Cut

To transgress the enforcement line cost wind its speed, men their blood, and a swordsman thirteen steps.

Nazran sliced across the eastern plains, each step shorter than necessary, hood raised on his cloak to keep the weather away. Winter refused to leave this city, misting his breath and biting his exposed ears.

Even his holdings were too cold this year.

Five miles from the encampment, human presence cut off—empty fields with unharvested produce, fallow waystations, and the occasional makeshift guard post marking every half mile on the main highway.

Troops shuffled along the line, swaddled against the ill wind, trudging with wilting banners, eyes darting for movement from the city. A young standard-bearer coughed. The platoon flowed around her, measuring ten steps for every breathless burst. Masks, stylized crows of crimson and burnt sandalwood were raised, warding against the air, desperation in their calls for a medic. Or a priest.

“Hold! I said hold, you fools!” Nazran barged through the outer circle, three steps, then turn, one hand on hilt, sensing glyph pressed against his right eye. Azure, hints of yellow, spots of black near her stomach. Choleric—possibly mild dysentery but not Firerash. “Nothing wrong with you, Asha. Stand straight. All of you. Centurion Karthik, is this how you train your troops? If only my orders encompassed the physical.” He spat, a thick glob that punched into the fine layer of snow at Karthik’s feet. Fearing a plague was expected, but not here.

Never at the enforcement line.

“Commander, you’re not a healer. Our orders—”

“Your orders, Centurion, are to march the line. Guard it! I am here because I understand. Not you. In the name of the Gods, you will march!”

Karthik could grumble, coarse bass, metallic enough to shake the hills a mile away. Thirteen steps.

Nazran drew his left foot aside half a span. The platoon backed away from him. None carried a true blade. Karthik’s neck flushed, eyes darting to the stakes punched three feet deep, ten paces across the line.

They marched.

Nazran watched their feet sink into snow, his own digging into ice, the satisfying crunch punching through his boots.

They pushed Asha to the front, but they marched.

He let cold mist shoot through his lips, hand opening and closing on the hilt. One breath closer to drawing on the troops.

The sun had crawled, slipped and steadied across the horizon, smaller little sun stuttering in its wake. Time bent under enforcement. He cursed, dragging the sensing glyph down when he caught sight of the city. Crimson roared from it in waves.

No blue. No black. No cure.

Nazran searched for them. A tree stump here, a misshapen boulder there. Symbols to mark the distance.

One mile.

One mile of snow, vultures and corpses.

The line was unseen. It undermined his breath, an implacable presence built by mages. Enforced by steel.

He hopped onto a nearby tree, squatting on thin branches. It bowed, creaking under him. He curled toes, spread fingers, lifted an elbow, distributing weight across his body. The bough sighed. Breath carried lightness, each hum through his sore throat, bearing his load. Swordsmen valued breath, not lines. The burn of the night’s harsh drink lingered. Firerash did not belong in the throat. It entwined it. Constricting. Always tightening.

Forty paces from the ground—occasionally one less when the bough swayed, Nazran stilled. Attunement to silence carried his blade. Training in steel cautioned him to watch. Execution in violence begged him to draw. Eight patrols, equidistant and rotated every hour to guard a cemetery of a million. Once gleaming walls shuddered in the light of the twin suns, guard posts empty and food carts abandoned one hundred paces from the gates. He’d ordered them to cross yesterday. To bring supplies for the residents.

Some supplies.

The ill wind burned his throat.

Thirteen steps and he could be at the gate. Twelve and he could reach the secondary barricade where his troops could be made to approach. The rest of the army watched from the line. Enforcement was for those inside. The barricade for those outside.

An army marked the line. A cut he orchestrated to remove a city from its foundation. From the kingdom.

