When Tyrus claimed she had no experience, it had taken all Moria’s self-restraint not to snarl back. Had he fought shadow stalkers? Thunder hawks? She’d even battled a slaver’s mercenaries. How dare he say she’d no experience.
But as the battle unfolded, she realized he was right. She had envisioned herself fighting alongside Tyrus as she had with Gavril. That showed how little she knew of a true battlefield. Even watching Tyrus’s back from a distance was a challenge. If she’d been immersed in that chaos . . .
And it was chaos. There was no other word for it. Perhaps that shocked her most of all. When bards told tales of clashing armies, she envisioned rows of warriors, fighting as if they were in a festival demonstration, paired off and maintaining position.
This was madness. Bloody, thunderous, stinking madness. The clang of swords and the grunts and screams of hits. Blood arcing through the air. Blood spattering over the tents and the grass. Clouds of dust and dirt obscuring the fighters. The warriors themselves were blurs of armor and steel, fighting this bandit only to be hit from behind by that one.
With the warlord’s men, they’d expected to outnumber the mercenaries. Not by enough to make it a quick and bloodless routing, but enough to make it an easy battle. Except another twenty bandits had arrived almost immediately. They fought with blades and whips and cudgels, ignoring the warrior code.
It was a treacherous, filthy, backstabbing brawl. And Tyrus was caught in the middle of it.
He may have never fought on a battlefield either, but Moria would wager anyone seeing him would not believe it. She had worried about how he would do, after his response to the deaths in Fairview proved that battle training did not equate with battle readiness.
He was magnificent. More skilled with a blade than any warrior on the field. The first mercenary who rushed him was nearly cleaved in two before he could even swing, and that early victory seemed to add fuel to Tyrus’s flame. He cut down one opponent after another. As he did, though, he was drawn deeper into battle. Farther out of range of her daggers.
“We need to get closer,” she whispered to Daigo as two fighters blocked Tyrus from view.
Daigo grunted but did not move.
“I know he’s handling himself well, but he told me to watch over him. I can’t do that from here.”
She could feel Daigo’s gaze on her, and in that moment, she had no doubt there was a warrior’s spirit inside him, and that it was considering, assessing. She might have a duty to watch over Tyrus, but Daigo’s was to watch over her.
“I won’t join the battle,” she said. “I’m not ready. I see that now. I just want to be ready for him—in case he needs me.”
Daigo chuffed and rose. He peered out at the field. Then he snorted, his yellow eyes narrowing. Moria turned to look and—
“Tyrus?” She scrambled up. “Tyrus.”
He was gone. She started forward. Daigo caught her trouser leg and growled, telling her to pause and consider. Tyrus had not vanished from the field but simply from her sight. The battlefield was an amorphous thing, always contracting and expanding, and it had constricted again. Where Tyrus had stood, there was a knot of flashing swords, so dense Moria could not tell who was fighting whom, let alone pick out one warrior in the seething mass. She looked for his helmet. Surely she’d see that red dragon helmet. Yet she could not.
Tyrus was there. He had to be.
She crept through the long grass and around the sparse trees. She had her cloak on, hood pulled tight to cover her light hair. It did not, however, mask her face, and she’d gone about half the distance when one of the warlord’s men—a young warrior—looked her way. As he did, his opponent lifted his sword, taking advantage of the momentary distraction. Without thinking, Moria flung her dagger square at the man’s chest, as she’d been taught, and it was only as the dagger left her hand that she realized what she’d done.
The dagger hit its target. It pierced the simple leather tunic the bandit wore and drove squarely into his heart. His eyes widened. She saw the realization in those eyes. The horror and the fear. And she saw him fall.
She stumbled to a halt, staring at the downed bandit. He lay ten paces away, his mouth working, his fingers fumbling blindly for the dagger. He pulled it free, and the blood gushed, soaking his tunic, running off him in torrents. His life blood. Spilling on the ground, unstoppered by that dagger.
No, by her dagger.
I’ve killed a man.
