Was this the price of her hubris? The thought drove Melanna to unsteady feet as Calenne bore down a second time. Warm, sticky blood pooled at her collar. It trickled beneath armour to slick her chest and armpit. Her sword had grown too heavy for one hand alone, so she gripped it tight with both.

As the slender sword came forward again, Melanna struck at Calenne’s steed.

White flame roared. The horse screamed in sudden terror and shied up. Melanna flung herself back from the flailing hooves. Calenne’s cry of panic drowned Melanna’s own. Sword abandoned, she grabbed for the saddle’s pommel. Then the panicked horse fled, bearing her away towards the forest.

Melanna staggered drunkenly upright. She prayed to the goddess she’d disobeyed that no Tressian would come to finish what the Thrakkian had begun. She felt the whisper of movement at her shoulder and reeled about, her sword barely rising from its downward slant.

Sera, her white robes stained crimson by the day’s labours, reached down for her. “Come, Ashanal. Your time on this field is done.”

Melanna’s gullet soured with failure. But she knew that to stay was to die, or invite capture and all its myriad horrors. As a pair of Tressian knights at last thundered towards her, she seized Sera’s hand.

The chandirin came at a gallop, snout lowered and silvered horn aimed at Revekah’s chest. The pale-witch’s shard-spear hung loose in her hand, the rider content for her steed to deliver the deathblow.

Revekah rose on creaking limbs, the burden of years heavier in that moment than for many long days. But alongside that burden came experience. The knowledge that no battle was ever lost until you lacked the strength to fight.

She’d not yielded fifteen years before. She’d not do so now.

She let the chandirin come, counting down the moments of its approach. With the creature six paces distant, Revekah stooped. Her hands closed around a fallen spear. She drove the butt into the ground and planted a boot behind.

The point, angled sharply upward, pierced the dancing shadow of the chandirin’s chest. The creature hurtled on, unaware it had suffered a wound that would have slain an ephemeral steed. The spear-point burst clear of its back and skewered its rider through her heart.

The pale-witch slumped. The chandirin gave a shrill, echoing whinny and reared up. Revekah fell, the spear released in an instinctive attempt to ward off flailing hooves.

She struck the ground at the same time as the pale-witch. Of the chandirin, no sign remained save a dissipating haze.

Revekah rose on trembling legs and grabbed her sword.

Her gaze fell on the dead pale-witch, on robes already awash in crimson. The half-mask had come free in her fall. A dark, young face stared sightlessly out from beneath the hooded robe. Sixteen years old. If that. But then Tarn had been all of what? Nineteen?