Night at the Nohrian camp

"Odin. Odin, wake up." In the chilly, late hours of night, at the edge of our Nohrian army encampment, I hiss from outside the mage's tent. The sound of snoring inside takes several moments to stop. As Odin sleepily emerges, I keep watch on the bushes in our surroundings.  Hoshidan scouts could lurk anywhere.

"It's your turn for patrol. Nothing odd so far."

"Oh?" He points with a warning finger around him, slowly smiling at an imaginary audience. "Is it so soon the dead of night? Fear not, for Odin the Terrible now watches over our army..."

As he leaves to start his night patrol, I return to my tent. A two-person tent stolen during the last battle, it's made in the Hoshidan style with a low flap opening. I crawl into the small dirt space, where two sleeping bags lay side by side. At their feet squats a low wooden table. I sit here, my feet sighing with relief, and open a fire tome. The spell inside glows blue-green, like the streaked veins of luminescent rock on the cliff faces back home in Nohr.

We are a very long way from home now.

"Esthu pyralis," I whisper. A tiny flame springs alight above my thumb and index fingers, warm along my fingertips. It flickers like a grasshopper before I lean over and transfer it to the wick of a short candlestick.

Light spills over onto a large map I have left lying on the table. It depicts the entire landmass of Nohr and Hoshido, and its frayed paper corners hang off the table edge. A trail of crosses drawn in black ink march like ants from Nohr towards Hoshido. Dipping a pen in ink, I mark another one for today's march. So far, the crosses are spread far apart near Nohr, where our army moved through familiar territory, then crowd closer together at the border of Hoshido, where we felt our way cautiously through hostile land. On top of this main map is a second, roughly drawn map of terrain, where I have planned out the territory for tomorrow's conquest, following a long discussion with our foot soldiers who had scouted ahead today.

Rubbing my temples, I squeeze my eyes shut. Those conversations are always long, with arguments about who should go where, who should attack in what order, what plan to fall to if it doesn't work, and so forth. We all leave with a headache and no more certainty than when we started. I review this plan again, looking for more ways it could fall through, my eyes growing strained.  Whenever the light flickers, the towns blur into double-towns, trees wade into the ocean, and mountain ranges close in onto the villages, snapping them up into their jaws.

Then the tent flap rustles open, and I look up. Fatigue vanishes. It's Leo. I feel a small smile jump to my lips.

He bends his head and crouches his way towards me. The candle lights the stranded edges of his light hair and casts his eyes deep in shadow.

"Still hard at work, I see," he says, sitting down next to me. I look at him and feel the tension leave my shoulders. Leo seems the same way he did all those years ago, when we were all children merely playing at war on board games. Just as we thought we would win, Leo would pull a piece lurking in the sidelines, capture our kings and emerge victorious nearly every time.

I still believe he can pull victorious moves from his sleeve, no matter how dire things are. Even in a real war.

He takes off his high collared mage's cape, reinforced with tall metal shoulder plates, along with the rest of his black-and-gold plated armour. Underneath, I realise, he has the slim build of a bookish type of person, the very opposite of most of our muscled, thick-necked soldiers. His throat, thin with a prominent Adam's apple, looks vulnerable. For a moment, the urge to rearrange all my tactics to protect him rushes to overpower me.

But like a hawk, his red eyes flash alertly to every sight and sound around him. Not even a fortress soldier has been able to come close thanks to his magic. Speaking of which, a new ring gleams among the long, tapering fingers of his right hand: a gold band with an inset magic-amplifying stone, identical to mine.