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THE PRICE OF A GIFT

By Matthew D. Wilson

Early 609 AR

The battlefield raged like a storm.

Lightning arced overhead in long, crackling streaks, drawn from the heavens by half-mad scientists who could conjure weather and bend it to their will. Thunder boomed from batteries of cannons and arcanely charged pistols infused with explosive elemental force. The earth quaked beneath the iron feet of massive automatons charging across the landscape, smoke and ash billowing from the steam-powered boilers that propelled each machine’s armored mass on an unstoppable rampage of destruction.

Lieutenant Allison Jakes stood at the center of it all, but there was no calm eye in this storm. Every inch of blood-soaked ground was consumed by the fury of two nations at war and the eternal consequences of their endeavor to eliminate each other from a world too small to contain both their beliefs.

Like every soldier at her side, Allison Jakes fought with an intensity only the promise of death can inspire. In her dexterous hands, two mechanikally augmented dueling blades flashed in silver arcs around her, slashing and piercing armor and flesh alike. Her faith-driven targets gasped inside their golden helms as white tabards turned red with blood.

Unlike the rank-and-file soldiers equipped with standard-issue military hardware around her, Jakes moved with agility and finesse, clad in state-of-the-art armor crafted by the finest mechaniks and smiths in Cygnar. Beneath the outer shell of plates painted blue and white, rune-stamped sheets of precious metals conducted Jakes’ own arcane energies to amplify her physical strength and resistance to attacks.

Such accoutrements as her armor and weapons were afforded to only the most elite breed of warrior found in the Iron Kingdoms—though often Jakes thought this ironic, as she and those like her arguably needed these advantages the least. For Lieutenant Allison Jakes was a warcaster, a rarity among rarities, gifted in the womb with the talent to manipulate magic and the ability to project her will through mechanikal constructs.

The ultimate expressions of those machines were self-governing giants of steel and iron that towered over Jakes and the other soldiers on the battlefield. Warjacks, they were called: warriors born of forge and fire, meticulously constructed in factories and granted the attributes of thought and reason through the fusion of science and magic.

Even now, Jakes’ senses were intertwined with the consciousness of the metal beast that battled beside her, an Ironclad-class warjack. Jakes was instinctively aware of every strike landed with its seven-foot-tall quake hammer, cognizant of every blow colliding with its iron carapace, and in her mind’s eye she could see every friend and foe its optical receptors could behold.

Including the man who had trained her for battle.

Girded in gold , he spun his double-bladed staff through an endless series of energized attacks, cleaving through armor and leaving a trail of gutted corpses in his wake. If the battlefield was a storm, he was its epicenter. Jakes needed neither her own eyes nor those of her warjack to know he was near. This man, a force of nature by any measure, simultaneously visited ruin upon the flame-bearing fanatics before him while commanding an army with artistic ease. A cadre of warjacks linked to his mind executed every silent order with precision and potency while he directed an array of spells that could transpose his position on the battlefield as quickly as they could blacken his enemies with lightning.

For all his deadliness, for all his authority and the force with which he dominated this chaotic arena, Allison Jakes revered him more than any man living or dead. To the soldiers on the field, he was Commander Dalin Sturgis. To Jakes, he was her mentor, an example every warcaster should aspire to, a model of perfection.

But perfect he was not.

As Jakes glimpsed him through the eyes of her Ironclad, the commander was suddenly struck by a blur of bronze orbiting the fist of a massive white warjack by a length of chain as thick as her leg. The Vanquisher was ten tons of blazing retribution borne on a twelve-foot frame, and it had come out of nowhere. By the time its spiked metal sphere completed its second revolution, Sturgis had disappeared from sight amid the haze of the melee.

Jakes cried out, her concentration shattered at the sight of her mentor’s fall, but her voice was swallowed in the cacophony of metal crashing on metal. She parried the blade of a conscripted tribesman and disengaged, rapidly weaving her way through the fray in search of Sturgis. She could sense his presence; their connection as warcasters—mentor and student— was as tangible to her as the swords in her hands. But he was nowhere to be seen.

A voice called to her—a sergeant leading a squad of pot-helmed trenchers supporting the Cygnaran advance with rifle fire and strategically placed smoke bombs that concealed them from incoming fire. But recognition of the voice came too late. A crash just steps behind her snapped her consciousness back into the Ironclad in time to realize it had intercepted the attack of a lighter warjack, shielding her from what would surely have been a lethal blow from the enemy’s spiked flail.

She focused power into the Ironclad, guiding its attacks and infusing them with supernatural strength. Feinting with the massive hammer, it reached forth and seized the lighter warjack with its unarmed fist, then twisted with the full force of its hydraulic core and hurled the enemy ’jack into an oncoming group of zeal-crazed nomads.

Her flank momentarily unthreatened, Jakes resumed her frantic search, weaving a spell on the move. Three small, rapidly spinning rings of glowing runes appeared before her. With a glance, she sent the runes to orbit the Ironclad. The enchantment supercharged the machine’s power plant, pushing the Ironclad beyond the usual limits of its running speed. Under her telepathic control, it raced ahead, scouting as she gathered more support.

Mere moments had passed since Sturgis had been struck down, but before Jakes could reach his location, a wall of blue armor converged on the Vanquisher like a tidal wave of iron. A spear-wielding Centurion warjack and two Defender-class warjacks brandishing electrified hammers reduced the Vanquisher to inanimate scrap before it could continue its assault.

The Vanquisher’s destruction filled Jakes with joy, not because another enemy had fallen, but because she knew her mentor had not succumbed to the attack. This trio of warjacks was his personal battlegroup, linked to him just as the Ironclad was linked to her. If they were still fighting, so was he.

Jakes strained to be heard above the clamor. “Commander! Commander Sturgis!”

Before she could take another breath, he appeared before her. Spiraling rings of luminous arcane runes encircled him, dissipating before Jakes’ eyes as the spell-effect that had brought him concluded. His left pauldron was dented, its rank insignia all but ground off, and dirt streaked his face. But as far as she could see he was otherwise unharmed.

“Commander. Thank Morrow,” Jakes exhaled in relief, invoking the name of the god she worshiped, as most Cygnarans did.

Sturgis grimaced, not looking at Jakes as he methodically assessed the situation around them. “You left your position, Lieutenant. You exposed our support units to attack.”

Jakes’ guts coiled into knots. Even in the middle of battle, Sturgis made time to impart his lessons, and they were never gentle.

“I saw you—” was all she could utter.

“If you had found me unable to fight, what would you have done?” he barked. But after nearly a year of his tutelage, Jakes knew—she believed in the deepest recesses of her soul—that if she fell in combat, Commander Sturgis would come to her aid.

“Understood, sir,” she answered in the most confident voice she could muster, to assure him his point had been received. She was not placating him; her reply was sincere. By now she knew how he expected his training acknowledged. There was a correct way, and there was a way that produced an excess of monotonous instruction later.

Sturgis’ eyes glowed subtly as he silently called his warjacks to his side. “Your orders remain the same, Lieutenant. Cover those trenchers. Make sure nothing gets within reach of our artillery.” He was already stalking toward the thick of the fighting before he finished his instructions. “Stay focused. Thunder follows lightning.”

“Yes, sir!” she returned, before the weight of the commander’s words had sunk in. He was fond of quoting the informal motto of Cygnar’s fighting men, though the meaning of the phrase shifted subtly depending on the context. She had already witnessed her invincible mentor beaten to the ground and had earned a reprimand for poor leadership. Only as she ordered the trenchers to reposition did she realize what Sturgis meant: this battle had just begun.

Fort Falk sprawled along the west bank of the Black River. So widespread was the stronghold that the hilltop itself could no longer be seen. Tasked with guarding the vital waterway and the heavily traveled King’s Highway that paralleled it, the fort dominated the landscape with its ever-growing series of squat towers and thick stone walls. It began as a simple border outpost, but as threats to the Kingdom of Cygnar had grown so had it, making it the largest military fortification on the nation’s eastern border.

The 12th Division of the Second Army, nearly thirty thousand of Cygnar’s bravest hung their helms inside Fort Falk’s cavernous expanse. Recently arrived from the cosmopolitan capital city of Caspia was Allison Jakes, garrisoned here under the personal authority of Commander Dalin Sturgis who would complete her journeyman warcaster training over the course of her first tour of duty.

Barely nineteen years old, Jakes was older than most of the fresh recruits but young when measured against the handful of remarkable warcasters famous for leading Cygnar’s armies into battle. The explanation for their rarity was a mystery science had yet to decode. One in a thousand were born with the gift—that extraordinary ability to shape the world’s unseen magical energies into tangible form. But only one in a hundred thousand at best could commune with mechanika—the arcane machines—and were granted the distinction of being called “warcaster.”

Recipients of the gift could go years, even a lifetime, before their innate talent revealed itself, often manifesting in moments of extreme danger or emotional stress. Jakes’ power, however, had been apparent since infancy through the subtle effect her will had on the environment around her and the electric-blue spark that flared in her eyes every time she was near mechanika.

Her father, a successful barrister, and her mother, a diva famous for filling the gilded halls of the Caspian Opera, ensured Jakes enjoyed a life of privilege, but her childhood was far from carefree. Recognizing her considerable talent at a young age and possessing a strong sense of national duty, Jakes’ parents began her arcane education before she could walk, expecting her to follow a military career. Private training in the dueling arts came next, and by the time she had reached the minimum age for entry into Cygnar’s Strategic Academy she was an accomplished fighter and capable spellcaster. At the Caspian branch of the academy, Jakes was indoctrinated in the military system and trained to be a shining example of martial leadership. It was there she first experienced the communion between warcaster and warjack. And that was also the first occasion in her educational history when she did not excel.

Jakes chewed her bottom lip, recalling that moment bitterly while she stood in the center of Fort Falk’s training grounds. The quadrangle, wide enough to march a full regiment through in parade formation, was a constant spectacle of combat drills, physical conditioning, and pre-deployment assemblies. Jakes had just enjoyed a sparring session with her commander, the kind of session that left her basking in the admiration of dazzled onlookers and the accolades of her mentor. But that glow was snuffed when Sturgis summoned a trio of warjacks to the patch of paver stones ground he had chalked out for her training.

The warjacks lumbered toward them, each step of their heavy gaits vibrating the ground beneath Jakes’ feet. Despite being entirely mechanical, the fluid manner in which they moved made them seem more like armored beasts than machines. Even the rhythmic pumping of their pressurized steam boilers projected the appearance of living, breathing creatures. Responsible for this illusion was the spherical cortex buried deep within each warjack’s iron hull. Though primitive in its capacity compared to a human brain, this magical brain gave warjacks lifelike control of their constructed forms. They could learn and store memories and were even capable of developing unique personalities. The newest of these three warjacks had been in service more than two decades, and age had rendered each one a distinct temperament Jakes had come to know well.

The Centurion carried itself proudly. Jakes knew from experience that it fought methodically, preferring precise, calculated strikes over more energy-intensive attacks. The much lighter Lancer was shamelessly sneaky, a trait rare for its class of frontline fighter. It eschewed head-to-head combat in favor of ambush tactics, and she had observed in it a predilection toward petulant behavior. Finally there was the Ironclad, which Jakes had secretly named Bunker after its propensity to end up facedown in the dirt. Bunker was Jakes’ antithesis in every way, possessing neither grace nor style. And since the Ironclad had been assigned as her personal warjack, she had come to regard it as her greatest nemesis.

“Sir,” Jakes asked, already knowing the answer, “should we go over that last parry-strike combination again? I feel like I could get through it a little faster. Maybe add a bit of a twist.” She pantomimed the motions with theatrical flourish.

“Your speed and form are perfect. Your execution is perfect,” Sturgis stated. “Your command of warjacks is not.”

Jakes thought that was a gross understatement of her situation. It had been three months since she had arrived at Fort Falk with Sturgis, and not a day had passed that they did not train, save for those spent on patrol or engaged in one of the frequent border skirmishes that plagued this region. Jakes never grew weary of the exercises, and she felt her combat skills growing daily. But though the martial arts and even spellcasting came easily to her, controlling warjacks did not.

“Establish your bond,” Sturgis told her.

Her nose wrinkled. “Bunker again?” she asked, instantly aware that it sounded more like a protest than intended. Sturgis gave her an odd look. She hadn’t shared her nickname for the ’jack. “Uhh . . . the Ironclad, right?” He didn’t answer; the pairing was simply assumed. It was always Bunker.

The Ironclad tracked her with its expressionless gaze as she crossed the training area to meet it. “Looks like you and me again,” she muttered as she reached for Bunker’s chest and stared up into its amber eyes. The moment her palm made contact, her eyes pulsed with light and the warjack’s eyes flashed blue in response.

She was instantly overcome with the familiar sensation of falling, not backward, but forward into the warjack, passing through it. Light and sound faded as the consciousness of the two merged. She felt Bunker’s steam pumping through her veins and its fire burning within her chest. Her muscles tensed, ready to explode into motion, and her flesh tightened until it felt as hard as iron. There was no discomfort, no pain, only a euphoric feeling of power and absolute invincibility. A heartbeat later, she was staring at her own face through the warjack’s eyes, and then her senses became her own again.

The invisible bond between Jakes and the Ironclad was created at the speed of thought. Now this walking weapon of mass destruction would execute her every command . . . more or less.

I hate you, Bunker, she thought, the pit in her stomach growing by the moment. The Ironclad replied with a burst of steam from a pair of vents behind its slotted face grill, and Jakes could feel its unspoken protest in her mind. Communication between a warcaster and warjack was felt, not spoken, and as on many occasions before, she was grateful these machines had no capacity for speech.

