The invaders crept up on the first Helat village seven nights into their foray into the Empire of Day. It was just a small cluster of huts beside a shallow bend in the Salt River, a few sheep and goats, and an orchard of short, twisted cherry trees covered in pink and white blossoms.

  “We can slip past without being spotted,” Izak said. “There’s no reason to sack it.”

  “We can slip past, but Hack and five hundred men can’t,” Etian said. Before they left Blacktower, the crown prince had sent Hack to bring a small army of agreed-upon men behind them. “We’re not leaving any settlement along the river for them to deal with. When they come, I want speed and silence and open supply lines.”

  “Anyhow, Prince Izak, you can’t know if we’ve already been spotted,” Arnic said. “Some pointy-ears can bend the light so they look like they’re somewhere else. They could already be rousting their men out of bed to fight.”

  As if to prove his point, a scream went up in the village. A woman sprinted away from a rickety privy house shouting in the Helat tongue. An arrow sprouted from her back, joined by a second in her liver before she hit the ground. Barrick, who’d gone ahead to scout for them, whistled.

  “Now!” Etian spurred his horse.

  An unseen fist squeezed Izak’s internals as he galloped after his brother. The Thorns and soldiers followed, weapons drawn. The archers had already spread out around the village, ready to bring down any who tried to run.

  Doors opened and lanterns appeared in the darkness, villagers still half-asleep and tripping over their bedclothes. One of Handsome Jeik’s axes cracked into the chest of a balding man with a lantern in one hand and a wood maul in the other. A spin and swing took off the wife’s head. Across the frosted village green, a woman screamed and held in her entrails until Churl turned his horse around and put the tip of his pike down her throat.

  Etian rode half a length ahead of Izak, his sword opening throats without prejudice between men, women, and children. A long crook shot out from behind a stable and hooked the crown prince’s arm.

  Izak’s mount crashed into the stick, Loss impaling the young shepherd as the crook was ripped from the slight man’s hands. Izak felt the swordstaff’s blade slide into the shepherd’s stomach, and only at the last second realized what would happen if he didn’t brace.

  He hooked his elbow around her haft and leaned his hip into her for leverage. The shepherd let out a shocked grunt of pain as Loss’s sword blade tore itself free, opening him under the ribs and spilling ropy entrails.

  Bowstrings twanged all around, and fire blazed as Handsome Jeik tossed a broken lantern onto the thatched roof of a stable. The idiot thought struck Izak that this was obscenely unfair—shepherds used to a life of sunlight frightened from their beds to fight off soldiers who lived and warred in the darkness. But what did fairness have to do with anything, war or otherwise?

  Etian had been yanked from his saddle by the shepherd’s crook. Izak thought to grab his brother up onto the saddle behind him, but the Josean-blessed prince had abandoned mounted combat for foot.

  Nearby, Dolo’s blade crashed against a rusty flail wielded by a barefoot woman with blood running down her chin and her left ear hanging off. Hare hesitated—Izak saw the look of distaste twisting the bastard’s mouth—then cut the woman down from behind. Snarling, Tankard loped past and leapt onto a shirtless man, driving him to the ground and tearing out his throat. Cabalius’s ax made a dull thud as it crashed sidelong against the head of a fat man wearing nothing but smallclothes and boots.

  An arrow whistled past Izak’s face. He felt the fletching tickle his ear, and a heartbeat later, he felt the sting and blood trickle from the slice the arrowhead had left in his cheek. He hooked his shield over his arm and turned his horse, searching for the bowman.

  The bowman was a woman. A long-sleeved woolen shift billowed around her legs and pulled tight against her breasts as she sent another arrow flying toward him.

  He ducked behind the shield. Felt the impact in a resonating thud. She was already drawing again. In the dancing shadows from the spreading flames, she looked beautiful and feral.

  He couldn’t kill her. He raised his shield hand to catch hold of the energies in her blood and lock her up.

  “Izak!” Etian bellowed.

  Pain exploded in Izak’s lower back, and his horse reared, screaming. The world tumbled around him, and he hit the hardpacked dirt, his breath leaving him in a whoof.

  A grizzled face leaned over him, a huge flat grain thresher raised high to smash Izak’s skull in. Gasping, Izak tried to roll aside, but the shield was still on his arm and his clawed hand wouldn’t release Loss’s haft.

  The thresher lurched sideways, blood and teeth spraying as a war hammer smashed in the Helat’s face. It was Bones, one of Etian’s soldiers. Without a second glance Izak’s way, the soldier sprinted off to his next victim.

  Izak struggled to his feet and joined Sketcher at Etian’s side. The big rustic looked half panicked and half confused, but he cut down any Helat who got close to the crown prince.

  It felt as if the sack took an eternity, but in truth the flames barely had time to spread from the stable to the closest house before they had taken the village. There were perhaps twenty Helat able to put up a fight in residence, along with a few elderly and a handful of children.

  Gray vomited when Handsome Jeik put the ax to the children. Izak had already left himself behind by then.

