The valley seemed too narrow for so many men. The Captain, a man whose instincts were usually infallible, realized this a heartbeat too late. To Ámenor, walking in the center of the formation, the place felt like an open-air tomb. The green walls on both sides rose like the mandibles of a sleeping beast, and the path ahead funneled into a choke point of briars and low vegetation. The battalion advanced cautiously, but there was still enough confidence in their stride to mask the fear. They believed they were close. They believed they might find tracks of Sofoú. Maybe of Ámmon. Maybe some sign that everything could still be reversed.
They are dead, Ámenor thought, the bile rising acidic in his throat. Kaséti is dead.
He kept his head down, struggling to control his breathing. Since Kaséti's death, everything inside him vibrated in a constant, painful alert. Any loud sound made his body stiffen. Any sudden movement made his eyes dart for escape routes. The attack began without warning.
A dry sound cut through the air, then another, and in the next instant, the sky turned dark with arrows. The first man fell before he could even understand what was happening. An arrow punched through his throat, and he crumbled to his knees, hands clawing uselessly to staunch the blood. Another screamed as a shaft pierced his leg. A third fell backward, eyes wide, a fletched rod buried in his chest.
"Grasslandeeeeers!" someone screamed, as if seeing the god of death himself arriving.
"Shields!" roared the Captain. But the space was too narrow. The men compressed against each other, a panicked herd trying to raise protection while death rained from the slopes. Ámenor raised his arm by reflex, flinching as he felt the burning bite of a shaft grazing his shoulder. The pain was hot and immediate, but superficial. He barely noticed it. A second rain of arrows fell. Jafari, one of the recruits initiated alongside him, dropped to his knees, an arrow sprouting from his throat, his eyes searching in panic for help that would not come.
From the thickets on the sides, silhouettes in green lacquer emerged. They did not charge with the wild abandon of desert raiders; they moved with terrifying discipline. They marched in a synchronous rhythm, their heavy steps echoing like thunder, spears leveled, shouts short and coordinated. It wasn't a battle. It was an execution.
The battalion tried to react. Swords were unsheathed, shields clashed, and desperate shouts of command echoed through the valley. The sound of metal against metal reverberated like thunder trapped between the rocks. Ámenor tried to maintain his position. He tried to remember what they had taught him. Stand firm. Don't open your guard. Protect the flank. But everything seemed too fast. A man fell onto him, pushing him into the dirt. He felt the dead weight of the body, smelled the copper tang of fresh blood, and heard the last rattling breath leave the soldier's mouth right in his ear.
Trapped there, face pressed into mud mixed with gravel, he turned his head and saw, on the left flank, the enemy troops engaging. In the middle of the chaos were the twins, Zolú and Chofú, who just days ago had recited the Oath of the Sand beside him, their voices trembling with pride.
Now, they were fighting for their lives. The twins moved with the agility of the desert, spinning their spears in defensive arcs, back to back, as they had trained since they learned to walk.
Ámenor watched, helpless, as a massive Grasslander soldier, brandishing a broadsword with a serrated blade, advanced on Zolú. The boy tried to parry the blow, trusting the flexible wood of his spear, but the heavy sword descended with the force of a guillotine. It snapped the spear shaft like a dry twig and continued its trajectory as if nothing stood in its path, burying itself deep in the junction between Zolú's neck and shoulder.
Blood sprayed out, painting his brother's face crimson. Zolú didn't scream; he just fell to his knees, his gaze glazed with shock, as his life drained away in seconds.
"Noooo!" Chofú's scream tore through the chaos of battle, a raw sound of pure agony. Forgetting his shield, forgetting his training, forgetting survival, Chofú launched himself at his brother's killer with a dagger, driven by a blind, suicidal fury. He managed to drive the blade into the giant's stomach, once, twice, three times. The Grasslander grunted and, with a brutal motion of his iron-reinforced shield, smashed Chofú in the face. The sound of breaking bone was audible even where Ámenor lay. Chofú was thrown backward, falling exactly onto his brother's body. Before he could try to rise, two enemy spears descended simultaneously, pinning him to the ground, piercing his chest and uniting him, in a final bloody embrace, to Zolú's corpse.
