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My lower lip quivers. I hate that I can still see those cursed Dacians far in the distance and already Memnon is back to being the caring, supportive husband he always is. I hate that it makes my horror and fear of him seem petty.

He glances over to Zosines, who stalks around the battlefield, checking on the wounded.

“Bring me Bastiza’s head.”

I’m trembling as Zosines retrieves the severed appendage and brings it over to us, handing the grotesque thing to Memnon.

If I had the strength, I would physically recoil from my husband. As it is, I lean away from the hand that holds the head, right into Memnon’s bracing arm.

“Warriors,” he calls out. “Mount your steeds and ride with me. It’s time to announce the attack is over.”

Now the shouts return, the men rallying around their victory.

Memnon urges his horse forward, and together we ride around the battlefield, circling the corpses until all his fighters have hoisted themselves onto their steeds. Then, with Memnon at the front, we gallop back to the smoking husk that is our city.

Many of the structures have burned, and the survivors sit outside what remains, their eyes hollow, haunted. Scattered among them are the wounded and the dead. As their gazes lift to Memnon, however, their expressions brighten. A cheer rises, then catches, following us through the settlement to the center of camp.

The main clearing is a mess of bloodstains, gore, and lines of bodies. The main tent beyond it sits silent, but as the cheers rise, the doorway parts and people creep out.

Memnon steers us around the clearing’s perimeter once, twice, holding up the severed head for all to see as Sarmatians rapidly gather.

Once the area is full of onlookers, he tosses the head into the center of the space, dirt and grime collecting on it as it rolls.

“That is what remains of Bastiza, son of Zoutoula, King of the Dacians. He is the man who led our enemy here, into our city, to kill us while we slept.

“He sought to smoke you from your homes and pierce your bodies with his weapons. He sought to take you captive so that he might bargain your lives for our land. But one does not fight with Sarmatians and win!”

Shouts go up as the crowd grows.

“And we cannot be killed.”

Another shout goes up.

“And we will have our vengeance!”

The battered, weary people around us are roaring now, their weapons raised in the air.

“We shall use his skull as a chalice and drink to his defeat,” Memnon declares.

Drink fromwhatnow?

More cheers. People spit at the head, or else they kick more dirt at it.

“And the next time we see the Dacians in battle, they will tremble before us. We will not stop fighting them until we have razed their kingdom to the ground!”

CHAPTER 26

ROXILANA, 18 YEARS OLD

54 AD, Northern Sarmatia, near the Borysthenes River

Since the surprise attack,the mood around camp has been grim. Many, many homes have burned to the ground, leaving people with only the clothes on their backs. The people themselves are in rough shape. Many are wounded, and those who aren’t have the unenviable job of bathing and burying the dead—our dead, at least.

The enemy’s dead are treated with the utmost disrespect, their bodies left out for the scavengers or else placed on pikes outside the settlement, macabre warnings to anyone else thinking of ambushing us.

It takes three days for my magic to return in full, in part because as soon as I’m able to use it, I do, despite Memnon’s protests. Like him, I move about camp and heal as many of the injured as I can. It’s grueling, fatiguing work, made all the harder by the lingering ache in my bones, an ache that not even Memnon’s spells can soothe for long.

But I want to help. There’s something about this work that soothes the grief I feel over killing people. Grief I largely must keep to myself because no one but Memnon understands my complicated feelings toward war and death. So I tuck it away and do what I can to rebuild the settlement.