“Easy. Whoa,” Riot growled. “Stop you bastard!”

  The damned beast was deaf, or stubborn, because it strayed off the track once more and bent its head to graze.

  After a day in the saddle, Riot’s ass hurt and his thighs ached as much as his head and gut from the two blows Mercer had managed to land on him. He needed rest, but instead he was out here in the middle of nowhere on a damned horse.

  Riley, the portly arcanist, insisted that they ride together at the head of the marching men, and he’d spent the whole day pestering Riot for information about the regiments and the old Duke of Fallow, before going on to answer the questions himself at length. He was an armchair expert in warfare and had instructed Riot in at least a dozen ways in which he would get himself and a regiment of men obliterated on a battlefield.

  “Good land here,” Riley said, surveying the land.

  All Riot could see was the few miserable skeletons of trees that haunted the landscape. He was no farmer, but even to his untrained eye, the land was nothing but hard rock and scraps of dirt. Even so, some poor fool had tried to work it. A farmhouse sat on a small rise a few hundred yards away, almost lost in the weeds as nature reclaimed it. The roof had half collapsed, and four stone walls leaned grimly against one another like tired old men.

  “The men need a rest, sir,” Riot said.

  “Then I shall scout ahead and survey the land, Sergeant. Carry on,” the Arcanist declared.

  Riot gratefully slid out of the saddle, and the animal gave him a reproachful look before bumping into him as it wandered off. It was a ragged, swaybacked beast. Let it wander and be eaten by a pack of wolves, he thought. Horses were for prancing around on the edge of a battle while the bloody work was done in the ranks, pushing and shoving and stabbing and clawing your way through a melee, slipping on the bloody ground to drive forward.

  Gods his legs were sore. He stamped around, trying to drive some blood back into them as the men fell out of line, squatting by the side of the road. Some smoked the acrid Faelen weed, while others chatted quietly under the iron gray sky but all had hands rested on crossbows, and they watched the ridges, the hills and the flat, cold land around them.

  They were a filthy rabble of petty thieves and drunks but he was proud of them. When Lieutenant Clark had caught fever and died during the retreat there hadn’t been a replacement so they’d just followed Riot.

  He’d always been told that officers were born, not made, and that the job was better suited to those of good breeding but it’d been easy, really. Having a reputation as being the last man had helped. He’d never much liked the name, never sure if it was being used mockingly but it had its uses.

  A weak winter sun failed to burn through the clouds and the snow was almost all melted, with only patches remaining on the brown grass. What was it—three weeks, perhaps four till spring? Then the fighting would start again, the new officer would arrive and it would all be over. Back to the muck, back to taking bad orders and trying to stop them all from getting killed instead of just giving good orders in the first place.

  “Good spot for some deserters up there, I’d wager,” Ruddle said, squinting up at the farmhouse.

  “They’re not deserters, Rud, they’re escaped Leybound, and we’re not doing the wikkan’s job for them. If they’re up there and they stay out of our way, then bloody good luck to them.”

  Ruddle thumbed the Faelen weed into his pipe and gripped it in his yellowing teeth, leaning back with the air of a professional lounger and striking a match. “I saw a couple of them Leybound, you know, at the battle o’Fallow. They put them with the Champion’s battalion out of the Vale, right there on the end of the line. Made a heck of a noise with their carrying on, arcane whatd’youmacallits cracking like a dozen whips.”

  “I saw them in the prison up in the city. Poor bastards,” Riot replied.

  A few years ago, the arcanists had said that the Leybound would turn the tide of the war, but there had barely been a ripple. The bodies of those who volunteered had piled up, and fear spread through the regiments until the word Leybound was uttered like a death knell, which it was for most. Those that survived had been in a few skirmishes and Riot could still remember the stench of their bodies as they were cooked alive by arcane magic. In one battle south of Fallow, a Leybound had taken out half a battalion, two hundred and fifty souls reduced to stinking charred meat and bones. After that, the Leybound weren't seen again.

  There were rumors that the Erudorans managed to keep two in three alive, but he knew better than to believe any story that came from the home of his ancestors.

  “You ever think about volunteering to be bound back in the day, Sarge? They were offering five black guilders, I was sore tempted.”

  “I got enough scars, Rud, more’n you, I’d wager.”

  Half a mile away, Riley stood tall in the stirrups atop the small hill he had decided to conquer and gazed north with his hand shielding his eyes, like he was posing for someone to capture the moment in a painting.

  “A right bloody dreamer, that one, eh? They like to play at soldiering, but I still ain’t never seen one pull on a uniform.” Ruddle shook his head, a stream of thick yellow smoke escaping from his lips.

  They were the same old complaints Riot had heard a thousand times. Why, with their power, don’t the Arcanists join the fight? Better to ask, why would they? War doesn’t touch the great conservatories of the Arcanum, with their tall towers and their ley power. The great leave the fighting to the squabbling nobles and the rank and file.

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  The wikkan were a little better, at least they got their hands dirty, though more often these days they dealt with mutiny from their own side. The retreat had been hard, the winter harsh, and the morale of the rank and file was in the gutter.

  Riot held his thumb to the horizon. With the thick gray clouds, it was hard to tell where the sun was, but by his reckoning, they had about three hours of light left. This close to the Faelen lines, there would be patrols and foraging parties. He shouldn’t have beaten Mercer so badly, perhaps he even should have lost, then at least they wouldn’t be out here on their own.

  “I’d better go fetch his Lordship,” Riot said.

  “I’ll go, you ride that horse like a sack of grain in a saddle, it's practically a war crime,” Ruddle said, standing with a groan.

