Yes, the shadows seemed to whisper back.
She was the Princess of the Four Realms, the eldest child of the Emperor, the future Empress. The soldiers were pledged to protect her, but wasn’t she as responsible for their lives as they were for hers? Precisely because she was the Princess?
She should at least see what was happening. When all of this was over, she didn’t want to be found cowering in the shadows — no matter who won. She wouldn’t allow her enemies to find her this way, and she didn’t want the men to know that she had run and hid at the very moment they most needed a symbol of hope the most.
Tasia stood, glancing left and right to make sure none of the enemy had wandered far enough from the melee to see her. Once she was sure the route was clear, she sprinted from her hiding spot towards the tent to her right.
And promptly tripped on the rope staking it down, which the darkness had rendered invisible.
Tasia flew forward, arms outstretched before her, dagger bouncing from her grip when she hit the ground chest-first. The impact knocked the air from her lungs, and for a terrifying moment, she thought her lungs had collapsed in such a way that she would never take a breath again. Her face skidded across the dusty earth, and something sharp scraped down her chin.
A moment after her landing, she gasped in a breath, relieved that she hadn’t killed herself .
But the dagger. Where was the dagger?
She crawled forward in the dark, cursing her ineptitude as she groped for the dropped blade. Her men were being slaughtered, and she wasn’t even competent enough to run from one point to the next without nearly killing herself.
Tasia’s fingers met warm leather. She wrapped a skinned palm around the dagger’s handle, letting out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.
It wasn’t over. She could still go to them, and if Mother Moon and the other gods would have her die this night, then she would die alongside the Imperial soldiers, dagger in hand, fighting for them just as they fought for her.
More cautiously this time, she edged around the corner of the tent she was behind, trying to see what was happening. On the other side of her hiding spot, the fighting still raged.
She still needed to get closer.
She took off at a jog for the back of the next tent, taking care this time to skirt the ropes and stakes that bound them to the earth. Three tents later, the sound of fighting intensified. She was behind Captain Mannick’s tent, she realized, only one tent off from her own.
Her back pressed against the canvas of the Captain’s tent, Tasia inched forward, stealing a quick glance around the back edge of the tent towards the thick of the battle.
Joslyn’s rallying cry had done some good, it seemed. The Imperial soldiers were still outnumbered, with one man in the House of Dorsa black and silver for every two or three scruffy ruffians. But the remaining soldiers had managed to create a kind of oval formation, standing shoulder-to-shoulder as they worked to beat back the onslaught against them.
Joslyn stood in the center of the oval’s front line, a sword in each hand. Painted an angry orange-red by the blazing tents, the tongues of steel flicked forward, backward, sideways at speeds almost too fast to track with the naked eye.
An enemy lunged forward; Joslyn’s right sword plunged through his throat. Another enemy swung a hatchet at the man beside her; the left sword severed his weapon arm at the elbow. The fighter screamed and fell to his knees, clutching his arm. The soldier he’d been about to attack finished him, driving a short sword through his chest.
It was gruesome and bloody and chaotic and Tasia didn’t want to see it. She wanted to cover her eyes and drop back into a crouch behind the tent, but she wouldn’t. She would help.
As she debated what to do, she heard a cry of pain. There had been many of those tonight, but this one sounded too familiar. She ventured another glimpse around the edge of the tent and saw Joslyn crumple forward at the waist, dropping to one knee as she clutched her side and struggled to keep her feet. One of the swords lay on the ground beside her, no longer dancing in the firelight. A bearded man twice her size lifted his sword with an animalistic growl, preparing to deliver the final blow.
Tasia didn’t think. She stepped around the corner of the tent and lifted her dagger —
Elbow in. Left foot forward. Hand straight back. Flick the wrist.
— letting the blade fly with a perfect form she didn’t even think about. The dagger turned end-over-end as it whistled through the night air. Much to Tasia’s own surprise, it struck the man holding the sword above Joslyn in the throat, burying itself up to the hilt in his jugular.
The battle lust that had filled his eyes a moment earlier was replaced with shock. The sword tumbled uselessly from his hands as he reached for the dagger in his throat, clawing ineffectively as blood spurted like a fountain from the wound. He made a gurgling noise, and more blood poured from his mouth. With a grunt of effort, Joslyn pushed herself to her feet, roared in defiance as she drove her sword through the man’s belly. He fell backward, bouncing against the ground once, then moving no more.
Tasia stood frozen. She’d done it. She hadn’t just thrown her dagger into a hay bail target; she’d thrown it at a man. During a battle. And she killed him. She’d taken life.
“Charge and flank!” Joslyn shouted. Her voice was reedy, lacking the command it had possessed before. She held one sword; her other hand still clutched at her midsection.
But reedy or not, the other soldiers heard her and obeyed. As one body, they broke the back half of their oval in its center, half of them moving to the left and half to the right. They closed on the remaining enemy fighters like a crab’s closing pincer, trapping the ones still alive between them.
It was all over a few minutes later, with the last of the enemies impaled from behind by a soldier’s short sword. When that last man fell, the surviving Imperial soldiers all seemed to sag at once. Swords, axes, pikes, and halberds drooped from hands like wilted flowers. Exhausted men fell to their knees, while the injured tore off strips of their tunics or the tunics of the dead to bind their wounds.
Joslyn fell, too, collapsing in the center of all of them, dropping to both knees and then pitching forward as if she’d been pushed from behind. She braced one hand against the earth, barely supporting herself. The other hand stayed across her belly, and in the firelight, Tasia watched in horror as blood seeped from between her fingers.
Tasia rushed from her spot between the tents to the guard. The Princess kneeled before the guard, putting both hands on Joslyn’s shoulders, trying to push her upright again. “Joslyn? Are you alright?”
Joslyn lifted her head, face a pale mask of pain. Her normally ruddy bronze skin was ghost-white, despite the warm light cast by the blazing tents. “I need the… my box… in the tent…” She pointed weakly in the direction of the tent she’d been sharing with Tasia.
“Alright. Okay. I’ll get the box,” Tasia said, and she ran into the tent. No one seemed to notice her — a princess in a dirty sleeping gown, running bare-footed into the largest tent in the campsite. Those who were still alive were all too busy doing other things: Men chased down horses and pack animals, some of whose hobbles had been cut by the raiders and, in their fright, had scattered across the barren plain. Other men ran with buckets of water from the nearby pond to douse the burning tents, while still more tended to their fallen comrades, seeking out the ones who might still survive.