Rillirin gripped her spear in both hands and waited for the next, not stepping from the line and exposing herself. Dalli and Tessa were doing most of the work, but Rillirin did her best and didn’t die. The Raiders flung themselves at the Wolves, and the Wolves gave, shifting back as a pack.
Rillirin caught a glimpse of Crys in the front line to her left, droplets of blood spattering one side of his face. His sword would have winked heroically in the sun as he held it aloft if it wasn’t so bloodstained. But then he roared something and his Hundred wheeled, neatly splitting a few hundred Mireces off from the rest of their line. The Rankers moved like a shoal of fish under his command.
The Wolves stopped retreating and the Mireces came on, and then faltered when they realised they were surrounded. Rillirin felt her lips peel back from her teeth and she screamed a wordless challenge, advancing eagerly in step with the others.
Nine years of hatred, of fear and humiliation and shame, bubbled up and overflowed, and Rillirin shrieked at them again, daring them to face her.
Next to her Dalli parried a sword, the blade thunking into the spear’s shaft near the tip. She reversed the arc and whipped the butt forward between the man’s legs, practically lifting him off the ground. He whooped in a breath and fell like a sack of shit.
‘Fuck you, Mireces,’ Rillirin yelled at him. ‘Fuck you and your mothers.’ She slammed her spear into his ribcage and pinned him to the mud. Fuck you.
TARA
Third moon, eighteenth year of the reign of King Rastoth
Blood Pass Valley, Gilgoras Mountains, Cattle Lands
Bodies, dozens of them, most in Mireces blue, twisted in death beneath the twisting branches of the trees. No one else. No signs of life.
Cora kept on running so Tara put in a final spurt and grabbed the strap of her satchel, dragged her into the leaf litter and slapped a hand over her mouth. To her credit, Cora lay still, her only movement to shift her mouth away from Tara’s hand so she could suck in air.
When she was sure it was safe, Tara rolled into a crouch and drew her sword. At her side, Cora pulled two knives, one in each hand. Tara was past being surprised by her. She held her fingers to her lips, eyes quartering the glade. Out in the brightness of the valley she heard a trumpet sound the rotation. First Thousand out, Second Thousand in. Gods, rotating already? How long had they been fighting? The Rank would be entrenched, committed now. Getting out just got a whole lot harder.
For the first time in – what? – two days, Tara felt in control. She slid through the trees, barely able to feel her feet any more they were so bloody, bruised and torn. She’d made the mistake of taking her boots off when they paused in the middle of the night. Couldn’t see what they looked like – no fire, of course – but the cool breeze on them and a gentle exploration had revealed blisters of truly epic proportions, most burst at least once, and three loose toenails she’d just ripped off to spare the agony.
Cora was a comforting warmth at her back and Tara didn’t worry about someone creeping up behind her. The girl’s senses were keener than an owl’s. The light grew as they approached the valley, the grassy sward painfully bright. Squinting, Tara examined the valley and the battle, found the command post and realised they had a clear run straight to it. She looked back. ‘One more run?’ she breathed.
Cora was watching behind them but she gave a brief nod, reached out without looking and found Tara’s arm, tapping it twice. Ready when you are.
Tara tapped three times in response – right now – and set off, Cora her smaller, faster shadow. They burst from the trees and headed for the isolated hillock, Cora outdistancing her soon enough, but that was fine now. That was absolutely fine.
MACE
Third moon, eighteenth year of the reign of King Rastoth
Blood Pass Valley, Gilgoras Mountains, Cattle Lands
Dorcas had sounded the rotation to allow Mace to extricate himself from the battle and get back to the command post. He stood there now, arms heavy as lead, a vicious ache spiralling through his skull from the lump on the back of his head. His helmet was dented, too.
Fire arrows flickered through the sky towards the Mireces’ siege engines. They weren’t alight yet, but you never knew your luck.
‘General. General!’ a thin voice screeched.
He’d heard enough men screaming for him already today, and paid this one little attention. Wasn’t coming from the battle.
