Daughters of the Rising Sun

A short novella from the Eastsong Cycle (fourth epoch)

A Prefatory Note

Some readers may recall the Zshurii’s Song serial from 2023. But the November Warrior Wednesday prompt from the Brothers Krynn / Alliance Authors encouraged me to combine most of the previous snippets, spiff them a bit, and revise the ending. It’ll be a few years before I tell Zshurii’s story in full. In the meantime, in lieu of a snippet for last week, I hope you’ll enjoy this tale of ugly war, grievous battle, and reluctant heroes.

Happy reading, y’all.

P.S. — Due to length, you may have to read the full story in a browser or on the app, instead of in your inbox.

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Daughters of the Rising Sun

Zshurii lay awake already when her subaltern approached in the predawn gloom, rousing each soldier in turn with a hushed warning and quick cuff on the shoulder. The gnawing agitation in her mind would not permit her the luxury of sleep. Before Arawah reached her in the lumpen line of slumbering women, Zshurii exerted herself to prop up on one elbow. The subaltern’s shadowy form nodded and passed her by.

Katydids pined for mates from the shrouded, grassy hills surrounding the company encampment. Though the rolling landscape and lingering darkness hid the rest of the Prophet-King’s host from view, knowing it was out there lent Zshurii just enough comfort to keep the specter of imminent violence at bay. Even so, once she sat fully upright and began bundling her field blanket, her hands quivered. At least nobody could see.

Silver-tinged clouds fell across the low-hanging half-moon in smoky tufts, like unspun wool feeding her father’s wheel. Already the late-summer air gathered thick about her. It would be another muggy day; the quietly stirring horses knew it, lethargic despite their humans’ palpable tension. Between cinching her bedroll and lashing it to the saddlebag she used as a pillow, Zshurii picked out Cactus’s familiar silhouette from their horse-line, nearer the perimeter.

Cactus would be thirsty. He always ate and drank his fill early. Teetering atop a spindle-tip of deliberate calm, Zshurii couldn’t yet contemplate breakfast. The soft crunch of biscuit rations to either side told her that the other members of her seven didn’t share her stomach’s reservations. That, she supposed, was reassuring. Hastily, she collected her kit—saddlebag, steel cap, scimitar, bow, and quiver—before slipping away to the mounts.

For once, she was the first rider at the horse-lines—the first visible along this side of the camp, leastways. Even in cloud-obscured moonlight, there was no mistaking Cactus, third from right, with his naturally spiked mane. The horses to either side looked to be dozing again, but Cactus’s head was already perked in her direction. Zshurii grinned in spite of her nerves. Her fellow always saw her coming.

“Good morning, sir,” she whispered. His black ears twitched. After tossing her saddlebag on the patchy, dry grass at her feet, she set her helmet beside it. She propped her weapons carefully against Cactus’s hitching post, where his tack hung. The horse nickered. Zshurii straightened, brushed her hands on her deerskin trousers, and fixed him with a stern expression. It helped that they were of a height. “Rude,” she admonished.

She retrieved a biscuit from her bag and broke off half, which he accepted politely. Petting his muzzle, she murmured, “Think thyself too good just to eat grass, hmm?”

Cactus snorted. “Very well,” Zshurii conceded, “I suppose I could manage a bite.” As she nibbled on her bone-dry portion, she knelt to fetch her canteen, near empty. “Now, down to the creek with us.” Sunrise wouldn’t tarry; nor should they.

Zshurii and Cactus were first from their company to make the short, moonlit walk to the creek. The burbling stream snugged close around the hill under which they had made camp. Without prompting, Cactus walked alongside her, doubtless hoping for another bite of biscuit. “I do not think anyone enjoys our rations as much as thee,” she teased him softly. When he tried nuzzling her shoulder, though, she only patted him. Maybe if she could live off grass, like him, she could be more generous. But she had to exercise some responsibility with her foodstuffs.

At the creekside, she let Cactus drink his fill first while she stretched her limbs to the fingertips. They always took turns at streams and watering holes, she and the horse. It made them both less anxious to know the other stood watch, especially when they were on their lonesome.

Looking about, she could discern shadowy figures several dozen paces upstream, on opposite sides of the creek. The silhouette on her side accompanied a horse, too, but the person on the south bank had the look of a sentry. Hand resting on the hilt of his scimitar, the soldier stood still except for the whimsically crooked crest of his helm, which turned to and fro.

Their whole battalion, over three hundred soldiers, was camped along this part of the stream, just before it wound its way out of the low hills east of them and down to the river. The city of Danuh sat upon that river. It was the place that had rejected her and all her folk. Now, the Prophet-King had brought them back to conquer it. Yet, Danuh was still her city. It was home.

The creek knew the way to Danuh. Coursing along its bed of stones and clay, the water sounded eager. This might have encouraged Zshurii if they only had the tedium of a day’s march before them. Today, this imagined enthusiasm was unsettling. Flecks of moonlight on the current seemed like menacing glints. She barked a nervous little laugh that startled her, and her companion too.

Cactus raised his head and looked quizzically at her. “It is a bloodthirsty stream,” she whispered. “Get it? A stream that is thirsty!” The horse gave an unimpressed snort and toss of his namesake mane. He was right; the jest was not very funny.

As if taking pity on Zshurii, Cactus stepped back from the creek, ceding his spot on the bank to her. “I do not mind if I do. Thank thee, sir,” she said with a dip of her head.

What grass and reeds grew here were mostly flattened, by the dozens of hooves and boots that had trod before. Grass was fragile, like the quiet. And like her nerves. And flesh and bone. And cities.

She knelt on both knees in the hoof-printed clay and filled her canteen. The dark water running over her fingers wasn’t cold, exactly, but its relative coolness was welcome in the thick-spun air. She was no day to be without a full canteen. No doubt, if they drew breath by midday, both she and the horse would be parched as the western wastes.

If the rumors trickling through the battalion yesterday were true, their legion would be first to assault the western wall of Danuh after dawn-break. The prefect, honorable and ambitious as he was, had volunteered them for this honor, or so it was said.

Zshurii believed these mutterings, and the thought—of being volunteered for such a grim and forlorn duty—made her sick to her stomach. But she forced down her queasiness and her anger. “Someone must attack first. Why not us?”

Cactus nickered, at which Zshurii nodded soberly. “Yes, thou have the right of it. It could not hurt to pray.” Still kneeling, she closed her eyes. “Wright who formed us,” she began, “let our story not end today…”

After she’d prayed, they started back to camp. Zshurii relented and snuck Cactus one final bite of biscuit. Just then, the first hint of predawn light appeared over the nearest hill to the east. The insects’ nightly song had entered its final refrains. It was time to gear up for the trials ahead.

“Strange that the realm has come to all this, don’t thou think?” she wondered. If Cactus had any insight, he didn’t share.

At the horse line, she tugged on her fingerless bison-leather gloves while Cactus nipped at blades of grass and waited his turn. The rest of the company was moving about now, amid the low murmur of conversation. Zshurii kept to the tasks at hand. She replaced her bowstring and checked the fletching on her arrows.

“Father always believed the Prophet-King would return to the city and save us,” she remembered aloud to Cactus. Half the sea-folk quarter had been in flames by the time she and her sister finally convinced their father to flee, into the setting sun, on their rickety pony-drawn cart.

The pale pink horizon blossomed into full dawn-break and turned Cactus’s coat from silvery grey to blood red. Fully dressed and laden, they made their way to the center of their seven’s camp. Morning revealed that their pocket in the hills was tidied now, except for horseless posts and patches of flattened grass. In the new light of day, all the soldiers and beasts of the company reported to their sevens for duty.

Zshurii was neither the first nor the last of her comrades to fall in line in front of Arawah, whose horse, Sunset, waited patiently nearby. The subaltern, who leaned on the scythe that marked her rank, acknowledged her with a glancing half-smile and a nod but avoided eye contact.

Cactus made for the wide gap between the two soldiers who had arrived before her. The horse exuded tension, no doubt sensing the same in her and the other humans, but he didn’t object to her handling.

Sandy-haired, round-faced Rhecah slipped into line on Zshurii’s left. Cactus exchanged nickering salutations with her chestnut, who then lowered his head to graze on a tuft of grass between the women.

Rhecah smiled weakly at Zshurii. Her splendid tresses, unbraided in the custom of the steppe-folk, were usually neat and well-combed, even on campaign in sun-beaten wastes or muggy river-lands. This morning, her hair was unkempt under her three-pronged helm of leather, while her eyes and brow bore all the signs of fretful sleep.

“Is Tumble feeling more agreeable today?” Zshurii asked. It felt safer to inquire about their animals than each other.

Rhecah mustered an eyeroll and sniff of derision. “I suppose so. He was too busy wallowing on the ground like a pup to break-fast till now.” For his part, Tumbleweed ignored the jibe and chewed a mouthful of grass defiantly.

Zshurii allowed herself a grin. Folk with unhindered manners made her uncomfortable; that wasn’t how her folk were raised. Yet Rhecah had an unassuming bluntness that amused Zshurii to blessed distraction. A touch of levity kept her from losing her mind, some days.

Rhecah’s own smile returned, more genuine this time. “And what of Cactus? His night was more restful than mine, I trust.”

Their conversation seemed unnatural, almost absurd, under the circumstances. But as long as Rhechah was content to ignore the impending battle, Zshurii would gladly oblige. After flashing her friend a sympathetic look, she answered, “He’s not lacking in appetite, but he knows something is up.” Cactus gave an emphatic snort, and Rhecah nodded thoughtfully.

The pair lapsed into quiet pondering. Idle chatter was a difficult distraction to maintain, and Zshurii appreciated the friendly silence. All that disrupted the serenity of the moment was a slight breeze that wrinkled her nose with the familiar odor of horse waste.

Then the last couple of soldiers fell into line to Cactus’s right, so that six women and their mounts faced Arawah and Sunset.

Like Zshurii, the subaltern and four of the others wore sea-folk ponytails or plaits. Only Rhecah hailed from the steppe-folk. A handful of proud, curly-haired lost-folk were scattered through the company, but none had ever served in their seven. As fierce as lost-folk men were in battle, their daughters seemed averse to taking up arms even in these desperate times.

“To each their own ways,” Zshurii breathed absently in Cactus’s twitching ear. She heard the unintended question in the platitude as she voiced it.

Finally, Arawah spoke, which rescued Zshurii from descent into deeper musings. “The Prophet-King, bless his name, has declared today the Wright-appointed time to reclaim our city from the usurpers.

The subaltern swung her scythe to rest on her shoulder and paced the line. Arawah didn’t hesitate to look at them directly now as she addressed them with unwonted brusqueness. Her many shoulder-length braids danced every time she turned her gaze to a different soldier. Zshurii resisted the urge to blink when those eyes lit on her.

“This army of loyal folk is the Prophet-King’s scimitar. And our legion is its cutting edge.” This declaration twisted Zshurii’s stomach anew. Their prefect had committed them to the most perilous work, after all.

Arawah wasn’t finished. “But this battalion,” she continued, “is the tip of the blade. This day, we lead the attack.” The subaltern’s voice caught on those final few words, and Rhecah uttered a coarse sentiment alluding to the digestive habits of a sickly aurochs. Zshurii perspired cold through her tunic, all the way to her leather brigandine. Cactus shook his head in protest at her sudden pull on his lead.

“Now we draw straws,” Arawah intoned. With Cactus in tow, Zshurii swallowed hard and took a long step forward, her mind and gut churning.

The other soldiers stepped forward, too, and they all drew from the set of plain, smooth-sanded hardwood sticks Arawah produced from a belt pouch. Whoever drew the long straw would hold the horses whenever they dismounted to fight on foot. The short straw meant carrying the banner of their seven.

Arawah walked slowly down the line, letting each woman draw in swift succession: Suir and Tuir, Lamb, Cira. When Zshurii’s turn came, she suppressed a shudder and plucked the middle straw of the three remaining. She focused on stroking Cactus’s muzzle and breathing steady. Meanwhile, Rhecah drew her straw, and the subaltern was left with only one in hand.

