with Havnar and his officers;

then three hours practicing maneuvers

with the remnants of Memnor’s cavalry,

dusk darkening to night

before they finished.

A report from another scout;

a late supper with Memnor;

then out to the pasture again,

the horses coming to him,

crescent moon hung in a clear sky;

then an hour in his own tent,

letting his guards fuss over him

while he wrote to Artoch,

Donal, Subetei, Hana.

Xau too restless to sleep.

Back to the surgeons’ tents.

A gap where the boy

who’d asked about food had been,

a gap that halted Xau.

The boy. Atun.

New griefs layered

over old ones.

He took a breath.

Went over to the men

who were still awake,

listened to their wild stories.

WHEN KING XAU WAS GONE

Hana did not rend her hair,

nor neglect her duties,

nor number the days of his absence.

She did not listen to ballads

lauding his fabled deeds,

nor pause pensively by his portrait.

She did not picture him in battle,

heroic, valiant, leading his men,

his horse charging, his flesh torn—

Rather she imagined him

lounging in his tent, unshaven,

his hair greasy, his clothes grubby.

She took his daughters hunting,

taught them to fletch an arrow,

to shoot and skin a deer.

But at night,

heedless of the guard watching over her,

she laid Xau’s letters on her pillow,

her hair on the brushstrokes

his hand had made.

TAUNTING FATE

Not yet full dark,

the lamps lit, brimful of oil,

a butter-yellow rug on the tent floor.

King Donal bent

over a blank breadth of paper,

barren of words, cup of wine untouched.

Rose, his woman,

patient, playing both sides

of a board game, humming to herself.

Humming to herself

as if they were safe home,

as if no enemy had breached their border.

Donal looked up,

long enough to let her see

how she pleased him. Seventeen years.

Never his queen,

never the only one he bedded,

but the one he’d befriended, his Rose.

Donal turned back

to the paper’s bare breadth,

Xau, his ally, at the far battlefront.

Xau, wrote Donal.

Hundreds of miles between them.

Xau might be days dead before Donal heard.

Writing to Xau

taunted fate, presumed.

Failing to write a worse omen.

Fucking fish stew

with fucking parsnips. Again.

Tahj’s forces have crossed the Muir river.

Donal filled the page,

began another, as if his words

could slow an arrow or carry Xau home.

THE IMPERIAL WAR: THIRD BATTLE

An afternoon in late spring,

the valley sun-warmed,

cooler up on the ridgeline

where men fought, back and forth,

to the beat of drums

and the calls of carrion birds.

King Memnor’s men outnumbered

but gaining ground,

the foot soldiers supported

by the remnants of Memnor’s cavalry,

the horses turning and wheeling

over the rough terrain

in faultless form,

arrows speeding in glinting arcs,

the horses following the will

of one man, Memnor’s ally, King Xau,

who rode at the front, lightly armored,

with seven men who guarded him,