He counted the carts, as he had every quarter circle along the line. The number didn’t change. Couldn’t until tomorrow. He would order another crossing. Only he would. With slightly less food, the reduction calculated precisely by the administrators to account for expected losses, ratified by his own steward, and ignored by the rest of the staff. All the volunteers’ clothing had been burnt, their very skin seared under mage-fire and the Gods’ holy light, each of the Thousand lending their aid.

The gods acted, even when kings didn’t.

“Ten paces, Aarti.” Nazran called without turning back. “Stand ten paces from that tree and look. Without your glyph for once, mage.”

“Are you asking me for guilt, swordsman?” A lilt of the emerald hills, masculine and proud. “You think I avoid? Defer?”

“No,” he floated down, drawing deep breaths to accelerate his descent, noting the broken gate that would need mana sweeps in the morning. “I’m asking you to look and see without the Gods’ assistance. I’ve had enough of plague.”

She chuckled, all smoke and sinew. So familiar, yet long past the bright laughter he recalled from the academy. Once a teacher, now—now a peer. “If you had enough, why don’t you turn away, Naz?”

“It will take another ten minutes for a patrol to arrive here.”

“Only you can watch the line? Only you fear the thirteen steps? You, the Silent One?”

He reached for Indrani. Paused. Wiped drifting snow from his brow.

She laughed louder, the heat from her gaze locked on his sword. He turned, twenty degrees clockwise, enough for Indrani to settle. The blade demanded silence. Isolation.

“Let them try to cross then.” She reached out for him, hands brushing the wind aside, fingertips arcing for his shoulder. He swayed away, eyes locking with her amber stars. Those eyes devoured. “You fear me, Naz? Where are the others? Why are you here every day?”

The others huddled in their tents. Shamed, but meritocracy conveniently forgotten without a battle to plan. This was a battle.

Of bodies and the line.

She watched his face and nodded. “So you know. Sidelined and praised.”

She rubbed her hands together—for warmth—to make a point as she had during every lecture. Those gloved fingertips were steeped in mana at every moment of the day. Arcane enchantments and prayers, even Aarti herself may have forgotten. Nazran took a sharp breath, letting the world settle on him for a moment. For clarity. Beyond the mortal threshold touch carried consequence.

He could not fear her.

Fear demanded thought. Around a dying city, thought was the enemy.

“No, mage. I don’t fear you.” He cursed her distance. From the line, the enforcement, the carrion scent of battlefields carried from homes.

Aarti came to his side, observing the city. Without mana. “Did you ever visit?”

“Before? Too far from my holdings.” Dragged in the name of the King for this work. He couldn’t afford the cost to avoid deployment. It had been an auction, spent with spies, court dances and the lives of assassins. Border lords like Nazran could not play. Could not afford to play.

“I don’t know anyone,” she fingered the book. “Inside.”

“Me neither.” Nazran gauged the distance once more. Thirteen steps. Thirteen blinks of an eye and he could be at the gate.

Clouds were forming. Twisted striations so different from his memory. Redder than necessary. Brighter.

“My son visited. With his family. Last year. Same season, before the crimson blooms. He brought a dozen to plant in my garden.” She reached for a small notebook hung from a silver chain around her shoulder. “I kept one pressed over the summer.”

The ground shook underneath, not enough to unbalance them, but a reminder of their proximity to the Ring of Fire. The general had once lamented how beautiful the sky appeared in the glow of ember ash. In the frigid tendrils clawing their way down the northern reaches, no ember could glow, and swordsmen like Nazran had to bow. Or huddle.

“I would have liked to see them,” he conceded.

“Not really worth it.”

“I think you’re lying.”

Her lips drew a tight arc, a dimple on her left cheek he’d never noticed before.

Nazran hopped back to the tree. Taking deep strides, spiked boots digging into bark as he made his way higher. Aarti settled on a nearby rock. The sun shifted by three degrees, little sun by four, and the wind turned away from him.

The South Gate trembled. One mile, but he could sense it.

Flares of magic exploded from the East and West, indigo bursts of flame and lightning.

