‘They are chosen young, not for size or strength, but cause,’ Storm told Draupadi with a bashful look. She had warmed somewhat to the Princess, perhaps feeling guilty over her harsh words in the palanquin. ‘Erm, you had asked how the Silver Wolves are recruited… Well, we all have a past we are not proud of. Most of us are the third or fourth girlchild in the family. I don’t need to tell you that the North does not treat its women right. Not like the South, anyway. Burdens, they call us. Girls are given away to temples as devadasis, you know—temple dancers, or sold off to visiting traders. Or simply left in the streets to die. Some are fugitives fleeing charges of witchcraft. Some are considered murderers for slaying husbands who raped them. But in the Silver Wolves we are trained to destroy our pasts. The day we receive the Silver Wolves badge, past pains are extinguished.’ She smiled, and then winked. ‘More so because nothing can leave as many bruises on the body than the training Lady Satyabhama puts us through.’

‘Ignore her words, My Lady,’ Rain said, rising from amidst the rocks. She stood a good two handspans taller than Storm, and had the look of a High Priestess rather than a soldier. Her hair was tied in a tight horsetail behind her head. A scar ran from her right brow to her left cheek. A longsword and dirk hung from her studded leather belt.

‘Yama take you! How do you sneak up on me every damn time?’ spat Storm.

‘You just have stubby ears, Storm. So Princess, does Panchal have no women soldiers?’

‘Nay, it does not,’ Draupadi confessed. ‘I was amazed to see women carrying arms in Mathura. Women soldiers is something I could have never imagined though I have heard tales that they do not make such distinctions beyond the Riverlands.

‘Calling us soldiers is a stretch, Princess. The Wolves are part of the Army, but we aren’t soldiers, not in the fight-on-the-battlefield sense. Search-and-rescue and patrolling, that is our job. Aye, we carry weapons, but we use them mostly to frighten civilians and pry open suspicious crates. The Senate doesn’t pay us enough to stand around while an armed foe tries to hurt us. Ah, talking about suspicious, we seem to have our first smugglers of the day.’

The trio watched a pair of traders undertake the laborious march up the pass where it shrank to a narrow defile, scarce wide enough for three men to ride abreast. Piety and Bleed were right behind them, though the traders did not seem to know of their proximity. When they were but a dozen paces away from the city walls, Storm straightened and discarded the maize stick she had been chewing. Her cloak flapped behind her as she raised her crossbow. ‘Close enough!’ she growled.