It took two hours to reach the sound of the three falls. The moon's small light from the east fought to penetrate the forest canopy. Mero had just heard the first faint crashing whisper of the waterfalls when Helenai raised a hand and hunkered down.

Mero and Quo dropped silently, watching both her and the dark forest around them. The flora had changed since leaving their encampment; now the woods consisted of dense, slender white trees looming like ghosts. It gave Mero the dizzying effect of being in a hall of mirrors; at night, looking in any direction was the same as looking in any other. Without Helenai’s guidance, he may very well be lost. Left to his own devices, it would take him three times as long to find his way back to camp.

Helenai crept to them on silent feet. “You hear the falls?”

The men nodded. The shushing sound of water cascading over rock came from the south. It made Mero thirst.

“We’re very close,” Helenai said, her voice virtually silent. “Keep your weapons sheathed. We can’t risk the barest sound. I will take us as close as possible and then we’ll camouflage in the brush to listen.”

“Ought we break into three, Captain?” Mero asked. Ambushes were not his stock in trade.

“No. We will separate a little, to give them room to pass by if they should happen our way, or to find only one of us in the worst case. But we must remain close in case there is a bigger problem.”

“How many Scalus do you expect?” Quo asked. “I’m not a shabby fighter but I don’t fancy taking on a double dozen lizards.”

“Hard to know. It could be a handful; it could be a den. Perhaps it is even only one or two. We’ll know soon enough.”

She crawled toward the sound of the falls. Mero gripped Quo’s shoulder. Quo nodded back at him, once, and they crept forward behind Captain Helenai.

Mero had to squint frequently to find the scout in the darkness. In her dark armor, Helenai virtually disappeared as she kept low to the ground, where smaller bushes grew up around the base of the white-barked trees. Only her short golden crown of hair gave him a point to follow, like a star. He was again reminded of his love in Seena, and wondered how she fared. It had been months since he’d last been home on leave from this bloody war with the Scalus. He’d lost many friends in the battles; some dead, some wounded and sent home to recover.

He knew she was safe in Seena, at any rate. For now. One of the great miscalculations of this war—in his unspoken opinion—was the risk of not only failing to gain ground and lands, but losing what territory the state had slowly gained over years of slash and burn agriculture. The Scalus had never attacked Seena proper, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t or wouldn’t. If they ever did—and here, Mero had shared the thought with General Osote recently—Seena would likely be unable to defend itself, and—

Mero blinked. He’d lost Helenai to the darkness.

Cursing softly, he tried to pick up his pace as quietly as possible in the direction he’d last seen her, but the woods’ strange way of twisting his vision confused him.

Stop, he told himself, still on his hands and knees. Think it through. At worst she’s within this one-hundred-eighty-degree arc; she’s certainly not behind you. You lost track of her for only a moment, she must be dead ahead.

Quo tapped his tall leather boot. Mero moved on.

In less than a minute, he knew it was too late. The sergeant was utterly and completely out of sight. Mero stopped again and motioned Quo to his side.

“I lost her,” he whispered.

Quo sighed through his nose. “So have I.”

“Well, this is a problem.”

“Osote should have sent scouts.”

A twig snapped nearby. The soldiers froze. In tandem and unconsciously, they slowed their breathing the way they’d been taught in their training years before. The forest was so quiet, Mero could hear his own heartbeat. The tips of his fingers throbbed with each clenching beat.

The forest, he thought. The forest is so quiet . . .

“Damn,” Mero whispered, and felt his intestines uncoil in his belly. When Quo gasped softly beside him, he knew his friend had seen them, too.

Several Scalus materialized in the darkness before them. Even as Mero tensed his muscles to spring, his periphery caught more emerging from his left; and, turning his head to look, another two on Quo’s right. No less than six Scalus, armed with deadly wooden spears, approached them so quietly they may as well have been ghosts.

“Now what,” Quo muttered.

Short of being splayed flat on their backs with their bellies wide for the stabbing, Mero couldn’t imagine a more compromised position. Here he was, a respected lieutenant in the Seena army, now caught unawares on his hands and knees like a child, surrounded by the enemy.

“You’re right,” Mero said quietly, preparing himself for death. “Osote should have sent scouts.”

“It wouldn’t have mattered,” Helenai said.

Mero and Quo snapped their attention to the left. Helenai appeared gradually, fading into sight like the Scalus had. She, like the Scalus, was on her feet, looming over the nearly prone soldiers.

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“I knew he’d choose one or both of you,” the captain went on.

Understanding—if only partial—flowed into Mero’s brain like the water of the nearby falls. Slowly and with great deliberation so as not to initiate an attack, he drew his right foot underneath him, then his left, and stood. Quo followed his lead until both men were on their feet. Quo immediately shifted his weight to put his back to Mero to better cover themselves.

Mero studied the Scalus carefully, weighing his options. Their race was clearly reptilian in origin, with dark iridescent skin made up of millions of tiny scales, their bellies pale, their backs and limbs shading in spectra from midnight blue to dark green. They had three fingers and a thumb on each hand, and four nearly prehensile toes on each foot. The Scalus wore no clothing nor armor, and thus far, Mero could not distinguish between the sexes; whatever genitalia they possessed, it was inverted, and they all looked roughly the same height and size. Their heads were the same size as a human’s, though their jaws and snouts protruded somewhat, and their mouths were twice again as wide, like a lizard’s.

One of the Scalus nearest Helenai issued as series of clicks with its tongue. Their communication—language, if it could be called such—consisted of hisses and clicks from their mouths, as well as a pair of twig-like bony protrusions on the backs of their hands, which could be tapped as deliberately as human fingers, or vibrated into a high-pitched hum, and any speed in between. Mero could not help but be fascinated by this alien manner of communicating, and under other circumstances, he might even have wished to make a study of it like some scholars had.

