Chapter 1

Sergeant Belisarius stretched his arms out behind his head and exhaled deeply through
puffed cheeks as he stepped wearily from the Guardhouse. No, he mentally reprimanded himself,
twisting his torso to stretch the stiffness from his back. Not Sergeant any longer. Lieutenant. He
smiled wanly at the extra responsibility of his new rank. He strode out of the cozy alleyway that
the Guardhouse he was stationed at was tucked away in, and into a comfortably uncongested
byway that ran along one of the city of Einar's concentric circles. He turned left and soon stepped
from the Southeast Quadrant onto the broad highway that led from the city's main gate, East
Gate, through the market, and finally ended at the massive keep at Einar's heart.
Belisarius headed up the highway towards the market, as he did every day on his
commute back to his home. The conference with Captain O'Dell had been a pleasant one. The
Captain had said that with the increasing threat from the Imperialists in the East, he needed more
soldiers that he could trust in command. He'd given Belisarius a new rank, a blood-red shirt with
the Raven and Sun insignia of Einar on the sleeves, and command of a full platoon of soldiers.
He'd then told Belisarius that he was in charge of providing advanced combat training for his
men, and that the squad he'd previously been in command of as a Sergeant would remain with
him as a personal guard.
Having made his way into the flow of the crowd and reached his first destination, he
sidestepped nimbly from the flow of people and into a small open storefront. He stepped under
the broad awning and up to the counter where a short round old lady sat on a stool looking into a
small clay oven. His feet crunched some of the packed dirt and gravel. The little old lady's face,
wrinkled from decades and decades of smiles, snapped around to face him. Her poofy gray hair
wobbled atop her head, as she placed a hand over her heart and exhaled.
"Oh my...," she breathed.
"Ahh... Good evening, Mrs. MacIntire. I'm sorry for startling you." He clasped his hands
respectfully in front of him and inclined his head slightly.
"Oh, hello, Bel," she said, finally calming down. "Don't worry about me, I was just lost in
thought, and you startled me a bit. Anyways, you're around later than usual," she said inquiringly,
in her offhand manner.
Heh, he thought, As kind as she is, she's still a woman at heart. "Ah, yes, I was in a
conference with the Captain. I ended up getting out late."
"Oh? The Captain, eh?"
The edge of Belisarius' mouth curled up in amusement. When she wants to know
something, she'll find it out one way or another. "Yes ma'am. I was actually promoted to
Lieutenant today."
"Ah?! A Lieutenant? That's wonderful, Bel! Congratulations." She gave his left arm a
squeeze. She glanced back at her little oven. "Looks like your timing was just about right,
anyway," she said, removing a fresh pan of sweetrolls from the oven with a long wooden handle.
Belisarius had been coming here to buy sweetrolls from Mrs. MacIntire since before he
could even remember. As a child he had officially been in the custody of his uncle, but for the
most part he had roamed the streets by himself. When he did so, he busied himself with
collecting stray coins, and once he'd accumulated enough, the only thing in his mind was buying
a sweetroll from Mrs. MacIntire.
 He smiled contentedly as he completed his near-daily ritual of exchanging a twenty-five
copper piece for one generously large honey-glazed sweetroll wrapped in a piece of paper. He
cheerfully bit into the sweetroll. "Delicious, as always," he remarked.
Mrs. MacIntire smiled and nodded familiarly. "Oh, and would you like something to
wash that down with?"
Belisarius slightly cocked his head to the side in curiosity. "A drink? But you've never
had anything to drink here. I don't think you could fit any dishes in here if you wanted to."
"Ah, but that's the thing. I don't need any dishes to serve drinks now," she said. "A man
came by and brought me these." She set a stack of what looked to be thin-walled cups on the
counter. "He said his name was Adus, claimed to be a scholar and inventor. And look at this."
She held up one of the cups and thumped it. "It's paper."
Belisarius carefully took the cup from her hand, and held it up to the light outside the
awning. "What...? How would this work? It'd just leak right through..." He ran his finger along
the inside of the cup, and felt... "Wax. He coated the inside with wax." Belisarius' eyebrows
raised up in amazement. "This is ingenious."
"Yes, that's what I thought. He gave me these for free and told me to try them out and see
if they worked like he claimed they would. He said I'd have to pay for any more if I wanted
them, but the price is so cheap I'd only have to charge a few coppers extra for a drink. And you
can just throw the cup on a midden heap when you're finished with it." She smiled at the prospect
of her new business opportunity. "So, in honor of your recent promotion, allow me to treat you to
the first drink this shop has ever offered." She pulled a large clear glass bottle filled with amber
liquid from under the counter.
