“Heya!” the youth next to Joss leaped back, abandoning his neat pile of stones.

Joss spun to face a man splashing up out of the shallows. Joss stabbed with his short sword, wrenched it free, and waded in as a second man lunged at him. He knocked aside a spear thrust and cut him down, and leaped back to realize he had just killed two men.

This was butcher’s work. Reeves were never meant to chop and hack like ordinands.

“Marshal! Your back!”

Spinning, he faced one of the enemy, who had axe raised; the man slumped, toppling forward and bringing Joss down with him. He squirmed out as the man twitched, to find Sengel grinning at him as he offered a hand up.

“Hu! That was close!”

Six rafts had been released into the waters, and the stragglers, their arrows spent and their comrades dead, dove into the water to swim back to the far shore. A single raft floated downstream, spinning away in the night as arrows vanished harmlessly into the river behind it.

Above the eastern woodland, the Basket Moon rose.

Anji trotted out to Joss, streaks and splashes of blood revealing he’d done his share of fighting. “Thirty of the enemy accounted for, and more lost in the river, I expect. We lost one man in the river, another three in the fighting on shore, and have five wounded. But we’ve delayed them.”

Joss wiped his brow. “I need a drink,” he said, looking at the bodies littering the shore. Villagers were already cutting their throats to make sure they were dead, stripping anything of value, and then dragging the bodies into the river.

“Now we wait for the strike force?” Joss asked.

Anji nodded. “Now we wait.”

JOSS WHISTLED SCAR in at dawn. The enemy camp was in turmoil, men arming, rafts abandoned. It looked as if they were readying to march upstream to Hammering Ford. He got high enough to scan several mey down the road, and he did suck in air, then, as Scar chirped interrogatively, feeling the shocked tightening of Joss’s shoulders.

“The hells!”

He hadn’t thought the strike force could really ride that far, that fast, but cursed if they hadn’t managed it: about three hundred riders, a mix of Qin and local men who’d been training with them. Joss signaled with his flags.

Eagles closed in, thirty strong. Below, the strike force approached at a ground-devouring pace, pounding up the road with their remounts left behind for the final dash. Before the enemy could break north into the forest, the eagles flew low and dropped oil of naya in their path, driving them back toward the road. In confusion, they fled. The unluckiest caught a scrap of the unquenchable fire on their bodies. Those who ran screaming into the water still burned.

In the direction of the road, the clash of arms rang with ugly vigor, the shouts and screams of a battle engaged. But Joss’s attention was caught by a throng clamoring after the cloaked man, who was riding away into the forest. He was abandoning his own troops. Reaching open space, the horse opened its wings and flew.