Right now, the sounds only felt like a death sentence.

Helenai kept her eyes on Mero as she spoke to the Scalus. “Yes. They have value.”

“What is this?” Quo shouted.

Each of the six Scalus twitched, spears at the ready. They hissed and clicked aggressively.

Quo, clearly, was cowed not in the least and yelled again. “Helenai, what have you done? On my life, you’ve sold yourselves to these lizards?”

To Mero’s shock, the woman’s visage appeared sincerely sorrowful. “I guessed Osote would send you, Quo. He trusts and favors you both out of all others. Now you are mine.”

“Yours,” Mero said, his voice calm even as his heart thundered behind his leathers. “To what end?”

He wanted to keep her talking as he weighed their options. Six armed Scalus . . . a captain of the Seena army . . . against two lieutenants.

Not the most wonderful odds he’d ever faced; though not the worst, either. There could, he figured, be more Scalus hidden around them in the dark and trees. If so, open combat would likely end in his and Quo’s deaths. If it was just these six . . . seven, if Helenai dared fight . . . still not very good odds, but the density of the trees would be of some use.

Whatever Helenai’s plans for the two of them, death would be better for the state than their capture. Mero understood this on an instinctive level. Being kept alive, paraded as propaganda, could do irreparable harm to Seena. While those who loved him knew he was ready to die in service, Mero knew they did not share his willingness. They would take any action to save his life if they could.

Helenai frowned at him. “‘To what end?’ Mero, you yourself said as much earlier tonight as we walked. The Cerchi’s lust for power must be curbed. The war must end. Peace must be had with the Scalus.”

“Peace?” Quo spat. “You traitorous hag!”

Captain Helenai kept her gaze fixed on Mero, as though already certain there was no ground to be made with Quo. Mero knew she was right about that.

“The Scalus will share their water with guarantees of no further encroachment by Seena,” she said to Mero. “To me that is a small price.”

“But you are not in the Assembly and have no authority to make such a treaty,” Mero said.

“It would appear otherwise, now that I hold your lives in my hand.”

“Our lives? You truly think General Osote will cease the campaign to save us? Our lives, your life, was committed to the state years ago. We have no value to you or these Scalus.”

Mero was gambling with the argument, and clearly Helenai knew it as she shook her head. “You’ve never understood people, Mero. In your tower with your betrothed, looking down at all of us.”

Mero fought to maintain his composure at her tone and the mention of My Lady Em, the young woman to whom, at some near date, he would be married.

“You underestimate Lidia and Osote’s faith in you,” Helenai went on. “The two of you are destined to become captains yourselves, putting you next in line for Osote’s command, and so one step from being Magistrate—”

“Huh!” Quo grunted. “Politics!”

Helenai gave him the merest glance before centering on Mero again. She took two steps nearer, closing the distance between them to seven or eight feet.

“Mero. We are Victrix. We value reason, yes? Then be reasonable. The Cerchi are zealous and violent fools. If they should ever come to full power in the Assembly, they will raze this forest to satisfy their greed. We’ve both lost friends in this pointless conflict. Help me end it.”

Mero found himself so aghast, he momentarily lost the power of speech. “You . . . dare to blame the Cerchi for your betrayal?”

“Mero!” Quo said loudly. “Since she won’t even deign to look at me, ask her who gets to control the water rights in this oh-so-pious treaty?”

Mero raised an eyebrow.

Helenai shrugged expansively. “Someone must administrate the equitable distribution of the water to Seena.”

“Ha!” Quo barked. “Naturally that’s you!”

“Better a Victrix than a Cerchi, yes.”

Quo grinned like a savage. “I will live to see you hewn in twain in the mines, traitor.”

“Then so be it!” Helenai snapped in a display of emotion that surprised Mero. “I know what I’ve done, Quo. I know the risk. I know the possible price.”

“Ah, ah—the most certain price,” Quo said, holding up a finger like a corrective parent.

Mero noted his friend’s other hand flexed near the pommel of his sword. Quo was ready to fight.

“I don’t want or intend to hurt you,” Helenai said. “You will be treated well. Both of you. I wish only to force Lidia to the table. Mero, your relations with My Lady Em make you a valuable asset to that end. And Quo . . .”

Quo gestured sarcastically for her to go on, as if he hung on her words.

A shift occurred in Helenai’s gaze, Mero noticed. Even in the relative darkness, he saw something soft come into her eyes as she spoke.

“You are beloved by so many, Quo. More than you could ever know.”

“You can imagine the joy that sentiment brings me at this moment,” Quo said.

Mero scanned the area again as they spoke—continued scanning, really, since he’d shifted to a tactical mindset the instant the first yellowish belly of a Scalus entered his vision. They were in a very slight clearing here. The topography obviously suited the Scalus well, but the Victrix had learned much in the past year of warfare. Their swords were now shorter and more nimble than in times past, to better account for all the damned trees crowding around them. The Scalus were fierce fighters; agile and swift. But they used no metal nor stone, their spears fire-hardened and wound with twine, but not as strong as Seena steel.

Six Scalus versus the two of us, Mero thought, without thinking the actual words. His soldier’s mind did the calculations for him like a scholar doing automatic arithmetic. Six, and one traitorous scout who I want brought back to Osote for judgement and to be made an example of.

He made his decision.

“Well,” Mero sighed, and met Quo’s eyes. “I, for one, love Quo quite readily. It was a delight knowing you, old friend.”

Quo grinned, Mero’s message received. “It really was, wasn’t it? I am a delight!”

With the elegance and synchronicity borne of years of fighting side by side, the men drew their swords and charged.