"I'm honored," Belisarius said, sliding the paper cup towards Mrs. MacIntire.
The moment she opened the bottle, the strong smell of alcohol began to permeate her
small shop. "And you can thank Farmer Bragg for the whiskey," she said nodding to a short
stocky man in his fifties who had just entered her shop.
Farmer Bragg, another regular at Mrs. MacIntire's bakery shop, bowed his head slightly.
"I've come for another one of your sweetrolls and a loaf of sourdough before I head back out to
the farm, Miss." He had the friendly smile of a working man enjoying the fruits of his labor.
Belisarius politely stepped aside, cup in hand, and let Bragg approach the counter. He
remembered the last time he had alcohol. It was not a pleasant experience. He stared in repose
out into the crowd of passersby with his elbow resting on the edge of the counter.
Suddenly, he was jolted from his thoughts and his eyes locked with someone moving
along with the crowd. It was a girl, or more correctly, a woman. She was not necessarily tall, but
her thin figure made her look far taller than she really was. Her facial features were sharp.
Perhaps her most striking feature were here eyes. Her eyes were a sharp, slate gray that pierced
the soul. Her black hair was cut shorter at the bangs and partied to the side with the rest flowing
gracefully over her delicate shoulders. She wore a long dark grey dress made of a dense cloth
that moved with her figure as if it were sheer silk, with a thick mahogany colored leather belt
that accented her slender hips. Belisarius was a bit surprised at the covering-yet-revealing shape
of the woman's garb. Instead of looking immodest, however, it made her seem all the more
graceful and majestic.
For a brief moment, time seemed to stand still. It was almost like there was a corporeal
connection between his eyes and the woman's while her image was being burned into his mind.
The hair on the back of his neck stood straight up, and he found his hand tightly gripping the
brass pommel of the gladius at his left hip. Sometime during this moment, it seemed that she
broke the connection between them, allowing Belisarius' eyes to wander behind her.
Following her were three men. They weren't obviously following her, but to Belisarius'
eyes it was completely clear. The shape of their faces, their slanted eyes and pronounced
cheekbones spoke of a distant nation. They were doing their best to blend in, but these men
clearly were Easterners. Their appearance sent off a dozen alarm bells in his head. They walked
with the bearing of people who have traveled a very long distance, and their traveling cloaks
were dusty from the road. If that were the case, then why would they be heading East, towards
the main city gate and away from any inns, especially in the evening?The tension in both the
woman's and the men's stride spoke of trouble.
"Bel? ...Bel?" Mrs. MacIntire glanced from Belisarius to the crowd of people with a
worried expression on her face.
"Erm.... Lieutenant Odea? What's the matter?" Farmer Bragg studied his face from the
side.
Belisarius tried to set the cup of whiskey down on the counter, but found that he'd
crushed it, spilling the contents down the sides of his fist. He wiped his hand on the hem of the
old shirt he was wearing under his studded leather cuirass, and slid his hands into his leather
gloves. When Belisarius spoke, his voice was dark. "Mr. Bragg. I need you to go find Captain
O'Dell of the Southeast Quadrant Garrison, and bring him here. Can you do that?" Farmer Bragg
nodded reluctantly. Belisarius swallowed past the sick feeling in the back of his throat and
continued. "Mrs. MacIntire," he stepped toward the street, and loosened his gladius in its sheath.
"Watch where I go. Send the Captain after me when he gets here."
And with that, he stepped out into the mass of people.

Chapter 2
Belisarius shouldered his way through the mass of people. He found the way the crowd
moved through the street to be odd. At first glance it would appear to be a chaotic mass of
people, but once one was in the crowd, there was a strange order to the ebb and flow. Lines of
people entered and exited through side streets and various shops, giving openings in the crowd in
strange places. It vaguely reminded Belisarius of looking at a spread out corn husk, thick lines
and open space in a strange tandem that didn't quite make sense. He scanned the lines of people
in heading in one specific direction, and noticed another section of the road between two of these
lines that was free of people. Belisarius fought his way into the clearing, and craned his neck to
find the mysterious woman. He was tall enough to see over most people without a problem, but
the people he was looking for were all on the shorter side. Eventually he spotted them. The
woman in that clinging grey-black dress of hers, and the three men in their dark traveling cloaks
moving through the crowd in a triangular formation.
Belisarius quickly gained ground on them thanks to the opening in the crowd he'd found.
