and an oversized, smiling mouth.

Thank you for visiting Micha.

It snowed all day yesterday.

The first heavy snow in the two months

Xau had been at the border.

Snow that would hinder Xau’s cavalry,

a fact which might tip Donal

from hostility to open war.

Not a thought to share with Keng.

A knock at the door.

Tsung, captain of Xau’s guards,

announced General Qiang.

Xau stood, bowed to the general,

tucked the thought of Keng away.

THIRTY-NINTH WAR BETWEEN INNIS AND MEQING:
COMMENCEMENT

Not a battle, but a raid,

not on impulse, but under orders—

Prince Connol would have risked

his brother’s anger

and questioned those orders

had he judged it would do any good,

but King Donal was set on war,

so war it would be.

And Connol would start it.

Connol and twenty of his soldiers

trudged through snow and wind,

crossed the border

somewhere inside a forest

that had been renamed six times

in the past hundred years

as war shifted it from one king to another,

or, as now, carved it in two.

Rested until dark,

then off again, light snow falling

as they went from farmstead to farmstead.

Burning, killing.

Setting the Innish banner by each burnt farm.

They didn’t kill or rape the women,

just bound them and left them in the snow.

One woman nearly naked,

Connol worried she’d freeze.

He wrestled a coat from a corpse,

put it on the woman as she spat at him.

Not many women, no young children,

for which Connol was grateful.

Wherever the women and children

had fled, the men hadn’t followed.

Peasants with pitchforks and shovels

that Connol and his men

killed with brutal ease.

Some of them not armed at all.

Some trying to surrender.

Armed or unarmed,

resisting or cowering:

all killed.

Three hours before dawn, the sky cleared.

Snow gleamed under the half moon

as they happened upon a larger farmstead.

Stone house and outbuildings.

Connol gave the signal to halt.

None of his soldiers injured,

but all of them tired.

He weighed it up, said quietly,

“We’re heading home.”

Fergus gave him a look.

“King Donal won’t like it.”

That the only protest,

Connol started back.

Before he’d gone a hundred yards,

a scream.

Connol spun round,

saw Tamhas collapse, arrow through his neck.

Saw the pair of archers.

Helmets. Cuirasses.

Not peasants, but Horse Boy’s soldiers.

A large group of farmers assembled behind them.

Well then. A fight after all:

“Kill the fucking bastards!”

Connol ran, shield up,

straight for the pair of archers,

Fergus alongside him, the others following.

A cut-off yelp behind him.

Connol didn’t turn. Ran on.

Drew his sword as he reached the archers,

slashed one in the shin.

The man staggered, fell.

Connol cut the man’s throat,

looked round: Fergus and Iain

fighting the second archer,

most of his men attacking farmers.

He stepped toward Fergus,

lost his sword to a blow from a shovel.

Grabbed his axe,

took down the farmer with the shovel.