The woman on the horse guffawed. “The honor of a Sun Warden hound,” she said, spitting into the road. “Speaking of animals, where are the rest of you, eh?” She glanced at the empty expanse about them.

With a deep frown, the captain raised his eyes to the landscape as well, then back to Anji and the Hawk. A spiral of fine dust wafted between them on the frigid wind. The Hawk stood still, her legs like tree roots dug deep into the earth.

“I’m afraid I cannot acquiesce.”

The captain barked a laugh and waved this last away. “Enough of this,” he said, drawing a long, polished sword. “Kill her if you must. Take the girl.”

The two on horseback dismounted, armor rattling. Tiny puffs of gray dirt clouded around their polished boots as they slammed into the ground. The corporal gripped the hilt of his longsword.

The Hawk darted forward, sword in hand as though it had always been there. She shot like an arrow around the roan stallion’s head, her sword slipping neatly between the man’s jaw and chest piece. Blood spurted and dribbled down his white tunic. Anji stared, the food she’d eaten earlier threatening to come back up.

“What the fuck—”

The corporal gurgled and fell to one knee, eyes wide, his hand twitching toward his neck, but the Hawk’s blade was already out and ready to catch the sergeant’s steel with a clang that rang out across the plains.

The sergeant grunted and whipped her sword around in a wide, scraping arc, separating her blade from the Hawk’s. The Hawk sidestepped, feinted, and swung at waist level, ostensibly going for a side cut. The woman raised her blade to block it, but the Hawk swung up, dodging the incoming slice, and drove the point of her sword into the woman’s unarmored armpit. Blood-drenched steel burst out her shoulder’s other side, through leather and cloth, scraping against metal. The sergeant screamed, her eyes wide, and dropped her sword to the dirt. The Hawk twisted and wrenched her blade free, letting the woman crumple into the dirt.

Sucking in a breath, the Hawk pointed her sword at the Captain as he leapt off the wagon, his broadsword raised, the hilt poised at the side of his head in two gauntleted hands. He advanced on the Hawk with quick feet and sliced the giant blade through the air.

“You’ll pay for that, you cu—”

The Hawk twirled, the broadsword’s edge passing within a hair’s breadth of her leathers. She bent, poised her steel against the Captain’s hamstring, in the space between plated armor, and slid it up with a jerk. The Captain bellowed as the Hawk dodged a blow that would have broken bone.