The banquet hall occupied the entire second floor of the General's headquarters.

  Three rows of low tables ran the length of the hall, each one laden with dishes that steamed and glistened.

  Eirik sat at the head table, to the General's left.

  He had been given fresh clothes—a black tunic with silver stitching at the collar. Someone had drawn him a bath before the feast, and he had stood in the wooden tub for longer than necessary, watching the water turn brown with dried blood and grime.

  He couldn't remember the last time he'd been clean.

  The hall was full. Eirik counted roughly two hundred faces, though he suspected more were packed into the back rows where the lantern light didn't reach.

  At the head table, to the General's right, sat Corvinus in his wheelchair. Beside Corvinus was a man Eirik had not seen before.

  He was hairless. No beard, no eyebrows, no hair visible wherever Eirik looked. And yet his robes were finer than anyone else's in the room.

  "Septimus," Corvinus had said by way of introduction, and nothing more.

  The food arrived in waves.

  The first course was a broth of dark grain. After that came slabs of roasted meat—goat, by the taste—served on wooden boards alongside flatbread. A dish of boiled greens that had been salted so aggressively Eirik's lips tingled.

  None of it was good in the way he understood the word. A thousand years of culinary development separated this table from the kitchens of the Northern Kingdom.

  And yet Eirik ate until his stomach ached.

  He hadn't realized how hungry he was until the first bite. The expedition to the Sunless City had been dried rations and stale water. Before that, the political maneuvering in Frostfall had killed his appetite more effectively than any fast. And before that—

  He couldn't actually remember his last proper meal.

  The goat was tough and the bread was charred, and he did not care. He ate with his hands, tearing meat from bone, scooping broth with flatbread, and when a servant refilled his bowl without being asked, he ate that too.

  Olaf, seated three places down, caught his eye and grinned.

  The General ate sparingly. He spoke to officers who approached the head table, clasping their forearms in greeting. But his eyes kept returning to Eirik.

  Eirik understood that he was displayed as an omen.

  A man from the future, arriving through sacred waters at the hour of the city's greatest need, bearing powers that had no business existing in this age. For a besieged army grinding through its encirclement, such a thing was worth more than ten thousand fresh troops.

  Hope was a precious resource during a siege, and the General was dispensing it tonight.

  Which was why Eirik found himself unable to stop thinking about the dragon.

  He had seen the General's body tear itself apart and reassemble into something that should not have been possible. He had watched the city shrink below him as wings wider than the courtyard carried them both over the northern wall.

  A man who could become a dragon.

  The phrase kept turning over in Eirik's head as he chewed his goat and drank his fermented grain.

  His own advancement to Hail realm had felt significant. Two hundred mana. Changing the laws of ice that could persist for a full minute. He had stood on that platform ascending to the sky and believed, for a few bright seconds, that he had become something formidable.

  Then the General turned into a dragon, and Eirik's bright seconds had gone dark.

  If this was the power Velthan sought—the artifact, the legacy, whatever name they gave it—then the Archmage's obsession made perfect sense.

  A man who could become a dragon could hold the North alone.

  And yet.

  Eirik reached for another piece of flatbread and turned the problem over again.

  Thirty years. The Sunless City had held for thirty years against the Khorath siege, and in the end it had fallen.

  The Khorath were pre-Skarl nomads. Horse archers, primarily. Fast, disciplined, raised from childhood in the saddle with a bow in hand. Dangerous on open ground, where their mobility gave them the advantage over any infantry formation.

  But they were not going to shoot down a dragon.

  Not with horn bows and iron-tipped arrows. Not from horseback, not from siege towers, maybe they have ballista bolt designed for penetrating dragonscale, but it shouldn't have been that powerful at one thousand years back.

  A dragon could thin out a thousand men in a single pass. Breathe fire—or whatever the General's draconic form produced—into the densest portion of the camp, then climb before the archers could organize a volley. Return an hour later. Do it again. A thousand today. Two thousand tomorrow. The math was simple and the conclusion was obvious: in a month, the siege would break itself.

  It sounded ridiculous. But that was what a dragon did.

  So why hadn't the General already done it?

  Eirik watched the man across the table, laughing with an officer whose name he didn't know, and the question sat in his chest like a stone.

  He filed the question away and reached for his cup.

  Movement at the edge of his vision.

  Eirik's eyes tracked left without turning his head. A young man stood near the back wall, half-hidden behind a wooden pillar. He was watching Eirik. The moment Eirik's gaze shifted toward him, the young man looked away.

