"Ah. Technically I'm not a wizard." 

"You've got a wizard contract and, respectfully, every single person I've ever heard use the word 'technically' like that is a wizard." 

He's known some song-sorcerers to do it too but it's different. They say it like they're about to tell you a cool fact and it has not once ever in their lives occurred to them that anyone else might not be interested in every single cool fact they've ever heard. 

"...admittedly you sound slightly less like you're correcting me because I'm very stupid than the average war-wizard does, which I must say I appreciate," he adds, wryly. 

That gets a startled giggle. "Okay, yes, guilty as charged, certainly I am an academic. It's a different spell tradition, though. ... which I will not tell you about in detail unless you actually want to hear about it?" 

Hm.

...

...

Arguments against: foreign, Evil, objectively less Splendour than most of the serious candidates he's been introduced to at parties which probably reduces sorcery chance, wizards aren't known to be very enthusiastic about retiring to raise children, his father will be furious. 

Arguments for: deliberately defected from the white witches of Irrisen to come fight Tar-Baphon instead, passed all the security checks they obviously ran on her about that backstory, not immediately gratingly annoying, his father will be furious, and also he kind of wants to follow her around looking at her like she's a painting. Which is probably not because he's enchanted, see again items 1 and 2. 

...

...

"...I would actually love to hear about it over dinner sometime?" 

(sometime in the next few years...) 

The Farseer (the soldiers of their company have started calling her that instead of Wizard, as it is more technically correct which is the best kind of correct according to Wizards, and they are willing to indulge their Wizard when nearly all of them has each personally experienced having the crushing realization that they're about to die of being gutted/shot/lifedrained/etcetera in the next two seconds and then waking up stabilized because she just so happened to be standing exactly right next to them in particular) is staring into the middle distance, apparently ignoring her surroundings.

This is basically normal behavior, so no one is particularly alarmed by it, but they're all keeping a bit of an extra eye, because sometimes she surfaces from witchtrance and says something terrifying like 'eight seconds to fireball strike on our position, hands on me for resist energy' and they all have to move right quick. 

They're formed up with the main body of the army today, moving slowly into position for some grand strategic objective no one within several rank steps is cleared to know anything about.

Marshall probably knows (for values of "know" including "guessed from ambient context, using witchcraft intuitive understanding of how armies work"), but he's relatedly very scrupulous these days about not speculating aloud after the incident with almost getting court-martialed over his information state closely resembling the results of espionage.

Avaryne, who has been done casting for hours, finishes quietly counting time from the last bell, and says loudly, "jump in two," causing most everyone around her to snap to attention. 

(Her hour-long trance yesterday was about what spells to prepare this morning. 

The one she cast earlier today was about when.) 

Marshall nods briskly, pulls a wand[1] from his belt, and taps the cleric of Aroden standing next to him with it. 

[1] Precise nature of generic buff stack intentionally ambiguous. They are doing whatever makes sense in accordance with strategically efficient use of budget. 

"What?" says the cleric, who was assigned to them last week and had been a cleric for about two days before that. He doesn't see any signs of a fight starting. "Aren't we supposed to wait until confirmed engagem--" 

"Round buffs, now." 

Okay, sure, if the wizard and the deputy are on the same page it's somebody else's problem whether this strategically indicated. He starts casting.

Marshall taps himself as well, puts the wand away, and settles his lance back into position. 

A half-dozen soldiers, the ones immediately to the left of the cleric, are visited by the by-now-familiar sensation of knowing extremely and precisely where they should be standing; they all brace themselves. 

A gargoyle swoops out of the darkness, aiming for the baby cleric, about eleven seconds after Avaryne's announcement.

(It's quite difficult to run an army and treat the identities of your clerics as classified strategic information, and if you are Tar-Baphon, naturally it is useful to you to make sure Aroden sees every potential new cleric as having a high chance of immediately dying and wasting the budget, but not so high a chance he just stops doing it instead of spending budget at a painful actuarial surcharge!) 

At twelve seconds, the gargoyle is midair several feet from its target.

The prewarned martials all smoothly sidestep out of the way. 

A magical spear of ice bursts from the ground directly into their unwise ambusher, crunching through stone skin like it's ordinary flesh.

It hits the ground, squawking in annoyed offense, but it is not some poor infantry that is completely disabled by a grease or wizard whose concentration can be disrupted[2], it can just jump right back into the air and-- 

[2] In the modern era, of course, Fly is not a concentration spell. However, this not yet being true explains why Iomedae's Third Act (currently scheduled for a few years in the future) will involve riding a griffon when she certainly has access at that level to commonly used 3rd circle arcane buffs.

Did somebody say 'take a move action through the threat range of this x3-critical reach weapon'? 

Decidedly unmurdered and suddenly feeling like he deeply understands why these guys all love their Wizard, the young cleric looks around him at the undead swarming, takes up his shiny new silvered sword, and plunges into the fray.