The voice continues to boom and command. Evie steps between two equally ragged, unwashed bodies and plants her feet in the neglected earth. She hopes the fabled “line” of which the angered god speaks will form around her so she’ll be required to move no more. Her head feels like a melon pressed between two scorching boulders.

The demigod’s raging commands cease, and for a moment there is only blissful silence on the field, save for the steady, gentle rasping of hurried drunks.

Then he steps before their assemblage.

It’s him, the giant from the cells. He’s the one who took them all from the dungeon, loaded them onto a wagon, bagged their heads, and rattled them what felt like halfway across the countryside. He’s the tallest man she’s ever seen. His torso is like a hundred-pound sack of taro, bulging rolls of flesh pushing through the impossibly small vest he’s somehow managed to toggle together around them.

“I am your wrangler,” he announces. “My name is Laython. You will call me ‘Tasker’ or you will call me ‘Freemaster.’ And from now till your bloody deaths on the field of battle in service of Crache… your name… is Savage.”

Savage. Evie turns the word over in her mind, finding it offensive even by her standards.

“Look to the spires of this field,” Laython instructs them.

Evie tilts her head and squints through the harsh sunlight at the towers crowning the walls of the training field. They are each crewed by Skrain, the elite soldiers of Crache, resplendent in breastplates embossed with the ant, the nation’s symbol. Rich folds of leather extend from each shielded chest to cover their arms all the way to their wrists. They carry master-crafted Ancestor Hafts, long weapons crowned with horse-cutter blades. The faces of the Skrain aren’t visible to the rabble on the field, which seems appropriate.

“What you see are soldiers. What you see is the exact opposite of what you are. There will be no shining armor, oiled leather, or fine steel for the lot of you. Oh no, my friends. You’re Savages. The rags you’ve come here in and any rusted pieces of scrap you can scrounge from the armory wagon is all you’ll need on the battlefield.”

“What in the Fire Star’s light are you going on about?” Evie asks him.

Laython scowls. “Calling out the name of outlawed gods is exactly what landed your raggedy ass here, girl! Now shut it!”

Evie finds it easy enough to obey that command, as speaking hurts just as much as everything else right now.

“You will not loot,” Laython informs them, casually returning to his public address. “You will not pillage, you will not rape, and you will not take battlefield trophies of any kind.”