Both arrived on the same morning.
The scout report came first — handed to Kane at the gate by a rider who had been in the saddle for eighteen hours and declined food before rest, which told Kane the report's priority before he read a word of it. He read it at the gate. Read it again walking to the command tent. Handed it to Straze without commentary because commentary would have been redundant.
Straze read it.
Set it down.
The letter from Solomon arrived twenty minutes later, also by courier — different courier, different seal, a channel Solomon used specifically when the relay crystals felt like too wide a net. Straze opened it. One line.
The Lance is ready. I need three more weeks. Then we go.
He set the letter on top of the scout report and looked at both of them.
---
Kane stood across the table. He had learned, in six years of service under Straze, that there was a specific quality to his commander's stillness that indicated the difference between processing and deciding, and that the correct response to deciding-stillness was to hold position and wait.
He held position.
He waited.
"FENRIS," Straze said.
"Moving south," Kane confirmed. "Scout team confirmed visual three times over two days. Deliberate pace. Not concealed — he walked the main Hyperborean road, which is the opposite of concealment for something his size."
"He wants to be reported," Straze said.
"That was my read too."
"He wants Byzantium to receive that report." Straze picked up the scout document. Looked at the description — seven feet three, silver-white hair, amber eyes, moving south at approximately forty kilometers per day, alone, no visible equipment beyond what he carries. "He's been sitting in those mountains for eight hundred years and now he's walking south on a visible road two days after the Lance advanced to Rank 5."
"The timing is exact," Kane said.
"The timing is deliberate." Straze set the document down. He was quiet for a moment — not the processing-stillness, the other kind. The kind that came after deciding, when the next step was already clear and the only question was the order of execution. "How long since Ervalen went to Caledonia?"
"Forty-two days," Kane said.
"Solomon says the Lance is ready." Straze looked at the letter. Three more weeks. "If the Lance advanced and Fenris is moving south — Solomon has information we don't yet have. Someone told him." He picked up both documents and moved to the strategic map. "Call everyone in."
Kane turned for the door.
"All of them," Straze said. "Every officer with a role in the final configuration. And send word to the provinces of Aragon, Navarra, and Castilia — I need the committed garrison forces to begin moving to staging positions today." He indicated three points on the map. "Here. Here. And here."
Kane left at speed.
Straze stood at the map alone.
He put his finger on the Prussonian Pass, then moved it south to Byzantium — three hundred kilometers, the same distance as the first engagement, the same road, the same mountain terrain. Then he moved his finger east to the Caledonian range. Then south-west along the road FENRIS was walking.
Three lines converging.
This is what it looks like when things are ready,* he thought. Not when they're planned. When they're ready — the pieces start moving on their own because the time has arrived.*
He had been a soldier for thirty years. He had felt the shape of a coming battle dozens of times — the specific atmospheric change, half tactical and half something he had never found an adequate word for. The sense of events reaching a state of inevitability that had nothing to do with who won and everything to do with the fact that what was coming was now going to happen.
He was feeling it now.
He moved his finger back to Byzantium.
You read the scout report, he thought. You know FENRIS is moving. You know what that means.
Open the drawer.
---
In Byzantium, the drawer was open.
Not metaphorically — the actual desk drawer, pulled out the full distance of its runners, the folded document lying inside it exactly where it had been for three weeks.
Yogiri did not look at the drawer. He was looking at the morning's correspondence, which included a scout confirmation of FENRIS moving south on the main Hyperborean road and a provincial garrison movement report indicating that the forces of Aragon, Navarra, and Castilia had begun relocating toward pre-identified staging positions along the Prussonian approach corridor.
Three weeks to the day since Solomon's letter, he estimated.
He turned the garrison report over.
He picked up his pen.
He did not write.
He set the pen down.
He looked at the window.
Outside, the central plaza was doing what it did every morning — filling, moving, the ordinary commerce of eight hundred thousand people conducting their lives. He had governed this city for forty-six days. The grain surplus had stabilized. The eastern trade routes were running at one hundred and eight percent of their pre-transition volume. Provincial corruption was down by a measurable margin because the people conducting it now understood that the administrative eye looking at their ledgers was both more thorough and less interested in their excuses than the previous one had been.
Efficient, he thought. This is working efficiently.
He looked at the drawer.
The folded document had three paragraphs.
· The first: acknowledgment of the Lance's development trajectory.
· The second: two countermeasures against dual-formation assault.
· The third paragraph was seventeen words.
He had read it perhaps fifteen times since writing it. He knew it without reading. He looked at the folded paper anyway, the way you looked at something you were deciding whether to burn.
He closed the drawer.
He picked up the pen and wrote three lines on a blank document. Folded it. Sealed it. Set it on the corner of the desk.
---
When Mort arrived eight minutes later — punctual, headache-adjacent, carrying the morning's full correspondence stack — he found Yogiri at the window and the sealed document on the desk.
