“First came the Bluejacks to eat all my cattle.

Next came the Lobsters to steal my ploughorse.

Next came the Freecorps to make my children fight and my wife whore.

Next came the Legions to burn my home.

I have naught but my life, and now the Arluks come to take even that.”

-Valadian Peasant's Lament

Hans Draiger, 4 October 1582 AAA. Kasilisk.

“On my mark, heave!” Eidre yelled. Hans grunted, putting his back into pushing the coach clear. If he had to get the bloody thing out of the mud one more time, heads would roll. The coach began to move clear of the mud, the horses grunting and snorting, picking up momentum.

They’d been on the road for a day now, making good time on the roads outside Carfane, but the meltwater had turned the uncobbled roads of the passes to slush even as the lowland mud was drying out.

Aled stood apart from the mud, watching them, hands on his hip. “You’re a witch. Couldn’t you just tilt or whatever you call it to roll it out.”

Hans ignored it. He’d gotten quite good at using his third eye and tendrils, but his aunt Casana Draiger had died before she could teach him anything more sophisticated and he’d never had the need for anything else. Even knowing how to mindbreak made him the angel of death as far as the fauna of Carfane were concerned.

“You’re the one who wanted to bring the coach. Why don’t you help?” Uln said, wiping mud off her gaiters.

He shrugged. “You all seemed to have it under control.”

“We’d be making better time if we didn’t have to bring it.” Hans said.

“No. We’d be making worse time, because you two can’t ride.” Aled answered.

“We can ride. Just badly.” Uln said.

“You know why those wyverns are lurking about?” one of the servants asked.

“Heard Hans has them as a familiar.” Mellyn, a short woman with a penchant for superstition, said.

“Witches don’t use animals as familiars. Just demons.” The first servant said.

Hans decided it was best to not point out those were likely Glaive’s war skein, shadowing them to Foothold.

“Speaking of things following us, who are they?” Aled asked, pointing at a cluster of multicoloured blotches moving down a hill further back on the road.

Eidre shrugged. “Maybe they’re reporting the result of the resolution. Maybe they’re leaving for the same reasons as us.”. She sounded doubtful.

“Why, though?” Aled had asked when Eidre had pointed them out. “The actual Diet hasn’t started. You’re only leaving because of the wyverns.”

Aled was still bitter over leaving Kasilisk early. Hans rather got the impression he was one of those people who actually liked cities.

“Lot of riders to be messengers.” Uln said.

*

They were high up in the pass when the riders began to catch up to them.

There were seven of them, too far to tell their sex. As was sensible in the passes, they were armed to the teeth. Some of them wore padded jacks or buff coats, and light glinted off something that must have been a breastplate.

They were coming at a fast trot, steadily gaining on them, less than a hundred yards away.

“Get the rifles” Uln said, swearing as the coach jarred again. He slithered forwards over the luggage piled onto the coaches top. He found their rifles and the baldrics with their powder horns and shot, passing one back to Uln and taking the other for himself, removing the muzzle tampon and quickly priming it. They’d kept them loaded going into the passes, in case of predators or highwaymen.

Or assassins.

“Those riders.” he said to the coachman. “They’re catching up to us, fast. They don’t look friendly.”

“Highwaymen?” the coachman suggested, patting something under his coat.

Hans heard Uln yelling something at the splasher girl hanging on for dear life on the coach’s side, and Eidre yelling something back. One of the mounted servants reined in, calling about what was the commotion and if she should greet the riders.

The footservant sitting next to the coachmen, a burly Halidon’s Hill veteran by the name of Hollin, leaned over the side of the seat, checking behind them.

“They’re gaining. They’re at a fast trot now.”

“That one looks like the devil himself” Mellyn said, pointing at one of them, perched behind the coachmen. The man was in a bright green coat with red breeches, utterly bald. He had a hornbow in his hands.

The Arluk from Halidon’s hill. Traharn’s men are coming for us.

He blinked his eyes shut. Fifty yards. Something was being let loose from a pentagonal cage of straight lines by a witch’s tendril, starkly apparent in the usually liquid aether.

“They’ve got a demon. They’ve got a demon!” Hans yelled, panic breaking into his voice.

Oh, god, oh god…

“At the gallop. Now!” The coachmen yelled, his whip snapping. “Uln! The one in the middle-“ he called out, hoping she could get lucky and kill the witch.

It wasn’t fast enough. Two of the horses went down, screaming and thrashing, entangling the rest of the horses and bringing the coach to an immediate halt that nearly threw him from the wagon. His third eye saw a great terrible worm wrapped around their souls, tearing, constricting. He hit at it with a tendril, battering at it, managing to beat it back, off the horses, but it was too late; the coach was already hopelessly fouled.

