fairly cut him in half. Sasha stumbled to her feet, her shoulder screaming, the blade strangely light in her hand, which she put down to the jarring numbness of impact…until she realised that her blade had shattered midway from the hilt.
She threw the hilt away as Terel came back, grabbed his hand with her good arm and swung up behind him. He galloped immediately for the rear, heading away from the fighting, swerving to avoid some intervening clashes as Sasha clutched to his middle and fought the urge to try and steer. Dear spirits, she hated being a passenger.
“Where's my horse?” she yelled at Terel. “Where's Peg?” Terel did not bother to reply to a question he had no hope of answering. The guardsman raced protectively to one side and Sasha hunted around for Errollyn, but could not find him. That scared her. No Errollyn, no Aisha. She heard a new round of bloodthirsty yelling and then some of the reserve was charging back the other way—perhaps a hundred horse, and desperate to get into the action.
Terel stopped in the middle of a field of grain, his horse heaving desperately for air. The racket of battle continued behind, but now, there were horns blowing. The Hadryn retreat. They were pulling back.
“They need to stop,” Sasha gasped, realising suddenly that she was shaking all over. “We…we need to tell them! Someone tell them, pull back! We must preserve strength!”
“I'll tell them,” the guardsman said grimly and galloped his poor, frothing horse back toward the fray. Sasha felt Terel's muscles twitch, the reflex to follow.
“Go help him,” she said. “I'll get off.”
“No,” said Terel, putting a hand on her leg. “Stay. I can't leave you here alone.”
They must have been winning, Sasha reckoned, because there were officers backing off and watching the battle with the confidence of soldiers seeing their enemies flee. The guardsman arrived beside those officers and pointed back toward Sasha. One put a horn to his lips and blew the reform. Horns duelled in the darkening sky, and the cries and yells of men also began to change pitch, seeking now to instruct and organise.
Sasha turned in the saddle and surveyed the scene behind. The fields of grain, once soft and level, were now torn and flattened like the coat of some animal ravaged by a terrible disease. Some bodies lay visible, and some horses struggled terribly against a fate they had not deserved. Some men were walking, or limping, searching for comrades, or simply away from where they'd been. Two Goeren-yai guarded a Hadryn rider with wary blades, to the Hadryn's apparent disinterest, as he listened in stunned silence to the trumpets.
The remnants of the reserve were riding across the fields now, dismounting as they found wounded. Sasha tapped Terel on the shoulder and pointed. He reined his horse about with no dissent, and rode that way.
Soon a dussieh-rider came racing toward them, two Falcon Guardsmen on warhorses close behind—one apparently Verenthane, the other clearly Goeren-yai. Sasha blinked as she realised that the owner of that fast-moving little horse was none other than Sofy, her brown hair flying out behind. She slowed and circled to Sasha and Terel's side with remarkable judgment.
“Sasha!” Sofy stared up at her in alarm. “Where's Peg? Are you injured?”
“I fell,” Sasha replied. Her voice was strained and hoarse. She barely recognised it. “There are many missing whom I hope to find again.”
“Terel,” Sofy said urgently, “you'd better come this way.” And she was off again, galloping ahead through the twisted wreckage of grain, men and horses. One of Sofy's guards gave Sasha an apologetic shrug before galloping off in her wake. Terel managed to get his mount to a canter, but seemed not to have the heart for more. They followed Sofy across the corpse-strewn fields where the lead of the Hadryn column had been so totally enveloped and annihilated. They reached a spot near a fence, now far more exposed with the surrounding grain all beaten down.
There, Sofy stopped beside a fallen horse. Alongside knelt Aisha, holding a body in her lap. Terel dismounted quickly and ran to her side. Sasha followed, and her knees gave way as she hit the ground. She rolled and came up covered in wheat chaff, too exhausted to care. She staggered to Aisha's side and found that the body was Tassi, bloody and limp, her strange, bronze eyes gazing sightlessly at the overcast sky. Tears rolled down Aisha's cheeks from her pale blue eyes, and blood