Most of the armor gifted to the Savage Legion is fit only for scrap. Piecing together an entire suit, or even half of one, proved to be an impossible task. The best Evie can do is triple layer her torso with heavy wool undergarments and wear two pairs of thick leather trousers (she bartered the former articles, won the latter in a game of “de-fanging the snake” by disarming her opponent of their knife twice in a row). She scrounged a broken helm from Spud-Bar’s armory, well constructed but for a shattered right faceplate. With Spud-Bar’s help, Evie chipped off the remaining pieces and replaced them with a solid square of steel from a breastplate with enough holes in it to have ended half a dozen of its owners.

After thoroughly inspecting the entire pile, not a single Savage shield proved to be anything but a storm of splinters and a piercing wound waiting to happen. Evie hadn’t the time or the materials along the march to fashion a proper one. She was able to salvage a leather gauntlet that almost completely covers her forearm, along with enough pieces of slim scrap steel bars to line it like a skeleton. Evie has also chosen a long knife to carry in that hand; she’ll use them to deflect the strikes of spear and sword.

Evie looks around her. No, they’re not an army, but she sees more fighters than victims. She’d expected to look on faces of fear and panic and even dread, and yes, she sees those expressions, although far, far fewer than she would’ve ever imagined. Most of the faces are twisted into masks of war, teeth bared and eyes slit and breath coming in heated gasps.

Perhaps they’ve convinced themselves that if they can survive the next few minutes then they can survive. Perhaps it’s as simple as wanting to make it to one more Revel.

Evie doesn’t know, can’t know, and the time for existential questions is over before she even realizes it.

It’s like watching the sun come out. The Sicclunan army appears on the horizon across the valley all at once, a wave of crimson shields and metal helms. Evie begins counting from the far left, makes it to almost two hundred, when Laython’s voice calls down the line.

“Make yourselves ready!” he instructs them all. “And be light on your feet, Savages!”

Evie realizes she’s almost panting. The fire in her blood is speeding up everything, her breath, her heart, the thoughts and images in her head.

She never hears Laython give the order to charge. One moment there’s silence, and in the next the bloody screams of the Savages around her fill her ears and she sees dozens of them streaming down the hill.

Evie allows herself one deep, steadying breath, and then she joins them.