The Greatest Sin

 “Let us not pretend the situation is anything which it is not. The White Pantheon has invaded us!” Mwai looked around at the Kirinyaan politicians in their national assembly. All grim faces, all hard, all wearing the green armbands of the Reclamation War. “We have stood, and we will stand. Kirinyaa will not kneel!” It was the first time he ever saw everything stand up before him. Every person gave Kassandora’s salute.

Damian Sokolowski looked through a series of binoculars from the inside of one of Melukal’s towering blocks. It was an ugly city, existing only because of a trading route and nothing else. Not particularly large but neither small. Tight is how he’d describe it. Tight and contained. To the north and south stretched two large highways, both large enough for four vehicles each, then towards the eastern front of the city lay its claim to fame. Five railways heading north into Khmet, and towards the south, four went straight and one split into two to veer west.

All the buildings were a dull yellow, all flat topped. The cities’ sole landmark was the Gates of Kirinyaa, a grand archway in the middle of the city. Supposedly built to symbolize entering the country, Damian had given it one glance, taken one image, and left it at that. In the east was the train station, the largest building by far in the entire city. Bigger even than the local hospital and the schools.

This room had once been residential areas. One of the men had knocked down two of the walls with a sledgehammer to make it into an observation post. Damian walked past the couch were two men, Pawel and Mateusz, were smoking and inspecting the images they had taken as he circled to the southern windows. Another man stood here with a camera, Wiktor. Ex-Twin Heart Cleric, as all the men in Damian’s inner circle were. Tall and once pale, now tanned by Arika into a shade of warm bronze. That tanning had happened to all of them though, it was nothing to comment about. “You got a shot of that?” Damian asked. The southern road was the evacuation highway, cars and trucks were slowly trundling along it. Somewhere further down someone had crashed and there was a traffic jam. Some of the sorcerers had been sent to clear it.

And the other road was the supply route. There, it was truck after truck coming in with supplies from the south. Kirinyaan volunteers, explosives, the new hedgehog landmines, napalm shells too. Although only four Binturongs had been sent as a cover for the ammunition.

Wiktor didn’t reply, he only pulled a series of images from his coat and handed them to Damian. One shot of the soldier’s cordon as they organised people into trucks. Another was of trucks leaving, filled with people. Some had been taken earlier from the ground. Shots of people entering buses, their faces a mix of anger and fear. Women crying as they held onto babes. More of Melukal’s mayor giving a speech to the population. “This one’s good.” Damian said as he picked an image. Two soldiers, swords sheathed on their belt, hoisting an old man on a wheelchair onto a bus.

“I know.” Wiktor said. He lifted the camera and snapped another photo. Kassandora had supplied them, apparently Helenna had been gifted too many to handle and now she was donating them away. An image was immediately printed out, of an unhappy sorceress in mid-air.

Damian wished they had sent Anassa. Or Kassandora. Or anyone else but the sorcerers. And especially not all fifty-two of them. He looked from Wiktor’s camera to the outside. Fleur was there, simply standing in mid-air as her red dress and black hair whipped about in the wind. Those cold blue eyes gazed at Damian, then she pointed to the window. “Brace for wind!” Damian gave the warning to the rest of the team as he unfastened the window locks.

Immediately the desert winds roared through the room as Fleur slowly hovered in through the window. Papers were sent flying, bottles and glasses were knocked over. Fine vodka was spilled, what a waste! Fleur snapped her fingers and the window shut closed while Wiktor held the camera close to his chest as if it was his own child. “Traffic jam unblocked. Evacuations can go ahead at full speed again.” Did this sorceress girl think she was speaking to a crowd? There were five of them here, her included in that number. “Lyca’s and Eliza’s team have also ran out of hedgehogs to plant.” She crossed her arms and stared at them angrily. “What sort of name is that anyway?”

