The incantations he used were gruelling and it wouldn't take much for them to go wrong. The slightest slip in the flow of syllables would be enough to render them ineffective - or, worse, make them function in some unexpected way. He was playing with fire, and that tended to mean someone getting burned. Semper was used to working in the peace and calm of his own laboratory, not on the front-line of a war where the guns were never silent. But eventually he was done. He could only hope he hadn't made a mistake. And he also hoped - most fervently - that he would never have cause to use the ensorcelled scrap of cloth and find out.
At five in the morning, Semper trudged through the cold mud of the trenches to report his readiness to Featherstone. The Major was still sitting in his dugout, as i
