Dawn rose up behind us, casting a hundred thousand shadows far into the pass ahead.

  “The first thing an army needs,” my father had said, back over his map table in Iron Tower, weeks ago and three-hundred li away, “before even food, or weapons, or banners… is a leader. A beast with no brain is a corpse. An army with three brains is three different beasts.”

  In the valley east of the pass, a single man strode out ahead of the assembled army, banners bearing the white oxtails of leadership flapping in the wind. In his hands, he held, not a weapon or banner, neither sword nor bow, but an ancient clay bowl, its contents rippling black with the howling wind. At his indrawn breath, the valley echoed with the rumbling of the earth and an altar rose up like a spire, carrying the man higher and higher, bowl held aloft.

  Alone atop the altar, between Heaven and earth, the man dipped his fingers into the bowl, and smeared the sacrificial blood upon his nose and lips. He looked up to the sky and made his oath of leadership. As he turned and stepped out into air, a staircase formed around the spire of his altar and met his footsteps.

  His golden armor flashed in the sun, reflecting the rays of dawn until he seemed to be a shining god, descending from the Heavens. He stepped down from the last of the steps to face the leaders of the coalition assembled against Dreadwolf.

  Noble Lion stood before the first line of generals, some of whom were trusted allies, others enemies not a few weeks ago. Whether by design or by happenstance, the first general to receive the cup of oathblood from Lion’s hands was a man known as Old Head, who actively held a portion of the Lion clan lands. He took his oath to obey Noble Lion, to bind his ambition, body and soul to the Coalition East of the Pass, and to root out the evil known as Dreadwolf. Then he smeared the blood upon his lips as Lion had.

  I took the same oath, as did the old man next to me, Swaying Willow, who had been so kind to me when I had stood before him those many months ago but had taken Windmarsh from my father, the moment the opportunity arose, helping to rob me of an inheritance that I had struggled and killed for.

  Dozens of generals and commanders took the same oath and each had their own tangled skein of enmities and alliances. Each of those personal pursuits fell by the wayside in favor of eradicating the wolf from his den.

  The last to take the oath, and the last general in line, was the Tiger of Jiangdong, who plunged his hands in the bowl and brought them up dripping red. He raked his fingers down his face and armor, covering himself in red streaks. He spoke the same words of loyalty to Lion and the coalition’s purpose but added, “Should I fail in this task, let me die by flame and arrow.”

  With that, his Red Star Mandate washed over us so powerfully, it was a struggle not to draw my blade then and there, to charge Heaven-knew-what was down in that valley.

  “The second thing an army needs,” my father had said, “Is a fighting spirit. A cause can bring an army together. A leader can forge some unity from them. But a true fighting force is nothing without its vanguard. If the vanguard’s spirit falters, what hope do the rest of the troops have of moving forward.”

  The Tiger, flanked by his officers, Iron Rod and Flashing Palm, mounted up before the entire Crimson Tiger clan, a thousand cavalry and five thousand more infantry at their backs.

  “By flame and arrow!” He repeated, drawing his sword.

  “BY FLAME AND ARROW!” the vanguard responded, voices echoing throughout the surrounding peaks. Tiger turned and charged down into the valley, his forces flying behind him, all men and armor, horses and blades, barely a waterskin between them.

  The vanguard’s task was not to hold ground, nor dig in for protracted engagement. They were to shock and to harry, to bite and retreat, sow fear and bloody the enemies flanks, to test if they truly had it in them to stand and fight. If six thousand tigers could damage Dreadwolf’s two-hundred-thousand, they would immediately begin to break when they met a force of nearly equal size.

  The task of the vanguard, more often than not, was to die valiantly.

  For another few weeks, fighting echoed throughout the mountainside as the Tiger taught the Wolves the meaning of fear. At the end of the first week a messenger appeared, detailing the positions of the troops. At the end of the second week, a messenger came with a request for food and water. The Tiger would carry on the fight for as long as he could, tiring the enemy while the rest of the coalition conserved its strength, but he needed supplies to do so.

  “The third thing an army needs, once it fights with one mind and one spirit, is something to fill its stomach.”

