“Where are they?” Harin asked.

“The last dispatches said they’d been waylaid by cavalry from the Horde. Iron Guard,”

Harin pounded his fist on the table. “The Iron Guard are here! Do they think me stupid?”

None in the room spoke, the soft sputtering of torches the only companion in the silence. A light breeze came through the open windows of the room on the second floor.

“I have one of theirs in the room over there,” Harin pointed to the room that Atlan had been imprisoned in. “And they will come for him. They only believe in honor, and a debit is owed,”

“Shall we let him go, let him free to be rid of this fight?” Falamar asked.

The room of Legates all murmured their agreement.

General Marius stepped forward. “They will not stop at him. We have offended their people by invasion of their lands. It will never end, as long as their memory provides,”

“We are here on The Council’s business, not our own!” Brago protested.

Harin silenced Brago with a wave of his hand. “They care not for semantics. Their honor demands that they fight us, The Council means nothing to them, less than nothing,”

“We make a dash to escape this place,” a young Legate spoke up.

Geral piped in for Harin. “There is nowhere to escape to. The Horde own this place as if it were their own homes, their own lands. They are everywhere and anywhere in the west. The Iron Guard roves this place at all times. They do not stop, not to sleep or eat. They stay in the saddle even to piss. No, there is no escape here,”

“So what do we do?” Brago asked.

Harin cleared his throat. “We fight,”

—--

Harin danced out of the way at a log tumbled to the ground from above, embedding itself in the sand in front of him.

“Watch out below!”

“Soldier! I’ll have your neck, you almost killed the king!” Brago shouted up the wall.

Harin laughed, his heart was pumping faster than it had been in some time. “Brago, it’s nothing, let them finish the wall,”

Brago growled, looking up the wall with some disgust. He looked back to Harin and nodded.

“You shouldn’t be out in the sun, you should be inside, out of the heat,” Brago said.

“What reports do we have?” Harin clasped his hands behind his back, continuing his walk of the perimeter.

Brago shook his head, falling in stride with Harin. “The men from the west, north and south all say the same,”

“The Iron Guard?” Harin asked.

The men of the Praetorian and Fourth Legions were busy building up the defenses around the town they were in. Harin hadn’t chosen to share what the Horde called the town. Cursed or not, he needed them to believe in their defense. As long as it would take for reinforcements. If he left now, he’d risked running out of water. If he had enough water for his men and women, he risked a running defense, worse, a pincer, cutting his army in half and destroying both.

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“More than them now, there are hundreds of horsemen, tents all over, roaming patrols. It is as if they wish us to make a run for it. They taunt us with an open run to the east,”

“And with it, certain death,”

Harin and his command had debated this at length, but they all knew they could not outrun the horsemen. They had none of their own now.

“What bloody water are they surviving on?” Harin felt at his side for his own water skin. A constant reminder of how fragile life in the desert truly was.

“I know not sire,” Brago fell into a quiet walk beside him as they turned at the corner of the wall, left, and then straight down the line.

All along the wall men moved supplies up. Logs and boards scavenged from the town, arrows, axes, swords and shields.

“Make ready the defenses Brago, I want the wall’s secure with murder holes in them by the time the sun sets,”

“Aye sire, the eastern wall will have it’s gash filled in by the morning,”

“Zufier above, I forgot that it was not done. Tell the men to work with haste, the Horde have beasts that could leap that gap even still,”

Brago looked ahead where the wall was being worked on. “Aye sire, there are two hundred or more at it now. I’ll leave you to it, sire” Brag nodded back towards the interior of the town.

A shadow between the buildings, a silhouette framed up by light trickling down from it’s zenith between the stone buildings that had been released from the sand that had coated the walls for generations. Harin had his men live in each building, filling them up. They’d cool at night, giving the men a place to sleep at peace in lieu of the tents they’d lived in year round on the campaign.

Harin walked back inward.

“Sister, how long have you been following us,”

Anastasia pulled her scarf down. “I’m not following you, brother,”

Harin felt his cheeks growing hot, the comment unsettling him. He looked over this sister, her face had color in it, one that had not been on her skin for many years. She’d spent so long in her aviary, with her paper and secrets that she rarely was touched by the sun. “I’m sorry for dragging you out here sister,”

“Don’t you dare!” Anastasi warned.

