Alone at the command table, Ramesses looked over Amun's report. Without exception, every one of its companies had taken enormous losses. Fourteen of its commanders were dead, men who had taught him many things, their tutelage shaping him into the battle commander he had become. And he had lost them. In one night.

He picked up a reed brush and made a note in his journal, writing down their names, titles, and the date of their deaths. He stared at the wet ink, depression overwhelming him. Everything they had done, all they had achieved; all of it amounting to nothing more than a few marks noting their passing. And in the passage of time, they would be forgotten, men who had once meant much to him, and to Egypt. For him--one day--it would be the same. Morbid, he dwelled on the thought, determined to prevent the same fate from happening to him. He would be remembered. Even the passage of thousands of years would not erase his memory. He would make certain of it.

He pushed his journal away, and waited to receive the wax tablet containing the final tally of Amun's losses. The scribe handed it up to him. He looked down, quick; then again, disbelieving.

Two thousand six hundred and fifty-six dead, one thousand four hundred and nineteen more injured, at least two-thirds of the camp's followers butchered. He stared, numb, at the figures, unable to process the enormity of it. The scribe shifted his position, wincing with pain. Ramesses eyed him, noting the blood-soaked bandages wrapped around his torso. He gestured toward the camp.

"Go. Help Amun, and change those bandages. Egypt will not lose you, too."

Ramesses's gaze drifted back to the tablet. In all of Egypt's history, even during the invasions of the hekau khaswet, never had a pharaoh lost so many lives in so short a time, and for so little. Egypt was barely breathing. He unrolled the scroll Paser had prepared before the battle, outlining Egypt's terms to Hatti, and perused it. His vizier had been thorough as usual. He set it aside, watching it curl back into a scroll. By the wings of Horus he was tired. He closed his eyes. He would rest, just for a little while.

❃

Paser ducked into the command tent. At the table, Ramesses sat alone, leaning his forehead against his fingertips, his eyes closed. Paser backed away, quiet, deciding his report could wait. He was in no hurry to tell Ramesses he had lost Istara.

He crossed the enclosure. Within her bloodstained, torn tent, Nefertari paced, her arms wrapped tight around her torso. She looked up. He lifted his fist to his chest and pressed on, his head bowed as he passed the spot where Istara had freed him.

Nefertari had been furious when she found out Istara had escaped. She had wanted to kill her in front of Urhi-Teshub to punish him for what he had done to her guards. Paser scoffed. He had no idea Nefertari could be so vengeful. He hurried across the charred open space separating the royal couple's residences from the rest of the camp. While he had his reprieve from Ramesses, he would continue the search for Istara. He looked back, his attention drawn by the bright blue flags atop the royal tents, snapping, loud, in the cold air. He stared at them, offended by their exuberant undulations. Someone should take them down. They looked ridiculous, flying proud over the scorched tents of the pharaoh and his queen; the ruined enclosure a mockery, perched alone and vulnerable in the middle of a bloodied, burned wasteland.

Paser rubbed his hand against the back of his neck, thinking of what he had endured after Istara disappeared. Even with King Bentesina and his men from Amurru, they had been hard pressed to protect Nefertari. The Hittites' numbers were endless. They just kept coming, right up until the horns blared Egypt's victory. But even then, it was not over. The camp burned out of control. Fire surrounded them on all sides. The flames drawing so close he had been forced to wipe a dagger clean, in preparation to obey Nefertari's brutal command. She would not burn to death.

She had waited until the last heartbeat, when the scorching heat of the approaching fires had turned the interior of her tent a dull orange, the heated air suffocating and almost impossible to breathe. Still regal, she had come to him and knelt, her back pressed against his thighs, her breasts rising and falling, rapid, betraying her fear. His eyes burning with tears, he had wrapped his fingers in her hair and tilted her head back, gentle, tender. Her eyes, streaming, met his, trusting, frightened. His heart clenched at the memory. He had been so close to confessing his love for her.

But Horus had been watching over them. Just as Paser laid the blade against her neck, rain, cold, sharp, and heavy pounded down onto the stricken camp, thundering against the tent's roof. The flames succumbed.

He had snatched his dagger away and helped Nefertari, shaking, to her feet. Neither of them had looked at the other for the rest of the night.

The flags snapped, sharp. He blinked, and pushed the dark memory aside, stepping over the still-warm embers of the nobility's enclosures, cautious. His own tent was out there somewhere, lost in the cinders. Ahead, the fire line ended, and a wall of broken tents stood between him and the way out. He shoved through the wet material of a sagging tent and emerged into the chaos of Amun's vast barracks.

Wounded soldiers sifted through the wreckage. Their eyes widened when they recognized him. Sagging with exhaustion, they stood up and lifted their fists to their chests. He gestured for them to carry on, picking his way past them, clambering over broken chariots and fallen horses. Other horses, still living, stood trapped and exhausted in their harnesses, their heads hanging. Atop an overturned Hittite chariot, he paused to catch his breath, turning full circle. The devastated camp stretched away in every direction, blackened, broken. Unrecognizable.

A group of camp women--their gowns torn open, their breasts and faces battered--hauled broken stakes, poles, and tattered lengths of tents toward the camp's edge. Nearby, a knot of soldiers, their faces hard, dragged aside the remains of a burned-out tent, pulling out the charred body of a decapitated woman. In grim silence, one of them lifted her up and carried her away.

A little distance away, a bloodied follower struggled to heft a fallen support pole. Paser scrambled down from his perch and hastened over to help him. The pole cast aside, the man scrabbled through the remaining debris. With a broken cry, he found the ones he sought. Crying out their names, he dragged the eviscerated bodies of his wife and child to him.

His heart tight, Paser turned away, giving the grieving man his privacy. A group of soldiers passed by, carrying the corpses of Hittites toward the blazing fires outside the camp, where thick billows of greasy black smoke gouted up into the sky. Paser glared at the dead men, bitter. Without their hearts they could not enter the afterlife. It was what they deserved, for what they had wrought against innocents.

He carried on, stumbling through the debris of dozens of rows of charred tents, overwhelmed by the magnitude of what Hatti had wrought. Ahead, a wall of ruined chariots barred his way, he clambered over them and broke free of the camp.

He staggered to a halt, gaping.

Row upon row of injured men and women fanned out across the plateau, laid out in irregular lines on the muddy ground. Between each line, fed by the women carrying out the broken tents of Amun, fires burned. Groans and cries for help rose over the crackle of the flames, the voices of the wounded mingling, a susurration of desolation and misery, rising and falling in the cold gusts of air.

He moved forward, thinking he might find Istara there, among the wounded. He stopped. No. If Istara had been found alive, dressed as she was, she would have been taken to the prisoners. If she had been found dead-he glanced at the fires of the burning Hittites, shuddering. She deserved better. Bleak, he turned away, sensing the souls of Egypt's dead brushing past him, flying away to the gods, as soft as a summer breeze.