Refuge crashed into the Faithful.
It was a battle unlike any Aned Heast had fought before: Refuge’s charge met was met by the Leerans in silence, and the first of the burning soldiers that Oya, Zvae and Saelo slammed into did not even raise their weapons. Instead, they tumbled, already dead, a wall of burning flesh for Refuge to ride through, for their mounts to stamp out, for their discipline to be tested.
The fury that he had felt earlier returned to him, even as his own sword flashed out, crashing into the head of a Leeran soldier who struggled, half alive, towards him. From his left, he heard one of his soldiers shout that their arrows had been used up, but by then the Leerans had closed in, and combat had turned to swords and shields. Up close, the Faithful bore serene expressions on their burning faces, and although their eyes were open, Heast suspected that they were not truly awake.
Even in the square, the Leerans had greater numbers than Refuge, and they pressed against front and left flank strongly. Heast’s biggest concern was that they would be able to swell around the flanks and surround them. Se’Saera’s Leerans – he would not refer to them as Waalstan’s, or ascribe any ownership of the soldiers to the general he had fought in Mireea – were kept from doing that by their own numbers, and by the discipline of Refuge. Yet the fear of being encircled was not one that Heast had alone, and when he turned to give the order to shore up the left, he found both Qiyala and Bliq, along with the other soldiers who had ridden double into the square, had already slid off their mounts and moved to strengthen the edge.
A burning woman burst towards Heast while his attention was diverted. Dimly, he was aware that she had leapt from the back of a horse and onto one of the black-and-red-armoured soldiers of Refuge. The soldier she knocked off the horse had lost her weapon and had been forced to grab the Faithful’s burning arms to stop her from choking her. As she did that, the burning soldier surged forwards, charging him. Heast’s mount met the charge by rearing back on its legs and lashing out at the soldier. She fell, but it was the two who followed, the two who had come through the gap, that proved too much for the horse. Flames scalded its hair, and the sight of the flames and the smell of burning flesh overwhelmed the animal’s training. The horse reared back again, causing Heast to lose control, for him to slip from the saddle.
He hit the ground hard, the wind knocked out of him, his sword lost. The two burning Leerans rushed and Heast rolled to avoid the swords that came crashing down where he had fallen. The Captain of Refuge lurched painfully to his feet, grabbing the ugly dagger in his belt, aware that it would not do much against two soldiers – but there was no one who could turn to help him.
He felt Se’Saera’s gaze intensify, as if this moment, this instance, was something that she had been waiting for, as if it was of importance to her. Heast saw his death, saw it in flashes of hard steel and burning limbs, his dagger grinding into the neck of the soldier on his left. On instinct, he turned to the one on the right, and as he did, the burning soldier’s chest burst open, as if an unseen hand had punched through him. Heast charged the other, his dagger plunged into the stomach of the soldier, the flames on the body threatening to grab him, threatening to leap to him. They forced him to take two steps back, to brush at his arms as he did.
‘Captain!’ Anemone’s bloodstained hand reached out for him, her wet grip with enough strength to help lift him onto the horse behind her. ‘My grandmother—’
‘Is laughing.’ Lehana had closed the gap that his attacker had come through, her bastard sword lashing out in devastating arcs. ‘She’s supposed to be helping Taaira and Isaap.’
‘She has.’ At the back of the square, as if on cue, sounds of battle began to emerge. ‘Kye Taaira is very angry, she says.’
Heast understood that. ‘Where is Waalstan?’
‘In the very middle.’
‘On Lehana!’ It hurt to shout and he knew, soon, that his voice would soon be burned out. ‘On her and push!’
The former guards of the First Queen of Ooila did not hesitate to shift into the formation he ordered.
As they did, Se’Saera’s gaze fell away and screams filled the air.
They did not emerge from Refuge. All the warriors were horrified to hear the sounds rise from the burning soldiers of Se’Saera.
Their god had held their pain at bay. In leaving, she left them with only their torment, as if it was a punishment for failure, for being unable to stop Heast. The thought confused him, for she could still very well have killed him. But he had survived her attack and she had left. In her place, the agony of her Faithful announced itself. It destroyed the form that they had, caused mounts to throw their riders, for riders to drop their weapons, for them to lift their burning hands in horror, as if, for the first time, they became aware of what had happened.
Only one was spared.
He sat in the middle of the square, untouched by the flames that consumed the soldiers around him. His silver armour had disguised the fact by reflecting the human furnace around him.
General Ekar Waalstan met the Captain of Refuge’s pale, furious gaze.
He raised his sword and charged.
He did it clumsily, as if he had only learned to ride recently and had never truly mastered the skills that a soldier needed.
In his path stepped Lieutenant Lehana, who had not only been trained in all the skills the man before her lacked, but who had lived the life that Waalstan had not.
The awareness dawned in Waalstan’s face as he rode towards her. He saw the soldier before him, saw the anger in her, saw that it was a response to the atrocity that he rode through, the violation of everything she had been trained in, everything she had been taught, and the rules that she lived by in her soldier’s life. General Ekar Waalstan saw in her the horror of what his orders had given rise to, the devastation he had wrought on men and women who had believed in him and his god, and had obeyed without question.
He saw that and, in the moment before Lehana’s bastard sword crashed into him, he lowered his own weapon, to let her blow tear the life from him unimpeded.