A scream from behind me caused me to glance back and I saw Old Tobb – not only a Greatcoat but a former Domaris cavalry officer – fall from his horse with three spears sticking out of his back. He wasn’t the first Greatcoat to die that day, nor was he the last.
Fear and exhaustion began to wear on me. A duellist puts every ounce of energy he has into a few brief minutes in the circle. A soldier must fight on and on, hour after hour, until either a halt is called or he dies on the field.
Worse than the physical effects was the fog obscuring my thoughts, thick as nightmist. The constant rise and fall of frantic, violent action followed by desperate retreat were wearing on me, turning the battle into a roiling assault on my senses – flashes of steel, splatters of blood, the rapturous roaring of the enemy as they attacked, the panicked screams of our own soldiers as they fell to the ground, the mad, grinning faces of the Avarean warriors hacking them to pieces the last thing they saw.
By the time the sun set and that strange, unspoken agreement to cease fighting for the day had come once again, I could swear I felt Death himself breathing at my neck, chasing after me as I stumbled up the small hill to collapse beside Kest.
‘They fought with all their hearts,’ Feltock said quietly, standing at the hill’s edge as he looked down at our men as they nursed their wounds and took what rest they could. ‘May what Gods there are damn any man who says otherwise.’
‘How many?’ I asked. I couldn’t summon enough strength for any more words.
‘We lost eight hundred,’ he replied, then turned and grinned. ‘The Avareans lost two thousand.’
‘Two thousand?’ We’d fared better than I’d thought, but the look in Feltock’s eyes told me it wasn’t good enough.
‘It’s the numbers. They still have four thousand to our less than sixteen hundred.’
‘So what happens now?’ I asked.
He glanced at Valiana and Nehra, as if waiting for one of them to explain what should be blindingly obvious, and when neither spoke, asked, ‘Now?’ He gestured down at the weary soldiers huddled together on the field. ‘Those people did what you asked of them, Falcio: they proved our worth to the enemy. They have displayed as much damned rokhan as any of us could hope for. If the Avareans have an ounce of honour or decency or whatever it is that makes a man show mercy to his enemy, then there’s a chance our people back home will survive.’
‘But our troops,’ I said. ‘What happens tomorrow?’
‘Tomorrow Morn’s warriors will overrun us, Falcio.’ He looked down at the soldiers preparing for sleep. ‘Tomorrow we die. Every last one of us.’
*
It’s hard, deciding what to do with your last hours of life. I spent a little time with Valiana, mostly trying to convince her to leave the field. That didn’t go down well. Despite my promise to Ethalia, I tried to do the same with her, but she did me the kindness of clamping a hand over my mouth before I could speak.
‘It hardly seems a suitable end for the song Rhyleis has worked so hard on, that it should end with you sitting alone in a tent with a bloody nose, Falcio.’
I gently removed her hand. ‘You know, people are starting to wonder just how merciful the Saint of Mercy really is.’
‘I’ve told you many times, Falcio val Mond, it’s in my nature to be mysterious. I am a Sister of the Order of Mysterious Light, after all.’
‘I thought it was supposed to be Merciful Light.’
She kissed me then, and held the kiss for a long time before she said, ‘And here I thought you and I agreed that we could be more than just one thing.’
I expected that kiss to become something more, but then she took my hand and led me outside. ‘Where are we going?’ I asked.
‘To where you would want to be, no matter how persuasive my charms.’
We walked hand in hand in the darkness, guided as much by the soft sound of Nehra’s guitar as the fire around which Kest, Brasti and Valiana were sitting. I thought she meant us all to share the remaining hours together, but instead, Nehra and Valiana got up, and they, along with Ethalia, left the fire to Kest, Brasti and me.
‘Well, Falcio,’ Brasti said, ‘I think you’re taking far too long to concoct a daring plan that saves us all from total annihilation.’
‘I suspect the odds are rather unfavourable for any of Falcio’s plans to work,’ Kest said.
I felt a sudden urge to shout at them both, to tell Brasti to stop making everything into a joke and Kest to stop finding new ways to tell me we were screwed. Ethalia had given us this time together and for once I just wanted to sit with my best friends and speak plainly, honestly, to stop playing the fools and instead admit that we loved each other without pretext or artifice. But that’s not who we were; it wasn’t how we had lived and it likely wouldn’t be how we died. The three of us had survived a thousand dangers and a million heartaches not just with our wits and weapons, but with the little jokes, the jibes, the small – perhaps even petty – defiances against a world that was determined to kill us.
‘It’s that damned cliff that bugs me,’ Brasti went on, ‘even more than the horde. It feels like the Avareans could send all that snow crashing down on us at any damn time they want.’
‘It’s too far away,’ Kest said. ‘The snow wouldn’t reach us here.’
Brasti shook his head. ‘You really are thick sometimes, you know that? I was being metaphysical.’
‘You mean metaphorical.’
‘Oh, really? My mistake.’
Kest suddenly looked at him. I mean really looked at him. ‘But you already knew that, didn’t you? How long have you been pretending—?’
Brasti grinned. ‘Sometimes I like letting you feel superior.’
For a long while Kest just sat there, eyes narrowed as he tried to work out how many times Brasti’s incompetence with words had been genuine, and how many times he’d been poking fun at him. Finally he leaned back and laughed, loudly, uproariously. It was infectious, and soon Brasti and I were roaring with laughter too.
Who says being fools is such a bad thing?
When tiredness and the reality of our situation finally settled over us again, I stared out across the field and tried to guess which tent belonged to Morn. Was he feeling triumphant at the certainty of his eventual success, I wondered? Or enraged over the luck we’d had and whatever respect or rokhan that might have cost him among the Avareans?
I’d give just about anything to meet you out on the field, Morn.
‘He won’t,’ Kest said.
I looked up. I hadn’t realised I’d spoken aloud.
‘Maybe if you asked him very nicely,’ Brasti said, and set about changing the string on his bow, whistling all the while.
Kest looked annoyed. ‘Is there a reason why you insist on whistling that particular song over and over?’
‘It’s cheerful,’ Brasti replied. ‘I’m entitled to a bit of cheer on the night before my death, aren’t I?’
‘You do realise your cheery melody is an Avarean song?’
‘No, it’s not – I distinctly remember hearing it in a tavern ten years ago.’