  Remembering a strange reading from what felt like a lifetime ago, Lion had given his half-brother, Golden Goat, command of the supply train. It was, I had to admit, the perfect post for such a man with such a Mandate, once I learned what that Mandate truly was.

  Goat could drink all night and wouldn’t have to refill his cup once, I had noticed as I had watched him back in the Hall of Sixty-Four.

  So, when the Tiger had engaged the wolf in the passes east of the capital, at first I thought it was the goat’s drunkenness that kept him from sending supplies forward. My second thought was that he was merely being frugal.

  One night, while sitting with the other officers around the map table, one of Goat’s retainers entered and requested his lord’s “assistance.”

  I made my excuses to the other officers around me and followed Golden Goat a moment later, trying my best to not appear to be skulking. All armies separated the supplies from the tents to avoid the potential for theft, or the appearance of it, so I watched through pickets, as Golden Goat dug his hand into a sack of grain.

  He scooped fistful after fistful from the full sack into a nearly empty one, and to my surprise, when he was finished, he was left with two sacks completely filled with grain as if the grain had somehow just doubled. It was then that I realized that Golden Goat’s “bottomless cup” trick was more than just a trick, but a very unique and very powerful gift from Heaven, and it worked on more than just cups. Far from the useless drunk he had at first seemed to be back in the capital, he was, in fact, the perfect General of Supplies for our coalition, and he ensured that his half-brother could lead the Coalition East of the Pass for as long as was needed.

  Not drunk, and with no need to be frugal, it meant the failure to send supplies to our vanguard was deliberate. Looking back, it was the first sign that our coalition was not so cohesive as I thought it to be.

  After fourteen days of continuous fighting in the mountains, the first of the vanguard finally began to trickle back down out of the mountains. Then, when what little remained of the Tiger’s forces came screaming back up the valley, we finally arrayed ourselves for honest battle.

  “In any army, there are generals new to the rank,” my father had said, turning from the map to look me in the eye. “For those leaders, there is no conflict more important than their first battle. For those men, there is never a better time to call soldiers of worth to themselves.”

  “But,” I said, feeling the fear and pressure mounting within myself, “there are no soldiers left in the Plains of the Falcon. We only have farmers and bandits!”

  My father let out a wheezing sound, and it took me a moment to realize he was laughing. “Where do you think soldiers come from?”

  I looked at him with a puzzled look.

  “Your grandfather adopted me into his clan when I was young, so that I could carry on the Falcon clan. We bear a noble name, but come from common stock. I’ve sent word to my cousins. My blood cousins.”

  “Are you saying some of the bandits we’ve been fighting are my relatives?”

  “Flashammer and Tongs,” my father had said, when two thousand men appeared before Iron Tower and pledged to follow me into battle, “Heavy archers and light cavalry.”

  “Surely you mean light archers and heavy cavalry?”

  The two bandits before me, one jowled, hefty and wielding a bow, the other tall and lean as a jackal, with lance in hand and warhammer at his belt, looked at each other and smiled.

  At the pass, the last of the fleeing Crimson Tiger vanguard were streaming through our ranks, the Tiger himself the last to retreat, with only Iron Rod beside him. Again the hills thundered, but this time, they thundered not with a Mandate, not with a battlecry, with the thousands of heavy hooves of armored cavalry. This was the Dreadwolf’s own vanguard. This was his crack force meant to strike fear into our hearts and test our metal. The black iron of their armor was terrifying to behold and even their horses were covered head to hoof in a forged plating, which I hadn’t seen before. Their pennants were the heads and flayed hides of Tiger’s men. One of them unmistakably belonged to Flashing Palm, the man who had first encouraged me to speak up and take my place among the assembled lords in the Marshal’s first meeting.

  The Tiger, upon seeing his officer’s corpse so bespoiled, roared and made to charge back into the fray, but Iron Rod, the burly soldier and former sailor, tackled him to the ground, before more men were able to drag their lord back to the safety of our line.

  Lion, for his part, could have been carved from rock. He turned to me and nodded.