  The old man pulled himself up and wheeled the horse around, guiding it at a skillful trot over the uneven ground. On the hill Riley waved his hands in the air, his shouted words too far away to carry. The men of the company laughed and called back to him, giving cheerful, mocking waves of their own.

  As Ruddle gained the hilltop, a shrieking whistle pierced the quiet afternoon and the old man clung on grimly as the horse reared up, kicking the air with its front legs. More whistling shredded the air as Riley put his heels to his own horse and the animal tossed its head before bolting back down the hillside.

  The high pitched whistling of Faelen darts awakened a primal fear. It was a sound they had heard on battlefields for a year. A sound that meant shredding, burning red death was about to come to destroy ranks of men just like them.

  “Move up the hill!” Riot bellowed.

  Most were moving before Riot even gave the order, scattering like dry leaves in a stiff breeze, struggling up the hill toward the wreckage of the farmhouse.

  Risking a glance behind him, Riot saw a handful of Faelen riders crest the hill, yellow plumes trailing from their tall, bright helms. There would be more of them, and when they were lined up boot to boot, they would charge.

  White foam flecked at the mouth of Riley's horse as he drove it on, and the animal began gently curving away from them towards the road. Either the arcanist was a coward or he couldn’t stop the horse, perhaps both, but he was out of danger, unlike Ruddle.

  “He’s going to lose that damn horse,” one of the men said.

  “Just get up the hill, and put up some cover,” Riot replied, pushing the man ahead of him.

  Ruddle drove the horse toward them, but the animal's flank was covered in blood, and as it caught a hoof in the uneven ground it lurched forward, throwing the old man off. He tumbled over and over on the grass until he finally lay still fifty yards from Riot.

  Upon the hill, the cavalry were obviously ready, because the lead rider placed a horn to his lips and blew a shattering charge.

  A frustrated growl escaped Riot’s throat, and he ran back down the slope.

  See him now, the last man, running the wrong way, about to be burned through by a Faelen dart or flensed by a sabre.

  Half a mile on uneven ground gave him about two and a half minutes before they would bear down on him. The Faelen cavalry would be rich officers, all of them with fine uniforms, strong horses, and well-forged, sharp sabres. If he looked up now, he might see some of them, forming the dark red darts in their palms. A sight like that would strip the nerve from most men, so Riot kept his head down and sucked fresh air desperately into his lungs as he ran.

  Ruddle gibbered senselessly, eyes wide, his shaking hand hovering over the white shard of broken bone that stuck out through his ripped sleeve. He’d lose the arm, nothing to be done about that.

  The hateful horse thrashed on the ground, and Riot silenced it with a downward stroke of his blade before ripping off his sword belt and wrapping it around Ruddle’s arm, pulling it tight just above the elbow.

  “Deep breath you old bastard.” Riot raised his sword, wishing he’d taken the time to sharpen it properly.

  “Sarge, no, just leave me, I’ll be a prisoner. Not my arm Sarge,” Ruddle gibbered, pushing Riot back with his bloodied hand.

  No time for bedside manner. Riot’s fist caught the old man on the chin, a textbook blow that dropped him limp onto the cold ground.

  Riot raised the blade. Just ignore the thundering hooves and focus on the job at hand. You’re no surgeon, but you’ve butchered enough animals, right? Just below the elbow, leave as much bone as you can and a bit of skin to flap over.

  The blade hammered down, cracking bone and carving flesh, and Riot grabbed the collar of the bloodied uniform and hauled the unconscious man up the hill.

  Shouts came from the farmhouse—alarm or encouragement—he couldn’t tell. Ruddle didn’t weigh much, less now anyway, but Riot’s own legs felt like they were filled with lead. The cavalry trumpet blared again. A shrill whistle split the air as a Faelen dart thunked into the brown grass next to him, hissing and burning.

  More whistling came from behind. Doing anything from horseback was hard, and the poorly aimed red darts hit the ground around him or whistled through the air over his head.

  Forty feet to go, that was all. Crossbows twanged, and a red mist of exhaustion bled into Riot’s vision. His own ragged breaths roared in his ears, like waves crashing in an ocean cavern.

  Thirty feet, and he would be safe. His numb fingers began to slip on Ruddle’s collar, and the thunder of horse hooves on the hard ground brought a wordless scream to his lips.

  Just twenty feet away was the open door of the farmhouse, a crowd of his men shouting at him to hurry.

  Ten feet, the thunder of hooves was all around, and a warning cry cut through the chaos.

  Throwing Ruddle to one side, Riot dove the other way and slammed into the chest of a horse, his teeth almost biting clean through his tongue, filling his mouth with blood. He flung out a hand in desperation, and his scrabbling fingers hooked the bridle around the animal's mouth. He felt its hot, wet snorts and the hard edges of its teeth as it snapped at him. Well-trained war horses could bite the face off of men in battle, and a panic welled up inside Riot as he held the beast’s head at arm’s length.

  Something hit his skull so hard his knees buckled, and as he sagged down, he tugged viciously at the horse's mouth, pulling the beast around.

  “Let go, you wretch, you dog!” the Faelen rider cried, his accent clipped and ancient.

  Blood trickled into Riot’s left eye and through the red veil he saw the Faelen raise his sabre, his long-eared, powdered face twisted into a snarl. In desperation, Riot surged to one side, tugging the horse with him and sending the slash hissing over his head.

  Kicking horse hooves threatened to break his legs, and the Faelen rider snarled in his own tongue, but Riot hung on, too terrified to let go.