“Me too,” muttered Fionn, stealing one last glance down the valley. “Me too.”

***

As darkness descended on the city, the troops at the Gold Gate frantically made their final preparations. From atop the battlements, Fionn watched as colonels and captains hurried up and down the ranks below, shouting orders and running drills with their men.

Soldiers and couriers ran along the wall, bringing supplies and orders from the other gates in the city. From what Fionn could make out, there was still no sign of the horde yet. Every now and then, a Simian scout mounted upon a massive, armoured elk would arrive at the wall, deliver a message, and gallop away into the night.

“Firemaster,” called a gruff voice, pulling Fionn’s attention away from the troops on the ground. “A word, if you please.”

“Yes, sir,” said Fionn, bowing to Commander Plackart, though the young mage wasn’t quite sure who should be bowing to whom.

“Tell me about your magic. Its limits, its uses, its weaknesses in battle.”

Fionn hesitated, as the hundreds of dusty texts he had studied on Pyromancy back with Firemaster Conleth resurfaced in his memory. Complex calculations and equations on heat transfer across metal, through air, through flesh….

“I don’t know where to start,” said Fionn. “Is there anything in particular you’d like me to discuss?”

“Tell me about its range,” said the commander immediately.

“Well,” began Fionn, “the concentration of the heat dissipates with distance, but it can reach the same distance as a bolt fired from a crossbow, though with not quite the same power.”

“What about energy? Will you be able to keep your magic up for the full battle?”

“Like the other schools of magic,” Fionn recited, “Pyromancy uses the soul as its fuel source. I would need to rest after using a significant amount, but I have learned that I have more endurance than others.”

One more soul than most others, more like, said Sir Bearach.

The commander didn’t reply immediately but stared down at Fionn with his single eye. “I ask that you remain on the wall for the duration of the fighting,” he said, eventually. “Given the range of your spells, you’ll be just as effective up here as you are down there. Lacking close combat experience and armour, you’d be quite vulnerable in the fray. Accommodations can be made for the latter, but I believe you’ll be more valuable up here, with respect to morale.”

“Sure,” said Fionn, trying to hide his relief. “I’ll keep away from the fighting, if that’s what’s best.”

The commander bowed curtly and left, weaving past a group of marksmen stationed on top of the wall and toward the stairs leading to the ground below.

“You seem glad,” came a voice from behind Fionn. He turned to see Aislinn, fully clad in armour, but with her helm held under a thickly plated arm. “Most lads your age would kill to be on the frontline.”

He nodded towards the ranks of soldiers below. “Most lads my age are fools. With so much death in the world these days, why are so many more willing to die?”

Aislinn sighed deeply. “My father believed it was part of Human nature,” she said, lowering her gaze to the ground. “Humans conquered Alabach through force, and the sacrifice of their soldiers has paved the way for the peace our kingdom saw for the following four hundred years. But peace comes with a price. Many of the smallfolk live and die achieving next to nothing in their lives. Feeding one’s family may be a man’s only purpose, just so his sons and daughters can grow up to do the same. But if some earl or captain calls to your village, hands you a weapon, and tells you that for the first time in your family’s history you can be part of something larger, what choice would you make?”

Fionn recalled the face of Cormac from amongst the ranks. He seemed so happy to be there, even awaiting certain death. Given his background, it was possible too that he lived a life not unlike what Aislinn had described. It was easy to understand why someone would want to make a mark on the world, and if running off to die was the only way to do that, then….

“Do you agree with your father?” asked Fionn. Aislinn didn’t reply straight away, and instead stared out at the empty valley ahead of them. Flanked by huge, grey mountains, the land looked like a black and white painting, with bare trees and decaying plant-life staying perfectly still in the darkness.

