Heaving for breath, Bifalt tried to protect him. Duck and slash. Hells! Step back, knock down, thrust. Whoreson! Shift, deflect, flick. Die, you bastards!

Spliner’s son did not deserve this death.

For a few steps, Boy’s caution kept him alive. Then, at the edge of his sight, Bifalt saw a broadsword that Boy did not. His damaged hand screamed as he grabbed Boy’s arm, jerked the younger man back.

Boy stumbled against him. Bifalt staggered for balance.

In that instant of distraction, a blade sliced open the King’s left side below his ribs. Spilling blood, he fell facedown in the red slush.

He tried to rise, but he was too weak. There was no air in the world and no one to help him. Boots skidded off him as Rile’s soldiers rushed to attack the remaining riflemen. Those impacts may have broken some of Bifalt’s ribs. If so, he did not notice the damage. The impossibility of breathing demanded everything. He had nothing left.

Elgart had not abandoned his King. He had left Bifalt’s side unprotected to answer the call of a spy’s instincts, the impulse to draw sudden conclusions and trust them.

He had glimpsed signs of sorcery, fire and lightning, the hard punch of winds. They were some distance below him, and too far north of the King’s struggle.

King Bifalt had left Magisters Crawl and Brighten a bit south and west of him. The Decimates in the north had to be General Klamath’s sorcerers. Trusting himself, Elgart believed at once that Klamath’s people were trying to reach the King.

But they were too far downhill. Even if they succeeded at breaching the barricade of infantrymen, they would not arrive where they were most needed.

Elgart turned away from his King, his friend, to warn the General.

He had to earn every step. Infantrymen crowded against him, eager to kill. As a much younger man, Elgart had trained with Belleger’s army. He had ridden into hell against Amika more than once. But he was not a soldier by nature. His work as King Bifalt’s Captain of Spies had been a better fit. Instinctively, he fought with a low cunning that was better suited to surprise attacks in dark alleys than to direct conflict against vast numbers. Some of his tactics—tripping and kicks, feints, blows rather than cuts—lured his foes to miss him. They won him half the distance to Klamath’s army. And the terrain helped him. He made the boulders serve him, the shelves of rock, the slick swaths of mud. But he knew at every moment that his task was hopeless. Sudden evasions and luck were not enough.

When he lost his saber, he met his fate with a wolf’s grin on one side of his face, a grimace of despair on the other.