"Mort," Yogiri said, without turning.
"Sir."
"The sealed document on the desk."
"Yes."
"Do not open it. Do not send it. Do not move it." A pause. "If I don't return from the next engagement, open it."
Mort stood very still.
If I don't return was not a phrase that belonged in any sentence Yogiri Augustus had spoken in forty-six days. It was not a phrase Mort had expected to survive long enough to hear. He had filed it as a theoretical possibility back in the first week and then gradually, over the accumulating evidence of forty-six days of absolute competence, had reclassified it as negligible.
Negligible was apparently not the same as zero.
"The engagement," Mort said carefully. "You're going north."
"Yes."
"When?"
"Three weeks." Yogiri turned from the window. He moved to the desk. Picked up the garrison movement report and made a notation in the margin. Set it in the outgoing tray. "The coalition is entering final configuration. The Lance has advanced to Rank 5 and now carries dual-formation. Solomon has been building suppression architecture around the new profile. FENRIS is walking south." He pulled the next document. "They'll be ready in three weeks."
Mort looked at the sealed document on the corner of the desk. At the closed drawer. At the man reading a grain assessment as if the sentence before it hadn't ended with if I don't return.
"Sir," Mort said.
"The morning's correspondence," Yogiri said, without looking up.
"Yes — but—" Mort stopped. Reorganized. "Is there anything you need me to prepare? Administratively. For the possibility that — for the period while you're—"
"The standard governance protocols are in the administrative codex I wrote in week two," Yogiri said. "Julius and the Seraphic Seat have sufficient operational authority to maintain provincial stability for up to ninety days without central administrative input. The trade guild representatives have standing agreements that don't require renewal until spring." He turned a page. "The outstanding matter is the Livonia situation — the governor who fled. His province needs a replacement appointment. I'd prefer to handle that before I leave."
Mort wrote it down. Stopped writing.
"You've already thought through all of this," he said.
"Yes," Yogiri said.
"You've been thinking through it since you wrote the document in the drawer."
"Since before that," Yogiri said.
---
Mort looked at the desk drawer.
"Is it a serious concern?" he asked. "The possibility that — that they—"
Yogiri looked up.
The golden-green eyes held Mort's in the way they held everything — fully, without flinching or warming, just completely.
"The Lance will reach twenty-seven meters of penetration depth inside suppression-delayed fire," Yogiri said. "I require twenty-five for reliable breakthrough. Solomon's new architecture — if it performs as theoretically capable — triples the dissolution delay. FENRIS's involvement introduces a variable I cannot fully calculate. Straze is building the final configuration around all of these elements simultaneously." He held Mort's gaze. "Is it a serious concern? Yes."
Mort stood with his correspondence stack held against his chest and processed thirty words that rearranged the past forty-six days of his life.
"Then why—" He stopped.
"Why am I going?" Yogiri said.
"Why are you going without more preparation?" Mort said. "You have a functioning empire, administrative infrastructure, time—"
"Because waiting is worse," Yogiri said. He returned to the correspondence. "Every additional month gives Solomon time to refine the suppression architecture. Every additional month gives Ervalen time at Rank 5. Every additional month gives Straze time to add variables I haven't accounted for." He turned a page. "The calculation tips further against me with time, not for me. If there's a window where the engagement is survivable, it's closer to now than later."
Survivable, Mort thought. Not winnable. Not favorable. Survivable.
He filed the distinction and understood that the distinction was the whole point.
"You think you'll win," Mort said slowly. "But you've planned for losing."
"I think I'll win," Yogiri said. "I plan for the alternative because the alternative is real." He looked up one more time. "That is not contradiction. That is precision."
---
The command tent at the Prussonian Pass was full by noon.
Twelve officers. Kane. Solomon, who had arrived the previous day with updated rune-script burning bright on both forearms — the new architecture visibly active, a different pattern than what Ervalen had seen in the first engagement, tighter and more specifically tuned. And one additional figure that several officers hadn't expected to see inside any tent associated with organized military command.
FENRIS sat on the ground in the corner.
Not a chair — the chairs were insufficient, and he hadn't asked for one. He sat cross-legged on the canvas floor of the command tent like something that had settled rather than chosen a position, and looked at the assembled officers with those ancient amber eyes and said nothing.
Nobody looked directly at him for long.
Straze didn't look at him at all. He was at the map.
"Three weeks," Straze said. "Final configuration. I'll cover the changes from the Prussonian engagement." He indicated the map — the road, the mountain terrain, the approach corridor. "The primary difference is the suppression architecture."
