“Let’s have Sinza and his boys at Jensa retreat north a ways,” Yechvan said to Ulula as he adjusted the troop positions on his map. For the entire season of Cillion, Banx had been pushed back little by little, and now the Perysh could easily surround their tower at Jensa, leaving the defenders to starve with no escape. “Better to give up the tower than have it sieged.”

  Grask swept into the tent in time to catch the end of the discussion, a question already forming on his lips. “We are giving up more ground?” He threw off the hood of his cloak, spraying Ulula with rainwater and eliciting a disapproving grunt.

  “We’ve no choice,” Yechvan murmured. He was sitting at the table, his sword arm twinging with sharp pain as Zu stitched up his newest wound, a slash across the biceps.

  The half-dozen confrontations with Peryn had shown Banx to be horribly outnumbered. Peryn was disciplined, their shield walls tight, their archers skilled, their armored horses terrifying. Every clash over the past turn had been a skirmish, neither side willing to commit enough forces to do any real damage. The war was still in its infancy. Yechvan and his Perysh counterpart, Telu Myrrh, were still placing the initial pieces on the board, feeling out each other’s stratagems.

  “We knew it wouldn’t be easy to defend against Peryn’s heavy armor in the plains,” Ulula reminded the boy. “We can run circles around them, but so long as they remain disciplined, all we can do is hold them at bay. With their superior numbers and steel, it’s a wonder they haven’t pushed us all the way back to Teg.”

  “They’ve forced our retreat six times now. When will we get reinforcements?” Grask asked.

  “I’m afraid we’ll get no reinforcements,” Yechvan said. “Roog and the qish must force the center of the Perysh army into retreat if we are to gain any reprieve here on the eastern front. We are but a distraction meant to split their forces. We are the Tandai Illusion, I’m afraid.”

  “So, we will let them push us all the way to Teg and beyond? Back into the caves our people came from?”

  “Relax.” Yechvan put his hands up to calm the boy, laughing to himself. The child who had known nothing of orcish history a mere season ago spoke with such passion now that he was a part of it.

  “Keep still,” Zu said. He pulled Yechvan’s arm down and returned to dressing the wound. “Remember, Little Grask, you must be the stone. Let the river flow over you.”

  “Yes, remember, Little Grask, if you lose your patience, you die,” Ulula said with feigned severity. Zu bore the jest with immaculate poise, hardly sparing her a glance as he tended to Yechvan’s injury.

  Yechvan snorted a laugh and then winced when Zu jabbed him with the needle harder than necessary. “For every stride we retreat, the Perysh take two. One closer to our cities and homes, yes, but also one further from their own. Further from familiar terrain, further from their supplies, from their allies, from their forges and timber. There are some trees for kindling here, but not enough to withstand the bitter snows through Galgonon and Solynon and Alternon. They may take control of the city of Teg, but if they do, the locals won’t welcome the soldiers and offer them food and lodging. No one likes a conqueror.”

  “Which is exactly what your father faced after coming to the surface,” Ulula said. Her mother’s family had settled in the southeast after the Emergence, giving her a keen perspective on the resistance the orcs faced. Things Grask was too young and too na?ve to comprehend. “Don’t question Yechvan,” she continued. “Not unless you’ve something of substance to add rather than mere complaints. Have you a solution to our current predicament?”

  The boy shook his head with defiant determination.

  “Then I suggest you think of one.”

  “Yes, Qiway,” Grask said.

  Ulula chuckled. “Only my bantax call me that.”

  Yechvan remembered when a young, eager Ulula had made the same mistake. He tried to turn to her, coaxing another irritated grunt from Zu, who yanked the injured arm back into his grasp. Ulula came around the table to sit before Yechvan, a bemused smile playing across her lips.

  “You’re both enjoying my misfortune entirely too much,” Yechvan said through gritted teeth. “How are the recruits coming along?”

  “Everyone is struggling some,” Ulula replied, “between the fighting and falling back, the injuries, the constant need to relocate. But the younglings are impressive, disciplined.”

  “A testament to your skill.” Zu nodded his approval.

  “Don’t flatter me,” Ulula scoffed. “I have refused to allow the veterans their usual complacency between battles, that’s all. I have given them the choice: build walls and dig trenches or join the drills.”

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  Zu guffawed. “That can’t be good for morale.”

  “No, it isn’t,” she admitted. “Particularly among the veterans who believe themselves heroes. But they are productive, and it gives me extra time to train the younglings.” She beamed, pleased with herself.

  “Good,” Yechvan said. “I will observe tomorrow to encourage them to be on their best behavior. It will be difficult to keep their spirits up come Galgonon if we have yet to win even a minor victory.”

  “You’re right to worry about the veterans,” Grask said.

  “Why? Have you heard something?” Zu wondered.

  “Just general mumbling and groaning.”

  “Work with them on the morrow, Zu. I’ll join you after I watch the drills,” Yechvan said. “Perhaps it will elevate the mood to see us building the barricades rather than spending all our time with Grask. The boy could use some old-fashioned grunt work to develop those muscles anyway.”

  Grask, grumbling under his breath, pulled a book off the shelf to begin his nightly reading. Ulula grinned at him. Despite her earlier misgivings, he was quietly winning her over.

