~TIEN LYN~

The Celebrated Emperor Wo Jia waited for them at the foot of the Prayer Beads. This string of narrow hills was the only natural obstacle standing between Zha Yao and Xichon. The gentle Verdant Plains stretched to either side of the hills, and once Zha Yao passed them, he would be within an easy day march from Wo Jia's capital city. On approach, the rebel forces could see flickering cooking fires between the snow-covered slopes and red dragon banners sprouting like thickets on top of the hills. The soldiers whispered about ancient burials, and the ghosts from Wo Jia's own lineage stirring under those hills. With the drifting snow devils, it was easy to credit these tales.

Fortunately, morale soared when three war mages declared themselves Oathbreakers, and two of them openly joined Zha Yao.

Also for the sake of esprit-de-corps, Tien Lyn was not permitted to depart for Kefei and stay with Xi. Her mother was adamant that Xi was safer there, and her primary duty was to make sure he remained safe. Mother was not wrong, of course, given that their survival now hinged on Zha Yao's ultimate victory, but her spirit flagged every day she had to dress in garments designed by her mother and accompany Zha Yao. The fashions were partly borrowed from myths, and partly - from men's intimate dreams, or perhaps those were one and the same.

The rebel leader was brisk but courteous to her, and as far as she could tell, not at all titillated by her flowing silks. But Shan Jiang sang nightly of Tien Lyn's fortuitous delivery from the pirates and the soldiers cheered when they saw her. Sometimes, it gave her headaches.

Of Yu she had no sign but dreams. She asked Rustam the Unsworn after him. The Mage told her cryptically that the Waverunner had returned unscathed, and that Yu had passed beyond his Understanding. She hoped it meant that Yu was still alive in the same way she hoped that Xi was well.

Tien Lyn did not know how Zha Yao's generals selected the day for the attack. The talk was mostly of supply chains, bloody flux outbreak and the planting time. Then, out of the blue, the word: "Tomorrow!" spread from campfire to campfire.

The next morning saw gallant men emerge from the chaos of tents and the squalor of latrines, to form brave lines.

Tien Lyn along with her mother and the other high-born ladies settled into an uneasy wait in the Ladies' Camp. The Wu wife spoke enough for all of them, compensating for years of marriage to a man absorbed with his twin sister. Tien Lyn was discovering that the plump woman worshiped her remote husband, unlike the second Wu twin's husband. Although a competent warrior in his own right, the consort was no match to either Wu, the brother or the sister, and delighted in the company of women not steeped in martial tradition. Tien Lyn's head spun from the tragic fate of Wu, the complexities of their household, and keeping the track of the twins in Lady Wu's stories, but she was grateful for the distraction.

It kept her mind off the pebble Rustam gave her. "Look at us from above," he'd ordered her, "and if the day is lost, flee to Kefei. Save Xi."

The mention of her son filled Tien Lyn's arms with the phantom weight of her baby, and drove a thousand sharp pins through her belly, but she willed herself to focus on the fateful battle. She caught up to Rustam and asked, "How would I know? In the Chronicles it's just knights fighting one another, blow by blow, and then it tells you who won the day."

"Watch the hilltops," Rustam suggested, "if we cannot dislodge the faeries from the heights by the evening, we are lost."

Rustam rode out to rejoin the Coven on the right flank next to Deserving Du's band of heavy cavalry. Zhu Zhao and one of the Oathbreakers stood in the center by Zha Yao's own banner and the preemptively drunk Shan Jiang. The last of the rebels' war mages was stationed on the left. She could not see him despite his bright robes.

Zha Yao's army rippled, screaming the challenge to Wo Jia's men. The enemy answered from the shelter of the Prayer Beads Hills. The echo multiplied their voices.

It has begun. Tien Lyn took a deep breath, squeezed the pebble, and looked.

It took her a few moments to lock into the mind of a bird overhead and get used to the lurching images of the world as seen through the bird's eyes. Tien Lyn's avian proved querulous, and it panicked at her intrusion. Fighting the motion sickness, Tien Lyn cajoled it until the bird had finally settled into a less erratic flight pattern. Little by little, she nudged it to circle closer to the fighting.

Thousands of men still shouted in the distance, but Tien Lyn was all eyes. The noise lost its meaning once the bird had finally submitted itself to her control.

Despite the bright robes, she had trouble picking Rustam out. A wide semicircle of archers and the foot soldiers took up most of the foothills.