Arawah held the short straw. Zshurii’s heart fell at the flash of resignation that crossed the other woman’s face.

Yet this result came as no surprise. By custom, at least among their company of female soldiers, the subaltern always wore the banner—and made sure the youngest in her seven drew the long straw. But they went through the ritual every time battle loomed. Tradition mattered, especially at such times.

This custom carried added weight today, considering the peril they’d soon face. Long meant life, and short meant death, unless the Wright himself favored Arawah. If she were only their friend, as in the early days of their training in the wastes, Zshurii or Rhecah might have put a comforting arm around Arawah.

But these days, their friend carried the blessed scythe, noblest of weapons, not the scimitar. Command of six other souls left a person lonely, it seemed. Zshurii reckoned this a shame.

A choked sob drew her attention down the line to her right, just past Cactus. There Lamb, the youngest of their seven, held the long straw as usual, but tears now wet her cheeks.

The sixteen-year-old girl suddenly reminded Zshurii of her sister. What was Aihzsh doing right now, back in the main camp? That question led her inevitably to fret about their father. Which nuisance had woken him today—Tuucih’s yips or the unrelenting aches of rheumatism?

Cactus gave his head a little toss. He was right, of course: this wispy halo of loose thoughts would get her killed quick if she didn’t clear them and keep wary.

“Our battalion will spearhead an assault on the western side of the city.” Arawah’s voice cut through Zshurii’s silent self-reprimand. “Once our legion has taken the outlying fortifications, we can prepare to attack the high walls.

“Our company will ride in with the infantry, to shield them with our arrow clouds. When our warriors reach the wall, I’ll signal the dismount so we can scale the low wall with the rest of the battalion. The legion, and the whole army, will follow.”

Zshurii admired that Arawah could issue those orders with such steadiness. Every other thought flitting through Zshurii’s mind was to wonder if any of their seven would see the morrow.

Arawah seemed to discern her troubled heart. “Peace of the Wright be with thee,” she said solemnly. Though she spoke to all of them still, new sunbeams radiating behind her, she looked direct at Zshurii. “If each of us performs our duty well,” the subaltern admonished, “and the Wright blesses our cause, all our country will know his peace again.”

Beside her, Rhecah scoffed, earning a sharp look from Arawah. Rhecah had no patience for talk of healing the kingdom. Some hidden needle pricked her heart full of loathing for the judges’ soldiers and rendered her fearless.

But Zshurii’s heart swelled in concord with Arawah’s solemn declaration, which smoothed the frightful tangle inside her. A surreal hope remained in its wake.

Arawah pulled their rolled-up banner from its resting place in Sunset’s saddlebags. She unfurled the woolen rectangle to its full length, a pace tall and half as wide. The banner was her own design, though she’d asked Zshurii, and the other five at the time, for their approval. Dyed the royal purple of the Prophet-King, the standard was adorned with seven rising suns in blue and white, the colors of Arawah’s clan.

Then the subaltern retrieved two small wooden poles from across the saddlebags, slid the shorter crosswise into a hole in the longer, and deftly tied their banner to the simple frame. She took a baldric fit with leather sleeves from Sunset’s saddle-horn and pushed the banner-pole through the sleeves. Finally, Arawah looped the baldric across her shoulder, snugging it so the top of the banner peeked over her crested helm.

The standard would make it easier for Zshurii and the others to spot their leader on the field. It would also draw the attention of enemy bowmen, which was why Arawah ensured no one else carried it.

Zshurii stowed her straw in her belt, where it would remain till Arawah collected it at the end of the day. Then she tousled Cactus’s mane—at which he feigned annoyance—and guided him into formation beside Rhecah and Tumbleweed.

There was no call to march; the seven simply lurched into motion, in twos behind Arawah, when the subaltern started forward. This morning, they would make their way toward Danuh as discreetly as possible for thousands of men, women, and beasts.

Their seven fell into column fourth in their company, Zshurii counted. She embraced the momentary illusion of protection that the three sevens ahead, and three behind, afforded.

It was a false and fleeting sense of security, to be sure. One mighty, hostile host lay in wait behind impenetrable walls. Another army, bent on breaking it, amassed behind Zshurii and to either side. Caught in the middle, the three hundred-odd men and women of their battalion, and their horses, walked into the light of the risen sun.

Their company followed the winding creek through windswept, treeless hills. Other than the arrhythmic clinking of weapons and rustling of saddlebags, and the low hum of hushed conversation, the column moved in relative quiet.

Cactus had noticed they were marching in a direction they hadn’t ventured on any of their patrols or exercises since the siege of Danuh began. His eyes and ears flicked about, inquisitive rather than apprehensive.

Zshurii gave a start when Cactus side-stepped a sand-rabbit hole and jostled her leg against Rhecah’s. Her friend said nothing but continued to stew, tight-lipped with a tighter-knit bow. The vibrant steppe-folk woman’s grim demeanor looked out of place, like the stickers on a flowering bristle-pig cactus.

Ahead, the soldiers’ murmurs rose sharply and then fell to a sudden hush. Looking up, Zshurii saw the top of the city peeking over the hills. Massive crimson banners with yellow sunbursts hung from the towers lining the high wall to declare the judges’ rule.

Rhecah spat loudly to the other side of their path. The unbecoming gesture meant Zshurii’s yellow-haired comrade saw the banners, too.

Rhecah was so forthright in most respects, it made her reticence about her reasons for enlisting all the more glaring. Rhecah hailed from a steppe-folk ranching clan in the outlying villages and, like Zshurii, reserved a deep affection for her kin. In the early days of their training, she’d spoken often and fondly of her parents, siblings, and cousins. Her brother, Menno, rode with the Prophet-King, too: he was in the dragoons under General Arduu, on the far side of the city.

Whoever had wronged Rhecah, the bitterness fueled Rhecah’s ferocity as a soldier, for better and worse. To prod the wound without invitation would be poor form and help no one, but Zshurii sometimes asked the Wright to mend the tear in her soul.

Zshurii’s father had taught her it was a waste to speculate about other folk, like chasing dust on the wind. But she struggled to keep a tight rein on her musings when it came to the Prophet-King. What if he had never abdicated his rule over the realm, to retire into the western desert? Had he kept his throne, wouldn’t he have kept order and peace where his steward failed? The Prophet could have kept their kingdom from unraveling like a poorly woven blanket.

Ire stirred at the notion that their lord might have prevented this war and its attendant suffering. But she didn’t let her heart linger there, to mold and fester. What might have been was beyond her ken or control.

A few hills past the point where they first glimpsed the west wall, the creek broke into the open. The soldiers and horses of the battalion spilled onto the floodplain over the river, from which the manmade mountain of Danuh rose sheer in the middling distance. The watercourse divided into two arms that wrapped around the city before continuing southeast. Though elaborate bulwarks obscured the River Danuh from view immediately below the city walls, elsewhere it shone like a polished blade under the risen sun.

Other soldiers of their legion, under the purple sunburst banners of the Prophet-King, exited the hills at gaps north and south of Zshurii’s battalion. It was odd for many people and animals to be making so little noise.

Their battalion commander had ridden forward, a few dozen paces in front of Zshurii’s company as it veered to make way for the column coming up behind. Commander Anntica was steppe-folk to the core, like Rhecah. She sat tall in her spotted charger’s saddle, with dark hair fluttering loose in the persistent breeze. Anntica wheeled her mount to face her troops and raised her scythe high, pointed at the heaven-realm.

From the front of their seven, Arawah turned and growled at Zshurii and the others: “Mount thee up—now!”

Zshurii’s mind blanked for an instant. Then her eyes met Cactus’s, and she sprang into motion.

She gave her helm a firm tug and hoisted herself into the saddle. Cactus loosed a whinny of anticipation but held steady as she mounted. Once both her boots were secure in their stirrups, she tightened the leather baldric on which her scimitar hung, to ensure the scabbard wouldn’t flail about while she rode. Then she freed her horse-bow from it is place across her saddlebags and double-checked the new string she’d fitted earlier. Everything seemed in order.

Bow in one hand, reins in the other, Zshurii looked to her comrades. Like the rest of the company in their nearby knots of seven, they were all saddled up. A couple of the women were so tense, awaiting the next command, they half-stood in their stirrups—as if their horses truly were cacti.

Between their ragged line of riders and the hills behind, a mass of infantrymen swelled. Unlike the dragoon outfits that made up the greatest part of the Prophet-King’s forces, Commander Anntica’s battalion comprised six companies on foot, with only their single company of horse-bows mounted in support. Today, it seemed, support would mean leading the charge.

“Heads out of thy hindparts,” Arawah snapped. Zshurii saw the subaltern was glaring at her, and her cheeks warmed. Beside her, Rhecah snickered, and Zshurii only narrowly quashed the urge to kick her sandy-haired friend in the shin. This wasn’t a moment to indulge foolish inclinations.

“Eyes on our banner now!” Arawah jabbed a thumb over her shoulder at the standard strapped to her back.

Bellowed orders from the senior subaltern, who led their company, cut the air. Zshurii’s heart quickened fit to burst. Arawah’s voice felt oddly removed as she relayed the orders in one breathless rush: “Ahead to the left—we’re forming into fang—the whole legion.”

Zshurii flinched, by instinct, at the soldiers’ speak for a wedge. It seemed almost blasphemous to liken the Prophet-King’s soldiers to the wicked tooth of the vile serpent-mother. But it was also far from the worst expression she’d heard.

“We’re on point, but keep to a walk,” Arawah continued. “We don’t want to leave our tail behind.” Indeed, the infantry companies would be hard-pressed to keep up if the cavalry moved at any faster gait. Tiring themselves, their beasts, or their comrades on foot too early in the day could prove fatal later.

“Stick thee close!” the subaltern added as she started Sunset forward. And so Zshurii did, determined not to slip up again. She wouldn’t let her sisters-in-arms down. Or Cactus, who didn’t have a say in all this, poor fellow.

As if minding her thoughts, he tried to break into a trot amid the excitement. She checked him with the reins but let a wry smile flicker across her face. “Begging thy pardon.” Cactus had come late to the life of a warhorse, but he might have volunteered for this duty if he’d had the choice. He was a strong-hearted creature.

Though eager, Cactus was disciplined enough to settle into stride with the other horses. He followed the banner on Arawah’s back without any prompting from Zshurii. Their seven trickled into the wider current of their company, which streamed northeast from the creek and into the mighty rolling river of the legion.

Shouts arose ahead and rippled through the company. The sevens, pace unaltered, flowed into a spearhead formation. Arawah’s seven became part of its right wing, so that Zshurii had a clear view of the city to her right.

Their battalion was sidling nearer to the city of Danuh. The high west wall with its red banners glowered down at them. Dense fortifications around the main gate resembled a scowl. Home it had been—and would be again, Wright willing—but the very walls of the city scorned their arrival. Zshurii’s spirit faltered.

Rhecah, for her part, seemed to be spoiling for a fight. “Don’t fret thyselves, sisters!” Tumbleweed neighed, as if for emphasis, and to Zshurii’s irritation, Cactus echoed him. “There ain’t a soul manning the walls of that slaughter pen,” Rhecah called out. “The judges heard we were coming, and now their yak-brained army is busy knitting them dry underclothes.”

Scattered whoops and nervous laughs greeted the steppe-folk warrior’s jeers. But Zshurii took no heart from her friend’s ranch-hand crudity. If anything, the slender fibers of her courage felt more fragile than ever, compared to the likes of Rhecah, or Arawah, or Commander Anntica.

Zshurii had taken up bow and scimitar to protect people. Yes, she’d learned to injure others, but the mere thought of it turned her stomach every time. The battles she’d already fought, and survived, should be making this easier, yet there was no reasoning with the revulsion and dread lurking in her soul.

She hadn’t enlisted because she possessed Rhecah’s bravery or Cactus’s yearn for adventure. Much as she grieved the fall of the king-regent, an upright man of the sea-folk, she didn’t fight to avenge his murder, either. She was here in the field for her family’s sake. The mobs had put the judges in power; now the realm was in tatters. For the honor of her father’s household, she had to help the Prophet-King mend it. It was a matter of duty—terrible duty, the warp yarns that held together the weave of a civilized realm.

