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the battered shoulder plate. There was resistance, but only of the most amorphous sort—he could feel the solidity of the armor, and if he concentrated, feel the rough ridges of the dimpled metal.
    These men had fought, Khadgar realized, both hard and recently. Only one man in three was without some form of rude bandage, bloodstained badges of war sticking out from beneath dirty armor and damaged helms. Their weapons were notched as well, and spattered with dried crimson. He had fallen into a battlefield.
    Khadgar examined their position. They were atop a small hillock, a mere fold in the undulating plains that seemed to surround them. What vegetation existed had been chopped down and formed into crude battlements, now guarded by grim-faced men. This was no safe redoubt, no castle or fort. They had
    chosen this spot to fight only because there was no other available to them.
    The soldiers parted as their apparent leader, a great, white-bearded man with broad shoulders, pushed his way through. His armor was a battered as any, but consisted of a breastplate bolted over a crimson set of scholar’s robes, of the type that would not have been out of place in the halls of the Kirin Tor. The hem, sleeves, and vest of these crimson robes were inscribed with Page 17

    runes of power—some of which
    Khadgar recognized, but others which seemed alien to him. The leader’s snowy beard reached almost to his waist, obscuring the armor beneath, and he wore a red skullcap with a single golden gem on the brow. He held a gem-tipped staff in one hand, and a dark red sword in the other.
    The leader was bellowing at the soldiers, in a voice that sounded to Khadgar like the raging sea itself.
    The warriors seemed to know what he was saying, though, for they formed themselves up neatly along the barricades, others filling gaps along the line.
    The snow-bearded commander brushed past Khadgar, and despite himself the youth stumbled back, out of the way. The commander should not have noticed him, no more than any of the blood-spattered warriors had.
    Yet the commander did. His voice dropped for a moment, he stammered, his foot landed badly on the uneven soil of the rocky hilltop and he almost stumbled. Yet instead he turned and regarded Khadgar.
    Yes, he looked at Khadgar, and it was clear to the would-be apprentice that the ancient mage-warrior saw him and saw him clearly. The commander’s eyes looked deeply into Khadgar’s own, and for a moment Khadgar felt as he had under Medivh’s own withering glare earlier. Yet, if anything, this was more intense. Khadgar looked into the eyes of the commander.
    And what he saw there made him gasp. Despite himself, he turned away, breaking the locked gaze with the mage-warrior.
    When Khadgar looked up again, the commander was nodding at him. It was a brief, almost dismissive nod, and the old man’s mouth was a tight frown. Then the snow-bearded leader was off again, bellowing at the warriors, entreating them to defend themselves.
    Khadgar wanted to go after him, to chase him down and find out how he could see him when others did not, and what he could tell him, but there was a cry around him, a muddy cry of tired men called into duty one last time. Swords and spears were raised to a sky the shade of curdled blood, and arms pointed toward the nearby ridges, where flooding had stripped out patterns of purple against the rust-colored soil.
    Khadgar looked where the men were pointing, and a wave of green and black topped the nearest ridge.
    Khadgar thought it was some river, or an arcane and colorful mudflow, but he realized that the wave was an advancing army. Black was the color of their armor, and green was the color of their flesh.
    They were nightmare creatures, mockeries of human form. Their jade-fleshed faces were dominated by heavy underslung jaws lined with fanged teeth, their noses flat and snuffling like a dog’s, and their eyes small, bloody, and filled with hate. Their ebon weapons and ornate