Eighteen in the service of the Sanid Empire and thirty of the Silversheen Company, forty-eight in all, a proper number for the numerologists but less than half the strength of the opponent to be faced within the fortress. Nor were the mercenaries, unlike the fifteen men of the imperial guard, comprised wholly of elites. Nevertheless, they had proper if somewhat simple armor and finely made weapons, more than a match for the crude broad blades and patchy bits of hardened leather used by the cultists. All of the officers and soldiers believed that so long as our own surmounted the walls successfully victory would be achieved. Confidence regarding that feat was far less widespread, and Yomat and I faced considerable suspicion as we rode north in darkness to the place where we must abandon our mounts and proceed on foot into the canyons. Only a thin loop of rope, tied about the waist of each man, served to guide us through those dry channels.

That rope, though much maligned by the pride of the soldiers, saved lives. Several times men stumbled and fell from the wobbly ladders but were held and pulled up by their fellows across on the strength of that chord. Despite such measures, the journey was not without loss. One of the Silversheen crossbowmen slammed his skull against the stones after falling down the canyon wall. When pulled back up, he was already gone to meet the Lord of Death. On the final swaying rope ladder one of the Winged Cavalry lost his grip at the key moment and plunged away into the deep ravine of the gap, never to emerge. Such was the grave risk of this path under cover of darkness.

Despite such tragedy, dawn broke as Erun Nassah, who had insisted upon taking point and being the first to climb that trembling line, scrambled onto the wall of the fortress with sword in hand. The only pair of sentries assigned to walk the circuit of that barrier in nighttime were far away at the main gate, for they sought to leave their post early and find their beds. The fortress slumbered, with the few eyes the cult devoted to vigilance distracted by the distant fires of the camp far below. It was not until a young woman, truly little more than a girl, who had gone to fetch firewood from a stockpile against the northern face of the wall, happened to look in our direction, that a scream of alarm went up. By this time there were twenty-five soldiers on the wall, including the crossbowman who put a bolt through the girl's throat and silenced her mid-outcry.

A harsh response, it is true, but this purchased another full minute of confusion before the cultists realized the origin of the threat. In that time three more of ours claimed the wall and joined the line of battle. Further, the fate of these cultists was always to be slavery or death. The fanatics, twisted by their false faith, are all too likely to take their own lives, and even to slay their children, rather than surrender. Such violent heresy should not surprise us, for much is lost by those who refuse to acknowledge the dominion of the Lord of Death.

By the time the Sunfire Cult gathered warriors and raced to challenge the assault force thirty-two men stood atop the wall, myself among them. The fortress stood before us, laid bare to our sight. The wide oval wall, bonded to the edge of the plateau, wide enough for three men to walk abreast across its ramparts, represented the totality of its defenses. Though ill-maintained, in the dry climate of the badlands the original works still stood strong. Six staircases, one by the gate, one opposite, and two each on the long sides, allowed access to the open expanse below, a three meter descent to the earth of the plateau. Within the walls there was a loose assembly of ragged buildings and piles of litter made from mud brick or simple canvas extended over poles. These included compact sleeping chambers, stables for donkeys, cooking stalls in rows, a small forge, a practice yard, and a tiny kiln. There was much wood, broken pottery, and donkey manure piled about. All of it was deeply wretched and ill made, lacking any of the disciplined layout of an imperial outpost. Nor was there any of the tight precision of the Nikkad or the carefully supporting circular deposition of the Kharal.

The largest structure by far was a wide platform in the center of the plateau near the well. There a bright fire burned intensely in the center of an iron-lined pit. The flame altar used by the cultists to honor their supposed supreme sun. Their prophet, an aging, bald, and wrinkled figure who leaned heavily on a long staff, prostrated himself before the flames and screamed foul blasphemies in Kharal loud enough to penetrate even through the chaotic din of combat. A hideous thing to listen to. Such exhortations, while they may well have rallied the cultists, served to steel the resolve of Imperial and Silversheen soldiers alike. It is a rare thing indeed, to go into mortal battle knowing one stands fully on the side of the Divines.

The initial response of the cultists was to send roughly twenty of their number to the stairwell to the south of our position, the closer of the two upon the western side of the fortress to the main gate. We had come over the wall, as it happened, almost directly above the other stair. Those twenty, it seems, consisted of all those awake and prepared to take up arms at once in response to the initial outcry. This included those standing guard at the gate. Had we possessed the strength for a simultaneous attack that blunder would have turned events to a massacre from the very beginning.

Instead, forced to make do with only those upon the wall, Erun split our already limited forces into three parts. He sent three of the dismounted mercenary cavalry to cover the stairwell beneath us, ordered all crossbowmen to take up firing positions, and then dispatched four of the Winged Cavalry and Captain Sasinah with two of her best to meet the oncoming attack.

The halberds of the Winged Cavalary are meant to sweep and spear through enemy ranks in great swinging blows or terrible lance thrusts borrowing the power of their formidable mounts. Deprived of those allies they must fight as spearmen, but they are trained in such combat and their plate-and-mail is thick and strong even if it lacks the full coverage of dedicated infantry breastplates. Much the same could be said of the Silversheen mercenaries in partial plate above padding, though their captain augmented this with mail gauntlets and a crowned helm. Their long-bladed swords were meant for wide, sweeping strokes moving through disordered forces, but could be turned to a similar purpose, tightened in, when the day demanded street fighting. Atop the wall, standing shoulder-to-shoulder, was not their focus, and they stood hindered and lacking fluidity.