"Reaction-speed targeting rather than output suppression," Solomon said. He moved to the map. His rune-script brightened as he spoke — the physical equivalent of warming to the subject. "In the Prussonian engagement, the field attempted to reduce the fire's overall output. The fire burned through that because the exchange rate was wrong — it cost more to suppress than the suppression cost the fire." He pointed to the approach corridor. "The new architecture doesn't fight the fire's strength. It specifically targets the dissolution-response mechanism — the reflex system that reads incoming threats and begins the burning process." He looked at the assembled officers. "If I can introduce approximately four-tenths of a second delay into each dissolution response cycle, the cumulative effect across a dual-formation Lance impact is a tripling of the penetration window."
"How long can you sustain it?" Straze said.
"In the Prussonian engagement — ninety seconds," Solomon said. "The new architecture is more efficient. I estimate four minutes. Possibly five."
Several officers exchanged glances.
"What's different?" Straze said.
"I'm not carrying the weight of the field," Solomon said. He looked at his own forearms — at the new rune-script, the tighter pattern. "In Prussonia, I generated the field from continuous active output. This architecture is written into the ambient substrate of the engagement zone before the battle begins. I anchor it to the terrain — to the stone and earth of the road itself. When activated, it runs from the substrate rather than from me." He looked at Straze. "I become the activator rather than the engine. The field burns the substrate's energy, not mine."
"And if he burns the substrate," Straze said.
"He can," Solomon acknowledged. "The conceptual burn that dissolved the Prussonian field in ninety seconds would reach this architecture eventually." He paused. "It would take approximately four minutes to find the correct conceptual layer and another three to dissolve it. Which gives us—"
"Seven minutes," Straze said.
"Seven minutes of reaction-speed delay," Solomon said. "If he finds the architecture quickly. If he doesn't find it immediately—" He left the sentence open.
Straze looked at the map.
Seven minutes was not ninety seconds.
Seven minutes was a different kind of engagement entirely.
He felt the shape of it — the specific atmospheric change, half tactical and half the thing he'd never found a word for. The sense of something being ready.
---
"Ervalen's range?" he said.
"I don't have confirmation," Kane said. "He's been in Caledonia for four weeks at Rank 5. Based on Solomon's penetration calculations—"
"I want the number from him," Straze said. "Send a relay crystal to the training site."
"He doesn't have one," Kane said.
From the corner, without moving, without changing his expression, Fenris said: "He'll reach two hundred and forty meters reliable range. At optimal kinetic approach with dual-formation, penetration depth will be twenty-seven meters."
The tent was quiet.
Every officer looked at Fenris.
Fenris looked at the map.
"He calculated it himself," Fenris said. "Last week. I confirmed it." He finally looked at Straze. "He needs twenty-five for reliable breakthrough. He has twenty-seven. You have two meters of margin."
Straze held Fenris's gaze.
"Against suppression-delayed fire," Straze said.
"Against fire responding at one-third speed," Fenris said. "Which is what Solomon is building." He looked at Solomon. "The architecture performs as calculated?"
"Within five percent," Solomon said.
Fenris looked back at the map. "Then the math closes."
The tent was very quiet.
Straze let the silence hold for exactly as long as it needed to.
Then he picked up his marking rod.
"Final configuration," he said. "Here's how we do it."
He began.
---
Three hours later, the tent was empty except for Straze and Fenris.
Kane had gone to begin staging coordination. Solomon had gone to begin pre-embedding the suppression architecture in the approach road — a process he said would take ten days working section by section. The twelve officers had gone to their units.
Straze stood at the map.
Fenris still sat on the canvas floor.
"You engineered this," Straze said. Not accusation. Statement.
"I created conditions," Fenris said.
"You fed information to both sides. You made yourself visible moving south so Byzantium would receive that report." Straze looked at the ancient amber eyes. "You've been running this from Caledonia."
"I've been making it real," Fenris said. "There's a difference."
"Real," Straze said.
"A foregone conclusion is not interesting," Fenris said. "A genuine engagement with actual variables — where both sides have real information and real capacity and real uncertainty about the outcome — that's something else."
"You want a real fight," Straze said.
"I want to see what happens when something hits him that he can't immediately answer," Fenris said. The amber eyes were steady. "I've been watching this world for eight hundred years. I've seen impressive. I want to see interesting. The question is whether he's capable of being surprised at a level that matters."
Straze looked at him for a long moment. "And if he is? If the Lance lands, if the breakthrough happens, if we find the gap — what then?"
Fenris was quiet.
"Then you know where to aim," he said. "And so do I."
Straze turned back to the map.
"Three weeks," he said.
"Three weeks," Fenris said.
---
Outside, the Prussonian Pass wind moved through the fortress walls, cold and indifferent, carrying snow down from the peaks. The army of the coalition moved through it — soldiers who didn't know the full shape of what was coming, only that the command had said final configuration and that meant something was about to end or begin or both.
Straze stood at his map and built.
Three hundred kilometers south, a white-haired man closed a desk drawer and read a grain assessment.
Both of them knew what three weeks meant.
Neither of them was wrong.