“Real,” Briar whispered.
The queen and all of her snakes nodded.
“Have a good day,” he said, entirely unsure of what else to tell her.
She smiled as they all retreated back to their flat, painted selves. As flummoxed as he had ever been, Briar trudged uphill to the camp. He couldn’t even tell Rosethorn. She had too much on her mind for him to worry her more.
When they took the road, Briar carefully did not look at the stones until they had safely crossed the river. Only then did he turn to gaze at them. A number of gaudy, painted figures in shades of orange-red, bright green, and deep blue sat on top of the stones, waving at him. Atop the biggest stone, the naga swayed as she stood on her muscular tail, eight of her heads looking at their neighbors or the air. The crowned head blew a kiss at Briar. Gingerly, trying to do it so no one else would see, he waved at her.
A hard hand smacked him in the ribs. “What is the matter with your hearing today?” Rosethorn demanded. “I said your name three times! Captain Lango says we should reach the junction of the Tom Sho and the Snow Serpent sometime tomorrow. I’m leaving you there.”
Briar frowned. “You didn’t see —”
“I’ve had visions till my eyes want to pop. So what?”
He looked at the toe of his boot. A handful of sparkling snake scales lay on the leather. He would let them serve as a reminder that what he’d seen weren’t visions in the least.
“I should go with you,” he said, once he collected his thoughts. “There are strange creatures up here, Rosethorn —”
“No,” she interrupted. “I won’t argue the point anymore.” She turned her mount away from his and rode up to the head of the column.
Souda moved into the spot at his side. “I’m sure she’ll feel better once this errand of hers is done,” she told Briar softly.
Will she? he wondered. Will any of us?
They had ridden three miles when they saw buzzards circling near the road. In a shallow gully where a creek ran into the Snow Serpent, they found the remains of a group of villagers, one of Captain Lango’s squads, and some Yanjingyi warriors. Lango dismounted and walked down among the dead along with a few of his people. Briefly the Gyongxin soldiers stood there or along the edge of the road, their palms pressed together in prayer. Then the captain and those who had gone down to look climbed out of the gully.
Rosethorn and Briar approached him. “We know you haven’t time to bury them,” Rosethorn said, “but we can grow plants over them, all of them, until they become part of the earth.”
Lango shook his head. “We have sky burial. The buzzards will have them, and the other creatures. In that manner they will become part of our holiest of lands and remain close to all the gods.”
“This sky burial is your tradition?”
Briar envied the polite curiosity in Rosethorn’s voice. He was clenching his fists to keep from yelping his disgust. He had seen the buzzards haunting the gorge as they had fled into Gyongxe, but he hadn’t thought they were following meals left by Captain Rana. Or by him and his companions. He knew the Yanjingyi soldiers had their own elaborate funeral rituals that did not include being left to rot in the open. At home, the dead were buried to return to the earth.
“Sky burial is a practice of thousands of years,” Lango replied. “Commonly we have more ceremony for our dead, but war leaves us little time for the celebrations of peace. The ending is the same. The creatures feed and return us to Gyongxe.” He nodded to Souda and her captain. They came closer to hear what he had to say. “You see the danger. Here we have Yanjingyi soldiers who have come this far into the plain. We must press on.”
That night they were forced to camp in the open, together with two small villages’ worth of refugees. Briar saw Soudamini the commander for the first time as she chose the camping ground and selected sentries, both ordinary and mage. The mages among the soldiers and the villagers placed their protection spells, while Rosethorn and Briar sprinkled lines of thorn seed all around the outside of the camp, to be woken if things came to a fight. They took guard shifts with the other mages, watching and listening in the dark for the enemy.
No one came.
By noon they had caught up with Parahan’s company. They were escorting a long train of refugees to the Temple of the Tigers, a massive fortress that guarded the meeting of the Tom Sho and Snow Serpent Rivers.
“We’ve seen scouts in the distance,” Parahan told them when they had a chance to talk. “They ran from us. Captain Jha sent scouts to me last night. He has found two villages burned in the northeast and planted with the emperor’s flags.”
“When does Jha mean to return to us?” Lango asked, worried. “If the enemy is in this area, I don’t like him being out there alone.”
“His message said he’d meet us at the Temple of the Tigers,” Parahan assured him.
Briar drifted back until he could ride without having to talk to anyone. His gut was tight; his hands trembled. During the night he had dreamed of the imperial birthday celebration, and the field of Weishu’s soldiers that had seemed to go on forever. It wasn’t the first time since they had left the palace that he’d dreamed of them. Today, though, the dream had a more ominous meaning.
Captain Jha was out there with one hundred warriors. They had looked like a lot before, when they were all crowded together on the road west. Now, imagining them against the emperor’s thousands, he realized the number was pathetic.
Stop panicking, he ordered himself, when it seemed he might vomit. The emperor has his thousands at the capital, not all the way down here. He’s got his main force guarding his own silky self, not burning a clump of wood-walled villages!
And what happens if Weishu catches
What he wouldn’t give for a few of those nagas and many-armed gods to send Weishu back to Yanjing!
The sky was turning gray and they had ridden another three miles or so when Briar saw something bobbing in the river. At first he thought it was a boat. He rode down to the water’s edge for a closer look. The thing that had gotten his attention was brown and muddy. A log or a branch? Several like it followed, rolling as they came over the rapids. One floated close to the edge and turned, showing him a swollen, eyeless face. Two of the corpses were missing heads. All had either ugly blade wounds or carried the crossbow bolts that had killed them. Behind them came the carcass of a yak, its hooves sticking in the air.
“Say nothing,” Rosethorn murmured. Briar flinched. “Our soldiers have orders to keep the villagers away from the river or they’ll panic. We’re only a mile from the temple.”
“What if the temple’s under attack?” Briar asked. “What if imperial soldiers are there already?”
Rosethorn shook her head. “Scouts came to tell us all’s safe. The dead are coming from west of there. No one’s been reported on the south side of the river.”
“You aren’t still going on alone!”
“I’ll be fine,” Rosethorn said. “You stay with Parahan and Souda and do as you’re told, understand? They know more of war than you do.”
Briar glared at her.
“When we go home, I am giving Vedris a big hug and kiss,” Rosethorn remarked. “I never appreciated what a fine ruler he is before we made this journey.”
“Me neither,” Briar agreed. “There’s a lot to be said for a king who isn’t greedy.”
They rode together in silence, trying not to look at the other bodies that came down the river. At last they reached the two bridges at the meeting of the Tom Sho and the Snow Serpent Rivers. The temple rose on a rocky hill high above both of them. Their people didn’t wait. Soldiers and villagers streamed across the Tom Sho Bridge on their way up the hill.
Rosethorn leaned across the space between her mount and Briar’s to kiss him on the cheek. “Travel safe,
