The farthest northeastern corner of the empire was almost always deemed to be a prestigious assignment for the empire’s marshals. It offered a rare chance for routine combat. Performing well meant a steady rise up to more comfortable commands, such as commanding the home armies around Methrangia itself, or perhaps the Zarmandian Home Army.

Marshal Atyn Vildrious had hoped for such a rapid rise, but instead he found his trajectory mired in the ragged mountains of the Marche. The Marche. The dreaded Segrison Marche. His wouldn’t be the first career to be buried along with the countless thousands of hapless soldiers who had died in that inhospitable and desolate track of rocky gorges and steaming vents. That was of little comfort to him, however. His was supposed to be a promising ascent, fitting for his noble birth of one of the great families of the eastern Methrangian Empire. Failure here would mean the death of that dream.

It was not only his star that was fading. True to form for the men of his family, he had aged prematurely. His hair had grown thin, his belly fat, and his skin wrinkled all by the age of thirty-seven. That, with his bloodline, was merely unfortunate, but not unexpected.

What was unexpected was that it would be during his time up at the Segrison Marche that Bohruum would choose to strike. His generals and lower commanders had originally assured him that the Bohruumite probes into his lines were a mere nuisance. As he visited the forward central redoubt of his main line, it was plain they were more than a nuisance. In the map room, he summoned his commanders and looked over a map detailing all of the attacks. The generals looked at him in uncomfortable silence while he evaluated the situation.

“Quite. Quite. Quite,” he grumbled, tapping his fingers all over the map. “Now look here, I need answers. Just how many incursions have there been this last week? You all keep using vague terms. What exactly are we looking at?”

General Zihrehd, a husky old man with a thick red and grey beard, stepped forward. He wore the flat black leather that had become customary in the northern extremes. Ordinarily, in other settings, Methrangian generals would wear the grandest of ornamented armor. On the Segrison Marche, however, Vildrious had noted that all dressed as paupers.

“Forty-two, sir,” he said.

“Forty-two?” Vildrious gasped. “Now, that’s an answer. Thank you.”

“Those are the ones of any strength, sir,” Zihrehd continued. “Small parties might have gone unnoticed, sir.”

“Fine,” Vildrious huffed. “Right. Again, how do we stop this? If we double the patrols any more times, we won’t have men in reserve.”

A few whispers broke out in the rear portions of the chamber, but the room was generally silent.

“None of you? Now look here, we need to arrive at something. For no other reason, I need to send something down to the king. His Majesty is impatient. Now so am I!” Vildrious snapped.

Zihrehd again stepped forward.

“With respect, sir, we can’t stop the incursions and maintain our forces right on the border. We need staggered lines of lookouts to form a net they can’t slip through. We just can’t do that at the border, sir,” the general explained in a harsh clip.

“Right. We can’t very well put those lookouts on their land. That would start an open war,” Vildrious responded. “What exactly is this idea?”

“Sir, we would withdraw several miles back and create a lattice of lookouts and mounted garrisons to assist them when they come under attack. The lattice would ensure that any intruders are spotted before they reach our camps,” Zihrehd explained, positioning the tokens representing the northern army all over the map.

The proposal made some sense, but still it left Vildrious feeling hollow. He felt that if the solution came to him he would know it. Still, he had seen worse.

“They would still be breaching our borders, though,” Vildrious bemoaned.

“With respect, sir, we have no way of stopping that without considerably more men,” Zihrehd replied. “This would protect our main camps from raids. It also gives us room to respond if and when they invade.”

Vildrious sighed.

“Right. Good good good. I’ll explain this to the King. Thank you. You may all go now.”

That night, he strolled along the redoubt’s outer wall, looking out at the savage lands surrounding him. Even at night, with just the gentle glow of Rithys’s moons, the rampant ugliness of the region was plain. Just as he was looking out upon it, one of the steaming vents belched a sulfurous blast.

How can it possibly matter that we cede a few miles of… this? He mused.

Guards saluted him as he continued along. He eventually found a southerly portion of the wall where he wanted to rest for the evening and simply stare up at the sky. The south wall was only lightly guarded given that it faced toward an encampment of some twenty-thousand soldiers that stretched right up to the redoubt’s base. Nothing meaningful would get through that.

However, he noticed a presence coalesce behind him. It was a recognizable one as it had manifested near him before.

“No no no no no,” he grumbled. “I told you that I don’t need your help.”

“Your king says that you do,” the stern female voice responded just behind him.

He turned and faced her, the angel Myrvaness. She wore glorious shimmering pearl plate over her yellowish skin and kept a barbed lance strapped to her back. Her eyes glowed an iridescent green and her hair, red as the clay around Zarmand, flowed like wheat in late summer winds.

“What have you told him?” Vildrious asked.

“I told him nothing. It was his pleading that brought me here. I never asked to be sent,” she replied in a stilted, but polite tone.

“He’s unhappy with me then,” Vildrious groaned. It was what he had feared. He knew that the continuous failures could not be sustained in perpetuity without consequence.

Myrvaness’s eyes flashed.

“I would not be here to convey that message,” she scolded. “I am here to offer advice.”

“Advice? Advice!” the marshal laughed with incredulity. “I wish this was simply a matter of good advice saving our miserable situation. Advice? Ha!”

Myrvaness grasped the marshal by his left forearm and squeezed. It was a tight and icy grip. He could feel his bones buckle under the stress. He tried to avoid showing his discomfort, but there was no avoiding it.

“Why are you doing this? Let me go! Now!” he screeched.

“I have watched you mortals fight and slaughter one another since what you would consider time immemorial. I have seen your strategies and tactics and your grasps for glory. It has been a pathetic spectacle,” she declared. “If you think you can dismiss my knowledge that glibly, then you deserve your defeat here.”

Vildrious stood in astonishment at the angel’s stern condemnation. He wanted to say something to object, but he was left with nothing. He swiftly concluded that there was little point in battling an angel’s wits.

With a sigh that smothered what remained of his pride, he relented. If this unlikely advisor wanted to help him, he was inclined to let her do so.

“Alright, what advice do you have?”