A DRINK BEFORE BATTLE (MxM)

Sevei sat on the ground, leaning against a hard and lumpy pack of gear, eating a handful of various bland dried things, and wondering how he would ever survive roughing it in a military camp now. After dragging himself out of that heavenly bed in the pre-dawn, he’d had a breakfast cooked by a chef who could work for the King followed by a long soak in Kyrzhan’s gigantic bathtub, with a half-dozen lovely young men massaging his shoulders and adding hot water whenever it began to cool. He had smelled like a flower when he’d arrived outside the city for muster. Five hours on the road under the warm springtime sun had long since taken care of that.

His second-in-command, First Constable Evaran Yanek, threw an empty walnut shell at him.

“What are you sighing about?” Yanek said with a grin. “Miss your paramour already?”

Sevei closed his eyes for a moment, and a pair of emerald orbs appeared against his eyelids. He shook his head and threw the walnut shell back.

“Yeah,” he laughed. “Your mom says hello.”

“Oh, you’re such a philanthropist! My mother is not a good-looking woman, bless her.” The walnut shell was launched again.

“One can tell that by looking at you.” Sevei landed the shell square in the middle of Yanek’s forehead.

A chorus of laughter sounded around them, and Yanek gave a good-humored grimace while rubbing at his face.

“I didn’t see you around the party last night,” he said. “I thought you’d pissed off to bed early, but you were in an awfully good mood this morning, and now here you are pining like a maiden. Must have been a good night.”

Sevei glared daggers at him for a moment, then one side of his mouth quirked as his gaze slid away.

“It was alright,” he mumbled. “A little confusing...” he then mused, “but not bad.”

“Do tell!” Yanek said dramatically.

Sevei glared again and raised an unopened walnut in his hand, aiming at his face again.

“Never mind!” Yanek yelped, waving his hands in surrender. “Keep it to yourself!”

Sevei cracked the walnut open and popped a piece into his mouth. Seeing the General thus unarmed, Yanek had to try for the last word.

“Well, wherever you were last night, you sure smelled pretty this morning.”

“Yeah...” a young man sitting near Yanek guffawed, “the rest of us all smelled like cheap whores!”

Everyone within earshot began to snicker and slap their knees.

“Soldier!” Sevei barked.

The young man’s rations tumbled to the ground as he snapped to his feet, a fist over his heart in salute.

“Yes, General!”

“Don’t use that word in my presence,” Sevei said. He spoke calmly, but his expression was hard, and an angry flame shone in his eyes. “Those people – people,” he emphasized, “are just doing their best to get by in this world, same as the rest of us. There’s no need to insult them.”

Silence descended over all of the men as this poor boy’s face turned beet red while he trembled in his boots.

“Yes, General!” he answered. “Thank you for your instruction!”

Sevei stared him down for another very long moment, then nodded and began to crack another walnut lazily.

“As you were,” he muttered.

The soldier sat down again and gave a passing glance to his spilled lunch before turning away in defeat.

“Don’t waste food, Soldier” Yanek said to him sternly.

The young man’s disbelieving glance passed over Yanek to Sevei, who only raised his eyebrows in agreement.

“Yes, Sir,” he said forlornly as he began to pick the nuts and berries out of the grass and struggled to wipe the dirt off of some cheese and the stickier bits of dried fruit.

“Buck up, kid,” Yanek said, grinning again, “he’s just grumpy ’cause he smells like his horse now.”

Sevei gave him a sidelong glower and tossed another walnut shell towards him. He leaned back and tried to close his eyes for a minute, but flashes of memory from last night instantly flooded his mind, causing a surge of heat to rush his body. That had been happening all day.

Come on, it was just a night of fun, he told himself, his inner voice stern. No need to dwell on it. It’s business hours now.