“Let’s begin,” Sturgis said, stepping backward out of the training area.

The scenario was always the same: Sturgis would control the Centurion and Lancer from the sideline while Jakes and her Ironclad attempted to battle them out of the chalk ring. Success required that both the Centurion and Lancer be outside the ring at the same time while neither she nor the Ironclad could leave the circle, and Jakes had never succeeded.

Jakes drew her training blades; blunted facsimiles of the dueling weapons custom created for her before she began her tour with Sturgis. They were mechanikal just as her fighting blades were, but though they would leave more than a mark on any living opponent, they weren’t likely to pierce the iron plating of the armored warjacks. All the same, the warjacks were strapped with leather sparring pads, and their own practice weapons were wrapped in burlap blankets stuffed with wool. To further minimize damage to each other—and more importantly, to Jakes—the warjacks had standing orders to pull their attacks in practice, but that didn’t make the many bruises covering her body hurt any less.

Without warning, the Centurion began to charge.

“Wait! I didn’t say ‘ready’!” Jakes cried as she quickly sidestepped out of the way and backed toward the Ironclad for protection.

“I didn’t ask if you were,” Sturgis replied as he paced the perimeter of the sparring ring.

“But you always wait until I’m ready!” She dropped her right foot back and adopted a defensive stance as the Centurion wheeled to face her.

“‘Ready’ is a relative condition,” he said. Before she could reply, he struck the ground with his training staff and barked, “Now focus, Jakes!”

From the corner of her eye, Jakes saw the blue runes of a spell ignite around him and braced for whatever he was about to throw at her. An instant later, a flurry of lightning strikes broke out over the Ironclad, scorching its protective padding with electricity—but the magical storm had not come directly from Sturgis.

It was at that moment she realized that both she and Bunker were watching the Centurion, and neither was paying attention to the agent of the arcane attack—the shifty Lancer stalking them from behind. Atop the Lancer’s armored carapace was mounted a device called an arc node, advanced technology that enabled Sturgis to send his spell through it to a target far beyond his normal reach rather than attack it—or her—directly.

Sensing the threat, the Ironclad turned to meet the Lancer head on, blocking Jakes’ attempt to close the distance to it before Sturgis could target one of them again. Instead, the Lancer charged.

“Move it, you lug,” she said aloud, catching herself before Sturgis remarked on her poor habit of speaking to the ’jack. Take the Centurion!

Untangling herself from Bunker, Jakes whirled just in time to evade the Lancer’s oncoming spear. A retaliatory strike from her sword glanced off its padded shield as she ducked under its backswing. Two swift steps and a half-pirouette put her in position to ram her dagger backward into the ’jack’s boiler. It was not a lethal blow, but using her focus she was able to channel just enough arcane energy through the blade to send the Lancer staggering forward.

A series of heavy whumps redirected her attention to the Ironclad. The Centurion easily rebuffed its hammer blows with a heavy shield, waiting for the precise moment to strike. Get its spear, she commanded telepathically. Her focused attacks on the Lancer had momentarily depleted her reservoir of energy, though, and without her guidance the Ironclad wasn’t skilled enough to attempt such a complex grapple.

As the Ironclad wound up for another swing, the Centurion thrust its spear forward into her warjack’s core. An instant later, the Centurion bashed its shield into Bunker’s chin, sending the ’jack stumbling backward.

Jakes winced. During her defensive footwork, Sturgis had maneuvered both the Lancer and Centurion between her and her warjack, forcing them toward opposite sides of the ring. Bunker needed her assistance quickly, or it would end up over the chalk line.

“You lost track of your warjack, Jakes,” Sturgis chastised. “Get the blinders off.”

Her lack of situational awareness had been a constant point of Sturgis’ criticism. On her own she was more than capable of engaging multiple opponents, but when controlling a warjack she struggled to keep her attention on it without leaving herself vulnerable to attack. Damn it, Bunker! You’re never where you’re supposed to be!

She projected her senses into the Ironclad, her mind racing to find the perfect counterattack that would shift the advantage in this fight. But the Lancer came about, continuing its assault on her and breaking her concentration. The best she could manage was impelling the Ironclad to disengage before it got pummeled to the ground.

“Focus, Jakes! Empower your Ironclad’s attacks!” Sturgis called, urging her to concentrate on the Centurion. But the Lancer continued to drive her back, increasing the distance between her and the Ironclad.

Across the ring, she saw the Centurion deliver another measured blow with its spear, a downward blow across Bunker’s back that forced the Ironclad onto one knee. Another bash with the shield and Bunker slid backward, its left foot scraping through the chalk line. The Ironclad dug its right hand into the ground, tearing up pavers to prevent being shoved from the ring.

Jakes grunted in frustration, knowing it was now or never. But every time she felt ready to focus through the Ironclad, the Lancer would distract her. She back stepped out of its range and summoned her will, preparing to commit every bit of her focus to a perfectly executed offense. Hang on, Bunker. Here it comes, she said through their telepathic connection, visualizing the Ironclad launching forward and ramming its armored skull into the face of the Centurion, a move that would surely turn the tide. If I can make it work. But that infuriating Lancer would not stop dogging her!

“Focus on its attacks! Now!” Sturgis’ voice rang in her ears as the Centurion repeatedly crashed its shield over the Ironclad, hammering the warjack down like a nail.

It was all she could do not to scream. Just once, let me get this right. She needed space, breathing room to focus. Deflecting the Lancer’s spear, she backpedaled further out of its range and transferred her full attention into the Ironclad’s mind, centering her consciousness in its space.

And then it was gone.

In mid-step, she realized she had backed away too far, exceeding the range of her ability to maintain a functional bond with the warjack. It was as if her head had been shoved under water; their connection was all but a distant echo in her mind. Without a stronger connection, she couldn’t focus through the warjack, and it was helpless against the Centurion charged with Sturgis’ power.

Jakes cursed under her breath and swung her body forward, trying to reestablish the mental connection, but the Lancer had followed up, leaving no room to advance. Pitiless, it beat her back with its shield, sending her stumbling across the chalk line and onto her rear.

And then she could swear it laughed, at least as much as a warjack could laugh. Steam bursting from its face vents, it banged its spear on the front of its shield.

A platoon of soldiers marching across the quad appeared to lose their timing for a moment. Faces turned toward her, and Jakes saw far too much amusement in their expressions.

Her blood boiled. In an instant, Jakes was on her feet, arcane energy flowing into her blades as she charged at the showboating Lancer. Sparring blades or not, she aimed to remove its beak-like head.

“Lieutenant Jakes! Stand down!”

A wall of stone could not have stopped her more quickly. In the nine months she had trained with him, Sturgis had never reprimanded her. Her guts knotted as she fought to contain her embarrassment.

“Why do you hesitate?” Sturgis asked, no anger in his voice.

She peered at him from beneath her lowered brow, a stray lock of red hair obscuring one eye. “You, uh . . . you told me to stand down, Commander,” she replied uncertainly. “But that ’jack has it coming, so if you want me to—“

“You became separated from your warjack because you did not take control of it. These machines are weapons, just like the swords in your hands, and they are only as effective as the warcaster who wields them.”

“Yes sir,” she said softly, casting her eyes to the ground again.

Sturgis walked the short distance to the Ironclad, which had regained its feet. Lifting the protective padding, he inspected it for damage. “Why didn’t you press your warjack’s attack when you had the chance? You could have held the Lancer at bay; it was not your priority.”

“It’s Bunker. Every time I—” Sturgis looked back over his shoulder at her, his expression perplexed. “The Ironclad!” she clarified. “Every time I turn around, I’m bumping into it, like it’s glued to my back. And it can’t stay on its feet! It falls down every time we’re in a fight. Have you seen how mangled its grill is?”

Sturgis ran an armored finger over the bronze face grill on the Ironclad, examining its irregularities. “This warjack has served me in over a dozen engagements. I’ve seen no flaw in its performance.” Wiping soot off his gauntlets, he walked slowly back to her. “When you fight alone, you are as confident and capable a warrior as I have ever trained. But you struggle with warjacks like no one I’ve known who possessed the talent for them. You’re hesitant. Unsure. You neglect your bond.”

Jakes stared at his feet, unable to meet his gaze. “It’s . . . hard.”

“Of course it is,” he said, laughing. Jakes could count on one hand the number of times she’d heard Sturgis break his characteristic professional stoicism. “That’s why we train.” His voice softened and he spoke gently. “Why can’t you commit to the warjack, Allison?”

He had never called her by her given name. In their military culture, a soldier’s first name was reserved for casual interactions, and only within the same stratum. And this was Dalin Sturgis, a machine built for war as much as any warjack she’d seen. She admired that in him and relied on his consistent nature. It was the only thing that offered her any stability in this violent and unpredictable existence. But this tiny gesture of compassion, this break in formality, jarred her sensibilities. It disarmed her, and she suddenly found herself speaking not to a superior officer or an instructor but to a trusted confidant.

“I just want it to be perfect,” she confessed. “I need to get it perfect.” Jakes stopped herself, remembering her rank, but Sturgis only scratched absently at his tightly trimmed beard as he considered her words.

“This need to be perfect, Allison,” he said, “is a mask for what you’re truly feeling . . .” She swallowed nervously, feeling as if he were peeling back her armor to expose her beating heart. She knew exactly what he was going to say, what she felt.

“Fear.”

Since the Kingdom of Llael had fallen to the Khadoran Empire over four years ago, the Protectorate of Menoth had exploited the opportunity to wage a bloody campaign across the fractured region. Recruiting the vast number of faithful beyond their own borders and exterminating any who failed to answer the call of their angry god, Hierarch Severius and the high priests of the Protectorate continued to commit the bulk of the nation’s military force to their Northern Crusade.

Fueling the crusade required constant replenishment of munitions, troops and warjacks across the great distance separating the Protectorate from its armies in Llael. In an effort to liberate their Llaelese allies and hinder the growth of the Protectorate’s fanatical following, Cygnar’s military had made many attempts to sever this supply line, which operated just beyond their border on the opposite side of the Black River. With each endeavor to blockade the supply line, Cygnar was met with a larger and better-equipped escort to safeguard the Protectorate’s vital cargo. The ongoing conflict had proven costly for both sides, until finally the Protectorate had committed what was effectively an entire army to attend the supply column.

Knowing this, Jakes marveled at her commander’s unfolding plan as a wall of lightning-slinging Storm Knights drove ranks of Protectorate soldiers before them like cattle. From their hidden vantage, Jakes had watched as the Protectorate column emerged from the narrow pass cutting through a rocky gorge that concealed their northward movement from Cygnaran border patrols. As they moved into the plains and approached the shallow tributary known as Caerly’s Crossing, they widened their formations to cover ground faster and reduce the duration of the exposed river fording required for their passage. Jakes had only moments to count the dozens of warjacks among the Protectorate’s white and gold battalions before Sturgis ordered the flare that would spring his trap.

As phosphorous exploded against the murky dawn, unseen Cygnaran cannons pummeled the bank of the Crossing from the safety of their camouflaged positions on the opposite side. Instantly, the Protectorate column halted their progress and its leaders ordered a retreat from the river’s edge. With the sudden chaos of communicating a new course throughout their ranks rendering the column vulnerable, Sturgis struck.

The Storm Lance cavalry led the charge from the army’s hidden location in the foothills above the plains, their voltaic lances scattering the Protectorate flank with bursts of flesh-searing lightning. Jakes and Bunker followed Sturgis and his mechanized battle group into the fray, surrounded by a blue sea of armored knights and trenchers. Through the forest of bobbing helms and halberds, Jakes could see another host of warjacks trailing the famed mechanik Captain Dominic Darius as he tromped across the field in his custom-built steam-powered suit. Calling the attack an ambush would be like calling the great Meredius a pond, and like the tidal waves common to that treacherous ocean, the Cygnarans crashed upon the Protectorate column, forcing them to flee westward, right into Sturgis’ snare.

Caerly’s Crossing to the north, impassable mountains to the south, and the Black River to their backs, the Protectorate column was slowly pushed into the entrapping terrain, just as Sturgis had predicted in the officer’s briefing the evening before. But Sturgis was never one to underestimate his enemies, and his cautionary words still rang in Jakes’ mind as the battle raged around her: They will fight to the last.

The Protectorate met the assault with flame and furor, giving no ground that the Cygnarans did not pay for in blood. Like wild animals, the packs of zealots fought with even greater fury the tighter quarters became. The army also included a legion of Temple Flame Guard with their impenetrable shield walls and at least two warcasters commanding battlegroups of warjacks. Jakes soon realized the Protectorate column was not unprepared, they were only outmaneuvered.

When Sturgis had been knocked down by the Vanquisher’s attack, Jakes had feared the worst. Without the commander, the operation was doomed. Without her mentor, Jakes thought she’d never survive such an engagement. But when he had emerged unscathed, her faith in his leadership redoubled, filling her with the courage to meet any adversary so long as it was at his side.

Now, as the full radiance of the sun rose above the mountains behind them, Sturgis brought the hammer to the anvil. Manned by teams of trenchers, a score of heavy cannons packed with explosive ordnance inched forward behind the Cygnaran army. When Sturgis gave the signal for the artillery to advance, Jakes knew only minutes remained until the guns would unleash hell upon the entrapped crusaders.

Then hell was unleashed upon Cygnarans.

Even over the clashing blades and clanging warjacks, Jakes heard the distant herald of fiery death. First a low whistle, the familiar sound grew louder until it was a high-pitched shriek that rose above all other clamor.

“Incoming!” bellowed a trencher.