He reached the end of the clearing, twisted sideways, and pushed his way between two groups of
people. They turned to him to protest, but saw that he was a Guardsman who looked none too
happy, and quickly decided otherwise. Up ahead, Belisarius could see that they were approaching
the last stretch of avenues before they reached the final pathway circling the inside of Einar. The
sun was just beginning to set.The crowd was starting to thin out. People were reaching their last-
minute shopping destinations, or entering one of the houses interspersed throughout the business
districts. Belisarius watched the crowd peeling away and realized that he, the woman, and the
three men were almost alone by now.
It was obvious that both the men and the woman knew of the others' presence. Belisarius
hugged the side of the road inconspicuously, expecting the men to look back for a tail at any
moment. The woman turned down one of the avenues on the side, ready to face the men herself.
Before following her, the men looked back, as Belisarius had expected. He ducked into the
recessed doorway of one of the shops, and peered around the corner of the doorway, between bits
of cloth hanging from an awning between him and the men. The thought of that woman trying to
defend herself alone against the three men made him sick. He silently eased his gladius free of
the leather sheath he kept it in. He saw the men step around the corner, and deftly moved through
the awning and around the corner. In the light of the setting sun, he saw the glint of three blades
being pulled from sleeves. The two men on the sides moved up to take the woman from either
side. These men were assassins. Belisarius had thought so, but seeing it for sure made his head
spin. The men weren't going to wait any longer. They silently readied their knives. Between the
left man and the middle man, Belisarius saw the woman's shoulders tense up as she prepared
herself to face the situation. Belisarius gripped the gladius in his right hand, and spun the handle
around in his palm once quickly. The woman planted her right foot on the ground and began to
spin around to face the men. Belisarius' fingers settled firmly into the grooves on the leather
handle of his gladius. He raised the blade up above his head, and stepped forward with his right
foot.
The sharp blade made very little sound as it sliced through the air. It swept downwards,
and made solid contact with the left side of the middle man's kneck. The blade sank deeply into
his flesh, crushing vertebrae, severing the collar bone from the spine, and shearing the man's
spinal cord in two. A grotesque metal thunk resounded through the deserted street, and the man
started gurgling almost immediately. The other two assassins' attention snapped from the woman,
now facing toward them with her palm upraised and a look of utter shock on her face, to their
comrade, who now had three inches of steel protruding from his throat. Their faces melted into
twin visages of horror. Belisarius took their half second pause to wrench his sword out of the
man's kneck as he sank forward onto his side. The gladius ripped free, sending a jet of blood
from the assassin's carotid artery splattering across the cobblestones.
Belisarius looked up and saw the man on the left beginning an overhanded thrust with his
curved dagger. Belisarius' sword was still pointed down at the dying man on the ground. He
would barely have time to get his sword back into guard position to block the man's strike. So
instead, he swept the sword upwards in a counter-clockwise arc and intercepted the man's blow
in mid-air. The broad-bladed gladius hacked the man's limb off just above the wrist. The
assassin's hand and dagger soared gracefully through the air, before coming to rest on the
cobbles. Belisarius swept the gladius through the arc, turned the follow-through into a flourish,
gripped the handle and pommel with both hands, and rammed the entire blade into the assassin's
chest.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the other Easterner had procured a three and a half
foot long curved, single-edged sword from beneath his cloak. Belisarius turned his attention back
to his sword, and desperately jerked on the gladius to free it from the second assassin's chest.
Instead, the man's bloody, semi-limp body toppled over on top of the sword. He figured what
must have had happened. The blade stuck in the junction of one of the man's ribs and his spine.
And now Belisarius was without a sword.
 Belisarius leapt back and crouched down with his arms to held out to his sides. He
glanced around and assessed the situation. Though he was out of range of the assassin's sword
for the moment, if he were to run, he was sure that he'd instantly be killed. That was fine. He
wasn't really one to run, anyway. He reached to his right hip and drew his freshly stropped
dagger. Its point was sharply angled, ideal for punching through armor. The edges were sharp as
a razor's. Daggers aren't really a match for swords, but in this case, it'll have to do.The final
assassin shuffled forward slowly but surely, his sword held in front of him, with the tip pointing
directly at Belisarius. Belisarius was curious as to just how he should face this sword-wielding
man. Well, he did have leather bracers with thin steel plates riveted on buckled onto his forearms.
He'd use those to his advantage. He felt the grip of the dagger through the soft underside of his
glove. The feel gave him confidence.
He kept his crouched posture the same and edged forward. The assassin shuffled back.
