Grenzheim
Konrad knew something was wrong when Jost came running.
The man normally waited beneath the awning of a closed saddler's shop, where he could watch the garrison road.
Today, he nearly stepped beneath the magi-car's front wheels.
Konrad hauled back on the steering bar.
The vehicle lurched to a stop. His leather case slid across the passenger seat and struck his hip.
"Unless the town is burning, Jost," he said, "you could have waited."
Jost planted both hands on the side of the car. He was a narrow man in a coat that hung badly from his shoulders, with a thin neck and eyes that never settled anywhere for long. Sweat darkened his collar despite the cold.
"Ries. You're back."
"Apparently not a moment too soon."
"I have something."
Jost glanced toward the gate, then leaned closer.
"Something very important."
Konrad switched off the drive.
"What?"
"I need to sell it."
"That's how our relationship works."
"I mean now. Before someone else hears."
The nervousness looked genuine. That didn't necessarily mean the information was.
"How much?"
"Five gold crowns."
Konrad kept his face still.
For the right story, he would have paid a hundred times that. He hadn't brought anything like that much in coin, but five crowns was less than he had spent replacing damaged capture-device fittings after the desert.
He opened the small purse inside his coat and counted ten coins into Jost's hand.
Jost stared at them.
"I said five."
"I heard you."
"Then—"
"Next time something important happens, you find me before you find anyone else."
Jost closed his fingers.
Konrad had never understood reporters who bargained their sources down to the last copper. Ten crowns bought today's information and improved the chances that tomorrow's would arrive at the correct desk.
"Well?"
"A convoy left for the front this morning."
Konrad waited.
Jost lowered his voice further.
"The new lord went with it."
"Kaspar?"
"White hair. Iron Cross coat. Sword. Unless the Crown has appointed another one."
"How many vehicles?"
"Four magi-cars. Two freight wagons."
"Soldiers?"
"Knights."
Konrad looked south.
"Where did they leave?"
"Eastern service exit. Before the main gates opened."
"You saw them?"
"No. The soldier on the door did. So did the carter waiting to bring flour through. I spoke to both. The soldier said the first car was through before he could ask for the papers."
"A lord visiting the front line isn't five crowns' worth of news."
"He wasn't visiting."
"You know that?"
"I asked."
"Whom?"
Jost gave him three names. A freight clerk. A barracks quartermaster. A Magical Army officer.
"None of them knew where he was going," Jost continued. "The wagons arrived under military seals. Nobody opened the crates. Nobody has a schedule. No inspection notice. Nothing."
Konrad rested his forearms on the steering bar.
A routine visit generated paperwork. Food. Rooms. Horses. Officers who wanted to be seen beside the visiting noble.
"You're certain he went south?"
"I watched the column from the eastern wall after I heard."
Konrad turned the drive back on.
Jost stepped away.
"Where are you going?"
"To find out whether you've earned your money."
"The front?"
"Yes."
Jost glanced at the passenger seat, then at the road.
Konrad moved the leather case onto his lap.
"Get in."
They heard the fighting before they saw it.
At first, Konrad mistook the distant impacts for the ordinary elven bombardment. He had heard enough of it to recognize the dull concussion that carried through the ground before the sound reached the road.
Then came a cluster of sharper sounds.
He eased the magi-car up the last incline.
Smoke rose beyond the crest.
"That isn't the usual morning barrage," Jost said.
"No."
Konrad stopped below the skyline and climbed out with the capture device.
Jost remained seated.
From the hilltop, the front opened beneath a low gray sky.
Konrad knelt.
One of the vehicles lay nose-down in the opposing ditch. Another had stopped among ruined shelters. The familiar lines of a civilian magi-car had been distorted by metal plating fixed to the front and sides.
Human soldiers moved around it.
He brought the capture device up.
The distant figures were small through the crystal lens. Too small for faces.
Konrad adjusted the frame until the human trench occupied the bottom of the image and the occupied rise sat above it.
