Courage and discipline were vital. The automatons were slaves to their commands. Some took that for perfect discipline, and some mistook their lack of fear for courage, but it was the antithesis of courage. Courage was to face down the very fears the gyanrigot could not even recognize. Courage was to fight on in spite of looming disaster.

Trumpets blared, calling the Voraxani to alert. Guards stationed at the western sally port hauled away on thick ropes. Crossbars swung up. Sweaty, loincloth-clad men turned capstans. The gate swung outward.

With Vlay Laedhze in the lead, the Voraxani poured onto the battlefield.

Things had developed much as Moraven Tolo had predicted. The city’s main southern gate was its weakest point, so the assault had been concentrated there. The first wave of humans had broken. The battlefield lay littered with casualties-be they still or crawling back toward their own lines. They had been a distraction while the boring beasts had tried to tunnel beneath the walls. Neither of those ploys had worked, so Nelesquin had shifted tactics.

Conventional siege machines rolled along the Imperial Highway. A massive ram mounted within a long wagon led the parade. A roof over the top and shields covering the front and sides protected the men as they pushed the creaking machine forward. Two siege towers came next, each as tall as the city’s walls. Along line of kwajiin soldiers propelled the towers along the road. Once they had them in position, they’d mount the towers and hurry across bridges to top the wall. Soaking-wet hides covered both the towers and the rams’ roofs to repel fire.

The kwajiin were the antithesis of the gyanrigot warriors. Their standards, terrible and yet glorious, had been affixed to the machines, proclaiming pride in past deeds. The warriors chanted rhythmically and the engines moved in time with that music. Even the rams’ steel-shod points swayed with the tempo, seeming eager to pound the city’s gates to pieces.

Formations of men flanked the engines, though marching through the corpse-strewn fields slowed their advance. Nelesquin’s monsters and conscript attendants hemmed them in, preventing defections. The hammer-headed xonarchii pulled wagons, like children’s carts, bulging with smaller stones. They’d dig a hand in, raise it, and throw, scattering rocks against the walls and battlements. Men toppled, screaming, and the kwajiin cheered.

The men of Moriande answered with well-aimed arrows and flights of their own stones.

The mounts’ hoofbeats pounded up into Ciras. The Voraxani drove at the monsters. The conscripts shouted warnings and bared swords. The warnings turned to screams as the Voraxani appeared on their metal mounts, festooned with spikes and blades.

Ciras deployed the armor and spikes barely a dozen yards before the conscript line. He squeezed his knees and rode over the first man. His sword flicked right. A bloody geyser spurted into the night, then he was through.

A xonarch towered over him. Ciras had known they were big, but hadn’t appreciated just how big. The creature could have easily grasped the top of the city’s wall and hauled itself over.

Ciras drove in hard, then rose in his stirrups and slashed mightily at the thing’s left ankle. Fur flew and blood flowed. He’d hoped to cut the tendon and hobble it, but he would have had an easier time hewing through oak.

The creature roared furiously and flung a handful of stones. They crushed a dozen of its allies, smearing broken bodies across the ground. By then Ciras had ridden far enough forward for the driver to see him. The driver jerked a lever and the beast swiped a hand at him.

Ducking the blow, Ciras slashed the creature’s palm. The xonarch roared again and sucked on the wound. The driver worked the control rods. The xonarchii stopped midlick, then smashed both fists against the ground. It gathered itself to leap.

Too close. I’m dead.

The tingle of jaedun accompanied an arrow’s flight from the walls. The shaft passed through the beast’s right nostril and burst through the thin bone wall separating sinus from brain. The razored broadhead sliced through nerves and arteries, plunging deep into the brain stem.

The xonarch ’s left arm and leg collapsed. It mewed, stricken, crashing on its left side. The impact bounced the swordsman and his mount into the air. The right arm clawed weakly at Ciras but missed. Then the only visible eye fluttered and rolled up in the broad, bony head.

He landed astride his mount in the gap between its arms and thighs. The war mask’s visage concealed his surprise. He brought his mount past, thinking to cut around the body and deal with the driver, but he never got the chance.

The ground opened beneath him.

Ciras rode a dirt-and-grass avalanche into a breached tunnel. Four yards down, the mount found its feet. It kicked at dirt-covered men. In response to Ciras’ commands, it started scrambling back to the surface. Ciras clung to it, but a flying stone struck him full in the chest. It glanced off his breastplate with enough force to somersault him backward, casting him again into the darkness.

He landed on one knee, somehow retaining the vanyesh blade. He rose and placed his back against a tunnel wall. Surprise pulsed through him, chased by fear. Many men emerged from both sides of the darkened tunnel. They all brandished swords, their lethal silhouettes intent on his death.

Ciras invoked jaedun. What he saw and heard took on secondary importance. He concentrated on what he felt. He parried. His blade came around and up, then thrust through a throat. He pulled back, and slashed left. The vanyesh blade clanged off a battle mask, then chopped down. Blood splashed black and hot. Shift left, parry with a hip and twist, letting another thrust pass wide of his ribs. Slash up through an armpit. A limb drops, a scream echoes.

The battle shifted. Close quarters had favored his foes initially. Quickly, however, fear constricted the battlefield, dictating their movements. Their desire to elude death just made them easier to kill.

One man lunged from the darkness. Ciras sensed him only as a point of fury in that sea of fear. Ciras parried the thrust, then riposted. His blade arced up and around, slashing at the man’s head.

His opponent ducked, whipped his other hand around. His blade’s wooden scabbard cracked against Ciras’ knee.

Pain exploded and the swordsman danced back, eluding another slash. Ciras gingerly planted his right foot. More pain, but his knee held. Then something grabbed his ankle. A dying man, blind and desperate, curled himself around Ciras’ leg.

I am rooted in place like an oak! A vision flashed before his eyes. His feet extended roots into the earth. His limbs stiffened like branches. His skin became bark.

Then came the killing stroke. It passed beneath Ciras’ left elbow, aimed at his waist. Sliding below the breastplate, the blade sliced cleanly through armor lacings and his robe.

It will open me cleanly. My guts will pour out in one steaming mass.

He prepared himself for the sting, for the gush and flow, but it never happened.

The cut splintered flesh and caught firmly in the wood beneath.

Ciras’ blade fell, driven by the weight of an oaken limb. It drove the man to his knees, crushing his shoulder. He looked up, disbelief in his eyes. Ciras hit him again, scattering his brains, then slashed down and rid himself of the man hugging his leg.

Three thumps heralded the arrival of gyanrigot reinforcements. One killing machine began working its way south, while the other two charged into the tunnel’s north end. Men screamed, and the machines clanked. Both sets of sounds grew distant quickly.

Alone save for the dead, Ciras probed the wound at his left hip. His glove came away darkly stained, but he smelled no blood.

And those pale flecks…they are splinters. Oak splinters.