Alone in the tent, Yechvan bent over his maps. He lamented being unable to stand beside his friends when the skirmish broke out, forced yet again to sit out the battle, a fate that never plagued Ulula or Zu. He couldn’t believe his ill luck over the campaign. In the very first contest with Peryn, a blade snuck past his defenses and caught his hip. Each time he’d moved, the skin around the wound tore. Then he took a sword slash to his biceps. And just when that injury had healed, a blasted stray arrow slipped between the plates of his armor.

  But if he was honest with himself, it was so damned nice to be able to think without the constant clatter of pots, the incessant laughter, the droning of voices beyond the tent flap. When the army was away, the days were quiet. Only Yechvan and his spirits remained.

  Despite taking an arrow to the shoulder two days earlier, he’d insisted that he could raise his shield, fight if it came to it, but Ulula had insisted harder. Grask had gone with her and Zu. The boy had improved to the point where he held his own, which, all things considered, was a small miracle, the sort they would need if they were to stand their ground for much more than another season.

  No fighting had taken place until Terython, after Lodan’s Day marked the equinox and the new year, when warmth finally returned to Ex’ala. The soldiers’ spirits had risen with the temperature, and that slight improvement kept the resentment from growing further. It was fortunate, too, since Peryn had come back with renewed vigor, sending wave after wave to probe Banx’s defenses.

  “Gods be damned,” Yechvan growled, as he lowered himself onto a stump and rubbed his aching shoulder.

  He studied the figures on his map, placed according to the most recent reports from Gorse and Roog. Banx’s strategy was holding. For now.

  Thanks to Gorse’s shrewd maneuvers and effective counterattacks, the soldiers of the western front fared well over the cold seasons, entrenching themselves against the mountains. Grusk’s central front, the linchpin in Yechvan’s plan, had sent support to the west and held off Telu Myrrh’s inexorable advance in the center. But the qish’s current situation was precarious, his force now stretched too thin. Although Yechvan’s own soldiers were struggling to make up the ground they’d lost before the snows set in, he would need to send some of his troops to reinforce Grusk, much as it pained him.

  He couldn’t imagine the rippling impact on his eastern flank if he sent a hundred foot to Grusk. Not only would their numbers dwindle, but more would perish without those additional blades and shields on the field. Would so few extra bodies even matter to the qish’s significantly larger force? Would Yechvan need to send Ivin or Ples? The two commanders had proven themselves on more than one occasion, and he would be sorry to lose either of them. What was best for the overall war effort almost certainly wasn’t best for the men and women under his command, which made it all the more difficult to choose who would live and who would die after they’d shared food and stories and the warmth of the campfires for so many seasons.

  Yechvan needed to hold the eastern flank for just a little longer. The cracks were beginning to show in the Perysh armor, but he still hadn’t found a chink large enough to slip in a blade. Telu Myrrh’s soldiers remained disciplined. Her supply lines changed routes, making them impossible to predict. Her heavy cavalry thwarted every attempt to steal a victory. For an untested general in her first prolonged engagement, Telu Myrrh was patient, cunning, too clever by far.

  “Mead, Yog?” a young boy asked, popping his head into the tent. Heugo had been a fine soldier. Until his sword arm hadn’t returned to camp with him. Rather than be sent home to Usao, however, he volunteered to stay and help, to boil bandages and serve porridge and mead. Yechvan beckoned to the youngling, who reminded him of Grask before the war began: stick thin but bright and determined. Yechvan accepted the cup gratefully and asked for a meal to be brought in whenever the food was ready.

  The troops still hadn’t returned by the time darkness reached her frigid fingers under the tent flaps, and Yechvan resigned himself to a lonely and uneasy night. He anguished over his friends’ fate. Were they bedded down in some hollow sheltered from the wind, or did the fighting rage on? How many had found their way through yet another skirmish, and how many had been lost? Had Grask held his own once more, or had he fallen without Yechvan by his side? Had Ulula continued to shine as the bantax’s brightest star, or had a stray arrow snuffed out her light?

