Bound for the Front Lines
A week had passed since the grand banquet at Wintercrown Manor.
Second Lieutenant Ashlyn Wintercrown’s train was bound for the borderlands of Paros. Anyone looking at her would have known at once that she was a newly commissioned officer. Everything about her—the set of her uniform, the precision of her posture—was wound tight with discipline.
Not a single crease marred the stiffly starched officer’s coat, and her cap sat perfectly square. Her bearing matched. Five hours and more of travel ought to have worn anyone down, yet Ashlyn’s spine remained ruler-straight, locked at a perfect right angle. Her face and expression were just as composed: a slender oval, cool-lidded eyes. The golden hair that should have shone brilliantly was bound tight beneath her cap so it would not sway.
The Paros-bound car she rode in was nearly empty. Not a single civilian—only soldiers of the Starlight Alliance, Ashlyn among them. It was only natural. Paros was a thoroughly insignificant country. It possessed neither the abundance of mages that marked Istar or Barbaros, nor the advanced mechanical engineering of Kunetz. Without the protection of Istar and the Alliance, the weak little buffer state would long since have fallen to the Barbaros Empire.
Most of the soldiers in the car seemed to be returning to the front after brief leave; they traded complaints back and forth.
“Damn it. Back to those flavorless sardine tins again.”
“Ugh—just thinking about it makes me want to puke.”
“Fuck, still better than a whole month of nothing but mashed turnips.”
“Wasn’t that because some general embezzled the rations? Bastards.”
At the mention of mashed turnips the men’s faces went dead. They must have hated the stuff with a passion. Ashlyn’s expression, by contrast, remained perfectly calm; anyone watching might have thought she was headed somewhere else entirely.
Three days had passed since she finished the Istar Republic Magic Officer Course and received her commission. Ashlyn’s heart was fuller of purpose than it had ever been. She repeated the vow she had made more times than she could count.
I will not let this chance slip away.
A chance to raise the family’s renown. A chance to walk in the footsteps of her great ancestors. A chance to be acknowledged as the next head of House Wintercrown. Unconsciously her shoulders and fists tightened.
Then—damn it. Perhaps she had clenched too hard. A sharp, acrid pain lanced up her left hand.
“Ngh…”
A low sound escaped between her teeth.
Hell. I thought it was fine this time, but again…
Ashlyn exhaled and looked down at her left hand with troubled eyes. The white glove hid it, yet a hideous wedge-shaped scar lay across the back of that hand. The mark was ugly enough to make anyone wince on sight, yet it carried no grand story. It was simply the wound left by a dog bite twelve years earlier, when Ashlyn was fourteen—and the dog had been a stray she herself had taken in.
A thoroughly stupid accident. Foolish, trivial… the result of pure carelessness. The real problem was that this trivial accident had nearly ended her life as a mage forever.
What did a wounded left hand have to do with becoming a mage? For casting, the left hand was indispensable. To work a spell a mage had to open the circuits within, draw up ether, chant the incantation aloud, and with the left hand form the magic circle through precise finger-work. Fail at any one of the three and the spell collapsed. To injure the left hand—more vital to a mage than the heart itself—while fussing over a stray dog… No one else was to blame. It had been entirely Ashlyn’s fault.
She still remembered, word for word, the conversation the family elders had held in the manor smoking room that day.
“I am deeply disappointed in Ashlyn. I thought her a calm, clear-headed child, yet she goes and keeps some mongrel only to end up like this.”
“Still, we can count ourselves fortunate. Young Arthur was right beside her when the beast went mad, wasn’t he? If he had been hurt as well…”
“House Wintercrown would have been finished. The collateral line would have taken everything.”
“But I still don’t understand. What did she see in that hideous black dog that she had to bring it home? The steward warned her repeatedly, yet she swore it would be no trouble.”
“Perhaps the shock of losing her birth mother so young… In the end a child is still a child.”