Finally, she saw the Coven advancing behind Du's cavalry unit. The armoured riders crushed into and pushed back at an infantry unit bristling with spears, trying to gain the access to the base of the hill. Wo Jia's crossbowmen dug in mid-slope, up of the hillside. They did not waste their time watching the onslaught. Du's men went down under the relentless pounding of their bolts despite their thick armour. The unarmored horses were even more vulnerable to being struck. The rest continued to press past the long spears, and her heart froze with fear. Surely, this was a hopeless strategy?

"Come on, Rustam!" Tien Lyn got carried away with the furious partisanship. Ancestors, why are you doing nothing, you and your vaunted Coven?! What are you waiting for?!

The faery chants started up on the hilltops. Tien Lyn's bird dashed upwards, seeing only its own red panic and the onrushing sky. She turned it around. As it dove, she saw that the faeries had torn up the ground. Steaming groundwater burst through the dirt in the middle of Zha Yao's positions. Boiling mud spread out from these centers in torrents.

On the left, they ran into an unseen obstacle and came to a crashing stop in gigantic mud slabs. The men suffocated underneath, but it checked the advance.

In the center, the mud caught on fire and solidified into walls actually offering a measure of protection to the archers. The ash rained down.

On the right flank, the Coven threw up a massive lightning display. It lifted the torrents like a net. For a few moments, the stream of debris froze up in the air, then reversed to crush into the side of the hill, scattering the crossbowmen's line. The aim was not perfect, but it gave Du the respite she needed.

So that's what the Coven was waiting for!

Du, massive in her blackened steel, shook her halberd up in the air, rallying her men to her. Tien Lyn could not see the other woman's face behind the helmet's snarling mask, but she was sure the big woman was screaming. It could be no other way.

The cavalry wheeled around, trampling everything underfoot. She was now joined by the barbarian light cavalry, armed with curved bows, who came riding out to shower the enemy pikemen with arrows. Before they closed in on the infantry, they reversed and fell back to the center. The snow got churned into a brown mess of mud and blood.

There was another boom, and another counter, and more fire, lightning and the trembling of the hills. The harassed enemy infantry was spreading out, but they held their position at the lower portion of the slope. The faeries added boulders ripped from the slopes and projected through the air to their boiling mud traps.

Every time Zha Yao's men charged, Tien Lyn's hoped that this advance would break the stalemate and would finally set them on the smoking trail of the retreating foe. Her mouth went dry from screaming. Her eyes burned with tears of frustration. Her nails were all broken off by the desperate curling of her fists. She did not have enough wits left to obey Rustam's orders. If Zha Yao's army broke, she would not run for Kefei and Xi. She would just die here, where she stood.

Closer to mid-day, she finally understood why Du kept pressing on. A fresh unit, made of barbarian riders with the exception of one man in a lightened imperial kit, came between the hills, after managing to encircle Wo Jia's position, to hit the pikemen from behind. The imperial seemed to ride and shoot from the saddle with the same ease as the rest of the ambush unit, something Tien Lyn would have found despicable a few years ago, but now cheered for.

Simultaneously, Rustam's Coven produced a fireball that sizzled through the air before exploding with a resounding boom. Du rode through the fires, destroying the dazed men. A unit of footsoldier detached itself to follow her into the breach under the resumed bombardment of boulders and bolts. It was not over yet.

The retreating crossbowmen responded with a cloud of bolts. Behind them, the faeries opened wide cracks. The man in imperial armour so easy to see among the furry hats, vaulted off the back of his beautiful black mount just as it crushed down the zigzagging gap. He teetered dangerously on the brink, before throwing himself sideways, and rolling away, just in time to avoid being caught in the quickly growing brambles. She watched him scramble back to his feet, caked with dirt but undefeated, and cheered.

More and more bramble barriers shielded the crossbow men's retreat, making their ascent up the hard-won slope nearly impossible.

The Coven linked hands and brought up a wall of flames from the mud. The fires leaped forward consuming the bolts out of the air. It continued on, angrier with every yard. The panicked crossbowmen could not outrun it up the steep slope. The wall of fire hit them. For a while, the hillside was lit with human torches.

A thicket of brambles coated the upper slope, but the Coven set forward another firewall. It rolled up to the crest, and imploded into a firestorm, turning the hilltop into a blazing beacon.

Once the fires died down, the Coven advanced to the high point and drew a barrage from the faeries on the next hill and the next...

Hold! Please, hold!

