The two men standing above Roskvir were discussing something important.

  The first soldier, the man in the suit of armor, seemed the superior officer of the other, who was perhaps a close lieutenant. Sweeping gestures and furrowed brows accented much of their conversation.

  Their conversation was difficult to follow. Roskvir’s grasp of their native’s language had much improved, but he was still far from fluent. And the men stood just on the border of comfortable earshot, so the intermittent evening gusts chose at random whether to carry whole sentences to him, or to sweep their words away.

  He knew that any other dutiful soldier of Albion in his position would take full advantage of the fact that the two officers were underestimating his ability to overhear them, and attempt to glean information by eavesdropping.

  But Roskvir was exhausted. Not to mention, captured and bound on the battlefield of his defeat, while his victorious enemy decided what to do with him. The thought of applying himself further for far-away concepts like king and country had fallen to the last of his priorities.

  So long had he served such ideals, at first in honest good faith. Then by rote, carried on by simple momentum, long after military service had ceased leading him to oases of fulfillment and instead dragged him ever deeper into that tortuous sea of anomie. At the very least, ‘ideals’ owed him some shore leave.

  Thus, instead of eavesdropping, he daydreamt.

  The taller of the two men, the captain in plate metal armor, could’ve been a great knight of old history. Riding into battle with lance in hand, facing down a fire-breathing monster of legend.

  Roskvir thought then of the child, and her tome of such fantasies. The ache in his throat sharpened.

  Unaddressed by healers, salve or even water after the battle’s end, raw skin peeled on his back where the wing roots of his sjaelsvaben sprouted. His palms and forearms stung much the same, chafing against his wrist bindings. But of all the difficulties he’d faced those last days, physical pain was the easiest to bear by far. Pain’s consistency felt familiar, and familiarity in its own way soothing. Perhaps he even deserved to be subjected to some great degree of pain.

  At the very least, pain felt like something.

  One of his marines sitting bound nearby shifted to scratch his chin, and with a solid thwack met the butt of a native soldier’s rifle against his temple.

  Roskvir tried to imagine how he might treat prisoners of an army that had brought such ruin to his homeland. They all saw what rose from the horizon, there.

  The corpse of a city. It loomed over all of them there alike, inescapable.

  After many minutes, a few of the foreign words exchanged between the armored soldier and his lieutenant made their way to his ears, even despite his disinterest. Some words he couldn’t help but understand.

  “… just shoot them…be done…” said the lieutenant.

  Roskvir resisted the urge to turn their way. Some part of him still thought his men deserved another chance. Something more than senseless betrayal followed by summary execution in that foreign land.

  But at the same time he wondered if he might not feel anything at all, even if their captors had them all shot.

  “Good will… surrender… questions…” he gleaned from the captain’s response, as at last he committed himself to listen. “If we do… for bargaining… dangerous… best… as prisoners.”

  “Mouths… supply… morale… to surrender…” countered the lieutenant. “Intentions… hostile… evidence… resistance… dangerous… shoot them… free them… away…”

  So perhaps the natives would maroon them in the barren savanna. That would be an execution, all the same, in the end. They weren’t quite settled on the issue, yet, though. The superior officer in the suit of armor seemed distrustful of the idea.

  But Roskvir had come to a conclusion, himself: he couldn’t imagine caring whether he and his men lived or died, he realized.

  So much had just been so hollow, for so long. Lying by habit to his comrades, and to himself. Slaying foe-men, waging war.

  Nothing.

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  The two native officers paused in their conversation as a new commotion made its way toward them.

  A great, flightless bird — one of those tall creatures the people of Setet used as mounts in place of wolves — wove its way through the crowded makeshift encampment of his disarmed marines. Two riders, both women, shared the saddle. They seemed younger and greener than the other officers.

  The soldier at the reins spoke first. Looks of consternation came to the captain and his lieutenant, and they both interjected at times with syllables of disapproval or anger.

  Nevertheless, after weathering some harsh-toned reprimand, the second of the lower-ranked soldiers dismounted to step forward.