Belisarius circled counter-clockwise, the assassin circled clockwise. Belisarius inched forward,
the assassin stepped back. Belisarius stepped back.... But the assassin didn't step forward as
quickly as he had before. Belisarius coiled his body, and the assassin brought his sword up over
his head, and stepped forward like lightning. There was no time for Belisarius to step inside of
the man's guard. There was also no way he could sidestep or leap back enough to escape the
blow.
Belisarius clenched his fist and rose his arm. The assassin's sword would no doubt slice
through the metal bracer, through Belisarius' arm and into his shoulder if he simply tried to take
the blow. Instead, just before the blade reached him, he tried to backhand the sword, and slap it
away with the steel bracer. However, he hadn't accounted for the sharpness of the blade. It bit
diagonally through the steel, through the leather, and through several inches of his flesh.
Belisarius was acutely aware of the blade slicing away a flap of flesh, and scraping across his
bone. The horrific sensation shivered its way along his bones, up his spine, and exploded into his
brain. White-hot pain. Agonizing, yet strangely clarifying.
The assassin was as surprised as Belisarius about the outcome of the attack. With the
man's sword still inside his arm, Belisarius mercilessly drove his dagger into his opponent's groin
with a snarl of anger and pain. He angled the blade upwards and lifted up on the handle. The
blade ripped flesh as Belisarius tore the blade up through the assassin's abdomen. He didn't stop
until he felt the blade lodge inside the cartilage that connected his opponent's ribs and sternum.
The assassin's suddenly heavy hands weighed down on the blade sticking through Belisarius'
arm, as he started to topple forward.
Belisarius cried out to fight through the pain. He grabbed at the blade wedged into his
arm to support it himself, and balanced the quickly dying assassin against his shoulder. Seething
through his teeth, Belisarius stepped backwards, and kicked the dying assassin in the chest.
His body toppled backward.
His entrails toppled forward.

. . .
Belisarius sank to his knees in pain. Maybe it was from the blood-loss, maybe it was from
the agony, but his mind started getting muddy. He gritted his teeth against the encroaching
unconsciousness and ripped the cloak from one of the dead assassins. He put the corner under us
knee and used his dagger to slice a long strip from a mostly clean section of the cloak. He
scraped the large strip he'd cut to the side, an lay his left arm down so that the sword was resting
on the cobbles and not putting its weight onto his wound. With his dagger shaking in his right
hand he cut the three leather straps fastening his bracer on. Each time one came loose, the
throbbing in the wound doubled, and it felt like his arm expanded a bit.
Now that the straps on his bracer were loose, he was going to try and remove the sword
from his arm. He slowly lifted his arm from the cobbles... but the bracer stayed on his arm, held
fast by the sword. He screamed through clenched teeth, partly in agony partly in horror. He felt
the sensation of the blade grating against the bone. It felt like someone had just thrown freezing
water across his bare bones.
His hands were slick with blood, by now. He dimly realized that he needed to get things
straightened out soon, or he might not be able to make it back onto the main road where he could
be easily found. He wedged the handle of the sword under one of the dead bodies, took part of
the cloak he had cut up, and wrapped it around the blade. His mind told him that he could get
good leverage this way. He placed his hand on the cloth covering the blade, and pulled his arm
back toward him. There was a horrible ripping sensation as his arm came free of the bracer.
He snatched the large strip of cloth he had cut and hastily tried to wrap his wound, which
was bleeding profusely. He ended up wrapping the flap of meat back against his arm instead of
into the gaping wound it had been severed from. He silently peeled the cloth from the sticky flap
of flesh and relocated it where it belonged. He wrapped the cloth tightly around the wound,
rolled his arm over, and bound it with the piece of cloth as best he could. He stood up as best he
could and held his injured arm close to his chest. He thought to himself that the tears that had
accumulated around the edges of his eyes were getting more and more opaque by the second. He
staggered to the end of the avenue and stumbled out into the main highway. He tripped, but
caught himself on one arm and forced himself back to his feet. It was maybe a quarter mile back
to Mrs. MacIntire's. He could only hope that Farmer Bragg had found the captain.
The next few minutes were all a blur. Step step step step step. All he could do was keep
walking and hope he could make it back before he passed out. In the distance he saw glistening
red gold and silver bobbing towards him through the twilight... Yes, he was sure now. That was
Captain O'Dell and his squad, running towards him with weapons drawn. Belisarius' delirious
mind couldn't quite understand what was happening. The last thought that entered his mind
before unconsciousness took him was that it must be alright to rest now
He toppled over onto the ground, his face stirring up dirt on the road.