Jakes cast her eyes to the sky, where a swarm of sparkling rockets streaked toward the unwary artillery slogging across the battle-churned field. On the open plain, there was no cover—which was precisely the reason Sturgis had chosen this location to waylay the supply column. Now, though, Jakes cringed as the cannon crews dove to the ground, the rockets impacting around them in ear-splitting bursts.

A single missile exploded upon a cannon, detonating its own loaded shell and shattering the case into iron shards that scythed through a trio of trenchers unlucky enough to be caught in the blast. Had the rockets been more accurate, half the artillery and crew might have been eliminated in a single barrage.

A tangle of smoky black tendrils hung in the air, pointing like a road sign to the source of the rockets. Squinting, Jakes could see a cluster of white-garbed soldiers perched atop a ridge near the pass the Protectorate column had emerged from.

“Deliverers!” Sturgis shouted as he broke toward Jakes while a pair of Centurions moved to fill the gap he left behind. “They’ve left a rear guard in the canyon,” he told her, indicating the rocketeers on the ridge. “I want you to get up there and knock them off those rocks. Take Whisker and a section from Fourth Platoon and make sure not a single deliverer walks away. If we lose our artillery, these Menites will easily overrun us once they regroup.”

Jakes felt the grip of fear around her throat. She knew she was supposed to respond, but that simple acknowledgement of her commander’s orders would not form on her lips. Sturgis didn’t seem to notice as he beckoned to the nearest trencher sergeant and a frizz-haired stormcaller who had just directed a bolt of lightning at a Protectorate warjack.

“Whisker. Sergeant. You’re with Lieutenant Jakes,” the commander ordered. Before the sergeant could snap a salute and acknowledge this, Sturgis was gone, rushing back into the broil.

Jakes blanched and stared at the men gathering before her. Almost four decades older than Jakes, Sergeant Hollings stepped to the center and regarded her with every bit of soldierly professionalism he had shown Sturgis.

“Gravediggers atcher command, ma’am,” he announced, using the epithet proudly adopted by the hardened men that comprised Cygnar’s most frequently deployed fighters.

She yearned to join Sturgis in the battle. By his side she was fearless, confident in her own combat skills and secure in the knowledge that her mentor’s guidance was readily available. Now, he was sending her in the opposite direction of the conflict with minimal instruction and an objective for which she’d received no specific training. Had she been left alone with Bunker, she’d have been far less daunted; at least she had finally developed something resembling compatibility with the warjack. But the eleven faces gazing at her now—trusted allies, trained soldiers ready to follow her every direction—scared her more than any enemy on the battlefield. It wasn’t her life she feared for. It was theirs.

Jakes stared straight ahead as if in a trance. In her mind, the world moved in slow motion as she peered through Bunker’s eyes, gauging the distance between it and their two adversaries. As the Lancer circled wide, angling for an attack, the Centurion moved across the sparring ring with its back to the Ironclad while coiling its arm in preparation for a strike.

Suddenly the padded head of a spear rocketed toward Jakes’ face, and her vision snapped back into her own time and space. Dipping backward reflexively, she swung her body under the Centurion’s extended spear and pivoted on her left foot into a three-quarter turn that ended with both magically charged blades striking the ’jack’s undefended side. The Centurion careened forward under its own momentum, just managing to dig the edge of its shield into the paving stones in time to stop itself from crossing the edge of the ring.

Without pausing, Jakes reached out with her mind to focus though the Ironclad, spurring the warjack into a charge. Two steps from the smaller Lancer, Bunker twisted and lowered its shoulder, slamming its massive hull into the smaller warjack and launching the machine through the air.

Jakes sprinted toward the airborne Lancer, already feeling the satisfaction of beating the irritating ’jack. Splitting her focus, she charged one blade for her assault on the Lancer while searching the Ironclad’s vision for her other adversary. To her alarm, she spotted Bunker about to trample her from behind. You idiot! You’re supposed to be on the Centurion! Her concentration was instantly shattered, the link between her and the Ironclad suddenly a confusing blur of images and sensations. She needed to correct its course, focus its attack, but all she could think of was getting out of the way.

Throwing her body forward into a roll, she barely missed being crushed by Bunker just as the Centurion smashed into the Ironclad from the side. The impact drove Bunker’s grill into the pavers, laying the ’jack out like a pile of discarded junk. As Jakes regained her feet, she realized the Centurion’s attack had actually been meant for her.

Bunker struggled to push itself up off the ground, but the Centurion drove it back onto the pavers with the butt of its spear. Using the distraction to her advantage, Jakes rushed the Centurion from behind and laid into it with a series of focused attacks. When it turned quickly to defend itself, the massive warjack stumbled forward and tripped over the bulk of the prone Ironclad, which sent it staggering over the edge of the practice ring.

Glimpsing the Lancer back on its feet, Jakes quickly hunched down behind the Ironclad to conceal herself. Holding her breath, she waited, listening for which direction the Lancer would move in its hunt for her. As it moved counter-clockwise around the Ironclad, Jakes crept silently in the same direction, circling behind the unsuspecting Lancer. With a furious battle cry, she waylaid the light ’jack and struck when its weight was on a single leg between steps, off-balancing it to send it reeling from the ring, nearly tripping into the rising Centurion.

“Well done, Lieutenant!” Sturgis said as he walked toward her. “A well-executed defense. Excellent reversal.” Her heart pounding from exertion, Jakes hadn’t even processed that she had just defeated both of Sturgis’ warjacks for the first time.

“Thank you, sir,” she replied without a hint of pride. Succeeding at the expense of her Ironclad had sucked any gratification out of her victory.

“That was a risky gambit, but it paid off,” Sturgis said, patting the Ironclad’s armored shoulder as it labored to right itself. “Expensive as they are, a warjack is a small price to pay for victory or your life.”

There had been no gambit, though. Without Jakes’ direction, Bunker had thrown itself in the way of what would have been, in real combat, a lethal attack from the Centurion. All Jakes had done was use the stalwart warjack’s dented wreck for cover. This truth was more embarrassing than being beaten so handily by the Lancer only a week before. She needed to come clean.

“Sir,” she started, unsure how to put the words together, “I didn’t . . . I’m afraid that wasn’t—”

Sturgis raised his hand, interrupting her stammering. “It wasn’t perfect, Allison, but you achieved your objective. That is what’s important.” He circled around the Centurion, checking the fuel gauge on its furnace before silently commanding it and the other ’jacks to return to the armory for repairs. “This desire for perfection has paralyzed you before at critical moments that required action. Permitting yourself to fail, as you did today, gave you the courage to grasp victory.”

If he could read the confusion in her expression, Sturgis didn’t comment on it. She hadn’t permitted herself anything. Fear had beaten her again, and she knew it. Why didn’t he?

“It’s time for you to start drilling with a squad,” he said, hoisting his dual-bladed staff over his shoulder. “You’ll be leading soldiers soon. That’s going to make commanding warjacks seem easy,” he added with a wry grin.

Jakes was almost sure the lump that had just formed in her throat was visible.

“Commander Sturgis,” she said, walking two steps behind him as he followed the ’jacks to the armory, “I feel like I’ve got a lot more to learn.”

The commander nodded. “We all do. The moment you think you’ve learned everything there is to know, some hairy northerner or crazed fanatic will prove you wrong.”

“I understand.” Jakes spoke slowly, fighting to keep from sounding like a fragile child. “But if I’m not perfect . . . If I can’t do everything a warcaster is meant to do, flawlessly, how will you know when I’m ready?”

“Ready?”

“You know . . . ready to lead,” she replied.

Sturgis finally paused, turning to face her. The humor was gone from his expression, replaced by the quiet understanding Jakes had yet to become comfortable with in a superior officer. “No one is ever ready, Allison. Not for war. Not for the things you will have to see . . . or do. But we do what we must, all the same.”

She tried to swallow, but the lump in her throat wouldn’t budge. As she had on many occasions since entering the Strategic Academy, she wondered how this rare talent she was born with had ever come to be known as “the gift.”

“Ma’am?” There was a pause. “Your orders, ma’am,” Sergeant Hollings repeated. But Jakes was frozen in place, her mind caving under the weight of her immense responsibility.

A new salvo of rockets screamed over the trampled plain and detonated amid the scrambling Cygnaran artillery crews, shattering Jakes’ momentary daze. A series of secondary explosions signaled a hit on an ammunition crate, but from her position, none of the crewmen appeared to be caught in the blasts. Jakes knew, though, that another moment’s hesitation would cost lives.

Hollings’ professional regard had turned doubtful; she could see it in his ruddy face. He eyed her uncertainly. But it was the youngest of the men before her that broke the brief but uncomfortable silence.

“Pardon my speaking outta line, ma’am,” the trencher said, sighting downfield through the scope mounted on his rifle. He was the only soldier in his section to have such a scope, she noticed. “But if we can get yonder of those cannons, I can knock them candles off those rocks, sure as the sarge can whistle Swanny.”

To call him a man was to show him the respect his courage as a soldier deserved, but in every other way he seemed just a boy. His face was smooth, save for a few blemishes of adolescence scattered across his cheeks, and Jakes noted that his voice cracked when he spoke, yet to find its permanent octave.

“It’s truth, ma’am,” Hollings said, nodding to the boy. “Wally’s the deadest eye in Fourth.”

“He’s positively peerless,” Whisker intoned, his obvious overbite beneath the blank stare of his tinted goggles giving him an almost puppet-like appearance. “Lightning fast, too. I’ve seen it myself.”

Jakes wore the rank of lieutenant on her left shoulder and the uniform of a warcaster beneath her armor. The pair of mechanika blades she carried and the arcanely enhanced armor she wore cost more than the collective kit of the entire squad before her, and she had six and a half tons of walking iron at her command. But in every way, she felt a fraud. To lead these men into combat was to accept their blood upon her hands should she fail them. To renounce her responsibility was to consign the artillery crews—and very likely every Cygnaran east of the Black River—to certain death. And, as she knew in her knotted gut, there was no choice she could make that would guarantee the prevention of either.

“Gravediggers. Stormy. We need to get those candles off that hill,” Jakes finally uttered, using the soldiers’ derogatory slang for their fire-loving enemy. She drew her hand cannon from its holster and checked the round, mustering all the bravado she could fake. Growing up the daughter of a diva had endowed her with some ability to perform, even when the performance wasn’t honest. “Who’s ready?”

“Dig deep!” The trenchers barked their famous battle cry.

“Charged to capacity,” Whisker added with excitement.

No one is ever ready, Jakes thought.

She pivoted on her heel, simultaneously sending a mental command to Bunker to keep pace with her. “Double time!” she shouted, ramping into a jog as the squad fell in behind her. Running straight toward another volley of rockets launched from the deliverers, Jakes clung to the lessons of her mentor and prayed to Morrow they would be enough.

But we do what we must.

Sturgis walked across the sparring ring dragging a long, heavy iron chain. Jakes watched, puzzled, as he anchored one end of the chain to a tie-down ring on the back of the Ironclad and returned to her with the opposite end of the chain and a stout padlock.

“Put this around your waist,” he said, handing her the chain.

She stared at him, even more baffled. “I thought ’jack-hauling had been outlawed,” she said, half in jest. Warily, she accepted the chain and looped it behind her lower back.

Sturgis chuckled as he secured the loop snugly around her waist with the padlock. The gruesome form of torture involving strapping a man to a searing hot warjack hadn’t been practiced since Cygnar’s current king had taken the throne. “You’re not being punished,” he said as he located the center of the chain and tied what appeared to be a twelve-pound shot on the end of a short rope to it.

“You want to tell that to the peanut gallery?” she asked incredulously, nodding toward a small crowd of soldiers gathering a distance from the sparring ring. “I’m pretty sure I saw one of them holding a bag of rotten fruit.”

“This chain—” Sturgis held it up so the attached cannon ball hung below his hand “—represents the maximum range you can control your warjack. As you get farther apart, you’ll feel resistance from the weight hanging here. That will be your signal to close the distance to the warjack before your mental connection becomes ineffective.”

Jakes nodded. “Okay. I get it.” She grabbed the chain in front of her and took a few steps backward to get a feel for its weight.

“Excellent,” Sturgis said, striding to the edge of the ring. “You’ll train with the chain on until you can intuitively sense the edge of your effective range.”

She gawked at him. “You want me to wear this while we’re sparring?”

“Are you ready?”

“You’ve got to be kid—”

“Very good,” he said, cutting her off. He crossed his arms across his chest, and his eyes flared blue. The Centurion and Lancer both lurched forward, each adopting its combat posture as it advanced on its chosen target.

Jakes dropped into a defensive stance as the Lancer stalked toward her. Jockeying for the best angle, she repeatedly stepped on the chain, which distracted her from maneuvering and prevented her from taking the offensive.

The Lancer struck with a series of rapid thrusts. Jakes parried the first and backpedaled out of range, struggling to maintain awareness of the Ironclad’s situation. She focused through the warjack to energize a powerful blow from its hammer that sent the Centurion reeling toward the edge of the ring. By carefully balancing her defense and offense she had gained a slight advantage, and she quickly moved to exploit it.

Keeping the Lancer’s attention on her, she retreated from it in a wide arc. Rather than having Bunker follow through with its attacks on the Centurion, she concentrated her full focus on it and spurred the Ironclad into a charge on the Lancer. She felt clever as she sprinted across the ring toward the Centurion; with both of the other ’jacks fixated on their retreating targets, they’d never see the attacks coming.

