The briefing dome was hushed except for the low thrum of data streams filtering across the central pylon. Light from a dozen suspended screens flickered across the worn grey floor and caught in the brushed gold of Willem’s ill-fitting uniform collar, which he had tugged straight half a dozen times already that morning. He had been delegated as chief spokesman of the Rumish interior ministry as he was one of the few available people fluent in Rothenian, German and English available to face the press. He was not necessarily comfortable with it, even with the military uniform to hide behind.
Will stood at the mic alone—still, contained—his hands clasped behind his back, his eyes on the lead screen. It was showing a topographic overview of the Lower Tigris Corridor, updated in real time with the little red slashes that marked hostile movement. Too many slashes and too fast. The Sassanid advance had not stopped for the night. And in the far right corner of the projection, where the names Rozhin and Afran had been pinned in quiet white, the map had not refreshed in nearly twelve minutes.
The reporters behind the arc-light barrier waited like hunting dogs held on a leash—dressed in optic-threaded coats, recorders palmed, eyes alert. They were from across the Oecumene: Strelsenermedia Eastnet, the New Athenian Freewire, AP, BBC, CBC, even a stream correspondent from the royal channel in distant Altai. None of them had seen combat. None of them would. Journalists were not being accredited to this battlefield. Will cleared his throat, voice low at first.
‘The Oecumenical Council confirms that as of 05:00 local time, enemy columns from the Sassanid Army Group Varak completed a second river crossing south of Tikrit, pressing against the Kurdish-Rumish central formation under Her Majesty Queen Rozhin and His Majesty King Afran.’
He paused. No noise. Only recorders blinking. ‘We also confirm that forward units of the Second Anatolian Light Infantry engaged with mechanised elements from Varak’s left wing three hours ago. Casualties are being assessed. There is no indication of collapse on the southern axis. All lines are holding.’
He looked down at his slate, fingers trembling faintly at the edge. His voice did not betray it. ‘Command has directed all inquiries concerning the disposition of Field Marshal Cornish to the Harran Joint Headquarters, where Supreme Command under the chair of His Imperial Majesty continues uninterrupted. Morale among field commanders remains high. Logistics corridors are secure. No withdrawal has been authorised.’
There was a flicker of murmured exchange in the press arc—nothing hostile, just the usual scent of unease. Will raised his eyes again. He could feel them watching him—not the reporters, not the aides behind the dome glass, but them: Rozhin and Afran, somewhere out there in that boiling stretch of earth and fire. He hadn’t heard from Afran directly in two days. He knew, rationally, that this was to be expected. That messages from the front were slow, controlled, and often relayed through secure drone packets or delegated pegasid adjutants. But none of that had stopped the dreams. Afran’s voice calling out from beneath rubble. Afran falling backwards into a river of fire and—the screen above him chimed.
Will blinked, frowned, and leaned forward. One of the minor aides—the English boy Ramsay from the uplink suite—was hurrying into the dome with a hardband slate in hand. His eyes were wide.
‘New drop from Harran, sir. Urgent. Uncoded priority two, but flagged for public dissemination.’ Will took the slate, scanned it—then read it again. He drew in a breath, slowly, deliberately. Then he stepped back to the mic.
‘We have just received a bulletin from Field Marshal Cornish’s command. I am authorised to release the following.’ The press corps snapped to attention.
Will kept his voice steady. Don’t grin, he told himself. Don’t break. But something in him was breaking—some dam of disbelief, some long coiled tension. ‘Hostile forces under Army Group Varak have been repelled along the central axis. We are told that their advance has been halted not by artillery or drone strikes—but by an emergent unit as yet unacknowledged in previous force structures.’ He looked up. ‘An autonomous wing known internally as the Centaurid Order.’
Now there was a murmur. Will allowed himself the smallest smile. ‘They have no heraldry. They appeared in the centre of the enemy formation at 06.15 local time, descending without air support from the highlands. A combination of winged centaurid strike lancers and shock cavalry forced the Sassanid vanguard to break formation within fifteen minutes. Forward drone positions have gone silent. As of 07.00, satellite telemetry shows the battlefield under our control, the Sassanid units are in full retreat, and their cataphract units have … dispersed … I repeat, dispersed.’ He glanced again at the aide’s slate. ‘Repeat: The Order of Centaurids has entered the war. Repeat: the line holds and the Persian onslaught has been reversed.’
