Whatever the Vithtak had fired toward the tree hit with a loud thump. In the same moment, the Vithtak on the front line, closest to where Ashes and the others huddled, clutched at his throat with his free hand and lowered his sword. As soon as his guard dropped, the man in front of him drove home his spear. As the soldier fell, Ashes noted the fletching protruding from between the bloodied fingers he held to his throat.

Archers.

She squinted toward the trees to her right, beyond the Meres-folk with the spears. Additional figures perched in the lowest forks of a handful of trees. Black feathers dangled from their hair and necklaces, interwoven with a light-colored moss. Ashes didn’t recognize the tribal symbolism.

“Who is that?” Daness whispered and nodded toward the Vithtak’s back line.

At first Ashes thought Daness meant the officer with the gold-threaded clothing. She wore a sword on her belt and held a polearm in one hand, but she remained well back from the fighting and used neither.

Then another movement caught Ashes’s attention, another several feet back from the officer. A figure sprawled in the heavy grasses near the water’s edge, barely visible but wrenched into what appeared to be an awkward pose.

“Tied up.” Moss eased a half-step forward to look closer where Daness pointed. “I can’t see what they’re wearing.”

“If the Vithtak have them tied up, does it matter?”

“Are you suggesting we should involve ourselves in this?”

Daness turned all the way around to look at Moss.

“My only interest is in getting myself and my sister safely home.” Moss squared her shoulders.

Ashes did not fail to notice that Moss referred to her as sister without effort or thought, despite them sharing no blood. Despite Moss’s recent anger at her.

“If we help our people win this fight, we gain in numbers—armed and obviously practiced at fighting numbers.” Daness laid an extra emphasis on our people.

“It’s the right thing to do.” Charak eased to his left, looking toward the fighting as he spoke.

“It’s the smart thing to do.” Arrold spoke mildly, and Ashes couldn’t tell if he agreed with Charak or argued semantics with him.

Once again, a helplessness dragged at Ashes’s heart. These were, even more than Daness realized, her people—the people her father had once been high king over. The people she was supposed to have helped years ago and hadn’t. She wished desperately that she’d learned how to fight, so that she could do something now.

If I’d gone for the crown then, I might have it now. This moment might never have come.

Ashes turned her head and found Moss staring at her.

Ashes could have said any number of things in that moment. She could have reiterated Daness’s reminder that these were their people or reinforced Arrold’s statement that this was not only right but smart. She only looked back at Moss and let her eyes plead on her behalf.

More cries rose from the fighting just beyond the reeds, one near and one further, followed by a distant splash.

“We’ll need some kind of strategy.” Moss frowned at Ashes. “And you will stay far back. Do you understand me?”

Back. Protected. Never taking any risks.

Another of the Vithtak had fallen. One bearing a polearm stepped forward. A dead Meres fighter sprawled face down between his feet.

The remaining sling-wielder fired, and a shot whistled in an arc toward the trees. There was no loud thump this time, but a scream. An archer crashed through branches. His body hit the water below and sent a spray into the air.

“We are seriously under-equipped. You’ll need surprise.” Arrold’s finger wavered as he counted out four—Daness, Charak, Meleri, and Moss. “The four of you, armed and with the best chance of taking her down.”

If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

“Her?”

“The officer. The best gambit is to avoid the main fight altogether. If you take down the lone Vithtak officer at the very back, perhaps the others will cut and run.”

“Or at the very least be distracted. Clever.” Charak narrowed his eyes at Arrold, as if seeking signs of some trick at work.

“I’ll grab her.” Daness shoved another step forward. “Once I have her, the rest of you can gut her without fear of her drawing a weapon on you.”

“The three of you stay here.” Moss said three, as if she meant Arrold and Kestrel as well, but her gaze pinned only Ashes.

Another shout rang out. Ashes didn’t look to see who it might be. She watched Moss’s back as she followed Daness through the reeds and angled to the left. Charak and Meleri fell in behind them.

Kestrel, huddled beside Ashes, growled in quiet frustration. “I could help if…” The blonde girl’s hands patted her hips, and she glanced around as if seeking something. Then she sighed. “Well, I have the key still.” Kestrel sounded more like that would do them any good than Ashes thought she ought to.

But how can I judge? I have nothing whatsoever to contribute.

In response to the thought, a scent of bitter herbs touched Ashes’s tongue. Air moved across her back like the smooth coils of a serpent.