Through Bunker’s eyes she saw the Lancer spin to face it the moment before impact. With a deafening crash, Bunker slammed the Lancer with its full force. Grinning, Jakes leaped for the Centurion, charging her mechanikal sword with arcane energy. Then in mid-air, the moment before she could land the strike, she suddenly felt as if she’d been torn in half. Flying forward one moment, she was yanked backward and flung to the ground, pounding the wind from her lungs. Her weapons clattered across the ground and her armor sparked on the pavers as Bunker’s forward momentum dragged her across the sparring ring.

Unable to lie on her back because of the cumbersome turbine that powered her protective power field, she rolled to her front, supporting herself with one arm as she gasped for air. She could see the gathered soldiers struggling to contain their laughter.

Sturgis appeared and knelt by her side. “Are you hurt?”

Still unable to speak, she shook her head. But in that moment, she wished she could sink into the ground, away from scrutiny.

“You didn’t feel the weight,” Sturgis said. “You were too concerned with your attacks.”

She nodded, glowering at the soldiers.

“Tell me, how many times will you have to get knocked down before you can sense the edge of your control area?” Sturgis’ face was stoic. She couldn’t tell if the question was earnest or rhetorical.

Wheezing, chest burning, she finally managed to force words from her mouth. “I don’t . . . know. But I’ll . . . try again.”

“Good.” Sturgis grinned and hoisted her to her feet. Is he actually proud of me? she wondered, unable to read the intention in his expression or his response. “It’s not important how many times you get knocked down. What’s important is that you’re willing to get knocked down.”

The deliverer’s head jerked backward, perforated by a single rifle round expertly fired by Private First Class Benjamin Wallace. The man’s lifeless body slumped behind one of the several moss-covered boulders where the rocketeers had taken cover. That was the third deliverer put down by Wally, who was every bit the sharpshooter his squad-mates had so glowingly advertised.

“It ain’t nothing really, ma’am,” Wally shouted over the staccato pop of the squad’s suppressing fire, never looking away from his scope as he chambered another round in his rifle. “Back in the Westins, I ain’t got one o’ these fancy glasses, and marsh turkeys hide a whole lot better than these fellas.”

Jakes had to smile at the young trencher’s endless banter. She’d learned more about him in the few short minutes they’d been pushing their way up this hill than she knew about many of the classmates she’d seen every day for two years at the Strategic Academy. The only son in his family, Wally had five older sisters, and not one could bake a pudding as good as the army cooks at Fort Falk. Sergeant Hollings had been teaching him letters, at least enough to know how to avoid the stuff that could blow up. And even though his mother begged him not to, he’d volunteered for the service because he figured any king good enough for his daddy and granddaddy to die for was a king who deserved whatever small help he could offer.

At nineteen, Jakes was accustomed to feeling inexperienced in the presence of the veteran soldiers and officers she encountered daily. But Wally made her feel as if she’d already lived a lifetime. Despite his trappings as a soldier, she couldn’t look at him without seeing a young boy she needed to shelter.

Another pop from Wally’s rifle and another deliverer went down. Under the constant barrage of gunfire, the deliverers couldn’t bring their cumbersome launchers to bear, and every attempt brought them a wound or casualty. With nearly half the squad incapacitated, the survivors changed tactics and began to slowly move back into the pass, using the large rocks and thick chaparral to cover their retreat.

Sturgis had ordered the threat neutralized, though, and Jakes resolved to eliminate any possibility that another rocket might endanger the Cygnaran artillery again. But the labyrinthine pass ahead was unknown, and she wasn’t ready to put her squad at risk if the deliverers were up to something.

“Hold position!” she called out as she marched forward with Bunker at her side.

Sergeant Hollings took a few cautious steps in pursuit. “Lieutenant?” he asked, perplexed, “Shall I move the lads up to cover yer advance?”

“I said hold, Sergeant,” Jakes barked back as confidently as she could manage, quickening her stride. Despite her rank, she felt categorically unqualified to be giving orders to a man with a military career longer than she’d been alive. “I want to check it out first.”

The trenchers began to fall in behind Hollings, but he held them back with a wave of his hand. He kept pace with Jakes despite his portly physique but did not overtly assert himself. “Them crags are twisty, ma’am, full o’ crisscrosses and switchbacks. And them bloody candles are keen on dirty tricks. They don’t care a lick for their mortal skins.” He slowed, letting her move ahead alone, adding, “You holler if you need us, Lieutenant.”

Jakes kept her shoulders squared and her eyes straight ahead. “Be ready to move on my signal.”

“Yes, ma’am!” she heard behind her as she neared the mouth of the canyon pass. Knowing the sergeant and his men would wait brought her some small sense of relief. She felt no nervousness about mopping up the remaining deliverers, only about putting the lives of her squad at risk in a situation she wasn’t prepared for.

The walls of the canyon sloped steeply toward the narrow, travel-worn pass. Wide enough for ten men to stand shoulder to shoulder, it provided ample room for Jakes and Bunker to maneuver but would have been impossible to move an army through at anything more than a march. Loose boulders and scrub made the terrain even more treacherous, and the winding gorge cut by eons of wind and rain prevented any visibility beyond thirty or forty yards.

Jakes slowed her pace, proceeding cautiously. She kept Bunker close and scanned the area through its eyes as well as her own. Twenty paces ahead, a deliverer popped up from behind a cluster of boulders, his launcher spewing fire and flame. The wild shot sent the rocket flying harmlessly over Jakes’ head and past the rim of the canyon, but the surprise made her duck for cover before she realized neither she nor the Ironclad were in danger of being hit.

The deliverer dropped his launcher and hastened deeper into the canyon. Jakes fired her hand cannon at his back, but the shot was wide and the fanatic was out of site before she could load another.

,She gave chase without hesitation, reloading her pistol as she ran. She focused on the Ironclad, running it at full steam by her side, heedless of the uneven terrain. In her haste to hunt down her attacker, she completely failed to notice she had charged right into an ambush.

Fire bombs detonated in front of her before she spotted the white-robed fanatics that had sprung up on either side of the canyon’s rim. A dozen, maybe more, lobbed flaming spheres of explosive liquid into the gorge, each sphere blossoming into an instant bonfire on impact.

A clay vessel exploded over the armored hull of Bunker, bathing it in a fiery blaze and showering Jakes with burning shards of shrapnel and searing oil. Instinctively, she focused on her warcaster armor, revving the arcane turbine on her back to overboost her power field. When another bomb detonated at her feet, she felt the intense heat of the blast, but the flames and shrapnel washed harmlessly over the blue shroud of arcane energy that flickered around her.

She fired a shot from her hand cannon, grazing a zealot across his shoulder. Far from lethal, the shot was still enough to cause the fanatic to drop the bomb at his feet, which immediately detonated, engulfing him in its flame.

Jakes crouched behind the Ironclad as she hurried to shove another round in the hand cannon, but the sheer number of adversaries had her at a severe disadvantage. With no ranged weapon, Bunker was good for little more than a shield. And with only a cumbersome single-shot firearm of her own, she’d be swimming in flaming oil before she could possibly neutralize half her ambushers.

“Smoke!” she heard a familiar voice suddenly yell over another round of fiery explosions. Glancing backward, she saw Hollings charging the squad into the canyon.

An instant later, the pop-pop-pop of smoke grenades erupted around her, quickly filling the canyon with a thick white haze that completely obscured anything more than a few feet away. The smoke was of questionable protection, though. The bomb-throwing zealots relied little on accuracy.

“Fall back!” she ordered as another round of bombs exploded through the gorge. “Take cover!”

One trencher howled, singed by the splattering flames as the squad backed away from their assailants, feeling their way over the uneven ground.

A blue blur brushed past her elbow, and Jakes could just make out Whisker, his woolen coat buttoned tightly up to his chin. Even in the haze, his tinted goggles gleamed, but his stark white mop of hair blended into the smoke.

“Excuse my conduct, Lieutenant.” He spoke with a tick, as if constantly experiencing a mild electric shock. “But I’m struck with the notion that this is the perfect atmosphere to demonstrate my brilliance.”

Jakes blinked, her mind balking at the man’s puns. She’d heard the Stormcallers were odd, but she hadn’t yet experienced their unique peculiarity. “Brilliance?” she asked anxiously, still in retreat.

“Positively!” he said, grinning widely. He seemed to interpret her response as some sort of approval. “Ahem,” he added, tapping his goggles until Jakes realized he was suggesting she don her own. Baffled, she covered her eyes with her protective lenses, and when she looked back again, Whisker was nowhere to be seen.

A moment later the haze flashed like the interior of a thundercloud, illuminated by a streak of lightning that stabbed from the sky to the canyon’s edge with a crackling hiss. An arrested wail proved the bolt had found its mark; the bone-crunching thump and explosion of flame that followed confirmed its effectiveness. Tech-Specialist First Class Armin Whisker appeared to be as precise with his electrical strikes as Wally was with his rifle.

She couldn’t see him, but Jakes could hear Whisker’s mechanikal lightning rod charging up to call another strike. Overhead, a zealot priest chanted in Caspian, the ancient tongue inciting the fury of Menoth’s followers. Fire bombs fell around Jakes’ squad, scorching the ground and setting the sparse brush ablaze. After a second lightning strike found its mark, shouts and movement sounded above. Dislodged by hasty footsteps, the rocks from the steep walls of the gorge began to crumble and slide into the basin below. The zealots were descending into the canyon.

Just then, Whisker streaked past her in retreat. “Sorry to bolt!” Jakes had only a moment to gape at the strange man before she heard a mob of footsteps pounding toward her carrying bellowed promises of the wrath and vengeance the Creator would visit upon Cygnar.

“Your command, ma’am?” Hollings shouted.

This was what she’d hoped so desperately to avoid: the burden of her responsibility to keep these soldiers alive. Though she was angry Hollings hadn’t followed her orders, she knew that if he had, she’d already be dead and the squad would carry on their mission anyway.

“Ready bayonets!” she called behind her as she exchanged her hand cannon for her dueling dagger.

“Thunder follows lighting!” A trencher crowed in response. Jakes couldn’t see who it was, but the motto was quickly echoed by nearly every soldier in the squad. If these men feared for their fate more than she did, they gave no reason to believe it.

Conserving her focus, she mentally urged her Ironclad forward while searching the haze through its eyes. As the smoke began to lift, silhouettes of the approaching zealots became more visible with every step they took toward her. She spurred Bunker forward, charging his hammer with her energy. At the last moment, the Ironclad swung the weapon in a wide arc. The spiked head connected with a zealot, splintering every rib in his chest as it lifted him off the ground and sent him soaring over the heads of his fellow fanatics. A focused hook from Bunker’s right arm clotheslined another Menite, expelling the life from his body before he hit the ground.

“Skirmish formation!” Jakes shouted as she took off at a run. Moving along the wall of the canyon she skirted past the charging zealots while carefully keeping Bunker within her effective control range. She could hear Hollings shouting orders to his section over the screech of steel bayonets piercing chain mail shirts. And somewhere within the mob of zealots the priest continued his chant, inspiring a rage among the fanatics that compensated for their lack of combat training and physical conditioning.

Sprinting the width of the rocky pass, Jakes positioned herself behind the mob of billowing linen and flailing clubs. At their center, she spotted the priest. Her eyes flashed and she could see the Ironclad’s eyes answer as it deflected the relentless attacks of the zealots. She charged forward and spurred Bunker straight toward her. Jakes scythed through the throng of fanatics with flashing blades as the Ironclad trampled them under its feet. Together, they crushed a half-dozen zealots like a vicious vice until only the priest stood between them. “I curse you in the name of Menoth, you who have forsaken your Creator!” he just managed to say before joining his comrades in death.

Jakes felt the tug on the edge of her consciousness before she was aware of the weight pulling on the chain at her waist. It had been a week since she was last yanked off her feet, and the unseen bond between her and the Ironclad had become far more present to her senses than the chain had ever been.

Warcaster and warjack moved in perfect synergy, maneuvering around the practice ring with an agility and grace that Jakes could previously have achieved only when fighting on her own. The chain posed no impediment; she stepped effortlessly over and around it as she executed precision attacks against the Centurion. Her focus was flawless as she increased the power and accuracy of Bunker’s assault on the Lancer. Punctuating a seamlessly fluid combination of attacks, the Ironclad clamped its fist around the arm of the Lancer and flung it through the air to crash directly into the Centurion.

Jakes calculated the distance to the heap of sprawling warjacks, then divided her focus between her own attacks and the Ironclad in preparation for a two-pronged finishing move.

From nowhere, Sturgis appeared in the center of the arena, transported in a flash of mystical runes from his position on the sidelines. Without a word he launched a series of attacks at Jakes, battling her backward with the twin blades of his mechanikal staff.

“Commander!” she shouted, parrying his flashing blades. “What are you doing?”

He didn’t answer but only continued to come at her, driving her away from the center of the ring.

As Jakes struggled to puzzling out the unexpected change in sparring protocol while still defending herself, the Centurion and the Lancer regained their feet and advanced on Bunker. Jakes could see the flash in Sturgis’ eyes as he focused on his warjacks. The powerful, precise blows they landed only confirmed his direction over their attacks.

Inch by inch, link by link, Bunker and Jakes were pushed apart. She fought with every ounce of her will to close the distance between them, but the assault from the Centurion and Lancer continued to drive the Ironclad backward. The chain, pulled taut at maximum extension, towed her forward into Sturgis’ whirling blades. She stiffened her stance, feet sliding over the pavers as she batted his jabs and slashes aside. She refused to lose her balance or break her focus.