This time, even the press corps cheered. And Will, stepping back from the mic, allowed himself one deep breath—and sent a silent message into the sky. Hold on, Afran. The storm is passing. And we’re still here. A nudge from Ramsay reminded him to say. ‘Command will make available archive footage of the Centaurid Order on exercise to you, which is authorised for broadcast.’
***
The air was thick with heat and smoke, veined with streamers of scorched ozone and the last trails of disrupted drone exhaust. Below them, the Tigris valley burned—not everywhere, not in total collapse, but in enough pockets to let the Centaurids thread the seams of chaos. The cataphracts were gone, scattered like dry leaves before a hot wind. Across the open desert, dark shapes galloped in retreat—armoured forms that once rolled forward with machine precision now overridden with fear, disorder blooming in their ranks like a plague.
Jules flew fast and low beside Prince Oakheart, his white tail streaming behind him like a banner. His flanks were still trembling from the Charge—the Moment, as the others had begun calling it, when something ancient and inhuman had surged through their ranks and broken the enemy line as cleanly as a snapped bone. He banked hard over a ridge and caught up to the prince, who was coasting easily, almost lazily, above the broken formations below. Oakheart’s expression was unreadable: amused, perhaps, but a gravity underneath, like a violin string just out of tune.
‘Did you know your dad could do a Sebenico?’ Jules shouted over the wind.
The prince glanced at him sideways, and that familiar crooked grin spread across his face. ‘Why d’you think I brought him?’
Jules let out a breathless laugh, adrenaline still bubbling in his veins. ‘I thought that was legend.’
‘Oh no,’ said Oakheart. ‘It’s famous that Empress Brunhild—my great-great-whatever—she turned an entire Turkish light division at Sebenico three centuries ago. Didn’t touch a weapon. Just stood at the crest of a hill and let the herd panic ripple out through the aether like a lightning strike.’
He gestured to the ruins of the Sassanid charge below them, where black banners lay abandoned among still-smoking crawlers. ‘Stands to reason my dad could too.’
‘They didn’t just panic,’ Jules muttered, squinting at the satellite pings glowing in his inner vision. ‘They broke. That’s centuries of battlefield discipline, gone.’
Oakheart's grin widened. ‘Bye-bye cataphracts. They’ll still be running when they get to Afghanistan.’
They flew on in silence for a while, the wind hissing under their wings, the ground below slowly resolving into orderly chaos—smoke columns, field medics, Centaurid signal flags.
Jules rolled slightly in the air and looked sideways at the prince. ‘So what was it? The herd-panic? Is it telepathy, or—?’
Oakheart shrugged, but there was something careful in the motion. ‘Not exactly. It’s older than telepathy. It’s not mind to mind, it’s blood to blood. You get a herd of pegasids—or centaurids, or anything with enough equine hot blood and memory—into resonance, and if the lead pulses terror or rage at the right pitch…’
‘…the whole plain sings it back,’ Jules finished quietly.
The prince nodded. ‘My father’s old. Old enough to remember why we were made. He doesn’t speak much, but when he flies into a charge, everyone hears him.’
Jules swallowed. He hadn’t even seen the King at the head of the wedge—but he had felt him, like a roar in his bones, like a voice beneath his ribs shouting run, run, run and the terror of it had lit his muscles before his mind caught up.
‘I didn’t think that was possible anymore,’ Jules said, almost to himself.
‘What? That we could win?’ Oakheart asked, amused.
‘No,’ Jules said. ‘That we were still like that. Still animals. Beautiful, terrifying animals.’
Oakheart glanced down at the battlefield. ‘Oh, Jules. You’re in the wrong army if that frightens you.’
Jules looked ahead—and smiled. ‘It doesn’t.’
***
The wind in the Tigris valley still stank of oil and scorched alloy when Rozhin’s command column reached the ridgeline. Her banner-bearer paused first, then the others fanned out behind her—armoured Kurdish guards, aides in dust-caked field silks, the horse-archers of Mosul. And at the very centre, rising in her saddle, Rozhin drew her mount to a halt and stared down at what had been the enemy centre.
A silence had fallen. Not the silence of peace—no. This was the stunned, post-coital quiet of something immense that had passed through and was now gone, leaving only wreckage and adrenaline behind.
A hundred feet to her right, her son reined in his lighter charger, sweat soaking his undershirt, his eyes sharp beneath the rim of his helm. King Afran of Rum did not speak immediately. He was too focused, too intelligent for that. His gaze scanned the plain like a general—but his thoughts, she knew, were not entirely tactical. They rarely were, when it came to miracles.
