Alize clenched her reins as the first soldier’s silhouette appeared on the opposite ridge.

Beneath her, Josoun brayed softly and flexed his haunches.

“Not yet,” Alize murmured.

Though the dawn stretched from the horizon, the forested valley still rested thick with shadow. Against the ripening sky, the solitary soldier halted his horse to observe the valley below him.

Alone, he would not warrant Alize’s attention, but she listened to the trees.

Her gaze remained locked on the ridge.

After a heartbeat, a second soldier emerged, then a third, then their tide surged until a group of roughly thirty men guided their horses down the ridge, trampling the brush underfoot. The men’s ochre cloth armor marked them as common soldiers. Their coarse black beards shook with the same wind that tossed the leaves and curled the tree branches.

Alize stiffened on her steed. Her chiton hung to the knees of her zigzag-stripped leggings and more resembled the soldiers’ armor than the silken robes of the provinces’ women. Willows, the Hrumi called the province women, for their plaint limbs and wavering posture. In contrast, Alize’s chiton left the muscles at her shoulders exposed. Like the soldiers, Alize bound a long cloth around her abdomen for stability during strenuous rides. Her black braids fell past her shoulders, but she kept them tucked under her felt cap. Only her raised cheekbones and soft jaw signaled her gender and, implicitly, her Hrumi identity.

The sunlight flashed as its rays topped the mountain ridge and cast a flare on the slope above Alize. Again her horse tensed, but this time Alize did not dare utter a sound.

Instead, she closed her eyes and stilled her breathing. Her mind cast a net, and she listened as she drew it back.

She waited for the cue from the trees. Their whispers had warned her of the soldiers’ approach and then of the consequences. Now Alize plotted her every move to prevent the bloodshed that promised to follow if the soldiers turned onto the valley road.

For the trees knew too that the Hrumi Western Clan had at last left the sweeping steppes for the shelter of the mountain forest. Alize imagined her sisters emerging from horizon, swift on their horses and braced forward, their paths ever certain. They would come as Alize had, sometimes with nothing beyond the sun and stars to mark their progress through the steppes.

The trees’ voices coalesced to a drumming pulse. Somewhere in the south, Alize’s Hrumi sisters approached, each footfall bringing them closer to this valley.

The time to act was now.

Alize pressed her heels to Josoun’s flanks.

Her horse launched forward into the dawn’s blaze on the mountain slope, rearing up on his hind legs.

Alize did not need the trees to confirm the soldiers had seen her. Their throaty shouts echoed out from the ridge and Alize imagined the white clouds of their breaths swirling as they spurred their horses forward.

Most soldiers knew Hrumi only from folklore, for the clans avoided the society that hunted them. The Hrumi Western clan members pitched their tents deep in the forests, high on the mountains, or adrift in the steppes. Seclusion provided a measure of safety. Too often, the Hrumi who encountered the princes’ servants did not live to tell the tale.

Doused in the sun’s brilliance, Josoun and Alize charged up their side of the mountain slope. Alize had planned the encounter here because another road ran through the neighboring valley. After the soldiers followed her there, she could disappear into the forest and the soldiers would have little incentive to retrace their steps. Their new path would not cross her clan’s.

A branch snapped beside Alize. An arrow shaft jutted from the ground.

Alize abruptly shifted Josoun’s path to take advantage of a thick patch of evergreens. The soldiers’ pursuit had come faster than she had expected, but the trees betrayed no undue alarm.

The steepest part of the slope was mired with exposed tree roots and loose soil, but Alize pressed Josoun harder. One of his hooves slipped and Alize tightened her legs around him. Josoun surged upwards, this time with solid footing.

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Then the world began to fracture.

Though it started modestly, but soon the pressure between Alize’s ears built to an intensity that made her grimace. Six times that summer she had felt the same sensation, which was six times more than she had ever felt anything like it in her life. And just as every other time, the ground soon began shuddering.

It was the seventh earthquake to strike in as many weeks.

The trees’ steady hum of encouragement died as the tremors rattled the stones beneath Josoun’s hooves.

“Nocturne,” Alize swore.

The past and the future comprise a single story, separated only by the breaths of the characters stranded in the middle. Alize knew her future as soon Josoun teetered, unbalanced. She shifted her legs to avoid getting crushed by his stumbling, but she already anticipated the stones that would cushion or crunch against her shoulder and hip. It was not the first time Alize had fallen from Josoun. She knew how she would land. Her impacted right side would ache for days.

If she lived that long.

The ground slammed into Alize. Through she sought to steady herself, the momentum from her fall tumbled her down the slope towards the soldiers. From the corner of her eye, she saw a flash of armor.

The trees roared in warning.

Alize scraped at the earth as she reached a breadth of level ground. Sweeping to her feet, she faced a soldier who stood only three paces away, his curved sword already brandished towards her.

The soldier could capture her.

He would take her to the Sargons.

Death would be preferable.

The soldier’s eyes flickered over her, his lips twisted. Alize could see dirt streaks on his face, small trophies of his savagery.

This is the time to strike first. Alize drew the dagger at her waist. All her training had prepared her for this moment, her iron blade forged to counter the larger but far thinner swords of province soldiers and Sargons. They had their own vulnerabilities. Men channeled their force into their weapons and wasted one arm shielding their large limbs and rigid stances. Alize could dart under their blows, slash her dagger, and thrust her punches with her free arm.

But as Alize drew her breath, the trees’ voices swelled, silent to all but her, before dropping their cacophony to a hush. Alize could not claim to understand all they sang to her, but she understood that. She had heard it enough times before.

A plea for patience.

Alize hesitated.

In the next instant she was surrounded. Five more soldiers dismounted their horses and drew their curved blades. Alize’s chances of survival had just plummeted. Her heart battered her chest, but she fought to keep her face controlled. Never surrender before you’ve lost. Yet even as she gripped her dagger, she could hear the trees humming an incongruous tone of comfort, despite everything that stood before her.

The closest soldier took a single step forward and all Alize’s instincts prepared to block the blow she anticipated. In the edges of her vision, the greenery of the forest seem to tinge crimson.

Three sharp whistles sounded from the slope below.

Alize’s eyes remained locked on her immediate opponent, but his blow never came. Instead, all six soldiers lowered their swords in unison. Watching Alize grimly, they shifted their stances from offensive to defensive. After another short whistle, they parted to make way for a man wearing a helmet ornamented with cobalt feathers.

The sunrise blazed behind him, but Alize could see his age by the sagging of his skin and his hard breathing. His deep golden skin suggested eastern heritage, but his armor bore no insignia save for the stylized horse on his shield.

Alize gritted her teeth. A commander might torment his victim before presenting her to the Sargons.

Yet the trees did not falter in their message. Patience.

Alize watched the commander, not daring even to swallow.

His eyes flickered over her. Then he scrunched up his face like he had smelled sour meat. Shaking his head, he gestured to his soldiers.

“Leave her,” he commanded, “we’ve worse trouble to attend to.”

Alize blinked. She remained as she stood, guard up, shoulders curled, heart crashing in her chest. But the soldiers began sheathing their swords and whistling for their horses.

In her mind, Alize probed the commander’s words.

What trouble have I caused them?

But the trees rallied for her attention once more, now surging around her with a different message.

Underfoot a rumble began, a new force that was neither an earthquake nor a small group of soldiers pursuing Hrumi prey. This was the type of steady rumble that announced hundreds of horses, tightly controlled and obedient to the slightest pressure or instruction from their riders. Riders who, judging from the trees, were just beginning to notice the commotion on the side of the ridge.

The soldiers turned in confusion to the south.

The Western Hrumi Clan had arrived.