He pressed the trigger.
The mechanism clicked. Mana flashed through the lens housing, fixing light onto the treated copper plate.
He changed the plate and took another image as a spell struck the far side of the ridge.
The device's charge crystal dimmed.
Behind him, Jost had finally left the car.
"What is it?"
Konrad lowered the device.
Those were Imperial soldiers on the elven side.
"The line," he said.
"What about it?"
"It's... moving."
Jost peered over his shoulder.
"Is that good?"
Konrad looked at the distance between his lens and the fighting.
"It would be better from closer."
Jost shut his eyes.
"Oh, fuck."
The bunker guards refused him.
Konrad had expected that. He would have been concerned by anything else.
A soldier behind the outer blast wall examined his Chronicle credentials, looked at the capture device, and handed the papers back.
"I need to speak to Commander Wendt."
"He's busy."
"I can hear that."
"Then you understand why you're not going inside."
Konrad stepped out of the approach so two soldiers carrying a crate could pass.
"I'm asking for the observation trench. Not the command room."
"No."
"Will you at least tell him I'm here?"
The soldier gave him a look stripped of hospitality.
Konrad waited.
Another impact rolled across the ridge. A little dust dropped from the blast wall's upper seam.
At last, the guard turned toward an officer emerging from the bunker and passed on the request.
The officer looked at Konrad.
"Name?"
"Konrad von Ries. Imperial Chronicle."
"Wait here."
Jost stood beside the magi-car with his hands buried in his pockets.
"You tried," he said. "Now we can leave."
Konrad opened the capture device and checked the plate carriage.
"Not yet."
"He said no."
"The guard said no."
"You think the commander will be delighted?"
"I think the commander might think differently."
The officer returned several minutes later.
"Commander Wendt says you can photograph the blast wall."
Konrad glanced at the stained concrete.
"Did he use those exact words?"
"Not all of them."
"Please tell him I can already see Iron Cross soldiers fighting on the elven ridge. I need access to document it properly."
The officer's expression tightened.
"He knows what is happening on the ridge."
"I would hope so."
Konrad moved another pace aside.
The man disappeared inside.
Jost stared at him.
"Does that usually work?"
"Occasionally."
"And when it doesn't?"
They waited.
More soldiers passed them. A medical orderly carried rolled blankets beneath one arm. Someone pushed a narrow handcart. From inside came overlapping voices, too distant for Konrad to distinguish.
"Eastern section—"
"Confirmed positions—"
Konrad looked toward the smoke.
The sharp cracks continued.
He had heard that sound before in the capital.
Pistols.
The officer returned.
"You have permission. The observation trench only," the officer continued. "No command rooms or communications stations. You follow the route you're given and stay out of the soldiers' way."
"Understood."
"There is nobody available to protect you. If you expose yourself and lose your head, no one is going out to collect the rest."
The officer's gaze moved to Jost.
"Who is he?"
"My assistant."
Jost made a small, wounded sound.
"He carries the plate case."
The officer looked past them as someone called from inside.
"Then he can carry it quickly. Both of you. Come on."
Konrad picked up the case.
Jost caught his sleeve.
"No. I am not going into a bunker during a battle."
Konrad lowered his voice.
"The observation trench. Nothing farther. You carry the plates, help me change them, and earn another five crowns."
Jost looked toward the entrance.
"I'll sell anything I hear."
"And inside you might hear something worth selling."
Konrad held out the case.
For a moment, Jost didn't move.
Then he snatched it.
"If I die, I want the extra five paid to my sister."
"Give me her name on the way."
Inside, nobody had time to be impressed by a journalist.
Their guide took them up a narrow passage and pointed toward daylight.
"Observation step is to the left. Don't stand on it too long unless you want to become part of the landscape."
Konrad climbed.
The battle was much louder here.
He crouched beneath the trench lip and raised the capture device just far enough to look south.
The copper-plated car in the elven ditch was burning.