“We don’t choose the names.” Damian tried to argue back. Anyone else, he would have met with a salute, but there was no reason to salute to her, she never saluted to him. And they weren’t even in the same branch of the military. All Damian knew about her was that she took orders directly from Anassa. Nevertheless, he tried to maintain some level of hospitality to her. Kassandora could break an arm with a snap of her finger, Damian had seen her hold an execution for thievery too, but there had never been a moment where he ever thought Kassandora would turn on him. The sorcerers though, all of them were like rabid tigers on thin leashes. And Fleur was the worst of the lot, one wrong word with her and she made those eyes which simply told you she was thinking on how to kill you. Even Anassa wasn’t so bad, she had only come round a few times during training, thoroughly thrashed them about, called them ants, and then left.

“Well I don’t like it.” Fleur said. More sorcerers appeared outside. Fleur’s team of twelve souls. Damian wondered what sort of crimes they had done to be assigned to her. They hovered there, breathing heavily with sweat dripping down their faces. One of them said something and Fleur turned immediately. “I didn’t come to shout at you this time.” Fleur said as she looked at the sorcerers, somewhat calmer this time. She turned back to face Damian again once her team went pale and straightened their postures. “Fortia is approaching from the north, Edmonton is tracking her. She’ll be here around sunset, what’s your progress?”

“Station and the north is done. We’re working our way through the city centre now.” Fleur crossed her arms as Damian tried to crack a smile. That smile withered away when he saw her face.

“You’re slow.” Slow? Slow? Slow? They had planted twenty tons of explosives already. More than a thousand napalm shells were in the city sewers ready to blow! The sapper teams were working around the clock with four hours of sleep a day! Slow? It was made twice as bad by the fact the girl sounded her age, how old was she even? She couldn’t be any more than pushing twenty! Damian was almost twice her age! And she had the gall to talk like this?

“I appreciate the compliment.” Damian said. “But we’re going as fast as we can.”

“Then we’ll buy time, Eliza said the hedgehogs can be planted in city blocks. She can smother them with weakened asphalt, will that work or no?” Damian turned to his men. Obviously his own soldiers had not even thought of that, they weren’t going to be pulling tarmac up anytime soon. But then, they weren’t sorcerers were they? Wiktor shrugged. Pawel nodded.

“I don’t see why not.”

“Alright, we’re not going to risk our lives planting them on the front once the battle starts. They have heavy mage support.” She stepped to the window then stopped. “Anassa gave me this, you may need it. I’ve read it already.” She pulled out a little book, barely palm sized and thin, from the inside of her dress and threw it to Damian’s feet. The man looked down at it and read the title: How to Kill Gods. And at the bottom was the author. Anassa, of Sorcery.

Damian pulled out his version immediately, he finally saw an opening to build up some rapport with the girl. “Then take this.” He said, he knew off it by heart at this point, and everyone in his forces had been given one anyway. The Strengths and Weaknesses of White Pantheon Divines: Tactics and Strategies to be used. In the corner was a little K. That was all Kassandora had signed herself with. Fleur turned, gave the booklet a quick glance and shook her head.

“We have that one too. Keep it. Ours is…” Fleur giggled to herself. “It’s different, that’s how I’d put it.” Damian picked up the book and opened a random page. Zerus: Trap and engage from behind, do not try to engage in a duel with Zerus. He may not look it, but the man is terribly smart... Fleur stepped at the window and turned back to Damian. “We’ll pull out if we take heavy losses. Anassa’s orders.” Fleur said. “When you launch the red flare, we’ll retreat. Anything else we have to know?”

“Remember to clean up the Binturongs on the way out.” Kassandora had given that order. To make sure the equipment would not fall into enemy hands, the sorcerers were to thoroughly destroy it.

“Don’t worry, we won’t forget.” Fleur said. And then she did something Damian had only dreamt of. She pulled a salute. A perfect one, two fingers outstretched to just above her head. “Good luck General.” The window behind opened by itself, the wind howled in again as Fleur left. The window closed, Fleur approached the man who had been talking and he suddenly bent over and grabbed at his chest, then screamed out so loud he could be heard from inside of Damian’s little lookout.

