Calder was right. The nobles had spent the first half an hour after the war horn was blown debating strategy around a table in the center of Lord Brigham's tent. I watched them pace around their maps, moving little wooden figures and arguing over strategic advantages for that entire time until I realized that the princess was not among them. Had they moved her somewhere else, somewhere safer? So that her pretty husband could rise his pristine white horse into this bloody battle and return to her later with haunted eyes and a tale of victory?

It didn't matter. I couldn't take the plotting anymore. Commanders shouldn't plan a war from a tent. They should plan it from the field.

Taking my own advice, I went in search of my own. I found them on the ridge we had been occupying, staring out over a flat expanse of land much like we had settled on. It was empty, not even a tall blade of grass, with pockets of mud from last night's downpour. Across it stood an army clad in leather. Their braids were long, their eyes lined with kohl. My fist clenched over the hilt of my sword as I strained my neck to see as many of them as I could.

"How many?" I asked, hoping my men had used the time they had in my absence wisely.

"A thousand at least," Wells reported.

"Archers?"

"Less than a hundred."

"You know Rirdantans hate a ranged attack," Calder reminded me. "They don't win the favor of their gods unless the kill is confirmed."

"And Etzerans?" I asked, raising a brow as I peered down the line at him. "Do they hate ranged attacks as well?"

"We do not," a familiar voice replied and I glanced over my shoulder to find that the princess had joined the line.

Gone were the swooping trains of her court dresses. Her auburn tresses were bound up, loose tendrils falling down to frame her face and blowing in the gentle breeze. Her shrewd eyes narrowed as she examined the line of opposing soldiers as I had been doing moments before, her lips pouted out in focus. I couldn't help but allow my gaze to stray below her neck where she was intoxicating in a tight-fitting tunic and pants, mail covering her torso and neck. She tapped her fingers against the sword at her side, chewing on her lip now.

"We have archers," she said in answer to my unasked question. "They are stocking their arrows now. Two hundred of them."

I gave a firm nod and turned back to my men who were all openly gaping at her in shock. I narrowed my gaze and they all turned their attention back to our enemy, blinking or clearing their throats or otherwise indicating that they had been caught gawking.

"And who will lead the calvary?" I asked, looking over at the line of men on horseback now moving slowly to join us.

"Brigham, of course," she replied.

"And the infantry?"

She looked my way, her lips setting into a firm line, and took the helmet Captain Ridley was offering her from her other side.

"That would be me," she told me.

Then she was striding forward, her cloak of the Etzeran colors, green and gold, snapping in the wind behind her. I watched in awe as she stood upon the ridge, head cocked to the side, watching, waiting.

I heard the hoofbeats as the cavalry lined up behind me, listening to the sounds of bowstrings pulling taut as arrows were loaded and held. The Rirdantans moved and then surged forward. The sound of a thousand echoing shouts reached us from across the distance of the plain. The princess just watched them, head still cocked to the side, patiently waiting.

The closer the Rirdantans got, the louder their war cries became. The horses behind me began to shuffle, some backing slightly before reined in again by their masters.

"Hold," I heard Lord Brigham speak, his voice at normal volume. Why bother to shout when the entire army was silent?

The enemy was close. I felt the adrenaline surging through my veins. My fingers splayed out on the hilt of my sword, itching for the battle to come. Beside me, Hawk tapped his foot impatiently.

Finally, the princess moved.

Slowly, she lifted one hand up to the back of her neck. In one smooth motion, she unclipped her cape. It flapped away in the breeze, blowing all down the line of Etzeran soldiers, a flag waving a signal to begin.

So we did.

Surging forward like the Rirdantans had done minutes ago, Lord Brigham raised his sword and gave a shout and all of his men plunged into the plains.

"For those we love!" I shouted to my own men, drawing my own sword and pointing it toward the enemy.

"For those we've lost!" they screamed back and joined me as I ran headlong into the fray.

The princess was ahead of me the whole way to the fight. She was fast and nimble and she wasn't wasting any time. The first man she met fell immediately, pierced clean through and choking on his own blood. She darted away, parrying the blow of another, and I was forced to look away as I met a Rirdantan of my own. He was an enormous brute, thick and angry, spittle flying from his mouth as he shouted nothing. He reached for me and I ducked, planting my sword in the dirt and letting him fall onto it. Then I kicked him aside and withdrew my blade, turning and slamming it into the chest plate of another man.

Battle was a haze. It was one man after another. No matter how many you felled, they simply kept coming, again and again until you were splattered in the blood of men whose faces you couldn't even remember, whose names you'd never known. They didn't know you either. But they hated you. And you hated them. For who they served, for what they were trying to do to you, it didn't matter. Whether you fought for your life or your cause, still, you fought. And the leaders in their ivory towers were counting on it.

Well, not all of them.

I had just opened a man's neck from ear to ear, his blood spraying over my face as he fell, when I caught sight of Wells just beyond him. He was fighting a behemoth of a man, even larger than the first I had encountered. Wells had always been small and he liked the fight far less than the others. He was outweighed three to one. And he was backed against a fallen horse with an arrow in its side, his sword knocked out of his hands and laying a few feet beyond his reach. The man was bearing down on him. Gripping my sword, I ran as hard as I could, boots sloshing through something that I couldn't tell whether it was mud or blood.

I wasn't going to make it.

The Rirdantan reared back, his mace held aloft, ready to strike.

"Wells!" I shouted.

"Duck!" someone else screamed.

Then I saw the princess. She was running toward Wells from behind the horse. He did as he was told, falling to the blood-soaked ground. Adelaide vaulted onto the horse and used it as a stepping stone to propel her upward, forward.

She screamed as she slashed out and the man's mace, wrist and all, flew away with a crack.

He wailed, gripping his handless arm as blood spurted all over him, all over Adelaide and Wells. He cried out and then, in a final act of desperation, reached for the princess. But I had reached him.

I plunged my sword through his back so that it came out through his chest, covering her and Wells in even more blood.

I placed a foot on his side and kicked him away, turning to them both.

"Are you okay?" I asked, looking down at Wells.

He gave a tight nod as he stood and ran for his sword.

"You're welcome," the princess spat and then she was gone again, already fighting the next soldier.

I just blinked after her, stunned by what I had witnessed. I had already heard tales, several in fact, of her fears at the so-called Battle of the Brink and hadn't believed them before. But I wouldn't doubt her again. Because princess she may be, but it took a warrior to know a warrior and she had more fight in her than anyone I had come across in a very long time.

I turned, stretching my fingers around the hilt of my sword and looking for another fight, and froze.

He stood on the other side of an ongoing fray. Two Rirdantan soldiers fighting three Etzeran. They were slashing out at one another, screaming in agony or adrenaline, it was impossible to tell in the heat of battle. But through them, I saw him. Standing, chest heaving, covered in blood and holding his sword limply at his side. I blinked, uncertain if I was truly seeing him or if it was some effect of the horror of battle. But he was staring at me too, lips parted in shock, eyes wide, pale.

"Tyne," he said, his voice hoarse and so different from how I remembered it.

"Uesli."