Now she couldn’t disgrace her clan with cowardice in the royal service. Or shame her seven. Nor could she abandon Cactus, who belonged to the Prophet’s herds, not to her. Besides, what other rider would look out for him as well as she?

And just maybe, when the blood was spilt and wounds had knit, this scowling city would belong to all the folk of the realm once more—lost, steppe, and sea—as in the days of her youth.

Commander Anntica, darting past on horseback, pierced her inward focus. Accompanied only by her standard-bearer, the commander cantered away from her battalion on the march. She rode into the empty stretch of plain between them and the Danuh defenses, which the beasts of the judges’ army had almost grazed clean since the siege began.

Zshurii’s brow furrowed. Where was Anntica headed? They might be well out of bowshot from the city walls, but it seemed an unnecessary risk, all the same. The Wright only knew what traps the judges’ forces might have prepared.

To the other side of their battalion, Anntica’s infantry companies began forming in line, three across and two deep. The other commanders’ battalions gathered on either flank—dragoons mostly, ready to ride up close before dismounting to storm the defenses on foot. Their whole legion crawled into place at the eastern edge of the hills, north of the creek, in the shape of a wedge that tapered to their tiny spear-tip. Camel cataphracts anchored the flanks. Closer in, horses shied from hulking shell-backs as the beasts shambled into position.

Now the seven at the front of the company wheeled and came to a stop facing the city gate. Arawah gestured with her scythe. After Zshurii nudged Cactus right with her knees, he ground to a halt behind Sunset before she had a chance to use the reins.

They were a little too far from the outer bulwarks for Zshurii to discern any foes on the ramparts, but Rhecah’s jest aside, she was sure they were there and watching closely. Oh, to have walls to hide behind!

On the other hand, the judges’ soldiers had nowhere to flee, if the need arose. Slaughter pen, Rhecah had named it.

Zshurii remembered Arawah’s earlier reprimand and kept her face forward, but she closed her eyes a moment. She breathed in the scents of horses and muggy morning on the river-plain.

Somewhere back there, on a hilltop, the prefect who had volunteered them to lead the assault was no doubt observing their deployment. That was his place.

But what of the Prophet-King himself? Was his place to watch them bleed, or would he fight alongside them? Perhaps it was better if he spent the coming battle interceding with the Wright above on their behalf.

Suddenly afraid of missing some cue from Arawah, she reopened her eyes. Straight ahead, in the intervening space between their company and the city, Anntica and her escort stopped short.

Then, in an eye-blink, a man appeared on a black charger beside the commander. It was as if he’d been there the whole time.

Zshurii had never seen the Prophet-King before, but she knew in her gut that had to be him. His hair and beard were long and white, like a lost-folk elder, under a wide-brimmed hat like the steppe-folk dragoons wore. Even at this distance, Zshurii could tell he was great in stature, maybe the tallest man she’d ever seen, and broad of shoulder.

The Prophet-King wore a suit of leather plates over a purple tunic, to match the armor draped over his steed. In one hand, instead of a scythe or sword, he held a black staff that rebuffed the sunlight; it must be wrought of wood, of an unfamiliar kind. Though he didn’t make for a grand spectacle, exactly, Zshurii thought him noble and formidable all the same.

The Prophet-King walked his black warhorse alongside the commander’s dappled grey. From horseback, Anntica and her escort bowed deeply at the neck. After a moment, the Prophet leaned in, and the others lifted their heads. Then the two leaders began conversing, there in the middle of the field.

A reverent quietude had overtaken the onlooking troops. Zshurii was far from the only soldier in the Prophet’s army who hadn’t previously laid eyes on the Wright’s chosen. Subdued oaths and exclamations skittered through the ranks.

“Blessed mare’s backside, did you see that?” Rhecah exhaled softly. Elated at seeing their king in the flesh, she let her friend’s pagan curse breeze past her. Clearly, Zshurii’s mind hadn’t misapprehended the Prophet’s uncanny arrival.

A soldier somewhere behind Zshurii let out a gravelly huzzah. A few warriors answered with cheers. In the space of a few heartbeats, a torrent of yips and hollers was ripping through the host like a sudden deluge overflowing a dry creekbed.

Zshurii sought at first to maintain decorum. But when the whole legion took up the royalist chant—“One realm, one lord!”—she lent her voice to the chorus with abandon. At the front of their seven, Arawah shook her scythe high in the air to punctuate their cries. Rhecah and Zshurii both imitated the subaltern with their bows.

It was almost as if the Wright himself had appeared on the plain. The Prophet-King was a breathing legend. His given name was a mystery to his people, but Zshurii knew from girlhood that he was the latest in the unbroken line of Wright-ordained rulers. Prophet-Kings had led the realm since before the sea-folk were even part of it.

The father of Zshurii’s father had been so devout, or daft, that he swore this Prophet-King was the one and only—the same being, generation after generation. After the miraculous, instantaneous way he’d shown up here, Zshurii wondered if her grandfather didn’t have the right of it after all.

Peals rang out from the tower tocsins that lined the high walls of Danuh. Cactus snorted uneasily, and the army’s war chant dissipated to scattered shouts. The Prophet-King and Anntica paused their conference to look toward the gate.

Before the war, Zshurii had lived through enough barbarian invasions to know what the warning bells meant: the judges’ troops were in position already. The city defenders had manned their posts and were prepared to meet all comers. Now, they alerted the citizenry in their homes to the massed threat outside the walls.

“Today, we’re the barbarians,” Zshurii mumbled to herself and Cactus. And she reckoned they’d need more of the Prophet’s miracles to see this day through.

Zshurii held her bow to the side of Cactus’s neck and worked the bowstring repeatedly. “Let this be the only weapon I need today,” she asked the Wright with silent-moving lips.

In drills, she was handy enough with a scimitar, certainly better than with her bow. Only her small stature had landed her in the horse archers.

Yet she’d come to like the bow; it kept valuable distance between her and her enemy. The thought of slaying folk who might have been her neighbors was bad enough. Such notions could be ignored in the tumult of combat. Up close, at scimitar’s length, there would be no ignoring the reality. There would be no hiding from the men left torn and discarded, life-sized dolls of flesh and bone, like she’d seen after the battle of the wagons. She shuddered.

Besides, the bow was the only weapon she’d ever used in a real fight. But she didn’t see how it was possible to avoid drawing her scimitar once they reached the bulwarks. That was, unless the defenders caved so quickly and completely that Anntica’s infantry captured the ramparts before Zshurii and the cavalry could dismount.

Or unless none of the Prophet’s soldiers even made it across the field with their ladders. “On second thought, Forever-King,” she mouthed to the Wright, “you may disregard my request at your discretion.”

“Put in a good word for me with the Chief of chiefs,” Rhecah interjected, in dead earnest. It seemed Zshurii hadn’t been as discreet in her prayer as she supposed. She added a final, silent plea to the Wright for both their safety. And for Cactus.

The alarms from the city’s wall-towers stopped abruptly. A strong river breeze breathed life into the red sunburst banners that declared the judges’ rule.

The outer bulwarks were one thing, but the high walls of the city proper were another story entire. Zshurii remembered storming the southern seaport a summer ago. Scorpion machines skewered horses with stinger bolts three paces long. Flesh-piercing arrows fell on their battalion’s heads like sheets of rain. A hail of bricks littered the base of the wall with dented helms and smashed skulls. What terrors had Danuh’s defenders prepared for this day?

The Prophet backed his charger away from Commander Anntica and her standard bearer. With a broad sweep of his black staff, he pointed from Zshurii and the rest of the host toward the bristling west gate ahead. Zshurii’s heart skipped a beat.

Anntica’s dappled mount reared. “Advance!” the commander shouted.

By the time her husky voice faded on the wind, the Prophet-King had vanished as quick as he’d come, in a blink. Zshurii felt a fleeting pang of regret at his disappearance.

But time was up. The leaders of companies and sevens, every man and woman in earshot who carried a scythe, now echoed Anntica’s order.

“Advance!” screamed Arawah over her shoulder.

Cactus was fully alert and poised to go. Zshurii stopped fiddling with her bowstring and took up the reins again. “Go on!” she urged him, adding a quick encouragement with her knees.

Together, Zshurii and Cactus leapt into motion with the rest of their seven. She sank her full focus into the shimmering, sunlit purple standard strapped to Arawah’s back. Now to survive the last, brutal leg of her long journey home.

At a canter, Zshurii’s world narrowed. Though Arawah and Sunset, with their seven’s standard, held the center of her mind, Zshurii was acutely aware of Cactus and her bow. Beyond Rhecah and Tumbleweed to her left, and the rest of the seven on the periphery of her vision, nothing existed.

Charging gave the seven space to loosen their knot formation. Zshurii helped Cactus keep room enough between him and the other horses that on every side, another rider could have passed by without incident. It was important not to get too close, in case someone stumbled, especially if the armies began to fling—

As if her half-formed thought had bid them into being, scorpion stingers flew through the air from the direction of the city gate. Their low hiss came only a heartbeat before their slender shadows. Elsewhere in Anntica’s battalion, shouts of alarm met the defenders’ cold greeting. Moments later, the Prophet-King’s scorpions, mounted on shell-backed beasts to the rear, responded with their own swarm of stingers.

Of course, there was no way to tell what effect the missiles had on either side. Cactus didn’t look, either, but his ears pulled back and his neck strained forward at the sights and sounds of the deadly bolt-clouds. Though he seemed more eager than anxious, steppe-folk training had left gaps in his discipline. She couldn’t yet allow him to press ahead and deplete his reserves of strength.

Rhecah let loose a ululating war-whoop. Caught up in the thrill of exertion, Zshurii accompanied her friend with a throat-scouring cry. As hissing stingers darkened the morning sky in ever-greater numbers, she sought refuge in abandon, the way Cactus and Rhecah showed her. Zshurii let her mind unspool amid the throng of humanity and horses.

A scream from somewhere behind her and off to the left, in another seven, cut in. Other sounds of human and equine anguish followed in a jumble. An involuntary shudder coursed down her spine. Collisions with fallen horses wrought carnage as cruelly as enemy steel.

Now Rhecah let Tumbleweed pull ahead of Cactus, and a split instant later, Arawah did the same. Zshurii finally gave Cactus leave to match their gallop.

Indistinct shouting in the cadence of commands, coupled with Zshurii’s heady exhilaration, freed her focus for a moment from its tightly hemmed bounds. The seven ahead of theirs kept to a slower canter so that Arawah’s troopers could gallop into line on their right flank. In similar fashion, the entire wedge of their company reworked itself quickly into a wall of horse-bows. Glimpses of movement further out on the flanks showed that advance companies from the nearby dragoon battalions were lining up, too.

Then, with a curdling chorus of shrieks, the whole line of mounted skirmishers charged the western bulwarks at full gallop. Together they combed the naked river-plain, while the vast wedge of the legion lumbered forth.

Ahead, the main gate and its earthen redoubts loomed larger. They were almost in bowshot. If they occupied their foes’ attentions while the infantry brought up the ladders, Anntica might still have a battalion to command at the end of all this. The Wright only knew if Arawah would have a seven.

“Ready your bows!” the subaltern sang. Zshurii’s legs gripped Cactus tight as she willed herself to release his reins. Sure as the dawn, her life now depended on her fellow’s trained instincts.

With her free hand, she drew an arrow from her saddle quiver, nocked it, and drew.

“Loose at will!” Arawah cried, in near unison with her counterparts up and down the line.

And so Zshurii did. She loosed the arrow in a high sunward arc, where it joined dozens of others in flight en route to the fortified gate. Wright help them all.

The seven sevens of their company divided as they devoured the ground between them and the city. Too flat to hide enemy skirmishers and too bare to conceal horse traps, the river-plain vanished rapidly under Cactus’s hooves.

Despite a few stray incoming arrows, none too close to Zshurii, the enemy held their peace. It lent an uncanny, one-sided aspect to the charge. With every series of hoofbeats they advanced unscathed, her courage heightened. So did her apprehension that the defenders’ full fury was gathering just out of sight.