‘Where are the Centaurids now?’ Rozhin asked finally, her voice level. An aide responded at once. ‘My lady, the last drone overpass showed them circling eastward in three squadrons, moving in discipline—no sign of pursuit or collapse. They left no wounded.’
Afran glanced over. ‘No dead either?’ ‘No, Your Majesty. Not a body.’
Rozhin dismounted slowly. Her joints ached from the long battlefield ride, but she took care to move with sovereign control. She stepped to the crest of the ridge and let the full aftermath unroll before her: the shattered ranks, the abandoned cataphract lances, the faint line of scorch where fire had clearly burst through the Sassanid drones like a comet’s tail.
No human army could have done this. Not without months of preparation. Not without loss.
And yet.
Afran came to stand his mount beside her. For a moment they were simply mother and son, the sun throwing long shadows from their figures as if trying to measure their legacy before history wrote it in blood. ‘You saw them?’ she asked. He nodded. ‘Close?’
He hesitated. ‘Not close enough.’ That surprised her. Afran wasn’t a boy prone to countenance fantasy over reason. But his voice had a raw edge now, as though he had glimpsed something he couldn’t quite make sense of.
‘They were like a thunderstorm. They didn’t move like us. They dropped from the sky with no warning—no signal, no noise—and they just burned through the Sassanian line. I saw one rise over a crawler and scream. Just scream. The cataphracts turned and ran before they were even struck.’
Rozhin raised an eyebrow. ‘One scream broke the elite of the Shah’s cavalry?’
‘Apparently it didn’t need to be human,’ Afran said quietly. ‘It needed to be truly equine.’
She folded her arms.
‘There was a name,’ he added. ‘Passed along the backchannels. Whiteblaze.’
She froze. ‘What?’
‘I heard it three times. Field comms. King Whiteblaze. Another of the Centaurid leads is calling himself Prince Oakheart.’
They stood together in silence again. Then Afran added, more gently, ‘I’ve read the files, Mum. The restricted ones. The Nursery. Eden. The Petakh Protocols. They’re real, aren’t they?’ Rozhin said nothing. He continued, ‘They’re not just centaurids. They’re from there, the World Beyond, aren’t they? The ones you and Cornish, and maybe Emperor Rudolf, kept to yourselves.’
She turned her eyes back to the plain. A red sun hovered now above the smoke. ‘You don’t lie to children,’ she said softly. ‘You protect them.’
‘Until they’re kings,’ Afran replied.
‘Yes,’ Rozhin said. ‘Then you tell them the truth.’ She laid a hand briefly on his shoulder. Her grip was not tender. It was bracing.
‘We’re going to have to tell the public something,’ he said.
Rozhin nodded. ‘Not everything. But something. Centaurids we just might get away with.’ And from the edge of the sky, the first Centaurid silhouettes wheeled eastward again, vanishing into the haze, already legend before they’d truly arrived.
***
Dusk settled over the Tigris plain—thick, slow, scented faintly of blood and cooling sand. The encampment east of the breach was provisional, hastily erected by the Rumish forward sappers, but it had the rough intimacy of victory. Fires crackled in half-dug pits. Horses blew through their nostrils and turned in their hobbles. The wind had fallen still, and the stars were beginning to burn through the curls of smoke.
King Afran lay in his cot inside the command tent, half undressed, one boot off, the other dangling from his foot like an afterthought. His undershirt clung to him with dried sweat, and his dark hair curled damp against his brow. The lamps had been dimmed. He had sent his staff away. It had been a long day, and he needed—quiet. Or rather, he needed one voice.
He reached for the field terminal, pulled it onto his lap, and keyed in the secure streamcode.
TO: WILLEM MARTINOVIC — BASE HQ, SARDIS SECTOR
He paused.
The silence in the tent was not empty. It was full of memory. Will’s voice across a pillow. Will’s hand, warm and rough, cradling the back of his neck. Will’s ridiculous, brilliant mouth reciting poetry with one eye closed against the light. Afran swallowed. He had not touched himself in three days. Not since the Charge.
He began to type.
Willem. I miss you. We saw something today. Something not in the manuals. I know now that you were right—there’s another order to the world, something older than armies and Elphbergs. They broke the Sassanid line like snapping twigs. They didn’t ask for thanks. They didn’t even stay. One of them was called Whiteblaze. Sound familiar?
