The horse was deaf, or stupid, because it strayed off the track again and bent its head to graze. Riot’s arse hurt and his thighs burned as much as his head and gut from the two blows Mercer managed to land on him.

Riley, the portly arcanist, insisted that they ride together at the head of the marching men, and he pestered Riot for information about the regiments and the old Duke of Fallow, then answered the questions himself. He was an armchair expert in warfare and instructed Riot in at least a dozen ways in which he would get himself and at least a regiment of men obliterated on a battlefield.

Riot gazed around at the few miserable skeletons of trees that haunted the landscape. He was no farmer, but even to his untrained eye, the land was nothing but hard rock and scraps of dirt. Even so, some poor fool had tried to work it; a farmhouse sat on a small rise a few hundred meters away, almost lost in the weeds as nature reclaimed it. The roof had half collapsed, and the four stone walls leaned grimly against one another like tired old men.

“The men need a rest, Sir,” Riot called to Riley.

“I shall scout ahead, Sergeant, and survey the land. Carry on,” the arcanist declared.

Riot gratefully slid off of the horse, and the animal gave him a reproachful look before bumping into him as it wandered off. Let it wander and be eaten by a pack of wolves, he thought. Horses were for prancing around on the edge of a battle while the bloody work was done in the ranks, pushing and shoving and stabbing and clawing your way through a melee, slipping on the bloody ground to drive forward.

Gods, his legs were sore. He stamped around, trying to drive some blood back into them. The men fell out of line, squatting by the side of the road. Some smoked the acrid Faelen weed, while others chatted quietly under the iron gray sky, but all had hands rested on their crossbows, and they watched the ridges, the hills and the flat, cold land around them.

They’d been a filthy rabble of petty thieves and drunks, then Lieutenant Clark had caught fever and died during the retreat, and there hadn’t been a replacement, so they’d just followed Riot. He knew that officers were born, not made, and that the job was better suited to those of good breeding. But it’d been easy, really. His reputation had helped, he’d never much liked being called the last man, but it had its uses.

A weak winter sun failed to burn through the cloud. The snow was almost all melted, with only patches remaining on the brown grass. What was it—three weeks, perhaps four till spring? Then the fighting would start again, the new officer would arrive, and it would all be over. Back to the muck, back to taking bad orders and trying to stop them all from getting killed instead of just giving good orders in the first place.

“Good spot for some deserters up there, I’d wager,” Ruddle said, squinting up at the farmhouse.

“They’re not deserters, Rud; they’re escaped leybound, and we’re not doing the Wikkan’s job for them. If they’re up there and they stay out of our way, then bloody good luck to them.”

Ruddle thumbed the Faelen weed into his pipe and gripped it in his yellowing teeth, leaning back with the air of a professional lounger and striking a match. “I saw a couple of them Leybound, you know, at the battle o’Fallow. They put them with the Champions battalion out of the Vale, right there on the end of the line. Made a heck of a noise with their carrying on, arcane whatd’youmacallits cracking like a dozen whips.”

“I saw them in the prison up in the city. Poor bastards,” Riot replied.

They had said that the leybound would turn the tide of the war, but there had barely been a ripple. The bodies of those who volunteered had piled up, and fear spread through the regiments until the word leybound was uttered like a curse, which it was for most. There were rumors that the Erudorans could keep two in three alive, but he knew better than to believe a rumor from the home of his ancestors.

“You ever think about volunteering to be bound, Sarge?”

“I got enough scars, Rud; more’n you, I’d wager.”

Half a mile away, Riley stood in the stirrups atop the small hill he had decided to conquer and gazed north with his hand shielding his eyes, like he was posing for someone to capture the moment in a painting.

“A right bloody dreamer, that one, eh? Those arcanists like to play at soldiering, but I still ain’t never seen one pull on a uniform,” Ruddle said with a shake of his head. A stream of thick yellow smoke escaped from his lips and was plucked away by the breeze.

They were the same old complaints Riot had heard a thousand times. Why, with their power, don’t the arcanists join the fight? Better to ask, why would they? War doesn’t touch the great conservatories of the arcanum, with their tall towers and their power. The great leave the fighting to the squabbling nobles and the rank and file.

The wikkan were a little better; at least they got their hands dirty, though more often these days they dealt with mutiny from their own side. The retreat had been hard, the winter promised to be harsh, and the morale of the rank and file was in the gutter.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

Riot held his thumb up to the horizon. With the thick gray clouds, it was hard to tell where the sun was, but by his reckoning, they had about three hours of light left. This close to the Faelen lines, there would be patrols and foraging parties. He shouldn’t have beaten Mercer so badly; perhaps he even should have lost, then at least they wouldn’t be out here on their own.

“Perks, take that spiteful nag and go fetch his Lordship,” Riot ordered.

The young boy eagerly took the reins of the stubborn mare and wheeled the horse around, guiding it at a skillful trot over the uneven ground. On the hill, Arcanist Riley waved his hands in the air, his shouted words too far away to carry and the company laughed and called back to him, giving cheerful, mocking waves of their own.

