The Witch Field — Acceptable Loss

On the surface, The Witch Field – Acceptable Loss is a military fantasy novel set in a world based on the pike-and-shot period (ca. 1500–1650). An age that blends the best aspects of medieval warfare, like plate-armoured heavy cavalry, with large formations of infantrymen fighting with pikes and muskets. Artillery was the shiny new toy in this world, used to batter down fortresses that, in turn, had to adapt their construction. Warfare increasingly relied on cohesion and discipline, and on the early modern period’s most underrated participants: ditches and trenches. In this new world of modern wonders, weapons suddenly brought death from hundreds of metres away, killing even the most chivalrous knight in a single hit.

The bravery of one soldier was, seemingly, not as important anymore. Honour and bravery gave way to mass formations and warfare built around the strength of the many. And that power—belief—is physical in the world of The Witch Field. When enough men believe the same thing, stand together in formation, and fight cohesively, the witch field forms. Witches shape it to improve the men’s performance and keep them steady in the face of bouncing cannonballs, musket fire, and terrifying beasts. The power is limited, though. If kept active for too long without release, the field ruptures and kills those beneath it, so a witch must release it eventually. This creates a conundrum in warfare. When is the right moment to release the field and risk the men fleeing the battlefield? The Covenant’s new doctrine promises an answer to this very question. It creates armies that run on fear and exhaustion. Covenant commanders have every reason to want it, whatever it costs the soldiers.

Beneath the battles, this is a novel about friendship: friendships that have yet to form between people who must learn to rely on each other, and older friendships in which people struggle to reach somebody who is truly broken and fatalistic—and to find a way to live with them. Years of affection often only make it more difficult to understand and care for somebody who has stopped caring about themselves.

The novel’s main plot engine is its mystery, explored through the eyes of veteran practitioners. They already understand the witch field, and the narration takes some of that knowledge for granted. The reader must piece together its workings from clues and observations, learning the basics while the characters try to understand behaviour that should be impossible. The field can be observed and measured, but their findings increasingly challenge what they thought they knew. Their discoveries lead them through archives, archaeological sites, and governmental hearings.

The changing viewpoints also show the system at work while the investigation unfolds. Soldiers experience what the new methods do to them; engineers see what their calculations can achieve. Officials decide what can be authorised and what will enter the record. Each understands a different part of what is happening. The reader must make the connections, following both the mystery and the decisions of the people caught up in it.

Lastly, this is also a novel about systems: about the institution as a monstrous entity, how people sustain it, and how serving it changes them. The story follows the people making the Covenant’s methods possible. Not all of them are evil. In fact, the question of what evil is runs through this trilogy. Is an evil act a decision made by the person committing it, or something arising from circumstance? From a system driving people towards certain decisions, closing moral doors behind them until they can no longer go back?

The Witch Field — Acceptable Loss is also about the engineers, clerks, and government officials who look the other way or are driven by the belief that they are entirely correct about how to win a war, justifying everything with the prospect of victory. These are not heroes, but they could be.