The platform was circular, with a stone railing. Beyond the railing was nothingness. Not darkness, not light. Just ... nothing. Sela had no words for it. Emptiness without form or substance, or even absence. It was deeply unsettling.
"I apologize for almost killing all of us," said Faella. "But I'm afraid we didn't take into account that the fold would feed us directly into the receptacle, not into a happy landing spot. So I made an adjustment in midfold. Harder than it sounds, I can assure you."
"Where are we?" asked Sela, her voice shaking.
"Look behind you," said Silverdun.
Sela stood, turning. Behind her was a wide road that ended at a great stair leading up to a massive, black edifice, a squat castle without tower or battlement, streaked reddish orange. It was blocky, unadorned, huge. Larger than the Great Seelie Keep and twice as high.
Before them, at the start of the road, was a tall stone arch, and on the arch was inscribed a line of script in a language that Sela didn't recognize.
"What is that?" she asked.
Ironfoot looked up at the arch, puzzling out the characters.
"This is Thule Fae," he said. "I studied it at Queensbridge. But it's an odd dialect. Give me a moment."
"What does it say?" asked Silverdun.
"It says `Beyond This Arch Lies Death."'
"Not very welcoming," said Silverdun.
"Great. So what's the plan, boss?" asked Ironfoot.
Silverdun scowled. "We go inside and look around," he said.
"And that sign?"
"Pray it's a bit of hyperbole."
"I hate to bring this up," said Faella. "Because you may find it a bit dispiriting, but there's something I need to tell you."
"What now?" asked Silverdun.
"While we were in the fold, I'm afraid some time may have passed. Rather longer than you might have expected."
"How long?" asked Ironfoot.
"I think it was about four days," said Faella.
Silverdun swore. "Then the war's already begun!"
Morale is worth its weight in gold. Given the choice between a hopeful soldier with a club and a disheartened soldier with a sword, I will take the one with the club every time. After the Battle of Coldwood, General Ameus was asked how he prevailed despite being heavily outnumbered. He famously answered, "We were less interested in dying than they were."
-CmdrTae Filarete, Observations on Battle
He stood outside his tent facing north, reviewing his Seelie Army troops as they marched west along the Border Road toward the ruins of Selafae, where they would amass and cross into the Unseelie at dawn. The Border Wall itself was a hundred yards farther north, separated from the road by a swath of swampy ground.
A seemingly unending line of soldiers, wagons, and horses flowed past, kicking up dust along the road. The air smelled of dirt, horse dung, sweat, and the spiced preparations of the battle mages.
The battle plans for this invasion had been drawn up a week earlier and had been distributed to all of his generals, as well as to the Foreign Ministry and the office of the secretary of states. A copy had also been sent, encrypted, to Jem-Aleth, the Unseelie Ambassador, signed by Baron Glennet. That plan was probably even now circulating among Mab's commanders on the opposite side of the border. At least, he hoped it was.
The plan was a fiction, of course. They would not be attacking from Selafae. They would be going over the Border Wall. The soldiers weren't marching; they were taking their positions. At his signal, they would turn to the north and march directly to Elenth.
Six months ago, Mauritane and a pair of trusted battle mages had traveled to this very spot, miles from any village or city on either side of the border, carrying a unique spellbomb. No Einswrath this; it was specifically crafted to disrupt the bindings that kept the Border Wall impassable. It had performed its task perfectly, flattening down the barrier of Motion, allowing Mauritane and his mages to hop easily over the border. Two days ago, under cover of night, Mauritane's mages had strung identical bombs along a threemile section of the wall.
Mauritane looked at the sun. It was time. He called his head support mage, Captain Eland, to his side.
"It's time," he said.
Eland nodded and gathered up his mages. Across the border, a company of Unseelie cavalry stood, watching but doing nothing. The Seelie men hurled good-natured insults at them as they went, though the cavalrymen certainly couldn't hear them from this distance. They were in for quite a surprise.
One of Eland's men raised his hand, and a flare of witchlight shot up, flashing bright red in the sky. It made a small pop as it exploded. Across the border, one of the Unseelie cavalry pointed to it, talking to the man next to him.
A series of closely timed explosions ripped across the Border Wall. Even at a hundred yards, they were loud enough to hurt Mauritane's ears.
Mauritane's troops required no other signal, but he gave one anyway.
"The Seelie Heart!" he called, his voice magically amplified.
"The Seelie Heart!" answered the voices of a thousand men. The battle cry echoed up and down the lines.
The army turned as one and began marching north toward the curtain of black smoke that was now rising where the Border Wall had been. About a mile farther north, they would meet a very unprepared column of Unseelie troops, and the battle would begin in earnest.
The Unseelie cavalry turned and fled, but they were too late. Percussives fired from the lead battle mages blew them to bits within seconds.
Thus began the Third Unseelie War.
It took a few hours, but to their credit, the Unseelie realized quickly what had happened and altered their own plans in response. There were a number of small skirmishes-during which Unseelie forces, caught utterly off guard, were slaughtered handily-but those were few.
The first battle was just south of the Unseelie village of Claret. Mab's forces were waiting for them in the village and struck as Mauritane was advancing up the hill toward it.
The first spells began to clash overhead as the battle mages unleashed their opening salvos. Streamers of smoke intertwined in a riot of color, percussives and incendiaries canceling each other out in the sky. Those percussives that struck among Mauritane's troops, however, were devastating in their capacity.
Still no Einswrath.
The cavalry and infantry met on the outskirts of the village. Bowmen attempted to clear a path through the Unseelie line, but the force was too large. Mounted soldiers clashed, their swords glinting in the sunlight. Men on the ground fought with sword and pike. There were screams, shouted orders, the thunder of hooves, the endless scrape of metal on metal. And Mauritane was at the center of it all, urging his commanders onward, calling out his own orders.
He, of course, could not fight. He wore a blade, the one he'd taken from the prison at Crete Sulace, but hadn't swung it in months. Command was fine, but watching his men advance, he dearly wished to be in the middle of it, a cavalry officer on a clever touched mount, leading the charge.
They took Claret after two hours, but there were casualties. Scouts reported Unseelie reinforcements approaching by the hundreds.
Mauritane's strategy depended on the taking of Elenth on the fourth day of the campaign. If the city could be taken and supply lines fortified, they might stand a chance of repelling the direct onslaught of the main Unseelie force, which was even now coming at a forced march from the border crossing at Selafae, where a half-regiment of Mauritane's Fifth Battalion waited, both as a lure and a hedge, in case Mab decided to try for Sylvan anyway.
Soon there would be Mab's battle fliers, hurling balls of flame and arrows down from above. There would be a flag city bearing down on them, its civilian population offloaded to other cities. The ground war was only the beginning.