The Faelen convoy was almost below them, but once they passed, it would be too late and their numbers would count for nothing.

“Where’s Mercer, damn him,” Riot muttered, peering through the battered telescope.

“Funny, he seemed dead happy with your plan, Sarge.” Ruddle squinted down at the ravine and expertly spat a lump of the chewed yellow weed onto the floor.

Riot cursed Mercer and all the other stuck-up, aristocratic, pompous bastards that called themselves officers. Mercer had supported him in front of Colonel Williams and now abandoned him so that he would have to go back empty-handed, looking like a fool.

Riot turned to the men behind him. “Mercer’s not coming, so it’s us against fifty long ears; what do you say?”

Their grins shone out through their grubby faces. Forty men living and fighting dirty; their uniforms ripped and tattered, but their blades sharp.

The regiments were the place where bad men put worse lives behind them. A fresh start that stank like unwashed bodies and blood, but still better than the gutters that most of them had come from.

Nathaniel Riot joined up at sixteen, so hungry he could have rattled a stick along his ribs. The Duke of Fallow had paid him a silver gilder just for pulling on the uniform and promised him riches and spoils to be won. There would be plunder, they’d said, enough loot to make rich men of them all. Plunder, just like whatever was in the gilded wagon that rumbled along in the ravine below.

“To the last man,” Ruddle said with a sly grin.

There were a few chuckles as some of the men repeated in mock solemnity, while others murmured it like a prayer.

“We want the wagon,” Riot continued. “So if they want to run, let them run all the way back to the echo for all I care. We don’t have enough to feed prisoners.”

He drew his sword and stood on the edge of the ravine. Gods, it was further down than he had thought. At twenty, he would have flung himself down without thinking, but at thirty-six, his thoughts went to his aching knees, the twinge in his back that had been bothering him lately, and his sore feet that had marched all day on broken shoes.

Still, forty men waited behind him, and he faced the only choice that war ever gave anyone: die here or die somewhere else. Riot silently apologized to his aching body and jumped, skidding down the rocky slope, his wordless cry mingling with that of the men that followed him.

Shouts of alarm rose up from the Faelen guards, and they thrust out their long-fingered hands, the dark red glow sprouting from their palms.

“Charge!” Riot bellowed, his feet pounding on the rocky ground as he counted down the twenty long seconds in his head.

A hundred yards to cover in twenty seconds. Was he still fast enough? As the years went by, each desperate charge seemed much more desperate than the one before. At thirty yards out, the closest Faelen had fully formed the three inch barbed dart of burning red light. The long ears pulled back as he grinned, aiming directly at Riot's chest.

The creeping terror that he wasn’t going to make it crawled up Riot's spine like a poisonous spider, and the fear escaped his mouth in a guttural snarl as he pumped his legs harder.

The Faelen released the dart, and it shrieked like a banshee as it split the air, too fast for the eye to track, leaving a burning red trail in Riot's vision. Somehow his luck held and the dart flew wide, the burning heat passing close to his face.

Riot closed the final few yards, his sword raised high and fell on the Faelen with the desperate savagery that comes from being a hair's breadth from death. His sword slashed across face and body, dashing the yellow uniform with a spattered line of blood.

The air around him filled with the shrieking of more Faelen darts, but they were formed by panicked hands and were either too weak or too inaccurate, and the forty men of the company stormed into the Faelen, setting to work with their swords and spears.

The battle was over as fast as it had begun. Some of the Faelen cast their weapons to the ground and raised their hands in surrender, but at least a dozen of them ran after their captain, who put the spurs to his horse, pounding back down the ravine.

“Let them go; strip the wagon; it's what we came for!” Riot called to the handful of men who had given chase.

There was no threat. By the time the Faelen brought reinforcements, Riot and the men would be halfway back to the city with their prize.

The wagon had been abandoned a hundred yards away and men surged toward it, crowing their victory, swarming over and ripping off the cover. There were chests, hopefully stuffed with valuable goods, sacks of clothing, food, and barrels of what he hoped was ale but was probably the sweet, sickly Faelen wine.

Ruddle emerged, a long embroidered Faelen coat dwarfing his skinny frame. “Look at me, I’m a bleedin’ high Faelen!” He cackled and gave a little jig, kicking his heels.

Riot sheathed his sword and grasped his right hand to stop it from trembling. “I’m still alive,” he muttered.

The thrill of victory seemed to fade faster when you were in charge. He could see why officers were mostly grim-faced at the end of a fight: the men got the victory, but the officers had to settle the butcher's bill.

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

Two men in the blue uniforms of the regiment had gone down to join the Father in the abyss, their friends already gathered around them, dividing up their belongings. Stokes, a lighthearted jester for the most part, had fallen to the thrust of a sword and still wore a confused look on his face, as if he hadn't quite understood the joke. A Faelen dart had killed Argus, burning through uniform, flesh, and bone.

I should be used to the stench of it by now, Riot thought, but it stung his nose all the same.

Five Faelen had gone to whatever afterlife or hell awaited them, and another one with a grievous wound to the abdomen wouldn’t last the day. There were also eight prisoners sitting forlornly, trying their best to melt into the dusty floor. He’d been there too, only a few times, but he remembered the shame and the silent prayers that his captors would treat them honorably.