It lasted a few seconds, then stopped. Fleur’s team of twelve sullenly followed behind her through the air. “Well look at that, she can be nice.” Pawel said, then scratched his stubbled chin as if in deep thought.

“You call that nice?” Damian made a mock-accusatory tone.

“She did leave us another manual. The others haven’t.” Wiktor took a photo of the booklet in Damian’s hand. Damian threw it at him.

“And she gave us good luck.” Mateusz added. The fourth man of the command team. In charge of radios, he had set up a station of laptops in one of the kitchens but was doing nothing with them so far. There was no point running inspections on people who already had orders. “You know me, I’m a cold man but I think I’m in love.” He said in a swooning, sarcastic, mocking tone.

“Certification:” Pawel said slowly as a grin appeared on his mouth. Damian already knew what word was going to come out of it. “Would.” They all burst out in laughter.

“Why did you want the cameras?” Helenna asked Kassandora. She had missed out on a lot of the planning with her frequent travelling to meet with Kirinyaa’s richest. The munition needs, artillery, ammunition, guns, Kassandora got from the government directly. But then there were things she said she could never have enough of. Trucks were one, the woman already had enough heavy vehicles to mount the Clerics twice over, but it apparently was not enough. Another was good food. The government sent rations, and then the rich sent chocolates. Alcohol and cigarettes were two big ones, those went quickly and Kassandora said there was no easier way to raise morale in a bad situation.

But cameras? Helenna had met three different film directors during her stint in Nanbasa. They were all rich, and they were more than happy to give her supplies, but cameras? What was the woman even planning? Kassandora sighed as she looked up from her desk. Three maps sat before her, all so interspersed with arrows that Helenna’s eyes glazed over when she tried to figure out what was going on in them. It was as if the Goddess of War had drugged spiders and then let them run rampant as they drew cobwebs of different colours onto the diagrams.

“How do you build morale Helenna?” Kassandora asked. She chewed the end of her pen cap as she leaned back and put her hands behind her head. “I’m actually curious, how?”

Helenna answered the question as honestly as she could. “Create a cause. Something people love and would die for, then grow the idea. I mean, what’s the question? The principal of it or the details of speeches?” Kassandora shook her head.

“No, you answered it very well. You create a cause to fight for. Now how do you pick it?” Helenna shrugged. With anybody else, it would have been an annoyance that questioned Helenna’s authority, but it was a matter of tone with Kassandora. The Goddess of War somehow managed to sound as if she was actually curious and just respectfully asking.

“I can’t tell you that. Everything in context, something will come along and then you exploit the idea.” She had done it in the past.

“When you fought us, what did you pick?” Kassandora asked.

“Freedom.” Helenna answered immediately. Everyone loved freedom, and Arascus had not done himself any favours back then when he centralized his empire around him. It made his forces into a powerful foe on the battlefield, but in the propaganda war, it wasn’t hard to defeat him.

“And now?” Helenna thought for a moment. What would do in this situation?

“Justice.” Helenna said and Kassandora slowly nodded. She took the pen out of her mouth, wiped it on her shirt and passed it to Helenna.

“Draw me freedom and justice if you would.” Helenna stared at the pen, then at Kassandora.

“We both know I can’t do that, they’re not material things.” Kassandora laughed as she threw her hands up into the air, the pen was launched somewhere into the tent and Kassandora took a new one out of her cup.

“That’s the biggest difference between you and Malam.” Kassandora said. “You prefer having an ideal you craft into reality, Malam has reality she crafts into an ideal. You know, I asked her this once, she drew both for me. Shackles for freedom and a murder-scene for justice.” Kassandora started drawing, she made a quick figure of a man lying dead on the ground, a sword stabbed through him. “What does this inspire?”