He hesitated. Then added, more quietly:
I miss you. It’s stupid to write something so blindingly obvious, but I do. Not in the usual way—not just the hunger. Though God, you know I’d sell half of Rum to have you kneel at my cot right now and press your mouth to the inside of my thigh like you do. But also the sound of your laugh. The way you hold your breath when you lie next to me. The way you look at me when I talk too fast and you just—wait. Are you safe? I keep watching your broadcast on loop. You said ‘The line holds.’ My heart breaks every time you smile like that.
He let his hand rest for a moment against his belly, the heat there a mix of memory and wanting.
Tomorrow we ride east. I’ll write again if I’m alive. I think I will be. Yours. Always. FRANZI xxx In fire, in storm.
He thumbed send, then leaned back and let the silence return.
Outside the tent, the night shifted. The Centaurids were out there somewhere in the dark, camped who-knew-where, their great winged bodies folded like secrets, their eyes dreaming god-knows-what.
But Afran’s mind, in that moment, was with one boy: a boy in a uniform too big for his frame, standing in front of a microphone with all the courage in the world, saying the line holds when what he really meant was: Come back to me, Franzi.
***
The uplink suite was never quiet. Even in the small hours it ticked and pulsed with low-band drone telemetry and pulsed server syncs, the background hum of a war being stitched together in real time. But at 03:40 Sardis time, there was no one else in the room—just Willem Martinovic, barefoot, hoodie thrown over his uniform shirt, nursing a cup of black tea that was cooling rapidly in his indifference.
He had wandered here without really meaning to. The dome had shut down for the night, the last reporter's echo fading under the bulkhead doors, and sleep had proven a distant rumour. The screen still showed footage of the Centaurid Charge in loops—a half-dozen centaurid lancers emerging from a burning hillcrest, wings flared, halberds in full arc. They didn’t move like anything made for war. They moved like war itself.
Willem had almost fallen asleep in his chair when the message pinged.
PRIORITY 2 // ENCRYPTED PERSONAL
FROM: FIELD UNIT ROZHIN-01 // CALLSIGN: BLACK MOUNTAIN
He sat up, heart skipping. His fingers hovered briefly before he tapped to decrypt.
Afran’s words unfolded on the screen in clean, lean font. No encryption gloss, no filter. Just him. A strange tension twisted in Willem’s chest as he read.
I miss you…
He read it again. And then again.
The rest of the message—the battlefield poetry, the sex-drenched longing, the curious grief folded into every comma—worked its way under Willem’s skin like heat.
His tea was cold. He forgot to drink it. He took a breath and toggled to compose. The keys clicked softly beneath his fingers.
Afran—
The Order’s not on any roll because the Oecumene never declassified the existence of the Nursery Planet. Which, for the record, you weren’t supposed to know about yet. But yes—King Whiteblaze is real. So’s their legendary Empress. And so’s the king’s scream that broke the Persian charge.
And so are you.
He stopped. Backspaced the last line. Rewrote it.
So are we.
You’re not the only one dreaming. I sleep with your voice in my head. I pretend every time I see the dome mic that you’re on the other side of the lens, arms folded, grinning like a bastard because you know I’m trying not to blush. As for the thigh thing… you have no idea how hard it is to be professional knowing the curve of your hip better than my own palm.
He smiled faintly, embarrassed.
Come back alive, storm-child. The world hasn’t earned you yet. But I have.
—W.
He didn’t reread it. He hit send.
Then, without quite meaning to, he let his hand rest on the terminal, head bowed forward against it. The cold glow of the screen lit the ridge of his cheekbone, the hollow at his throat.
Outside, in the dark Sardisian hills, a storm was forming. In the uplink suite, he whispered Afran’s name under his breath. And he felt the warmth rise between his thighs with the memory of touch.
***
Sylvie Masson, former small-time Shropshire drug-dealer and sex-worker, put her latest foal to her breast. He was her third son by Whiteblaze and she currently was nursing the cheeky little brat in human form. She was thinking about calling him Kevin, a little mischievously. It was her grandfather’s name, the only male in her birth family she had any good relationship with, but the kid would probably end up being called something dull and MyLittlePony like Twinklehoof or Proudtail. She sometimes despaired of her people. But she loved them for all that.
She was in centaur form on a hill crest overlooking the blue waters of Lake Beyşehir with her centaurid court ladies in attendance. All in all, she very much liked being a queen, the deference, the effortless respect she had, the powerful body, but most of all, she liked the organising. And she had a whole kingdom now to organise. For the Kingdom of Rum had reached a treaty by which the former Beyşehir National Park was recognised as the ancestral domain of the Centaurid Nation which was to be an independent state in a mutual defence alliance with it.