  “City… under… there…enemy… powerful… and I escaped…” Roskvir heard from her, as well as the word ‘vis’ many times, which he knew was the native word for ‘sjael.’

  The armor-clad captain’s anger diminished by the time she was done speaking. He shook his head with apologetic sorrow, instead.

  “Be true… for any reason… it's alright,” said the captain. “Still… go east… it doesn’t change… we must go… too late… surrender.”

  That seemed to infuriate the young soldier. She stamped forward, shouting back at the captain. The captain’s lieutenant rose to match her, incensed on his superior’s behalf. Words were exchanged that Roskvir hadn’t yet learned, but that somehow made the course of the dispute only clearer. The captain for his part continued to address the newcomers with managed repose, in the space between shouts.

  The young soldier drew a leatherbound notebook from her uniform jacket and thrust it toward the officers, spreading a small cloud of dust in its wake as she gesticulated. For a moment the captain almost appeared interested, but then shook his head and held fast to his previous stoicism.

  “… not enough… Commanding… not up… consideration,” he said.

  The younger soldier was crying with her frustration, Roskvir saw, and appeared embarrassed as well, even as her anger had not abated.

  “You’re right… we don’t know…” said the captain. “We only… what we know.” He gestured towards the horizon, and the ruins. “…the city… gone… family... dead…”

  And then Roskvir’s heart skipped a beat, as he overheard one word he couldn’t help but recognize.

  A word that evoked at once raw and recent memories of the shogun’s chamber. A word much like one the shogun had used to address the girl, those days ago, when he’d shown her the ruins.

  ‘Empress,’ the shogun had called her.

  He turned toward the native soldiers’ argument at last, uncaring if he revealed himself, as that word abducted his attention.

  “With emperor… dead… we must… east… surrender,” the captain finished.

  There was a beat of silence across the group of other soldiers, as the finality of their captain’s words sunk in.

  It dawned on Roskvir that the shogun had been right.

  The princess’ people intended to surrender. They believed she was dead.

  Aurelia.

  And so suddenly Rosvkir remembered what had last felt to him like anything at all.

  The soldiers’ dispute resumed. But he no longer bothered to decipher their words.

  Sitting bound on the burnt clay soil, still like stone, he remembered.

  Even after their victory that day, the native soldiers intended to surrender, he realized. Faced with the prospect of a weapon so terrible as had erased their great city — and faced with what they believed was likely the princess’ fate, along with the rest of her line.

  They would surrender, and Roskvir’s people would win their war with artifice and the weapons of cowards.

  And all the girl’s efforts to remain strong, defying the shogun’s coercion, would come to nothing.

  He thought then of the fates of other chieftains and princelings of other lands, who’d refused cooperation with their Albian conquerors. Those that were symbols of resistance for their people.

  And he thought then of Aurelia.

  He remembered observing her, talking to her, helping her in what ways he could.

  He remembered when he’d tried to change her mind regarding the shogun’s designs, which had felt so awful — but which had felt like something, at all, at least.

  And he remembered how, after all else had long since turned hollow and numb, how witnessing her strength and courage inspired him.

  The native soldiers appeared almost ready to come to blows, the more veteran officers perhaps poised to arrest the younger newcomers for insubordination. They were all distracted for those last fleeting moments.

  He’d been ordered to face that enemy before him, Roskvir knew. To hold out until Thjali’s force arrived.

  But he’d been ordered to ensure the safety of that strange girl aboard the Tanngnjostr, just the same. The shogun himself had ordered him thus.

  He realized then which of those orders he'd rather die fulfilling.

  Wrists still bound, he rose to his feet awkward and tottering. But managed indeed to rise, with his nearest captors distracted by their officers’ dispute.

  The shouting faltered when they noticed him upright. The armored captain and his lieutenant interrupted themselves to storm over, ready to beat and shove him back to the ground. But Roskvir managed to speak, before the first scowling officer closed the distance — and to them in their tongue, he said:

  “Aurelia lives.”