Page 107 of The Summer Pass

That was her first thought. Her second was: Why, by Earth’s heart, did Nakhana have to be here to see this? He hadn’t been any help, and now he would be horrified. It was a shame. He had seemed like such a good match for Susami, up to now.

“If we face the Sukiyans, our biggest advantage is that we are faster on our feet. They are weighed down with metal armour and heavy shields. Those things protect them well from a frontal assault, but we can attack from the side, where they are weaker.”

Firuduna had translated all that for Vanu when he spoke to the men before they came down the mountain. He didn’t feel very fast on his feet as he staggered back through the disintegrating Sukiyan battle formation, clutching their splintered standard.

He’d taken a spear in the shoulder, the point punching through his light-weight leather armour. He’d had worse wounds and stayed on his feet afterward. He had to bring the standard back to Vanu. He had to tell Barda’s mother how her son had fallen—that he’d died a hero’s death—in case no one else had seen it. These were reasons enough to push on.

Helmeted foreign faces glared at him, swords and shields clashed, his shoulder throbbed, and he pushed on. Then he was out. Friendly hands were grabbing him, holding him up, and the voices all around him were speaking in Hawada. He realized that a sound he’d been hearing was not the ringing in his ears but the note of a trumpet, blaring over the battlefield, repeating the same two notes.

“That’s the signal to surrender!” someone shouted.

“How do you know?”

“Because look at them!”

Firuduna was too tired to look. Someone was guiding him toward a place to sit down. Someone else had taken his shield and the Sukiyan standard away from him.

“They’re surrendering!”

“I didn’t think they knew how to do that.”

Though he’d been in the midst of it, he had to have it explained to him, afterward, as if he hadn’t been there at all. Vanu had sought out the mercenary leader and taken him on in a duel, the way he did, while Firuduna was capturing the standard and the rest of the men were harrying the Sukiyans from the sides and causing their tidy battle formation to bunch up and fall apart.

“He wasn’t much of a swordsman, if you ask me,” one of the men from Tawakhura scoffed, retelling the story. “But he didn’t think he needed to be. He had a spear, see?”

“Until Lord Vanu broke it!” someone else crowed.

“Let me tell it! I’m the one who saw.”

“I heard he grabbed the spear and flung it away?”

“No, he broke it, like Gurbunda said—grabbed the shaft just below the point and smashed it against the edge of the Sukiyan’s shield, and it broke off. So they had to fight sword and shield, and anyone could have told the Sukiyan he didn’t stand a chance after that.”

“The only reason he’s still alive⁠—”

“I’m telling it! The only reason he’s still alive is because he surrendered to Lord Vanu.”

“Huh. I didn’t think they knew how to do that.” It was a witticism being repeated all over the field by this time.

“Earth’s tits, it only makes sense! Word was going round by then that we’d captured their standard—that was Firuduna here, good man, Firuduna!—and the Sukiyan leader could see his men were hard pressed, between us and the prince’s guard, never mind that Vanu would have killed him seven times over by then if it weren’t for all his armour—it’s true, I was there—and you know they’re mercenaries? They want to take home booty for their families, not get themselves killed out here. Of course they surrendered.”

The Zashian besiegers had taken a different approach. With the Sukiyans bearing the brunt of the attack by both Vanu’s Hawakhaba and Artayarasha’s cavalry and their siege works largely destroyed, they had gathered themselves up into something like an orderly retreat. And a swift one at that. They had made it far down the valley by this time and were recrossing the broken-up streams of the Rakhiri.

Firuduna’s shoulder was bandaged now, and he got back to his feet.

“Where are you going?” someone asked. “Wait for Lord Vanu—he’ll want to congratulate you on getting the enemy’s standard! That helped to turn the tide, you know.”

Firuduna shook his head. “I got to go—look for a friend’s body.”

It was an ordinary enough thing, after a battle. He tried to tell himself that. Ordinary to be grieving for a fallen comrade. Ordinary to have kissed someone goodbye and then learn you’d never see them again. Pull yourself together. Be a man. He heard his mother’s voice in his head.

It was pretty ordinary to be stabbed with a spear in a battle, too, he thought, but that didn’t make it hurt any less.

“No, Darma is dead,” Gurti repeated. “In front of the great house—quite dead, and—” She broke off because Nakhana was signing at her again. “Susami, Lord Vanu’s daughter, killed him,” she added reluctantly.

She had thought, when the blacksmith accompanied her here to explain the situation to Garda of Manáshta, Vanu’s deputy, that Nakhana wanted to tell everyone he had killed Darma himself. She’d imagined he’d say it was to protect Susami or some such thing. Nonsense, as far as she was concerned, but she’d have gone along with it, if that was what he wanted, because at least he hadn’t mumbled excuses and run off after seeing Susami stab a man in the neck.

On the contrary, he’d been quite helpful. He dragged Darma’s body out of the way and talked comfortingly with Atari while Susami went in to clean up the blood on her hands and dress, and then he and Susami had a conversation which Gurti had carefully not eavesdropped on. Vanu’s girls went back to their room in the great house after that, and Nakhana followed Gurti to the gate to report to the headman of Manáshta. Where, it turned out, he wanted to make sure everyone knew Susami had killed Darma herself. That was … unexpected.