Rustam went down.

She did not know what hit him.

The Coven closed its ranks. Zha Yao's infantry rushed to support it to the heights, but a few foot soldiers skidded down, carrying the fallen mage wrapped in a cloak.

Tien Lyn kept her bird's eyes on Rustam's body's progress and made her way to wherever they were carrying him. She stumbled her way through the camp like a woman possessed. Once she found him, she let go of the pebble. The world swung, making her shut her eyes against the dizziness.

When she got used to seeing things for herself again, she was in the field hospital. A tall figure in flowing robes hurried from the other side to see to Rustam. At first, Tien Lyn mistook the new arrival for Zhu Zhao, because of the bright robes and the white hair, but the mage's face was beardless, feminine. The lady did have the same ageless look as Zhu Zhao. It could only be the third Oathbreaker, Wenjing.

The war mage beckoned Tien Lyn. "Girl! Come over, I have a job for you." Without waiting for Tien Lyn to respond, the woman also commandeered a surgeon.

Together they waited for Rustam to be lowered to the ground.

The surgeon made to kneel by Rustam, but Wenjing gripped his shoulder with her bird-like fingers. "Have you treated a mage before?"

"The mages bleed like all of us," the surgeon snapped. He was covered in blood to his elbows.

Wenjing shook him, "I don't have time for arguments. You will apply what poultices you can, but you will not administer anything to dull the pain, or put him to sleep. "

The mage turned to the soldiers that brought Rustam, "Kill anyone trying to numb him."

Then she remembered Tien Lyn: "Girl?!"

Tien Lyn could not stop staring at the bloody froth around Rustam's mouth, "Ma'am?"

"Stay with him. Keep him awake. Wipe your nose! Look at me. Tell me you understand."

"I understand, Ma'am." Tien Lyn nodded barely looking at her. "He will lose his mind if I let him sleep."

"Listen to the girl," Wenjing told the surgeon before releasing him, then addressed Rustam. "I will take your place in the Coven. You are lucky I am curious about it. Ancestors, just let me get my hands on that young rascal Zhu Zhao!"

Wenjing put two fingers in her mouth whistled like a boy. A white steed presented itself as if by magic. Actually, there was no 'if'. The horse stepped out of the thin air, but the mage mounted up and galloped off in a mundane way.

Tien Lyn checked on Rustam. His bloodied lips moved, and as long as he was mouthing the words, he was thinking. As long as he was thinking there was hope. The surgeon cut off the mage's black tunic and clicked his tongue in dismay. The shoulder was a mess of blood and bone from a blunt impact. "A boulder. Courtesy of Serene Mother Weynala," Rustam explained quietly.

A wordless scream of rage seared her throat raw, but she slapped her own face to regain control of her senses. "Don't lose your focus, the medic will fix you up." Her voice shook, her thoughts run wild, Celestials! Why do you suffer this bitch to live?!

Rustam managed a guffaw before going white in the face as the surgeon splashed herbal tincture at the caked up blood.

"Hold him down," the man said brusquely, back in command of the situation.

Tien Lyn joined the soldiers in keeping the mage from struggling while the surgeon prodded. She tried to focus on Rustam's face, but the red-hot knives, stitching silk, bandages, needles and hideous pastes in her peripheral vision drew her eye. Mortified, she pressed down harder, even though Rustam had stopped thrashing.

"I miss the faeries," Rustam strained to get the words out.

"I miss Yu," Tien Lyn whispered.

"Yu." The mage grimaced saying his name. His eyes stopped at something very distant and won't leave it. "What did you promise him? For Xi's life?"

"Anything," Tien Lyn replied firmly. "I promised him anything. And I would promise it again for you."

"It does not count the second time," Rustam started to chuckle, then screamed as the surgeon burned into his flesh.

Stay with me, Tien Lyn prayed, as the medical torture went on, stay with me, I need you.

The surgeon plastered ointment over half Rustam's torso, then bandaged his right arm to his chest. "Let it cook overnight. And pray that your Ancestors don't want your company."

"We need to put him somewhere quiet where he can focus," Tien Lyn said.

The surgeon shrugged before tossing his horrific tools into a steaming bucket. "Whatever you wish, girl. Just find someone to change the dressing in the morning if he survives the night."  

AN: Thank you so much for reading this far! I am curious if in all these endless battle text, you've spotted Zhenshi the Younger? The last of Tien Lyn's chapters (save for her epilogue) is on Sunday!