Chapter Eleven

Shalla made her way carefully across the makeshift bridge the Alliance had assembled across the Elmwyves. It was a rickety thing of hastily cut logs and branches, only wide enough for two people. It had been put up only a week ago, so that Alliance scouts could go downriver toward Cuisienne easily, and it was already showing wear. She suspected that they would have to start fording the river soon, which she supposed wouldn’t be too bad. The river was much too deep to stand in for most of its length, but here at the fork there were sandbars, lots of them, and a careful person could get across without getting wet above the chest. Shalla was a very careful person.

Still, she preferred the bridge.

It was an easy walk down to Arcshire, the westernmost village in Eldden, once she reached the other bank, and a pleasant one. The land was richer here than it was at home. Whatever blight had struck Cuisienne so long ago had stopped dead at the Riven Mountains, towering half a day’s walk away. The soil was strong here.

Ivy rippled up the trunks of towering oaks, chestnuts, and beeches. Vibrant shrubs filled the understory and gave way to soft grasses in the meadows. Animals were everywhere, from birds singing madly in the trees to rabbits darting across the path and deer sliding silently into the forest. As she got closer to the village, the trees thinned, and fields of wheat and barley, interspersed with the occasional small vineyard, replaced the meadows. The river rushed to the left. That wasn’t a sound that Shalla knew from home, but she liked it nonetheless. She could hear and see people working in the fields. That relaxed her, reminded her of home. It was good to know that not everything was like the Alliance camp, full of people and strange smells and sounds. Even a long way from home, people hoed.

Arcshire was a large river village—a town, really. It was wedged between the water and the side of a sheer rocky foothill that was nearly a mountain in its own right. It was a gateway, the last stop on the river before the nigh-impassable wall of the Riven Mountains. A dozen mossy docks staggered off the sandy bank and tottered in the Elmwyves’ cool waters, teeming with small boats. Children snatched at crayfish in the mud while their parents cast nets or waded out with poles. A few high stilt houses leaned out into the water, anchored to the bank by flimsy bridges, but most of the village was firmly seated on the banks, thatched houses crawling up the slope, divided by narrow paths of packed dirt or river rock. A few on the western end of the village, where there were fewer trees to clear, went so far as to butt up against the hill’s sharp stony sides.

It was substantially larger than the village near Shalla’s home where she and her family sold their produce. It was better than she could say to be away from the camp, where there were people, people everywhere, as well as hundreds of unfamiliar sights, sounds, and smells, but the town was still intimidating. Their crops grew so well! And the people were so different, so unknown. How could she talk to them?

She glanced around, taking in the houses, with their wooden sides and thatched roofs, the gardens, brimming with squash and grapevines and pumpkins, and the village square, paved haphazardly with flat river stones, filled with colorful stalls and wagons. They were all unapproachable.

Then she spied a gray-haired woman crouching by a small house on the outskirts, near the edge of the trees, trimming an iveri’s claws. Her garden had rows of beans and peas in it. She had an iveri. It would make sense to talk to her. She would probably know why the iveri were ill.

Shalla approached her carefully, trying and failing to not seem too awkward. When she reached a safe distance, she coughed quietly.

The woman turned to look at her. “Who’re you?”

“I’m with the Alliance,” Shalla whispered. She quickly gave up on returning the woman’s gaze.

“Speak up, girl.”

Shalla cleared her throat, studying her feet. “I’m with the Alliance.”

“A soldier, huh? And what do you want?”

“Looking for people who are good with iveri. They’re…they’re getting sick, see.”

“Your iveri are ill?”

“Yes,” Shalla said, glad that she had successfully communicated this.

The woman stood up, brushing claw trimmings off of her leather apron. Addos, she was taller than Shalla had expected. She scratched the iveri behind the ear. “What kind of illness?”

“A cold,” Shalla said. “But…a cold that stays, keeps them ill. Then they get tired, and then they get weak.”

The woman frowned. “Sounds like they’ve got the wasting sickness. I’ve heard it comes from the south. We got some Rakkinen traders through here a few months back, said their iveri all died.”

“Do you—“ Shalla stopped midsentence, distracted by something beautiful hanging on the wall of the house. “Is that a horn bow?”

The woman grinned. “No, but close. Musko tusk. It’s been in my family for generations.”

“What’s it pull?” Shalla asked, all fear forgotten.

“A hundred and forty. Want to draw it?”