The other four had barely crept out of sight before Kestrel whispered, “Is there anything else at all that we can do? Surely there is.”

Kestrel glanced toward Arrold, and Ashes did, too. She didn’t trust him entirely—she thought his self-interest ruled his decision-making. But he did frequently have smart ideas.

Arrold glanced between the two women and shook his head. “A distraction if things go awry, maybe. I’m not certain how.”

“What about their prisoner?” Kestrel peered again through the reeds.

Ashes slid her fingers between the reeds and parted them slightly to look through, as well. She cared less about the tied person they’d glimpsed and more about keeping Moss in sight.

Even knowing they were there, Ashes was hard pressed to see where the other four had gone. The faintest of movements rippled out from the cattails where the mud gave way to the short expanse of water between them and the land on which the fighting took place. She glimpsed black hair and a brief bending of reeds, and that was it. Ashes held her breath.

One moment, the Vithtak officer stood leaning against her polearm as she barked commands at those of her soldiers still standing. The next moment, Daness was simply there, her arms hooked from behind around those of the officer. She cranked the arm holding the polearm hard behind the Vithtak officer and pulled the officer brutally backward, bending her until her upper body was nearly parallel to the ground.

Just as abruptly, two other figures fell upon the officer, red hair and black and blades flashing toward her throat. Moss stepped around behind them. The prod she’d taken from Barab and sharpened drove directly toward the Vithtak’s gut. It tore through the gold-threaded quilting as if it were nothing and sank deep into the body.

Blood spilled and spurted. So fast and brutal and bloody was the violence that Ashes barely took a single breath during its duration. The Vithtak officer was living when Ashes inhaled and dead by the time she exhaled.

A shout rose from the front line. Three Vithtak soldiers remained on their feet. The one closest to Moss half turned and looked over his shoulder. A sling dropped from his hand as he went for his polearm.

Charak and Meleri and Daness swarmed past Moss. Before the soldier could close his fingers around his weapon, Daness knocked it aside and pinned him, just as she had the officer. Two blades descended in an unnervingly efficient synchronicity. The man went down as quickly as had the officer.

“They’re done.” Arrold spoke with his usual matter-of-fact calm. “Only two remain. They’re severely outnumbered.”

“Maybe we can help the prisoner, at least.”

Rustling sounds followed Kestrel’s declaration. Ashes sensed she and Arrold moving away.

Daness let the second Vithtak they’d killed fall to the ground. The two others hesitated. One backed a step away, leaving his fellow exposed.

The Meres-folk lashed out immediately with spears. A third Vithtak fell.

Ashes turned her head to see what progress Arrold and Kestrel had made.

A splash, big and sloppy, came from in front of her.

“No!” Moss’s voice rang out. “Stop him!”

More splashing. Ashes faced forward again.

In front of her, the reeds parted. A tall figure with a deep burgundy cowled cloak loomed over her. Surprise twisted his terrified expression as he stared down at Ashes.

Ashes pressed the soles of her feet against the mud.

Stand up. You have to move.

The soldier lifted his sword—and then hesitated. Something like hope burned across his face. Instead of stabbing, he grabbed at her with his free hand.

“No!”

No.

The bitter blackness inside Ashes rose up in unison with Moss’s agonized shout. Darkness filled Ashes’s head, but it seemed to carve sharper, brighter edges along everything in her vision. Strength thrummed through her veins. Alien symbols flickered and vanished.

Ashes blocked the Vithtak’s lunge, grabbed instead onto his arm, and shoved as hard as she could. Where her fingers touched, black smoke rose from his flesh. He gasped in pain.

Another figure was beside Ashes, suddenly, all blonde hair and fury. Metal glinted as Kestrel slashed at the Vithtak with her key. It sliced across his arm, drawing blood as he stumbled away from them.

The air in front of Ashes whistled. Black-feathered fletching sprouted over the falling soldier’s shoulder as two arrows took him in the neck and back.

He fell at Ashes’s feet. The water was barely deep enough to cover his entire body.

Ashes thought she would start to shake, soon. Fear would overtake her when she realized how very close she had come to dying on the point of a Vithtak sword.

For the moment, though, with a dry taste of herbs in her mouth and a wreathing of shadow at the edges of her vision, she merely felt powerful.

I did something. I hurt him.