what gave her pause, it would’ve been much worst if it had been the Dawn Queen herself.  Rather, Airka realized that arrayed in the Captain’s armor it was her job to meet the General, to conduct parlay.  With a shout to Glout, she began to make her way through the rows of their army.  The large sergeant met her part way and by the time they reached the front a trio of their remaining horses were brought forward.

Her stomach still sinking, Airka stepped up into the saddle.  Behind her Glout ordered one of the standard bearers up with them and after a moment the trio rode out.  Odelipen had already reached the rough center point between the armies.  One of his companions held his personnel standard, the other held a silver crest.  A shattered keep raised up and made whole once more, the emblem of the Aus Argentum, the Silver Kingdom.  Odelipen was an Aenesi like most of the officers Airka had seen from Argentum.  His long limbs and barrel chest seemed a bit out of place on the back of a horse, and looking at the black painted, silver trimmed, armor that encased the General, Airka pitied the horse.  Odelipen had his helmet tucked up underneath his arm, revealing the Aenesi’ pointed teeth and violet eyes.  Airka pointedly kept her winged helm in place as she brought her horse to a stop before the General.  Glout stopped beside her, the pair of them sat in silence before the General.

With exaggerated Odelipen sighed and shook his head.  “You Provincials never did know how to go about doing things.  Very well, I suppose I’ll start.”  Pointedly staring over Airka’s head the Aenesi continued.  “You no doubt know the state of things.  I have orders to burn the City of Verken. you are outnumbered and,” he cast a look back to the Provincial Armya and then to Glout, “let’s say out equipped.    Agree to discard your weapons, swear to never pick them up against the Silver Kingdom again, and I will offer you the mercies of Dawn and Dusk and let you all go home.”

Glout shifted next to Airka and she turned her gaze to see him staring back at her.  With a dryness in her mouth, but a firm hand on the Spear of Brokel she spoke.  “We reject your offer, refuse to turn back your army and you will all find your final resting place here.”

Odelipen sat in silence for a moment, before laughing.  It was almost like a bird’s chirping to Airka’s ears.  The General looked back to his two attendants and then back to Airka.  “I will assume your foolishness is a consequence of your newness to the position.”  Airka’s eye narrowed at the Aenesi continued.  “See I know that this army was suppose to be led by a Captain Antel.  Your voice is clearly not his and so you girl are playing at something above your station.” Odelipen leaned forward, malice dripping from his next words.  “Fail to accept my peace and I’ll water this grass with the blood of every one of your Provincials and parade your bodies before the walls of your last city.”

Airka glanced past the General, pass his arrayed army, and to the storm clouds that were coming in from the sea.  All in the Provinces knew the summer storms, storms you could set your day on as they raged through at midday and dusk.  Had she not discussed the implication of this very battle with her soldiers as it rained?  More talk would buy her more time for the storm’s coming.

But more talk would allow this man to spout more of his hatred.

Airka kicked her horse forward a step, turning it to the side before the Aenesi General.  She raised Brokel’s spear from where it had rested by her side.  She gave Odelipen a moment to see if he knew his stories, if he deigned to recognize it.  When he offered no response she continued, “Freed from dragons, like the Heroes before us no oppression shall we face again.”  She waited just long enough to take in the sour look on the General’s face before spurring her horse about and heading back towards their lines.  Glout and the standard bearer followed, the sergeant coming up along side her.

“I don’t think he cared for your conduct at all,” he observed as they continued back toward their line.

Airka was fighting the stone that remained settled in her stomach.  “Glout, we have to hold until the storm rolls in.”

“Maybe we should’ve dragged on the negotiations then,” he offered with a smile.

“Likely,” she admitted as the sour taste in her mouth resurfaced, “but here we are and we’re going to have to face at least the irregulars before I can control the storm.”  Airka looked towards the larger sergeant.  “I know my men will hold the left flank, and I’m going to post myself in the center, but I need you to hold the right flank no matter what.”

Glout’s smile disappeared and he gave her a nod.  “No sorry excuse for an adventurer is going to send us running this day.”

Airka nodded and extended her hand, “I’ll see you on the other side.”  Glout snorted and shook it before spurring his horse and heading off to his regiments on the right.  Bringing the horse to a stop before the army, Airka dismounted.  Someone came forward to take away the animal and Airka stood there staring up at her fellow soldiers.  Taking a final breath she raised the spear of her ancestor.

“For Koric!”

“For Koric!” came the cry back.

“For Migin!  For Reznor!  For Verken!”  Each of the cities, the namesake of the Four Heroes of the Provinces, was echoed in a cry from the army.  Leaving them in a cheer, Airka looked down the line, saw Wignot and the others.  With a nod to herself she fell in and settled herself where she knew she best belonged.  At the head of an army facing down the tyrants of the Silver Kingdom.

* * * * *

In her years in the war, Airka had only fought in a handful of large pitched battles.  Most of her battles had been smaller affairs, her regiment moving about quickly, engaging with units of similar size, as each of their larger armies attempted to reach and take whatever strategic position their superiors had settled upon.  Koric had fallen before she had taken up the call to fight and when Aus Argentum had laid siege and eventually broken Migin, she had been down south at the crossings of the Haelrun preventing the Silver army that had just burned Reznor from heading north.