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  The thought of the bantax brought Sevora’s piercing copper eyes to mind. When Yechvan had been injured and forced to remain behind during the Great Northern War, at least he’d enjoyed her spectral company. Here, the ghosts served only to irritate him or keep him awake. None were as knowledgeable as Sevora had been, guiding him through the most difficult time of his young life.

  She had recruited Ulula to the bantax, and Yechvan couldn’t help but draw parallels between the two impressive leaders. Both hardy, steadfast, loyal, a veritable rock against the never-ending tide.

  Absorbed in maps and melancholic memories, Yechvan barely registered Heugo’s entrance or the taste of the gruel he shoveled into his mouth. When his spoon scraped the bottom of the bowl, he returned it himself, an excuse to stretch his limbs. He walked through the rows of empty tents, an eerie pall of silence looming in the crisp night. An ill feeling fluttered in his gut, one he struggled to shake.

  Yechvan took a deep breath and sat at the lone campfire, surrounded by the skeleton crew that stayed behind to feed and care for the injured. He spoke to Heugo for a time, listening to the youngling’s stories about growing up in a family of fishers. The boy rattled on about pike and trout and other things Yechvan could only assume were either fish or tools. The tales reminded him of the farm where he’d been born. He had only a few memories of his mother and father and baby brother, but they were happy ones. Memories he wished had been replicated a hundred hundred times rather than stolen at the point of a Five Nations blade. The idyllic childhood that lived in his mind was at the heart of his interest in farming, his longing for a simpler life. Instead of giving life, however, Yechvan had become an expert in the taking of it.

  As he drifted into Zadria’s Realm, his mind followed Heugo along the banks of Usao’s shores in search of the best fishing spot. Would a simple life ever be within his grasp?

  Solonia’s first rays peeled open Yechvan’s eyelids. He was surprised to find himself leaning against a wooden post by the fire’s dying embers. Koruzan’s hair, had he slept under the stars all night? Heugo snored by his side, bundled in sheepskin. The sight of the inviting, fluffy wool raised the hair on Yechvan’s bare arms, and he rubbed the chill away with stiff fingers. He stood and stretched, let out a deep yawn and made his way to the edge of camp for a piss when he spotted a returning battalion flying his company’s standard.

  Their numbers were scant, far thinner than when they’d departed, nearly half either killed or captured. He waited on the road to greet them as they arrived. Gods be damned, it was Ivin and Ples, their companies mostly sword and pike. By the looks of it, three hundred were missing.

  Yechvan bade the pair follow him to his tent. Once inside and away from inquisitive ears, he asked “What happened out there?” He poured them each a cup of mead.

  The Perysh force had engaged with cleverly placed cavalry, waiting out of sight until the last possible moment. Ivin was tricked into thinking he’d come upon a scouting party, and his company had been scattered by the heavy horse and harried to retreat, leaving too many behind.

  He knelt before Yechvan, tears in his eyes. “I’ve failed you, Yog. I give myself over to you.”

  Before Yechvan could respond, Ples bowed her head and threw herself to the ground beside her friend. “He isn’t the only one to blame. I, too, failed to detect their cavalry or divine their tactics. If you are to punish him, punish me as well.”

  “Stand up. I’ve no plans to punish either of you. This is the way of war. I know all too well that the guilt of this battle will haunt you far more than any punishment I might inflict.” He added under his breath, “Let us hope Zu and Ulula fared better.”

  “What should we do?” Ples scrambled to her feet, eager to atone.

  “This complicates matters. I must send soldiers to strengthen the qish’s front, but we’re already too few—now fewer. You may be needed elsewhere come the morrow. But for today, rest, tend to your injured. Keep your spirits up, and more importantly, those of the men and women who followed you into battle. They need to know that you care, that you will do anything for them. I must rethink a few things. We’ll talk again at dinner.”

  “Of course, Yog,” they said in unison, pounding their chests. They bowed and hurried off to attend their troops.

  Yechvan swept aside the empty cups and bent over his maps once more. “This certainly complicates matters, doesn’t it?” he asked of no one in particular.

  His ghostly companions nodded their agreement all the same.