Every few dozen syncopated beats of Cactus’s hooves, Zshurii loosed an arrow toward the sky over the gate. She didn’t try to aim carefully but made a slight adjustment each time, as they closed from the arm-aching limit of her range to a less strenuous bowshot. The Wright would decide where her darts landed. Meanwhile, she clung to the conviction that every arrow she let fly staved off the enemy’s retaliation another critical moment.

A stone’s throw from the bulwarks that flanked the final approach to the gate, Arawah and Sunset veered left. Cactus followed Sunset’s lead, and Zshurii shifted her weight to maintain her posture. Their seven galloped parallel to the gate fortifications, showering the ramparts with arrow-sprights. At the far north end of the left bulwark, they wheeled about and carried on the attack the way they’d come, down to the south end of the right bulwark. Then they turned and rode the circuit again.

Amid the rhythm of their mounted assault, Zshurii picked up other threads of the scene around her. The bulwarks were rammed-earthen redoubts several times her height, like the hedges of a judge’s manor made of massive bricks instead of shrubbery. They blocked the river entirely from view. Between the battlements, enemy soldiers’ heads popped up and down like ground squirrels on a training yard.

As all the sevens of their company passed to and fro, in front of the city’s outer defenses, harassment from the ramparts increased. Zshurii had to screen her mind from the enemy missiles and the sporadic cries of wounded comrades. She pretended the foe couldn’t touch her, Cactus, or their seven. Her resolute focus stayed on holding her torso steady and sending each arrow, one after another, just over the crenellated tops of the bulwarks.

By the time Zshurii’s fingers had to search more than an instant to pluck a fresh arrow from her quiver, the seven were maneuvering around their own advancing infantry. Men in segmented coats of aurochs leather labored in threes to carry scaling ladders at a double-quick pace.

A few harried-looking dragoons trotted past, side by side, likewise headed toward the base of the bulwarks. Each pair balanced a ladder across their saddle-horns. These mounted infantry attracted deadly missile swarms, and most dropped from their saddles well before reaching the redoubts.

None of the Prophet’s warriors ventured yet into the center lane of stone and packed earth, which arched over the river flowing between the outer defenses and the colossal city walls. There, in the gap separating the two bulwarks, the red flutter of enemy standards began to bloom. The judges’ army was stirring at last to defend the gate.

“We’ll be chucking cowpies soon now, Sub’,” Rhecah called to Arawah. Though barely winded, her voice held tense warning.

Zshurii’s stomach lurched as she shot her last arrow. Then Arawah, bless her, issued the order to pull back.

Without delay, the seven cantered just out of the defenders’ bowshot. As soon as Arawah stopped Sunset short, Zshurii and the others circled around her and slowed to a halt. Zshurii slipped out of her saddle, tucked her bow back in place, and yanked her scimitar from its scabbard. She patted her helm for good measure and took Cactus by his bridle.

“Well done, sir,” she told him. Cactus gave a shuddering sigh, his sides heaving. Though Zshurii felt weariness beckon, too, urgency kept it at bay. She had to keep moving.

Little Lamb remained mounted just behind Arawah. The youngest soldier of their seven clutched two other sets of reins in her hands and watched Rhecah release Tumbleweed to her care with an affectionate tap on the flank.

Zshurii brought Cactus over to wait beside Rhecah’s chestnut. Lamb, her normally desert-bright face severe and sweat-streaked, whistled at Cactus and acknowledged Zshurii with a terse nod. A hint of guilt shone in Lamb’s youthful gaze and wrinkled brow. But Zshurii tore her eyes away in frustration—this was no time for pity.

Then she and the other four besides Lamb stood clustered on foot in front of Arawah. Rhecah took a wide stance and stretched her limbs quickly before drawing her scimitar. Zshurii likewise seized the moment to work the tight, bowed feeling of the saddle out of her legs. Arawah allowed them the brief respite while she surveyed the other sevens of their company regrouping in the vicinity.

Closer to the fortifications, the enemy now sortied in earnest to bar the attackers’ route between the bulwarks to the gate. Three of Anntica’s infantry companies had hastened there to meet the foe. They formed a purple-bedighted phalanx and strove to push the defenders back to the river line with their wall of rounded-square shields.

Arawah balanced her scythe in blue-gloved hands and swept her eyes over the seven. “Get them clear of the scorpion stingers,” she ordered Lamb calmly over her shoulder. Lamb uttered a choked cry and rode further to the rear with the others’ mounts in her wake.

Without another word, Arawah spun and led the rest of the seven toward the melee.

Zshurii hurtled after the seven suns of the subaltern’s banner. As she ran, she kept close enough to Rhecah that they bumped elbows once; they exchanged grunts and pressed on. Their understrength seven advanced amid the thud of arrows striking clayish soil on all sides.

Wright be praised, the enemy scorpions preferred more inviting targets than a half-dozen skirmishers light on their feet.

The battle-clamor intensified as they neared the clash of red and purple banners in the center. Anntica’s sturdy sea-folk infantry were better equipped and more desperate than the foes they confronted. A fourth company of their battalion, also newly arrived, drove toward the defenders’ exposed flank like a spear.

Arawah waved their seven toward a rivulet of fellow royalists who skirted left of the fight in progress. They made directly for the bridge arching over the River Danuh.

Sounds of struggle erupted from the rampart above. A few of the Prophet’s dismounted dragoons had finally topped the bulwark and now sought to wrest control from its defenders.

Below, dead and wounded soldiers littered their path. Rhecah leapt over a writhing infantryman. Whether he was the Prophet’s man or the judges’, Zshurii couldn’t say. All the same, her stomach convulsed at his crimson-soaked leather armor, and her heart heaved at his whimpering pleas for aid. Yet she set her jaw and kept after Arawah. Duty was lord over mercy today.

Just before their boots hit the west foot of the bridge, a sinister hiss overwhelmed Zshurii’s senses. She stumbled to a stop. For an instant, she was certain the scorpion stinger had come for her.

The bolt narrowly passed Zshurii by, but her relief at being spared turned at once to horror. The long steel bolt, near Zshurii’s height in length, had pinned Arawah through the chest to the soft grey-brown earth three paces ahead.

The spent missile protruded from the subaltern’s back and propped her upright, almost vertical. Arawah’s limp body leaned only slightly on the stinger shaft, and the sunward tilt of her head made it look from behind like she’d paused to beseech the Wright’s favor. Belatedly, her officer’s scythe slipped from her hands and fell to the ground.

Rhecah reacted first of the five remaining: the yellow-haired woman rushed over to scoop up the scythe. Two of the others followed close behind and proceeded to check Arawah for signs of life—in vain, by their resigned headshakes.

Zshurii stared blankly at Rhecah, who hefted the scythe one-handed as she stowed her scimitar. “Couldn’t leave it there,” her friend said flatly, as if she mistook Zshurii’s bewildered expression for offense. “Get the banner, why don’t thou?”

Numbly, Zshurii complied. Arrows whizzed by, but they couldn’t penetrate her daze. Though fumbling a bit at first, and gulping ragged breaths, she managed to unhook the entire contraption—both the baldric and the standard in its special fittings—from around her fallen friend’s torso. Every time her efforts shifted Arawah about and sent the dead woman’s head lolling or arms flopping, a burst of tears dampened Zshurii’s cheeks.

“We’ve got to move!” Rhecah yelled.

Zshurii noticed the short straw poking from the subaltern’s boot. She stared at it.

An arrowhead grazed the toe of Zshurii’s own deerskin boot before burying itself in the clay. Startled to her wits, she strapped on the baldric and felt the weight of the standard on her own back. On impulse, she snatched Arawah’s short straw and stuck it through her right braid.

“What do we do now?” she shouted. Zshurii heard the panic tingeing her question. Chaos behind and to either side threatened to swallow them up, but the bridge ahead seemed impossibly longer.

“Follow me,” a husky voice replied. “And keep on my tail like a horsefly.”

Anntica and her beleaguered-looking standard bearer appeared among them, likewise on foot. The battalion commander’s waist-length mane was badly disheveled, and splotches of mud smeared half her face. She grimaced as she noticed Arawah slain on the stinger. “Sun scorch me, we’re taking back our gate from those snakebit, yak-brained traitors.”

Zshurii felt a faint glimmer of light within her.

Brandishing her scythe, Anntica spoke no further orders but raced onto the stone-girded bridge. Her standard-bearer followed close on her heels. Instinctively, Zshurii did the same. Without so much as a whoop, Rhecah and the other three ran headlong after her. Together, they left Arawah on her lonesome and pursued their wild-haired commander, at a dead sprint, into the enemy maw.

The defenders on the bulwarks to either side continued to hurl arrows and stingers down on them, but their aim erred high. A stiff breeze buffeted Zshurii from the side. Though the wind snagged the thin woolen banner on her back, her momentum carried her forward like a maddened she-boar. But her stride was shorter than Rhecah’s or the commander’s, no matter how fast her boots pummeled the dirt. By the time they neared the midpoint over the muted roar of the river, Zshurii had slipped a few paces back.

Just before they crested the bridge, a glancing ray of sun struck Zshurii direct in the eyes. It lasted only the length of a heartbeat; her legs never ceased to propel her forward. But the sunbeam left her vision starry with the distinct yet fleeting impression of an incoming arrow volley.

Her immediate instinct was to drop to the ground—and she balked. Why save herself only to let the others fall?

She’d just opened her mouth to shout a warning when the arrows’ whistle reached her ears. The corner of her sight, now clear, picked up movement overhead. No time remained. She felt empty and weightless.

Then she was flying. Some unseen force embraced her from behind like a cloud of wool and pushed her through the air. Before she could form a full thought, she careened into Rhecah’s back. Both crashed into Anntica and her standard bearer, and all four went sprawling in a tangle.

The flat, bare dirt of the bridge smacked the side of Zshurii’s face hard. Grunts and curses told her the other two women were alive, too.

When Zshurii looked up, she saw an arrow lodged in the earth an arm’s length from her face.

She clambered off Anntica’s escort and helped the dazed man to his feet. Rhecah likewise lent a hand to the commander, who by some miracle or sheer willpower had maintained her grip on her scythe.

Bewildered, Zshurii saw that their enemies’ shafts had stuck in the ground in a chevron, like a flock of ducks, leaving the trio narrowly unscathed.

Bruised but back to her senses, she turned to look for her dropped scimitar. Another of her comrades, dimple-chinned Cira, handed her the blade hilt-first. Despite their exposed position and the furious din of battle, Cira and the other two women behind Zshurii were staring agape at her.

Zshurii opened her mouth to ask Cira what had just happened—she must have seen clearly. But then a gloved hand clapped Zshurii hard on the shoulder.

“My folk wrestle yearling aurochses more gently,” Rhecah said with heaving breath, “but thank thee.”

“Get thyselves to me, soldiers!” Anntica called roughly. Already she and her standard bearer had cut to the left side of the bridge and crept a pace past the midpoint. Eager for a modicum of protection, Zshurii and the rest of the seven ran over to them at a slight crouch. Zshurii knelt just behind Anntica, while Rhecah took point beside the standard bearer.

Across the width of the bridge, more pockets of the Prophet-King’s troops had almost caught up to their position. Fellow dismounted cavalry and dragoons were scattered among infantry sevens, several of which carried ladders.

The commander pointed past the end of the bridge. Zshurii squinted against the sun and dripping sweat to make out individual figures atop the main gate. Directly over the iron-barred entrance to the city, the battlements were lower than elsewhere—more decorative than practical. That section of the rampart bristled with scythes and pronged helms. Tall red shields shone in a nearly unbroken wall. In the center stood a great-bearded man clad in brilliant steel and an aurochs-horned helm. He leaned on a scythe half again his height while turning his head this way and that.

“There’s the shrub-ox we’ll be relieving of our gate,” Anntica remarked coolly.

Zshurii felt suddenly sure she would die today. But she didn’t think the serpent-mother and all her sprightly legions could keep the commander from her prize.

The Danuh below muffled the cacophony of the wider battle. In a prolonged moment of eerie calm, Zshurii tried to settle her breathing sufficient to think straight. Fresh river air scoured her lungs; it filled her nostrils with a crisp alluvial aroma. Conspicuous in its absence was the pungency of horse scent.

