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W inter carved a path through the smoke-filled skies as she swooped towards the fleeing fettered Huddites. Jai clung on, his gaze unwavering on the retreating backs that held a promise of redemption, for his knights, his country and himself.

The Huddites continued their desperate flight towards the Kashmere Road. Freedom beckoned them east, promising sanctuary, away from blood-soaked fields and the steel of the legion. Behind, Jai could hear the trumpeting of the legion’s cornu, and the rise and fall of screams, clangs and shouted orders.

Jai dropped in front of the vanguard of the escapees, Winter’s teeth bared and wings spread, a monster blocking their path. The Huddites came to a halt, some trying to edge around, exhaustion evident in their eyes, weapons gripped weakly in malnourished hands. They had not made it far, for the grass was virgin here, and they had chosen to push through rather than cut a path.

‘I am Jai, son of Rohan, leader of the army that has bought your freedom. Who speaks for you?’ Jai called, suddenly aware of his empty core, and the scabbard that matched it. The men slowed, seeing he had no intent to harm them.

‘I,’ a man called. ‘Mago.’

A tall Huddite, his body a mass of welts and dirt, hands manacled together by a short chain, pushed his way past the others.

He faced Jai, his chin high and defiant, eyes blazing as he weighed the scythe in his hands. It was a rusted, ancient thing, but its blade’s edge had been sanded sharp and gleaming. Jai eyed it and held up his hands.

‘Do you think the Phoenix Empire will strike your chains, when you reach its borders?’ Jai called. ‘They will be thankful you have come, ready shackled for work.’

Mago spat, in answer. Already, the stragglers were catching up, crowding behind Mago, urging the man to move in their language.

‘Your countrymen fight with me,’ Jai said. ‘Hanebal, freed from Porticus, and scores of others.’

‘No country,’ Mago said. ‘Nothing left to fight for.’

Jai stabbed a finger west, marching closer, careless of the blades that threatened him.

‘The Sabines, in their arrogance, leave their eastern flank defenceless, pulling all legions west for the fight against the Dansk.’

He turned to all the others, beseeching them with as much conviction as he could stir, even as he swayed on his feet, his fire-dried eyes blurry in the light.

‘Join me, and I will guarantee your freedom. And you can march at my side as we ride into the Sabine heartland, freeing your people where they work the fields stolen from them.’

Mago stared, the men clamouring behind, careless that Jai could not understand.

‘With these?’ Mago asked, brandishing a scythe.

Jai nodded, and took the implement from Mago’s hands. The man released it, as if glad to be free of its weight. Then Jai pushed through the Huddites, marching towards the enemy, picking up speed over the half-trampled grass.

‘Run and live as the fettered they made you,’ Jai called, lifting the scythe high. ‘Or fight like the warriors you once were!’

Jai kept walking, the weight of his words left behind him. He dared not look back, not wanting to seem desperate, refusing to betray the hope that they might listen. Yet, through the bond he shared with Winter, he could see everything, hard though it was to walk in the half-trance.

Through Winter’s keen eyes, Jai saw the turmoil among them. Men shoved each other, heads turning between Jai’s departing figure and the uncertain horizon to the east. Some continued walking, but still more stood as if rooted, caught between distant sanctuary and duty that tugged at their souls.

Then movement. Mago, whose defiance and pride had first met Jai, swung around, striking a wailing Huddite across the face, snatching his weapon from him. The other man stumbled, then recoiled, eyes wild with confusion and anger. But Mago, unmoved by the confrontation, merely turned his back and began walking in the direction Jai had taken.

Like a wildfire, the spirit of vengeance spread. One by one, men began to break from the throng. Some shouted out to their retreating brothers in chains, imploring them to remember who they once were. There were curses, pleas and even maddened laughter – a raucous mess of raw emotion.

Others simply fell into step with Mago. The sight of each seemed to pull more with them, and soon a procession of men, once broken, now followed in Jai’s footsteps.

The grass whispered as he waded through, as if the Mother herself was trying to hold him back, but Jai kept moving, trusting in the pull of destiny.

Winter caught up to him in leaping bounds, nudging her head under Jai’s arm until he allowed himself to be shunted into her saddle. She limped on, scrabbling through the grass, picking up speed as the cries of battle neared.

