"We're lucky that wasn't shaping," Gries said, his face red from the heat of the fire and steam. "We'd all be dead."
Enly shook his head. "It wasn't luck. The shapers were still fighting off the eagles."
Tirnya looked toward the sept again, and saw that with the first group of eagles all dead or maimed, the second flock had begun to attack the Fal'Borna, and the white-hairs had resumed their magical assaults on the birds.
The Mettai were conjuring again, and as with the finding spell, when they threw this magic it turned to a fine glittering powder and streaked over the plain to the settlement, where it fell like a light snow on the sept. Immediately Tirnya saw the white-hairs go down, as if struck by unseen warriors. A cheer went up from the Eandi soldiers behind her.
Seeing their prey rendered helpless, the great eagles that still circled over the sept pounced, digging their talons into the prone bodies and tearing at them with their massive beaks.
"We should finish it," Jenoe said grimly. He turned to Tirnya and the other captains. "I want the children spared. But every adult is to be killed." Tirnya and Enly shared a look.
"Forgive me, Marshal," Gries said. "But am I to understand that you want us to slaughter the Fal'Borna while they sleep? The men and the women?" Jenoe drew himself up and took a breath. "That's right, Captain."
"But-"
Tirnya's father held up a hand to stop him. Several soldiers were approaching from both ends of the army.
"Report," Jenoe said.
A man in a Qalsyn uniform sketched a quick bow. "We los' one hundr'd an' twelve, sir."
"One hundred and twelve dead?" Stri said, incredulous.
The soldier nodded. "Anoth'r two hundr'd or so were burned an' need healin'."
Jenoe turned to a soldier wearing the colors of Fairlea. "What about your men?"
"Ninety-six dead, sir. More'n a hundr'd hurt."
"And yours?" Jenoe said to a soldier from Waterstone.
"We don' know yet, sir. A' least one hundr'd an' fifty dead. More than tha' probably. An' two hundr'd hurt."
Jenoe nodded. "I'm sorry for your losses, Marshal, Captain," he said to Hendrid and Gries, both of whom appeared shocked by what they had heard. "But to answer your question, Captain Ballidyne: Yes, I want them killed while they sleep. That was just one attack, and thanks to the Mettai we were spared the worst of it. And still we had hundreds of soldiers wounded or killed. We can't trifle with this enemy. They're at our mercy now, and I don't dare show them any." He gazed toward the sept as the eagles continued their bloody feast. "Please carry out my orders. Take archers with you and kill those eagles, too. I don't want to lose any more men today."
"Yes, Marshal," Enly said quietly.
The other captains led their men into the sept, but Tirnya hung back for a moment.
"Father?"
Jenoe didn't seem to have noticed that she was there. He started at the sound of her voice and frowned upon seeing her.
"You have orders to carry out, Tirnya. Please see to them."
He turned his back on her before she could say more. She wasn't used to hearing him speak to her so, but she couldn't bring herself to be angry with him. After a moment, she followed the others.
She walked quickly and soon had caught up with her men. Oliban and Dyn, two of her lead riders, were walking together. When they saw her they made room between them.
"Capt'n," Oliban said by way of greeting, his voice low.
Tirnya merely nodded. The men around them were so subdued one might have thought that they had lost this battle.
She heard the thrum of bows once more and looked up in time to see two eagles laboring to keep aloft, both with several arrows jutting from their breasts.
"I've never had t' kill an enemy like this before," Dyn said.
Tirnya pulled her sword free. "None of us has."
Already she could see soldiers thrusting their blades into the chests of sleeping Fal'Borna. Some of the soldiers were from Qalsyn; others were from Fairlea or Waterstone. All of them seemed disturbed by what they were being made to do.
"We should check the shelters," she said. "There'll be warriors in many of them."
She approached the nearest of the structures, which had been fashioned out of wooden poles and rilda skins. Pushing aside a flap that covered the entrance and stepping into the shelter, she found half a dozen sleeping children and two women, both of them holding spears.
"Damn," she whispered.
"Capt'n?" Oliban called to her from outside the shelter.
"It's all right," she said, her teeth clenched against a sudden sick feeling in her stomach.
She considered ordering Oliban into the shelter and telling him to do this. But she quickly dismissed the idea. Then she wondered if she and her men should drag the women out of the shelter, so that the children wouldn't awake to find themselves with two corpses. But would they be any better off leaving the shelter and finding the bodies out there? And did she want anyone else to see her do this?
In the end she decided that she didn't. She stood over the first woman and pulled her sword back, intending to stab her through the heart. These women were white-hairs. Their people had taken Deraqor from the Onjaefs and had killed thousands upon thousands of Eandi over the centuries. This should have been easy for her.
Her sword hand dropped to her side. She opened her mouth to call for Oliban, knowing that she wouldn't be able to carry out her orders.
But at that moment, the woman before her stirred and her eyes fluttered open. Golden yellow they were, and for just an instant, she stared up at Tirnya.
Her heart abruptly pounding, Tirnya jumped forward and plunged her blade into the woman's chest. The Fal'Borna cried out, flailed briefly, and then was still, blood staining her shirt.
The piece of rilda skin covering the shelter's entrance was thrown back. "Capt'n!" Oliban said. "Are you all right?"
"Yes," Tirnya said, breathing hard. "One of them… one of them woke up."
Oliban looked down at the woman Tirnya had slaughtered. After a moment, he drew his blade, walked to the other woman, and killed her as well. Then they left the shelter and made their way to the next one.
It was slow, grim work. At one point, Tirnya heard shouting and screams from the far end of the sept. She later learned that several Fal'Borna, including at least two shapers, had awakened before any of the Eandi soldiers reached them and had put up quite a fight before being killed by Stelpana's archers. Several more Eandi soldiers had died, most with snapped necks.
But by late in the day, all the adult Fal'Borna had been slain, as had the remaining eagles. Tirnya had rarely seen such carnage. The sept was littered with bodies, the earth stained crimson in many places. Jenoe ordered his men to pile the bodies and burn them, which meant that all of the Fal'Borna children were awake long before the Eandi army left the sept. Most of the younger ones cried piteously, while the oldest among them stared stony-faced at the pyres and the Eandi soldiers.
Tirnya had learned her lesson from her encounter with the boy in the last settlement; this time she made no effort to speak with any of the children. She stood at the edge of the village nearest to the horse paddock, staring off across the plain, hoping that the wind wouldn't shift and send the stench of burning corpses her way.
She hadn't been alone long when she heard a footfall behind her. Knowing that it had to be Enly, she turned, the words on her tongue intended to send him away and let him know in no uncertain terms that she didn't need comforting or sympathy. But it wasn't Enly who stood before her, nor was it Gries, or Stri, or her father, any of whom she also might have expected. Instead, she found herself facing her lead riders, Oliban, Qagan, Dyn, and Crow.
"What's happened?" she asked.
Oliban looked at the other three, but they were all eyeing him. For a long time he had spoken for all of them. It seemed that the others expected him to do so now, too.
"Oliban?" Tirnya said.