“I didn’t before,” she said. “But on the night the dead came to Rosca Umhír, when my father refused to help, I felt the ‘call,’ as he had once named it. The urge to fight, even when there was no hope. I snuck away and donned my brother’s armour, this armour, and rode out to meet the horde head on. It was such a powerful feeling, seeing all the other soldiers’ spirits rise, believing Sir Bearach Carríga had returned from the dead to save them, and for the first time in my life, I felt that I finally understood my father. And my family.

“But as I crossed the drawbridge, I was thrown from my horse and disarmed. With no weapon, I found myself in the heart of the horde. Amongst the stench of decay and the guttural cries of the dead, all my sense of valour vanished. In that moment I ran, and I no longer felt like a Carríga.”

“Aislinn…” said Fionn. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you.”

“What’s that?” Aislinn said suddenly.

“It’s your brother, he’s—”

“No,” she said, grabbing Fionn by the shoulder and pointing down the valley. “What’s that?”

Fionn had to squint to make out what she was referring to, but when he did, the hairs on the back of his neck stood to attention. A faint black cloud was rising above the mountains, amorphous in form, spreading inwards and outwards as it went. The darkness smothered the peaks, descending down the valley like a flood. A faint, screeching sound came with it, but only when Aislinn spoke did Fionn finally make sense of the shape.

“The crows,” she muttered. “The crows always come first.”

Other voices cried out below, and a maddening pandemonium came over the soldiers. If there was room to run, many would have, but instead a thousand cries and pleas for help resounded through the valley. Amongst the discord, Commander Plackart’s booming voice rose out, as stern and fearless as ever before.

“To arms!” he cried. “Marksmen, take aim!”

Immediately, the archers and crossbowmen all around Fionn raised their weapons, pointing up at the black mass overhead. The tiny details that made up the flock was visible now, and they were indeed crows. Thousands of them, like insects swarming the mountains.

“Fire!” called the commander, and a hundred arrows and bolts were loosed upon the crows. The swarm did not slow.

Fionn clicked his flint-rings together and tugged at the power of his soul. In a fraction of a second, his hands were alight. He raised both fists upwards, and a pillar of flames rose up to meet the crows. This time, the birds shrieked as they burned, and charred corpses littered the valley before them.

It’s working, thought Fionn, gritting his teeth and adding more to his fire. But I can’t hold them off forever.

Indeed, even as hundreds of their brethren fell, more and more crows poured down through the valley. The sky was alight with fire, but the new arrivals quickly outnumbered the dead.

“I can’t hold them on my own!” Fionn cried. But the other marksmen had not stopped firing when the order was given, and their weapons remained useless against the horde.

The crows were right overhead now. Some individual birds broke away from the flock and descended upon the marksmen on the wall like arrows of their own. The men roared as they fell, but the cries of the crows covered their death-rattles. Above, more began to break away from the rest, and a harrowing sense of fear tore through Fionn’s body.

It’s over. It’s over before it even began.

In a blinding flash of light, a tower of sapphire flames erupted from before the wall, consuming the crows overhead. These fires quickly outshone Fionn’s own, and soon, the whole valley shimmered blue.

Gods, thought Fionn, looking up at the cobalt inferno. What is this?

By instinct, he reached out to control the fire himself, but it eluded his grasp. A familiar feeling came over him, like this has happened before….

Beggar’s flames. Farris made them from thainol, back in the Glenn.

He sprinted to the edge of the gate to peer down at the source of the flames. The wall of fire flames stopped at the three strange steel statues from before, but now they were looking upward, the fires erupting from their arms.

“What sort of Simian… magic is this?” said Aislinn, shaking her head in awe.

“Reapers,” Fionn muttered. “This is what the Silverback was talking about before.”

The blue flames extinguished suddenly, and the burnt bodies of a thousand crows fell from the sky. Cheers rose from the soldiers below.

“I better join the infantry,” said Aislinn. “Stay safe up here, you hear me?”

“Sure,” said Fionn, his attention still drawn to the three Reapers on the ground. Though I’d rather just stay near those….