Seeing simultaneously through Bunker’s eyes and her own, she divided her focus, preparing for a counterattack that would bring them closer together. Then, feinting with a thrust toward her face, Sturgis spun on his heel and sliced his blade through the tightly drawn chain. The recoil sent Jakes and the Ironclad reeling in opposite directions, their effective bond severed as quickly as Sturgis had severed the iron links.

Without Jakes’ guidance, Bunker swung clumsily at its two opponents. They were under Sturgis’ command and were well within his much-greater control area. Blue energy rippled over their armored carapaces as together they charged, beating the outgunned Ironclad to the ground with brutal thrusts and slashes from their spears. Bunker battled to regain its feet, but the Centurion and the Lancer were merciless in their attacks, continuing to batter the warjack long after it had been pushed outside the practice ring.

Jakes rushed forward, desperate to reestablish control of her Ironclad, but Sturgis blocked her path with his bladed staff. “I don’t understand!” she shouted. “Why are you doing this?” Stone-faced, Sturgis offered no answer but only held her at bay as she watched the Ironclad fall under the avalanche of blows. Finally, able to resist no more the Ironclad collapsed with a mournful, metallic groan. Jakes fell to her knees in defeat. “Bunker!” she cried out, her voice trailing off even as the flames within the Ironclad’s furnace expired.

She gritted her teeth in frustration. Against her will tears welled and blurred her vision. She angrily blinked them away and demanded, “Why?”

“You are the engine that drives a powerful machine, one that only functions when all its components work in harmony. And you have learned to operate the machine well.” Sturgis mentally called the Centurion and the Lancer back to the center of the practice ring, but Bunker remained motionless, sprawled across the pavers. “Until these last few weeks, you felt you were stronger alone. But now you’ve learned what it means to be a warcaster—that the bond you share with the warjacks multiplies your strength exponentially.”

“I already understand that,” she said through clenched teeth. “So I don’t know why you had to go and scrap it.”

“You needed to understand that although you are weaker without the warjacks, they are powerless without you. Remember this, and let nothing ever come between you again.”

“You defied my direct order, Sergeant!”

Hollings stared straight ahead, his doughy body at rigid attention as Jakes yelled into his ear. Out of respect, she had walked him away from the other men before dressing him down, but she knew the entire squad would receive her message in short order. Whether his dereliction of her command had saved her life or not, she couldn’t allow the impression that she would allow disobedience.

“Honest, ma’am. We only come a-running when we heard yer signal.” Unblinking, he delivered his explanation with every ounce of deference he would use to speak to the army’s most decorated general. But Jakes knew he was lying.

“What signal?” she demanded.

He took one too many breaths before answering, a clear indication that he was covering. “The signal you said to be ready for, ma’am.” He winced, silently cursing himself for not having a better explanation; she could tell.

In truth, Jakes wasn’t angry at all. Though this was not as exhilarating as communing with the cortex of a warjack, she was nonetheless forging a bond.

She backed off, giving him some breathing room and softening her tone. “You’re lucky no one was killed.”

“Understood, ma’am. I take full responsibility for my actions,” he said, showing no sign of relaxing. “Permission to speak, Lieutenant?” he asked when Jakes didn’t fill the silence.

She glanced sideways at him before turning away to conceal the smile curling the corner of her mouth. She was quickly coming to like the sergeant and was amused that a man could be insubordinate, consummately professional, and charitable all at once. Staring into the maze of intersecting ravines, she absently kicked a stone over the edge of a low cliff. Bunker had run the last of the deliverers right over the edge of the jagged escarpment here, and Jakes could see the broken body draped over the unforgiving rocks below. “Go ahead.”

Hollings finally let his shoulders slump, allowing the starched military presentation of a hardened soldier to fall away. Jakes heard the words of a man speaking from his heart.

“This whole war would be over ’fore I could name every reason to love our great nation of Cygnar, but at the top o’ my list is that me and every one of the men and women fighting for our king done so by volunteering. Them reds don’t— they’re called by their empress. The candles gotta go by their god. And woe to the poor sod who ends up serving the Cryxians. He’s forced to fight even after he should be cold in the ground.”

She turned to him and pointed at her left pauldron. “You do know these wings on my shoulder mean I spent two years in the academy, don’t you, Sergeant? I’m familiar with those other armies.”

Hollings cleared his throat. “No disrespect to yer station, ma’am. Point is, them lads o’er yonder knows the stakes and is ready to face whatever bloody bastard tries to take a piece outta Cygnar. Every one o’ them made a choice outta love for this country, and they done it without having any special gift such as yerself.”

This time Jakes took a moment to answer. “I wish I had such courage,” she said quietly, eyes on the ground.

Hollings grinned, raising his chin. “Ma’am. That’s wot you gots us for.”

His words comforted her more than she could have ever expected. She searched for a way to acknowledge his message—to thank him for the adjustment in her perspective. But all she could manage was a quick nod before a trencher yelled suddenly from his lookout atop a mound of boulders.

“Colossal!”

Bunker’s head snapped up, his senses going into full alert. Spinning on her heel, Jakes looked out over the Crag to see what looked like a massive pair of golden pipe organs rising over a ridge. A moment later, the two unmistakable rocket pods of a Judicator came into view. Three times as tall as her Ironclad and ten times as heavy, the Judicator stomped through the canyon like a walking fortress.

“Them deliverers was a ruse, ma’am!” Hollings shouted, pointing beyond the Judicator at the mass of Protectorate fighters following behind it.

Jakes was appalled. “They sacrificed those men to mask their reserves.” She crept to the edge of the cliff trying to get a clear view of the oncoming reinforcements.

“They plan to march that thing right up our rear,” Hollings said gravely.

“Which means there’s another warcaster down there,” she added.

A bay of covered ports on one of the Judicator’s rocket pods opened, unleashing a salvo of rockets directly at Jakes.

“Sergeant!” she cried, pushing him ahead of her as she turned to flee from the cliff’s edge. But she was too slow to make her escape. The rockets detonated on the rocky wall of the cliff, instantly turning the ground beneath her feet to rubble.

Hollings stumbled forward onto solid ground as the avalanche of rock swept Jakes and the Ironclad into the gorge below. Sharp boulders rushed up at her from the floor of the canyon. Instinctively, she focused on her warcaster armor to boost the protective field surrounding her, but the wind was still knocked out of her as she bounced off a rock and tumbled toward the broken earth at the base of the cliff.

The moment before impact, Jakes was struck with that dreaded sensation of having her head dunked under water. Her bond with Bunker had been stretched too thin, and she couldn’t see where the Ironclad had ended up. Clambering out from beneath the landslide of jagged stone, she searched wildly for the ’jack, but among the massive boulders could neither see it nor sense his presence.

Then the screech of hydraulics approached and the earth shook underneath Jakes. Peeking around a boulder, Jakes spotted the Judicator stomping toward her. She felt a blast of heat as twin plumes of fire erupted from the colossal’s chest-mounted flamethrowers, turning the scrubby foliage before it to ash. Beyond the huge warjack rose the riled voices of zealots, searching her out.

Cut off from her squad with no sign of her Ironclad, Jakes did the only thing she could and fled.

Despite the vastness of Fort Falk, its massive population of garrisoned troops and support personnel made privacy a luxury in short supply. For the first three weeks after she had arrived, Jakes had devoted what little personal time she was allowed to seeking out some small corner of refuge from the endless clamor of wartime enterprise that filled the fortress.

She had been rewarded with the discovery of a little-used rampart along the outer curtain’s west wall. It was a short stretch of battlement between two turrets, where there was little reason for anyone to cross unless the fort was under siege. From here, Jakes could look out on the expanse of scattered farmlands, largely untouched by the war so far, and experience a moment of solitude impossible to find even in her own quarters. Religious rites were, by Jake’s upbringing, private affairs, and she preferred to make her devotions away from the interruptions and appraisals of others. Here, atop the crenellated wall of Fort Falk, Jakes could pray, free of intrusions from soldiers, cooks, mechaniks, priests, or warcasters.

Jakes removed the leather cord she wore beneath her simple tunic and looked at the small medallion hanging from it. Not much larger than a copper farthing, the medallion was crudely stamped with the image of an outstretched palm receiving a coin. It was the symbol of Ascendant Rowan, a noble who half a millennia before had sacrificed her wealth, and ultimately her life, to ease the suffering of the poor and downtrodden.

She placed the medallion in her right palm and wrapped the cord around her hand, binding it in place. Resting on her knees, she held her right hand in her left and dipped the tips of her fingers into the shallow clay vessel of lily-scented oil she had brought. As she brought her hands toward her face, she paused to watch the oil drip down her fingers and over the face of the medallion.

“His memory we protect,” she said softly, touching her fingertips to her forehead. “His soul we surrender,” she continued, placing her folded hands over her heart. “Gentle Rowan, light his path and ease his burden that his crossing may be safe and swift. Shield his passage, bless him, and guide him to the eternity of Morrow’s radiance.”

Extending her arms, she raised her open palms to the sky.

“This we humbly ask of thee, gentle Rowan, while we endeavor to honor those who crossed before us.”

Finally, Jakes closed her eyes and touched the medallion to her lips, hanging her head in quiet reflection. It was then she felt the tingle along her spine alerting her to the presence of another who shared her gift. She did not have to look to know it was Sturgis.

“One usually invokes the name of Katrena or Marcus with the Crossing, not the patron of paupers,” Sturgis said, no judgment implied in his tone.

Jakes rubbed the oil off the medallion and looped the cord around her neck once more. “Katrena and Marcus watch over knights and soldiers, not paupers.”

“Who was he to you?” Sturgis asked.

She glanced at him, noting that he held an official-looking sheaf of papers. As she had expected, they were being deployed. What she hadn’t expected was for it to be so urgent he’d search the fortress for her personally.

“I didn’t know him,” she finally said. “He was just a boy, a street urchin from the slums in Caspia. I’d never seen him before.”

“You pray for him often?”

Jakes nodded. “Every day.”

“That sounds more like penance.”

She gazed out past the battlements, watching the crimson orb of the sun slowly melt over the uneven horizon. “A building had caught fire. I saw him, trapped in a cellar and struggling to squeeze through a barred window. But the fire brigade was only concerned with preventing the flames from spreading to the merchant district. He was crying, pleading for help, and they just ignored him.”

“You didn’t.”

“I stole one of their laborjacks. I’d had lessons in arcana; I’d even practiced with a steamjack a couple times.” She clenched her eyes shut, recalling the memories all too vividly. “I thought I could help him. I thought I could control the ’jack. It could have ripped away those bars so easily.”

“I understand now,” Sturgis said solemnly. He stepped to the battlements and stood beside her, close enough Jakes could feel the heat emanating from the arcane turbine on the back of his armor. “But you must understand that his death is not on your hands.”

Her response was only silence.

Sturgis hung his head. He spoke gravely, clearly no stranger to such loss. “Allison, when you go to battle, soldiers under your command will die. You must know this.”

“If I’m good enough . . if I’m perfect at what I do . . . maybe there will be fewer.”

“We are at war. Will you punish yourself for every death?”

She turned to face him, searching his eyes for an answer that could extinguish the turmoil within her. Her trust in his guidance was absolute. His wisdom would be her confidence. “What do you do?”

He stared back at her, his eyes slightly distant. Behind that thin veil was pain, but he would not allow such emotions to surface. Finally he placed the folded clutch of documents into her hand and walked out the way he had come.

“We march at dawn.”

Jakes crept through the ravine, careful to keep her head low as she moved between concealing boulders and scrub brush. One of the greatest assets afforded a warcaster was the mechanika armor that enshrouded the wearer with a powerful ablative power field. But that same armor could also be a bane when stealth was required, for the steam turbine that powered the field constantly emitted smoke from its coal-burning furnace.

In her attempt to evade the Protectorate forces, Jakes had cut the power to the turbine. It was a risky gambit, as cycling up the turbine took several seconds, and during that time she’d be far more vulnerable to attacks than normal. Powering down also produced a greater disadvantage: the armor became an intolerable burden. In addition to creating the invisible shield and sending additional power to the armor’s arms and legs, the arcane turbine offset the great weight of the armor and allowed the warcaster to move as if wearing no armor at all. Though Jakes’ armor was light compared to that preferred by some veteran warcasters, the still-substantial load hindered her movements, slowing her speed and reflexes. The alternative, however, was to advertise her exact location to the small horde of bloodthirsty zealots currently searching for her corpse.

The Judicator had lumbered on ahead, setting the pace for the Protectorate reserves. It appeared to be taking a route that, although circuitous, would perfectly position their forces to ambush the Cygnaran artillery on the other side of the crags. Unable to return the way she had come and blocked by the advancing reserve force, Jakes could only stay out of sight and hope for an opportunity to get a warning to her countrymen.

As she crouched behind a tangle of dried brambles, the hairs on the back of her neck began to stand up, one by one, until her whole spine tingled with the unmistakable sensation of a warcaster nearby. Peering through the thicket, Jakes could see a lustrous glow moving through the canyon. At the center of the light was a young woman, no older than Jakes, bedecked in magnificent armor and flowing garments of white and gold. In one arm, she cradled the shaft of a billowing pennant bearing a Menofix—the crest of Menoth, creator of Man. In her other hand, she held the source of her illumination: a golden sword radiating with holy light. Seeing this woman was enough to take Jake’s breath away, even more so because she hovered above the shoulders of her followers, bound to the earth by a trio of robed acolytes pulling chains tethered to her waist.

