I did not care if the whole of Kregen heard her. The overlords meant nothing. The metallic rattle of their war harness sounded loudly now, the stamp of sectrix hooves iron-hard on the turf. She lost that brief spurt of luminous reason. She lay back in my arms, as she had when I had first held her, looking up from her tiny face to the glory of my Delia beyond, smiling. Her hands and her face were ice-cold.
'My lord. .' she whispered. 'My love. .'
She was slipping from me.
'Mother,' she said. 'Here is Father.'
The pallor of her face, the coldness of her, and that ugly red dribble from her mouth. .
'Father-' she said again. And then: 'Gafard.' She spoke his name three or four times. At the end she said, 'Oh, to be home in Val-'
The overlords of Magdag rode up to take me.
I sat on the ground holding the broken body of my daughter in my arms as they came for me — as my Velia died.
