The witch’s steed came about. Revekah rode anger through the pain. She ducked beneath the flashing spear and swung hard at the beast’s mouth. Flesh parted in wisps of light and shadow. But the steed’s shoulder was tangible enough. The glancing blow knocked Revekah from her feet and her sword from numbed fingers.

A name from childhood tales flooded back. Chandirin. Ashana’s moon-coursers. Invulnerable to harm save beneath starlight.

The hoof-beats began anew. Revekah stared down into Tarn’s sightless eyes.

How did you fight that?

You couldn’t.

Calenne parried the first spear and jerked sharply in her saddle to avoid the second. What in Lumestra’s name had she been thinking? She’d no place among the rush of hooves and the crash of steel.

Chest heaving in near panic, she checked a sword-thrust. The Hadari leaned into the blow, and the blade scraped down to her hilt. Calenne held firm. Her eyes came within two spans of her enemy’s sallow, thinly bearded face. Their horses circled. She felt the slow, inexorable retreat of her sword. She wasn’t strong enough to check him. He’d force her sword wide, and then . . .

Calenne angled her sword. The outrider’s blade, the weight of its master still behind it, skittered away. The Hadari fell across his horse’s neck. Shouting with all the fear and frustration of preceding moments, Calenne thrust.

A dull tearing sound marked her thrust’s passage through the man’s leather breastplate; a choked pah of expelled air and a welter of blood as it slid between his ribs. The outrider fell from his saddle with a gurgling cry, his dying weight almost dragging Calenne’s sword from her hand.

She urged her horse clear, eyes fixed on the bloody blade. Fear dissipated into excitement, and revulsion at having taken a life. She’d known she might have to before the day was done, but in the moment of the deed . . .

She snapped from her reverie at a bellow. An outrider galloped from the north, gore-slicked spear braced in the crook of his elbow.

Calenne hauled on her reins to face the charge. She knew even then that she’d no time to parry. Life or death now lay in the gift of a shield she barely knew how to use.

A blur of black and silver shot in from Calenne’s left. Wild, rough laughter streamed in its wake. The steel-shod butt of the swan banner, levelled like a lance, struck the outrider in the chest. His horse went one way and he the other.

Anliss’ steed circled about. Her long-handled axe swung a lazy arc. The dismounted outrider lost his head before he reached his knees. Then the two women were alone in a ring of dead and dying and the surviving Hadari retreating eastward in a cloud of dust.

Anliss grinned. “No room for conscience here, lady.”