  “Tongs,” I said, my voice an icy calm that I didn’t feel within me. The signal flags flashed behind me, carrying out my first order as a general.

  The jowly bandit, Tongs, rushed down into the center of the valley floor, placing himself and his men directly in front of the cavalry thundering through the pass. His own men were heavily armored as well, but they were loosely formed, and they drew bows, not shields or pikes. I could almost imagine the jeers of the enemy as they saw I had sent archers to stop cavalry.

  Tongs drew an arrow and leaned far back to aim it nearly straight upward. His men drew and did the same. I could smell his Mandate swirl around them like the bite of dew or frost, and as they loosed their arrows his power went with it. Where the arrows fell, the earth began to change to my eyes, as it had back in Iron Tower when he had first demonstrated his gift.

  “Water-Field,” my father had explained, back in Iron Tower. “Technically a Black Star Mandate, but there is water in many things. Including the ground.” I had reached down to the field outside Iron Tower, where Tongs’s arrow had fallen in the earth and found that the soil had softened as if water had welled up beneath it, turning it all to sticky mud. Even as I held the clump in my hand it began to dry and harden.

  Now, Tongs’s arrows fell to the valley, lodging in the earth just short of the first ranks of cavalry. Instantly, the first of the armored horses’ hooves trampled the sunken shafts. We could see no sign of what was happening to the ground they trod upon, other than the gradual slowing of that first rank, then the second, then the third, and before long the entire charge had almost entirely stalled, horses floundering in the muck. Others that had chanced upon drier patches careened into their slower brethren, or halted so suddenly that they threw their riders.

  Then we watched as the ground began to turn silver with condensation. Only then did Tongs’s men draw and loose at will, sending cloud after streaking cloud into the already panicked horses. As many men died from their own horses as they did from the arrows.

  ROSTER: ARMY OF THE SILVER FALCON CLAN

  VAN……………..Tongs

  LEFT FLANK…..

  RIGHT FLANK…

  CENTER………..

  REARGUARD….

  “Flashammer,” I said.

  The signal flags flashed. Brown, tan, and black flashed by me, stirring the whisps of hair that had come loose from my knot.

  These were common horse, not so majestic as the silver and white my father had once commanded, nor so hearty as the Tiger’s own bloodbays, but light as these bandit horses were, with no armor, and carrying only men in simple leathers or furs, they practically skimmed across the valley floor.

  “Light cavalry?” I had asked my father. “They make good skirmishers, yes, but what good will they be in organized ranks?”

  “The secret to cavalry,” said my father, “is not strength, nor weight, nor even speed.” There was a crack like thunder as we watched Flashammer lead his men in drills on the resting fields outside of Iron Tower. “The secret to cavalry is momentum.”

  If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  Now in the pass between the Coalition and Dreadwolf’s floundering cavalry, Flashammer’s horses streamed through the open formation of his brother’s archers, and the moment the two allied forces were clear of each other, there was a crack like the rending of air. Suddenly, his formation flashed. One moment they were half a hundred spans from their enemy, and the next they were upon them. The heavier enemy horses had lost momentum in soft ground, the ground had hardened, in some cases with horses or hooves or bodies still half-sunk, and now they were completely stationary. The lighter horse slammed into them with as much momentum as I had ever seen in a cavalry charge. The effect was the same as a hammer on cold iron. Dreadwolf’s vanguard was shattered in one go.

  ROSTER: ARMY OF THE SILVER FALCON CLAN

  GENERAL: Sparrow of the Silver Falcon Clan

  VAN……………...Tongs

  LEFT FLANK…..Flashammer

  RIGHT FLANK…

  CENTER………..

  REARGUARD….

  But it was hardly the end of Dreadwolf’s first play.

  Even as Noble Lion turned to give me a weighing look, as if seeing me in a cold, new light in the wake of such a decisive impending victory, more of Dreadwolf’s first army appeared from the crest of the mountains.

  Archers in black and gray seethed over the peaks to set up on the slopes. Within moments arrows were raining down upon my two new officers in the valley from elevated position and no archer in the world could shoot the same distance upwards as his enemy could shoot downwards.