Jakes had heard of this young woman, a mysterious prophetess known throughout the Iron Kingdoms as the Harbinger of Menoth. Though a white cloth masked her eyes, the Harbinger was said to possess miraculous vision, and her followers believed that she spoke directly to their god, Menoth. Gazing upon her was to behold the will of the Creator incarnate, and her mere presence had converted entire villages to follow the Menite faith. She was the beating heart of the Northern Crusade, and though Jakes had been raised under a different creed, to her the Harbinger was a vision of pure perfection.

The Harbinger was thought by Cygnar’s military intelligence to be occupied with expeditions in Llael; shat she was here now was a disastrous turn of events. How could Jakes hope to survive an encounter with such a supreme force, much less excel as a warcaster at all? This girl had already led armies to victories against insurmountable odds. Jakes couldn’t even lead a handful of men through a canyon without getting lost.

Jakes’ spirits crumbled as she contemplated her complete lack of options. Her hopeless situation had become impossible. Her failure would end in tragedy. Yet despite her Morrowan upbringing, she still felt the draw of the divinity before her. She could not deny the wonder of this girl, unbound to the earth by the glory of her god. She could not shake the tingling down her spine and the sensation of being in the presence of such unfathomable power. And then Jakes realized that if she could sense the Harbinger, the Harbinger could surely sense her, too.

As though to confirm this, the Harbinger suddenly raised her sword, and from over thirty yards away leveled it directly at the thicket obscuring Jakes from view. The sword blazed with brilliant light, and the collective eyes of the zealot mob turned toward Jakes’ location. The mob surged forward with their bombs and flails in hand, shouting.

Jakes struggled to her feet under the weight of her armor and ran along the edge of the canyon, searching for any cover that might shield her. She flipped a concealed switch on the side of her chest plate and ignited the furnace on her back. Instantly, the steam turbine began to pressurize, invigorating the arcane turbine with rapid chugs. Electric-blue tendrils crackled around her as the runeplates sealed between layers of steel armor conducted her arcane energy and slowly formed the invisible shield around her. But still, the weight of the armor made the muscles in her legs quiver in pain and she winced with every stride.

Fire exploded in the canyon as the bombs of overeager zealots were flung too soon and fell far short of her. As she willed the muscle fatigue from her mind, Jakes felt a tug on the edge of her consciousness, like a thread being pulled at the hem of a shirt. Three heartbeats later she felt it again, stronger but still fleeting. It was Bunker. The warjack was somewhere nearby.

Jakes glanced around as she continued her sluggish flight, but the tall boulders and sheer canyon walls blocked her view. The Ironclad was nowhere in sight, and she couldn’t hold the connection in her mind long enough to determine its direction.

She nearly stumbled into a zealot who sprang from behind a jagged spire of rock, swinging his mace with a vengeful wail. Unable to dodge under the load of her armor, Jakes twisted clumsily, taking the impact of the mace across her back. The crude weapon glanced off the hardened steel but sent her plowing into the baked earth. She rolled to her side and brought her hand cannon to bear just as the zealot swung the mace over his head to strike her. Then his chest exploded beneath white robes and the force of a grape-sized slug hurtled him backward against the spire, painting the rocks in a swath of red.

Clambering to her feet, Jakes holstered the pistol and drew her blades. Her arcane turbine was spinning at full speed now, and every step felt lighter than the one before. More zealots jumped into her path, but she sliced through them easily without slowing her pace now that she was freed from the armor’s load. All this time, she searched with her mind for the Ironclad. Its presence flickered on the periphery of her awareness, but for all her concentration, she could not lock it down.

A pair of shots rang out above her head, demanding her attention. The Protectorate employed few firearms; Cygnarans must be close by. Then she spotted them: racing along the rim of the canyon above her was her squad of trenchers and the white-topped stormsmith. Moving in a leap-frog pattern, the trenchers ran along the cliff edge, two at a time stopping to fire on the zealots. Though few of the hasty shots found their mark, the zealots slowed their advance, allowing Jakes to increase her distance from them.

The trenchers’ rifles outranged the hand-thrown zealot bombs, so Jakes felt momentarily secure in the safety of her squad. Though the Judicator loomed ahead, she continued to run in the direction of its movement, hoping to find a pathway up the cliff that would reunite her with her squad. Too late, she realized the zealots were falling back, staying out of the effective range of the trencher fire.

The reason quickly became clear as a pair of light Protectorate warjacks loped toward her from behind their ranks. The first, a Revenger, carried a long halberd and a hefty mechanikal shield energized with an arcane force that could repel any attacker that struck it. Like the Lancer she had trained against, the Revenger was also equipped with an arc node—reverse-engineered by Protectorate mechaniks—which made the threat of arcane attacks difficult to predict. Several paces behind the Revenger trailed a Repenter—nearly identical in design but armed with a wicked flail in its right hand and a smoking flamethrower in place of its left arm.

Realizing she couldn’t outrun the onrushing warjacks, Jakes braced herself for the Revenger’s attack, hoping to use it to screen herself from the other warjack’s flamethrower. A scant few feet separated the Revenger from her, yet its attack didn’t come. It was as if the warjack had stopped short before crossing some invisible line—the edge of the Harbinger’s control range! Looking past the ’jack, Jakes saw the Harbinger, safely outside the effective reach of the trenchers’ weapons. Glowing runes appeared, encircling the young woman as she arched her back and turned her face to the sky. Jakes couldn’t interpret the runes, but she knew the Harbinger was weaving a spell.

A gout of flame burst from the Repenter’s flamethrower as it rushed to the side of its companion ’jack. A moment later, the arc node atop the Revenger pulsed with light. Jakes took evasive maneuvers, dashing to one side and diving to the ground. She rolled over her left shoulder to right herself in the crevasse between the base of the cliff and a large boulder, covering herself from the forthcoming attacks.

On the ridge above her, Wally sighted through his scope at the Harbinger. “I gotcha covered, ma’am,” he called.

Her back pressed against the boulder, Jakes peeked around the edge ever so slightly. The Repenter unleashed a short burst of flame but halted at the limit of its master’s control, still just out of range to threaten Jakes. She could see the arc node on the Revenger’s back flare with mechanikal light and the air before it distort with rippling waves of heat. What effect that might produce was unknown to her. The Revenger wasn’t looking toward her, though. It was holding position and staring at the young sniper above her.

“Wally! No! Get back!” Jakes shouted, waving her arms at him.

Before Wally could pull the trigger, a beam of light projected through the Revenger’s arc node, and the trenchers cried out, recoiling. Jakes gasped as Wally dropped his rifle and arched backward, engulfed in holy light. Wracked with pain, the boy opened his mouth in a silent scream as he pitched over the edge of the cliff toward her. Jakes couldn’t maneuver in the tight crack between the rocks. She put up her hands, as much to cushion his fall as to protect herself from his impact.

Wally’s corpse crushed the wind out of her lungs. Jakes choked, sucking air sharply as she raised the boy’s head between her hands. His face was a frozen mask of agony, his eyes blasted completely white by the Harbinger’s devastating spell. “Morrow, no,” Jakes sputtered, tears trickling down her dirt-smeared cheeks.

The Protectorate warjacks on the other side of the boulder began to advance. Two pairs of mechanized feet stomped toward her. Despite being small for warjacks, they shook the earth beneath Jakes with every step they took. She heard the flamethrower of the Repenter open up with a roar. The air around her heated instantly, and flames licked around the edges of the boulder.

Trapped in the crevasse, Jakes knew she had failed. She had led courageous men to their demise. Her countrymen would be destroyed at the hands of the merciless Protectorate fanatics. and Cygnar would crumble beneath the might of their relentless crusade. She steeled herself for the pain to come and silently prayed Morrow would find her soul after she crossed.

And then her senses exploded with a euphoric rush of heightened awareness. She was outside her body, watching the Repenter circle around the sheltering boulder as it disgorged its flaming essence into the crevasse. She could see the Revenger just beyond, readying its halberd to strike her should she emerge from the cover. But what she felt was power. She felt an inferno raging within a swelling furnace, hydraulic pistons pumping iron legs, and the mass of an unstoppable force bearing down on its target. Bunker had found her, and their connection ignited her will to persevere.

Instinctively, she focused on the arcane turbine at her back, overboosting the force field that surrounded her. She rolled to her side, clutching Wally’s body in front of her as a barricade against the flames that now billowed into the crevasse. Splitting her focus between her shield and the Ironclad, she willed the warjack forward into a dead run, mentally adjusting its vector as it charged toward her attackers.

Jakes could smell singed leather and burning flesh as the clamor of the approaching Ironclad filled her ears. She looked through its eyes, then lowered its left shoulder and aimed for the unwary Revenger. The impact sounded like a train wreck. Slammed off its feet, the Revenger catapulted forward and collided with the Repenter. Both ’jacks crashed into the boulder, resulting in a twisted, mangled heap of hydraulics and armor plating.

Jakes slid out from beneath the dead soldier as Bunker followed its assault with a series of crushing hammer blows energized by her focus. But the Harbinger was on the move, and again the mob of zealots surged toward her position.

A familiar voice broke through the commotion. “Lieutenant! Up ahead! A path!” Jakes looked up to see Sergeant Hollings on the ridge above, urgently waving her further into the canyon toward the lumbering Judicator, which still advanced on its objective.

She set off at a sprint, commanding Bunker to follow. Fleet-footed zealots intercepted them, but their uncoordinated attacks posed little obstacle to Jakes or the Ironclad. Flashing blades and hammer strikes deflected the attackers from their path, and soon Jakes saw Hollings and the rest of her squad dug in around a ramp of baked earth that had formed through centuries of rain erosion.

Rifle shots whizzed past her, holding back the pursuing zealots as she and Bunker climbed the ramp to rejoin the squad. Smoke grenades rattled down the slope behind them, bursting into a curtain of white haze that further masked their retreat from the Protectorate forces.

“We thought yeh was goners, Lieutenant,” Hollings said gravely, extending his hand to help her up the steep embankment.

“Wally—” she started, without knowing what she might say next.

“He did what he had to, ma’am,” Hollings said, cutting her off and quickly leading her away from the ridge. “Up here, now. We found a path that will make it hard for them candles to follow.”

Jakes nodded in agreement, promising herself they’d return for Wally’s body when they could. The boy deserved a proper burial, and that, she could give him. The squad filed into the narrow ravine with Bunker warily protecting them from any enemies bold enough to give chase.

Once he was confident there were no pursuing zealots to contend with, Hollings took up his position next to Jakes as the squad pushed farther into the twisting notch in the rocky landscape. “I’m sorry we botched it all, Lieutenant. Who coulda known they was marching a colossal on us?”

Jakes hiked through the ravine with purpose now. She wasn’t fleeing anymore; she was moving toward an objective. “Sergeant, do you know where this path goes?”

He shrugged under the bulky shoulder plates of his reinforced coat. “Not as such, but I reckon it’s roughly in the direction of the Crossing.”

He was no more finished with his sentence when Jakes spotted twin columns of black smoke over the rock wall of the ravine. “Bunker, give me a boost.” Trenchers squeezed against the walls to make way for the Ironclad to get to her. The Ironclad bent forward and extended an open hand. Jakes stepped onto the oversized palm, gaining enough elevation to see over the edge of the ravine. Not a hundred yards away, the Judicator continued through the winding pass toward a hill that would give it a clear firing position on the unwary Cygnaran artillery.

“Yeh got a notion of some sort, Lieutenant?” Hollings asked.

“We’ve got minutes, at best. We need to move,” she replied, hopping down from Bunker’s improvised platform.

“We couldn’t possibly get word to the commander in time,” Hollings said hopelessly.

Jakes shook her head. “We just need to stall it.”

“That colossal?” a trencher piped up incredulously. Barnes hadn’t said a word since Jakes assumed command of the squad, but he seemed to suddenly find his voice. “Then we already failed, Lieutenant.”

“Exactly,” Jakes replied, continuing through the ravine as it climbed upward. “So we already know the worst that can happen if we don’t stop it.” She halted quickly to face Barnes and the rest of the squad. “But I’d rather fail again than know I didn’t try.”

Hollings jogged after her as Jakes quickened her pace. “You have a plan you want to share with us, ma’am?”

Jakes stared ahead, her expression resolute. “Thunder follows lightning.”

Whisker beamed, twitching ever so slightly as he raised his lightning rod above his head. “A striking plan, indeed!”

The quadrangle was alive with predeployment activity as Jakes exited the officer’s briefing. Sturgis had just finished presenting the strategic plan for the forthcoming attack on the Protectorate’s supply column to the Northern Crusade. In just three days, Jakes would experience her first major engagement.

With their various operational roles assigned, the dozens of officers of Sturgis’ 29th Brigade spread out through the fort to complete equipment requisitions and ready the force to move out. As a journeyman warcaster, Jakes was not attached to a specific platoon but instead reported directly to her warcaster mentor, which left her available to oversee any task or action he might assign her during the operation. This also meant her current responsibilities were light compared to most other officers, her only obligation being the preparation of her warjack and her personal kit.

“Lieutenant Jakes!” she heard Sturgis call out behind her. Most of her time with the commander was spent alone or with no audience other than the warjacks, so it was always unexpected when he addressed her formally. He only recognized her rank in the presence of other soldiers and officers or when he had a particularly stern lesson to impart.

She spun on her heel, replying with the proper etiquette. “Yes, Commander?”

“Come with me,” he said, “I have something I want to show you.”

Minutes later, Jakes found herself standing in the middle of the sparring circle with Bunker and the Centurion facing each other from opposite ends. The peculiar timing for a lesson was disconcerting enough, but the fact that she was weaponless and without her armor troubled her greatly. Her officer’s uniform was certainly not designed for combat training.