“Heroism.” Helenna said. “Revenge? Righteous Anger? Sadness? I don’t know, what’s the context?” Helenna asked and Kassandora wrote the words down. She circled them, then the picture.

“Now which one is more effective? The words or the image?”

“The image obviously.” Helenna said annoyed. Of course it was the image, she wasn’t a new player to this game. Frankly, she was better at it than Kassandora. The Goddess of War could give speeches and rally, but not like Helenna could. She could do armies, Helenna did nations. “What’s your point?”

“Very simple Helenna. Melukal is going to be sieged today. It will fall in about a week. Why do I need cameras? Because I’m going to give you your pictures. So that your speeches will be filmed on a backdrop of our soldiers evacuating civilians, so you’ll talk about justice as we see Fortia cut men down, so that you can talk about righteous anger with the image of a burning city behind you. How’s that for inspiration?”

Damian looked through his binoculars north as a line of men started to crest the sand-dunes in the distance. The highways and rails separated them, but on either side it was simply wasteland. They were marching down the main road, some men and women in long shawls and cloaks floated in the air above them. At least the men on the ground had a cohesive scheme. All in golden-bronze steel, the men of rank had cloaks. Damian wrote it down into his notebook as he glanced at the men in the room. Pawel, Mateusz and Wiktor were all dressed in green shorts and shirts. Wiktor was snapping pictures with his camera of the approaching army. Those in the air were horribly mismatched in colours.

Kassandora had taken him, Zalewski and Ekkerson on a leadership course. Personally trained them, and now that he was aware of the things she had told him, it simply raised his opinion of her even more. It was the small things that separated the talented from the masters. Amateurs forced their soldiers to always be in full-armour and always combat-ready, Kassandora had made the three generals stand at attention in the midday Arikan sun in full battledress. They were supposed to last two hours, they managed forty minutes before Zalewski fainted from the heat. Damian could only imagine the fatigue of those men approaching him if they had just marched across that desert. “I see her!” Pawel shouted. “On the hill, left from the road.”

Damian turned his gaze to look left of the road. Several ranks of men in their gold-bronze armour were there. With long spears and tower shields and casting long shadows in the sun. And then that giant amongst them. A woman, tall and beautiful, with golden hair. Not as vivid as Fer’s, but straight and elegant. She wore gleaming golden armour and held a spear in her side. It had a tiny red ribbon tied just under the spearhead itself. “Certification:” Pawel said as he looked at her. “Would.” They shared a few chuckles among themselves, but it was hard to find mirth when you faced a Divine.

“That’s Fortia, isn’t it?” Mateusz said.

“Fits the description.” Damian said. Twice the height of a man, gold armour, spear, gold hair. He couldn’t make out the eyes, but he was sure they were a dulled gold too. “Radio the men, hold fire, keep the sappers working. We’re just delaying her.”

“Do you think she’ll move in right now?” Pawel asked as Mateusz disappeared through a hole in the wall.

“Kassandora said she prefers daytime fighting. I think she’ll set up camp to start sieging us.”

“Aye aye.” Wiktor said as his camera clicked away. He printed off the picture after picture and stuffed them in his jacket.

“Kassandora expects those back.” Damian said. “Don’t crease them.”

“Kassandora gets them digitally when I send them.” Wiktor tapped the breast pocket stuffed with pictures. “These are for me.”

“You starting an album or something?”

“I can’t?”

“Not saying you can’t, but should you?” Damian shook his head as he looked at the Guardians come to a stop before the city. “Tomorrow morning, but prepare for battle right now.”

“Are we letting the men sleep?”

“We are, don’t change the lookout regimen. Have the local police take over evacuations. Move the evacuation teams to the north of the city.”

“And if they launch a sneak attack in the night?”

“We have an alarm system, don’t we?”

“We do?”

“What are the hedgehogs if not that?”