Beyond it, soldiers dragged a sheet of metal across the captured slope. A man with a Magitek forearm pointed toward an unfinished line of earthworks.
Konrad found the frame.
A human hand hauling elven timber into position. Iron Cross insignia on a bent back. The opposing trench beneath their boots.
He took the photograph.
The capture crystal went cloudy.
"New crystal," he said.
Jost crouched beside him, clutching the plate case against his stomach.
"What?"
"Small padded compartment. Brass cap."
"You didn't explain this part."
Jost fumbled the compartment open.
Konrad replaced the spent crystal, seated another plate, and looked south again.
From this distance, he could finally distinguish the pistols.
One of the Knights rose behind a copper sheet, extended an arm, and fired. The report arrived just after an elf dropped out of view.
Konrad adjusted the frame.
The next image caught three men lifting a timber brace into place while a fourth packed earth against its base.
He lowered the device.
Faces vanished behind smoke. The low trench hid the wounded. Whatever was happening beyond the storehouse remained broken into glimpses of fire and wind.
The light changed.
Konrad looked up.
A white discharge tore across the far side of the camp.
For an instant, the ridge cast shadows toward the human trenches.
He had time to see the beam climb.
Then the crest beyond it broke apart.
The sound struck.
Konrad dropped beneath the parapet with the capture device crushed against his chest. Jost swore and covered his head. Dirt pattered down the trench wall.
Several soldiers shouted at once.
When Konrad looked again, part of the hill was missing.
Dust climbed through the gap. The cut was still smoking.
His finger had never reached the trigger.
He stared.
Then he brought the device up and photographed what remained.
The fifth plate slid into its protective sleeve beneath fingers that had become noticeably less steady.
Jost looked at him.
"Was that ours?"
"I don't know."
"Was that theirs?"
"How the fuck would I know?"
"Shouldn't we leave?"
Konrad looked through the lens again.
On the far side, figures were moving east beneath a spreading curtain of dust. The spells coming toward the human position thinned, then stopped.
A flag rose above the captured trench.
Someone beside Konrad shouted for the signalman.
The order passed along the trench.
"Clear the ramp. Medical teams forward."
Soldiers moved at once.
A man carrying a folded stretcher pressed past Konrad. Another followed with a pack of dressings and splints. Farther down, two teams assembled around water containers.
"What are they doing?"
"Bringing someone back."
"Across that?"
Konrad watched an officer lean over the parapet with a glass.
"Flags confirmed," the officer called. "Critical casualty. Additional wounded. They're holding the approach."
A lean man in Academy robes came up from the bunker passage.
Konrad recognized Molino.
The professor looked exhausted. Sweat had dried in pale tracks beside his hairline. A soldier offered him an arm on the last step; Molino ignored it, then briefly steadied himself against the trench wall.
He carried a staff. Something dark rested in his other hand.
Konrad began to raise the capture device.
Then he stopped.
Frieda would kill him. If the Iron Cross didn't get to him first.
The professor's staff touched the trench floor.
Mana tightened across the ground beyond them.
Konrad felt it through his own Circles. The mana was being removed from that section alone.
"Stay between the white stakes!" the officer shouted. "No one leaves the route!"
Medical teams climbed the ramp.
The supply carriers followed at a run.
Across no-man's-land, another group emerged from the captured position with a stretcher between them.
Konrad shifted forward.
Jost caught his coat. "No."
"I'm going across."
Jost stared at him.
"You said the trench."
"The situation has changed."
"The situation has become worse!"
Konrad looked toward the ridge.
The fighting there had stopped, but the work had not. Men were dragging fallen copper sheets back into place. Others hauled someone out from beneath a collapsed brace.
"I need to get closer."
Konrad opened the leather case.
Five exposed plates lay inside, each wrapped and separated from the next.
He checked the clasps, then pushed the case against Jost's chest.
"Take these to the capital."
"What?"
"The Chronicle. Frieda von Thalberg. Give them to her personally."
