VIRAN

  Viran had almost waved to Mirri when he saw her, but she seemed busy. Keeping watch had been easy, after all the knights and the Wards had reached the north tower.

  The battle between the hydra and the Seraph was distracting, but it was the good kind of distracting. Nobody else seemed to want to fight each other anymore. Or at least, the sounds had stopped when the Venatrix arrived.

  She had probably given the Bessos knights a firm set of instructions to behave.

  Watch duty got hard again after the Seraph crashed back over the walls. The buzzing declaration didn't quite reach Viran's ears, but it did gently shake his bones.

  "They left. Running together. But not everybody. Why would they split up?" Viran asked Dast. "Weren't they going to help the Seraph?"

  Dast sat on a chair borrowed from inside, and kicked his boots up on the edge of the wall while he leaned his back against the tower, lazily peering past the edge. He could see people moving, but couldn't count them or pick out who was who without Viran's help.

  The back and forth nature of keeping watch together was soothing some of Viran's nerves, and frustrating in equal measure when he failed to say the right parts of what he was seeing for Dast to figure things out.

  "Well you have to tell me which ones stayed behind for me to guess at that. Who are the runners?"

  Viran shrugged.

  "I don't know their names. I can tell you what weapons they have?" He offered.

  If everyone with a sling had stayed behind, that would probably tell Dast something about the plan.

  Dast waved away the offer and took a swig from his regular waterskin instead of the special one.

  "Just the important parts. Troop numbers, heraldry, officers, obviously wounded fighters." Dast listed out what he wanted to hear on his fingers. "And who can fly. They're near the cliffs, that's an important escape route."

  "Dovin and all of Dovin's wards, even the ones with wings." Viran said. Dast already knew how many of those there were. "And the same number— no, one extra human that didn't run up the hill with the Bessos men is going down with them."

  Viran took a second to make sure he hadn't miscounted by accident. None of the Wards following Dovin were Mirri either.

  "They won't be planning to hole up in there long then, just making a distraction of themselves with the threat of the Seraph on the walls. Light show like that isn't something you can ignore while you run down ready fighters. Smart retreat." Dast mused. "Just one? Hydra must've got the other four with firearms, then. Least the garrison got out."

  Viran shook his head.

  "The new human has no armor. And there's another one with Mirri and Sutai." He pointed to the three figures that had just paced out around the walls. "They're on the ledge, with weird clothes too."

  "Those are an Arrivals, then. Armed ones." Dast grimaced. "Bessos men wouldn't be leaving one of theirs behind with your cousin. They're going to evacuate the delicate ones across the pass once Dovin's group is far enough the distance matters, and force the Warlord to commit to a fight with the Venatrix at the bottom of the cliff, or leave with empty jaws."

  "Why would distance matter?"

  "They need Dovin's forces split from the Venatrix and Seraph, so they'll wait. I suspect if they hadn't just poured out of a mineshaft in those hills, they'd already be gone, with the Warden this ready." Dast snorted and waved a hand at the sky. "And if they push too far from that shelter, the cleanup will take days of forestry and break a few dozen hatchets. It'll be a pyre seen from Sanctum."

  "After she deals with the Immortal." Viran said. "To be smart."

  "Tactically, yes. Your auntie's been known to make a point of things for political reasons, when it's more than just her." Dast grinned a bit. "That staff is heavy."

  "Right." Viran remembered. "She beat Greyfang the Grizzled into red paste with it inside Eastwatch, when Mirri was little. Dovin says fighting up close like that every time is risky, though."

  Viran had mentioned it last night, when Dovin had made him put the sparring weapons away to knock over the training dummy with magic instead. The lecture about 'why' had been fun, before he had to go back to practicing. Even if Dovin had skipped the exciting parts of the story.

  "Yes, that was what I meant, I was in the mess hall for it." Dast winced and waved towards the cluster of knights moving down the opposite ridge. "Maybe say it with that old nickname a little quieter, lest we wake his ghost in some of our human guests later."

  Viran twisted his fingers into a warding sign against spirits at the reminder. He took a moment to think about it, and pointed the sign South towards Eastwatch, then East through the pass. Greyfang's ghost might have gone to either place.

  Dast sounded unreasonably chipper as he changed the subject. "Different circumstances today, though. Mirri's a terror all her own now, and Isha has backup."

  "Dovin." Viran said confidently.

  Mirri had told him the story about why Auntie trusted Dovin to help her. Dast didn't seem to agree with what Viran was saying though, even while he admitted it was the truth.