Shalla nodded, at a loss for words, removing her longbow from her back and laying it carefully down on the ground.

The woman stepped over to the house and lifted the bow reverently from its hooks with both hands. She held it out to Shalla, who took it gently.

She had only ever shot her own bow before, a simple curve of wood, strung with linen, made for her by her uncle. This bow was something else. It was a work of art, sleek, dark, and beautiful, heavier than any bow she had ever seen, but soft and smooth with dozens of layers of varnish. Her fingers could find no flaw in the surface. No patterns were marked on it; the beauty of the tusk was left to shine by itself, enhanced by oils that brought out its natural color. Its limbs stretched elegantly through their double curves, each more than the length of her arm from shoulder to fingertip. The string was thick, tightly wound sinew, dark as wet loam. It was a weapon fit for heroes and legends. It was perfect.

Shalla raised it slowly and carefully. She let her gloved fingers find the string’s center and rest there, feeling for the perfect spot to pull. When she found it, she drew, letting her shoulders bunch together to help her arms, spreading the weight throughout her body. It was a good thirty pounds heavier than her own bow, but she adapted, exerting all the force the bow asked her to, pulling it back past her mouth to the corner of her jaw.

It was exquisite. She couldn’t help smiling.

The woman was smiling too. “I can see you know how to appreciate this thing. You must be quite the archer.”

Shalla lowered the bow, easing the string back into its resting position, letting the limbs flex gently back. “Not really. My brother and sister taught me when I was young, but I only use it to keep animals out of our fields.”

“You’re a farmer, then?”

“Aye,” Shalla said, feeling her fear come back. The bow had taken it away for a time, but now she was nervous again. She returned her eyes to the ground.

“Where from?”

“South. A good ways. Well past Lakespill and to the east.”

The woman nodded, eyebrows raised. “You’re a long way from home.”

“Aye,” Shalla said quietly.

“What’s a girl like you doing as a soldier, eh? You’re shier than a newborn iveri. You can’t be cut out for army life.”

Shalla felt herself turning red. “’M not. Just…my parents. They wanted me to get away from the farm for a while, see the world.”

“You don’t want to?”

Shalla shrugged. “I like the farm,” she mumbled. “Plants, animals. Get along well with them.”

“I can imagine,” the woman said. “Look, girl—“ She stopped, looking at something over Shalla’s head. “Shit.”

Shalla turned. Down by the river, something was happening. Boats were sliding up on the sandy banks, and people were getting out of them. Running, people were running, and the people from the boats were chasing them, and then someone screamed, a shrill sound, cut off too suddenly.

“It’s the Vloss,” the woman said. “Quick, girl, sound the alarm, get the Alliance over here!”

Shalla’s hand went to her belt and slipped her horn from its loop. She was lifting it to her lips when she saw a figure in dark armor sprinting at her, sword in hand.

She froze. The horn slipped from her grasp and landed on the hard-packed dirt at her feet.

“Girl! Girl, shoot!”

Shalla obeyed without thought. She slid an arrow from her quiver, nocked it, pulled, and released in one swift motion, hardly bothering to aim.

The arrow hit the Vloss in the gut. He fell backward like he had been kicked by an iveri, and crashed against a wattle fence. His hands went to the arrow, stuck in his stomach.

Shalla went to him without thought. She was dimly aware of the woman yelling at her, but he was bleeding. She dropped to her knees next to him, the beautiful bow falling beside her.

“Oh,” he was saying between moans. “Oh, Emperor, it hurts. It hurts.” There was blood leaking through his fingers, dripping out through the gaps between his plates, pooling on the ground beneath him. There was so much. “You shot me. You shot me.”

Shalla put her hands over his. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t—“

He died.

A hand snatched her arm and yanked her to her feet. “Girl, what are you doing? Get up, get up, we need to move!”

Shalla picked up the bow, staring at the dead man. She continued to stare until the woman dragged her away, cursing fluently.

She looked around. People were screaming everywhere, dying. The stones of the village square were red. The Vloss were throwing torches onto buildings, where thatched roofs caught quickly.

The woman was pulling her away from the village, toward the trees. Someone in dark armor was running after them. Shalla paused, nocked, drew, and shot, and the person fell with an arrow in their eye. Dead.