It was Harin’s turn to be confused. “Do what?”

Anastasia whirled on Harin, pointing her finger in his face. “I came out here with you because I wanted to, not because you drug me out here. I am a Sunborn, not some fool from your court,”

Harin blew out a breath. “You are right sister, I am sorry, I should never have-,”

“You’re right! You never should have. You think me a simpleton like one of your soldiers, but without me you’d be lost out here,”

Harin felt the weight of the situation they were in on his shoulders. “They surround us, I do not know how long we will last out here sister. The Council’s legions are still too far away to help us,”

“Father will come,” Anastasia said.

Harin Feld the cold relief like a balm. “He’s sent word?”

“No, nothing of the sort,” Anastasia laughed.

“Because we need him, Harin. Our father will be here, and he will bring with him the horrible wrath of death,”

Harin shivered at the proclamation. He still wins’ sure that his father would be able to save them. He didn't know that his father knew where they were. His sisters expression was that of belief. He’d seen it on many faces before. She believed in their father as if he was a deity, not just a General, not just a solider.

“Take it easy on Brago, he take on more than a man should,” Harin smiled at his sister.

—--

Harin sat in the chair, alone in his new home in the cursed town. The prisoner form the Horde, Atlan had told him nothing of his people. True to his word. Harin knew he could push the man, but he felt no animus towards the horseman. They were just men, doing their jobs. He understood why the Horde would take offence to the invasion of their lands. He would.

A noise came from the next room, the opening of a door, the closing of it.

Harin stood, trying to shake the weariness from his mind. His body.

He walked towards the noise, towards the room where Atlan was held.

Nothing came from the stone room turned prison. The door stood, as it had for generations. Sturdy and thick wood from a bygone age.

Harin was about to turn when he heard it. The slap of flesh on flesh. H took another step towards the door.

Smack.

‘Ugg,”

“Tel me of your people, what’s your plan! I’ll kill you if you don’t answer,”

“Death is not the worst thing that can happen. This thing that will be given to me, death, it is a gift from the gods.”

Smack. Harin didn’t think, he pushed forward, throwing the door open with all his might.

Geral stood above Atlan, holding back his fist.

“Stop!” Harin shouted.

Geral and Atlan both looked at Harin, blood trickled down Atlan’s face.

“Harin, I need a moment with the prisoner, he has something he’d like to tell me,” Geral smiled.

Harin felt sick, his guts twisting. Geral smiled with the same smile that he’d used on Harin his whole life. Uncle Geral. The fun uncle. The uncle that had taught him to fight when his father had been on rare returns from campaign.

“Girl, enough,” Harin said, pointing to the door.

Geral shook his head. “I know you do not have the stomach for this, but let me see it done, boy,”

“Boy?”

Geral smirked now. “That’s right, I’ll be out shortly, close the door behind you,”

Harin closed his eyes for a moment, inhaling through his nose and then out. In, out, in, out. “Geral, if you touch that prisoner again, I’ll have you strung up. You were there when I gave the command. He is not to be touched,”

Geral’s smile faltered. “Sire, I know that’s what you said, but we need information, we are just sitting ducks here, waiting for the Horde to come for us, it’s just a matter of time,”

“And that justifies beating a prisoner?” Harin asked.

Geral sighed, an impatient thing, as if he was explaining to a child something that was simple for the tenth time. “We need to know what he knows. Any information he gives us helps. If he wont talk, I’ll make him talk. In the southern wars, me and your father learned from the tribes in Alesia. We found their prisoner holds. It made us sick, but it taught us what we were up against. Do you know what they did to our people?”

Harin didn’t shake his head. He knew the stories, he’d heard of them, read of them. The tribes of Alesia were ruthless. They tortured and killed in gruesome ways. Ways that make Landorian blanche.

“I’ve heard. I’ve read,”

Geral took a step towards Harin. “I was there. I could smell it, taste it in the air, I could hear the screaming,”

“And you think that is how we should treat Atlan?”

Geral laughed. “Of course you know his name, gods above Harin, he is the enemy!”

Harin took another step towards Geral, closing the distance between them.

“Leave this room, that’s an order Legate Geral,”

Geral’s eyes widened, his hand went down to the hilt of his sword.

“Draw that sword and you will die. I promise you that, uncle,” Harin said quietly, locking eyes with Geral.