  Eirik studied him for a few seconds.

  Young. Perhaps Eirik's own age, or a year older. Lean build, dark hair cropped short in the military fashion. He wore the black armor of the General's guard, but without the dragon mask. His face was familiar—Eirik had seen it somewhere during the courtyard battle, or perhaps among the guards who'd escorted him to Corvinus. He couldn't place it precisely.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  The young man was now examining the ceiling with exaggerated interest.

  Eirik turned back to his food.

  The banquet had reached its peak. Officers were standing to deliver toasts. The General acknowledged each toast with a raised cup and a nod.

  Then the General stood and the hall went silent.

  "Brothers."

  His voice carried without effort.

  "The Khorath have camped on our doorstep, waiting for us to starve, to break, to open our gates and beg. They've waited." A pause. "They'll be waiting a good while longer."

  Laughter.

  "Today, something happened that I haven't seen in my lifetime." The General turned toward Eirik. "A man came to us from a time that hasn't happened yet, bearing power that shouldn't exist, and told me—to my face—that my terms were unfair."

  Louder laughter.

  "He held my courtyard against a hundred of my best. When I sent three hundred more, he carried me into the sky on ice he summoned from thin air. When I asked him what he planned to do next," The General smiled. "he told me that he had his methods and 'You'd do well to listen to what I have to say.'"

  The hall erupted.

  The General extended his hand toward Eirik. "Lord Eirik Stormcrow. From the future, with the future's knowledge and the future's strength. Here, now, when we need him most."

  Eirik rose to his feet.

  Two hundred men beat their fists against the tables. The sound was deafening—a rhythmic thunder that shook the lanterns on their chains. Officers stamped their boots. Someone in the back rows began chanting his name, and others picked it up.

  "STORMCROW! STORMCROW! STORMCROW!"

  Eirik raised his cup. The chanting intensified. He smiled and drank, and the hall roared its approval.

  The General clasped his forearm in the warrior's greeting. The crowd bellowed.

  He sat back down. The General also resumed his seat. Servants cleared the first round of dishes and brought more.

  Eirik waited through the second course and the third round of toasts. Through a performance by three musicians who played stringed things that produced a high, nasal sound which the audience seemed to enjoy. He waited until the General's cup had been refilled four times and the conversation at the head table had turned loose and warm.

  Then he leaned toward the General.

  "If I may—I've been considering the siege."

  The General tilted his head. "Have you?"

  "The Khorath encampment is vast, but it has weaknesses. With your permission, I'd like to outline some possibilities."

  The General's expression remained open. Interested, even.

  "The dragon," Eirik continued. "Your transformation. If deployed in limited engagements—short sorties, each one targeting a different section of the camp—the enemy would be forced to spread their defenses. They'd commit archers and shield formations to cover every quadrant, thinning their lines. After three or four sorties, once they've committed to a defensive posture, a coordinated assault from the garrison—"

  "Lord Stormcrow."

  Corvinus's voice cut through the noise.

  Eirik stopped.

  The wheelchair had been repositioned. Corvinus sat between Eirik and the General, his hands folded in his lap, his expression pleasant and entirely closed.

  "The banquet is still young," Corvinus said. "And the General has been generous with his hospitality. Perhaps we might discuss something lighter?"

  The General said nothing. His cup was at his lips. He drank.

  Eirik looked from Corvinus to the General and back.

  "Of course," he said.

  The conversation turned. An officer asked about the future—how men dressed, what they ate, whether the great forests of the North still stood. Eirik answered with half his attention. The questions were trivial. The interest behind them was not—these men were starving for novelty after all that time behind walls, and a visitor from the future was an inexhaustible source of it.

  He played along, until someone asked about his companions.

  Eirik set his cup down.

  "Velthan is dangerous. He's served the Duke of Frostfall for decades, and his primary talent is illusion. He fabricated an entire reality to extract my blood, and that should give you a measure of what he's capable of. Caelum Frostgrip is a cultivator of considerable power and stands to gain from Velthan's schemes."

  The table had gone quiet.

  "I'd strongly recommend that when they arrive, they be imprisoned immediately."

  He paused, weighing how far to push.

  "Velthan designed a ritual requiring my blood—willingly given—as a component. A sacrifice, specifically. He constructed an entire false reality to trick me into providing it. Whatever he intends to do with that power, it involves rituals that—"

  The scrape of a chair.

  The General stood. His face had not changed, precisely, but the warmth of the evening had retreated behind a wall.