There was a sick wet thunk, and the woman dropped to the ground and was still. Shalla glanced at her, saw a red ruin where the back of her head had been, and something clicked. She ran, faster than she ever had in her life, into the trees, forcing her way through bushes up the hillside, harsh sobs rising in her throat as people died behind her. They were all dying, and she didn’t want to, she didn’t want anything but to be back home on the farm, weeding the herb garden and mending fences and harvesting rakka and carding iveri wool and not dying.

She tripped over something and went flying. No, something had caught her legs. She reached down and scrabbled at the weighted rope that had somehow wrapped around her ankles. Her fingernails ripped the knot apart and she kicked it free. Someone was crashing through the brush after her, and she nocked another arrow without thinking, and drew, and loosed, and felt hot blood spatter on her face as the arrow drove into the Vloss soldier that had been almost on top of her.

He collapsed backward like the others had, her arrow in deep where his shoulder met his chest. No. No, I didn’t mean to kill you, I don’t want to kill you.

She pitched herself forward, dropping the beautiful bow. His hands were at the arrow, like the other one, the first one, I’ve shot more than one, and he was twitching and crying, his breath coming in hot gasps. She pulled his helmet off and saw blood bubbling up from his mouth, red against pale skin.

“No, don’t,” he was begging. “I don’t want to die, I don’t, oh please, it hurts, take it out.”

She grabbed the arrow and pulled, and he screamed. It was stuck.

“Take it out! Please!”

“I can’t. I can’t, I don’t know how.”

He cried out and was wracked by a horrible convulsion, gloved hands grasping at nothing, back arching off the ground.

Shalla grabbed the arrow again and yanked with all of her might. The soldier howled in agony as the head ripped free and a great red tide boiled forth. She dropped the arrow and pressed her hands hard against the hole in him, trying to hold the blood in, but he died anyway.

She pulled away from him when he stopped moving, and crawled a little ways away. Then she curled up into a ball, her bloody hands reaching around to cover her head, smearing hot wetness on her face, holding herself close, trying not to hear the roaring fires and screaming people in the village.

She didn’t know how long she was there before they came for her, but they did come. She tried to pretend that they hadn’t, and remained still.

“Emperor. It’s one of their scouts.”

Someone laughed. “Not much of a soldier, eh?” A heavy boot kicked her in the side, and she flinched.

“Well, she obviously killed this poor sod. Go on, get up, Command will want you for questioning.”

There was a sharp intake of breath. “Emperor save us. Look at this.”

“Shit. Do you think it’s hers?”

“Not any longer. Do you reckon it’s better we keep it or give it to Command?”

“…Better give it to Command. Someone would notice it if we kept it, and then we’d be beaten or flayed or something.”

“Damn. Such a shame. Could kill an awful lot of barbarians with this.”

“Oh well. Up, girl.” Someone bound her wrists and dragged her to her feet.

She didn’t dare look at either of them. She kept her gaze firmly fixed on the ground, well away from their feet, well away from the blood and the corpse.

“Ugh, a coward.”

“She’s a woman, what’d you expect?”

They took her out of the woods, and she looked up.

Arcshire was a ruin. Most of the houses had burned down. Smoke was everywhere, thick and dark, choking her. And the smell, the burning flesh…she kept her eyes firmly away from the dark burning pile that was its source.

They were taking her down to the river, to the boats that they had landed in. Shalla had carefully avoided looking at the gray-haired woman’s body and that of the second soldier she had shot, but when she slipped in bloody mud and fell to her knees, she landed nearly on top of the first one, the one with an arrow in his gut. She stared at him in terror. She could feel his drying blood on her hands, his and the other one’s.

“I’d say she got him too.”

They were pulling her to her feet again, cursing her uselessness, when the horns suddenly sounded. Close, close. Shalla and the soldiers froze together.

Warhorns were supposed to cheer you if they were on your side. Shalla tried to feel hopeful as the soldiers sprung into action and dragged her with them down the hill, tried to feel some kinship with whoever was blowing those horns, but all she could feel was fear. The warhorns were long and low and wild, like animals calling at night, and they thrummed in her blood and made her want to run. From the quality of their breathing, hard and fast and panicked, it struck her that the Vloss were also afraid.

Then the sounds of iveri came, crashing through brush and roaring their way toward them, and the sounds of their riders followed, fierce war cries, and then the darting hisses of arrows from all directions, and then screaming people and animals, and through it all the warhorns called.

The first iveri came bounding past her, its rider armored all in plate and mail, sword swinging to catch one of her captors in the neck. The Vloss crumpled and died. The other one fell to his knees and shook the corpse. “Cot! Cot!”