The riparian smells reminded her of the full canteen corded to her waist. Her insides felt like camel jerky. Her free hand raised the leather pouch and squeezed a thin stream of warm water down her throat. A few heart-pulses later, she’d already guzzled half the contents.

Then the reprieve was over. Anntica rose to her full height beside Zshurii. Dark hair cascaded all askew from the back of the commander’s helm. This close, Zshurii could see primitive horse and bison figures etched into the dome of leather scales.

“Over the top!” Anntica hollered through the wash of noise from the river. She gave the gate ahead a defiant one-handed thrust of her scythe. With a resounding, collective grunt, the nearby infantry sevens surged forward.

Anntica held her pose, scythe extended at arm’s length. Zshurii’s grip on her scimitar was so tense that her exposed fingernails bit grooves into the leather wrappings.

The advancing sevens carried their ladders across the threshold from the east foot of the bridge to the shadow of the gate. “After me, with haste!” Anntica ordered their seven. Zshurii girded her tenuous resolve, ignored her complaining muscles, and loped toward the riverbank with the rest of the commander’s ad hoc guard.

The judges’ men were showering missiles on the first of the Prophet-King’s troops to arrive at the gate. Zshurii and her companions, moving up in support, received far less notice from the defenders.

At the end of the bridge, an arrow whistled her way. An instant later, she felt the impact at her hip. Wetness sprayed across her leg and side. Zshurii stumbled to a stop and searched frantically for the wound. Why didn’t it hurt yet? Where was the blood?

Following on Zshurii’s heels, Cira crunched the arrow—and the tattered remains of Zshurii’s canteen—under her boots. Shuddering relief flooded Zshurii.

Cira slowed beside her while other soldiers brushed past. Finding Zshurii unharmed, Cira shot her a curt nod and grimacing half-smile. They clinked the cross-guards of their scimitars in quick salute.

Zshurii now felt emboldened by the close encounter with the enemy dart. Without further pause, she shouted, “One realm!” Cira echoed her, and they threw themselves into the swell of their battalion reforming under the gate.

Almost at once, Rhecah caught her eye and waved her over. Anntica had led the others to one of the nearest ladders up the fortified entrance to the city. A pair of infantrymen flanked and steadied the ladder for the commander while she and her standard bearer scaled it. The rest of Zshurii’s seven huddled at the bottom; they shifted and fidgeted in place as they awaited their turns. Zshurii and Cira threaded the loose weave of intervening soldiers to join their comrades.

Standing still proved terrifying. Zshurii keenly felt her lack of a bow with which to answer the foes pelting them with arrows. It was worse than running across an open field.

As scimitars rang on metal and scraped on leather above, the enemy barrage slackened. Yet those protracted moments at the base of the ladder were excruciating, all the same. The air was so warm and thick with sweat and leather, Zshurii almost sicked up. One ladder to their right, a woman plummeted from the battlements. The hard clay ground cut short her unholy scream. To Zshurii’s left, Cira retched loudly.

Zshurii wanted to squeeze her eyes shut and disappear into the cracks in the ground at her feet. Instead, she forced herself to concentrate on the sandy hair spilling from the back of Rhecah’s helm.

When her friend began climbing, Zshurii’s focus trailed from Rhecah’s tresses to her baldric, her belt, the fringe on her chaps—

And now it was Zshurii’s turn to mount the ladder.

She clutched her scimitar hilt with one gloved hand, and the rung above her head with the other, for dear life. The tormented cries of unseen combatants reverberated in her head with every step. She resisted their paralyzing effect with incessant, half-formed prayers. Only that, and the furious exertion of her one-handed ascent, kept Zshurii herself from screaming like some bird-riding barbarian.

A warm wind assailed the banner on her back and brought the lowing of shellbacks to her ears. Had so much of their army come this far already?

Suddenly, the meager reassurance of Rhecah’s presence overhead was gone. After that, the final rung came quick. Zshurii’s fear of delay outweighed all others; it lent her a burst of strength, and she hauled herself over the battlement. Then she tumbled, ungracefully, into chaos.

Zshurii’s right knee jarred on the rampart. She barely managed to brace herself with her left hand and keep hold of her scimitar with her right. Thank the blessed dawn, she hadn’t impaled herself on her own sword.

Scuffling boots and writhing bodies filled her vision. The stench of blood and perspiration assaulted her nostrils, while vicious oaths and pained grunts permeated the air.

Zshurii scrabbled to her feet and lifted her gaze—just in time to see a scythe arcing toward her neck. It was too late to bring her weapon around or sidestep the incoming blade.

Yet she didn’t die. A stinger, launched over the battlement with expert or reckless aim from a friendly scorpion, saved her. The barbed bolt shivered the enemy subaltern’s scythe arm to bony, fleshy fragments above his elbow. A crimson spray spattered Zshurii’s face. She and the officer exchanged bewildered expressions in the instant before she lashed out with her scimitar. He toppled mutely in front of her.

Someone jostled Zshurii from behind, and she staggered past the fallen foe. Ahead, the broad rampart over the gate widened further into a stonework platform. Dozens of soldiers from both sides dueled and scrapped for advantage. Among them were Commander Anntica, the standard bearer, and Rhecah.

Zshurii’s comrades were engaged in a ferocious brawl with several of the scythe-wielding, red-shielded warriors they’d sighted from the bridge. Each of the enemy soldiers bore a standard on his back, like the one she carried. But theirs were emblazoned with the sign of a legionary prefect.

At the edge of their fight stood the lost-folk prefect in his segmented steel armor. The hulking shrub-ox of a man hefted his sapling-like scythe as if poised to intervene whenever he deemed prudent. An aurochs horn, painted blood-red, jutted from either side of his black helm.

Zshurii wished sorely for a buckler as she dodged a wounded royalist dragoon who careened toward her. With her scimitar at a low guard, she picked her way toward the commander and Rhecah.

The ebb and flow of the melee ahead obscured the great-bearded enemy prefect from view for a moment. When she got another, closer glimpse, her heart plunged into her gut.

Under the short brim of his helm, an open-faced shell of layered leather bands, this man had the holy mark tattooed across his right cheek. Lost-folk lords who bore the crosswise sigil of the Wright’s blessed were untouchable.

But her commander and her friend required her—even if she condemned herself.

One of the prefect’s soldiers rammed the standard bearer with his red rectangular shield. Anntica’s companion went sprawling. Before the commander or Rhecah could move to assist, another red-shielded warrior swung the curved fang of his scythe into the hapless standard bearer’s chest.

Zshurii hastened her progress through the maze of duels and skirmishes. A steppe-folk archer, wielding his bow as a cudgel, threw a sea-folk swordswoman out of a bind directly in her path. Zshurii suppressed the urge to wind around, or to stop and help. Instead, she darted through the momentary gap between the soldiers.

Five red-shields formed a wall to force Anntica and Rhecah back. The steppe-folk women kept their footing but fast ran out of space. Unburdened by bulky armor or a cumbersome shield, Anntica swept to the left with a flurry of blows at her opponents’ scythe arms. That drew the enemies’ focus and their shields, which exposed their left sides to Rhecah’s scimitar.

The rightmost red-shield pivoted just in time to parry Rhecah’s cut from above, but the yellow-haired woman spun and struck low across his unarmored calf. He crumpled with a howl above the rest of the tumult.

Such tactics might succeed until Zshurii’s comrades tired or made an error. Her frustration intensified as knots and snarls of soldiers, friend and foe, impeded her every step. She almost tripped over two fellow royalists as they tackled a beleaguered enemy banner-bearer.

Zshurii tore around the edges of the pile and saw that Anntica and Rhecah had laid low another red-shield. Now they dogged the remaining three with a stream of attacks. The aurochs-horned prefect sidestepped his men’s backward tread and shifted his pole-scythe to a low guard.

From behind Anntica, several royalist infantry rushed in to relieve the steppe-folk women. They fell on the enemies’ flank with exuberant shouts.

Zshurii was mere heartbeats from the skirmish now. With the flat of her scimitar, she smacked an unsuspecting swordsman in a bent-crested helm across the shoulder blades. Unheeding that he might be an ally, she shoved him aside.

His red-shields occupied, the prefect finally attacked, with lightning footwork. He jabbed the convex edge of his scythe blade at Anntica and then Rhecah in rapid succession. The women scrambled to evade. Like a rattler, the prefect recoiled briefly between strikes from his low, narrow stance.

Blades and limbs of nearby combatants whirred past Zshurii’s head as she charged at last into the middle of the fight.

To Zshurii’s left, Rhecah slid her scimitar off the prefect’s scythe blade and lunged inside to slash at his chest. He deflected Rhecah’s attack with the middle of his weapon pole, between his gauntlets. Zshurii tried to take advantage of the prefect’s open flank, but he repulsed her with a swift kick that almost connected with her knee. Then he thrust the sharpened butt of his scythe backward to parry Anntica’s attack from behind. He followed up by knocking the commander akilter with his left elbow.

Before Zshurii or Rhecah could retake the initiative, the prefect brought his scythe up, horizontal across his broad chest, and shoved the pole at their necks. As she ducked the thick steel bar, Zshurii saw Anntica lunge at their enemy’s hamstring with her shorter scythe.

But the aurochs-horned officer hadn’t forgotten the commander. He whipped his scythe around; the back half of the pole swept Zshurii and Rhecah off their feet. He turned Anntica’s blade aside on his leather greave while his curved blade swung behind her. As the commander withdrew from her spoiled attack, the pointed tip of the prefect’s scythe hooked her between the shoulders.

The prefect shook Anntica off his blade with a satisfied expression. She splayed face-down on the stonework and didn’t stir.

Zshurii and Rhecah had just regained their feet when their foe faced them again. It had all happened stunningly fast. An indiscriminate anger flared in Zshurii’s veins.

With a wordless yell, Rhecah leapt forward and slashed recklessly at the prefect’s stomach and legs. Zshurii scooted back into striking distance alongside her, and aimed cuts as high as her arm could reach readily. The prefect rebuffed every attack, but Zshurii was well-placed to ward off his counterblows from Rhecah’s helm and neck. She let her ire stoke her determination to keep her friend alive.

Relentless as their onslaught was, their scimitars only glanced off their aurochs-horned enemy’s scythe and armor. He used every part of his weapon to counter their blades and keep them to his fore. Zshurii felt herded. Beneath his waist-length beard, he grimaced smugly, which further infuriated her.

“By the horns,” Rhecah gasped. Zshurii nearly missed her meaning. Given his height, how could they possibly reach those red horns? But as Rhecah started for the prefect, her movements sparked Zshurii’s memory from their early days of training.

Together they rushed their opponent to either side. With Rhecah opposite her, they could grab this shrub-ox by the arms—his “horns”—and drag him to the flat of his back. Zshurii’s eyes fixed on his scythe blade; she watched for the slightest thrust.

Light on her feet, she jogged left and right. Then she launched herself bodily at the prefect.

Only, he anticipated them in the last instant. Before Zshurii could trap his left arm, he shifted his weapon to that hand and caught her grappling embrace on the scythe-pole. Single-handed, he lifted her so her boots dangled and she could gain no leverage. Then he flung her to the ground with all his tremendous strength.

Rhecah had succeeded in pinning his right arm under hers, but he was too sturdy for her to topple without help. Freed of Zshurii’s interference, the prefect raised his scythe like a spear in his right hand. He aimed the sharpened butt-end at Rhecah.

Zshurii shouted a warning, but her friend recognized the danger too late. The prefect skewered Rhecah like a catfish.

The steppe-folk woman let out a scream that drowned Zshurii’s cry of protest. Rhecah released the prefect’s arm and dropped her scimitar. She clawed at the scythe pole stuck in her side. When he jerked it out, she collapsed with an agonized shriek.

The prefect glanced down at Zshurii with a triumphant glow. “Run along,” he scoffed. Now he turned back on Rhecah and swung his scythe high to strike at her prone body.