A moment later the horsemen were on them, unleashing a hail of bullets, thundering past the coach, blowing out splinters of wood. He sighted one and fired; so did the coachman and Hollin. Something heavy slammed into his back, jerking his face away from an arrow, grey feathered, that thudded into a baggage case an inch from his face.

One of the mounted servants riding out ahead, Llewn, actually drew his rapier and charged them as they wheeled back and drew hand weapons, rapiers and broadswords and a long, vicious walking axe for the bald Arluk. Llewn’s courage was for nothing; he fell from his horse under a rain of cuts. . It brought Hans a moment to get his bearings, though, and he took it.

Hans realized one of the ambusher’s horses, too, was riderless, and that only five were left. Another of the servants took off at a gallop; the third seemed paralysed by panic. He couldn’t see what happened to the fourth. He took it all in in an instant.

He began to reload, not bothering with patching the ball or using fine priming powder. He scrambled up to the top of the coach, trying to see if Uln had been hit. His hand slipped in something. He realized it was Hollin’s brains; his body had fallen from the wagon, lying next to a horseman struggling to extricate himself from under his dying horse.

Uln had blood running over her brow. She was furiously loading her rifle, slamming the butt down, settling the ball. Hans did the same. No time for careful loading now, as the horsemen came charging back in.

He waited till they were within twenty yards then took out the soul of the nearest horse. The witch batted his tendril aside before it could reach it. He aimed at the witch, a wiry woman in a grey doublet, but something lanced into him and his shot went wide; the witches tendril. He screamed in pain, but somehow found the will to force her tendril out of his soul, barely holding it off. “The woman with the grey doublet! She’s a-“

He saw Uln beginning to aim in the corner of his eye, and threw himself flat as the shot rang out despite the agony of his soul coming under attack. The tendril went slack, like a cut tripline, as the witch spilled out of the saddle. Uln scrambled forwards, drawing her falchion in one hand. He saw a man on foot unhorsed in the first charge drawing a bead on her with a pistol and hit his soul with a tendril. His shot missed, and Uln was on him a moment later, leaping down from the coach, her falchion flashing, beating aside his rapier point, landing a flurry of crushing blows to his jack and breastplate that left him reeling then taking off one leg and crippling the other with a single low cut.

She had no training or experience in swordfighting, formal or otherwise; but she had the instincts and skills from a lifetime of bringing down things far stronger and faster than humans with tools far cruder than her Wolzuk falchion.

The coachman was shouting something at him; muscling past him, an arrow sticking out of his shoulder. The horsemen were to their right now, shooting with pistols, the balls whipping overhead or kicking up splinters.

“Get under the coach!” Hans yelled, slithering down the side of the coach, splashing into the mud. Horsemen came at her, two of them, circling around from the right to the left. He waved to Uln. “Get under the-“

She sidestepped the first one, off to his vulnerable left, and chopped his horses leg out from under him. The second horse came straight at her; she went down. He couldn’t tell if she’d flung herself aside or been knocked down.

No, no, no…

He wasn’t going to let her end up like the Woose at Black Creek, like the wyverns at Highhome. He couldn’t.

The horseman came at him next, broadsword flashing. He flinched back, nearly falling over; felt the weapon slam into him. There was no pain, no blood. He caught his balance and drew his knife, half running, half staggering towards the man-no, a woman-rising from the horse Uln had brought down. She was stepping around her crippled horse, holding her broadsword awkwardly in her left hand.

He saw Uln, too, on her feet, unsteady, fumbling for her falchion. He slammed a tendril through the assassin’s soul, and she went to her knees; then grabbed her by the hair and started stabbing, ignoring her flailing attempts to win free, over and over again till they both fell to the ground. Uln stood over him then, yelling, waving her falchion; he saw the last three horsemen crashing towards him. He disentangled himself, grabbing the dead woman’s sword in one hand and his hunting knife in the other.

It he was going to die, at least he was going to die at Uln’s side.

“Fuck you!” Uln yelled besides him as the horsemen came rushing in, pistols empty with no time to reload, edged weapons drawn.

The horsemen paced up to a gallop, rushing straight in, and he forced himself to treat them as charging griffons, reaching out with a tendril to strike down the Arluk’s horse.