She had fought her father’s corpse and banished the shadow stalker within. She’d helped bring down the thunder hawk. With the slavers they’d fought on the road, while she’d injured two, the only man who’d died had not been by her hand. The scene flashed in her mind, Gavril’s blade cleaving through a man, his look of shock as he realized he’d killed him. Shock and, yes, horror, and now that’s what she felt, watching this bandit die.
I’ve killed a man.
Moria looked out over the battlefield. At the men on the ground. Dead and dying. Some bandits. Some the warlord’s men. A couple of their own—warriors she’d traveled with for days now. There lay Kinuye, who’d recently married and carried a lock of his new wife’s hair. There lay Reynard, whose young son just won his first riding tournament.
“My lady.”
It was the young man she’d saved. He was rushing to her side, awkwardly bowing as he hurried over.
“Thank you, my lady.”
She looked at him, her gaze struggling to focus. Then she glanced at the bandit, lying still on the ground, her dagger at his side.
I regret that I had to do it. But I do not regret what I’ve done. I cannot.
Her gaze swept the battlefield. Her ears rang with the clang of swords, but they did not miss the softer sounds—the gasps and the grunts and the cries of pain.
I regret that all of this had to happen. But it did. They die and a town is saved. That is the warrior’s duty. To die so that others may live.
She took a deep breath and clutched her remaining dagger. Daigo sprinted off to retrieve her other blade.
Moria turned to the warlord’s man. “I apologize for distracting you in battle. I’m watching over Prince Tyrus, and I lost sight of him, so I was getting closer.” She peered into the melee. “I still do not see him.”
“He was beset, my lady.”
“What?”
“Three men went after him at once. On a signal, I think. I was going to his aid—”
She lunged toward the battlefield. The young warrior caught her arm.
“They did not cut him down, my lady. They surrounded him, and they were driving him off in that direction—” He pointed. “They mean to take him hostage. I’m certain of it.”
“Then we’ll make sure they do not succeed.”
The young warrior led Moria around the battlefield. Some of the men noticed her, but only a few and thankfully none of them was distracted.
As they hurried around the camp, Moria searched the fighters for Tyrus, in case the young warrior was mistaken. But there was no sign of him.
“They led him behind these tents,” the warlord’s man said. “But it seems quiet now.”
They’ve taken him.
If someone had suggested before the battle began that a prince could be kidnapped in front of his own men, she’d have laughed. Surely someone would see. Surely she would see. But each warrior was locked in his own fight for survival and could ill afford a moment’s distraction.
The warlord’s man led her to the largest tent. All was quiet and still behind it.
“Blast it,” the young warrior said. “We’re too late. Can your wildcat follow a trail?”
“He’s no hound, but he—”
She caught a blur on the battlefield. A plait of long, black hair whipping as a warrior spun.
“Tyrus,” she breathed.
If it had been difficult to pick out men on the field from afar, it was even harder now that she was right beside it. They truly were a seething mass of flashing swords and whirling bodies. But she knew that hair—and the dragon helmet atop it. He was in the thick of the fight, with Jorojumo at his side. Tyrus said something, grinning, and the warlord replied with a smile.
“He’s there,” Moria said. “The prince is there.”
The young warrior exhaled. “Thank the ancestors. Lord Jorojumo must have helped him drive off his attackers. Let us get you to safety, my lady. This is no place for you.”
While she followed him around the large tent, she kept glancing back at Tyrus, assuring herself he was fine. He had blood on one arm and cuts in his breastplate, but none seemed to have penetrated.
The battle had slowed enough that the remaining bandits seemed in no hurry to take on both the young prince and the warlord at once. The two had a moment to catch their breath on the sidelines. Then Lord Jorojumo pointed at someone in the fray. Tyrus started forward, attention fixed on his target. Behind him, the warlord raised his sword.
Why? There is no one close enough to strike except—
Daigo let out a snarl and ran. Moria stood frozen, certain she was mistaken, that the warlord was only hefting his blade.
Lord Jorojumo swung. At Tyrus. At his back.
“Tyrus!” Moria screamed, lunging forward as Daigo flew from the long grass beside him and—
Something hit Moria’s head. Pain flashed. Then darkness.