The wind blew hot and low across the Marches of Kraal, tugging at cloaks no longer worn by the dead.
Bodies sprawled in every direction--armored, torn, twisted. The stink of iron and open gut rose in waves from the blood-soaked earth. Crows circled. The sun, swollen and dirty-orange, sagged between the jagged stone spires that crowned the valley like broken teeth. Shadows fell long. The day was nearly done.
In the center of it all, Elsha stood.
She bled from the thigh, a long gash that stung with every shift of weight. Her cheek was split, lip cut, chin crusted with drying blood not all her own. Her axe--Gods, that axe--was streaked in black and red, the grooved head still wet. Steam curled off the blade like breath. Her arm trembled from the swing that had brought down the last Kraal warrior. Her knees wanted to fold. She wouldn't let them.
The silence that followed was too complete. A battlefield's hush, but charged--like the pause between lightning and thunder. Her vision tunneled, narrowed, focused only on the one who still moved.
Yethan of Zaarn.
He rose from the wreckage, stumbling over the corpse of a friend. His helm was gone, hair matted to his forehead, one eye swollen shut. His people--her allies--were gone, slaughtered by the war-singers of Kraal. He staggered toward her, a curved blade in his hand and murder in the set of his jaw.
"You brought them here," he spat, his voice ragged. "You knew. You read that cursed scroll and you knew."
Elsha didn't speak.
"You said we'd be safe. That the eclipse would buy us time. That she--she--would protect us. And for what? Your shadow-fucking ghost whore?"
Still she didn't speak. She let the words pass like heat. She could barely hear over the blood in her ears.
Yethan screamed and charged.
He was quick for a dying man. Desperate. His blade swung wide, savage, meant for her throat.
She moved faster.
The axe came up, not high, not grand, just a brutal half-arc that caught him through the collarbone. His scream cut off halfway through. The impact rang through her arms like hammer on bell.
He dropped.
Elsha stood over him, panting. Her blood ran down her leg into the dirt. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and blinked into the dying light.
Somewhere beyond the spires, the sun dipped lower. Soon the sky would bruise. And if the scroll was right, the shadow of the Red Moon would fall across the battlefield in less than an hour.
And she would come.
Namaris. Flesh again. Breath again. For eight minutes this time.
Elsha looked down at the dead.
She could already taste her.
Later.
The beast thundered beneath her--six feet tall at the shoulder, all sinew and feathers the color of old rust. A beak like a scythe. Eyes black as oil and just as cold. It screamed once as it tore across the scrubland, legs pounding the cracked earth in strides longer than a man's reach.
Elsha rode it bareback, fingers tangled in the thick plumage at its neck, the leather reins long since discarded. Her leg burned with every jolt. The makeshift bandage was soaked through. Her cheek was scabbed, lip split anew from the wind.
Behind her: Kraal pursuit. A wall of them. Screaming, howling, riding beasts smaller but faster--scaled hounds, venom-spitting lizards, even one war-chariot rigged with bone and blood. But they were behind. For now.
The spires were gone, swallowed by horizon. To the east: flat plains, cracked and gold-flecked, stretching toward the bones of forgotten cities and the shadow of the next eclipse.
She didn't look back.
She didn't need to.
Later still--The Bar
It's a few days on. The wound's stitched. Her cloak's fresh, though still stiff with old salt and blood. She's sitting at a bar in Orrik's Rest, a dusthole town with one well and too many gods. The barkeep is a woman with a dead eye and no patience.
Elsha drinks from a tarnished tin cup.
A man next to her says, "You're the one from Kraal."
She doesn't answer.
He says, "They say you ride a beast that eats horses. That you fucked a ghost under the Red Moon and brought ruin to a warhost."
She says, "The beast's name is Kaava. And I never kiss and tell."
He laughs, nervous.
Then she looks at him. Really looks at him.
And he stops laughing.
The door banged open like a shot, and half the bar twitched. Dust blew in, caught the lantern light, and stuck to sweat-slick brows. He was a big fucker--chainmail stiff with dried salt, the red-clay crest of the Cur still smeared across one pauldron. His eyes scanned the room and locked on her like a butcher sizing up meat.
She didn't look back.
She sat sideways at the bar, one leg crooked on the rung, the other stretched out, boot muddy, her thigh wrapped in stained linen. Her curls were a riot--copper, sun-wrecked, matted in places. The kind of hair that suggested a woman too mean to brush it and too wild to care. Skin gold and scarred. Muscles taut. Shoulders like a goddamn statue but posture like a drunk. She drank with her whole mouth, like she didn't owe anyone grace.
He stepped closer.
"You're her," he said, low, like he couldn't quite believe his luck. "The axe bitch."
She swallowed, wiped her mouth with her forearm, and finally looked at him.
Her eyes were exhausted. Flat. She didn't blink.
"You came a long way to say something that stupid?" she asked.
He grinned. Yellow teeth. No shame.
"Orders say you come back alive. But me?" He licked his lips. "I think we've got time to get acquainted first."
He reached for her.
The next moment happened too fast.
His fingers grazed her bare arm. Just that. The brush of touch.
Her elbow moved. The cup spun away. And her other hand was already holding the knife--a short, vicious thing honed on bone. She slammed it into the bar next to his crotch, leaned close, and hissed, "Touch me again and I'll bleed you like a pig."
He laughed, tried bravado. "You don't scare me. I've fucked--"
She stood.
Not tall. Not bulky.
But built like the fucking Red Moon carved her out of raw sex and steel. Every muscle said she'd fuck or fight you, and you'd lose either way.
He reached for her jaw, maybe to slap her, maybe to pull her in for the kiss.
Bad idea.
She headbutted him. His lip burst. He howled, hand flying to his mouth. "You bitch--"
He went for his blade.
She went for his wrist.
Steel flashed.
And his hand was gone.
It thumped wetly against the floor, fingers twitching like spiders. He screamed. She stepped over it and kicked him in the gut so hard he hit the wall behind him with a noise like dropped meat.
She bent down, picked up her tin cup from the floor, checked for dirt, drank what was left.
The bartender, polishing something with eyes like flint, finally spoke. "You paying for that?"
Elsha shrugged. "Wasn't my hand."
Then she walked out into the night, where the Red Moon hung low and fat, and her rage hadn't yet cooled.
The Road to Taal
The trail east was dry, brittle, and curved along cliffs like a serpent skin peeling from the world. Every step kicked up grit. Elsha's bandage itched, her mouth tasted of last night's copper and bad beer, and her mood was exactly as foul as the sky was hot.
She was alone for all of five miles.