Ámenor closed his eyes, hot tears tracing paths through the grime on his face. We are the weapon the sun has made, the oath echoed in his mind with cruel irony. But here... we broke. It was then that he heard his name.
"Ámenor!" The voice cut through the chaos like a blade.
He turned his head and saw his father cutting through the confusion toward him. His face was caked in dust and blood, it was impossible to tell how much was his and how much belonged to others. The sword in his hand moved with firmness, carving space, protecting the path to his son.
"Get behind me!" he shouted, positioning himself between Ámenor and two advancing enemies.
Ámenor obeyed without argument. For the first time since Kaséti fell, he felt something akin to safety. His father fought as he always had: steady, precise. Every strike had a purpose. Every movement was calculated. He blocked a spear, pivoted his body, and struck the attacker in the side of the neck. The man fell immediately.
"You need to get out of here!" his father said, never taking his eyes off the fight.
"I won't run again," Ámenor replied, his voice cracking. His father didn't have time to react to the sentence.
A dry crack echoed. Ámenor didn't immediately understand what had happened. He only saw his father's body go rigid for a strange, almost imperceptible second. Then, slowly, his father looked down. The arrow was protruding from his chest.
There was no dramatization. There was no warning. Just that short sound, that precise impact coming from some high point in the valley. The sword dropped first. The body followed.
"No!" Ámenor whispered, before he even ran to him.
The world seemed to slow down as he knelt, catching his father before the body completely hit the ground. The blood was too hot, flowing too fast between his fingers as he tried to press the wound. "Stay with me. Stay with me," he repeated, unaware that he was crying.
His father's eyes were open, but they were already losing focus. His breathing came short, irregular, as if the air itself had become too heavy. For an instant, the chaos around them seemed distant. Ámenor could only hear the fragile sound of his father's breath. He tried to speak. Blood pooled at the corner of his mouth.
"Don't... carry... guilt," he managed to say, almost inaudible. Ámenor leaned in closer, desperate to hear.
"Live." His father said in his last breath. The weight of the body changed in his arms, it became heavy, impossibly heavy, a dead, shifting mass that sought the earth.
"Father" Ámenor cried. The battle raged on around them. Bronze rang against iron, screams tore at the sky, and the smell of opened bowels and copper filled the valley. But he stood inside an absolute void. The noise became a dull roar, like being underwater. He stared at his blood-slicked hands, unable to comprehend that the heat fading from them was his father's life.
He felt someone yank him violently by the shoulder.
"If you stay, you die!" screamed the Captain.
Ámenor resisted. He wanted to stay. He wanted to die there, beside his father. He wanted everything to end at that exact point.
"Run! That is an order!" the Captain bellowed, shoving him toward the tree line. Ámenor's instincts, the same ones that made him run when Kaséti fell, kicked back in. He let go of his father's cooling body. And he stood up.
The rest of the battle became fragments, a mosaic of horror. He saw the Captain turn to face the tide, only to be cornered. He saw the flash of a heavy blade and the Captain's head separating from his shoulders with terrifying ease. He heard the screams of grown men crying out for their mothers. He smelled the iron tang of rust and the sour stench of bowels where all bravery had been extinguished. Now, the sound of his own breathing was too loud in his ears. He ran along with the few who were still standing, diverting through secondary trails, slipping between bushes, listening to heavy footsteps behind him that he didn't know were friend or foe. The enemy was in pursuit, cutting down everyone they caught. More screams. More death. More terror. Ámenor didn't turn to look back. Without pausing for breath, he ran faster than he ever had in his life.
When the sound of combat finally grew distant, the valley was no longer in sight. Ámenor stopped, his chest heaving like a bellows. He turned back toward where they had come from. There was no smoke. There was no visible sign of pursuit anymore. But there was also no possible return. Sofoú was not there. Ámmon was not there. His father was no longer anywhere he could reach. The silence that came after the battle was not peace.
There was no water, but thirst did not worry him. His thoughts would not stop. He blamed himself for his father. For the Captain. "I ran again... like a coward," he repeated, his voice cracking as salty tears ran like lava down his dirty face.
He blamed himself for Ámmon, for Kaséti, and for Sofoú. "They are all dead!" he screamed at the empty sky, a sound of pure pain and self-hatred.