  Suddenly a forest of polearms appeared from around the bend in the valley followed by the marching of ten thousand boots. No cavalry in the Land under Heaven, no matter how fast, could take arrows for the length of the valley and still break a line of pikes.

  “Castellan,” I said.

  No signal flashed.

  “Castellan!” I turned to face the flag-bearer, who looked horrified. Had he forgotten a signal? Wars could be won or lost by such a mistake as miscommunication.

  But no, he had held up the right flag, it just seemed he didn’t know where he was supposed to look when directing his signal.

  I looked around the field and found that even I couldn’t pick out where the next play in my gambit was supposed to come from. “Castellan?”

  “Of course,” said my father, back near Iron Tower in an old abandoned barn in the surrounding village, “I was not the only one adopted into the Silver Falcon clan. I have cousins in name, too, as well as in blood.”

  I looked around at the scraps of twisted metal, broken armor, and other metal contraptions I didn’t recognize.

  “There’s… no one here?” I said.

  My father grunted, “My cousin said his boy would do that.” Suddenly his hand shot out and slammed into my chest, halting me midstride. “He also said to watch my step.” My foot hovered about what looked like a pair of iron jaws, spread wide and half buried as if ready to bite the first thing that wandered into it.

  The pass east of the capital suddenly echoed with screams from the mountainsides, and the rain of Dreadwolf’s arrows cut off before it had really gotten going. Everywhere Dreadwolf’s archers and infantry had stepped, the earth and rock of the mountside churned, sometimes throwing up dust as the metal jaws of a trap snapped shut, sometimes consuming whole swathes of troops as they fell into spiked pits.

  Finally, when it appeared that the last of the traps had gone off, and Dreadwolf’s remaining forces were scrambling back up the mountain to reform or retreat, an incredible series of cracks ran out, like the snapping of firecrackers, and then the peaks themselves began to give way. Dreadwolf’s infantry that thought to continue up the mountain face were buried in earth and rock, but those that ran for their lines to the middle of the valley were suddenly caught up by fifty screaming silver horses.

  ROSTER: ARMY OF THE SILVER FALCON CLAN

  GENERAL: Sparrow of the Silver Falcon Clan

  VAN……………...Tongs

  LEFT FLANK…..Flashammer

  RIGHT FLANK…Castellan

  CENTER………..

  REARGUARD….

  “And, of course,” my father had said, bouncing his only grandson on his knee while River looked on with glowing smile, “there is your cousin. The most powerful warrior in your arsenal to lead the most powerful weapon of the Silver Falcon clan. The Screaming Cavalry.”

  “Who is it?”

  He just looked on and smirked.

  “I had thought to lead the Screaming Cavalry myself,” I said. “Even without a Mandate, I’m sure I could do it better than some stranger.”

  “They’re no stranger,” said my father.

  “Then why haven’t they come to help us? I’ve been leading the Screaming Cavalry against bandits and rebels for months now. Where has this supposedly powerful cousin been all that time?”

  “Right beside you,” answered River.

  I looked around. The only people in the room, at the time were me, my father, baby Ang, and River.

  River was smiling like she knew something I didn’t. Which is when it hit me.

  “No… You’ll lead them into battle?” I asked, incredulous.

  “Why not?” said my father, slamming his own helmet onto the table. “The other generals might not accept her, but she wouldn’t be the first woman to ride into battle hidden beneath padding and armor. If she’s good enough to raise children of the Silver Falcon clan, she good enough to lead its soldiers.”

  CROWN OF THE SILVER FALCON CLAN

  TYPE: Helm

  ARMOR RANK: 27th

  LORE: The only crown the Screaming Cavalry of the Silver Falcon clan has ever known is a winged helm. It has served as a banner to inspire the horse-lords of the northern plains for nearly a thousand years and more recently to strike fear into the hearts of savages in the lost province of the shepherds.

