Southrons (Delfii's Song, Snippet 0)
Southrons (Delfii's Song, Snippet 0)
A story fragment from the Southsong Cycle
This country is hot—confounded hot. Not in the way of the isles and coasts, where a body could almost swim through the air like it was the green-blue sea. Here the air was dry enough to turn Delfii’s insides to leather. Sweat evaporated before it could trickle from her hair to her ears.
And the mottled landscape was so dull in appearance, it had taught her to discern a whole gamut of browns and greens she had never known existed.
Delfii sat easy astride her softly growling ridge-cat. Turtle sniffed the improbable pile of droppings at her feet and then drew her neck back into her chest. Fair enough. It didn’t look like any bird excrement she’d ever seen. But six months was a brief time in which to uncover the curiosities of this wild wasteland.
“Settle, Turtle,” Delfii murmured. She studied the dry creek-bed below. The glare of the late-afternoon sun illuminated a scratchy set of markings in cracked clay.
Delfii peered over her shoulder at the nine women and freemen behind her, mounted on their own cats. Each warrior held a javelin in one hand. A few carried their wave-shaped shield on one arm, like Delfii, while others kept theirs slung on their backs. At her standing order, they all wore their short-crested helm on patrol.
The warriors’ arms and necks were tattooed with the souls each had sent to Livyat. Only Palma, Delfii’s second, boasted more than she.
“It may be the raiders the locals babble about, or maybe not,” Delfii said. “If the empress favors us with her shadow—”
One of the other women snorted in contempt. Who, this time?
“If she favors us,” Delfii drawled, “maybe we will find barbarian blood worth spilling.”
Then she swept the quarter-crew with dagger eyes. “Unless I spill yours first and let the mother of leviathans sort you all out.” Silence, and eyes glinting behind steel nose-guards like a school of blue and brown fish, met her gaze.
Delfii didn’t bother giving a command. She simply nudged Turtle, and the beast took her into the gully with a single leap. The other nine would follow.
After all, they weren’t just any Waveborne. Their blood, blades, and souls belonged to the eternal empress. They were Southrons.
Note from the Author
Welcome to our recent free subscribers! The May break in free snippets, while we finish Zshurii’s Song for paid subscribers, seemed too long, so this was a quick teaser snippet for Delfii’s Song. It’s our first published story in the Southsong Cycle—and there’s more to come this fall!
P.S.—Remember, free subscribers can also find episodes of Zshurii’s Song, Sciito’s Song, and Len’s Song on Kindle Vella, or upgrade to a paid sub here on Substack for access to our full archives.