  "I think," the General said, "that I've eaten enough for one night."

  He placed his cup on the table with a soft click.

  "Lord Stormcrow. My thanks for an entertaining evening."

  And he left.

  Two guards fell in behind him. The hall, which had been gradually quieting as the head table's conversation grew serious, now fell into an uncertain silence. The musicians, who had paused mid-song, resumed playing as if nothing happened.

  Eirik sat very still.

  From the far end of the head table, Septimus watched him. The eunuch's smooth face held an expression that Eirik had no difficulty reading.

  Venom.

  He held Eirik's gaze for three full seconds, then turned and rose from his seat with the fluid grace of a man whose body carried no excess weight, and followed the General out.

  The hall resumed its noise.

  Eirik sat in the middle of it and tried to understand what he had done wrong.

  A hand touched his elbow.

  "Lord Stormcrow. A word, if you please."

  Corvinus's wheelchair was already moving toward a side door. Eirik rose and followed.

  The room beyond was small—a study or an office. A single lantern burned on a desk. The guards who had pushed Corvinus's chair withdrew and closed the door behind them.

  Corvinus positioned himself behind the desk. His fingers steepled.

  "A remarkable day, Lord Stormcrow."

  "Thank you."

  "The General has not been so thoroughly surprised in years, I think." Corvinus's tone was conversational. "And this banquet—what it will mean when our men return to their units and tell their comrades what they saw and heard—that is worth more than a year of rations."

  "I'm glad to be of service."

  "I believe you are." Corvinus unfolded his hands and laid them flat on the desk. "Which is why I'm going to tell you two things that you need to understand if you wish to remain of service."

  Eirik waited.

  "First. You do not suggest to the General how he should use his dragon."

  The words were delivered without emphasis.

  "The power is his alone. It carries a cost that you are not aware of and that I will not explain, because it is not mine to explain. We do not advise, suggest, hint, or imply how the General should employ that aspect of his strength. We trust that he knows more than we do about its use and its limits. That is enough."

  Eirik listened in silence.

  "Second." Corvinus leaned forward. "We do not speak of sacrifice. Especially not in the General's presence. The word itself is unwelcome. You will not raise the subject again."

  The silence held for a moment.

  Sacrifice. Velthan had told him—had been quite specific, in fact—that the General had performed a great sacrifice to gain his power. A blood ritual, a willing offering, the mechanism by which the door between worlds had opened and cultivation had entered their reality. It was the foundation of the Archmage's entire plan.

  And the General wouldn't hear the word spoken at his own table.

  Why?

  Eirik could feel the question pressing against his teeth.

  He did not ask.

  "Now," Corvinus's voice softened. "The General is impressed. That is an extraordinary foundation, Lord Stormcrow, and I would hate to see you undermine it by pushing too hard, too fast."

  "I only intend to lift the siege."

  "When circumstances demand your expertise, you will have every opportunity to demonstrate it. But first, you need to understand what you're dealing with." Corvinus tilted his head. "Study the lay of the land. Walk the walls. Observe the enemy's positions. Speak with my quartermasters, my engineers, my scouts. Compile a report of your observations and your recommendations, using whatever knowledge the future has given you. Bring that report to me, and we will discuss it thoroughly. Then, we will determine how best to use what you know."

  Eirik stared at him.

  A report. The man was asking him to write a report.

  Velthan could arrive any time. Every day Eirik spent walking walls and counting grain stores was a day the old bastard could spend worming his way into the General's confidence.

  But the alternative was to push Corvinus now, in this room, and lose whatever remained of the goodwill he'd built today.

  "I understand," Eirik said.

  Corvinus studied him, and whatever he found in Eirik's face seemed to satisfy him.

  "Good. I'll have quarters arranged for you and your men. The eastern barracks should serve—close to the walls, within easy reach of the command post."

  Corvinus nodded to himself, and his hands moved to the wheelchair's wheels.

  "Wait," Eirik said. "One more thing."

  Corvinus paused.

  "The Archmage. If he arrives—when he arrives—can you at least alert me?"

  Corvinus regarded him. He turned his wheelchair toward the door and his guards opened it from outside, and he left without answering.

  Eirik stood alone in the study.

  He became aware, after a moment, that someone was watching him from the corridor. He turned.

  The young guard. The same one from the banquet hall. He stood a few paces down the corridor, and this time he didn't look away immediately.

  Then he turned and followed the sound of Corvinus's wheelchair down the corridor, and was gone.