However, in the pitched battles she had participated in, Airka had largely seen the same techniques from the Silvers.  The richer kingdom maintained far superior equipped soldiers.  These well armed and trained heavy infantry made up the heart of any Silver army.  However, their investment meant that Airka had never seen them strike first.  Instead, Aus Argentum had what it called its adventurer corps.  Self-armed, glory seeking, and utterly irregular, these corps were the first to be thrown into combat.  Ostensibly, first into combat made for the greatest glory and thus the best story and Airka couldn’t argue that she had heard the kingdom’s minstrels sing tales of a given adventurer group or another obtaining some great exploit.

In reality, Airka knew that these expendable masses had one real purpose.  Tire out their enemies and break up their lines enough such that the Silver’s heavy infantry could easily come in with a follow on attack and crush their enemy.  All this to say that it was no shock when with a sound of horns and drums the writhing clumps of the Silver irregulars began to move forward.  The heavy infantry moved behind them but slower, the space between the two lines growing.  With a flick of her eyes upwards, Airka noted the darkening sky.  The storm was nearing but not near enough.

“Steady,” she called to her fellow soldiers, “let them tire themselves on the hills.  Fight as the one their arrogance doesn’t allow them to have.”  She heard similar calls along the line and then her focus was back on the approaching irregulars.  They picked up speed as they neared, each taking up some call of their own as they headed into a sprint.  Airka interlocked her shield with her fellow soldiers, felt the weight of those behind her.  As the irregulars continued to near she saw the javelins sail over her head.  A man or woman fell amongst the surging irregulars, further breaking up the already haphazard line.  They reached the hill and began to surge up.  The momentum of the charge, the press of the bodies meant some couldn’t avoid the old spears and stakes that Airak had ensured were planted, the shear press of bodies impaling those at the front.  However, even the hill and the defenses barely slowed the irregulars and with a final crush the irregulars were upon them.

“Brace!” Airka sent up the cry, it echoing about and up and down the line.  Airka felt the surge of pride as the army worked as a unit.  Shields pushed back at the thrashing irregulars.  Spears from lines in front and further back thrust out, grey metal and worn shafts coming back coated in crimson.  An axe buried itself in the rim of Airka’s shield, the splinter of wood blinding her.  In the moment she felt a tug on her spear but there was a crack and through blinking eyes she caught a flash of blue.  She heard the murmur go up around her, saw the fear in the eyes of the next soldier of Argentum before he met her spear.

But then it was back to the press of bodies and the too familiar work of the spear.

* * * * *

Airka looked up as the rain began.  The army had conducted the rotation of the lines during a lull in the attack by the irregulars, pushing the disorganized Silvers down the hill to make space as tired soldiers from the front rotated to the back.  Stoppering the waterskin she had been drinking from, Airka shut her eyes and felt the raindrops fall upon her face.  In her other hand shield she clutched Brokel’s spear.  She remembered the first time her mother had taken her out with it.  A storm had been raging over her family’s farm.  Standing with the wind whirling about them, with the rain pelting her face, Airka had ignored the pain and discomfort.  So rapped had her attention been as her mother explained the power they had been entrusted with, the legacy that Airka was now a part of.

“The Silvers would find us to grow their power, but a hero’s job isn’t to grow a power.  It’s to ensure that others retain the power to control their lives.”  Her mother had told her that night and then Airka had watched in awe as her mother brought down a series of lightning strikes into the field of gravel field around their home.  When her mother had handed her the spear Airka had felt its power immediately.  There was a thrumming in the shaft, as if it wished to be alight in the sky with the very storm it controlled.  How it had such power Airka had never fully understood.  The Sword of the Last Landian was said to have the same ability and its shard in the spearhead passed some of this along.

Regardless, Airka felt that thrum of life come into the spear now.  Hooking her waterskin back on her belt, Airka leveled the spear down the hill as the center of the irregular’s line.  She felt the connection between spear and sky, forced it onto the point she watched.  The crack that followed was no rumbling thunder, it was faster and louder than any bull whip.  The flash blinded her for a moment but when the after image of the lightning faded, Airka could see the destruction she had wrought.

Never before had she called lightning down on a living thing.  Had hardly ever used it on anything besides that same old gravel field of her home.

At the center of the strike were a few charred black bodies but in a wider cycle were more, some of them still twitching from the after effects of the lightning.  The fighting had slowed just slightly around the point of impact as Provincial and Silver alike were paused by the whip-crash of the thunder and the sudden death.

Airka didn’t pause.

Working as fast as she could she passed up and down the irregular’s clump of a line.  Lighting lashed out again and again.  She quickly remembered to avoid looking at it, taking it the carnage she had created only as she pointed the spear at the next group of irregular.  To say that the effect was devastating on the Silvers was an understatement.  Both to their numbers but also to their morale and against the seeming opposition of the sky itself a few of the so-called adventurers turn and broke, heading back to the lines.  Soon it was a full on route and as the last of the irregulars were either struck down or broke, a cry went up along the Provincial lines.

Airka heard the cheers, heard the murmurs from those around her but her gaze remained fixed on the heavy infantry of the Silver line.  She knew the next moment would define the turn of the day.  If Odelipen turned and marched his army away she was content to let him go.  However, if Odelipen turned out to have a mage, if he decided to be stubborn to his own ambitions, or if he believed that the lightning’s onslaught was a one time trick, then the blood would have barely been spilled that day.

Airka heard the horns go out from the Silver line and, going cold in no way because of the rain, she watched the heavy infantry begin to advance.