Shalla pushed him to get his attention. “He’s dead. He’s dead, and there’s more coming.” The soldier ignored her. “Move! Move, please! They’re going to kill you!” He just sat there, staring at the body. She shoved him hard. He nearly fell over. Then he turned and stared at her.

She grabbed him with her bound hands, pulled him to his feet, and dragged him back up the slope with her, toward the trees. He yanked his hand free and ran with her, the horn bow at his side. She reached safety before he did, ducking into a crevasse in the hillside. He slid in beside her, panting, his hands covered in blood.

“What the fuck are you doing?” he hissed.

“Not dying,” she mumbled.

“No, why the fuck did you bring me?”

“You were going to die too.”

“Not if I was good enough. I’d get you fucking savages before you got me.” The hand not holding the horn bow was trembling. He held it up to his eyes and stared at it, the black visor hiding whatever he might have thought.

Shalla listened to the battle. She didn’t know what she thought that fighting would sound like, but it hadn’t been this. The clashing of steel on steel, roaring and shrieking iveri blending with roaring and shrieking people so that she couldn’t tell which was which, the buzz of arrows flying like vast insects, and over it all the fires kept roaring and the warhorns kept calling. For a few minutes, that was all there was.

Then someone with a voice that carried all the way to them started shouting commands. “Form up!” the voice roared. “Shields up, spears out! Shield wall, now!”

“That’s the general,” the Vloss said. Shalla could hear fear in his voice, fear and deep respect. “Oh, Emperor, I should be there.”

Shalla didn’t know what to say. Why would anyone want to be in a battle?

The general was still yelling. “Keep it together! Retreat down the bank!”

“Oh, Emperor,” the Vloss said. “They’re leaving. Oh, fuck, they’re leaving.” He was breathing hard, and now both of his hands were shaking. “I have to get down there. They’re going to leave.”

Shalla was dumbfounded. Didn’t he realize that he would die if he left the hiding place? “You can’t. They’ll kill you.”

“Us,” the Vloss said.

Before she had time to process what he had said, he had grabbed her arm with his free hand and was running down the hillside.

“No,” she said, pulling back hard. “No, no!” She struggled violently, kicked him hard in the shin, but he was protected by leather there, so she tried to knee him in the groin, but she tripped, and she was on the ground spitting out leaves, and he was yanking her to her feet, and then he bashed her in the face with a vicious strike of his metal vambrace. She cried out in pain, and for long moments couldn’t think, could hardly see or hear or breathe.

When thinking came back, they were already out of the trees, and there was a roiling mass of people and iveri ahead, and more of them scattered through the remains of the village, fighting everywhere. The Vloss was dragging her around the edges of it, and somehow no one was attacking them. She was too terrified to attack him, and could only follow, begging Addos to end this.

They were in the water, sloshing their way toward boats beached upriver and docked at the wooden jetties, and there were lines of soldiers around them, their large shields pressed together, holding back the Alliance on the other side. When one of them died, the person behind them would rush up and fill the gap. Behind the smooth wall with them were injured soldiers being helped into boats, bound and screaming villagers being thrown into boats, and Vloss in heavier armor—officers, Shalla assumed—climbing into boats. The banks were red and wet, and there were bodies everywhere. Arrows were whizzing past from both the Alliance and the Vloss, and people were screaming and dying.

She suddenly noticed that at least three-quarters of the iveri were not Alliance. They were…she had no idea who they were. They were armed in leather and iron, their exposed skin painted with black patterns, and skulls of small animals glared at her from their helmets. But the Elddener soldiers around them weren’t fighting them, so they had to be part of the Alliance…

An officer caught the Vloss by the shoulder and snarled, “Where the fuck have you been? Where are your arms?”

“Caught a prisoner, sir, and gathered booty!”

The officer shoved him. “Get the fuck in a boat!”

The Vloss forced Shalla into one of the boats. No. No. They were taking her. The Alliance was right there, just up the bank, she had to get to them, she could not let them take her. She lunged at the soldier with strength she didn’t know she had, and tackled him, sending them both flying back onto the sand. She hit him, but with her hands bound together, she couldn’t hurt him. He flung her off of him and hit her with his vambrace again, hard. She felt her face open, blood dripping down her cheek.

