She rolled off to dirt softer than she’d expected. Socair was back to her feet quickly, the fight still roaring around her, a few soldiers staring at her in awe. She whipped her hand toward the fight.
“Go!”
The soldiers came to their senses and rushed away to continue the attack. She looked up, arrows still flew through the air. The column had not broken and turned. Her hands were slick with blood so she wiped them clean and took a sturdy grip on the hilt of her blade. She pulled it from the bone and turned to find her next task. From behind came a sound that raised a deep concern in her. Creaking, loud and with too familiar a cadence. No, she thought. No. Not now.
A great ball of flame woofed over her head. The trebuchets. There was no need for them. No horn had sounded a rout nor a broken flank. Another came, to her left, flying toward the rear of the hippocamp column.
She must stop it. The city was as apt to burn as the horsefolk and they would have no place from which to repel a further attack. Socair turned, running through a field of bodies and limping wounded toward the command platform. She made it no more than a few hundred yards before she saw a sight that she near didn’t believe.
Deifir stood among the field with Meirge and a few others. Socair ran to her.
“Deifir, this is no—”
Her Treorai’s face was pale, covered with tears. She wiped them away, seeming almost embarrassed. “Socair, I… I am afraid I must apologize to you.” Her voice cracked, almost a desperate laugh. She had seen it before among this sort of death. “I… heh… I fear I could not bear to watch anymore. My heart…” She looked back at the walls as a volley of fire was loosed. “I ordered them fired. Cró… he has no blame in this. He tried to refuse me.” Her eyes were hollow.
Socair came in front of Deifir and held her by the shoulders. “I understand. I do. I know your heart, Deifir. You should not have come.”
“I had to come…” She sobbed, trying to choke them down but unable.
“You must…” She looked to Meirge whose face was devoid of all emotion. “Meirge, you must take her from here.” She let Deifir go and turned. “You must evacuate the city of any who do not mean to fight. And have any who can walk bring water.” His eyes tracked past her, following along. She narrowed her eyes in confusion.
“Little girl?” Deifir spoke, but not from where she had been. Socair whipped around.
It was a girl. Young, bleeding from her face and her crotch. Most of the hair torn from her head and dried semen across what was left of her clothes. She dragged a broken leg, black and ruined. It was three scratches across her face that took the whole of Socair’s attention.
“Nath?” She whispered the words.
The girl stood dead still as Deifir came closer to her. Her eyes came up, wild and unfocused.
“Mine.” Nath croaked the word from broken lungs.
She pulled her arm from behind her back. Socair recognized the shape and moved as fast as her spent muscles could bear. She threw a hand in front of Deifir but it would not be enough.
The chunky clack of the bow firing weighed heavy in her ears. A short noise but it echoed, somehow, in the empty of the field. The satyr-made bolt punched through Socair’s forearm as though it had not even been there and lodged deep in Deifir’s chest. The noblewoman reeled, coming upright and falling backward, only sadness on her face.
Meirge and his retinue were past her before Socair could so much as turn her head. Nath screamed as the swords pierced every part of her. Meirge answered, the sound of a broken man, full with rage.
Socair was the first to Deifir’s side. She shivered and jerked. The bolt had entered her chest high and the blood from her mouth told of the damage it had done. She coughed, calling for Meirge weakly. He came, eyes bloodshot and desperate, kneeling beside her.
“I am here, love. I am here.” He took her hand, looking over her body as though seeking a way to fix it.
“Good,” she coughed. A spatter of blood landed on her chest where more quickly
