“Without war, there would be no heroes,” said one man.

“Would that be a bad thing?” asked the king.

“That’s a woman’s question,” one man responded dismissively.

“Perhaps my wife can tell me the answer, then,” said the king with a dangerous smile.

“Take my advice,” said another man, one with a scar that puckered his skin from his forehead, across his cheek, and down to his chin. “Never let your wife tell you anything.”

His friends all laughed. Hilarion opened his mouth to call them to account, but the king reached out to cover his mouth. Hilarion was so surprised, as he looked down at the king’s hand, that his eyes crossed, and the men around the fire slapped their knees and rocked back and forth. Hilarion realized what the king had already seen: these soldiers had meant no insult to the queen. With his right arm and his hook covered by the borrowed cloak, the men had no idea who the king was. They’d offered a drink to a couple of passing strangers, oblivious to the guards waiting beyond the light of their fire.

“When you return home from war,” a skinny whip of a man said thoughtfully when the merriment had subsided, “you see your wife and your children and you know you have protected them. They are safe and well and you are safe and well. There’s nothing like that feeling. Nothing else in your whole life will ever compare to it.”

“And you swear you’ll never go to war again, but you do,” said the man with the scar, shaking his head at his own decisions.

“What man will stay in his bed when the Medes are coming?” the whip-thin man asked. “Who wants to say ten years from now, ‘I had a good nap that day!’” He spoke in a querulous old man’s voice. “No one will remember their nap. They’ll remember this.”

“Tomorrow we will fight for our homes and our wives and our children.”

The king shrugged then, and a little of his bitterness was back. “Not I.”

They still did not know him. Looking him over, they assumed him to be one of the many indispensable servants of war.

“Well, we wouldn’t be able to fight without your help, son.”

“Blacksmith?” the thin man asked.

“Nah,” pointed out the man with the scar, “no pox. He’s no blacksmith and no farrier. Cooper?”

The king shook his head.

“Cook, are you?”

Again, Hilarion would have said something, but seeing the king’s frown, he bit his tongue. The men saw it too, and misread his intent. “Don’t you tease him,” they said. They did not doubt Hilarion was a fighting man. “None of us can get along without the cooks.”

“But I want to fight!” insisted the king. He slumped dramatically and added, “My wife won’t let me.”

They roared. The man with the scar slapped his leg. “Didn’t I say never listen to your wife?” And they all laughed even louder.

“She doesn’t want you to lose your good looks, end up like Lefkis with his face split.”

“Spindly kid like you,” said Lefkis, pinching the king’s right arm above the elbow, not noticing the straps under the heavy cloth. “Stay in the cook tent,” he said.

The king pretended to be insulted. He muscled up his other arm and said he would destroy the Medes single-handed if she would only let him go.

“You’ll have your chance in time,” the men assured him as they sobered again. They knew that every man would fight, coopers, cooks, and all.

“I’ll tell you what,” said Lefkis, pulling a glove out of his belt and handing it to the king. “If you ever make it into battle and out again, you bring this to me so I’ll know you, and we’ll make sure you get a double ration of wine that day.”

Taking the glove, the king stood and bowed and thanked them for the wine and said he must go. His wife would be expecting him. Far more cheerful than they’d been earlier, they waved him on his way.

There had never been any expectation that we would stop the Mede advance, only slow it. Three of the next five days, we fought and retreated. On the sixth, the Medes requested another parley. After very little debate, the queens agreed to send Attolia and the king again, for no other reason than it meant a morning of rest for our soldiers. The Medes came out on horses this time, no need for petty intimidation. Again, Bu-seneth asked for complete surrender, and again Attolia refused him. As the two parties turned away from each other, Nahuseresh delivered an unscripted announcement from behind the Mede general. “I have found Kamet!”

Attolia laid a hand on the king’s arm to caution him, as he swung around angrily.

Bu-seneth had turned on Nahuseresh and was pushing him back. Attolia’s former ambassador, who foolishly thought she had fallen for his seductive offers of support from the Mede emperor and from him, had been humiliated and had returned to the empire in disgrace. His hatred of Attolia and her husband was a personal affair, and the king’s hatred of Nahuseresh was the same. It was at Nahuseresh’s instigation that Attolia had cut off the king’s hand, and the king blamed him for it. Why the king felt such animosity for Nahuseresh and not for Attolia, I do not know. People are no less mysterious than the gods. If an author’s account of any man is tidy, you must believe it has been made so in contrast with the truth, which is rarely clear and never simple.

Nahuseresh shouted past Bu-seneth’s ear. “I found him in Roa! My men took their time cutting him to pieces. Oh, I see your queen restrains you! Come out and fight like a king, Eugenides, instead of a sneak thief hiding behind your wife’s skirts!”

Bu-seneth pushed Nahuseresh one way and Attolia dragged the king the other, ending the parley.

That day we watched in horror as a wing of the Mede’s horse broke through our lines and cut off a group of Eddisians. Mede infantry drove in after the horsemen. Attolia looked for a rider to carry her orders to the Attolian reserves. “I’ll take the message,” said the king, fed up with sitting still, and he was off before anyone could stop him. His attendants galloped after him, but I stayed, as Snap would not have been able to keep up. We turned our attention back to the battle.

“What is it, Pheris?” said Attolia a little later, as I reached to tug her sleeve. “I have no time for games.”

I pointed at the white horse leading the reinforcements.

The Eddisians, hard pressed, could see him coming, Fryst glorious with mane and tail flying, the king with his sword held high. Behind the Mede line, Nahuseresh reared his horse into the air and stabbed at the sky with his own sword, exultant at having drawn the king out at last.

Faster and faster Fryst came, not slowing even as they approached the men locked in battle. Where another horse might have leapt into the fray, Fryst, predictably, dug his front hooves into the muddy ground. Head down and heels up, he sent the king flying in his pitneen-colored coat.

I had the observation glass. Philologos had handed it to me before riding out after the king. I watched the king rotate in the air, straight as a pike, arms thrust out to either side. He spun as the weight of his sword arm dragged him off-balance. Still spinning, he landed in front of Nahuseresh, swinging the sword along the ground like a scythe, slicing into the hock of Nahuseresh’s horse and bringing it down, screaming.