defending their standard to the last.
Three times Thirrin offered them terms, but each time they refused. Soldiers of the Empire had never surrendered. And so, as the last rays of the winter sunset bathed the naked trees in a glorious light of red and gold, they were all cut down where they stood around their banner.
The housecarls and soldiers of the Oak King drew back and stood in silence, staring at the fallen troopers before them. Thirrin finally removed her helmet, leaned her shield against her legs, and for a moment allowed herself to be a fourteen-year-old girl once more. She wept for the deaths all around her, she wept for her people forced from their homes into the harsh winter of the Icemark, and she wept for the young Polypontian trooper who lay at her feet, the blood seeping from the wound in his neck where her ax had bitten deep.
And as the tears streamed from her eyes, a line of steel-gray clouds drew down upon the land and released the first snows of the winter in a swirling tangle of white that would shroud the fallen and preserve their bodies for months.
11
The first of the winter storms died out during the night, and at daybreak the sun was reflected brilliantly by an unbroken blanket of snow. The people of Frostmarris looked even more ragged and dirty than usual set against the freezing, fresh white of the new day, but now that the storm was over, their mood had lightened. The snows had arrived at last, and they could begin to hope that the bad omen of their late appearance would begin to lift.
As usual, Oskan and Maggiore led the way, and soon they noticed that the trees were slowly beginning to thin out. They were coming to the end of the forest, and by midday they reached its eaves. Before them lay a wide snow-covered plain, brilliant and glittering under the winter sun. The road was only just discernible as a slight hollow in the softly undulating surface, and when the next storm hit the old highway, it would be completely lost until the spring thaw.
After a brief pause to view the sight before them, the people plodded on. Maggiore turned in his saddle to look back over the refugees and then said casually, “You don’t feel a need to ride back to see how the Princess is faring, at all?”
Oskan looked at him and smiled. “No. I know she is safe. She’s won her first battle, Maggie. She’s proved herself the warrior we all knew she was. And besides, I don’t fancy being flayed alive by her tongue for leaving the people to the mercy of the weather. The fact that we’ve got at least two days before the next storm won’t make any difference to her.”
“No. I suppose not,” the neat little man answered automatically. But his mind and attention had suddenly wandered elsewhere. Thirrin had won her battle and they had at least two days before the next storm! After a quick calculation he realized that they would reach the main Hypolitan city before bad weather hit again. With a whoop of joy he urged his mare to a plunging gallop through the snow, throwing his hat into the air and laughing aloud while the people watched and cheered.
Then he reined to a halt and considered how he’d changed over the last few weeks: The rational man of science was now quite ready to accept without question the word of a dubiously educated peasant boy! And he really didn’t mind at all! So far Oskan had always been proved right, and what sort of rationality rejects proof just because it seems a little … colorful?
Maggiore sang bright, lilting songs of the Southern Continent for the rest of the day. His voice fell completely flat in the dense silence of the snow-covered land, but he didn’t seem to care, and the people added their own voices in a tangle of different songs and tunes that burst from the column of refugees like a flock of noisy birds.
It was Oskan who first spotted the splash of bright color moving steadily toward them across the white of the land. His keen eyes soon showed them to be cavalry of some sort coming from the north along the main highway.
He called Maggiore over and pointed ahead. “The Hypolitan have found us,” he said simply.
Thirrin led the march through the forest at an unfaltering pace, one they could keep up