  “All done,” Zu said as he finished wrapping up Yechvan’s wound. He tied the bandage tight and turned his attention to Grask. “How was your first taste of battle, Little Grask?”

  “Not…what I was expecting. I thought it would feel good, but…” He picked at the dried blood and dirt beneath his fingernails.

  No one spoke, giving him space to explore his feelings.

  “Mostly I feel relieved I didn’t die. But I guess I thought it would feel more…I thought I would feel better, but I don’t.”

  Grask’s fidgeting hands betrayed irreconcilable anxiety. His eyes searched for absolution, for reassurance from one of his elders. But he would find neither absolution nor reassurance there.

  “Why is that?” Ulula asked in a voice both strong and gentle.

  “Because the two men I killed were soldiers, not rabid dogs. They had mothers and fathers, maybe wives, children.”

  “I hope you remember this feeling when our father dies and you are qish,” Zu said. “The world hasn’t seen a penitent ruler for quite a while.”

  “Oh, how would you know?” Ulula punched Zu in the shoulder. “You’ve never traveled beyond Peryn.”

  “You don’t think our father is penitent?” Grask asked.

  “He is a conqueror. More altruistic than some, perhaps, and far better than what I’ve seen of humans. Rape, torture and slavery are unforgivable and abhorrent to him. But he has made a home where he was unwelcome, pushed himself and his posterity into positions of power and influence where they previously had none. It may well be that the benefits of his actions outweigh the consequences in the end, but how many men and women and children will suffer for his ideals of prosperity?”

  “Why do you do it, then? Why do you fight for something you clearly don’t believe in?” Grask shot back. The emotions of war, of pain and death, were raw as blisters and just as quick to burst.

  Zu shrugged. He pulled an apple from his pocket, hands still crusted over with Yechvan’s blood, and took a bite. “Perhaps I’ll tell you when you’re qish.”

  “Oh, don’t listen to him,” Ulula said, ruffling the boy’s unkempt hair. “He’s being ornery.”

  Sensing that the conversation could only degrade, Yechvan stood to pore over his maps. He flexed his arm, and the muscles tensed around the wound. It wasn’t too deep, but the torn flesh burned with the fire of the hells. He mimicked raising his shield and sword and immediately lowered his arms. He hoped they wouldn’t be fighting anytime soon, but even a cursory glance at the mud-speckled parchment told him they had three, maybe four days before crossing swords with Peryn again.

  Every surface in the new camp was muddy. Sokk, god of rain, had dumped buckets on all the locations Yechvan had scouted for their fallback encampments. He’d chosen the highest ground they could find and still his boots squelched with each step.

  Part of him hoped the Perysh would attempt a run on the camp. It was easily defensible, and the mud was worse at its base. Puddles two or three fingers deep dotted the landscape. The high ground and slow terrain would give his archers an immense advantage. The soldiers had felled as many trees as possible to fashion makeshift walls, which would easily frustrate any advance.

  Yechvan sighed wistfully. One of Peryn’s lesser generals might lead such a foolish advance, but Telu Myrrh would never take such a misstep.

  All things considered, his people could be faring much worse. They’d suffered fewer casualties than their opponents. Yechvan had dictated the locations of their skirmishes, forcing the southerners to approach and engage. The bantax, led by the fearless Ulula of the Wind, wove in and out of Peryn’s lines, flanking the enemy archers and pressuring their blasted shield walls. They rode in wide formations, swooping in to fire a volley of arrows and then flying away, sweeping past for another run as they returned to the safety of Banx. Only a few of the magnificent riders had fallen to stray arrows. The footmen had done their job, too. Long spears and pikes had prevented the heavily armored knights from penetrating the softest and weakest sections of the army, and Banx’s soldiers had been well trained to hold their own shield walls. They’d remained disciplined, providing cover from long-range volleys, and were effective enough to engage and disengage without being overrun. But the eastern and western flanks of Banx’s army had been forced to retreat farther than Yechvan had hoped and quicker than he liked.

  It was a losing strategy, but so it had been from the start. The Banxian soldiers numbered about half that of the Perysh, if the estimates were correct. They needed to fight, to delay, to lose battle after battle until either Grusk or Gorse won a decisive victory. Or until Yechvan could exploit some weakness, some chink in Telu Myrrh’s flawless armor. Grask was right to be frustrated, but Yechvan had played out stratagem after stratagem, and this approach was their best chance at winning the war in the long run.

  Difficult as it had been to explain his stalling strategy to Grusk, a seasoned veteran and brilliant tactician, doing so with a boy of thirteen who’d never experienced the reality of war was nigh on impossible. Ulula and Zu had stood beside Yechvan time and again and succeeded when failure seemed not only likely but inevitable, so they’d long since given up questioning the tactical decisions he made. But Grask was only just dipping his toes into the frigid waters of death and loss, and he wanted answers.

  For now, Yechvan’s task was to burn the candles long into the night, to come up with new battle plans and continue to frustrate the Perysh advance without entangling his troops in a pitched battle. The soldiers wouldn’t be happy about it. No one would be.

  It was war. No one would be happy until it was ended.