‘Mace! Mace! Fucking Mace!’ That one penetrated. He glanced down the hill and did a double-take at the little girl labouring towards him. She was very red, elbows and knees pumping as she drove up the slope. Behind her, Tara slogged uphill, flapping a hand and urging her on.
‘General Mace Koridam?’ the child gasped, her hands on her knees, thin stomach heaving in and out. She spat out a mouthful of hair and wiped at the spittle on her chin.
‘Yes, I’m Mace. Who are you?’
‘General, Tara has news. Five days ago, just after dawn, an army of several thousand Mireces came down the Gil-beside Road. Tara was there; she saw it all. Only survivor.’
She heaved for breath and Mace found himself holding his. He felt his staff crowding his back, their dumbstruck silence.
‘They overwhelmed the sentries and Major Costas’s Hundred, but not before he sent Tara to warn you. They’re coming north, hoping to catch you unawares. A crab-claw. No more than half a day behind, maybe a little more. But we ran pretty fast.’
Mace’s mouth was hanging open. The girl hacked a harsh, dry cough.
‘What are you talking about? How can there be another force? This is the largest army of Raiders we’ve ever seen. How can there possibly be more?’
‘I don’t know,’ the girl grated. ‘The Mireces were going to run into our scout camp on their way here. My mother sent me. She said I had to warn you, to make you believe somehow.’ She swayed on her feet and Mace steadied her as Tara finally made her way to the hill’s summit. ‘You do believe me, don’t you?’ the girl asked, her eyes big and bright with sudden tears.
‘Yes,’ Mace said, ‘I think I believe you. But I don’t understand how this could be possible.’ His fingers tightened on her shoulder. My entire Rank is committed. All five thousand men. There’s no reserve, no force left in the forts. There’s no one to call on. We’re fucked.
‘Everything she says is true, General,’ Tara panted, then dropped to one knee and vomited thin, watery bile into the grass. She wiped her mouth and stood back up. ‘Five days, just after dawn. Major Costas would’ve held them off for as long as he could, but there were just too many.’ She put her arm around Cora and the girl clung to her, exhausted.
‘Lim Broadsword approaches,’ Dorcas murmured and pointed down the hill.
‘Mace,’ Lim shouted as he jogged up, a bloody bundle clutched to his chest, ‘we have a serious – Cora! What are you doing here? Where’s your mother?’
‘Uncle Lim,’ the girl cried and burst into tears, running to him. ‘There’s Raiders coming down the Gil-beside; they’re heading this way. And Gilda was with the scouts.’
Lim’s face paled. ‘Hush child, hush. Freya will have got them out. You know your mother. Hush now. Here, drink.’ He handed her his waterskin and kissed the top of her head, then straightened and looked Mace in the eye.
I didn’t offer her a drink. She’s run gods know how far in the last few days and I didn’t even give her some water. Mace could feel himself blushing, and it didn’t help when Tara grabbed the skin from Lim’s hands and emptied it down her throat.
‘This confirms it,’ Lim said. He dropped the cloth covering the bundle and revealed a human head. Mace jerked backwards. ‘Look, he’s an old man. His hair and beard have been dyed to make him look more youthful, but look at his wrinkles, the missing teeth. Must be sixty, maybe seventy. They all are.’
‘The men coming down the Gil-beside weren’t old,’ Tara said. ‘They looked like the best warriors the Mireces have.’
‘Then this battle is a dive
rsion,’ Lim said, ‘a ruse to weaken us so the reinforcements can finish us off. Rillirin says these men are likely blood sacrifices who’ve agreed to sell their lives as dearly as possible for their gods. That’s why they’re not retreating, why they’re being pushed back but aren’t breaking, aren’t running. Their sole mission is to distract us until Corvus can get here.’
‘But why?’ Tara asked. ‘Why not just send everything they’ve got against us at once? Why the subterfuge?’
‘They’ve never fought a pitched battle before. They can’t be sure they’ll win, so they weaken us with expendable warriors and send in their elite afterwards to mop up any survivors.’
‘What do you suggest?’ Mace asked in a voice devoid of emotion. Has any general ever fucked up as monumentally as this? I’ll be vilified through the ages. If there are any ages to come. We’re out of men and out of time. My Rank is going to die.