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Yet the maddened fanatics who charged to meet them had little technique, no true armor, and crude cleaving blades wielded opportunistically to take advantage of size and weight, often with one in each hand. There is a style, called the Martyr's Whirl, that reveals swirling mastery of those weapons, a vortex of spinning steel, but such understanding has been all but exterminated and was not found in that fortress. Cultists of the current era rely upon raw courage and savagery to win their battles. It is an approach few soldiers would recommend.

The initial thrust fell against stout halberds and was repulsed, leaving four dead. That rose to six as the withdrawing cultists came within line of fire from the crossbowmen. An attempt, thereafter, to maneuver to the base of the stairs cost them far more, as the crossbows worked and bolts claimed lives not kept under cover. Losses increased even as the cultists gathered the fullness of their strength to throw against us. By the time the charge came the odds had been reduced to two to one.

Heretics, but not fools, as noted. The Sunfire Cultists, once assembled, heeded the exhortations of their prophet and threw their full strength forward, holding back nothing in an attempt to drive us off the walls. A handful of warriors were sent to contest the stairwells, but the remainder, over eighty lives, swarmed into the center. Powered by madness, wrath, or the blessings of their heretical theologian, they threw down piles of debris and jumped upon them to clamor up the wall itself at the center of our formation. Forced to meet them blade to blade, everything reduced to a mad struggle for survival.

Crossbow bolts told a tale in bursts of blood and shattered bones at close quarters against unprotected flesh, but the bulky weapons reload slowly, and the cultists continued to fight on even sporting grievous injuries. One, his left arm torn away completely by the tearing power of a barbed head, strode forward still swinging his heavy sword with his remaining limb. All those contained in the center were pressed into a line upon the wall, desperately holding to cover for the crossbows as they struggled to send forth sufficient bolts to render the foe naught but holes.

It did not last long. Two minutes, perhaps three. No more than that for the desperate balance to stand in question. I stood between two of the Silversheen company, one of the infantry and the other of the cavalry. With no armor of my own among the expedition's supplies I stood clad in hardened leather borrowed from one of the Greencoats, for my build was unsuited to the armor of the heavily built Winged Cavalry. The Sunfire Cultists, red and yellow dyed rags wrapped about their wrists, waists, and in hanging tassels atop their chests, slammed against us with swords swinging down.

The scrum of melee combat does not lend itself to clean retelling. Battles blur in memory, one cannot properly recall the events of moments so tightly compressed, nor would one wish to. The cacophony of strikes, orders, crashing stones, and more confuses the ear as well, and the smell of blood, excrement, and other fluids is truly wretched. Events are best related with such clarity as simplicity supplies. Our line was pressed hard in the center but held long enough that those dispatched to hold the stairs overcame their opponents, folded inward, and pushed the attackers from both sides. This left them trapped and the crossbows knocked them down one by one. None surrendered. The women and children among the cultists who did not fight – and the enemy ranks included several women and a number of boys with several years to go before their first shave – set their cooking tent alight and collapsed the heavy canvas upon themselves as it took flame, perishing in fire and smoke. Their prophet threw himself into his sacred altar, continuing to scream blasphemies until his lips burned away.

The losses suffered by those who joined the attack were blessedly light in comparison to such annihilation. Of the forty-eight who had ridden out, forty returned. Two perished, as mentioned previously, on the approach, while six more fell in battle atop the walls. These were two more soldiers of the Winged Cavalry and four of the Silversheen Company. There were, in addition, a considerable number of injuries. Most were limited to cuts, deep but clean, and by the blessings of the Divines and the attention of the healers manageable. The enemy, wielding neither spears nor maces, dealt few crippling wounds. One of the Silversheen cavalry lost his left hand, the blade having cut too deep at the elbow to save anything below. Three others had injuries serious enough to keep them from their feet, mostly broken bones, but the treatment of the healers and the generally clean and dry climate of the steppe in summer preventing any from succumbing to infection.

Of course, a battle leaves other scars, and the Dragon Expedition would never again retain the height of glad spirits it had previously possessed. Erun, who had stood and watched as the mad prophet immolated himself, often looked away from strong flames thereafter. Myself, I confess I was forced to grapple with the change that comes over all humans who take the life of one of their own for the first time. My knife came out of that battle coated with blood, and though I do not recall dealing the blow in the moment, I matched the mortal wound on the bodies thereafter when we dragged the fallen out for sky burial. No doubt they would have preferred to be burned, but such an act deprives the cycle of the essence of their bodies and condemns them to linger in the desolate realm of the Lord of Death until the debt is paid. Heresy carries penalties even in death, and must not be countenanced. I had been trained in combat since I was young, of course, even if I was never more than a novice warrior, but giving and taking blows while sparring is nothing like plunging the blade into the flesh of the other and ending all that lies within. That is something more, an interposition of human judgment in the place of the divine, and not to be undertaken lightly or swiftly forgotten, ever. It speaks well of Husun the Fifith that he chose to name the later period of his reign Enduring Peace, and that under this banner most in the empire should be spared such experiences. Death, and killing, are not, however, so easily escaped in Shdustu.

The expedition remained for four days at the fortress, to allow the injured to recover, to perform the rites for the fallen, to cleanse the place of all heretical signs including the horrible altar, and to insure that General Kutumush was satisfied with our success. The expedition claimed all supplies and good as plunder for ourselves, minus the shares promised to the Silversheen Company, and thereby turned a profit monetarily. Not one that came even close to matching the true cost.