When she could think again, everything was muddled. It seemed to take her a long time to understand what she was seeing. She was crammed in against the prow, her head hanging over the edge of the boat. There were two soldiers shoving the boat into the water, their heads even with hers, panting and gasping in her ear. Three more soldiers were behind them, the last of the line, trying to keep the Alliance away with their shields.

An iveri came crashing up against the soldiers protecting Shalla’s boat, bowling over two of them. Its long jaws clamped around the helmeted skull of the pushing soldier closest to Shalla, and he screamed. When it realized it couldn’t crush his helmet, the iveri went to his throat, and blood sprayed in Shalla’s face. The man fell into the water, gurgling. The fur-cloaked rider was screaming, a great long gash ripping her from shoulder to stomach.

The Vloss who had sliced her yanked one of the fallen to his feet and resumed pushing, his sword in hand, pressed up against the side of the boat. The other Vloss the iveri had knocked over was trying to get up, but the iveri stepped on him, pushing his head back underwater as it sprang at the man who had killed its rider. It slammed the soldier into the bloody water and tore his throat out. By the time it was finished, the boat was in the water and floating, and the two remaining soldiers were struggling up the prow, more Vloss helping them in.

Arrows thudded into the boat, the people in it, and the water around it. The oarsmen were taking them rapidly downriver, following other boats. Shalla could move enough to crumple herself into a ball and cover her head, so she did, closing her ears to the screaming around her.

For what felt like forever, everything was a chaotic mess of pain and fear and horrible noises. The person pressed up next to her on her left was sobbing. The person on her right was wearing armor, she could tell because it dug into her ribs, hard and cold, and they never said a word. The person in front of her had pissed themselves.

After what could have been an hour, or several, or a day, Shalla lifted her head and looked around.

It was dim. Dark, even, though not night-dark. She was in a boat, for the first time in her life. Oarsmen were propelling it downstream. There were people packed into the rest of the space, armored Vloss, dark and alien, and common folk in wool and hemp, cowering away from the soldiers. There were bodies scattered throughout. With no room to be elsewhere, people sat on or next to them.

Mountains rose up all around them, very unlike the ones that Shalla knew. They were more cliffs than mountains, shooting up like great bare walls of rock on either side, nearly vertical, their edges lit by a setting sun. The banks were narrow where they existed at all, able to sustain only a few stunted trees and sparse grass before the mountains started.

And ahead of them the river ended in a wall of darkness.

Shalla looked more closely and saw that it was not made of shadow, but stone. The sun was behind it, and its bulk cast the river in gloom, but for a small gate at its base where water and light poured through.

It was built between two great ridges that sliced down from the mountains and narrowed the Elmwyves to nearly nothing—the Broken Bridge of Cuisienne, which Shalla had seen on maps and heard descriptions of. But the Vloss had made it whole again, connecting the halves with stone. Soldiers walked the battlements at the top, apparently unaffected by the vertical drop to the river, which must have been forty or fifty times the height of a man. She had heard of this too, a stone fortress that the Vloss had built to wall off Cuisienne entirely.

As they drew closer and the first boats passed through the gate, Shalla realized that the gate was not small at all. It would have fit a proper boat through, perhaps even a ship, and the longboats were dwarfed by it. Then the boat she was in entered the pool of light that the gate allowed past the wall, and she was blinded for a few moments. When her sight returned, the boat was not yet halfway through the wall. She estimated its width at ten lengths, but the buildings on the other side that stuck out into the water made the passage seem even longer.

Once they were past, Shalla turned a little to look back at the wall. She saw why the scout who had gone furthest west had called it a fortress; this side of the wall was covered with stone buildings, connected by various walkways. It looked almost like a city, a vertical city. And there were Vloss soldiers all over it.

The boats continued downriver until the sun touched the horizon. The Elmwyves opened up into a wide delta that poured into a great bay—the Eye. There was a small town on the shore, nestled between the mountains and a low hill hardly deserving of the name, and it was at that town’s mossy stone quays that the boats finally docked, greeted by soldiers.

The captives were led off first. The soldier on her right shoved her out of the boat before climbing out himself. Then he pushed her into a line with the rest of the Elddener before walking away down the quay.

Shalla didn’t dare look at him, only glimpsing deep black armor before focusing on the quay. She stared at the stone beneath her feet, unable to speak, listening to the people around her murmur amongst themselves, their voices colored by terror, and to the soldiers telling them to shut up and get in line.

