“It isn’t.” Nyx sighed as another bell rang, then another, calling the countryside to war. “I have no time for gods.”
He heard a laugh behind them and turned to find Nadia holding out a hand to Lamont, who had one foot in the stirrup. For the first time since Nyx had met him, Lamont smiled as if he meant it, looking down at Nadia as a breeze stirred her short hair.
“Better be careful with that one,” Estrid murmured, and Nyx nodded.
Lamont spurred his horse to a trot, riding around the milling soldiers until he came to an awkward stop. His horse looked nervous, digging at the earth, and Lamont’s face was sweaty, his hands tight on the reins.
“I know these are our kinsmen,” he said, while Estrid rolled her eyes and Nadia approached Nyx’s other side. She linked arms with him, and Lamont hesitated, looking them over. His gaze met Nyx’s and slid away, smooth as oil. “But when they signed their treaty with the empire, they agreed to follow our laws, to live peacefully under our banner. They have betrayed that trust, but we will not betray ours. If they surrender, we’ll show them the same mercy my beloved brother would have given them and offer them a chance to atone. We are the emperor’s swords, not his butchers, and we will fight with honor.”
“Tyr didn’t need to remind us,” Estrid muttered, and Nadia glared her into silence. Nyx and Lamont looked at each other again, and Lamont flashed him his falsest smile, placing a hand on his chest as though to acknowledge him. Nyx bowed, thinking of how Tyr would inspire the troops with promises of beer and a feast afterward, not glory and honor. Honor fed no one.
But Lamont was a clever man, and he knew how to use his intelligence to his advantage. He handed orders directly to Nyx, then rode off the field, heading for his small group of bodyguards. Nyx looked down at the orders and huffed. For all that Lamont spent his life in the palace surrounded by books and politicians, he knew how to divide a battlefield.
They moved into position, and Nyx watched as figures started to appear from over the hill. They were better armed than he’d expected, and organized—there were lines of archers behind the spear-carrying soldiers, and Nyx shouted the order to raise shields as a flurry of arrows arced across the sky.
Nadia shouted a southern war cry as an arrow cracked over her shield. The impact had to hurt, but she held steady even as someone cried out behind them. Nyx gave the order to advance, shields locked together in a protective wall, and heard answering shouts from the hill.
When the first enemy slammed into their line, Nyx pulled his shield free, passed it behind him, and threw himself into the field. He wasn’t a shield bearer—neither was Nadia or Estrid. They were the Bloodletters, soldiers who were the first into battle and the first to die, breaking free of the shield formation to cleave a path through the enemy.
Tyr had been one of them, fighting at Nyx’s side. Now, Nyx had only Nadia and Estrid. Nadia fought wildly, using the spiked edges of her gauntlets to cut an enemy’s throat, while Estrid was fast and fluid, striking like a snake. Nyx fought with the practiced, deliberate motions of one trained for it all his life. Lamont had said they weren’t butchers, but Nyx knew better. He’d always been a butcher. That’s what war did: it turned people to meat.
He dodged a man with a makeshift axe, leaving him for Estrid, and glanced across the battlefield. It took years to be able to see any order in the chaos, but he’d learned to recognize his own people, and it looked like they were gaining ground.
Then he spotted a figure walking calmly through the field, their form flickering like a heat illusion. Their hair was almost white, and Nyx tensed, dread coursing through him. Death had returned.
Nyx pushed forward, but the figure disappeared as he approached, only to reappear a little ways off, weaving between fighters. Nyx ran, the earth muddy with blood, but he had to contend with a mounted man who slashed at him as he rode past. Nyx grabbed the man off the saddle, making the horse rear, and slammed him to the ground. The man looked up at him, terror in his eyes, and Nyx wondered who he was. What he wanted.
“It’ll be swift,” he said, as the man swung his sword. The blade slid past Nyx’s side, cutting through his leather with a brief flare of pain, but Nyx didn’t flinch. He ran the man through, then crouched to take his sword from his bloody fingers. He laid the sword next to the man—a sign that whoever found his body should return him to his family—and got to his feet.
The figure he’d seen before was staring at him from the corner of the field, but it wasn’t Azaiah. They were in imperial armor bearing the white stripes of a soldier who wasn’t a man or a woman, and their white hair was pale orange and red at the tips, like a fire. Nyx made his way across the field, fighting through until his breath came hot and his muscles strained with effort. When he reached the figure, the air around them was unseasonably warm, and the being’s eyes seemed to burn with an internal flame.
“Hello,” they said. “Aren’t you interesting.”
“You aren’t one of our soldiers,” Nyx said. The battle slowed around them, as though the other soldiers were moving through water, and the sounds of the world beyond were muffled and indistinct.
“No.” The person smiled. “You’re one of mine. Or you could be, but you don’t havemymark on you.” They approached him, and Nyx flinched as they touched his cheek with warm fingers. “You’ve met my brother.”
Nyx knew battle jitters—the cold sweat, the energy racing through him, the feeling like his heart would never stop hammering—but he’d never had them so strongly before. “What are you?”
“Ares. War.” Ares looked him over. “Yes, I think you’ll do very well.”
Nyx jerked away. “You won’t do anything with me.” His dominance surged in his voice, and Ares visibly shivered. Was War submissive? No, gods didn’t have dominance or submission like mortals, did they? “You, Death, the rest of you… you’ll leave me alone.”
“I only wanted to meet you.” Ares didn’t seem upset, only amused. “I can see why he’s called to you. My brother. You could be one of his ferrymen.”
“I’m not a ferryman.” Nyx struggled to breathe, but the battle fever was only rising, making him breathless and tense, like a hare that just spotted a fox. “I’m a soldier. I want nothing to do with death.”
Ares laughed. “Soldiers wade in death. They swim in my waters, which run to my brother’s river. You can no more avoid him than you can avoid me.” Ares sighed, looking almost blissful. “And you will never avoid me, in this empire.”
“We fight to get rid of you,” Nyx snapped.
Ares raised their brows. “Right now, you’re fighting for land no one will remember. It's a field. Maybe you could have grown something here. Children could herd their sheep here. It’s all dirt, mortal. If you wanted peace, I wouldn’t be here.”
Nyx tightened his grip on his sword hilt. “I didn’t ask for you. I didn’t ask for any of you.”
“So you think.” Ares examined their own sword, which was plain, ordinary, nothing but a blade meant for killing. “Return to your battle, soldier. It won’t be long, now that you’ve killed their captain.” They nodded to the man Nyx had dragged from the horse. “But they’ll hate you for it. I’ll come here again, one day. And again.”
Nyx staggered back another step, and as the chaos of the battle fell over him once more, War disappeared, leaving behind nothing more than a lingering warmth.