  LAST KNOWN OWNER: The Commandant of the Silver Falcon clan

  "Aiaiaiaiai!" Now, my father’s winged helmet bobbed atop my “cousin’s” head as “he” rode into battle at the head of a screaming wedge of fifty white horse. Bigger, faster, more disciplined, more armored, the last of my father’s own cavalry followed River into the teeth of the pikewall.

  ROSTER: ARMY OF THE SILVER FALCON CLAN

  GENERAL: Sparrow of the Silver Falcon Clan

  VAN……………...Tongs

  LEFT FLANK…..Flashammer

  RIGHT FLANK…Castellan

  CENTER………..Shadow River

  REARGUARD….

  If I had been calm and collected throughout my first battle command, thus far. That poise threatened to shatter as the woman I loved soared on the back of her stolen back horse past the forest of blades.

  I motioned for my own helmet, and Windstopper handed it to me then donned his own. I had no forces left to command, save Windstopper and myself. And if River’s cavalry failed… well there would be nothing left for me anyway.

  "Fly!" I kicked Windshear down into the valley at full speed and heard Windstopper bellow behind me, “GO. OX.”

  ROSTER: ARMY OF THE SILVER FALCON CLAN

  GENERAL: Sparrow of the Silver Falcon Clan

  VAN……………...Tongs

  LEFT FLANK…...Flashammer

  RIGHT FLANK…Castellan

  CENTER………..Shadow River

  REARGUARD….Windstopper

  We careened down the slope of the valley and out into the relatively flat land of the pass just in time to meet up with Flashammer’s cavalry, who were wheeling around to rejoin the fray. My chest constricted – as if my father were directing his Mandate against me as he did those many years ago – when I saw the enemy parting before River and her fifty falcons driving deeper, but threatened to close behind her small force and encircle her.

  Flashammer’s Mandate cracked again behind me, and suddenly I was following him into the gash formed by River. She was the point of the spear, and he was the shaft, neatly cutting our enemy in two. I didn’t care that Windstopper and I were the butt of the spear so long as the enemy remained good and skewered until River could fight through.

  Windshear bit and screamed and kicked with battle-frenzy, and the Son-of-Heaven Saber cut this way and that, daring any of Dreadwolf’s men to come near our coursing mounts and flashing blades.

  A good general had to call off his archers once his own forces blended with the enemy, but with so clean a cut into the enemy ranks, Tongs was able to direct his fire into the enemy fringes without fear of hitting his allies. As I looked to left and right, I saw that arrows still fell among the enemy, even as River’s cavalry cut deeper and deeper and then finally punched through the back of their formation.

  Horses now behind them, stone still sliding down the mountain, and arrows still lancing out over churned, frozen ground, the enemy had no idea where they could advance or to where they could fall back.

  Suddenly, it became every man for themselves among Dreadwolf’s forces.

  Some broke and ran. Some fought and died. And without even the bulk of the coalition engaging, the first major battle was complete. Harried now by horse, arrow, and one last line of traps set in the dark of night at the far end of the valley – a spiked chain buried deep in the earth that cut men in two when it was cranked to tension – Dreadwolf’s vanguard retreated, completely broken, completely fearful, completely outmatched. I checked the sun’s progress across the sky. It had taken the Tiger’s preliminary assault two weeks to finally fall back, and only then for want of food and water. Our enemy’s first thrust hadn’t even lasted half a watch.

  We chased them back to the bend of the valley, and as we leaned hard into the turn, we came up against something we hadn’t accounted for. Here was a wall of ice and snow that hadn’t been there at the beginning of the day, at least according to the scouts’ reports.

  Some of Dreadwolf’s retreating soldiers hesitated at the sight, as well, and were cut down by River’s pursuing men. Others tried to clamber up its ice-slick sides, succeeding only in burying themselves in heaps of snow, or freezing warm, sweating skin against cold blue ice. Still more made for the frozen ramp that seemed to be the only way beyond the wall. They met their deaths the same as their fellows, for the ramp was only wide enough for one man at a time, and at the very top stood one man, wide and powerful, skin the color of windblown snow.

  When the first of Dreadwolf’s men was about to crest the wall, the man atop it swung a massive blade downward. It was more a cleaver than a sword.

