Kushiel's Mercy

shot. I caught the first arrow on my shield. The second took my horse. I was pitched over his head as he went down hard, poor valiant beast. I lost my shield and my spear. I rolled and came up fighting, ripping the sword from my sheath.
    The Euskerri surged after and around me.
    We took the bridge and plunged into enemy territory.
    In a poet’s tale, every thrust and blow, every individual act of heroism would be catalogued and recorded for posterity. This was no poet’s tale. It was war. Just war. I fought well because it was what I’d been taught to do. It didn’t matter that it wasn’t a style suited for the battlefield. Not in the midst of this chaos. I told the hours over and over—beyond fear, beyond weariness, beyond thought. I defended the sphere of my own person and the bodies mounted around me.
    Our Aragonian allies answered my prayers. They rushed from the sally ports to join the fray, scrambling to clear the first trench. Gears ground. The portcullis lifted to admit the bulk of Aragonia’s army onto the battlefield.
    What an ungodly mess it was.
    It stank. It stank of death and desperation. Gore churned into mire, bowels spilled in death. We heaved bodies into the trenches, forging a gruesome causeway. Sharp hooves carved dead flesh. Onward, onward. Feet trampling the dead. Horns blowing. Men scrambled in and out of trenches. Aragonia’s army seized control of the ground between them. They hewed at the earthen bulwarks with battleaxes to forge passages. They raced over open ground, falling on Carthage’s army from the rear.
    And in the end, we won.
    I never saw the main part of the fray. When the last of the Aragonian army had passed, the surviving Euskerri asked me if we should follow them. We’d lost half our remaining number before the Aragonians had emerged and there wasn’t a survivor among them that wasn’t trembling with exhaustion. In the aftermath of battle, I could feel a profound weariness settling into my bones.
    “No.” I shook my head. “We’re done.”
    When we heard the horns blowing a retreat, I wasn’t sure who it was signaling. It wasn’t until a lone Aragonian rider came racing back bearing the news that we knew. Astegal had been captured alive, brought down by a Euskerri javelin that had struck his helm hard enough to knock him insensible. Additional troops from nearby Coloma had arrived, defying their leaders to join the rebellion.
    Pinned between two forces, leaderless, the Carthaginian army had mounted a concerted attack and broken through the western line. Even now, they were fleeing, likely to retreat to New Carthage and make a stand there.
    There was cheering from atop the walls of the city and, impossible as it seemed, from the devastated Euskerri. But I was surrounded by dead men, many of whom I’d led into this battle. I was weary and soul-sick, and I couldn’t feel aught but a grim relief.
    “Is General Liberio pursuing?” I asked.
    “No.” The courier’s battle-grin faded. “We can’t afford to. We took too many losses.”
    “The Euskerri?”
    He nodded. “They were hit hard.”
    The news had spread through the city. It wasn’t long before every manner of chirurgeon, physician, and healer in Amílcar came pouring out to tend to the injured. I reckoned my leg could wait and helped as best I could, setting aside my weariness to serve as a bearer for litters ferrying the maimed and wounded to the makeshift infirmary in the park.
    They’d prepared well; there were hundreds of new tents erected. They would be needed.
    The surviving remnant of the army came trickling back, many carrying injured comrades.
    I missed seeing Astegal escorted into the city with his arms bound behind his back, which I regretted. I kept an eye out for Sidonie and her guard. Their sentries must have reported the news, but I knew she’d be worried for me.
    It was nearing sunset when they came. I was sitting with Miquel, the young Euskerri who spoke Aragonian, giving him sips of water from a skin and waiting for a litter. He had a broken spear-head lodged in his ribcage.
    I rose when I saw them.
    “Go,” Miquel said in a hoarse voice. “I’m not going anywhere.”
    I couldn’t, though. All I could do was stand and watch as they rode toward us. No one had even begun to tend to the dead; the task was too enormous. I watched the blood drain from Sidonie’s face as she took in the extent of the horror. Her gaze met mine. Not even the relief of finding me alive could