“He should have been making watches,” said the king, holding the delicate green-and-gold timepiece Stenides had made him, opening the case and squeezing it closed again with a tight, precise snap, shrugging up one shoulder to wipe away his tears. Then he left to find his father and Temenus, his remaining brother, to bring them the news.

Perminder of Sounis distinguished himself, helping the king of Sounis off the field when he was thrown from his horse. We called Perminder the black sheep because of the tight curls in his hair, and that evening Eddis joked about the Lion being carried by the Lamb. She was not the only one to make jokes that sounded forced. Any levity was harder and harder to find. Sense was hard to find. A man was shot through the head by a bolt and lived to tell about it. My cousin, who’d been sent by my grandfather to command the men of Erondites, lost a single finger to a sword cut and died a few days later of an infection in the wound.

The Medes, like houseguests who don’t want to be impolite, rarely fought into the evening. When they withdrew from the field, the Peninsular armies did the same. As the sun set, the king and queen of Attolia would walk through the camp, between the long rows of tents, past regularly spaced cook fires and work sites. The ground that had been pasture a few weeks earlier was hard-packed dirt except where it was mixed with wastewater to a slippery, stinking mud. All around them, blacksmiths and barrel makers, fletchers, armorers, gunsmiths, and leatherworkers were engaged in making and remaking what was needed for an army of ten thousand men.

The king offered the queen his hand as she picked her way around a puddle. Because the Medes had not mustered to war that morning, the soldiers, at least, were having a day of rest. They slept through all the noise, most of them laid out in their tents, but some stretched out by the cold ashes of the fires they’d lain down by the night before.

When they reached the edge of the encampment, Attolia led the king into the open space beyond it. She did not intend to go out to the farthest pickets, just far enough that they could speak quietly without being overheard. There was a low stone wall. It had once served to divide one family’s land from another’s. Those property rights moot at the moment, it made an adequate bench.

He wanted to ask if she was tired, but didn’t. She knew it and was grateful.

“You’re quiet,” she said.

“You’re busy,” he said. He hadn’t wanted to interrupt her as she assessed her forces.

“I’ve seen what I needed to see. Eddis and I will talk later. What woke you last night?”

“The dead,” he said, and Attolia nodded. They woke her as well. The king toed the trampled and torn grass and said, “I thought it was wrong to sit back on a hillside watching men die and now . . . I am not sure. From above, I can see men on both sides trapped in a war over which they have no control. On the field, I care about nothing but striking down anyone who strikes at me.”

She took his hand. “Your morality up on the hillside is an illusion, no more real than the freedom you imagine you have from it in battle.” She had seen enough to know. “All wars make men monsters, all wars and all men.”

“And women?” he asked.

“Women, too,” Attolia confirmed.

Every day the priests and priestess with the army prayed for the arrival of the Brael ships at Stinos.

Some of the tactics used to delay the Medes worked well, some did not. “They seem so familiar with the terrain,” said Pegistus. “They must have sent scouts well ahead of their army.”

Sounis pointed to the campaign map. “We diked here to support the field guns.”

“We moved them back three days ago.”

“I know, but the dike diverts this streamlet, so it now runs into the flat here.” He pointed. Attolia and Eddis leaned over, along with Pegistus.

“Whoever has informed the Medes so well of the terrain might not know about this,” said Sounis. “If we lure their cavalry here, they will founder.”

Attolia and Eddis nodded and moved their markers, wrote out their orders, and the Medes lost an entire troop of their men and their horses.

The king had sent Fordad to the harbor at Stinos, but instead of troops he returned with the worst possible news. The Etisians, the late summer windstorms, had come early. The winds from the north would drive the Brael ships back, delaying their arrival.

Fordad’s words were a body blow. I saw men stagger, clutching their heads. The Medes, committing only part of their forces every day, were as strong as they’d been when they first passed through the Leonyla. Our army was exhausted. We might have lost ground all the way back to Stinos in the next few days but for the encouragement of those who went again from fireside to fireside—the kings and queens, the officers of the army, the barons who went to their sons and their cousins and stirred them to give everything they had. Instead of losing ground, step by bitter step, we advanced.

“Bu-seneth has an army of conscripts,” said the magus cynically, warning the council against false hope. “He uses us to train his soldiers for war.”

Whatever the cause, overconfidence or poor training, the Medes left an opening in their lines and Attolia, in spite of fears that it was a trap, ordered her forces forward. We had a day of glory. Moving our encampments, we took over the fortifications the Medes themselves had constructed and were still outside the range of the barrel guns.

After that, Bu-seneth did not take the field for several days. Perhaps he was licking his wounds, or perhaps reinforcing the motivation of his unwilling soldiers.

Only the king failed to appreciate the reprieve. After a morning of his fruitless pacing, Yorn Fordad suggested his energy might be better spent on horseback in the afternoon. “The men in your outposts would be cheered to see you,” he pointed out.

The Peninsular armies had been pushed all the way back to the fields east of Lartia and then had advanced again to the top of the ridge that separated the valley of the Pinosh River above the Leonyla from the watershed to the east, running down toward Stinos. The ridge was long and open, and small companies of men had been posted far out from the main camp to warn us if the Medes made an attempt to encircle our forces. Those soldiers had not had the benefit of royal encouragement, and so it was agreed that the king would ride out in the afternoon to visit them.

We followed a road that was really no more than a wagon track through the thin trees. The king was laughing at something Philologos had said as we neared a cairn of stones, a kind of grave marker not uncommon this far north. I saw a man standing near it and my heart leapt into my mouth. I was certain he meant the king no good. The king must have seen him too. He pulled up, making Fryst throw his head. When I looked again, the man at the cairn had disappeared.

“Your Majesty?” Philologos asked.

“I thought I saw a dead man. . . .”

The king eased up on the reins, Fryst took a step, there was a flash of light and a sound so loud that I didn’t hear it with my ears but felt it crash through my chest.

Then I was on my back, blue sky overhead, and my heart pounding. The air was full of smoke and muffled sounds. I heard, “To the king!” as if from far away and I rolled over, dragging my arms underneath me, too weak to push myself up from the ground. I lay like a baby, my feet scrabbling in the dirt.

Just ahead was the king—I knew him by the coat Hilarion had made him wear—lying partly under Fryst, the horse just as still as he was. There were men on horseback coming through the smoke in the air. They dismounted and walked through the bodies, looking right and left, killing as they came. When they reached Fryst, they tried to pull the king free, but had to lift the horse off him first. I saw Hilarion stagger up, his face covered in blood, shouting something—I couldn’t hear what. I saw a Mede drive a sword through his chest. Then they tied the body of the king over a horse and led it away.