Sylvie was still adjusting her son’s latch when a golden-haired boy came trotting up the hillside path, not quite barefoot, but in soft Rothenian cavalry boots that had clearly never seen mud. His shirt was open to the navel and unbuttoned at the sleeves, cuffs fluttering in the breeze. He looked indecently pleased with himself.
‘Maxim,’ she said, not looking up. ‘I thought I told you I’d only talk to you if you came as an equine.’
The golden boy gave an exaggerated sigh and raised his arms to the sky. A shimmer went through him, and with that disturbing quiet pop of rearranged biology, the boy became a white centaurid, his great feathered wings now furled but twitching with anticipation.
‘Better?’ he asked, tail flicking.
Sylvie pursed her lips. ‘You’re still preening, and you’re checking out my ladies for an admiration fix.’
‘And you’re still lactating,’ he replied with a smirk, settling himself on the turf beside her, wings folding neatly. ‘Shall we call it even?’ Her ladies tittered, though not too much. One of them offered him a peeled grape.
Sylvie gave him a sidelong look. ‘I wondered when you’d be along. I hear more here in Rum than you’d have thought. And that nice boy Willem Martinovic is my liaison with the local government. He’s very knowledgeable, and he feeds me stories. One I noticed a couple of days ago was a scandalous leak from an English public school where a foreign royal had been caught in flagrante with his headteacher’s daughter, who had unwisely shared some very compromising pictures with her friends.’
Maxim squirmed. ‘She was unhappy and depressed. I cheered her up.’
‘She is fifteen, and fortunately not pregnant after what I gather was a very passionate affair. I know that because the contents of her phone were hacked and have made it on to some very dubious sites.’
‘And I’m seventeen. It’s dodgy maybe, but not illegal.’
‘Maxxie. I knew you were coming. You always circle back to me when you’ve fucked up. You’re on the run from your parents. You want reassurance that your fuck-up isn’t fatal, and I’m the reassurance that your heedless sexual freebooting needn’t necessarily turn into a personal and national disaster.’
‘Sylvie, love, you’re one of three species depending on the day,’ he said sweetly. ‘We all carry our burdens.’
She rolled her eyes and shifted the baby, who had fallen asleep at her breast. ‘What do you want, Maxim? You didn’t come all the way out here to make trouble and eat fruit. Your brother Leo is a better counsellor than me. That boy is seriously bright and he isn’t afraid of you.’
‘Those are your virtues too. And these days you are a distinguished and visionary queen as well. I wanted to ask what kind of kingdom you think you’re building.’
That did surprise her. For a moment, her expression softened. ‘You mean—besides a stable one?’
‘Ha.’ He reached out and gently patted the baby’s fuzzy head. ‘I mean—what’s it for? The Kingdom of Rum, your centaurid domain here, the whole Oecumene mess we’re half-cobbling together. Do you want a realm for your people? Or a realm that changes people?’
Sylvie considered him for a long time. ‘You’re asking if I’m a nation-builder or a revolutionary.’
‘Exactly.’
She leaned back on her powerful hindquarters and closed her eyes against the high sun. ‘You know, before I met Whiteblaze, I thought changing my life meant giving up. Settling. Keeping my head down. But now I have three sons with hooves and tails and blood hotter than anything human. I have a court of mares who come to me for answers. And I find I like answering.’ He said nothing, just watched her with that same annoying smile. ‘So no,’ she continued. ‘I’m not trying to change the world. I’m trying to make sure my boys have one to grow up in. You want revolutions? Start your own.’
Maxxie looked briefly, uncharacteristically serious. ‘I did. But it turned into a mythical equine kingdom in real time, with a very sexy queen who’s an honest friend.’
Sylvie chuckled. ‘Then maybe the trick is to govern like you still want to burn everything down.’ They were silent for a moment, the wind off the lake ruffling his wings and her mane. ‘Kevin,’ she said abruptly.
‘Sorry?’
‘The brat’s name. I’m calling him Kevin. You can have him in your vision-thing later, once he can talk.’
He grinned. ‘That’s actually perfect. You know, Saint Kevin was said to have slept with a blackbird in his hand for a week without moving so as not to wake the bird up.’
‘Well,’ she sniffed. ‘This one just pissed on me.’
Copyright © 2025 Michael Arram
Posted 25 October 2025