Aldrath's column reached the king's position at Brennan's Ford on the fifth day of the forced march, and the king's army did not look like an army.

It looked like the thing that armies became when the things armies fought with were gone and the thing replacing them was whatever the soldiers could hold in their hands. Sixteen thousand soldiers, their thundermaker batteries empty and positioned behind the camp like gravestones, their boomstick ammunition at twenty-six percent and rationed to ten charges per man, their battlemages exhausted from three weeks of casting spells that the barbarian shamans redirected into the Threian positions.

King Aldric III stood at the command tent's entrance when Aldrath's column arrived. The king's armor bore the dents and scoring of three engagements. His sword hung at his hip in the specific position of a weapon that had been drawn recently and would be drawn again. His face carried the lines that three weeks of losing battles had carved into the features that the kingdom's population knew from the coins that bore his profile.

"Lord-Commander," the king said.

"Your Majesty." Aldrath dismounted and saluted. "Twenty-six thousand soldiers. Full boomstick complement. Ammunition at seventy-three percent of the standard campaign stockpile."

The king's eyes changed. The change was the change that commanders' eyes produced when the thing they needed most arrived at the moment they needed it, the specific relief that reinforcement produced in a force that had been fighting alone for weeks.

"Seventy-three percent," the king said. "We are at twenty-six."

"I know, Your Majesty. The dispatches have been detailed."

"The thundermakers?"

"Empty. The last ball was fired at Ashford Junction." 𝐟𝚛𝕖𝚎𝕨𝗲𝐛𝚗𝐨𝐯𝐞𝕝.𝐜𝗼𝗺

Aldrath looked at the empty thundermaker batteries behind the camp. Eight weapons that had been the Threian military's decisive advantage for two generations, their iron barrels cold, their platforms unmanned, their ammunition stacks empty.

"I brought no thundermaker ammunition," Aldrath said. "The eastern campaign consumed its allocation against the orcish Horde. The remaining stockpile is in the capital's armory and the armory's reserves are the reserves that the capital's garrison requires for its own defense."

"Then we fight without thundermakers," the king said.

"We fight without thundermakers. Against an enemy that has plenty of them with almost unlimited ammunition."

The two commanders looked at each other across the distance that rank and circumstance created between a king and a lord-commander. The distance was the distance between the man who had ordered the campaign and the man who was fighting it, the distance that closed when both men understood that the campaign's resolution would be determined by what they did next rather than what had been done before.

"How many total?" the king asked.

"Combined, forty-two thousand soldiers. Against approximately seventeen thousand barbarians."

"Two and a half to one."

"Two and a half to one with boomsticks that are running out against boomsticks that are not. The numerical advantage is real. The weapons advantage belongs to the barbarians."

* * * * *

The war council convened that evening with both command staffs present. Aldrath's officers and the king's officers sat across the table with the maps and the intelligence and the specific tension that two staffs produced when the staffs had been operating independently and were now required to operate together.

Fairfax presented the barbarian disposition. "Seventeen thousand warriors. Five thundermakers with almost unlimited dwarven ammunition. Two shamans of the Seventh Circle. The Seventh Circle, Lord-Commander. Our strongest practitioners are Sixth Circle. The king himself operates at the Sixth Realm of Power. These two shamans exceed every magical capability we possess."

The room absorbed the information. Seventh Circle shamans. The number seven carried the weight that magical classification systems assigned to power levels that exceeded the normal operating range of military practitioners. Sixth Circle was the ceiling of the Threian academy's curriculum. Seventh Circle was the territory of legend to them, the power level that historical records described in the context as one-person army rather than battlefield engagements.

"The shamans' Seventh Circle capability is the capability that redirects our mages' spells," Fairfax continued. "Every spell our battlemages cast below the Fourth Circle is absorbed and redirected. Fourth and Fifth Circle spells are partially redirected. Sixth Circle spells penetrate the shamanic field but are attenuated. Only a Seventh Circle spell would penetrate at full power, and we do not have a Seventh Circle practitioner."

"What do we have?" Aldrath asked.

"His Majesty at the Sixth Realm. Lord Fairfax at the Fifth Realm. The Royal Guard's personal detachment, mostly Fifth Realm with some at the Sixth. Eight officers across both armies at the Fifth Realm. Forty-three battlemages at the Fourth Circle and below. Approximately one hundred and twenty junior practitioners at the Third Circle and below, including every academy graduate who has completed basic combat certification in the past two years."

"And the barbarians' warriors?"

"Mostly Fourth Realm. Some champions at the Fifth Realm. Their chieftains operate at the Sixth Realm. The chieftains' physical capabilities at the Sixth Realm combined with the shamans' Seventh Circle magic creates the specific synergy that our previous engagements have not been able to counter."

Aldrath studied the disposition. Forty-two thousand soldiers against seventeen thousand barbarians. The numbers favored the Threians overwhelmingly. The weapons and magic favored the barbarians decisively. The battle that the two advantages produced would be the battle that determined which advantage prevailed.

"We fight tomorrow," the king said. "Combined assault. Full strength. We cannot afford another week of maneuvering that consumes the boomstick ammunition we need for the decisive engagement. Tomorrow. Everything we have. Against everything they have."

"Tomorrow," Aldrath agreed.

The combined staff worked through the night planning the engagement that the morning would produce. The planning was the planning that two staffs produced when the staffs had different operational experiences and different tactical philosophies and were required to integrate both into a single plan that the morning's battle demanded.

Aldrath's staff brought the eastern campaign's experience: four months of fighting the orcish Horde, four months of encountering tactical innovation that the Threian military's doctrine had no chapter for, four months of adapting to an enemy whose combined-arms warfare exceeded anything the Threian academy taught. The experience was the experience of commanders who had been outfought and outmaneuvered and who had learned, through the expensive curriculum of defeat, the specific adaptations that survival required.

The king's staff brought the northeastern campaign's experience: three weeks of fighting barbarians with thundermakers and shamans, three weeks of discovering that the weapons superiority the kingdom had enjoyed was gone and the magical superiority was contested and the numerical superiority was insufficient against an enemy whose ammunition was unlimited and whose shamanic magic redirected the kingdom's own spells.

"The barbarian shamans redirect our lower-Circle spells," Aldrath's battlemage advisor said. "The orcish army's Golden Wolf nullified our lower-Circle spells. The mechanism is different but the effect is the same: our Third and Fourth Circle capability is unreliable against both enemies. The kingdom's military has been fighting two consecutive campaigns in which its magical workhorse capability is neutralized."

"The academy's curriculum needs revision," Fairfax said.

"The academy's curriculum needs to survive the next twenty-four hours first. Revision can wait."

The planning continued. The dawn approached. The battle that the combined force's forty-two thousand soldiers and the barbarians' seventeen thousand warriors would fight was the battle that both sides' full capabilities would be committed to, the engagement whose outcome would determine whether the kingdom survived or whether the barbarians' advance continued to the capital's walls.