  "Well yes, Sanctum sent her Dovin after that little skirmish. They're not fond of assassinations, attempted or otherwise." Dast said. "But I mean the Venatrix and the Seraph. That staff is far from the scariest thing about the Warden."

  "It's just for storing energy, and hitting things in emergencies." Viran nodded at the sky. "Her magic is always scarier, and she can do it without the staff."

  Viran might be able to do that some day. Right now he was useless without a weapon. Stuck watching. Stuck waiting to see if Mirri would make it across the pass in time to fly up the cliff to them.

  He peered over the ledge, checking if there were any obstacles or handholds while Dast gave his own answer. Auntie said listening to what other people thought was an important part of being a Warden.

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  Dast seemed to like talking when he was nervous, so this was good practice.

  "Allies, Viran. She makes loyal allies out of powerful people, and then asks favors they're grateful to do for her. That's the scary part." Dast said. His leg was bouncing just a little while he eyed the movement across the pass. The monster seemed to be done fighting, but not quite dead. "Those knights are cooperating because it's smart right now, and they want to live. They go back to being enemies when there's not a bigger threat. The Seraph and the Venatrix, they're allies. Worthy of trust."

  "Oh. So she can delegate Mirri being safe." Viran understood now. "Auntie says I'll need to start doing that someday, for breaking the Teeth. Delegating."

  "Exactly. You want to clean out one of the Tyrant’s Teeth, you’re going to need allies, not just cooperation." Dast said. "Your cousin has a Seraph, a Venatrix, and one of the scariest mercenaries to ever kick up his heels and draw rations in this valley surrounding her on her first real patrol, because the Warden makes allies."

  "All of them." Viran corrected him.

  Cleaning out one mountain had only ever changed which Mage Lord took up residence. Or caused the next one to collapse on top of whoever tried.

  Viran didn’t know how to feel about the rest of the sentence. Dast was saying things that made sense, but Dovin had seemed mad at the Venatrix for luring the Horde warband to Tenashki in the first place.

  He would have to ask Auntie who was right later.

  "Yes, all of them. No amount of preparation would have made her a Seraph, gotten her the level of sponsorship a Venatrix gets from Sanctum, or given her Dovin’s particular tactical acumen. But a few centuries of investing in keeping people safe, and helping those who do..."

  Dast trailed off and took a swig from his actual waterskin, misunderstanding Viran.

  "The largest Horde incursion west of the Fang in three centuries, and they’re about to walk away with new friends instead of bodies to carry, and the rain hasn’t even really begun," The Ranger said. "So you can sit down, and relax a bit. You're making me nervous near that cliff."

  "I wasn't going to climb down unless there was an emergency." Viran said, mostly telling the truth.

  Helping Mirri would be an emergency.

  Dast seemed to see right through the excuse though, so Viran added the rest of his reason quickly.

  "And I won't be able to see the knights if I back up."

  The Ranger narrowed his eyes at where Dovin's group was working their way down the ridge. Maybe forty more lengths, and they would be able to hop safely off the ledge, and cross to the wide mouth of the pass to work their way up the ridge Viran was on.

  Hopefully Mirri would be here by then. Or Auntie. Viran didn't really want to be stuck in a tower with a dozen Bessos knights and half a dozen Wards when he had no weapon. They would go back to being enemies with each other when the Horde left, and Dovin said two to one odds were bad no matter how big you were.

  "Aren't they all the way across?" Dast asked suspiciously. "I can still see them moving even all the way down here."

  "The ones in the pass by the base of the Stubs." Viran pointed over the edge to the east, where almost a hundred earthmage-crafted pillars jutted from the ground to prevent wagons from passing, and split up armies for ambushes. "Saah's heraldry. I think they're watching too."

  Dast jerked his head up from where he was leaned against the watchtower door, and said a curse Viran had only heard in the city.

  He did it again when he followed Viran's finger, and began muttering, digging through one of the pouches on his belt.

  "What's wrong?" Viran asked. "They won't attack the Venatrix, right?"

  "Seraph didn't know about them either. Which means they're not bound by the Accords right now, and I'm not worried about the Venatrix's safety." Dast explained. "There's only one commander Lord Saah would be sending through the pass this early in season this year. Anyone but his heir leading the pack would be admitting the Firebrand scares him."

  Viran immediately grasped the problem.

  "We need to tell them, Mirri can't come down." He said. "They'll shoot her wings, she'll be trapped on three sides and won't be able to fly."

  Even if Mirri recognized Saah's men in time, the Venatrix might not understand what Mirri was doing if she had to defend herself.