“I wanted to show you this sooner, Allison,” Sturgis finally explained, “but you needed to develop your instinct for maintaining your bond with a warjack first.”

Jakes watched as Sturgis held out his hand and closed his eyes in concentration. Rings of luminescent runes materialized above his open palm, rotating like interlocking gears. This was the arcane formula of a spell—an image projected by the mind of a spellcaster as he focused his will and summoned his magic. Like mathematic equations written on a chalkboard, the runes presented a solution for harnessing arcane energy and forming it into a specific effect. Jakes concentrated on the runes, digesting their complex pattern, and held the image in her own mind until she could reproduce the projection in her own hand.

“It makes the warjack unmovable?” she asked finally, still parsing the subtle intricacies of the formula.

“I haven’t racked this spell in a very long time,” Sturgis said, referring to the practice of staying proficient in a specific combination of spells that could be called upon at a moment’s notice. A warcaster could stay battle-ready with only a limited number of spells at any one time, depending on the strength of their will, and were known to specialize in certain spells that they found effective in combat. “But it may serve you well.”

Jakes frowned. “It certainly would have helped yesterday when you decided to jump into the ring,” she said. “I wouldn’t have let Bunker get away from me.”

“Practice it,” he replied. “With whatever time you have between now and the mission, learn this spell.”

For several minutes, Jakes gazed at the rotating runes, studying their mystical meanings and unique combination until she comprehended the formula. Finally, she closed her palm and the rune circles evaporated. A moment later, the same runes exploded around her, larger and more intense. With sufficient practice she knew she could do it much more quickly. She looked at Sturgis with a cagey smile. “All right. Let’s try it.” The circle of runes expanded until it included the Ironclad, silently awaiting its orders. “Give me your best shot.”

Sturgis nodded. At his silent command, the Centurion belched flame from its exhaust stacks, lowered its head, and charged.

Lungs burning, heart pumping in his chest, Whisker raced over the high ground of the Crag as fast as his legs could carry him. Well accustomed to rapid deployments and the short sprints called for in typical battle maneuvers, stormcallers were rarely put on the front line, so endurance was not a requisite proficiency for the profession. It was a detail for which he would be generally thankful on any day but today. Nonetheless, Whisker denied the exhaustion threatening to overcome him and pushed on over the treacherous terrain.

From his vantage atop the cliffs, he could see the Judicator no more than thirty yards to his right, marching on its parallel course toward the Cygnaran army. Fortunately, the colossal’s forward-mounted head had not risen above the ridgeline, and it remained unaware of Whisker’s proximity. Even so, the stormcaller kept a wary eye on the rocket pods, just in case the sealed ports began to open.

Though ponderously slow, the Judicator had a good head start on Whisker, and the rough ground atop the crags made overtaking the giant warjack all the more difficult. Had Whisker only needed to outpace the Judicator, his path would have proven much easier, but the tech-smith’s objective was to head it off—hopefully without the colossal spotting him.

As he neared the Judicator, Whisker wondered if it possessed the same heavy shielding around its cortex as Cygnaran colossal-class warjacks. Unlike their smaller counterparts, Cygnar’s colossals were engineered so that the fragile nerve center was encased within multiple layers of protection that made the ’jack invulnerable to the disruptive side effects of Whisker’s weapons. By calling down a bolt of lightning on a standard warjack, he could momentarily interrupt the connection between the ’jack and its controlling warcaster. This was highly useful for diminishing the effectiveness of enemy warjacks, but it was useless against Cygnar’s mighty Stormwall, and he expected it would be useless against the Judicator as well. Still, he itched to send a bolt its way, just to see what would happen.

His lightning rod hummed in his hand, and he imagined it, too, felt the urge to direct a strike onto the massive ’jack. After all, it had been quite a while—several minutes, at least—since he’d last felt the tingle, and one quick storm wouldn’t take that long to gather . . .

Whisker twitched a little with the sensation of electricity running down his spine and his thumb inched toward the switch on his lightning rod. But Jakes’ words stuck in his mind—every second is precious—and he stuck to the plan. Soon enough, he would bring the lightning.

Hollings slowly peeked over a rocky embankment that sloped down toward the gulch the Judicator had just passed through. Behind it, the Harbinger and her host of zealots moved cautiously, alert for the reappearance of the Cygnarans. Glancing left and right, he confirmed that the rest of his men were in place, then slowly brought his rifle to bear, bracing it against a small boulder. They had doubled back behind the Protectorate reserves and now faced the rear of the column, the last place the larger force would expect opposition. At least he hoped so.

It was hard to keep his eyes off the Harbinger with her glow like a summer sunrise and the sparkling gold on her armor that shone in the light. As much as he loathed the Menites and their merciless, self-righteous crusade, that delicate lass, too divine to touch her toes to the ground, didn’t look like any enemy he’d ever faced. But she was the enemy, and the mob of rancorous fanatics surrounding her wouldn’t let him forget it.

Sighting down the barrel, Hollings lined up a shot on the closest zealot and squeezed the trigger. His rifle popped and the zealot pitched forward. Before the fanatic hit the ground, eight more of Hollings’ boys fired into the mob, scattering the zealots and forcing them to confront their ambushers.

Quickly, the trenchers reloaded their single-shot rifles, pushing rounds into the breeches and locking the barrels before lining up another shot. Hollings was the third to fire in the second volley. Not bad for an old gravedigger, he thought to himself, breaking open the rifle to shove another round in.

The withering fire was taking its toll on the mob of zealots, but they still outnumbered the trenchers significantly. Commanding her acolyte attendants to face the attackers, the Harbinger raised her pennant high and pointed her sword toward the trenchers. Glowing yellow runes exploded around her, rotating as she summoned arcane energy and formed it into a magic spell. The runes evaporated, transferring their glow to the crude maces held by each of the zealots surrounding her. A second burst of runes spread out from her to pass through the mob. The eyes of each fanatic sparked briefly before the zealots charged the trenchers as one.

“Fall back!” Hollings ordered, reserving the round he had just loaded into his rifle. “Fall back!”

One by one, the trenchers retreated from their position, attempting to evade the oncoming assault. Invigorated by the Harbinger’s magic, the zealots covered the ground with startling speed. They struck with expert accuracy, guided by the enchantment. Hollings’ chest tightened as he saw Morison and Baker overwhelmed, each succumbing to multiple attackers. Barnes fought back, stabbing with his bayonet as he backpedaled from a pair of zealots flailing at him. A precision swing swept him off his feet, but before the zealots could leap on top of him, Hollings brought his rifle to bear and shot one dead, evening the odds. Barnes followed with a slash of his bayonet. It wasn’t an effective way to use such a weapon, but it was enough to drive the second zealot back and buy himself enough space to regain his feet.

The zealots continued to come at them, but the Harbinger held her position. As Hollings and his men repeated their strategy of fire and retreat, they lured the enraged zealots beyond her ability to effectively command and support them.

“Come on now, lass, take the bait,” Hollings uttered under his breath, plugging another round into his rifle.

The gunfire was Jakes’ signal to move. “Fire it up, big guy,” she said to Bunker, at the same time mentally commanding the warjack to stoke its furnace to capacity. She’d been holding it in position on a low idle to suppress its exhaust while they hid from the advancing Judicator. Now it was time to open it up.

Flames belched from the twin stacks on the Ironclad’s back and steam vented from its grill, indicating its eagerness to do battle. Warjacks weren’t just built for combat; they craved it—no matter the odds.

Jakes nodded to Bunker, and the two of them scrambled over the rocky ridge. Just ahead, she spotted Whisker running at full speed as she and Bunker slid down the slope into the gulch, right behind the Judicator. The colossal was instantly aware of their presence and quickly rotated to confront them, both flamethrowers spewing jets of fire that scorched a thick crescent of earth. Anticipating this reaction, Jakes and Bunker were already running around the other side of the Judicator, forcing it to turn in a full circle.

“You know we’re going to get killed, right?” she called out to the Ironclad as they backed away from the Judicator, drawing it through the gulch toward its original destination.

Bunker clanked in agreement as it positioned itself protectively in front of her. Looking past the Ironclad and the great colossal beyond it, Jakes could see the Harbinger and her swarm of zealots further down the gorge, preoccupied with the ambushing trenchers

The Judicator lurched forward and blasted the ground before them with its flamethrowers. Though they kept their distance, the flames reached just far enough to splash over Bunker, charring the raised surfaces of its armor. Unable to feel pain, the mechanical Ironclad registered the damage as merely superficial.

As Jakes hoped, the Judicator appeared to be preserving its payload of rockets for other targets and hadn’t yet opened the ports on the massive shoulder-mounted pods.

“Just give it a little more space, Bunker,” she said to the warjack, shielding her eyes from the blazing inferno. “Keep it coming this way . . .”

Then the Judicator stopped. Fire erupted from the twin rows of exhaust stacks on its back, and steam burst furiously from vents throughout the colossal’s hydraulic system.

“Oh, hell! It’s going to charge!” Jakes shouted, trying to assess the best way to dodge the towering construct in the narrow canyon. But then it took a step back.

“Damn it! She’s reining it in!” Jakes yelled just as the Judicator took another tentative step backward. Farther down the gulch, Jakes could see the Harbinger moving toward the retreating trenchers. “We’ve got to stop it!”

Spurring Bunker forward, Jakes took off at a sprint. Splitting up to circle around opposite sides of the Judicator, they managed to take it off guard just long enough to avoid the flamethrowers. As she ran, glowing blue runes flared around her as she focused a spell into existence. It was the spell Sturgis had shown her only three nights before, and at his directive, she had spent every spare moment perfecting her ability to cast it.

Focusing her will, the circle of runes grew larger, spreading out to encompass Bunker as the warjack rejoined Jakes on the other side of the Judicator. A faint blue nimbus surrounded them both, connected by a barely visible cord of light.

“Steady now,” she said, sticking close to the Ironclad while keeping it positioned between herself and the colossal. “It’s about to get rough.”

The Judicator wheeled and swiped at Bunker, but the spell heightened the Ironclad’s reflexes and it deftly ducked the colossal’s wrecking-ball–sized fist. Bunker counterattacked with a combination of hammer and fist attacks. Every blow landed true, rending armor from the Judicator’s massive legs, but even energized by Jakes’ focus, the Ironclad could not cause enough damage to affect the colossal’s performance.

Roaring mechanically, the Judicator surged forward in an attempt to push through the Ironclad, but the arcane power of Jakes’ enchantment held Bunker in place. In the narrow gorge, the Judicator had no room to maneuver around them and was held fast, blocked by the unmovable Ironclad.

Blazing light flared in the Judicator’s eyes, and Jakes knew the Harbinger was focusing on the enormous warjack. Stretched between controlling the Judicator and protecting her zealots, she had to guide the colossal back to her or risk interrupting her connection with it. This is what Jakes was counting on. There was no hope of defeating the titanic machine, but if she could separate the Judicator from its controller, she might stall it long enough to get a warning to Sturgis.

“I’m sorry, Bunker. This is going to hurt, “Jakes said, cringing as she saw a wave of energy ripple down the Judicator’s arm.

The Ironclad turned its right shoulder into the energized strike just as the colossal’s five-ton fist crashed into it. Metal rent and caved under the crushing blow, contorting Bunker’s right arm into a useless hunk of iron and steel. Pressurized steam spewed from hydraulics sheared from their couplings, and rivet heads burst from their bucks. Still, the Ironclad didn’t budge, its feet arcanely cemented to the ground by Jakes’ spell.

Jakes’ mind reeled in agony for the warjack. Though the Ironclad possessed no sense of pain, it was keenly aware of its condition and the crippling blow shocked and enraged its primitive consciousness. It roared from within its armored hull and shook its head side to side furiously. Huddled behind the ’jack, Jakes trembled, hoping her own connection would hold out just a little longer.

Leaning on his lightning rod for support as he trudged up the hill, Whisker heard the crash in the canyon behind him. Though it was loud enough to rattle his bones, he dared not waste a second to look back. Either Lieutenant Jakes was making good on her plan, or they’d all be dead shortly. He preferred the surprise, either way.

He gripped the cramp in his side, wobbling with dizziness, his senses swimming. If he’d had to deliver his message verbally, he would have never been able to get the words past his sputtering coughs. Fortunately, that wasn’t his mission.

Cresting the top of the hill, he could see the battle raging in the valley below. Clear lines had been drawn, the field controlled by one or the other army in various places, depending on the concentration of warjacks and the presence of a warcaster. Though the Protectorate force remained on the defensive and continued to take heavy casualties under the artillery fire, their intertwined layers of protective wards and arcane resistance had ensured their defeat would be slow and costly for the Cygnarans.

Whisker eagerly thumbed a switch on his staff and the silver gyrosphere at the top began to spin on its vertical axle. Light pulsed within the small storm chamber, energizing an array of mechanikal coils that curved around the sphere. Whisker grinned with excitement as glowing blue tendrils sizzled around the apparatus. A grey brume materialized in the clear sky above, rotating in a spiral like a flat cyclone. It coalesced into clouds, thick and dark: a miniature storm crackling with electricity.

From a clasp at his waist, Whisker removed a device that looked like an oversized pocket watch. On its face, an arrangement of gauges and meters twitched and spun chaotically. But to the storm smith, the meteorospex communicated a sublime level of information about atmospheric quality, electrostatic accumulation and the conductivity of surrounding elements.

Every storm he’d ever summoned was delightfully unique, but after only a brief glance at the face of the ’spex, Whisker, calculated an incomprehensible convergence of elements and with his lightning rod summoned a lightning bolt to strike the ground fifty feet away, directly in front of him.