“At least fifty from the East, a hundred from the West. Already out of the gates.” Aarti was up, fingers forming loose circles, peering through to catch the signal flares.

She raised her hands and waited.

The South Gate dissolved.

A familiar touch. From the capital.

Thirty-seven cuts delivered in a heartbeat, the energy wave carrying debris into the wind, shadows carried away in cold dust.

He couldn’t see her well. Only blurred shadows.

Nazran closed his eyes. The sword would be angled thirty degrees from her hip, blade-edge perpendicular to her form, leading with left foot and a deep breath to gather strength. He’d been under that edge twice in the academy.

Aarti’s peer. An instructor.

His instructor.

Urmi took one step through the yawning opening, blade out and held at her side.

One step to reach the barricade.

Nazran equipped the sensing glyph. Boiling crimson, recorded only once—in an empire lost to dust and Firerash.

Large numbers of people were moving inside a plague city.

Aarti’s hands wavered.

“Call it!” Nazran hissed.

“It’s—”

“I know who it is. Call it out.”

Urmi took another step, and a ragged group of people raced after her.

Indigo flames dripped from Aarti’s fingers, coiling for a moment before racing to the sky, fighting with the little sun for prominence. Two green streaks of lightning followed. Warning of a master swordswoman.

Urmi’s third step twisted, drawn towards them.

Azure lances tore from guard towers two miles back, powered by three mages each, arcing down on Urmi. Her blade flicked, an effortless horizontal arc denying magic ten feet deep.

Snow bursts. Flowering out from her blade.

She cut down with her fourth step, dragging the sky from the arc’s apex—tearing into the distance.

Aarti cursed, and Nazran resisted the urge to turn. One tower down.

He breathed in deep and shot to the ground in clouds of loose ice and torn earth. Aarti pushed mana forward, the very air humming in violence and ecstasy.

Urmi’s head turned. An inch. Away from Nazran. Exactly as she had taught. Her fifth step bore down on Aarti, indiscriminate pressure a small mercy as the magic collapsed with a muffled scream from Aarti. Nazran’s blood raged, senses narrowing from inches to fractions. Aarti’s bones shattered in his hearing, the wind from her passage moaning in desperation, body drawing a hobbled crescent.

A master mage’s preparation was violence.

Swordsmen breathed it.

He crossed the line, Indrani screaming from its sheath in standard form—three deft cuts to invalidate the wind and constrain his path. The crystal blade impressed itself upon its surroundings. On his enemy’s eyes.

Urmi sheathed her blade. Stepped. The sky darkened. Space compressed in her wake, drawing the escapees into her shadow.

Nazran breathed out, wind roaring at his teacher. The snowfield died, deep furrows of elemental silence to guide their path.

“The wind is my path.” Urmi intoned, fist tight around the hilt of her sword. Indra, the twin to his own blade, first-born from the heart of a star. A void spun out from her, parting the clouds and smashing the earth.

“Silence. Eternal Silence.” Nazran replied, Indrani howled in the presence of its brother. It longed for a victory. Nazran breathed in, disrupting Urmi’s void in a cascade of broken ice.

“Raise the banners.” She cried. Nazran saw the pink hairclip he’d gifted shatter. His throat tightened. Arms sank under the weight, threatening to push him back, Indrani dipping five degrees.

“Order. Six strikes.” He was forced to strike first, Indrani drawing the hexagon he was most familiar with. Urmi deflected the waves of the first two, dodged through three, and caught his sword on the side of her blade.

Her breathing was ragged. She had green eyes. Overwhelming eyes.

Nazran breathed out. Her blade tilted.

“Family. In the name of family.” Her sword arced twice, first pushed aside by his breath, second digging into his leg. They stepped away from the city, the enforcement line silent and heavy at his back. They twisted blades, disconnecting. One half step each, right against left.

His advance.

Her withdrawal.

