Powtu had dealt with the other city, flanking our axis of advance, in a similar fashion to Janko and Herpatik. They had lost one trooper when the man stumbled into a high-level soulbound, but the rest had set fires, poisoned food, and dropped horrific things into the wells.

Two legions, the Sixth and the Ninth, had been dispatched to lay a half-hearted siege, and a thousand nomads accompanied each legion. This was just enough to keep the bastards penned up behind their walls and pose a threat, not so many that it significantly weakened our main force.

"Mond, I don't like leaving the herds behind," grumbled Jandak as we walked along at the front of the army. Everywhere around us was dry scrubland. Summer had come, and all the spring growth had shrivelled and turned a golden brown in the heat.

"Fast ponies and a rider equipped with storage rings solve that problem. We've got a constant flow back and forth now. But the further south we go, the more riders we need," Kos muttered before taking a long drink from a waterskin.

"That's the other problem. We will have to leave the river behind when we push east. Where's the bird?" Kril asked.

"He's guiding the kill team onto Urkash. And doing a little spying while he waits for them to catch up," I answered. Urkash was a mess. It had once been a mighty city, with a population in the hundreds of thousands. Now it was an empty shell, filled with undead and guarded by the biggest damn amalgam I'd yet to see.

"Rings or stones stuffed with meat are fine, but water? We need more barrels," Jandak said.

"Need wood for barrels. Any of you lugging lumber along?" I asked half-jokingly.

"Why would we bother? Rapid Growth can solve that issue!" snapped Kril.

"Then why were you bitching about it? Go set it up!"

"It has to be cured wood. We have to wax or tar the insides as well, Mond. It's not so simple. What we've got is about all we have to work with," Kril replied, then spat to one side. "It's going to be tight."

"It's only a four-day march for the legion? We can cover that distance a lot faster," said Mune, deciding to start paying attention. "Gods, it's hot!"

The sun continued to beat down on us. It wasn't even noon, and the world had become an oven. The legions, in their heavy armour, must be suffering tremendously.

"It doesn't need to be cured wood. Green wood will work for a while, but the barrels will warp and leak sooner or later," offered Mune.

"And what would you know about it?" snapped Kril, glaring at the younger man.

"My wife's family makes them," Mune replied, glaring at the Dreamer.

"Well, I won't argue with that. We still need a plan before we strike towards Urkash. Four or five days is fine, but if we get bogged down in a siege, we'll need to have our shit together," I muttered.

"What about the kill team?" asked Kos. "They'll soften them up before we even get there!"

"Getting in is going to be tricky. They'll have to infiltrate as peasants bringing in farm goods. They've got another wall-spanning amalgam defending the place. No way to hop through the walls."

"That's stupid," said Kril.

"I didn't pick how Mortimer laid out his fucking troops, Kril!"

"Not that, foolish boy. Have them store themselves in a bead and let Glimpse carry them in!" Kril emitted his signature cackle.

"That's… not as insane as it sounds… You might just be a genius, Kril!" I laughed as I sent the idea to Gimpse. The bird approved, but a thread of fear ran through him as well. He knew there'd be a lot of soulbound who could see the red letters over the bird's head, where I was thinking to send him. I sent him a flood of reassurance, but I felt a tinge of worry.

"Wilson!" I exclaimed as the thought hit me. I felt the wolf perk up in my mind and head towards me, but I sent him the idea of continuing his business. He was happy slaughtering goats in the wilderness. "The fucking golems! All we need is someone to load barrels of water into rings, and the golems of Wilson can run them across the steppe–badlands to the army. We can move tons of the stuff in hours rather than days. Filling the bloody things and getting empties back to the river will be the problem."

"Golems can do that?" offered Kos.

"They'll be busy, and we'll need most of them at the siege. That's a big fucker of an amalgam…" I muttered as my thoughts whirled.

"He'll have something else. Something we've not seen before," Kril said. "I can feel it in my water!"

"The water the golems will be carrying?" laughed Mune.

"What did you get out of the army commanders?" I asked, changing the subject. Mune glanced at Kos, then back at me.

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"Not much that we didn't already suspect. Two more field armies to match the one we crushed. They're dispersed, though. Unlikely to get back in time to break the siege. They're weeks away at best," Kos supplied.

"Figures. So, one shot or we have to deal with the defences and a field army." We fell into silence as we trudged along. Behind us, the dust rose in a cloud that reached for the sky. Thousands of feet, especially those of the Huskar, stirred up a column of dust that threatened to block the sun.

The river was still running to our left, a ribbon of blue lined with green even in the summer heat. I checked with the crow and noted the kill team was only a day's journey from Urkash.

"We'll have a better idea about what's going on in Urkash tomorrow," I said.

"Are we going to get to have some fun?" demanded Jandak.

"Oh, there'll be too much fun all around. We won't be able to steamroll Urkash, especially as Mortimer is probably there."

"You think? Mond, that coward, would have run south a week ago. Not a chance he's hanging around. He'll have run to a field army," said Kos.

"I'm not going to bet all our lives on that. None of us has the Death Affinity. The stuff I got from leveling up… He'll have something nasty up his sleeve when we get there," I complained.

