Aye, I’ve gotten plenty of advice over the years - most of it wise, no doubt.  Revenge won’t bring your friends back, Titus, now will it?  Shit like that.  And no, it won’t.


    But you know what?  Some bastards just have to die.


    <ul>


    <li style="font-weight: 400">The Life and Times of Legionary Titus Nasica</li>


    </ul>


    ?


    19th Day of High Summer’s Moon, AC 297


    The mountain pass was little more than a press of bodies and steel beneath the light of the moon.  Small circles of lamplight illuminated the struggling mass, picking out individual soldiers with a glint of firelight on steel.  Ismet paused at the open doors that separated the fortifications dug into the cliffs from the pass itself.  The blade of her sword was wet with blood, not only from the men she’d killed at the winch room, but also from three smaller skirmishes along the way.  But nothing had prepared her for this.


    Between her father’s men, the troops she’d been given by Wāli Marwan, and the men who’d joined them from all across the wastes, they had brought near eight hundred soldiers to the pass.  Commander Rizqullah had commanded another eight hundred men before reinforcements arrived from Ma?īn.  Though she could not be certain of the exact numbers, Ismet guessed there were something like two thousand men here, between both sides.


    It looked like nearly all of them had pressed onto the thin road that ran through the gate, between the rock faces of Jabal Al Nusur on either side.  There was no room for tactics, not even room for battle lines.  Instead, an incomprehensible mass of bodies simply pushed in on itself in a crush, swaying back and forth as more men tried to get in through the open gate.  Ismet saw soldiers fall, only to be lost in the surging tide of flesh and never rise again.  She couldn’t even tell whether they were her men, or the enemy.


    With a sudden urge to retch, she turned back into the garrison and made her way to the nearest stairs.  There was no way she was going out into that mess; even with the strength of the Angelus, there was little or nothing she would be able to do.  The thought of being trampled underfoot, ground into the dust of the mountain as her bones snapped and boots trod her face down…


    Ismet shuddered, putting out her left hand to steady herself against the wall of the stairwell.  From the wall, at least, she would be able to see; and perhaps able to do something about enemy archers.  Shouts echoed up the stairs from behind her; soldiers must have thrown themselves into the garrison to escape the morass outside.  They could fight each other.


    Four years, it seemed, was not enough time for Ismet to forget the way up to the top of the wall.  She did not get lost or turned about; instead, she kicked the door open and dashed through, out into the cool night air above the slaughter.


    Malik ibn Zain’s archers were shooting down from the wall into her army, below, where the men pushed forward to get in the gate.  The bowmen didn’t even have to aim: they simply nocked an arrow, leaned around the crenelations, and loosed down into the army.  The men were packed together so tightly that every shot hit something.


    Ismet lunged at the nearest archer, and the man never even saw her.  Her blade flashed, and the man’s head dropped over the wall, while his body slumped down at her feet.  A bolt of power shot up her arm, the shuddering passage of a Tithe, but she did not allow it to distract her.  There would be time to sort all that out with Epinoia after the battle was won.


    The second archer screamed before he died, and that raised a shout.  “Enemy on the wall!” the bowmen called, and turned to flee from Ismet.  Archers never held once you got in among their ranks.  It was just as effective as killing them; whether they were fleeing her or dying, either way the barrage of arrows ceased falling on Ismet’s men below.


    “Rally on me!” a man’s voice shouted.  “We’ll push them off the wall!”


    Ismet grinned.  Ahead of her, Malik ibn Zain, with a handful of his men, fell into formation to block her path.


    “There’s just one of them, Commander,” one of the men from the capital exclaimed.


    “One is enough to be the death of you,” Ismet snarled, stalking forward and flicking her blade through the air to clear it of blood.  “Malik!  Justice has come for you.  Face it on your feet or die like a dog.”


    “Kill her,” Malik snarled, eyes shining from beneath his dark, heavy brows.


    “That’s an Exarch,” one of his men protested.  “Are you mad?”


    With a single, straight arm shove, Malike sent his own guard tumbling off the wall down into the press of men below.  The man screamed as he fell, and then could be heard no more over the chaos of battle.


    “Kill her,” Malik repeated, “or I’ll kill you myself.”  His remaining men charged, shields raised and swords flashing by the light of the oil lamps that lit the wall.


    Ismet waited until they were almost upon her, then leapt up onto the crenelation to her right.  For a frozen heartbeat, she balanced there; if her boot slid out from under her, she would tumble down off the wall and be lost.  Then, with the inhuman strength and grace gifted to her by the Angelus, she leapt again, coming down behind the charging men in a crouch.  She spun on her toe as she landed, one leg extended like a dancer, and cut the hamstrings of the rearmost soldiers, sending them to their knees.


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    The men in the front rank scrambled to turn and face her, just in time for Ismet to leap again, planting both her feet on a man’s shield and bearing him to the ground.  As they came down, she sunk her blade into the other man’s neck, just where it joined the shoulder, and a fountain of blood told her he was as good as dead.  She hopped off the shield before she could lose her balance and fall, and instead stomped on the man’s helm.  The steel could not stand against the strength of the Angelus, and crushed in, popping the man’s skull like a ripe melon.


    In less time than it would take to draw a breath for each man she had killed, Ismet and Malik ibn Zain were alone on the top of the wall.  Wherever the archers had fled to, they had abandoned their commander.


    “You’re a daemon,” Malik snarled.


    “Ironic,” Ismet said, carefully stepping her way out from among the heap of corpses so that she would be able to rely on her footing.  She raised her sword, keeping it between Malik and herself.  “You stand against the chosen of the Angelus, barring our way.  You protect the Plague Dancer and the man who has usurped the Caliphate.  And you name me a daemon?  Are you truly so blind?  Or simply a fool?”


