"To the Last Syllable of Recorded Time"

-Chapter 2: Ilium-

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"You know what we need?" Caesar had asked, looking up one night from one of the books Apple had brought him, citing his need to unwind at night.

"Lilly Pendragon?" Apple had responded.

"We need to test the enemy's strength," he had responded. At times, it was simply best to ignore his mentor. "Who's the intelligence officer here?"

"Franz," Apple replied.

Caesar had blinked at her. "Franz? Really? I had no idea Le Buque was supporting us."

"Not Le Buque as a whole. Just Franz and a few mantor riders he brought with him."

"Why?"

"I think something happened."

"Well, thanks. It was hard to figure that out."

"You know what I mean."

"Yeah. But let's not get distracted. Could you possibly get him in here?"

"Get him in here your damn self."

"Please?"

"You could use the exercise, weakling," she replied, amused. He sighed heavily and made a great show of putting down his book, waiting for her to speak, to stop him and fetch the mantor rider herself. Finally: "Can't this wait until tomorrow?"

It hadn't been what he was hoping for. "It's still early," he'd responded and hopped out of his chair. "Where is he?"

"He's in a tent maybe three over from Chris's." She had finally looked up. "Want me to go with you?"

"I'd like you to go in place of me," he'd said, and she'd gone back to her book, and he'd made his grumbling way to Franz's tent. The mantor rider had welcomed him in with surprising kindness, really, particularly considering his surpassing coldness throughout the Flame Champion war.

"Where's Iku?" he had asked as Franz was fixing a drink for him. The man had stiffened, and this should have been a clue, but even after he tersely replied that she wasn't there, Caesar persisted.

"I thought she'd be following you everywhere, keeping you out of trouble," Caesar had smiled. "Is she pregnant or something?"

"She was shot and killed three months ago," Franz replied shortly.

Caesar had stared. "Shot?"

"Yes. Shot. With a gun. By a gunner. What did you come here for?" he had asked, leaving the half-finished drink on the counter and sitting opposite Caesar.

"Um. I want to see how powerful the Tinto forces are. Test them. See how they work as a group. Is there a small contingent, perhaps? I'd take out maybe a thousand or so, Grasslanders, probably, who can escape easily if things turned against them."

And Franz had nodded thoughtfully, and told him the location, and advised him to his course of action, and offered to accompany him. Had it not been for that last offer, Caesar would have suspected that Franz set him up for the insensitive questions about Iku.

"Sir!" a mantor rider who had just touched down cried over the fading hum of his mount's wings. Framed in a panorama behind him, the battle raged, with too many – far too many – falling. "Shiba is wounded, maybe worse. His squad was all but wiped out by one of those spells." The rider didn't even wait or recognition, instead launching his beast skyward once again.

"This is impossible," Caesar whispered. "Maneuvers like this...Even at our peak, we could never have pulled off a group spell!"

"I know," Apple said, looking rather nauseous. "Caesar, we have to – "

The inevitable recommendation of retreat was cut off by the approaching drone of mantor wings. Franz himself was pulling farther in, shouting something that was lost among the other noises of the battlefield. When Ruby had descended far enough, he threw himself from her back, landing among the dust as Caesar's horse shifted nervously.

"Harmonians," Franz finally gasped.

Caesar could only gape at him until the word made sense. "Where?"

"They're coming in behind the Tinto forces," Franz said, struggling to his feet. Caesar cursed and urged his horse a bit higher on the hill, until he could see the approaching line of blue and white behind the red.

"There must be two thousand of them," Caesar said, fumbling in his belt for binoculars as Apple rode up behind him. Even once he got them out, he couldn't see the lines of soldiers very well for the trembling in his hands. "This may well be the end of us, my dear."

"Should I sound the retreat?" she asked quietly.

He nodded and closed his eyes. He fancied he could see the entirety it in his mind's eye: the clopping of Apple's horses hooves accompanied her ride over to the heralds; the shrill whine of trumpets accompanied the slow turn and slide backwards of their forces. After a moment, he opened his eyes, and saw that the troop movements were entirely different from those he had visualized. The ragged retreat stood in opposition to his clean one. For some reason, that hit him hard.

Albert always talked of being able to visualize the enemy...

Well, that was why.

The thought of his brother set something off in the back of his mind, though he couldn't entirely put his finger on it. He stared at the approaching Harmonians for a long while, then forced his horse into a trot to catch up with Apple.

"How many soldiers are there in a Harmonian contingent?" he asked.

"I don't really know..." she began.

"Oh, come on, Apple, you went to Soledt. You have to know this."

"Depends, really. They come in increments of a hundred, three thousand, and five thousand."

He suddenly caught on to what he had been thinking. "But not fifteen hundred or so...?"

Her eyes narrowed as she understood. "No. They're trained rigorously, and in a group. They aren't going to just leave half the contingent behind."

"Shit," Caesar proclaimed. He pressed his fingers to his closed eyelids until black spots danced against the redness. "We can't retreat, then. But with the addition of the Harmonians, we can't stand, either...Dammit!"

"Maybe..." Apple's voice was hesitant. "Maybe we need to accept that this is a lost cause. We should ensure the escape of our generals, and..."

He pulled his horse up short. "Sound the command to stand and fight," he said loudly. "The soldiers in ambush will have to move in order to join the battle, and they'll lose their advantage," he explained to Apple. "Once they're out in the open, we'll sound the retreat once again, and hopefully break through."

Over the sound of the horns, before his forces turning once again with agonizing slowness and being cut down so brutally, he said to her, quietly, "If you want to run, you can run." She turned away and said nothing.

There was but a moment of renewed fighting before the Harmonian forces reached the rear of the Tinto forces. As they did, some sort of colored lights shot up from the rear of their ranks. At first, Caesar thought it was some side effect from spellcasting – but these let off smoke and a noise that could be heard even over the noise of battle.

Even as several of these explosions were still going off, the supplementary Harmonian forces burst from the woods, just as he had expected. However – they were actually on either side of the Tinto forces, the position that his own forces had fled from. They charged gamely forth and before Caesar's amazed eyes smashed devastatingly into Tinto's flanks.

"They're on our side?" someone behind him gasped. He understood the sentiment entirely.

The Harmonians boxed Tinto in on three sides, and the Grasslanders on the fourth; the massacre was all but total. Only about five hundred of Tinto remained by the time they managed to punch a hole through the left Harmonian line; only about four hundred were able to escape.

So Caesar was left on a hill, surveying the plain liberally spread with the dead and the dying, lost in his own reflections until a push from Apple brought his attention to the lone rider dressed in blue and white riding across the field, carrying a messenger's flag.

It took several minutes before the rider was able to make his way completely across the field and through the guards. Caesar was able to tell even as the rider was still being searched for weapons that he was barely more than a boy.

"I didn't know the Harmonian army took children," Caesar muttered to Apple. But she couldn't reply with any decorum in front of the young messenger, whose horse had already made its way to the two of them.

"You're General Silverberg?" the boy asked.

"Um, yes," Caesar said, thrown off by the unfamiliar title and hating his little stumble.

The rider saluted smartly. "Sir. The commander of the 51st Squadron sends his regards, and expresses contempt that it took you so long to figure out the plan."

"Contempt..." Caesar repeated numbly and stared at the solemn-faced boy. Then he got it. "That son of a bitch!"

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Yes, it's abrupt, but sue me; I want to get to the interesting bits, rather than this half-informed blathering about things I have half a clue about. Of course, now that it's finally getting close to the good bits, I'm going on vacation for two weeks. Pardon me while I cackle evilly, and see you in a while.