In seconds, the gyrosphere had recharged the manmade storm hovering above him, and Whisker called a second bolt, this time closer to his own position.

The third bolt struck, quite intentionally, exactly one foot in front of the stormcaller. His shock of white hair instantly straightened into a frizzy cloud over his head, and his lips parted to reveal his gleaming white overbite.

“Electrifying!” he said, ticking rhythmically. “Again!”

The warcaster-monk known as High Allegiant Amon Ad-Raza had not given ground easily, but Sturgis finally had him on the run. Amon’s arcane ability to navigate warjacks through the harsh terrain had made him the likely choice to lead the supply column through the Crag. Sturgis had anticipated this and prepared by requisitioning every stormcaller available in Fort Falk’s garrison. His strategy depended on their disruptive capabilities to mitigate Amon’s well-known effectiveness for commanding large numbers of warjacks in battle. The strategy had proven out but had cost Sturgis two warjacks in the process, and he found himself wishing for more stormsmiths at his disposal. The sudden burst of consecutive lightning strikes behind his force reminded him why he was currently a smith short.

Ordering his ranks of Stormblades to press their attack, Sturgis paused briefly, confused by the repeating series of lightning strikes that seemed to be concentrated on the hill directly to the rear of his artillery. Using a small collapsible spyglass taken from his belt pouch, Sturgis spotted Whisker alone on the hill, calling one bolt after another. Though stormcallers were notorious for being a little mad—even unstable—Sturgis knew instantly that this was a calculated attempt to draw attention.

Without Sturgis’ strength, the Cygnaran force risked losing their hard-fought gains in this battle. But his instinct compelled him.

Quickly, Sturgis summoned a nearby trencher. “Get this message to Captain Darius: Hold the line. You have command.”

The trencher snapped his hand to his helm, then ran off like a shot.

Blue paint cracked, curled, and blackened as the Judicator doused Bunker’s armored carapace with flame. Jakes huddled low in the Ironclad’s shadow, overboosting her power field while intermittently patting out flames that ignited her cloth or leather. She spoke to Bunker, soothing the battered machine like one might comfort an ailing loved one—a loved one with no hope of pulling through. “Just hang in there, Bunker. Stay with me. I’m right here.”

With a clang, a glancing blow from the Judicator bent one of the Ironclad’s smokestacks awkwardly to the left. The next two punches missed their target as Bunker narrowly ducked under one and barely managed to partially deflect another with its hammer.

“That’s it!” Jakes urged. “Just a little longer.”

Then the Judicator’s eyes flared, and Jakes knew the Harbinger still had control of it. Rippling with arcane energy, the colossal pounded its fist down on Bunker. Bunker shifted to the side but refused to give ground. The fist, nearly as tall as Jakes, smashed into the Ironclad’s left leg, caving it inward. The smaller warjack vented steam in a mechanical moan as its knees buckled and it shifted its weight to the undamaged right leg.

Still, the Judicator had not gained ground toward its controller. Blue runes continued to encircle Bunker and Jakes. Her physics-defying spell kept the warjack rooted in place; so long as it did not fall, the colossal would not pass.

Glancing back down the canyon, Jakes could see her trencher companions leading the zealots farther away, increasing the distance between them and the Judicator.

“Just a little longer,” she whispered. Though it might cost her a warjack or even her own life, Jakes would soon make the Harbinger choose: her mission or her men.

Using their range to their advantage, Hollings and his soldiers drew the zealots through the canyon. The Harbinger continued to infuse the fanatics with her faith-fueled power, but by the time those within her area to affect reached the trenchers, her holy enchantments had expired. From there, skilled Cygnaran marksmanship and bayonet strikes thinned their ranks.

“Dig deep, Gravediggers!” he bellowed before firing another shot. The challenge inspired his men, and many responded with their own battle cries. More importantly, it kept them together as a cohesive unit, tied to Hollings by the sound of his voice.

Private Hammond had fallen, but Hollings was fairly certain he’d seen the man crawl to cover and hoped his wounds were not fatal. His boys were hard as nails, and it took more than a rusty club to put one down. Even with the high casualties they were inflicting on the zealots, though, the diminishing squad of trenchers was now six against dozens. Then the Harbinger appeared to have reached her limit of her men’s suffering. She called her zealots back to her, declaring their valor and righteousness and denigrating the Cygnaran dogs as unworthy of their attention.

Too soon! Hollings thought. Even from here, he could still see Lieutenant Jakes and the Ironclad jamming the massive colossal up in the canyon, just as she’d said she would. But if his men couldn’t pry the Harbinger out of range of the Judicator, the sacrifice of the lieutenant and her warjack would be for nothing.

Plugging another round into his rifle, Hollings called out to his men. “Gravediggers, prepare to charge!” He snapped the breech closed, secured the lock, and yanked back the firing pin. After silently counting off the necessary seconds to be sure every man was locked and loaded, Hollings gave the order. “Charge!”

The squad sprinted forward, every trencher firing on the run. Zealots fell before them, and others braced to receive the assault.

The Harbinger’s patience finally broke. She cried out to her acolytes, spurring them forward through her haphazardly arranged followers toward the onrushing trenchers. With an explosion of glowing runes, a pillar of light engulfed her, illuminating the ground in a circle around her. The pillar grew, expanding a shimmering wall of brilliance that passed harmlessly through the zealots. But poor Olson, who had outpaced the other trenchers, ignited like parchment held to a flame the moment he ran into the glowing veil.

Hollings didn’t have to call off the charge or give the order to retreat. The remaining trenchers halted mid-stride, shielding their eyes from the intensifying light, and bolted back the way they had come. Hollings’ heart ached for Olson and his other fallen lads, but as he turned his back on the Harbinger, he knew she had finally taken the bait.

One moment, the Judicator’s eyes were blazing with white light. The next moment, they dimmed to the dull glow of a warjack without a master. The Harbinger had moved too far, and her connection with the Judicator had been stretched too thin. Jakes might have shouted for joy if Bunker hadn’t been mangled beyond recognition. Now she just had to make sure the connection wasn’t reestablished.

Leaping from behind the Ironclad’s battered hull, Jakes raised her hand cannon and fired a shot straight up into the colossal’s grill. The shot barely scratched the massive warjack’s finish, but it was enough to distract the machine as Jakes took several quick steps toward the top of the hill, luring the colossal away from the Harbinger.

As she moved, Jakes wove a spell to increase the warjack’s speed. The runes that had encircled Bunker evaporated as Jakes cast the newer spell.

“Come on, you junk heap!” she yelled to Bunker. “You’ve still got one good leg. Move!” Focused on the warjack, Jakes impelled it with her spell to follow her, much faster than it appeared capable of in its damaged state.

The Judicator swiped at the Ironclad but only managed to graze its boiler from behind. The Ironclad stumbled forward, giving the colossal a small gain in distance.

Wheeling one hundred and eighty degrees, the Judicator set the ground ablaze under the Ironclad. Jakes fired another shot from her hand cannon, nailing the Judicator just above its eye. “Pick on someone your own size, you whitewashed pile of scrap!” she shouted. With earth-shaking footsteps, it pursued.

The Judicator moved cautiously, as if apprehensive. All the fury and battle lust of a warjack was there, but it seemed reserved or confused, torn between conflicting directives.

With Bunker limping toward her, Jakes put another round in her pistol. “Don’t be shy! Show us what else you’ve got!” Another futile shot at the Judicator and the colossal accelerated its pace, huffing steam and belching smoke and fire from its stacks. And then, much to Jakes’ consternation, the silos on its shoulder-mounted rocket pods snapped open.

“Too much talking, Jakes!” she said to herself, breaking into a run while focusing on Bunker to keep the warjack moving.

A salvo of rockets burst from the Judicator’s launch tubes with a hiss. But without the guidance of its warcaster, the wildly inaccurate missiles detonated around Jakes and Bunker, missing them with all but the heat from their blasts.

Jakes grunted in relief at the close call and risked a look back over her shoulder just in time to see the Judicator’s eyes flare with the contact of its warcaster. The Harbinger had reestablished control over the colossal. Jakes’ heart fell into the pit that opened in her stomach.

And then her world exploded with thunder.

The Judicator’s head jerked to one side as a cannon round impacted its armored skull. Three more shells pummeled it in rapid succession, shearing armored plating off its giant steel skeleton.

Searching ahead for the new threat, the Judicator had no time to react before two squads of mounted storm knights charged over the crest of the hill, their electro lances crackling with energy. The Storm Lances’ electrified assault scorched its hull as their mechanika weapons sheared armor off its frame, dealing the colossal a blow that damaged systems throughout its structure. The giant warjack staggered back, fighting to maintain its balance and reorient itself.

Through the smoke spewed by its erupting furnace, the Judicator’s eyes flickered, flashing brilliantly despite the severe damage. The Harbinger’s connection was still strong. The colossal was still a threat.

Focusing on the Ironclad, Jakes commanded it to face the colossal and attack with every ounce of rage still stirring within its broken frame. Snorting furiously, Bunker spun as Jakes’ channeled energy rippled down its arm, igniting the head of the quake hammer with a blazing blue aura. With a single, mighty swing, the Ironclad buried the hammer in the Judicator’s core, sending a shockwave through the fractured hull that devastated whatever active systems remained.

The colossal reeled backward, metal screeching and groaning as it toppled over. Rock shattered under the weight of its wreck crashing to the ground, a smoking mountain of twisted steel and iron.

Finally, its eyes went dark.

Jakes ran to Bunker’s side and put a hand on its mangled arm. “You did it,” she said. The Ironclad turned its head to see her and clanged softly in response.

Two crews of trencher cannoneers pushed their heavy guns over the crest of the hill, while the Storm Lances circled back, arranging themselves in a defensive line across the gorge. Beyond them, Jakes could see the Harbinger and her remaining cohort of zealots mustering for their next move.

The tingling sensation down her spine alerted Jakes to a new presence. She turned to see her mentor materializing right behind her, the glowing runes of his spell still circling around him.

Sturgis looked from Jakes to the crippled Ironclad to the wrecked colossal, then back to Jakes again. “This was unexpected.”

Jakes’ eyes narrowed. “What—that we ran into a colossal, or that the colossal is a wreck?”

An air of urgency still surrounded Sturgis. He spared no time for banter. “Are you fit to fight?”

“Better off than Bunker here. Did I mention the floating prophet?” Jakes said, pointing at the Harbinger and her cohort.

“We’ll summon a mechanik for your warjack at once,” Sturgis said, moving up to the line of Storm Lances for a better look at the Protectorate reserves.

Jakes had to jog to keep up with him, her nose wrinkling in irritation at the commander’s matter-of-fact demeanor. “I don’t think she’ll be a threat anymore. Not today.”

“Explain,” he said, peering through his spyglass at the Harbinger and her zealots.

“She’s a perfectionist, sir.” Even as she spoke the words, the Harbinger raised her banner and signaled her cohort to withdraw into the Crag. Just then, Jakes spotted the trenchers climbing over the rim of the canyon to rejoin her. They had circled around the Harbinger’s force, crossing the high ground to avoid another encounter. Jakes grieved silently when she saw only six returning, with one—Hammond, she thought—was being carried by two of his squad-mates.

“Good,” Sturgis said, stowing his spyglass, “I need you back on the front line. We have a battle to finish.” With a silent hand gesture, he ordered the Storm Lances to move ahead and began striding back in the direction of the Cygnaran force.

“Yes sir,” Jakes said wearily, taking a labored breath before trotting after him. She jerked her head at Bunker, signaling him to come along even as she wondered if the crippled ’jack could make it to a mechanik before its motivators gave out.

“Thunder follows lightning, Allison,” Sturgis said, his stoic tone momentarily replaced with warmth. “You can count on it. Always.”

Jakes lifted her chin confidently as she fell into step beside her mentor.

“I know.”

In the grey light before dawn, Jakes picked her way over blackened rocks and the smoldering remains of two white-and-gold warjacks. Hollings and three of his squad lingered nearby, vigilantly scanning the surroundings despite the hours that had passed since the few Protectorate survivors had fled the area.

Making her way behind the boulder that had shielded her from the Repenter’s flamethrower, Jakes knelt down next to the charred body of Private Benjamin Wallace. Gently, as if the boy were only sleeping, Jakes lifted his head and removed one of the bronze military identification badges from around his neck.

With a silent nod from Hollings, two of the trenchers placed Wallace on a makeshift litter and set off on the long hike out of Caerly’s Crag.

Jakes dropped the small metal disk into a pouch at her waist that contained several more just like it. She tilted her head back, blinking rapidly in a futile attempt to dispel the tears welling in her eyes. She walked briskly past Hollings, looking away to conceal her emotions.

“Double time,” she said softly.

Though she knew the trenchers were at least as weary as she was, returning to Fort Falk was, for her, a matter of particular urgency. She would need a great deal more time for her prayers tonight.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Matt Wilson has worked in the hobby game industry since 1995 as a concept artist, illustrator, art director, and game designer and has even managed to get a little writing done in there as well. After working for several game companies—from the smallest startup to the largest corporation—Matt founded Privateer Press in 2000 as an opportunity to create expressions of his own original property concepts.

Since that time, Matt has created multiple worlds, designed several games, and produced over a decade’s worth of successful products, including the award-winning WARMACHINE and HORDES miniatures games, the Iron Kingdoms RPG setting, digital fiction through Skull Island eXpeditions, and the near-future science fiction trans-media property LEVEL 7. Matt has gathered numerous awards and other accolades for the products produced by Privateer Press. Today, he is Privateer’s owner and Chief Creative Officer, overseeing the creative development of every aspect of the company.

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