This would be the way it ended for them all. Nauseated horror sloshed in Zshurii’s gut. She felt detached in an uncanny way. It reminded her of floating in a wicker bin of scoured, dried fleeces as a young girl.

In the space of half a heartbeat, Zshurii let her despair wash away like suint. And she found something else in its place.

Then she was diving toward Rhecah. The banner-pole strapped to her back crunched as it broke her landing in front of her friend. She threw her scimitar into a hasty two-handed guard above her head, just in time to catch the incoming scythe blade.

The fang scraped her hilt and bit one of her gloved knuckles. So forceful was the prefect's blow, even the glancing impact stung her palms and jarred her to the elbows. Yet Zshurii and Rhecach still drew breath.

Anntica was likely dead, and Rhecah might die anyway of her wound, but no enemy would touch their bodies again as long as Zshurii could grip a sword.

Rather than wait for the prefect to follow up his thwarted strike, she seized on an impulse to attack him first. The wide arc of his swing had left nothing but his armor between them. Springing to her feet, she threw herself against his stomach. The unexpected blow sent him reeling to regain his balance.

But Zshurii pressed her momentary advantage. She ignored his bulk and murderous intent and pretended she was sparring in the practice yard. There was no battle or death; the people in her peripheral vision were merely comrades watching and heckling. She surrendered to her humbly trained instincts and let her scimitar arm move where it wanted. With her blade as her needle, she wove an imaginary pattern on the prefect’s scythe and armor.

Though she couldn’t find a gap in his defenses or reach his unprotected face to finish her pattern, her string of attacks bought more time. She was tired, yes, but if she hesitated or lost focus, she might drop the thread, or her needle might snap.

Did the prefect seem a touch sluggish? Was he feigning weariness? He’d donned a lot of steel for this rising summer heat. Sweat flopped from his brow.

He was a hair slow parrying one of her cuts; her scimitar sliced off a finger’s length of his expansive beard. His aggravated roar told her she’d pricked her enemy’s pride.

But she blinked in surprise at this modest coup, while he reacted quickly. With a bestial grunt and a backhanded swat of his scythe pole, he snatched her breath and knocked her sprawling.

Having won the initiative at last, the prefect pounced at Zshurii with the spear end of his weapon. She pushed herself upright and saw his underhand thrust aimed at her unguarded neck.

Zshurii rolled aside and whipped her scimitar at the prefect’s extended forearm. Where she expected the familiar clang of steel on steel, her cut met no resistance. She felt her blade slide into the narrow gap between armor segments. Thin layers of leather, cloth, and flesh gave way. She’d completed her weave.

The prefect bellowed and retreated several paces. He tucked his scythe under his uninjured arm and cradled his left against his chest.

Zshurii felt shaky getting up. As she found her feet once more, soldiers from both armies spilled into the space between them. Men with battered red shields swept in, enveloped their leader, and fended off the press of royalist warriors overrunning the rampart. They made a shuffling withdrawal down a stair at the back of the platform.

When the prefect’s red horns disappeared entirely from view, the full brunt of Zshurii’s exhaustion slammed into her. She wanted to curl up beside a battlement and let sleep swallow this waking nightmare.

But she didn’t. She turned instead to wade through the throng in search of her fallen comrades.

Zshurii found Rhecah in a small clearing at the end of a blood-streaked trail, one of many marring the stonework. She had crawled over to Anntica’s standard-bearer and now propped her back against the slain soldier. Her leather helm was cast to the ground at her side. Its three-pronged crest looked scraped and battered, like she had used it to haul herself along the platform. But she wasn’t dead yet.

Strands of yellow hair hung in Rhecah’s crimson-spattered face. Wincing and gritting her teeth, she used Anntica’s banner to stanch the wound in her side. Blood soiled her tunic sleeves and chaps, but it had turned the front of her brigandine nearly black.

A few paces away, Anntica lay inert. Though large smears of blood slicked the stone around her, it hadn’t pooled. Zshurii hesitated, considering where her first obligation lay. Then she hung her scimitar at her side and moved to kneel at her friend’s side.

“Thou broke thy banner,” Rhecah croaked with a wan smile.

“Thou look a bit broken thyself,” Zshurii rejoined wearily.

The steppe-folk woman gave a sputtering snort and then twisted her face in fresh pain. “The shrub-ox missed all the important stuff, I think. Check the commander first.”

Zshurii’s reluctance to leave Rhecah must have shown. Her friend glared at her and scolded, “Aren’t thou the one who speaks of duty?”

Cheeks warm from the chastening, Zshurii turned toward Anntica and saw Cira emerge from the mess of troops atop the gatehouse. The dimple-chinned woman nodded at Zshurii before hastening to their commander’s side. Zshurii joined her, and together they removed Anntica’s helm.

The commander’s startling groan was an instant salve to Zshurii’s shame over minding Rhecah first. Anntica lived!

Her focus sharpened. “Don’t move her yet,” Zshurii told Cira. Already her eyes picked over their surroundings for something to bandage the scythe-hole in Anntica’s back.

Bodies abounded; it made for a sickly sight. But the red shields were too tightly swaddled in armor to be useful at the moment. Finally, she spotted a fallen enemy bowman and rushed over.

Zshurii drew her scimitar and cut off the slender man’s tunic sleeves, as hasty as possible without nicking his flesh. She required the Wright’s favor, so callous disrespect for the dead seemed unwise.

“Help me,” she told Cira on returning with the linen sleeves. As Zshurii held the bandages at the ready, they turned Anntica on her side and used the commander’s helm to support her back. A memory surfaced of helping her sister tend their father that day of the first riot.

Zshurii suppressed the urge to wipe Anntica’s sticky, half-dried blood from her fingers. Though the commander wasn’t losing much blood now, what was already spilt had dyed Zshurii’s gloves dark red. Prophet be blessed, Anntica’s aurochs armor was thick and woven like a basket. The enemy prefect’s scythe had ripped it through, and the wool padding beneath, but the blade hadn’t bitten deep into her flesh. While Cira held the linen strips in place, Zshurii loosened Anntica’s belt and slid it up, across the commander’s bosom, to cinch the bandages tight.

Anntica stirred fitfully and said something indistinct through a groan.

“Find a healer,” Zshurii directed Cira, who dipped her head with a murmur of assent and moved off.

Anntica blinked laboriously as she looked around. “We took the gate?” she rasped.

Zshurii looked up and assessed their situation. The overall contest atop the gate and nearby bulwarks had subsided. Shouting subalterns regrouped their royalist comrades into some semblance of coherent, if thinned, sevens and companies. No foes resisted; the gatehouse belonged to the Prophet-King.

“Yes, commander,” Zshurii answered finally.

“Did we get him?” Anntica’s question had a sharp edge. She meant the enemy prefect.

Zshurii swallowed so hard that her bone-dry throat ached. “He is worse for wear, commander, but escaped.”

Anntica grimaced and pointed shakily toward Rhecah and the standard bearer. “Fetch the banner. Carry it for us.”

“Yes, commander,” Zshurii replied. The words sounded a little halting to her ear, but Anntica remained too out of sorts to notice. If the commander hadn’t noticed Rhecah damming her wound with the battalion standard, Zshurii wouldn’t mention it now. Instead, she complied and left Anntica, who stared mutely at the city wall above, to rest as best she could till abler help arrived.

Rhecah was struggling to her feet while clutching the blood-drenched banner to her side. “Help me up, Pigtails,” she said.

“Thou are too badly hurt,” Zshurii protested.

“I’m not some ponytailed lost-folk mare,” Rhecah told her. “I’m not that easy to slay. But help me upright. And get me a better bandage before I bleed out like this shaven-head,” she said without animus, nodding at the dead standard bearer.

Zshurii couldn’t save her friend from herself. Once she’d helped Rhecah find her balance, she went back to the enemy bowman. She cut several strips of linen from his quilted jacket. Each was a hand’s breadth, an arm’s length, and several layers thick. With a murmured “thank thee,” she shook loose tufts of woolen stuffing from the strips and rushed back to Rhecah.

Exchanging Anntica’s bloodied banner for the linen wrappings seemed to satisfy Rhecah. The steppe-folk woman stooped to retrieve her scimitar with a pained grunt and favored Zshurii with an appreciative grin. “I’m like leather. Better if I’m a bit broken. I mean, broken in.”

Zshurii, nearly choking on a laugh, covered her mouth in embarrassment. Her hand held the battalion standard, which reminded her of Anntica’s instruction.

She brushed past Rhecah and knelt by the standard bearer’s corpse. From the neck up, the youthful sea-folk warrior looked to be napping. Only a trail of dark red flecks peppering the smooth plane of his cheek, from his left eye to his bearded jaw, bespoke anything amiss. His chest and below told a different story, but she declined to dwell on it.

Deftly Zshurii unfastened the man’s banner harness. Then, with some twisting and wrangling, she removed what was left of hers. Though she’d obey Anntica’s order to take up their battalion’s standard, she wouldn’t discard Arawah’s. She slid the blue and white suns off their shivered pole and affixed them back to back with Anntica’s purple horse trampling a red rattler. The seven’s colors faced left; the battalion’s faced right.

Zshurii sighed deep and strapped on the intact harness. Two banners weighed far more than one, on her soul if not her shoulders.

Rhecah already stood guard over the commander. She brandished her blade and turned a menacing glare this way and that, as if daring Zshurii or anyone to tell her she wasn’t fit to storm the city. Instead of wasting her breath, Zshurii squatted beside the commander and waited for Cira to return.

Around them, their fellow royalists continued the effort to disentangle their units without much visibility or space for the purpose. Surely the city defenders wouldn’t allow them much longer to regroup. Strictly speaking, Zshurii reckoned, they ought to try to find their senior subaltern, or any other subaltern of their company. But common sense dictated they guard Commander Anntica until relieved.

“Have thou seen any of the others?” Rhecah asked.

Zshurii shook her head. Besides Cira, only Suir and Tuir had scaled the ladder with them. And she had seen neither, breathing or otherwise, since joining the fray over the gate. “There is no telling where they might be now.”

Rhecah grunted acknowledgment. “At least Lamb is safe.”

And Cactus, too. “May the Wright make it so,” Zshurii declared with more vehemence than she’d intended.

“Zshurii!” Behind her, Cira hastened to them from the direction of the battlements—not the way she’d left. Crowded though it already was on the rampart, fresh-looking sevens arrived to replace the walking wounded who shambled toward the ladders. In her wake, Cira brought an eager-looking woman with plaited hair and a yellow armband.

The healer had scarcely knelt at Anntica’s side when someone began shouting above the general commotion. A grizzled steppe-folk subaltern, with shoulder-length hair and a close-cropped beard, browbeat a company of sea-folk infantry into position in front of a stair at the other end of the platform. Through gaps in the throng, Zshurii gathered that the stair led to a lower landing, which connected the gatehouse to the city wall stretching high overhead.

The stinger bolt snatched two heavy-clad sea-folk soldiers from the ranks and carried them past Zshurii and her companions, a full two paces off the platform. She hadn’t even noticed the missile’s telltale hiss amid the noisy aftermath of battle. Where had it come from?

A flight of stingers followed the first and cut swathes of carnage through the company at the stair. Across the rampart, panic colored the officers’ shouts, while warriors crouched at the ready. The crests of helms twitched back and forth as soldiers scanned the sky in dread anticipation. Rhecah spewed curses as she and Cira hunkered down beside her. The healer, bless her, kept tending to the commander.

Zshurii saw no slits or blemishes in the sheer earthen blocks of the city wall ahead to indicate ports where the scorpions might be ensconced. And the angle of the attack was too low to come from the top of the wall. Could they have come from—below?

Baring her scimitar, she drew an arc in the air just above the stonework. “What if the enemy regrouped in the yard below, out of sight behind the redoubts?” And they must have stashed a battery of scorpions, too, for such an occasion.

A dozen bolts, launched from some hidden spot on the ground to their left, elicited new shouts and screams as they swept the top of the gatehouse. Their assailants had two batteries, then. Rhecah strung together words for a half-dozen varieties of beast excrement. “I hope somebody has a notion what we do now,” she added.

The sea-folk company directly ahead, thoroughly shredded, began to recoil from the stair. They would leave a gap no other units would likely rush to fill.

