"Grind that edge a little harder, princess, or you'll be tickling the Kalinga vanguard instead of splitting their mail," Aristha muttered, leaning heavily against a thick pine support post of the tent. He hissed through his teeth as he pressed a tightly wrapped strip of coarse linen around his ribs, securing the makeshift brace with trembling fingers. Gayatri didn't look up from the whetstone. The metallic shhh-shhh rhythm of steel scraping against grit filled the tense space between them as she drew her stolen blade across the coarse stone once more, sending a cascade of microscopic sparks into the flickering firelight. "If my technique displeases you so much, Aristha, you are entirely welcome to crawl over here and sharpen it yourself," Gayatri retorted, her voice ice-cold, though her hands were steady. She checked the edge against her thumb, satisfied by the lethal gleam reflecting the amber flames. "Though considering you can barely stan

"Keep your head down in the mud, or the Kalinga vanguard will use your spine for a bridge," Captain Vane hissed, his hand shoved hard against Aristha's shoulder, pinning him flat into the freezing, wet earth of the valley entrance. Aristha gritted his teeth, a sharp gasp escaping his lips as his cracked ribs scraped against the damp soil. "If you shove me into the manure one more time, Captain, I’ll let the vanguard walk right over me just to spite you." "Shut your mouth," Vane growled, his eyes locked on the grey morning fog rolling lazily over the low road. "They're coming." Ten yards to their left, Gayatri lay prone behind a rotting log, her fingers locked around the hilt of her newly sharpened blade. The courtly hesitation that had defined her every movement in the capital was entirely gone, replaced by a cold, coiled tension. Beside her, a local guerrilla named Joran nervously checked the tension of a thick he

"They're not stopping for the logs, Captain! Their shield wall is too thick!" Gayatri shouted over the deafening clatter of steel against steel, her blade dripping with dark Kalinga blood as she parried a fierce upward slash from a charging pikeman. Captain Vane slammed his heavy shield into the chest of a Kalinga soldier, sending the man tumbling backward into the churning mud before roaring back at her, "We can't hold this tree line against that kind of iron! The vanguard is just the bait; their main push is rolling right over our center!" Aristha stumbled backward, his hand clamped hard over his wrapped ribs as a sharp wave of dizziness threatened to drop him right into the blood-soaked earth. "A tactical retreat, Vane, or is this the part where we all heroically die so you can write a very sad ballad about our incompetence?" "Shut your smart mouth, Aristha, and start moving the non-combatant foragers toward the upper

"Keep your voice down," Aristha muttered, dragging himself behind a stack of damp firewood as the faint murmur of voices drifted through the grey haze of the ravine. Gayatri froze, her fingers still hovering over the torn linen bandages at his side. The flickering light of the nearby cook fire cast long, jagged shadows against the moss-slick stone walls. Across the clearing, half-concealed by a thick canopy of drooping pine branches, two figures stood close together near the supply crates. "Vane is getting sloppy," a rascal voice spat out, sharp and low. "He thinks his little diversion on the low road bought them time. The Kalinga main column is already swinging around the upper ridge. If we don't drop another dispatch tonight, the captain’s entire perimeter is going to fold like a wet leaf." "And what about my cut of the silver?" a second, higher voice hissed back. "A few bags of grain and some old iron won't buy

"Keep your voice down," Aristha hissed, his hand shooting out to grab Gayatri’s wrist as they slipped between the canvas walls of Captain Vane’s auxiliary command tent. "I am whispering," Gayatri shot back, her voice a razor-thin murmur as she yanked her arm free and pointed a finger at the heavy iron-weighted ledger resting on Vane’s camp table. "Look at the ink distribution on the third page. Someone has been systematically altering the grain tallies for the past three weeks to account for missing stock." "Missing stock that didn't rot in the rain and wasn't eaten by the foragers," Aristha finished, limping over to the table and squinting under the flickering tallow candle. "It was packed up, loaded onto extra mules, and conveniently misplaced right where the Kalinga scouts cross the low road." "Bren," Gayatri said, her jaw tightening as she traced a grease smudge beside a signature. "The numbers matc