  What brought him back was the sound of a woman shouting, and Cabalius’s laughter.

  The ax-wielding soldier had dragged the injured Helat archer into a hovel and shoved her shift up around her hips. Churl and Slackstring stood by awaiting their turns with eager grins while the woman struggled and Cabalius got his breeches undone.

  Izak didn’t think. He grabbed hold of the energies in the axman’s blood. Every bone in Cabalius’s body crunched as if a great stone bridge had been dropped on him. Blood, teeth, and bits of brain and organ showered the Helat woman and the onlooking pair of soldiers.

  Potbellied Churl cursed and brown-toothed Slackstring gaped. Izak caught their blood energies and dragged them out into the open.

  The spreading flames turned black. Darkness consumed the village around them. The wind howled like tortured souls screaming for mercy. Lightning cracked across the formerly empty night sky.

  Slow, painful thorns grew from the soldiers’ bones, pushing their way inch by agonizing inch toward the surface. Slackstring dropped to one knee, reaching for Izak, his mouth working but unable to speak. Churl pissed himself and screamed for mercy.

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  “I’ll help kill every Helat in every village between here and the strong gods’ hell,” Izak growled, his low voice carrying impossibly over the storm. “But any man in this company who commits rape or inflicts some other unnecessary suffering on our enemies will die and die horribly. This I swear on my blade and my soul and my royal blood magic.”

  The barbed points of long, wicked thorns emerged from the offenders’ flesh as Izak turned to face his fellow grafted swordsmen and Etian’s soldiers. Mouths hung open, and the blazing black fire made round eyes flicker and shine.

  “Is that understood?” Izak thundered.

  Nods and affirmatives drifted from the awestruck onlookers.

  Izak dropped the spell. The wind and lightning died, and the flames returned to crackling orange and yellow. The enchanted spikes disappeared from Slackstring and Churl’s flesh, and the men dropped to their hands and knees, whimpering prayers of thanks to the strong gods and the prince who had spared them.

  The archer woman snatched up her bow and swung it sidelong into Churl’s head. The wood splintered, and the blindsided soldier tumbled into Slackstring.

  She sprinted for the forest.

  While everyone else stood around dumbfounded, Etian grabbed the bow from Sketcher’s fist, yanked an arrow out of a crumpled corpse, and fired. The shaft thudded into the base of the woman’s skull. She dropped bonelessly and skidded in the dirt and grass before coming to a rest at the foot of a tree.

  Handsome Jeik was the first to find his voice. “They didn’t mean anything by it. They were just having some fun.”

  That gave Churl back some of his lost courage.

  “It was just some pointy-ear,” he said. “We were going to kill her anyway. Some of us haven’t had a proper woman in years!”

  “I brought you for your pike, not your excuses.” Etian’s cold voice echoed across the burning, desolated village. “What Izak said is my ruling as well. We’re here to cut our way to the imperial city—only. Lose sight of that and you forfeit your life.”

  The tension in Izak’s neck and shoulders released. He hadn’t realized until just then how uncertain he’d been whether Etian would back him.

  The crown prince returned the bow to Sketcher and sent men scrounging through the hovels for survivors, arrows, and what provisions they could carry. Their horses hadn’t run far. Izak sent Hare and Dolo to collect them, then turned to his brother.

  “Etian—”

  “It was smart sending a big, bloody message first thing,” Etian cut him off. “You proved you don’t make empty threats.” His cracked lens glinted in the light from the burning house as he cleaned his bloody falchion on a dead man’s night robe. “But if you kill another one of my men without my say, you’ll answer for it.”

  Izak scowled and set Loss next to his boot. “If you’re going to defend that vermin—”

  “I’m not defending him, I’m winning a war. We need every one of these men, no matter how you feel about them.” Etian sheathed his blade. “Don’t forget that we’re fighting the betrayers, not one another. Not yet.”

  ***

  In the nights immediately following Cabalius’s death, the soldiers steered clear of Izak. When they stopped for the day to make camp or when they watered the horses, the Thorns and the men from the king’s army separated like oil and water. The mutterings from the ungrafted side of the camp suggested that because Helat were too easy to kill, the elder prince had had to get his satisfaction killing one of their own.

  “He’s Teikru-blessed. They go twisted if they don’t get a thrill somewhere.”

  “Bet you if he’d got to her first instead of Cab, that would’ve ended differently.”

  The slurs on their commander didn’t do much to endear the soldiers to the Thorns.

  “Don’t listen to ’em, Commander,” Dolo said, while they saddled their horses. “They’re full of snow and piss from all those years up north.”

  “Probably all deviants and low street cutpurses.” Hare leaned into his mount’s side while he jerked the cinch tight. “Some lord sent them north with the body tax so he wouldn’t have to deal with them.”

  “Did you all hear that?” Gray stopped massaging his bad elbow where he’d taken the mace swing. “That’s the first time I’ve ever heard a boar call a sow fat.”