When fourteen-year-old Ashlyn overheard those words, the first emotion that rose in her was not anger. It was pure shame. She had wanted to die of it. Everything shamed her: the stubborn insistence on bringing a wild animal into the house, the bitten hand that followed, the near-injury to her younger brother, the danger she had brought upon the family itself. Yet the worst shame was separate. The simple fact that she had given affection to a worthless beast—that was what mortified her most.
What arrogance had she possessed? To believe she fully understood a dumb animal, that she and it had become special friends, that though they shared no language she had won its trust. She had behaved exactly like a childish little girl. And so Ashlyn repented. She spent the next twelve years living with fierce intensity. Aside from the bare necessities of eating and sleeping, nearly every hour went into rehabilitating her magic circuits. By some miracle she entered the Magic Academy. By the time she graduated she could wield almost her original power once more.
The trouble was moments like this—when a needle-sharp pain flared across the back of her hand, or when sensation dulled. The sudden ache cast a heavy cloud over Ashlyn’s eager spirits. Yet she quickly steadied herself again.
No point borrowing trouble. The pain has always been there, and it never interferes with function.
Forcing down the anxiety that tried to creep upward, she turned her gaze to the window.
While Ashlyn whiled away the time watching the landscape, the train gradually approached its destination. A piercing whistle cut the air as the cars slowed, then came to a full stop at the platform. Locks released throughout the train at once, and the passengers, as though they had been waiting for the signal, filed out in a stream.
Ashlyn remained seated until the last, then rose unhurriedly. As she stepped onto the platform with her document case in one hand she felt sidelong glances and the murmur of whispered voices.
“Holy shit… is that an Istar Magic Army cap? What’s a Republic mage doing out here? Don’t they all teleport?”
“Hell if I know. Don’t stare. Gives me the creeps—let’s go.”
Mages might be uncommon, but such open shock still made it clear she was far from Istar.
If this happens every place I go, it’s going to get tiresome.
She clicked her tongue softly and gave her uniform a final smooth. That was when a youthful male voice spoke behind her.
“Second Lieutenant Wintercrown, ma’am?”
Ashlyn turned. A rather vacant-faced soldier stood there. His eyes went round the moment they landed on her Magic Army officer’s cap.
“Yes. I am Second Lieutenant Ashlyn Wintercrown.”
“Yes, ma’am—please follow—”
“State your rank and name properly first.”
She fixed him with a cold stare. The soldier’s shoulders snapped rigid; he barked out his identification and saluted with full volume.
“Yes, ma’am! Private Marcel, Alpha Company, Golden Battalion, Thirteenth Division!”
“Good. Lead the way.”
She returned the salute with a slight nod.
“Yes, ma’am!”
Ashlyn and the driver who had come to fetch her, Private Marcel, climbed into a military jeep that rattled and jolted along the unpaved road. Their destination was Kran—the foremost garrison on the eastern Paros front. Roughly an hour passed.
“….”
I tried to ignore it…
Ashlyn let out a long inner sigh. The problem was Private Marcel at the wheel, who kept shooting her furtive glances. Once or twice she could have overlooked, but he had done it the entire ride; it was more than a little oppressive. At last she spoke.
“Private Marcel.”
“…Ma’am? Yes! Private Marcel!”
“First time seeing a mage?”
“Yes—no—yes!”
“Yes, no, yes? What kind of answer is that?”
“I-I’ve seen them plenty from a distance, ma’am! But never this close!”
“Is that so?”
“I thought all mages traveled by teleport.”
“Ah. It’s possible, but inefficient in any number of ways. After a long-range teleport you can’t do a thing for three days, so the train is simply better.”
“I see, ma’am…”
“What, disappointed you didn’t get to watch a teleport?”
“No, ma’am!”
They were exchanging such trivial talk when a bone-chilling, almost screaming sound suddenly tore through the air nearby.
Shiiiiiiik.
The noise scraped across the eardrums. Startled, Ashlyn jerked her gaze upward through the window—and froze solid.
A single enormous black wyvern was slicing across the pale sky. From the ground the rider was hard to make out, but an Imperial cavalry officer almost certainly sat astride its back.