Zshurii didn’t know what the Wright, or the Prophet-King, would have her do. But she knew what Anntica would do, and that seemed good enough.

“For Arawah!” Zshurii cried out, because it was the first thing that came to mind—and felt proper besides. Cira and Rhecah, wounded though she was, joined Zshurii’s race to the stair. The three pushed abreast through the reluctant withdrawal of the infantry company. Their charge turned heads; some stragglers paused their retreat, and a few warriors faced about. But the hidden scorpions flung another volley of stingers into the herd, which kept most of the men retiring toward the siege ladders.

Several paces ahead, the grey-maned steppe-folk subaltern fumed and swore at the crumbled sea-folk outfit. When his eyes met Zshurii’s, they shone with urgency. At the sight of her and her companions rushing into peril, the resigned twist of his mouth turned to relief. “One realm!” he boomed, with a flourish of his scythe. Then he fell in beside Rhecah, to Zshurii’s left. A handful of wavering stalwarts steadied and follow his lead.

And Zshurii kept on. But so did the scorpion stingers. One barbed shaft ripped through a knot of soldiers just as they rallied, off to Cira’s right. Rhecah’s tortured war cries and intermingled curses belied the strain of running wounded. But the woman was too belligerent to fall behind.

Quickly they reached the top of the stair. From here, the exposed backside of the gatehouse rampart, Zshurii had a clear view of the landing below. The square platform sat atop a stone-enclosed corridor. The passage led from the gate, under the landing, and through a dozen paces of rock and rammed earth into the city itself. Years before, she’d departed Danuh by the same avenue.

To either side of the landing, a ramp led to the yard below. The dirt lane, broad enough for two sevens to ride comfortably side by side, separated the bulwarks from the city wall. And there, past the left ramp, she could see the front half-dozen scorpions.

From this vantage, she couldn’t gauge their overall numbers. Crews in segmented armor manned them, and sevens of red-shields were interspersed among the machines. A few skirmishers ran about, too, loosing arrows in Zshurii’s direction. Within moments, she and the growing number of royalists at the back of the rampart were crouched or kneeling so they’d present smaller targets to the darts and stingers hissing by. Those royalists who still carried their bows replied in kind, but there were too few.

“We can’t stay here, Zshurii,” Rhecah opined. She wasn’t wrong.

The steppe-folk subaltern sidled over. “Yak’s breath! Forget the city—I’d settle for liberating those confounded scorpions.” A smile creased Rhecah’s sweat-slick features.

The prospect of storming the yard nearly turned Zshurii’s knees to corn pudding. But there was no safe place anywhere; she couldn’t preserve herself. So she reckoned she’d face danger and duty head on, with her sisters and brothers in arms.

“Right,” she said. The old subaltern nodded.

All four of them charged nearly in unison, trusting more warriors would follow. And so they did, with a roar that drowned out all other sound for a suspended moment.

Rhecah slowed a bit on the stair, but Zshurii and Cira kept to either side of her protectively. The subaltern and a couple dozen sea-folk soldiers outpaced them to reach the landing first.

As the front rank of royalists set foot on the left ramp, a dense swarm of stingers struck. Half of the soldiers collapsed with crimson blossoms on their armor, and the rest stumbled over their bodies. The subaltern clambered over corpses, his scythe held aloft, and limped down the narrow ramp while railing at the rest to press on. And the survivors leapt over the fallen to oblige.

Another volley struck just behind Zshurii and her comrades while they waited, desperate, for space to move forward again. Soldiers toppled off the open stair above to the yard below. She looked up and saw that other warriors had packed the top of the stair.

Terrible responsibility clobbered her senses. Though they might not know it, Zshurii had brought her fellow soldiers down here; she had led the dead and maimed into this slaughter pen. Now, there was no other way.

As soon as the congestion below cleared, Zshurii and her companions resumed their charge. Together the three women ran across the open yard, scimitars ready. Arawah’s phrase rang bitter-true in Zshurii’s mind: they were to be “the tip of the blade.” Their little seven, here at the fore, had proven her a prophet. By the time they were halfway to the first scorpions, they weren’t far behind the limping subaltern.

Scorpions filled this stretch of the yard, three across, as far back as Zshurii could see. Enemy warriors weren’t thick on the ground, but they’d coalesced near the front. The subaltern barreled into a red-shield and fell on his foe. His scythe flashed with a vengeance. Though some scorpion crews beat a hasty withdrawal, the two-man crew of the lead machine loaded, ratcheted, and loosed one final stinger. The defiant bolt hissed between Zshurii’s head and Cira’s, so close the latter yelped in fright.

But the crew hadn’t left themselves time to pull back without a scuffle. They drew their scimitars to greet the royalists. A short, stocky fellow charged at Zshurii, who parried while Cira stabbed him in the side. His tall, wiry companion slashed at Rhecah. She lowered her head and rammed his midsection with her crested helm. Zshurii seized the chance to kick his kneecap hard; the soldier crumpled.

Rhecah reached the scorpion and threw her shoulder behind a wheel in an effort to turn the oversized bow on its carriage. “Get over here!” she grunted. Zshurii and Cira ran to the wheels on the other side.

“Soldiering becomes thou,” Rhecah told Zshurii across the twin arms of the scorpion.

Zshurii’s mouth parted to reply when an arrow-spright pierced Rhecah’s throat from one side and protruded from the other. At first, the steppe-folk woman slumped forward onto the wheel. Then her body above the waist slid limply to the cart bed and didn’t stir.

Zshurii stared aghast at her dead friend. What was the point in victory, if this was the cost? Violent anger flared in her bosom and spread lightning-quick to her innermost depths.

In the corner of her eye, the tall artilleryman stirred. “Watch out!” she warned Cira. But ire consumed her alarm in the space of a heartbeat. She raised her scimitar arm with an eye to the writhing man’s throat.

Before she could swing the blade, a pang stayed her hand. In her mind, she saw her father lying, cut and bruised, on the kitchen table. Was duty lord over mercy? Maybe she ought to take this man prisoner instead. She’d never taken anyone prisoner before.

“Kill him, Zshurii,” Cira insisted. Her vehemence was disconcerting.

Zshurii kicked the tall soldier in the jaw, as hard as she could. It made an unpleasant sound and hurt her foot something fierce. The man’s eyes rolled up in his head, but he kept breathing. Some questions were too great for her; they were matters for the Wright to sort out.

New, panicked sounds arose from behind. Zshurii and Cira looked back to the ramp and the landing to behold a dire situation. The enemy prefect, the marked one, had reappeared as if from nowhere with a torrent of red, leather, and steel.

The judges’ reinforcements poured from an opening under the ramp, which left Zshurii and a few dozen other royalists trapped in the yard. Even if friendly troops from the top of the gatehouse could push the prefect’s soldiers back, the soldiers already down here would die first—caught between the scorpions and the shrub-ox.

“We should keep attacking,” Cira urged. “We could get away.”

The rest of the scorpion crews and their escorts were only now regrouping a little ways off. Maybe if Zshurii and her comrades broke through the machines, friendly bowmen on ramparts farther down the line would pick off any pursuers.

But how many of the enemy bulwarks had their legion, in fact, captured? How long before defenders high on the city wall began pelting the yard with stones and arrows?

And how many of the city’s soldiers were pouring from the stone-encased passage under the landing? How many royalist wounded would be slaughtered as rebels if the prefect retook the yard?

“We’ll never manage quick enough,” Zshurii said. “We’re too few and too tired.”

“But we can make them pay,” the old subaltern broke in. “Purchase time.” He limped hurriedly toward them, wiping his scythe on the grass. He made a fleeting grimace at the sight of Rhecah’s corpse. But it didn’t stop him from climbed onto the scorpion carriage, with remarkable dexterity for his injured leg. He hoisted his weapon overhead like a standard.

“Form up, you yak-brains!” he hollered. “Soldiers of the King, circle ’round!” The surviving royalists in the yard gathered like midges to a lantern.

Zshurii regretted that their fallen enemies’ round-square shields were too bulky for her to wield. She’d be better off without. Shoulder to shoulder with Cira, she stood beside the scorpion, just in front of Rhecah as if to guard her friend’s body. She hoped her family would somehow recover her own body, or find her grave—if the judges granted her the dignity of one.

The enemy tide was fast closing the distance. The horned prefect, despite his size, charged out front like an aurochs with a seven of red-shields.

“Stand firm!” the subaltern yelled. Zshurii braced herself.

The Prophet-King strode out of thin air in front of the prefect and his soldiers. Zshurii’s white-bearded lord was resplendent in his royal tunic, and leather plate armor. She wondered if the faint glow about him was merely a trick of the mid-morning sun. His curious, wide-brimmed hat was absent. Instead of his black staff, he extended a brilliant, uncurved sword toward the judges’ men.

The first few enemies with the prefect slowed for a heartbeat, uncertain, but then charged the newcomer at their prefect’s furious exhortation. The Prophet-King slew the red-shields swiftly. His sword flashed; he seemed to be everywhere at once. He disarmed them as if they didn’t carry shields at all, and they fell grasping at the bloody ribbons streaming down their leather armor.

Zshurii and Cira exchanged wordless expressions of wonderment and guarded hope. Reverence and apprehension prevailed among the ragged circle of royalist troops. The tension smothered one soldier’s isolated cheer.

“He fights after all,” the subaltern muttered from his perch atop the scorpion.

“So he does,” said Cira breathlessly.

Around the ramp, fighting raged between the resurgent red-shields and the royalists trying to descend from the stair. But immediately behind the prefect, the judges’ troops storming the yard had stalled. They waited on the steel-armored shrub-ox, who lumbered forward to confront the Prophet-King. Zshurii, like the other soldiers on either side of the leaders, watched with bated breath.

Without a word, the heroes commenced their duel.

It was strange to Zshurii to see her lord fighting a marked one, but then again, she was neither prophet nor king. The Prophet-King not only wielded a barbarian-style sword instead of a scimitar, but he also fought in a peculiar fashion. He faced the prefect with a perfect, even-shouldered bearing that disguised his intent as he probed his opponent. The Prophet-King hovered at the outer limit of his blade’s reach. When he attacked, he used rapid footwork to strike and retreat like a desert cat. The thrusts of his weapon were direct and abrupt. Even so, it didn’t seem he was truly trying to wound the prefect.

The enemy wore a bandage around his right forearm, where Zshurii had wounded him, but he didn’t noticeably favor it. He wasn’t quite as nimble as the Prophet-King, but he was just as tall and broader of shoulder. And Zshurii knew too well the long reach of that wicked, deadly pole-scythe.

She noticed the Prophet-King’s strikes becoming more fluid. The clean lines of his cuts and stabs were still arrow-straight, but his shift from one stance to the next was almost uninterrupted. He spun and twirled out of the way of the prefect’s counterblows in a manner unexpected for his age. The shrub-ox couldn’t catch him in a bind.

But nor could the Prophet-King penetrate that steel armor. The prefect took a series of vicious swipes at him, but he moved out of the way with such agility that it made the attacks look sluggish.

Then the Prophet-King retaliated with a whirlwind of sharp, deliberate cuts, creeping incrementally closer. The assault set the prefect back. Murmurs went up from the onlooking royalist soldiers.

The hoary-headed king brought down the hilt of his weapon on the prefect’s bandaged elbow. The shrub-ox’s right hand released his scythe, and the Prophet-King pushed past the polearm to bludgeon the prefect in the face with his sword hilt.

But the shrub-ox recovered too quickly and delivered a punishing blow to the side of the Prophet’s head. Zshurii’s heart skipped, and Cira gasped. The blow sent the Prophet reeling, but he kept his feet, ending in a wide stance and a high guard. The shrub-ox stampeded toward him with a bellow.

The Prophet-King moved with such speed, it was as if with every stroke of his sword, he vanished and reappeared from the air itself, from a slightly different vantage. It might have been an illusion, the dance of sunbeams, but he seemed to leave a faint, dissipating trail of light wherever he’d last been. The prefect, enraged, could only flail his weapon about in response.