  Viran scanned the courtyard for a suitable rock. He had his sling, and the knights were only mostly tucked into the Stubs. If he figured out which one was Saah's heir, and hit him perfectly in the helmet, Mirri wouldn't have to worry about her wings at all.

  Unfortunately, the winter snows had not deposited any perfect sling stones. The barren cliff face had long since been picked dry and swept down to the bedrock by the wind and rain. Taking part of the wall wouldn't work either. The earth mages who had built the south tower had favored rocks too big for Viran to throw.

  Dast disagreed again, pointing to where the Venatrix sat atop the wall. The air clapped when she finished hurling a fireball into the treeline. Sutai was nowhere in sight, and Mirri was having an angry-looking standoff with the straw-headed Arrival.

  She wasn't reaching for her weapon though, so they must still be the friendly kind of Arrival, just confused. The new humans wouldn't know that Sanctum's job was to keep everybody alive.

  "They're distracted, we need to tell Dovin, he can rally the troops to keep the west end clear and give her an out." Dast said, finally retrieving something from his pouch and redirecting the claw to Viran's chin. "You don't see me right now, and you won't copy me."

  The Ranger was unwrapping a tattered-looking waterproof cover, revealing a thin stick of clay. While Viran tried to examine it, Dast hiked a leg up onto the wall and began running the pastel down his own scales, taking care to only grip the covering with his claws.

  The gentle sparkle embedded in the distributed clay, along with the care the Ranger was taking, and the dire warning not to look gave away what he was doing.

  "That's platinum slough. On your scales." Viran realized aloud. "Those kinds of things aren't good for your—"

  Viran cut himself off as Dast practically snarled while dragging the clay down the scales of his own leg.

  "Sometimes you need to survive the day and deal with the consequences. A little off my power ceiling in a decade or lives right now because I was late is no riddle, I'm not an Immortal." Dast stopped gritting his teeth when he finished painting another line down his second leg. "You will be, someday. Keep watch from inside, no heroics, do not wish me luck."

  Viran closed his mouth before he could finish tempting any of the gods by accident.

  He didn't know whether that rule was real for him or not, but he didn't want to test it right now. Or with anybody's life. Auntie said some Immortals got away with ignoring it, but it was better to pretend until he knew how interesting the gods thought he was.

  It was an annoying kind of rule to worry about, when he only seemed to make people angry by accident.

  At least prayers had to be on purpose for the gods to listen.

  Thunder rumbled, and heat lightning lit the sky. Auntie was letting the storm roil, she wasn't close enough to save Mirri yet.

  Dast was gone by the time Viran recovered and looked down from the sky. He wobbled a little at first, thudding along the planks atop the wall, but once he jumped, the Ranger disappeared into the early-spring foliage before Viran had managed to blink three times.

  The Seraph leapt away from the north tower, eating up the distance towards Dovin's group. Something was happening over the ridge, where Viran couldn't see.

  Viran took a few seconds to make sure the aurochs wasn't trapped in the feed bag, got a bruise to the ribs for his trouble, and went inside in a foul mood.

  He stepped right back outside when he realized he was dripping on the floor. Water splattered off him with a flex of mana, and only a few fat droplets from the roof tiles hit his snout. Not even close to enough water to soak the stones below him.

  The door rattled in the wind until Viran barred it. After, he raced to the window by the water barrel, throwing it wide to get back to keeping watch.

  Something had gone wrong, in the minute he was looking away. Must have gone wrong.

  Nobody smart would have planned what he was seeing.

  The Venatrix was already at the bottom of the cliff, gliding to the ground without her spear or Sutai, just another Arrival Viran hadn't seen before. The Bessos men had broken formation with Dovin and swung into the pass instead of following. They were keeping themselves close to the north cliff, shouting back and forth while Dovin's Wards retreated from a hail of stones.

  Maybe they were setting an ambush. That would be kind of like cooperating.

  The hydra, at least, looked dead, pinned to the rocky cliffside by a lance of silver, but the north tower was practically rubble, and crawling with fighters. Some of them were even pitching stakes for an awning, carefully unfolding a cloth that glinted under the next flash of lightning.

  He couldn't find Mirri, either.

  Over the rattling of the shutters, Viran heard footsteps squelching through the mud outside, and the aurochs snorted a warning.

  Auntie was coming. Auntie would fix it. She would find a way.

  Nobody was dead yet, so it was still possible.

  superstitious beliefs date back to at least 5,000 years ago, with alabaster idols designed to protect against an 'evil eye' being found in the Mesopotamian city of Tell Brak, and texts from Ugarit (modern day Syria) attesting to the concept of a curse brought about by envious or malevolent gazes.