He looked around, taking a visual survey of their status. They were about halfway to their destination, and had paused at an official watering area where the road cut through a patch of forest and a stream ran nearby the road. He’d only brought his core unit of two thousand as an advance party to establish the camp, and had sent five hundred – the engineers and all the wagons - ahead yesterday to get started. That left fifteen hundred currently swarming these roadside woods.

Sevei watched a group of horses being led to the stream and tried to estimate how many had already been watered. They had a lot of horses. Even so, they could only move as fast as their slowest footsoldiers. It wasn’t certain they’d reach the camp with enough daylight left for much setup. There had been delays in the morning – mustering all these hooligans after a night in town was never going to go smoothly – and he hadn’t accounted for commercial wagons still traveling between the city and the river port as if nothing else was going on. He shook his head wryly. Of course no one wanted to lose money, but that port could become a war zone any day now. Perhaps they’d get the hint when the rest of his troops filtered in over these next days.

Sevei could only hope the engineers had gotten enough tents up that the men could pack in together for one night, but they’d have been focused on infrastructure – latrines and messes and such things. If there was no rain, some could sleep out under the sky.

Of course, they’d be joining up with another Valeskan unit that had arrived more than a week ago. Their general had just been promoted to his post. Maybe he’d want to ingratiate himself by sharing his resources. Sevei wasn’t sure he could bring himself to ask for favors, though. General Yeresym Urskatha was an Alchemist.

Sevei didn’t like Alchemists.

They used to be called Wizards, back when they were just eccentric old men and women hermiting away in forests or on islands communing with whatever it was they communed with. But then it became the fashion for younger nobles who wouldn’t inherit anything from their families to take it up and try to make it a respectable profession, so of course they had to give themselves a fancy new title.

Most Alchemists kept to their Academies or their castle towers, making potions and gadgets and whatnot, but this General Urskatha was a special kind called a Martial Alchemist. Rapidly increasing their presence in militaries across the continent, these creepy assholes could shoot deadly concentrations of magical light – ‘ethereal energy’, they called it – right out of their hands.

It was weird.

“Hey, do you think this General Urskatha has any Knights with him?” Yanek piped up.

Sevei’s musings scattered away and he laughed out loud.

“Of course not,” he replied. “They’re all nobles. They can’t be asked to take on a shit job like this one.”

“Urskatha’s a noble,” Yanek gave an unpleasant reminder. “I thought maybe he’d have a few Knight friends along.”

“No, they’re all sitting on the Valeskan end of the pass waiting for us to fuck up, aren’t they?” Sevei sneered.

“Between Knights and Alchemists, which would you pick?” Yanek challenged.

“Knights,” Sevei answered with no hesitation. “At least they’re honest warriors. Throwing magic around – is that really even fighting?”

“Don’t underestimate it,” Yanek warned. “We’ve got these new shielding mailles that might keep it from killing you, but one of those weirdos let me test it out when I picked them up. He threw that light at me and it still hurt like hell and knocked me on my ass.”

“Well, I guess if Loranar’s got weirdos, it’s good we’ve got them too,” Sevei muttered begrudgingly.

“What do you think he’s like? Heard anything?”

“Urskatha?” Sevei sighed. “He’s an Alchemist, and a noble. What do you think? He’ll be some whelp who got fast-tracked to General because of his family. My biggest concern is if he’s too green and too cocksure of himself to take advice.”

The Urskathas were one of the great noble families of Valesk. In Sevei’s opinion, if it weren’t for all the nobles of the world grabbing at power, there wouldn’t even be all these wars in the first place. Wars that disrupted the lives of regular people just muddling through. He thought about Kyrzhan sitting in Tharlburg biting his beautiful nails in worry that the war would come too close. He inflicted a bit of violence on another walnut.

“I’m going to call him a Wizard and see what he does,” Yanek said with an evil grin.

Sevei returned his grin, but stifled his laughter.

“Eh... let’s all behave ourselves,” he admonished. “We’re all on the same side, I suppose. As long as there are no big surprises, let’s at least try to be friends.”