Lunassera strode down the fire-lit darkness of the hillside like ghosts. Melanna went with them but stood apart as the masked sisters went about the wounded. A touch of gloved fingers upon the brow, the warrior was borne away to physicians. The same touch on the chest – always delivered to those lost to unconsciousness, or adrift in dream-sent madness – and those men were hauled into the gloom of the sanctum tent.

Melanna sought the patrol’s leader. “Havildar! What happened?”

He shuffled to a halt, so weary that his bruise-mottled face barely registered surprise at being spoken to by a woman. “Bronze giants waiting in the trees on the Kreska road. We never heard them coming. We lost hundreds.”

Melanna gestured for the lunassera to lead him away. If her father saw her worrying over every last soul, it would only harden his resolve to keep her from the battle lines. She walked back to the sanctum, lost in pity for others and resentment for herself.

One warrior alone had been taken neither to physicians nor sanctum. A lunassera knelt at his side. Sweet song spilling from her lips, she closed his eyes and slid the remembrance ring from his right hand. The band of engraved silver glinted in the moonlight, then vanished into a pouch. One day, it would be returned to a family who did not yet know their loss.

The tale was scarcely less bleak in the outer sanctum. Already the cool air of the sacred tent stank of blood and misery. Dying men lined the approach to the silk-shrouded altar.

“You are troubled, savim.” The lunassera spoke softly, her lips as expressionless as the gentle curves of her mask.

Melanna tried to gauge her age and failed. The robes left little clue to the woman beneath, beyond the athletic physique the lunassera cultivated for its physical beauty. She could have been two years younger than Melanna, or forty summers her senior.

“Do not be,” the lunassera continued. “Ashana will welcome them.”

“She shouldn’t have to. I could have warned them. I could have led them.” She scowled at the swelling sensation of uselessness. “I know the sounds the giants make. I know how to sift the scent of their magic from the breeze. I wouldn’t have been taken by surprise.”

“You must learn your place.”

“I’m tired of people telling me that.”

Two lunassera moved among the dying. One bore a silver pitcher, the other a goblet. At each makeshift bedside, they filled the goblet to brimming. Then they knelt, parted the man’s lips, and trickled the liquid into his mouth.

Melanna wanted to look away but couldn’t. Part of her felt duty-bound to bear witness. One warrior to another – even if no one else accounted her thus.

“If you would serve the army, there are always the vows.”

“Give myself to the lunassera?”

“To the goddess, savim.”