Then the Prophet stood directly in front of the disoriented enemy commander. He held both ends of his sword like it was a polearm and disarmed the prefect with three quick, whirling strikes and a jab. As soon as the shrub-ox dropped his weapon, the Prophet-King released his blade with his left hand and used that arm to knock the prefect off balance.

Before the shrub-ox had collapsed to the ground, the Prophet-King’s blade had cleaved a steel plate from just below his chest. As soon as the prefect hit the earth, the Prophet-King stepped beside his body, whipped his blade around point-downward, and plunged it into the man’s exposed chest.

Opposite Zshurii and Cira, the judges’ troops looked stunned. The Prophet-King faced them and held his ground.

As if by some unspoken command, the red-shields turned and fled from the silent, bare-headed old king.

Newly arrived royalists had used the Prophet-King’s distraction to fill in the yard around the ramp and force the enemy into a bottleneck. A few bold sevens dropped ladders from the back of the gatehouse rampart to avoid the stair and ramps all together. They reformed in the yard and advanced on the remaining scorpion batteries.

“Hold thy position,” the grizzled subaltern called out. “Thou’ve earned a breath or two.”

Zshurii shuddered and sighed; her scimitar arm dropped to her side. By the Wright, they’d live a little longer. No matter the fate of the city, they’d endured in the here and now. She wept unbidden tears of mourning.

Zshurii felt vaguely ashamed for crying, but she couldn’t bring herself to stop. She sank to the ground and squeezed her eyes shut. Her sense of time and place eluded her.

Then she felt a gentle hand rest upon her shoulder and lifted her bleary gaze to find a thick white beard, which led to a prominent nose and wise, sharp eyes. Up close, the Prophet-King reminded her of an eagle.

Her shame redoubled, Zshurii hastened to stand. But her knees shook as she rose, and she faltered. The standards she bore on her back seemed heavier than before; they threatened to drag her back to the earth. When had she ever felt so depleted?

A kindly crinkle softened the edges of the Prophet-King’s aquiline visage. He lent Zshurii an arm and helped her easily to her feet. The hilt of his sword, sheathed in a back scabbard, peeked over his shoulder.

“Weary am I, as well, C’hinzshurii,” he remarked in a softer tone than she expected. His voice was resonant, and lyrical in the lost-folk way, but more thickly guttural than any accent she’d heard in camp.

Zshurii tried not to reveal her skepticism. There was no hint of tiredness or feebleness about him.

“We lost so many,” she said plaintively. Her thoughts were full of wool after her cry. “So many fallen.”

The Prophet-King returned a somber nod. “Sword and seasons have claimed many souls nigh to my heart.” His voice seemed to catch, ever so slightly, on that final word, but he cleared his throat and continued. “From realm to realm, anger and folly find clever new ways to spread the same old bitterness. Mercy is ever in short supply.”

These words puzzled Zshurii. “But, my lord, why then did thou—why did you not show mercy to the prefect?”

The Prophet-King took no notice of her lapse in formality. “I think I did,” he quipped in reply, “and to others besides. But mercy is not always ours to give; nor do we accept it always when it’s offered. Compassion is a gift of the Wright, both in the giving and the receipt.”

This was a great deal for Zshurii to absorb in her present state. The Prophet-King took pity and shrugged. “We do as we’re able.”

“But he was a marked one!” she blurted, forgetting herself. “And I raised my hand against him. My blade drew his blood.” Unreasonable as she knew her qualms to be—she’d been resisting an enemy in battle, after all—her guilt reared its ahead anew.

“That mark,” the Prophet-King spat. Zshurii flinched, but he had aimed his scowl over her head, into the distance. Then he noticed her discomfort and explained, “Fear and respect the mark may deserve, but not honor.” He spoke the words as if delivering an edict.

“A burden is the mark to those who truly bear it,” he said. “Always have there been mockers who pretended to it. They lack understanding.” Was her lord rambling, or was Zshurii audience to some sort of prophecy?

“And one day,” the Prophet-King intoned, “true children of the Wright will no longer fear this mark. Its bearers true and false will cease their vain striving. Instead, they will strike their hands in pledge under the rising sun. And the mark will mean what they make of it—light or shadow.”

When he had finished prophesying, if that was what it had been, he sighed and looked, for an instant, very old. Zshurii could only stare; she dared not utter a sound. She let her memory absorb the words themselves, though she couldn’t begin to divide their meaning. Silently she repeated the cryptic lines and willed her feet not to shuffle in place.

Off to the side, the old steppe-folk subaltern cleared his throat awkwardly and offered mumbled apologies. “My lord, this isn’t a secure position. We’re too close to the wall.”

The Prophet-King’s eagle eyes narrowed. “Quite right,” he said, as if nothing unusual had transpired. “And we ought to check on thy commander. Follow me.”

As he turned toward the gatehouse, a thought wafted through Zshurii’s mind. “The bridge,” she said abruptly. He paused and fixed her with a patient expression. “On the bridge, I flew through the air,” she made herself continue. “I saved—my friend, and the commander, from enemy arrows. But I don’t know how.” She didn’t know what else to add without sounding more the fool.

“Did thou pray?” the Prophet-King asked. She looked him a question, so he posed his again. “Before this miracle spared your fellow soldiers for a time, did thou pray?”

Zshurii considered a moment. “I’m unsure,” she admitted. “I think so.”

He returned a slight nod. “Keep praying, C’hinzshurii. And pray for the future as well, thine and all our kingdom’s. A life beyond this war have thou, with a husband and wee ones. And a horse, mayhap.”

She told herself to sew up her gaping mouth. Though she’d given it scant thought since this war began, it seemed somehow improbable. To raise a family of her own, after all this? Surely this was only hopeful speculation. But even so, from a man called a prophet, it carried more weight.

For now, she had to push daydreams aside and, to her chagrin, leave Rhecah’s body behind. The Prophet-King already headed for the ramp. Zshurii and Cira’s legs churned to catch up, and keep up, with their lord’s long strides. Close behind marched the subaltern and a seven’s worth of soldiers he’d ordered to join him.

From afar, Zshurii reckoned, it must look like they were escorting the Prophet-King up the ramp, across the landing, and up the stair to the rampart. In truth, having witnessed his duel with the prefect, it felt like the soldiers were under his protection.

On top of the gatehouse, the bustle was less frantic than before. The battle-fog, among the troops and in Zshurii’s head, had mostly cleared.

They found Anntica propped against a battlement. The same healer as before continued to fuss over the commander, whose peeved expression fled as the Prophet-King approached. “M’lord,” she greeted him. “By your leave, I don’t think I’m fit to stand just yet.”

“I don’t suppose thou are, Commander,” he replied amiably.

Anntica’s eyes flicked toward Zshurii. “I’m glad to see thou survived.”

“You as well, sir,” Zshurii answered, sounding more flippant than she intended. She winced inside, but Anntica brayed a laugh before returning her focus to the Prophet-King.

“I’m told I’m indebted to you, m’lord, for preserving what remains of my battalion. You have my gratitude.” Any trace of humor had vanished. “But what now, m’lord?”

They fell to discussing commands and deployments. A distant blaring of war-horns drew Zshurii’s attention. Discreetly she peered between the battlements.

Countless sevens carrying rams or leading shell-backed beasts were crossing the bridge in apparent preparation to batter down the gate over which Zshurii stood. Back on the west side of the river, a tapestry of bodies decorated the otherwise naked field. It told the story of the battle there—the fight Arawah’s seven had avoided on their way to the bridge. Though the royalists had turned their enemies’ flank and enveloped them, corpse mounds testified to the courage of the judges’ men.

Horns blared closer now. A commotion rippled through the troops on the rampart. A sea-folk soldier pointed south in animated fashion, but she couldn’t discern his words.

“What in the mare’s milk is going on?” Anntica was speaking to Zshurii. The commander and the Prophet-King had paused their conversation to look her way.

Zshurii and Cira stepped over to the battlements. As soon as Zshurii glanced toward the floodplain south of the city, beyond the creek, she understood.

There a dark, undulating mass of troops had broken out of the city. Like an arrowhead through woolen armor, the judges’ host had punctured the Prophet-King’s downriver forces. Royalist cataphracts west of the city had turned their leather-clad camels southward to help. Based on the relative size of the enemy sally, the cataphracts’ effort seemed too little, too late.

“Well?” Anntica asked pointedly.

Zshurii opened her mouth to relay what she saw. But then the Prophet-King towered over her. “The auxiliaries are breaking,” he said with measured calm.

“Half-trained calves and old goats,” Anntica growled. Tearing her eyes from the disaster unfolding on the river-plain, Zshurii looked down into her commander’s stormy countenance.

The Prophet-King ignored the disparaging remark. “A change of plan is in order,” he told those assembled close around him. “With the fewest possible troops, we must hold this advanced position. To our southern flank will we send the rest of our warriors this side of the city. If we do not help ourselves quickly, we’ll be no use to our beleaguered friends.

“Commander Anntica,” he said, “I’ll be altering thy prefect’s assignment.” His tone turned wry. “Something better tailored to his ambition. This legion is thy charge for the duration. Battlefield promotions all around will we call it.”

Before the healer choked on her objections, the Prophet-King added, “Here thee and thy legion will stay, Commander, with the gatehouse as thy bastion. Do not lose it.”

“We’ll stick to this gate like a wart on the judges’—”

“Indeed,” the Prophet-King interrupted smoothly. “But this battalion will I need to borrow, spent though they may be. As my personal guard for the afternoon.” Knowing she would stick close by their lord for the rest of this fight brought Zshurii unexpected relief.

“Subaltern Cuur,” the Prophet-King said to the greyed steppe-folk officer, “acting commander of the battalion are thou. Gather up the infantry and reform them by the near foot of the bridge.” Cuur held his scythe in salute.

Then it was Zshurii’s turn. “C’hinzshurii,” the Prophet-King said, “thou are the subaltern of thy seven. And in command of thy company as well, till someone who outranks thee appears.”

This summary promotion to Arawah’s office left Zshurii dumbfounded, but she mustered a faint, “Yes, my lord.”

This seemed to satisfy him. “Alas, we’ve no scythe for you at present. Certain am I we can remedy that before the day is finished.”

Suddenly she found her full voice. “That’s unnecessary. I would rather not—my lord.” She was wholly content with her scimitar. After all, she wouldn’t be a subaltern, or a soldier, forever.

The Prophet’s crinkle of a smile resurfaced, though it was gone again just as quick. “Very well. Round up thy horsebows and get to thy mounts.”

“M’lord, what about captives? My soldiers are collecting a fair few, but there aren’t many of us to spare. Especially if the yak-brains—if the red-shields keep counterattacking like this. Things could get heated fast…”

And royalist soldiers under pressure might dispose of inconvenient prisoners, Zshurii’s commander was implying. It was a wretched, gut-wrenching thought, yet all too real a possibility.

“What does Subaltern C’hinzshurii think we ought to do with our captured foes?” the Prophet-King asked in reply.

Zshurii forced herself to ignore everyone’s stares and consider the question. She looked again to the battlefield they had traversed that morning. Her gaze lit on the bridge.

“I’d take their arms, my lord,” she said slowly, “but not their armor. Herd to them to the riverbank. If they try any mischief, or to escape to the west bank, they won’t get far.”

After a thoughtful silence, the Prophet-King spoke. “Very pragmatic,” he said evenly. “And merciful.” Zshurii beamed within.

In short order, the Prophet dismissed their unlikely council, and its members dispersed. Zshurii took leave of her lord and senior officers and turned to her dimpled comrade. “Cira, locate Lamb and bring the mounts to the far side of the bridge.” It felt an eternity since she’d laid eyes on Cactus.

Zshurii stood alone amid the milling soldiers on the gatehouse. She was halfway to gathering a proper thought when an inward tremor ambushed her. The cold snaked from her toes to her fingertips. What sprightly affliction was this? Her hands wouldn’t cease quivering.

The Prophet-King had bidden her pray. “If our stories must end today, Wright almighty, let them be good endings.”

As Zshurii breathed the words, her trembling stilled. A peaceful glow, akin to daybreak, spread within. She grasped it tight with all her being and went to find her horse.