In the next moment black-masked Sicclunan soldiers are swarming into the middle of the camp from every path and opening between tents. The long, curved blades of their swords seem on fire as the steel traps the light of the burning landscape. Among them are B’ors warriors issuing their whooping, taunting, and challenging battle cries as they brandish their axes and war clubs and long knives.

“It’s time,” Evie says, and Mother Manai nods in both agreement and assent.

Evie and Mother Manai quickly divest themselves of their Skrain armor, lest they be mistaken for the enemy as the tri-force converges on what’s left of the Crachian soldiers. Beneath the steel scales they’re both wearing light leather breastplates over thick woolen tunics woven to slow a blade’s penetration or deflect its slash. Evie briefly recalls thinking that begetting an impossible revolution was a fair price to pay for burning her filthy, torn Savage rags.

The two women join the surge of Sicclunans and B’ors warriors. By now the rogue Legionnaires have also begun their charge. The Skrain don’t know which way to turn, and their remaining commanders begin issuing conflicting orders as each beholds a different attack from a completely different angle than the others. When the combined forces converge on the Crachian soldiers it is less a skirmish and more a massacre. It is their own Savage Legion strategy evolved. Rather than using human artillery to precede the main attack, they have become the main attack.

Evie fights until eventually she can no longer find a Skrain soldier to face down. She turns wildly in every direction, certain more are coming, certain they can’t have suppressed the entire base camp. What she sees is her own forces standing over the armored bodies of the fallen, only the occasional death blow upsetting the blood-soaked calm that’s draping across the field of battle.

Evie looks down at her sword. She can’t see a single glint of steel for the blood bathing the blade.

One of the black-masked Sicclunans approaches, peeling away their hood. Sirach smiles at Evie, her dark violet eyes making a black reflection of the flames all around them.

“I believe the day is ours,” she says.

“The night,” Evie reminds her. “The night is ours.”

Sirach laughs, sheathing her sword. “I guess you just turn day and night upside down for me, my dear.”

Evie looks down, flushing slightly at those words, the red hidden beneath her Savage runes.

Several dozen black-masked warriors have gathered behind Sirach. She turns to them without missing a beat.

“Search every tent for survivors!” she commands.

Evie grunts. “What about the Skrain that have no doubt fled?”

“We have archers surrounding the perimeters, night-trained, just like us. They’ll pick them off to a soldier.”