Perks gained the hill and a shrieking whistle pierced the quiet afternoon, causing the boy's horse to rear up, kicking the air with its front legs as Perks hung on grimly to its neck. Next to him, Riley put his heels to his own horse, and the animal tossed its head before bolting down the hillside toward them.

“Company back, up the hill!” Riot bellowed.

The men scattered like dry leaves in a stiff breeze, struggling up the hill toward the wreckage of the farmhouse.

Risking a glance behind him, Riot saw a handful of Faelen riders crest the hill, yellow plumes trailing from their tall helms. There would be more of them, and when they were lined up boot to boot, they would charge.

White foam flecked at the mouth of Riley's horse as he drove it on, and the animal began gently curving away from them towards the road. Either Riley was a coward or he couldn’t stop the horse, perhaps both, but he was out of danger, unlike Perks.

“He’s going to lose that damn horse,” Ruddle said as he puffed along on his bandy legs.

“Just get up the hill, you old bastard, and put up some cover,” Riot replied, pushing the older man ahead of him up the slope.

Perks drove the horse toward them, and Riot willed it on, but the animal's flank was covered in blood, and it caught a hoof in the uneven ground and lurched forward, throwing the boy off. He tumbled over and over and finally lay still fifty yards from Riot as the lead rider placed a horn to his lips and blew a shattering charge.

A frustrated growl escaped Riot’s throat, and he ran back down the slope. See him now, the last man, running the wrong way, about to be burned through by a Faelen dart or flensed by a sabre.

Half a mile on uneven ground gave him about two and a half minutes before they would bear down on him. Rich officers, all of them with fine uniforms, strong horses, and well-forged, sharp sabres. Some of them, even now, would be forming the dark red darts in their palms. If he looked up now, he might lose his nerve, so he kept his head down and sucked in air desperately to his aching lungs as he ran to the boy.

Perks gibbered senselessly, eyes wide, his shaking hands hovering over the white shard of broken bone that stuck out through his ripped trousers. He would lose the leg, nothing to be done about that.

The hateful horse thrashed on the ground, and Riot silenced it with a downward stroke of his sword before ripping off his sword belt and wrapping it around the boy's leg, pulling it tight just below the knee.

“Deep breath, lad.” Riot raised his sword, wishing he’d taken the time to sharpen it properly.

“Sarge, no, just leave me; I’ll be a prisoner. Not my leg Sarge,” Perks gibbered, pushing Riot back with bloodied hands.

No time for bedside manner. It was a textbook blow, with Riot’s fist catching the boy on the chin so that he flopped limp onto the cold ground.

Riot raised the blade. Just ignore the thundering hooves and focus on the job at hand. You’re no surgeon, but you’ve butchered enough animals, right? Below the knee, leave as much bone as you can and a bit of skin to flap over.

The blade hammered down, cracking bone and carving flesh, and Riot grabbed the unconscious boy by the scruff of the neck and hauled him up the hill.

Shouts came from the farmhouse—cries of alarm or encouragement—he couldn’t tell. Perks didn’t weigh much, less now anyway, but Riot’s own legs felt like they were filled with lead. The cavalry trumpet blared again, and the shrill whistling split the air as a Faelen dart thunked into the brown grass next to him, hissing and burning.

More whistling came from behind, but doing anything from horseback was hard, and the poorly aimed red darts hit the ground around him or whistled through the air over his head.

Thirty feet to go, that was all. Crossbows twanged, and a red mist of exhaustion bled into Riot’s vision. His own ragged breaths were loud in his ears, like waves crashing in an ocean cavern. Twenty feet, and he would be safe. His numb fingers began to slip on the boy's collar, and the thunder of horse hooves on the hard ground brought a wordless scream to his lips. Only ten feet more, he could see Ruddle’s face, a mask of horror at the open door. The thunder of hooves was all around, and Ruddle’s warning cry cut through the chaos.

Throwing the boy to one side, Riot dove the other way and slammed into the chest of a horse, his teeth almost biting clean through his tongue, filling his mouth with blood. He flung out a hand in desperation, and his scrabbling fingers hooked the bridle around the animal's mouth. He felt its hot, wet snorts and the hard edges of its teeth as it snapped at him. Well-trained war horses could bite the face off of men in battle, and a panic welled up inside Riot as he held the beast’s head at arm’s length.

Something hit his skull so hard his knees buckled, and as he sagged down, he tugged viciously at the horse's mouth, pulling the beast around.

“Let go, you wretch, you dog!” The Faelen rider cried, his accent clipped and ancient.

Blood trickled into Riot’s left eye, and through the red veil, he saw long ears, a powdered face twisted into a snarl, and a raised sabre. He surged to one side again, tugged the horse with him, and almost threw the Faelen from the saddle.

Kicking horse hooves threatened to break his legs, and his head was pounding, but he was too terrified to let go of his grip.

Above him, the Faelen raised his sabre for a killing bow, but a crossbow twanged, and there was a wet thunk and the Faelen slipped from the saddle and landed in a heap at his feet, the black feathers of a steel crossbow bolt poking out of his left eye.