  “I said ‘no retreat,’” said the man atop the wall, more of a giant I now saw, in comparison to the men he cut down one by one until the last of Dreadwolf’s vanguard decided they’d rather throw themselves on the mercy of my men, than on the mercy of their own commander.

  “There is no war in which every Mandate is known and accounted for,” my father had said, just before my army had set out to join up with the coalition. “Gather enough fighters together, bind enough destinities to a single cause, and there are bound to be some soldiers that rise up as heroes, worthy of the times we live in. It is a general’s task to send his army into battles he can win, with strategies that will win it, and to know when there is no possible stratagem that can overcome a Mandate from Heaven. In such moments, only one Hero of the times can face another.”

  “Fall back!” I shouted to my cavalry. “Fall back!”

  “FALL BACK! FALL BACK! FALL BACK!” my officers and their men echoed.

  River sawed on her reins, and cantered in a tight circle so she could see me. She was alone now at the foot of the ramp of ice, the rest of her Screaming Cavalry having wheeled away at my command.

  “Fall back,” I whispered, knowing she couldn’t hear me, but hoping that she could read my face, my posture, my intent, even at a distance.

  I saw that her eyes had gone dark within the helmet that obscured her face. I saw too that there were no bodies of water deep enough. Perhaps her power could call those demons up from some distant lake. Perhaps… No, I was certain that if she were to unleash her Mandate upon anyone, even so powerful a man as that giant, she could destroy them as utterly as a babe in its crib. But I also knew that everytime she called upon her power it took something from her, and eventually, those demons would destroy her as surely as it had destroyed her enemies.

  “Fall back,” I mouthed. “Please, River.”

  She spun her horse again to face up at the giant atop the wall of ice for a moment that felt like an eternity to me. She kicked her horse into a gallup toward the ramp of ice, gaining speed. Then with a frustrated yank, she turned the horse and spun to fall back with the rest of her men. As I stood, frozen to the spot, not with ice, but with fear for my beloved, she blew past me, riding fast and angry. I closed my eyes and hung my head, wondering if the decision I had made was the right one.

  Now that I was alone on the field, the giant atop the icewall shouted jeers and insults at me, daring me to face him. I only did so when I saw that my forces had left the field, and I stood alone before a man who, I would soon learn, was called Frost Giant, and was certainly one of the most powerful men living in the Land Under Heaven.

  “Perhaps some other day,” I said to myself. Then I turned and followed my army back to the coalition camp. “Perhaps some other soldier.”

  ***SILVER FALCON CLAN MISSION REPORT: THE FIRST BATTLE OF WOLF CAGE PASS***

  SUCCEEDED Primary Objective: Assemble a roster of worthy officers capable of supporting the coalition’s battle plan.

  SUCCEEDED Secondary Objective: No key officers are lost.

  SUCCEEDED Secondary Objective: The army is not routed and does not sustain great losses.

  SUCCEEDED Bonus Objective: Win the first battle of Wolf Cage Pass.

  ENEMY SLAIN: 489 | ENEMY CAPTURED: 2,411 | LOSSES: 22

  OVERALL GRADE: A (Decisive Victory)

  ***RANK UP!***

  SPARROW

  RANK 0: Rebel → RANK 9: Noble Officer

  WORTH: 0 dan → 450 dan

  CLAN: Silver Falcon | STAR: Black | FATE: Fire-Water "Verge of Destiny"

  MANDATE: None

  BONDS: Shadow River, Windstopper, Castellan, Flashammer & Tongs

  ALLIANCES: Noble Lion, White Stallion, others in the Coalition East of the Pass

  DISTINCTION: A talented officer in the Coalition East of the Pass, this fledgeling noble displayed a shrewd cunning in the First Battle of Wolf Cage Pass

  WHAT AN ACHIEVEMENT!

  TITLE: TIME TO SPREAD YOUR WINGS

  DESCRIPTION: You've won your first decisive victory… and you’ve actually done so nobly. You didn’t fight for an evil lord, you didn’t slaughter the surrendering men, it wasn’t even a battle against unarmed villagers! A true victory. Truly!