Joel Shepherd - Haven

Her breath came hard as she found her running rhythm, climbing higher and higher across the face of the mountain. It seemed almost as though she were flying, high above the greatest battle in the history of all humanity, in the company of thousands of newly liberated souls.

General Geralin was not dead. Nor, Kessligh observed, was he feathered with serrin arrows. He dismounted before Kessligh's command party, ashen-faced and soot-streaked. One of his accompanying officers had to be carried from the saddle, bleeding profusely. There were only two such officers, where there should have been an entourage.

Geralin looked about at the army that retreated past him. Men who had marched so upright and proud, in perfect lines and squares, now limped and straggled in small groups, their shields battered, their armour blackened in parts by smoke and ash. There were not nearly so many of them here as there should have been. Not so many at all.

He looked at Kessligh, and at Damon, who sat in his saddle alongside. Damon had come hoping to see far more Rhodaanis returning than this.

“How'd your plan go?” Damon called to him, in brutal dark humour. In his eyes was not amusement, but something closer to hatred. Damon hated fools above all else. Wallowing in a village duckpond, they were harmless. Leading armies, far less so.

General Geralin looked once more at what was left of his army, then drew a knife and cut his own throat. He fell awkwardly, then lay still. Hardly anyone noticed.

“That bad, huh?” Damon asked.

“Should have done it myself,” said Kessligh.

“They'd have all left and wouldn't have cost the Regent anything at all,” Damon replied. “This bought us something, at least. I want to go and welcome Sasha. Back soon.”

He left at a canter, messengers and several juniors following. Kessligh remained in his dust, contemplating the body of a once proud general, and wondering if humans would ever learn as serrin did to see what was truly before them, instead of what they wished to be so.

The path descended onto a flat shoulder where a small town overlooked the convergence of the Ilmerhill and Dhemerhill Valleys. The town was full of activity, Ilduuri men bustling through, wagons on the hillside road hauling ammunition to the artillery's new position. Sasha arrived at a walk, within the tail of her army, and received a rousing cheer from the Ilduuris gathered there.

She saluted them without enthusiasm. “Wounded heroes remained behind and gave their lives to guard our retreat!” she called to those who cheered. “Save your cheers for them-they fell to the last man and went down swinging.”

At the base of the slope she looked about at the town and drew a few more deep breaths-they'd slowed to a walk once it was clear they were not being chased. The walk had given her a good look at the battlefield, and she'd left several of the best runners behind on the trail to bring back reports of the Regent's advancing formations.

Captain Idraalgen was waiting, and filled her in on the Ilduuris' new position, at the wooden barrier wall they'd built earlier in parallel to the stone wall across the valley below, a fallback they'd all known was coming.

“We've good artillery position just up from the town too,” he added, “but not close enough to the wall, so the range will be lacking.”

Sasha made a face. “Artillery's not built for mountains. How many did we lose?”

“A third of it. We sabotaged most, set it on fire; I think they only captured one working ballista….”

“Look, we're not going to be able to fit more than a portion of the force up here, so let's make preparations to move most of them down to defend the wall. And I want them fed.”

Suddenly Damon was riding up the road between wagons, horsemen, and soldiers. He dismounted at her side, as Idraalgen hurried off to see to her orders.

“So how's your day been?” Sasha asked him wryly. He looked very martial indeed in full armour, sweaty and rugged with blood droplets on one cheek. Not his own blood, Sasha noted with approval.

“Oh, fair.” His lip curled. “Not dead yet.”

“But the day is young.” Actually the day was getting quite old, shadows long as the sun set in the direction of the Ipshaal. But it was the traditional Lenay exchange for such circumstances. They tapped fists. “Rhodaanis?”

“Smashed. General Geralin killed himself.”

Sasha snorted. “It was a bad position, but fuck. Solid squares? What was wrong with him?”

“Nothing his own knife couldn't solve, apparently. We're not going to hold this wall.”

“Were never going to. Let's just hold it today, give them a night to think about it.”

“I know Rhillian's got all kinds of ideas for what the talmaad can do by night,” said Damon.

“Aye, well, she's not going to kill this army by sneaking a few arrows in the dark.”

Damon nodded grimly. “One of your messengers was telling me you think we've underestimated their force. How many do you think?”

“Here?” Sasha wiped hair from her face. “One thirty.”

“We missed thirty thousand?”

Sasha shrugged. “How many Bacosh lords do you think heard of the victory at Sonnai Plain, concluded they were missing out on the greatest triumph of Bacosh history, and sent in all the force they had to link up with Balthaar?”

“You think?”

“All I know is that there's well more than a hundred thousand here. I've seen a lot of big forces lately and I think I can guess.”

Damon sighed. “Well. It was near impossible to begin with, what's another thirty thousand?”

“Damon,” said Sasha, drawing his attention. Then she smiled. “Biggest battle ever. I mean in all the history of Rhodia. We're Lenay. We're in it. Where else would you rather be?”

“Anywhere,” said Damon. Sasha laughed. She knew Damon didn't embrace that sort of thing; she was merely needling him, as he now needled her back. “You haven't asked after Lenayin yet.”

“I don't need to.” For a brief moment, Damon seemed genuinely touched. “And I saw them withdraw in good order.”

“We lost a bit more than a thousand. Light under the circumstances.”

“Aye. Light.”

Damon's eyes gleamed. “We must have taken at least ten times that. Twenty times, maybe. It was extraordinary.”

“And you led it, King Damon.” Damon stared at her for a moment, eyes still gleaming. That was what Sasha had been looking for from Damon. Perhaps for the entire time she'd known him. Only now did she see it. The look of a Lenay king at war.

“Tell it to Koenyg,” he replied.

“I fucking will. And so will you.”

Alfriedo Renine walked gingerly along the bank of the Dhemerhill River, General Zulmaher and a handful of other Rhodaani lords accompanying him. The Rhodaanis were camped between the Lenays and the Torovans, a small group of perhaps two thousand noble cavalry squeezed between much larger forces. They had not yet seen battle, though Alfriedo's thighs felt as though they'd been through a war. He'd always liked to ride, though in Tracato he'd had the luxury to dismount and rest when he chose. Not here.

His short sword felt heavy against his leg as he walked. Men along the riverbank washed or gathered water by torch- or lamplight, as the river, barely twenty paces across at the widest, gleamed with the reflections of fires, dotted like the stars in the night sky above. Clusters of horses whinnied and munched on the grass, and food cooked on a thousand campfires. On either side of the valley loomed hillsides and mountains, upon the sides of which no man now dared to venture. The night belonged to the serrin, and cavalrymen here in the eastern Dhemerhill made their camp as close to the central river as possible. Up the hillslopes the trees grew more thickly, and serrin could move unseen and unheard. Sentries stood watch the length of the campsite's long, winding flanks tonight, and no man envied them the duty.