The shouts of triumph from the wagon were silenced by the blaring of a Faelen cavalry trumpet and the rumble of horses hooves on the hard ground.

“Back! Back!” Riot yelled, his blood turning to ice in his veins. Damn Mercer; without him and his horsemen, they were no match for cavalry.

Riot scrambled up the hill, slipping and sliding and cutting his hands on the loose stones, cursing Mercer aloud.

Behind him, the company scattered, each of them running for their lives, desperate to regain the safety of the ridge and Riot hauled himself up and flopped down, his chest heaving as he gulped in the cold air.

“Sarge, they’re ours!” Ruddle shouted.

The cavalry that thundered down the ravine wore the dark blue uniforms of the regiment and Captain Jack Mercer led them. The young man sat tall in the saddle, the blue plumage of his helmet trailing gently in the wind. His officers shouted and jeered at the dirty men on the ridge as they surrounded the wagon, and one of them hopped onto the wooden bench and slapped the reins.

“Bastards!” a man close to Riot yelled, leveling a crossbow.

Riot took two strides, yanked the crossbow out of his hands, and fired the bolt into the dirt next to his foot. “You send a bolt down there; I’ll hang you from the nearest tree,” he snarled. At a little over six feet and broad-shouldered, Riot towered over the man, who shrank back from him.

“They’re leaving,” Ruddle reported.

Mercer gave them a genteel wave and put a Faelen cavalry horn to his lips, the sound bouncing off of the ravine walls before he and the other dozen riders set off, the precious wagon bouncing along behind him.

Riot gripped the crossbow, wishing it were still loaded. Mercer had tricked him and he would return with nothing to show for four days of careful patrolling.

“Rider!” the sentry announced.

From the other direction, the Faelen captain, who had escaped their ambush, walked his horse slowly toward them, his white gloved hands raised high. Riot gave instructions for five shallow graves to be dug and slid down to meet him.

The Faelen swept off his plumed helmet and bowed from the saddle, the dozen or so gold rings in his long ears clinking together lightly. Sweat seeped out from under his thick, gray wig making rivulets through the white powder on his face.

Once, when Riot had been recovering from a wound, he’d been put on guard duty in the Duke’s palace in Fallow Neck. The walls had been covered with dusty old portraits of men and women with ridiculous ruffs around their necks, towering wigs, or painted faces. That’s just what the Faelen looked like—a people from another age of the world.

“Pray where might your officer be presently located?” Faelen spoke in clipped tones, his accent formal and stiff.

“You can speak to me,” Riot said.

The Faelen looked doubtful for a second, but seeing no other choice, he continued. “I am Captain Alar-dal of the Covenant forces. Whom do I have the… honor of addressing?”

“Sergeant Riot, Duke of Fallow Regiment.”

“A sergeant. It is no wonder you fought so dishonorably.”

Riot blinked in disbelief. “It wouldn’t be a very good ambush if I told you we were coming, would it?”

Alar-dal gave a labored sigh and mopped his brow with a lace handkerchief. “You will allow me to recover my dead and wounded.”

Riot ground his teeth. It didn’t matter what army you fought for; all officers were the same. It was the way they gave orders with the expectation that they would be obeyed. “You can come back when we’re gone. If I see a single set of pointy ears; I’ll have my men shoot.”

“And the prisoners?”

Prisoners had to be fed, watered, and dragged around. But the stuck-up-his-own-arse Faelen officer annoyed him.

“Mine.”

Alar-dal's lips pulled into a thin line of displeasure. He pulled out a curved cavalry horn and tossed it to Riot. It was a fine horn with the engraving of a salmon under a bridge, the symbol of the house of young Captain Mercer, who had just stolen Riot's wagon.

“You were fooled by your own officer,” Alar-tal drawled, looking down his hooked nose with a faint smile. “He waited in the pass and offered to trade his own horn for mine. I believe that he does not like you, sergeant.”

Riot fought the urge to pull the Faelen out of the saddle and give him a beating. But you just couldn’t do that to officers, not even the enemy. Kill them in battle, and you’d be rewarded; you could even loot the body. But if he so much as touched him now, it would be Riot who got the noose.

“You are a foreigner, an Erudoran; perhaps this is why he does not respect you. What do they call you? ‘stone eyes’, yes?” The Faelen continued, glancing at Riot's light gray eyes and smiling. “Or perhaps he dislikes you because you do not know your place? We have the same problem in our own army: low-born upstarts who challenge their betters.”

The comment was so true, it stung. Though Riot had managed to lead the company for the last three weeks, that was only because Lieutenant Clarke had died from fever during the retreat. Soon enough, they would find a replacement, sooner now after the humiliation of today. Two dead, and nothing to show for it.

“You may be interested to know the wagon belonged to Myam-tal.”

“Myam-what?”

The officer smiled indulgently. “Myam-tal is a High Faelen, second in command to the Covenant General, Bimil-pal.”

Riots mood began to improve slightly at the thought of a High Faelen starting a crusade of vengeance against Jack Mercer. Long-ears were famous for their obsession with revenge, not surprising if you believed the stories of betrayal that led to them being locked away for a thousand years.

"Well, you can tell him that Captain Mercer of the Duke of Fallow's regiment stole his wagon.”

"Oh, I don’t think so, Sergeant. You killed my men and made prisoners of the others. I shall be sure to inform Myam-tal of your name in my report. You may keep the horn.”