“Not yet,” the guard to my left answers.
My eyes dart from left to right as I try to pick out familiar soldiers in the lineup. But from this far away, they’re not much more than black ants ready to swarm, though it still doesn’t stop my eyes from skimming.
I’m looking for a spot of mustard hair, a behemoth male, a quick-footed female.
Spikes on a spine.
But I can’t pick anything out, not from this distance.
I don’t know what I thought would happen when we arrived. The idea of battle was there, but it didn’t feel real.
This...this feels real.
“Your army is going to decimate them.”
The guards don’t disagree with me, and my stomach hurts with misery for the innocent people of Ranhold.
“Serves them right,” the other guard tells me without sympathy. “They did this. Fifth Kingdom attacked our borders. Killed some of our men.”
I turn to look at him. “What’s your name?”
“Pierce, my lady.”
“Well, Pierce, I heard that your soldiers slaughtered Fifth’s army pretty effectively at that battle,” I tell him. “Isn’t that enough?”
He shrugs. “Not to our king.”
My fingers curl into my skirts, gripping them tight.
I know Midas tricked King Fulke into attacking Fourth’s borders. I know that this is essentially Midas’s fault. But to wage war, to be ready to decimate a kingdom...it’s like a lead weight in my chest that drags me down.
I hate the power plays of kings.
Ranhold Castle flies purple flags at half mast, a symbol of their dead king. The walls of the fortress glitter gray and white like marbled stone, proud spires pointing up to the Divines.
It would be pretty, if it weren’t for Fourth looming around them.
“Come, my lady,” Pierce tells me. “Time to get you safely in your tent.”
“I don’t want to go back to my tent,” I reply.
The thought of being cooped up where I can’t see, can’t know what’s going on, it makes me anxious.
Pierce gives me a sympathetic look. “Apologies. It’s orders.”
I press my lips into a firm line as they turn and lead me back. They let me walk along the line of the embankment though, like they’re trying to give me extra time to see.
It’s a testament to just how big Fourth’s army is that the camp isn’t completely deserted. There are still some guarding the perimeter, some on horseback, others on foot.
But no one jokes or drinks or plays dice by the fire, no one smiles. The soldiers are in battle mode, faces formidable and bodies tense, none of them familiar to me.
Then, just as we’re about to descend the slope, I feel it.
A pulse.
The single beat strums, rippling along the ground with a strange, errant swell. I stop in my tracks, every single hair on the back of my neck rising to attention in crippling awareness.
“Whatisthat?” I whisper, palms gone clammy, fear racing in my heart.
