‘Grandfather Jarre! Grandmother Lucienne told me to tell you that that’s enough for today of that layabout scribbling and that tea’s on the table!’

Jarre meticulously assembled the written sheets and corked the inkwell. Pain throbbed in the stump of his arm. The weather’s changing, he thought. There’ll be rain.

‘Grandfather Jaaaaarre!’

‘I’m coming, Ciri. I’m coming.’

It was already well after midnight before they had dealt with the last casualties. They carried out the final operations by artificial light–first from an ordinary lamp and later using magic. Marti Sodergren recovered after the crisis she had undergone and, although as pale as death, stiff and as unnatural in her movements as a golem, used her magic competently and effectively.

The night was black when they exited the tent, and all four of them sat down, leaning against the canvas.

The plain was full of fires. Various fires–the stationary fires of camps and the moving flames of torches. The night resounded with distant song, chanting, shouts and cheers.

The night around them was also alive with the intermittent cries and groans of the wounded. The pleading and sighs of the dying. They didn’t hear it. They had become accustomed to the sounds of suffering and dying, and those sounds were ordinary, natural to them, as integrated into the night as the croaking of frogs in the marshes by the River Chotla or the singing of cicadas in the acacia trees by Golden Pond.

Marti Sodergren sat in lyrical silence resting on the halfling’s shoulder. Iola and Shani, indifferent, cuddling one another, snorted from time to time with completely nonsensical laughter.

Before they sat down against the tent they had each drunk a cup of vodka, and Marti had treated all of them with her last spell: a cheering charm, typically used when extracting teeth. Rusty felt cheated by this treatment–the drink, combined with the magic, instead of relaxing him had stupefied him; instead of reducing his exhaustion had increased it. Instead of giving oblivion, brought back memories.

It looks, he thought, as though the alcohol and magic have only acted as they were meant to on Iola and Shani.

He turned around and in the moonlight saw sparkling, silvery tracks of tears on the girls’ faces.

‘I wonder,’ he said, licking his numb, insensitive lips, ‘who won this battle. Does anybody know?’

Marti turned her face towards him, but remained silent. The cicadas were singing among the acacias, willows and alders by Golden Pond, and the frogs croaked. The wounded moaned, begged and sighed. And died. Shani and Iola giggled through their tears.

Marti Sodergren died two weeks after the battle. She began meeting an officer of the Free Company of Condottieri. She treated the affair light-heartedly. Unlike the officer. When Marti, who liked change, began fraternising with a Temerian cavalry captain, the condottiero–mad with jealousy–stabbed her with a knife. He was hanged for it, but it was impossible to save the healer.