‘We can’t contain a second force,’ Colonel Bors muttered behind Mace. ‘We must evacuate. Or – or parlay, negotiate a truce.’
‘An immediate, full-scale retreat. It’s our only option,’ Abbas added. The wind brought the sounds of the battle clear to Mace’s ears. Screams and the clang of metal, the thump and whine of the trebuchets firing.
‘We can’t fight a retreat all the way to the forts,’ Dorcas said, blood on his lips, his fingernails chewed to the quick. ‘There’s nowhere to go. We have to defeat this army today and prepare to meet the other tomorrow.’
‘We’ve no reinforcements,’ Lim snapped, ‘while the Mireces have a second army. We have to disengage.’
‘A retreat would be a blow to the Rank’s morale.’
‘Fuck their morale, Dorcas,’ Lim snapped, his arm around Cora. ‘It’s their lives I’m more concerned with.’ He met Mace’s eyes with a challenge and a plea. ‘I’ve never let you down before. My people have never let you down. Don’t let us down now.’
Arguments rose behind Mace, voices buzzing in his ears like bees and making as much sense. ‘They won’t let us retreat. As soon as they know we’re making for the forts it’ll become a rout. Without cavalry, we can’t protect our rear,’ he said as he looked down at the swirl and crimp of battle below. The horses wouldn’t stand a slow walk burdened with an armoured man, let alone a cantering retreat. And they only had a few hundred anyway.
‘We have to win,’ Tara said. The voices faded. ‘We have to win today. Now. We win and then we run for the forts before the other army arrives.’
‘They’ll besiege us,’ Dorcas said.
‘Or they’ll leave a force just big enough to contain us. We’ve got supplies in the forts. We can rest and eat while they get hungry and then we can sally and slaughter them.’
‘They might just pass us by,’ Lim said. ‘It’s Rilporin they want, the alliance with Rivil. Either way we rest and then we follow them. Live to fight another day.’
‘Half a day behind?’ Mace clarified and Tara shrugged.
‘Well, we didn’t wait around to check, but they were fast-moving. I wouldn’t think they’d be much more than that behind.’
He rolled his head on his shoulders, loosening muscles stiffening from the fight. ‘Then we need to win in the next few hours if we’re to have any chance of reaching the forts. Sound the all-out.’
‘What?’ Dorcas and Abbas said together.
‘You heard me. Sound the all-out, put on your helmets and lead your Thousands into battle. They’re not breaking and they’re not retreating. We send in everyone and everything we have. We’re going to annihilate them.’
Lim, Dorcas and his staff stared at him, dumbstruck. ‘Do it,’ he snarled and his officers sprinted for their horses.
CORVUS
Third moon, year 995 since the Exile of the Red Gods
Northern Wolf Lands, Gilgoras foothills, Rilporian border
‘Are you the high priestess of your goddess?’ Gilda was silent. ‘I am high priestess, the Blessed One. I was chosen when I had eighteen summers. My predecessor picked me from all the acolytes before she went to the sacred fire. Is it as much an honour for you as it is for me to dedicate your life to your gods? How often does the Dancer speak to you, command you? I commune with the Dark Lady often. The power of Her voice reminds me constantly of my little, little place in the world. Is it the same with you?’
Corvus bit his tongue to stifle laughter. Lanta’s little place in the scheme of things? Oh aye, modest as a week-old fawn, that one, shy as a dormouse.
‘I’m not playing “my gods are better than your gods” with you, woman. Your hands are still red with the blood of innocents. There’s nothing to say to you that you don’t already hear in your nightmares.’
He saw Lanta’s back stiffen. Was there something in that remark? Had the Rilporian touched a nerve? Interesting.
The land was nearly flat now as they threaded between the trees. They were out of the foothills and should only be a few miles from the plain. They’d found the River Gil the day before and were following it to the grasslands. From Watch Ford, it was a day’s march to Watchtown and vengeance. Corvus’s stomach fizzed with excitement.