There was no need. Fire flashed; a stream of burning vitriol from a wyvern’s mouth in a low fast attack pass. Horses and riders alike went down as a flung dive lance impaled a rider. The Arluk flung himself from his panicked horse, hit the ground, rolled, struggling to put out his burning coat. He had a dive lance sticking into his back. The third rider was on fire, riding for his life when something on his body exploded and he went down. Another lance slammed into the ground, buzzing; and he saw Glaive’s war skein starting gain height to loop back in for another pass.

The Arluk was getting up, ripping out the dive lance and hefting it like a spear, his coat still smouldering.

“Take him alive” Hans said, edging in on him, hitting him with a tendril that seemed to slough off his soul. He wished he had his half-pike.

There was no need for that, though, or for the wyverns to come in for a second pass. Eidre blew apart his knee as she strode up to him, her riding dress bloodied, bits of wood stuck in her blonde hair, double barrelled fowler shouldered. Aled staggered after her, an arrow through his shoulder, blood running down his leg, awkwardly holding his rapier. He looked pale.

“Who sent you!”

Hans ran up to her.

The bald man’s head was covered in sweat with faint tattoos across his scalp and thick muscle shifting under the fat of his neck as he turned to look up at Eidre. Blood was leaking through his scorched coat, and Hans could see shining mail where the lance had torn through. A quiverfull of the grey feathered arrows hung from his hip, some of the arrows spilt out.

“Who sent you! You shot my son! You murdered my servants!”

“You think I’d desert my brothers in arms? You think I’d talk?”

Eidre shut her eyes, briefly.

The wyverns landed behind them, three of them, another two staying up for air cover.

“If you don’t talk, I’ll kill you.”

“You crippled me. Would be a mercy.”

“You killed the wyverns?” Hans said, pointing to the arrows.

He spat, grimacing in pain.

“Fucking guess.”

“Talk and I’ll make it quick.” Eidre said. “You shot my son. He was fourteen, you cunt.”

Glaive stepped up to them, her back scales painted red, war-spurs glinting on her legs.

“Let him bleed out. Or burn him. No guns.” she croaked.

“Me or the wyverns. Talk.” Eidre growled.

“Always wanted to die back on the steppes, but up here is good enough. Now hurry up and kill me.“

Eidre turned her back on him.

“He had his chance. Do what you want.”

She turned to Aled, dropping her shotgun, sitting him down, checking his arrow wound like he was a young boy who had a splinter in his foot.

“Don’t touch the arrow, it’ll make it worse.”

Hans turned away as well. There were bodies everywhere, humans and horses but no Woose and wyverns for once, dead and dying. The splasher girl was crawling out from under the coach; Mellyn had survived the fusillade by flinging herself flat against the roof. Hollin was dead, his brains blown out, and Lellwyn, who had charged the assassins, was somehow still alive though his face was a torn mask of red. Another mounted servant had gotten killed in the chaos. The servant who had stayed out of the fight, Hans had forgotten his name, had ridden over and was helping Lellwyn. Someone not used to fighting or taken by surprise, then, not a coward.

Spilt blood and cracked bone. Glaive had known what was coming.

The coachman was leaning against the coach’s wheels, an arrow in his chest, rising and falling as he breathed.

“Someone help him!” Hans yelled. He had no idea how to treat a chest wound like that, or if it was even survivable.

Hans was shaking as he turned to Uln. “Am I hurt?”

“You’ve got a splinter in your cheek.” she said.

The right side of her face was running red, down into her clothes.

“I think you got hit in the scalp.”

She’d nearly had her brains blown out, like that poor wyvern, like the servant Corrin lying dead.

But she didn’t. We survived.

Hans reached up and touched his face, and nearly screamed when he felt wood sticking into his cheek. He ran his tongue along the inside of his mouth; he couldn’t taste blood or wood. He left it in there, for now, until they could get it out properly. At least the sword cut must have hit at a bad angle, because it had only sliced open his overcoat without penetrating his undercoat.

We didn't just survive. We won.

He helped Uln tear a strip out of undershirt and wrap it around her scalp, after checking that it was only a flesh wound, then stumbled towards the coachman, trying to remember how to treat impaling wounds properly.

The Arluk screamed behind him as the wyverns finished him with fire and war-spur. He didn’t look. He’d seen enough death today for a lifetime.

If this is winning, what is losing like?

“Mellyn, ride to get help for the wounded, and fast. Hans, get to Foothold, tell Lorne what happened.” Eidre said, looking up from trying to stop the bleeding in her son’s leg.

Everyone who didn't make it in the mining riots. Black Creek. Highhome. Those scalps on the fortress wall. We aren't one of them. That's enough.

“Yeah.” Hans said, numbly, shock and exhaustion catching up to him. He vomited into the blood soaked mud.