    “All your pretty words do nothing to change the fact that you are a traitor,” Malik insisted, raising his own blade.  “You were sent north to crush the Narvonnians, and instead you joined them.  You could have wed our caliph, and instead you ran off to fuck an infidel prince.  You’ve thrown away everything our people gave you, and now you lead a rebellion to spill the blood of your own brothers and sisters.  You have brought nothing but suffering to this place.”


    “I gave you a chance to surrender,” Ismet reminded him.  “Your response was to cut down a good man.”


    “Rizqullah ibn Zayyan was only one more traitor,” Malik spat.  “And I will send you to join him.”  Instead of a shield, he drew a second curved sword from his belt, holding one in each hand, and falling into a modified stance with the two swords parallel to each other.


    Ismet narrowed her eyes, then leapt forward, making a cut down from above her shoulder on the diagonal.  Malik parried with both his swords, then immediately shifted.  With his left sword, he kept her in the bind, while with his right, he sliced at her belly.  Only the speed of the Angelus allowed Ismet to leap back in time to avoid the cut.


    Getting her feet back under her, she began to circle, her movements hampered by how narrow the wall was.  Malik merely grinned, and followed her movements, maintaining distance.  “Never fought a man with two swords before, have you?” he taunted her.  “Your time at university and a few small battles are nothing compared to the years I’ve spent fighting the Botis.”


    The man had height on her, and reach as well.  Ismet lunged forward again, this time circling her blade back and swinging a rising cut up at Malik’s groin.  Again, he cut down with both blades to knock her strike aside, and then immediately flicked one sword up at her chest while using the other to keep her blade out of play.


    This time, instead of leaping back, Ismet dropped her sword and continued forward, closing distance before Malik was ready.


    His blade sliced through the silk of her jubba and scored a cut along her ribs as she went by.  But Ismet was inside his guard now, past where he could cut with his swords, and though Malik was larger than her, she was stronger.  Ismet’s hands shot up, grabbing him by both sides of the head, and she jerked her hands, pushing forward with her right while pulling back with her left.


    There was an audible snap, and Malik ibn Zain’s body fell to the stones, his two swords clattering down next to him.  Her fingers spasmed as the man’s soul flowed into her.  Once the Tithe had passed, Ismet dropped a hand to her side, and felt the heat of her own blood.  She pressed her hand to the wound, retrieved her sword, and hacked off Malk’s head in a single stroke.  Then, she strode to the inside edge of the wall, and shouted down over the press of bodies.


    “Men of Ma?īn!” Ismet screamed, her throat already raw.  “Men of Ma?īn, hear me!  Your commander is dead!”  She let go over her bleeding wound so that she could raise the severed head of Malik in one hand, and her sword in the other, both into the air above her.


    From below, a cheer broke out from Ismet’s own men, mingled with a cry of despair from those who had held the gate.  “Throw down your weapons!” Ismet begged them.  “Let no more men die this day!  The Angelus command it!”


    Above her, Epinoia opened her wings, her light shining down on the battle.


    Men began to drop their swords, and Ismet was overcome by a sudden wave of dizziness.  It was all she could do not to fall, to remain standing strong and upright, until her father’s men reached her.


    ?


    Someone had moved Ismet’s things into a room in the garrison, and now she was able to recline against her own pillows while Samara used a cloth soaked in water from the cistern to clean her wound.


    “I believe it will heal clean,” the Exarch of Nāshi?āt said, after looking it over.  “You will have a scar, however.  And I would suggest you rest for at least a week before riding.”  She began to wrap bandages of white linen around Ismet’s naked torso.


    “We ride as soon as the men have had a chance to sleep,” Ismet insisted.  “And to have a meal.  The longer we wait, the worse things will be in Ma?īn.”  She wondered what Lionel would think of her scar.  Some men turned away from the women they claimed to love as soon as the blush of youth was gone; she did not think he was one of those, but a scar could be an ugly thing.


    “Are you fit to receive company, Daughter?” her father called from outside the room.


    “One moment, Father,” she called back.  Samara had brought her a clean change of clothes, and Ismet did not allow the pain of the wound to stop her from dressing.  Once she was dressed again, not only her father entered, but Fazil and Arkan as well.


    “She will live?” Salah ibn Yassar asked Samara.


    Fazil grunted.  “It will take more than a single cut to kill your daughter,” he grunted, taking a seat among the cushions.  “If the Sun Eater could not do it, a man like Malik did not have even a prayer.”


    “I will be fine,” Ismet assured her father.  “The ride to Ma?īn will be enough time for the wound to close.”


    “That is not normally how such things work,” Arkan protested.  “Moving will only break the wound open again, over and over.”


    “I am an Exarch,” Ismet said.  “It will heal.  What were our losses?”


    “At least two hundred dead,” her father said.  “And as many again wounded.”


    Ismet closed her eyes.  That was half her host.


    “However,” Fazil broke in, “tell her the rest.”


    Arkan leaned forward.  “Nearly the entire garrison surrendered.  What’s more, most of them stayed out of the fighting entirely.  They remained in their bunks and barred the doors.  Most of what we fought were the reinforcements from the capital.  And, Exarch, they will join us.”


    “Join us?”  Ismet blinked, unable to comprehend.


    “Malik killed their commander,” her father explained.  “And we came under the light of two Angelus.  We will leave our wounded to hold the pass, and take Rizqullah ibn Zayyan’s men with us to Ma?īn.  Ismet, we will march with more men than before we reached the pass.  We will bring over a thousand soldiers against the traitors.”


    Ismet exhaled.  It was better than she’d had any right to expect.  “Let the men sleep and eat,” she said.  “And treat the wounded.  Then, we march.”