The sound of running footsteps made her look up. It was the Vloss from earlier, the one she had tried to save and who had dragged her into the boat anyway. He pointed at her. “That’s her, sir. She’s an Alliance soldier, I know it.”

An officer with a short metal crest on his helm was with him. “Bring her,” he said.

The Vloss grabbed Shalla’s shoulder and pulled her along after the officer. They passed many people as they hurried down the quay, and Shalla realized that the captives were being made to strip naked. She had no time to think about it.

“Sir!” the officer barked, stopping sharply and saluting.

An officer with black armor and a tall crest turned to look at them. “What?”

“We have an Alliance scout, sir.”

The black-armored officer looked Shalla up and down. “Good. Bring her to the encampment. Who captured her?”

“I did, sir,” the soldier holding Shalla’s shoulder said eagerly.

“The general did not speak to you!” the officer hissed.

“No matter,” the black-armored officer said. “Good work, soldier. You—“ He paused. “Where is your shield? And your sword, and your spear? And what is that?” He nodded at the bow in the soldier’s other hand.

“I lost my equipment, sir. The scout had this bow, so I confiscated it.”

“You lost your equipment.” The general’s voice was flat. “How did you fight with your brothers, then?”

The soldier was silent.

“You deserted,” the general said after a few horrible seconds. “You let others fight in your stead, and then somehow got aboard one of the boats that they died protecting.”

“That was my fault, sir,” the officer said. “I ordered him onto a boat.”

“Understandable, sergeant. Is he under your command?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then I’m sorry to take a man from your service, but I won’t tolerate desertion.”

“No!” the soldier said. “No, sir, I came back, I came back! It won’t happen again, sir, I pro—“ He cut himself off mid-word when the general spoke.

“This is your first combat?”

“Yes, sir,” the soldier said.

The general lowered his voice. “The first fight’s hard. If this were any other campaign, I’d let you off with a whipping. But it’s not. We’re facing hard odds, and this army needs every man in it to be in top form, constantly. If I let you go, how many will emulate you? How many men will think that they can run and hide and come back like nothing happened?”

“Sir,” the soldier said desperately, “sir, please. Please, I’ll fight. I promise, I’ll be on the front line, I swear—“

“It’s a little late for this, son. You should’ve thought of it before you deserted.” He clapped the soldier on the shoulder. “It’ll be quick, I can promise you that.” He pulled a knife from his belt.

“No! No, no, don’t—“ The soldier’s yelling was cut off when the general cut his throat.

The general pushed him to the ground, where he landed with a thump and clatter. He moved for a little longer, then stopped. The general watched for a moment, then crouched down, wiped his knife on the dead man’s trousers, sheathed it, and picked up the horn bow. He straightened and looked around at the soldiers on the quay, who had gone quiet. “I won’t tolerate cowardice,” he said flatly. Then he moved on toward the beach, examining the bow. The officer followed him, pushing Shalla along.

They walked through the town, a small one at the base of a hill that Shalla vaguely remembered being called Kinnsrest, surrounded by grass and mud and the smell of salt. The sun was setting properly now, nighttime easing into the town. As they walked, a bright light flared behind them. Shalla spun and saw a squat stone lighthouse out on a watery shoal, a fire roaring up in it, before the officer pushed her back around.

As it got darker, more lights sprouted. Soldiers patrolling the town and the road north lit torches from braziers, and fires were lit on the beach. The officer lit a torch of his own from a passing patrol, lighting the muddy road beneath their feet. More of a path than a road, really, though its use had clearly increased recently. It was slippery and spotted with stones.

As they crested the hill, Shalla felt her jaw drop. It was a camp, like the Alliance had on the banks of the Elmwyves, but it was vast. The fires and tents went on and on, up to the feet of the mountains. There were thousands and thousands, more than Shalla knew how to count.

“Planning your report, scout?” the general said, continuing down the hill toward the camp. “If you do escape, make sure you tell your superiors that I have another five thousand still mapping Cuisienne’s caves, and two thousand more at the Broken Bridge.”

The officer pushed Shalla down the hill after the general. “Keep moving.”

They made their way toward the camp. It was surrounded by banks of earth and ditches filled with stakes. They were delayed briefly at a tall wooden gate, but when the men watching it got saw the general, they rushed to open it. It closed behind them with a deep, solid sound that reminded Shalla uncomfortably of the lid of her uncle’s coffin being hammered into place.

