The warriors closest heard him, but many were too heavily engaged and fought on, heedless, and it wasn’t easy to identify slaves from warriors in the flickering torchlight anyway. Lilla saw an Empire warrior stab three slaves rather than allowing them to be freed; he was cut down from behind by Lutek, but by then it was too late. Lilla ducked as an arrow whickered overhead and another clattered through the leaves behind him, but those on the pyramid had little protection and the war party, too, had bows and blowpipes. And ample cover.

There was just enough daylight for Lilla to pass the orders in sign to the Tokob nearest, and the Yaloh saw his plan soon enough. Those who could disengage concentrated their arrows and darts on the pyramid, and when the enemy couldn’t stand the withering rain any more, they leapt to the ground and charged those shooting from cover.

Lilla deflected a spear with his own, slapping it out of the air, but then a dart took him in the thigh. He ripped out the palm-long missile with a roar and held onto it, as weapon and to identify the poison if there was any, and if he lived long enough to take any of the antidotes in the pack he’d left back in the trees.

Someone screamed his name and his skin flushed with cold when he saw Tiamoko surrounded by three enemies. Lilla snatched up a fallen blowpipe, slapped in the dart, and shot. It lost much of its power on the too-long flight between them but grazed one warrior’s arm, just enough to distract her so she didn’t block Tiamoko’s punch to her jaw. She went down hard and the young warrior stamped on her throat and left her to suffocate, ducking the axe of the second and spinning him into the path of the third to spoil his blow.

Lilla threw his spear, catching one in the back of the thigh, and chased after it, but Kux and a handful of Yaloh got there first, hacking into the enemy while Tiamoko backed away, his eyes wide and wild. Lilla kept going anyway, more slowly. He knew the look of panic on Tiamoko’s face and how quickly it could become unmanageable fear.

The shouts, grunts, and screams, the thuds of falling bodies and the meaty smacks of flint and obsidian cleaving flesh, of clubs smashing bone, began to fade, though the sun had risen by the time it was done. The clearing fell still and silent but for the groans of the wounded and the sobbing of some of the slaves. Of some of the warriors. The enemy fighters, dog warriors and Coyote commanders only – not a Pecha among them – were herded to the pyramid and executed. Swift deaths. Clean if they could manage it.