“I’m not leaving him for the dogs. I’m not.”

“We’ll bring him! And bury him in Laraak.”

His face shattered with grief, Dagan picked up his younger brother’s broken body, grunting, and we crept around the side of the Libbu toward the west gate, where we could flee to Laraak.

As we passed the overturned cart where I’d tended the warrior, I gasped because I’d forgotten her when I’d found Dagan. But she was not there. There were smudges in the dirt—drag marks—as if she’d been pulled to safety by someone else.

But not sixty handsbreadths away, at the end of the trail, she lay in a pool of black blood with eyes that stared into the Netherworld, the tunic I’d given her to stem the flow of blood abandoned nearby.

How tenuous was the thread that bound us to life. How easily it could be severed.

As we ran toward an abandoned cart outside the Libbu and hoisted Shep’s body into the back, I wondered if she, Shep, and the young guardsman on the other side of the war were on the same boat to the Netherworld together.

DUSK BURNED WITH the heat of a thousand fires, and most of it radiated from Dagan’s skin. We stood at the outskirts of Laraak’s encampment, Dagan and Nasu shouting at one another. The eight Koru brides, including Ummi and Humusi, sat with various degrees of injury on pallets inside my healing tent. Though they’d lived, many of those who’d chosen to follow Higal had not. After stitching and slinging as many of her warriors as I could, I healed these eight in my tent, with Nanaea, Arwia, and Kasha acting as my aids.

The rest of the Manzazu warriors who’d come to Laraak with us, who still stood with us, had made their camp closer to the river. They hadn’t even known of the bloodshed until Ummi, a vicious laceration across her back, had ridden out to tell them. A small faction of warriors still believed in Higal and had made camp with her down the river. Ummi had tried to unite them, but for now, they were broken into two.

The fight outside intensified, Dagan yelling and Nasu replying sharply, “It was the better way.”

“You’re obviously wrong or we wouldn’t be standing here right now!” Dagan connected his huge fist solidly with Nasu’s jaw, sending Nasu’s lanky body sprawling into the sand. He sprang up to his feet, his face twisted in rage, bumping up against Dagan’s chest.

“I will not fight you, Farmer.” Nasu jabbed his finger into Dagan’s face, a trickle of blood from a split lip trailing down his chin. “In honor of your brother who had no business in battle, but if you hit me again, I will be forced. Do not test me.”

Dagan shoved him backward. “He fought for me! And for his mother!”

“He should’ve never been in there! It isn’t our fault!” Nasu threw up his hands.