‘On me,’ Jai roared, raising his scythe high. ‘We break their flank!’

As Winter surged forward, the eastern flank of the Sabine legion was close enough to smell, a charnel house of blood, of burning hair and cooking flesh.

It was a scene of utter chaos; the Sabines engaged with a mass of bellowing khiroi and hulking mammoths, Jai’s infantry pressing from the sides, making little progress. Their attention was such that they cared nothing of their rear. The legionaries’ shields were raised against the arrows and spears coming from the mammoth riders, their formations broken beyond the front line.

Winter ran through the pain, charging with energy borne of desperation, leaping high, her wings flaring, swooping.

Few legionaries noticed, all too late. Hoarse cries, desperately calling ‘Behind, behind!’ But their warnings were lost amid the roars of the mammoths and the cacophony of battle.

Winter smashed into the back rank, claws raking wide as she burst through, jaws clamping about necks, then shaking them like a dog with a rat before seizing another.

Jai, wielding his scythe with a deadly grace, one hand gripped about the saddle’s pommel as he rode the bucking Winter, the other yielding a deadly harvest until the head splintered away.

Huddites followed in his wake, swooping with their scythes low, cutting through the vulnerable backs of the legionaries’ legs, felling them like timber. A swathe of bloody destruction was carved deep into the Sabine ranks, even as they turned to face the new threat.

Men pressed against each other, crushed between the sweeping Huddite blades and the heaving khiroi, their half-formed ranks crumbling like a clay house in a monsoon. It was every man for himself, a free-for-all for survival.

Winter scrambled for a reprieve atop a fallen mammoth, even as pikes stabbed at her, cutting her flanks, the blades sliding across her ribs. Atop the furred hump, she was just out of reach, hissing and slashing at any who dared attempt to mount it.

Jai, from his vantage point atop Winter, scanned the battlefield. There were pockets of resistance where the Sabines had managed to regroup, forming small fortresses with their shields. They held out hopelessly, the enemy too close to wield their pikes, Jai’s infantry making short work of men whose weapons were not designed for the heavy crush of fighting.

Jai turned to look back at Winter, and followed her gaze. Far in the distance, limping in lopsided flight in the skies, was the outline of a gryphon.

Fleeing.

Winter, in her rage, raised her head, letting out a guttural roar of challenge. For a moment, the sounds of battle lulled, the terrible noise a fleeting shock. The change was slow, halting, yet it came. Legionaries began to peel away, at first in ones and twos, then entire lines of men, leaving their comrades to the slaughter for the false hope beyond the horizon.

Jai could see Harleen so close he could touch her, leading her khiro in pursuit, an arm hanging limp, the other stabbing and hacking at the enemy they drove like cattle before them.

The Sabine resistance was fleeting. With their formation broken and threatened on all sides, discipline evaporated, the enemy becoming a panicked mob. The pressing wall of pikes and shields fell away, turned to a mass of running, frantic men, their weapons abandoned as the pressure broke, the khiroi trampling over the fallen, their pursuit relentless, their blades rising and falling in tandem with screams of pain and terror.

A young Sabine soldier, not much older than a boy, lay on the ground, his entrails spilling out, his eyes wide with shock, slowly losing their light. The weight of the moment pressed on Jai as he looked into the boy’s fading eyes, bringing Jai to his knees.

He heard his infantry cheering, even as more among them continued a grim slaughter, their blades rearing and lancing down to finish the Sabine wounded.

The battle was won, the field theirs. But the lingering stench of flame and butchery was the cost. He scrambled up the slope of the mammoth’s belly, where Winter lay, the adrenaline that drove her fast fading in the face of her wounds, her flanks heaving, eyes unfocused with pain. Blood ran freely from the cuts on her side, her pearlescent scales stained crimson.

Jai’s fingers traced the weeping cuts, feeling the warmth of her lifeblood wet his fingers. He cursed, realising that he had no mana to heal her, his fingers sputtering, half-sealing what he could before he ran dry.

He cradled her head in his lap, calling for help that did not come. Closed his eyes, whispered a prayer to the Mother.

Winter gazed up at him, lapping his face with a rough tongue. They hurt, but they would survive. They would fight again. Soon enough, the pain and scars would fade, but their victory burned bright on this day and hereafter.