They went for a large tent near the edge of camp. It wasn’t a simple triangle for sleeping like the others, but a bulky round-backed construction tall enough to stand in. The general shoved the flap aside and went in. The officer took Shalla in after him.

Inside it was dark but for the torch. A table stood in one corner, covered with bandages and sharp metal instruments, but Shalla had eyes only for the post standing in the center, the ground around it stained dark. She felt her breathing quicken. No. No.

A skeletally thin man with a leather apron over his tunic and trousers unfolded himself from a stool where he had been washing his hands in a bucket. “My lord.”

“I’ve got a prisoner for you, Private.”

The man tilted his head to look at Shalla. He was not human. She had heard stories of the forest people, of course, but they were supposed to be beautiful. This man had skin as pale and cratered as the moon, long pointed ears with patterns carved out of them, horrible dead red eyes, and no hair at all, not even eyebrows. He wiped his spidery hands on his apron. “It would be an honor to help you question her, my lord.”

“No honor necessary,” the general said. “I’d just like answers.”

The officer shoved her over to the post and tied her hands behind it. Shalla stared at the ground, feeling the blood beneath her feet and the sweat dripping down her neck, and wanted to scream.

The general pulled up a stool, sat down in front of her, and pulled off his helmet. He was more human than the other, might even have been handsome if he hadn’t had red eyes and horribly scarred gray skin. “So, scout. How many troops does the Alliance have?”

She looked at the floor, unable to speak.

A gauntleted hand reached out, caught her chin, and lifted it. “I asked you how many troops the Alliance has.”

She tried to talk, but there was a horrible lump in her throat, and her tongue would not do as she asked. Her heart was pounding wildly in her chest, and her head hurt badly.

The general sighed. “You don’t have a stutter or something, do you?”

She shook her head wordlessly.

“Then answer the question, please.”

She focused hard on saying something, anything, something so that the man with the spidery hands would stop looking at her like that. Her jaw was clenched so hard it hurt. “Less,” she whispered, hardly hearing herself.

“What?”

“Less than you.”

He laughed and let go of her chin. “Well, it’s not a bad answer.” He leaned forward. “Be more specific, please.”

She was shaking. The man with the spidery hands was looking over the tools on the table. Oh Kinn. No. Say something. She forced her mouth into moving, and found words a little later. “Lots less. Lots.”

“Keep going.”

She felt cold sweat running down her spine, and her nails were digging hard into her palms behind the post. She could hardly think. “Three parts of four.”

“What?”

She couldn’t talk. She couldn’t. She tried, she really did.

The general sighed. “Vakov, put down the knife, please. I think you’ve managed to paralyze her completely.”

Vakov, the man with the spidery hands, laid a short knife down on the table gently and straightened it carefully so that it was in line with the edge of the table.

“Try again,” the general said. “What were you saying?”

“Three-fourths,” she whispered. “Of your strength.”

“That’s how many troops the Alliance has camped upriver from Arcshire?”

She nodded once. It was all she could do.

“How sure are you?”

She shook her head and felt hot tears run down her cut face.

“You’re not sure?”

She shook her head again.

The general sighed again. “All right. But you think that the Alliance has three-quarters of this army’s numbers?”

She nodded, staring hard at the ground, the ground a few feet away from her that was adorned only with footprints.

“Good,” the general said. “My scouts tell me that it’s closer to two-thirds, once you add in our troops from elsewhere in Cuisienne, but that’s close enough. Now I can trust you a little bit more, see?”

She felt a shaky breath escape from her, and was filled with relief so strong that she almost collapsed. They believed her. They believed her. If they knew she was telling the truth, they wouldn’t cut her, surely.

“Now,” the general said. “There was an awful lot of cavalry at Arcshire today, more than we would have expected in a short time. It takes your riders a long time to be ready to ride, doesn’t it?”

She nodded once.

“How long would you say it takes? For a man in his clothes to put on his armor, tack up his beast, get on, and get into formation?”

She thought, her mind flickering more rapidly than she could process between the various horrible deaths that this interrogation could end in, but slow as sludge in thinking of an answer, and slower in telling her mouth how to say it. “Twenty minutes,” she breathed.

“And how long would you say it takes for an iveri with a heavy rider to make it from your encampment to Arcshire?”

It was about an hour’s easy walk from the encampment, she thought. “…Thirty minutes? Forty?”