“Order,” his voice cracked. Once, in his last year at the academy, he had fought her. To a standstill. A master never weakened. He strained against the pressure, the legacy, the violence of his teacher. She had no crimson. But it followed in her wake.

Ten years ago—standstill.

“Order demands sacrifice.” He breathed in and lashed out.

One strike.

Left to right.

Into the path of her retreat.

She staggered. Blood pooled from her side. A small cut.

His breath ended her.

It passed through their battle, and extinguished all life in one step.

Stillness was never sweet. Silence was something he’d struggled to avoid.

Nazran had read the lists.

He wasn’t supposed to know anyone in the city.

Each death flowed back to sit in him. Just below the throat. Just above the heart.

He breathed out.

Short of thirteen steps.

Indrani blessed those it cut. Urmi’s eyes had crystallized. Azure and green and amber at the same time. The blood had evaporated, and her clothes were pristine.

The others were grey, colour drawn out by his breath.

“There’s another swordsman. Two mages. From the East.” Aarti hobbled closer and stopped just outside the lingering boundary of his last strike. Her arm was encased in mana—a temporary splint.

A city of a million. Two swordsmen.

Nazran crouched and turned over a body. It had fallen face down, sword in one hand, and a fierce anger marking his death. The man had always demanded a warrior’s death against the kingdom’s enemies. The king had awarded him a medal, and a fiefdom. The man’s sword had shattered, unnamed blade twisted in the wake of their passing.

His other hand was tightly intertwined with a small boy’s.

“He used to call me Uncle Naz.” Nazran said.

Aarti dropped her gaze, searching the bodies, each recognition raising a new struggle on her face. “They shouldn’t have been here. Urmi knew better.”

“The master thought she knew better. But her family was life.” He lifted Indra. It felt light.

Hollow.

“They need us in the East.” Aarti insisted. “They may not be masters—”

“Firerash is terrible.” Nazran cut her off. Each of the bodies still carried a crimson spark that reached for him and died.

“The quarantine has a purpose.” She hissed.

“I hated practicing sword forms.” Nazran squatted beside the boy. “He didn’t. Every day I would ask about making cuts. Butchers, cooks, swordsmen. We all cut. Surgeons cut.”

“We have to go.” Aarti’s urgency meant little. Her voice sounded farther away. The city’s crimson was swelling, roiling towards the gate.

“They’ll be out soon.” Nazran stood. He brushed the dust from his leggings and adjusted his violet coat.

“The army will deal with them. You have to face the other swordsman.”

“I don’t have to do anything.” Nazran growled. “Surgeons also cut.”

He stepped once, widening the gap between them. He took another and arrived at the barricade. Fragments of the gate were scattered around, some still aflame. The crimson reached out. To him. He breathed in and energy surged. When his foot left the ground—he froze.

“The first coda: Everything can be cut.”

The step was short. Only half the distance to the gate. Indrani was heavy, sobbing with his every breath.

Another step to cover half of the remaining distance.

Ice froze his veins, tearing the weight from his throat. Urmi wasn’t supposed to be here.

Indrani was back in his hand as the first heads broke out of the darkness, tearing through the gate in a frenzied dash.

“Naz, calm down!” Aarti called, but her voice was almost drowned by the stifling wind.

Half a step. The shortest step.

The gate was closer.

The clouds fled, and the crimson hesitated.

He reached out to touch it.

To know it.

It was just a plague.

The suns called to him. He felt them as he felt Aarti.

Equals.

The wind stilled.

The city wall cracked.

Nazran slowed.

His breath—shallow.

A thousand thoughts, fleeting moments of the blade amongst dancing flowers, twisted between battles across cities and sparring amongst the trees at home.

Urmi’s eyes, so green and bright.

Now gone.

Because of the plague.

His sight melted the sensing glyph.

Indrani, the sojourn blade keened.

It fell from his grasp.

One hand, voiding the sky.

Crimson alone would die.

Cut.