We trudged on south during the day; the sun was merciless. Anyone who spends much time outside knows there are two suns, even if there's only one in the sky. One of them warms your skin, makes the crops grow. The other is a vicious bastard who would drive you mad with thirst.

We were dealing with the second type. When the army finally staggered to a halt, the nomads pitched their tents, while the legion hastily constructed a fort; everyone was exhausted.

"The next few days will be rough, Fay," I said once we were alone in our tent. The night air was blessedly cool, and I was grateful for the drop in temperature.

"Why are you telling me this as though I don't already know, Ray?" she asked with a raised eyebrow. Shit. Overplayed my hand, there, didn't I? I got undressed and moved over to help her settle onto our bed, shuffling a cushion behind her head as she lay back.

"Well, it might be best if you–"

"Enough. You need me. You need the coven, Ray. I won't be going back up north." Her voice was firm; no argument would be tolerated.

"What about the baby? This weather isn't right for our people."

"You aren't even from this world, Ray! You're from some crazy place where wagons don't need aurox or horses, and machines fly –Fly!– through the air on metal wings! I am fine, husband." I knew I'd pushed as far as I dared when I heard the honourific.

I slipped in beside her and wrapped an arm behind her head. I could deal with some temporary blood loss in a single limb under the circumstances.

"How far off are you?" I asked quietly.

"Any day now. I've had all the early signs. Soon our son will be born, and you can stop all this fussing!"

"And what then, love? Will you go north with the baby?"

"Of course not. He'll stay with Haylin, back from the frontlines, but he'll grow up a warrior; he'll know what it's like to be on Koryolis from birth. It will build character," she said confidently, leaning into my side.

"Kids shouldn't see war up close. We both want him to grow up normal." I wouldn't go into how our definitions of normal in this context were very different. "You don't want him to get Souls too early, right?" She craned her head around and narrowed her pretty eyes at me.

"Making sure he can't snap a nursemaid's neck in a fit of pique and keeping him away from us are very different things."

"What if he didn't have to be away from us? Just me, for a while."

"You do want to send me away!" she accused.

"Not away! Just somewhere safe."

"And why do you think being away from you is safer than having someone with your stats on hand to defend me if needed? Her voice was icy. I felt I'd already lost this discussion, but I was determined to plough on anyway.

"Fay, what if Mortimer has something like Burning Skies, but from the Death Affinity? Some cloud of disease or miasma of rot or something fucking crazy that we can't have seen yet. Do you think I'm special?" I demanded.

"Yes, you're special." Her voice held a certainty that scared me. "But I know what you are saying, Ray." She sighed. "He likely has something just as powerful that we haven't seen yet and won't be able to defend against, at least the first time he uses it."

"So you'll go north?"

"Idiot. When our boy is born, I'll take him north, but only as far as the herder camps. But I'm not happy. I expect to wake up with your arm around my shoulders tomorrow! No more of this rolling me off in the night!" I agreed readily. Getting Fay and my soon-to-be-born son away from whatever bullshit Mortimer had waiting for us was worth irritating my wife.

As her breathing settled into the steady rhythm of sleep, I smiled. It impressed me how easily she dropped off. No worries or anxiety kept her from the sweet embrace of the sandman. Out like a fucking light as soon as her head hit the pillow.

I turned my attention away from my immediate concerns and surroundings, sending my thoughts down the link to Glimpse. And I found a whole new set of worries when I looked down from his eyes.

Urkash was an ancient city, even by the standards of this world. Whether the gods threw it together for every game and just edited things to suit the current paradigm or not, I couldn't be sure. Where were the ancient artifacts from previous games outside the cache we captured at the First Hearth?

There should be magic swords that could slice through stone, armour that could weather any blow, and rings imbued with powerful magic, but I'd seen none of them. It was as though this world sprang into existence, complete with a history and flourishing societies, when the fish-tits murdered us exiles. Was any of the history here more than a figment of some god's imagination?

Urkash certainly looked as though it had a history. It was Settall on steroids. The walls were taller and thicker. Instead of a riverside keep, the main castle rose over an ocean dockyard, and beyond the vast city, the first sea I'd seen in this world stretched away.

The streets were wider in many cases, but the narrow ones formed a webwork like veins in a body. They were made of cobblestones or dirt, but a few were covered in thick paving slabs that made me think of Roman roads. Perhaps this was another leftover from Narbo.

My assassins were still half a day away from the walls, and Glimpse had flown ahead after confirming there were no nearby enemy patrols. Grey flesh oozed slowly along the walls, an amalgam even larger than Ashrot having been left as a guardian. Swarms of the undead roamed the surrounding hills, enough that I wasn't confident my kill team would be able to infiltrate the place without somehow convincing the warriors to hide in a ring to be transported over the walls by Glimpse.

I was pretty confident they'd do it. They were crazy bastards. There was no reason why I couldn't deploy other troops in the same manner as well. A squad of mage-Huskars packed away in stasis… suddenly appearing behind an enemy's lines or walls. We could go air-mobile with some of my most potent forces.

My mind spun and turned as I guided the crow in a slow orbit of our target. I kept him far enough up that no one would notice. I was concerned that a soulbound might be looking in the wrong direction at the wrong time, dooming the plans forming in my mind.

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