I saw all that before Trokides snatched the scope away. Even then I could make out Nahuseresh as he dragged himself free of his horse. He ran away—feet flying and arms pumping, head tipped back like an athlete racing for a finish line, with the king, like a reckless fool, chasing after him. The king followed Nahuseresh farther and farther onto enemy ground as Nahuseresh outpaced him on feet winged with fear, every step carrying the king away from his own men.

From the council tent, we heard the roar of the Eddisians. “Annux! Annux!” they cried as they surged forward to save him. I was terrified and exhilarated. The queens were livid. The Medes were driven back.

It was not the miracle described in Pollimius’s history. The tiny Peninsular army did not push back the entirety of the Mede forces. The Medes outmatched us by such numbers that they sent only a partial force to every battle. Their confidence was so high that they were unprepared for a setback. They did not have their reserves in order, and what might have been a hesitation in their advance became a full-scale retreat. Legend makers will exaggerate, but the truth is extraordinary enough and needs no embellishments: the Medes withdrew in chaos; Nahuseresh seized another man’s horse and fled from the king.

As the rest of the army secured the ground they had painfully won, the king returned to camp. His father had taken him up on his horse and the two rode together, surrounded by smiling Eddisians. When they reached the royal tents, the king slipped down, but he didn’t approach Attolia or Eddis, who were waiting for him. He followed after his father, who was marching grim-faced for the tent Eddis’s senior advisors shared.

The attendants hesitantly went after the king but stopped when the minister of war slipped the cords and snapped the tent flap down in their faces. Again, tents by their nature are poor at providing privacy. There was a clearly audible sound of flesh contacting flesh and we all heard the minister of war say, after a moment, “Get up.”

“Why would I do that?” the king asked, bleary voiced. He must have done so, as there was another meaty smack. Hilarion and Ion stood looking uncertain, not knowing if they should rush to defend their king or spare him any witnesses to his humiliation. Before they could make up their minds, the tent flap was flipped aside and the minister stumped out.

The king lay on his back on the carpet. One side of his face was red and white with the imprint of the minister’s fingers all in a row. As we watched, the white was fading to red to match the rest of that side of his face.

“Get Petrus,” said Hilarion to Medander, but the king flapped his hand.

“Leave Petrus to those who need him more,” he said as he struggled to sit up. He had plenty of help to get to his feet. “Please tell the queens and Sounis and the rest in the council tent that I will join them,” he mumbled, “soon.” Sinking onto a campstool, he tipped his head into his palm.

When he was ready to stand again, the attendants led him to his tent, washed him, and put him in clean clothes, oddly quiet for people who had just seen their overmatched army win an unanticipated victory. They trailed behind the king like schoolboys to the council tent, where he stood with his face swollen and purple on one side and apologized to the queens and to Sounis and to his councilors for his astonishingly selfish behavior. Sounis sat next to his own father, looking sympathetic. His magus stood behind him, looking very grave. There was a pained silence until Sounis hesitantly pointed out that the prophecy hadn’t actually said clearly that the king couldn’t fight.

“I think we all know I wasn’t thinking of the prophecy, Sophos,” said the king. “Though I thank you for the excuse.”

There were a couple of small smiles.

“You were thinking of Kamet,” said Eddis sympathetically.

“You weren’t thinking at all,” snapped Attolia, less forgiving. “Did you hear Nahuseresh say a single word of Costis?”

“No?” the king said uncertainly.

“Nahuseresh said his men had killed Kamet. You can be sure they had to kill Costis first. Yet Nahuseresh never mentioned him. Tell me how you see Kamet captured and dead and Costis nowhere in his story?”

Feeling foolish, the king said humbly, “I . . . can’t actually see a way.”

“Indeed,” chided Attolia. “He taunted you with guesswork. Costis would not sit like a pigeon waiting for his neck to be wrung. We will wait for a message from Roa before we hold any funerals.”

She looked around at the other silent councilors. “We have enough to grieve over already, but not a defeat—not today. We have retaken the ground lost and established our front camps closer to the Leonyla. I believe the question before us, my king, is—do you fight tomorrow?”

The king looked at his father. Looked at his queen. “That is not my decision,” he said.

The queen nodded impassively and turned the question over to the councilors. They were interrupted in their deliberations by the sound of cheering.

“What is all that noise?” Trokides asked.

Hilarion, pleased with himself, said, “I think a man got his glove back.”

In a city of tents filled with exhausted men under the quiet stars, Eugenides lay in bed, listening to the muffled sounds of others who were still awake. He watched the shadows of torches that burned all night play across the canvas walls around him. It was late and his face hurt, but that was not why he couldn’t sleep.

“It is like being a sheepdog who suddenly turns on the sheep,” he said. “It feels utterly right in the moment, never afterward. That’s why I wouldn’t let someone else send me into battle. I never wanted to fight until I believed it was necessary. I do,” he said, as if he was trying to convince himself. “I do believe it is necessary.” He still sounded unsure.

“Your father will regret that slap to the head,” Attolia murmured into her pillow.

“Oh, that was just the final round of an old argument. It was so important to him that I not be the Thief, that I be a soldier instead, and now that I’m finally doing what he always wanted, he has to tell me to stop.”

“Maddening,” agreed Attolia in the voice of experience.

Eugenides sighed. “People should be more careful what they ask me for.”

Chapter Eight

The Peninsular armies had won the day because the men were rallying to their high king, all of them, Eddisians and Sounisians and Attolians alike. The royal councilors were in rare agreement: it would be foolish to undermine this new sense of unification. The king even prevailed in his desire to fight on foot, beside his Eddisians, and for the next three days our armies did not retreat. The Medes continued to send out only a portion of their forces, and the Peninsular armies fought bloody battles to hold their ground.

Philologos was wounded. It was only a slash to his shoulder, but enough to keep him out of the fighting for a while. Cleon the Eddisian died fighting at the king’s side, one of three of the king’s cousins who died in a single day. The king’s oldest brother, Temenus, came that evening and sat with the king alone before the two of them went off to observe the private rites sacred to the Eddisians.

It was his cousin who was Eddis who came slowly one evening, head down, to the Attolians’ tent with word of the explosion in the foundry that had killed Stenides, the king’s favorite brother. The body was far away in Eddis. There would be no rites to observe until they returned to the mountains, if they ever returned to the mountains.