"I'm not carrying your luggage across half the Empire because you've decided to die."
"One hundred gold crowns."
Jost's mouth closed.
Konrad pulled a small notebook from his coat and tore out a page. He braced it against the case and wrote quickly.
Five plates. Western-sector offensive. Iron Cross troops holding the elven ridge. He added the approximate time, Wendt's name, and an instruction that the bearer receive one hundred crowns against Konrad's account.
Below it, he wrote a final line.
Gone forward with the supply teams. Will send copy as soon as a route opens.
He signed it.
"Give her this too."
Jost read the figure.
"One hundred?"
"On delivery."
"Even if you don't come back?"
"Especially then. She'll want the plates before she writes the obituary."
Jost looked from the note to the case.
"Your car?"
"Take it to Grenzheim. Buy passage with a northbound courier if you can. Don't spend two days waiting for cheap freight."
"What if they try to take the pictures here?"
"Tell them they're images taken from the authorized observation position. Which they are."
Jost slipped the note inside his coat.
For a moment, his fingers remained on the case clasp.
"You really are going."
"Yes."
"That's insane."
Konrad transferred the remaining unexposed plates into the smaller padded field pouch. He checked the fresh crystal in the device and tightened the strap across his shoulder.
"Deliver the photographs."
Jost nodded once.
Konrad waited until the next supply team reached the ramp.
The officer overseeing the passage turned toward the incoming stretcher. Two medical orderlies hurried forward to meet it.
Konrad climbed out behind the last supply carrier.
For the first few strides, nobody challenged him.
Then someone shouted from the trench.
He couldn't tell whether it was directed at him.
The ground beyond the parapet was worse than it had looked.
Water filled craters deep enough to swallow a boot. Torn wire lay half-buried in the mud. White stakes marked a route that was much narrower now that he was standing inside it.
The active formations on either side pressed against his senses.
He kept to the footsteps ahead.
The stretcher team came toward him at speed.
"CLEAR!"
Konrad stepped aside without crossing the markers.
Four soldiers carried the litter. One had blood up to both elbows. Another ran with his head turned toward the man lying between them, speaking too quickly for Konrad to catch the words.
Someone with white hair lay against the dark stretcher cloth.
Kaspar.
For an instant, Konrad saw his face clearly.
The color had gone from his skin, and without the force of his expression, the face belonged to someone much younger than the stories written about him.
A thick dressing covered the end of his right arm.
The rest of the arm was missing.
Another strap had been tightened high around his leg. Blood darkened the bandages beneath it and had soaked into the stretcher canvas.
His eyes were closed.
Konrad's hands moved toward the capture device.
The stretcher was already passing.
By the time he lifted the device, the soldiers' backs blocked the view.
"Keep moving!" one of the supply carriers shouted.
Konrad lowered it.
He followed.
The ruined magi-car in the elven ditch stood ahead, its copper prow buried in earth. Someone had laid timber across the broken section to create a narrow crossing.
Konrad stepped over the scorched frame and climbed onto the captured ridge.
The smell struck him first.
Burned wood. Hot metal. Open bodies beneath the sharper stink of disturbed earth.
Then he saw the defenses.
A shallow trench hacked into the slope. Copper panels dragged from the cars and braced with scavenged timber. Half-filled sandbags. Soldiers digging with blood drying on their sleeves.
He raised the capture device.
A man looked up from a shovel as the lens turned toward him.
"Who the fuck are you?"
"Chronicle."
The man stared for half a second.
Then he drove the shovel back into the ground.
"Get my good side."
Konrad took the photograph.
A shout came from the rear.
"Last team across!"
Konrad turned. Mana stirred beneath the marked route. A buried formation pulsed blue, then another. The corridor had closed.
He stood still with the capture device in his hands.
There would be no walking back until the defenses opened again.
A soldier shoved an empty sandbag against his chest.
"If you're staying, you get to work."
Konrad set the capture device down behind a timber brace and took the bag.
I may actually be insane.