He wanted to run until he forgot. Until he erased everything. So he ran. He stumbled out of the vegetation and back onto the Flats. He ran for hours, perhaps days, until his legs were numb and his lungs burned. Finally, his own body did not obey him anymore. In an instant, the ground disappeared beneath him. But the baked mud of the Burning Flats did not come to meet his face. Instead, the memories came.
The sound of fabric being stretched filled his ears. The wind dragging sand against canvas that was still poorly rigged. The sky was an instant away from twilight, painting the horizon in bruising purples, but they couldn't light a fire. No light, they had been ordered.
Kaséti was kneeling, trying to firm one of the stakes into the unstable ground. "It's not force, Ámenor. It's angle," he murmured, with that calm, know-it-all half-smile that drove Ámenor crazy.
Ámenor, who was still struggling to hammer in his first stake, shot Kaséti a rude gesture with his finger. "Go count how many grains of sand are in the desert," he snapped.
Kaséti just chuckled, shaking his head. After a few minutes of hard work, they managed to raise the first tent.
"That is Ámmon's tent," Kaséti said, wiping sweat from his brow. "Bring his rat and his gear inside, please. I'll finish up here."
Ámenor obeyed. Kaséti always acted like an older brother, even though they were the same age. Grabbing the pack, Ámenor ducked into the small shelter. He positioned Ámmon's gear in the corner and opened the flap of the bag. Khepri, the jerboa, poked his head out, whiskers twitching.
What a cute little thing, Ámenor thought, a rare smile touching his lips. He pulled a piece of dried root from his pocket and offered it to the creature. "Eat up, little ghost."
"Ámenor!" The shout from outside wasn't casual. It was sharp. Urgent.
Ámenor dropped the root. He scrambled out of the tent, blinking in the dim light.
"What is…" The words died in his throat.
Emerging from the grass, silent as smoke, were six figures. Grasslanders. Their green armor looked black in the twilight. They were less than ten paces away from Kaséti, who stood between the enemy and the tent. He had snatched up his spear, holding it with both hands, his stance wide. He looked terrified, but he didn't step back.
"Run!" Kaséti screamed, not looking at Ámenor. "Get back to the others! Tell them! Ambush!"
One of the Grasslanders lunged. Kaséti parried the blow clumsily, sparks flying, but he held his ground. Two more circled him. Ámenor froze. His hand went to his dagger, his feet shifting in the sand. Help him, his heart screamed. Fight with him.
"GO!" Kaséti roared, his voice breaking as a sword slashed across his thigh. He stumbled but thrust his spear forward, catching an attacker in the shoulder. "ÁMENOR, RUN!"
It was the desperation in his friend's voice that broke him. Kaséti wasn't fighting to win. He was fighting to buy seconds. And every second Ámenor stood there hesitating was a second of Kaséti's life wasted.
Tears blinded him. He took one last look at his friend, surrounded, bleeding, fighting like a lion against jackals, just like his own father years before.
Then, Ámenor turned. He ran. Not like a soldier. Not like a warrior. He ran like a frightened child. The footsteps behind him mixed with his own blood pulsing in his ears. He didn't look back. Because he knew what he would see.
The soft sand of the memory vanished. Ámenor lying face down on the unforgiving, baked clay of the Flats tried to push himself up, but his arms were like dry branches, trembling and useless. He was broken. Emptied. Then, he felt it.
A vibration against his cheek. A rhythmic tremor traveling through the hard earth. Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.
Footsteps.
They were heavy, deliberate, and closing the distance. Not the scurrying of a scavenger, but the stride of a man. Fear flickered in Ámenor's chest, a dying ember trying to ignite, but his body refused to answer. Was it the Grasslanders? Had they hunted him down to finish the slaughter?
He couldn't lift his head. He couldn't reach for his dagger. He could only stare at the cracked pattern of the mud inches from his eyes and wait. A shadow fell over him, long and absolute, blocking out the merciless sun. The heat on his back vanished, replaced by a sudden, chilling shade. With the last scrap of air in his burning lungs, Ámenor moved his cracked lips. He didn't beg for his life. He didn't ask for water. He spoke only to the ghosts that were waiting for him.
"I... didn't... look... back..." he whispered, the confession raspy and broken as darkness swallowed him whole.