  “I wasn’t a part of the body tax.” Hare’s father had sent him to Thornfield when it became clear the crown wouldn’t allow the Duke of West Crag to legitimize him. “Commander Izak wasn’t, either.”

  Gray rolled his eyes. “Just because some of us got sent to Thornfield for cutting a few purse strings doesn’t make us the dung stuck to your boots, bastard boy. Be careful who you’re dumping out with the chamber pot.”

  “Exactly. Remember who your brothers are,” Dolo said.

  “I remember!” Hare snapped. “I was just saying, we’re stuck in enemy territory with a bunch of…”

  Izak cursed under his breath. They weren’t going to survive the next village, let alone take the imperial city, if they turned on one another.

  “Our fight isn’t with the soldiers.” He raised his voice and nodded to Bones, the nearest of Etian’s men. “Bones saved my hide in that village. If not for his war hammer, my head would be as flat and pulpy as beaten parchment. That’s all the proof I need that the soldiers are stalwart and trustworthy men.”

  The soldier grunted and went back to tying on his bedroll.

  It wasn’t much, but it was a start.

  When Izak didn’t crush any more ally soldiers at the next town, it got a little better. Afterward, Tamer ribbed him about being Teikru-blessed—a harmless joke with only a hint of malice—then started up some silly song about a toad with horns. Even though Izak couldn’t have felt less like singing or laughing after that bloodbath, he joined in. Soon Rake was yelling the chorus over the lot of them, and Lathan Red-Eye was laughing his tongueless belly laugh.

  In the next town, Gray saved Handsome Jeik from a butcher’s knife in the back, and in the stretch between the third and the fourth villages, Tankard made friends with Marit, forcing the reluctant Hare of West Crag to talk to the archer or abandon the enormous war hound’s friendship to him.

  The forested miles passed, and the lowlands alongside the river became towering hundred-foot overlooks populated by scraggly pines and waving grass. Across the waters to the west, jagged red mountains glared at them.

  Hardy grasses greened and stunted trees budded, but the cold never gave way to warmth on the cliffs. Snow fell and the occasional drizzle of ice. Some nights the wind scoured the bluffs so hard and so cold that the entire company huddled together sharing cloaks and bedrolls and saddle blankets—Thorn, soldier, prince, and dog alike—and still they shivered. That brought them together faster than any of Izak’s cajoling.

  Etian cursed his lack of foreknowledge about the Empire of Day’s climate. The soldiers had thought they’d lived through the worst of what the north had to throw at them on the front, but along the border the summer actually brought heat. In this rocky landscape, nothing of the sort was forthcoming.

  The Helat settlements grew farther apart, and the game thinned down to fowl and the occasional small furry creature. They heard wolves howling afar off, but never saw sign of anything larger than a martin. In response to the shortage, the soldiers cut their portions in half, and Etian and the Thorns went on starvation rations. Those with blood magic could survive by drinking blood when they had game and draining energies from nearby living creatures when they couldn’t.

  Slackstring died outside a barely populated shepherds’ grazing camp, victim of a lucky throw from a sheep boy’s sling. Etian found a spade in the shepherds’ hovel, and he and Izak helped dig the brown-toothed archer’s grave in the rocky soil.

  That day, soldiers and Thorns alike feasted on the dried mutton, mealy apples, and strong spiced cider the shepherds had laid by while they swapped stories about the dead archer. With the renewed rations, the mood was a curious mix of grief and celebration.

  The shepherds’ camp was the first of an increased number of settlements. They found the village the shepherds drove herds for the next night, then an apple orchard shielding a thick cluster of huts tucked up against the Salt.

  A few nights on from there, where a narrow tributary turned into a waterfall dumping into the muddy river, they found a prosperous little town with a mill. Upwards of fifty people called the place home. When it was emptied and all the food the horses could carry had been loaded up, the Thorns and soldiers put the town to the torch.

  At a trapper village edged by a stinking tannery pit, a young Helat girl slipped past the archers during the fighting. Barrick and Sketcher had to spend the rest of the night tracking her.

  Neither man wanted to talk about it when they returned at sunup, besides dull-voiced confirmations that the escapee had been dealt with.

  Later, Sketcher confided in Izak that the girl had been carrying an infant. When they caught up to her, she leapt off one of the cliffs with him.

  “He screamed all the way down,” the big rustic whispered. “Until.” Tears wet his chapped, wind-burnt face, and his nose dripped, but Sketcher didn’t seem to notice. “The girl didn’t make a sound. Not once.”

  By then Izak was spending so much time away from himself that the thought of an infant’s gruesome death at the bottom of a rocky cliff couldn’t touch him. He tried to imagine what pointed Helat ears looked like on a baby.

  Sketcher rubbed one eye and frowned when his fingers came away wet. The big rustic cursed up a storm, but the tears only came harder. He pulled his hood up to hide his face.

  Part of Izak knew it was good that Sketcher could still feel something. The rest wished the big man would learn to put that tender heart aside before it destroyed him. Izak would tell him how to get it back later.

  If he could remember how himself.

  e