‘Why is it you think your gods didn’t intervene?’ Lanta pressed Gilda. ‘If those people were as innocent as you say, why didn’t the Dancer save them? Or fill them with holy fire so that they slaughtered us? Why did She command you into our power?’
‘The Dancer never commands,’ Gilda said. ‘She teaches us independence and free will, patience and pleasure, and allows us to live our lives beneath Her guidance. We learn strength and resourcefulness from Her Son, the Fox God.’
‘And how does She guide?’ Lanta asked, tasting the unfamiliar word. They seemed so similar and yet different. Both walked tall, both sure of themselves, but Lanta wielded her power like a whip, whereas the old woman … it sat inside her, coiled and patient, to be used only in the direst need. Corvus was impressed. Apparently the old bitch didn’t count this as direst need, even though she knew they were walking towards the destruction of everything she loved.
‘Through encouraging us to work as a community, as family, through dreams sometimes, through silence and stillness. Her Son teaches us wit and ingenuity. When we sit beside the pools in the temples, or beside any running water or even beneath a canopy of leaves, that sense of timeless peace present in the trickle or the rustle is Her Voice. Have you ever seen the ocean?’ Gilda interrupted her own spell, bringing Corvus out of his reveries. Lanta had the grace to shake her head.
‘When I was a girl, to complete my training we made the trek through Listre to the ocean. A body of water without end, without limit, the sun sparkling on the waves, waves big enough to crash against the shore like the great ripples of grass the wind makes across the plain in late spring. That was when my soul opened and I knew the Dancer completely for the first time. That was my initiation. I sat on the shore for a day and a night and a dawn, watching the changing shapes and colours, the sounds it made, and I heard Her talk, and I listened.’
Was that wistfulness in the curve of Lanta’s cheek? ‘What was your initiation like?’ Gilda said, breaking the spell again.
‘After the old priestess chose me, I was honoured to perform her sacrifice, tying the sacred knots, bringing the sacred flame and setting it on her feet. She was transported with ecstasy.’
Gilda snorted. ‘Sounds like she was transported with agony. So, that will be your end too, will it? Burnt to death by an ambitious young woman, someone who will climb over your still-hot corpse and into your king’s bed to try and scrape herself some power?’
‘It isn’t like that,’ Lanta snarled. ‘It’s sacred.’
And there isn’t any climbing into my bed. More’s the fucking pity.
‘And that’s how your gods talk to you, is it? Through pain?’
‘But of course. What other way is there?’ Lanta seemed genuinely surprised and Corvus had to remind himself it was all she’d ever known. Not that he’d ever heard the Dancer in his sixteen years in Rilpor.
Gilda put her hand on the Blessed One’s arm and drew her to a halt. She raised her face to the budding branches overhead. Corvus slowed and stopped, curious. ‘Listen,’ Gilda whispered. ‘What can you hear?’
Lanta rolled her eyes. ‘Birds, the river, the creak of branches.’
Gilda sighed with pleasure. ‘That’s the Dancer talking to you, if you can learn to listen.’ She closed her eyes, smile beatific. Lanta screwed up her face but she was listening, straining to hear more than just the sounds of nature.
‘There’s nothing there, old woman,’ she said eventually and there was irritation in her voice, but not enough to mask the disappointment.
Gilda inhaled a deep, slow breath and opened her eyes again, turning that smile on Lanta and on Corvus. ‘You just have to listen,’ she repeated.
‘Sire? We’ve reached the treeline,’ one of Corvus’s scouts said, breaking the moment. ‘Half a mile to the plain, maybe an hour’s walk to Watch Ford.’
‘And then a day to Watchtown,’ Corvus said, his voice heavy with malice. Gilda’s smile faded like the sun tumbling from the sky.
DOM
Third moon, eighteenth year of the reign of King Rastoth
Blood Pass Valley, Gilgoras Mountains, Cattle Lands
Dom danced right, blocking low to protect his left leg, spun on his left heel lunged back in and sheathed his sword in the man’s armpit, dragged it clear and hacked off the foot of the Mireces to his left. The man sucked in a breath and squealed high through his nose, took a step forward, leaving his foot behind, and brought his weight down on the stump.
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