“Sounds about right. So given that my men were in and out of Arcshire in less than an hour, we shouldn’t have run into much trouble, am I right? Maybe some light infantry that could run from your camp as soon as they saw the smoke, or perhaps some very fast riders?”

She nodded.

“So how would you explain all those riders that showed up about thirty minutes in?”

She stared at the ground.

“You saw them, I’m sure. They weren’t Elddener, that’s certain. Lots of fur and iron, paint and skulls. Who were they?”

She shook her head.

“You’re not going to tell me?”

She shook her head again, desperate to communicate that she hadn’t meant that. “Don’t know.”

He looked at her. “You don’t know.”

She shook her head a third time, still looking at the ground.

He leaned forward and took her chin again. “Look at me. You don’t know.”

She managed a quick glance at his face and shook her head again.

“You’re certain?”

She nodded.

He lowered his voice. “This is somewhat important. I’d really like you to think about it a little harder.” He paused. “Or I’ll have to let Vakov continue this conversation.”

She froze.

“People become very eloquent when Vakov talks to them, which is nice. But it also tends to be the last conversation they have, by a disturbing proportion. So it would really be better if you told me instead, see?”

She was shaking her head quickly, despite the pain, trying to tell him that she didn’t know.

“Give yourself a minute. Think very carefully, please. Wouldn’t want you to leave anything out. Just consider. Of all the people in this land, who could that have been? And why would they be with the Alliance?”

She could only think of one possible answer, but it was also impossible. Eldden would never hire jotyen, not with things the way they were with Alddra. It made sense, in a way, but it was also stupid.

“Think of anything?”

She shook her head. She couldn’t give them an answer that she knew was wrong. Then they wouldn’t trust her, and then she would have no use for them, and then they would kill her.

“She knows something,” Vakov said. His voice was the husks of dead insects scattered by a wind.

“Right,” the general said. “What do you think? Should we start with fingers, feet, eyes…”

“No,” Shalla whimpered. “No.”

The general looked at her. “Vakov believes you know something. I believe Vakov. If you’d like to walk out of this tent with everything you walked in with, then I suggest you tell us.”

Two people came into the tent. The first one was a woman in red armor, with the same horrible face as Vakov, wearing an ornate mask over her eyes. The second was an officer, tall and broad, his face hidden behind his helmet.

The woman spoke. “I was told you captured an Alliance prisoner at Arcshire.”

“Yes,” the general said. “And as you can see, we’re in the middle of a conversation.”

“What has it said?”

“Very little. We just got started.”

Oh no. How many questions were they planning on asking? How many would she have no answer to?

“Well, continue,” the woman said.

“She was about to say something, as I recall,” the general said, turning back to Shalla.

She didn’t want to give them a wrong answer, she didn’t. But she didn’t know a right one. “Jotyen.”

“What? What’s a jotyen?”

“Mercenary,” she mumbled. “Monk. From Alddra.”

“Mercenary monks from Alddra,” the general said. “Well. Does the Alliance employ these mercenaries, then?”

She shook her head.

“No.” The general sat back. “Right. So why do you mention them?”

“Look like that. Fur, paint, iron.”

“How likely is it that the Alliance hired them without you knowing?”

She shrugged helplessly.

“That’s fair. Sergeant, go get Zavva, please, I’m sure he’s around here somewhere.” The officer from the quay ducked out of the tent. “How is the northern coast of Eldden defended?”

She glanced up at him in surprise.

“The northern coast. South of Unai. What defenses does it have? How many castles, how many ships?”

She shook her head.

“Think about it. It’s your country, you must know something.”

How could she tell him that she didn’t know, didn’t care about anything outside of the farm? She had been so happy. “Don’t know.”

He sighed. “You’re a wellspring of information, aren’t you? Okay, big question. I would very much like it if you can give me an answer. Look at me.”

She looked at him with difficulty, managing a few seconds of eye contact before looking away again.

“There are rumors of a school. An academy where all the mages are sent to stay. Where is it?”

She stared at the ground and shifted her position. Oh no. Oh no. Oh no. She knew that one. She knew it, but she couldn’t tell him, she couldn’t, the Alliance needed those mages.

“You know,” Vakov said in that voice full of dead things. “Please tell us.”

She summoned up every ounce of will she had and shook her head.

There was silence in the tent for a moment. “Well,” the general said finally. “I didn’t expect that. Vakov, I believe this is where you come in.”