Fedor Sokolov planted his boots in the grit of the narrow pass. He locked his shield with the Khevsur warrior beside him, the heavy rims of wood and steel grinding together to form an unbroken wall. This, he understood. The high-level talk in the council chamber of memory-seeds and stolen shame was a fog. This was stone under his feet and a choke point a dozen meters wide. This was a job.
He did not need to understand the Knyaz’s whole plan. He only needed to understand his part. Hold this pass. Let the others do their clever work. He trusted the weight of his shield. He trusted the familiar bite of his axe. He trusted the grim-faced man beside him, whose dark, etched armor was a mystery but whose stance was as solid as the northern granite of Belogorod.
The enemy came. They flowed into the pass not with a warrior’s charge, but with the silent, inevitable pull of a tide. Men in dark red tunics, their faces blank, their eyes empty. They did not shout war cries. They did not show fear or fury. They simply advanced, a river of bodies intent on filling the space he held. The silence of their approach was more unnerving than any scream.
The first wave hit the shield wall with a series of dull, meaty thuds. The impact jarred Fedor’s arm to the shoulder, a familiar pain he welcomed. He held his ground, legs braced, his body a part of the wall. The Khevsur warrior beside him grunted, a sound of pressure, not pain. Fedor answered with a grunt of his own. An understanding that needed no words.
He saw an opening. A red-tunic soldier’s sword glanced off the Khevsur’s shield. Fedor pivoted, his own shield covering the gap as his axe swung in a low, brutal arc. The steel bit deep into the soldier’s thigh. The man fell, his face still empty, his mouth open in a silent O. He did not even seem to register the wound before another soldier stepped over him to take his place.
— Left flank! — a voice shouted from above. Kira Zaytseva. The archivist. — Around the pillar!
Fedor risked a glance. The woman was perched on a high ledge overlooking the pass, a place the schematics must have shown. She was not a warrior, but her eyes were sharp. She pointed, and Fedor saw three more of the blank-eyed soldiers using a natural stone column for cover, trying to get around their flank.
The Khevsur saw it too. He barked a short, guttural command. Two of his clansmen further down the line broke off, their own shields locking together as they moved to intercept the flanking group. It was a disciplined, immediate reaction. A strange dance, just as the Knyaz had said it would be. Each part moving to a rhythm only Sineus seemed to fully grasp.
A flash of movement from another ledge caught his eye. One of the Scriptorium’s own guards, a man who had likely read of such tactics in a scroll, hurled a clay pot down into the pass. It shattered among the attackers, releasing a cloud of thick, choking smoke. It was not deadly, but it sowed confusion. Men stumbled, their silent advance faltering for a precious few seconds.
Fedor used the moment. He pushed forward, a single step, his shield a battering ram. The soldier in front of him staggered back, off-balance. Fedor’s axe came down, a clean blow to the collarbone. He pulled the blade free with a wet rasp and stepped back into line, the wall once more unbroken. The Khevsur beside him gave a curt nod of approval.
The fight found its rhythm. A brutal, grinding cadence of impact and steel. Block, shove, strike. Step forward, step back. The air grew thick with the smell of sweat, hot metal, and the coppery tang of blood. The sun beat down on the ochre rock, turning the pass into an oven. Fedor felt sweat trickle into his eyes. He ignored it.
He saw one of the Scriptorium guards, a scholar in a leather vest armed with a short spear, go down. The man’s eyes were wide with a surprise that the enemy soldiers never showed. He had tried to hold his ground, but his form was wrong, his nerve too thin. A red-tunic soldier had simply walked into his spear, taking the wound to drive a short sword into the scholar’s gut.
Fedor felt a flicker of pity, then nothing. It was the cost of battle. He and the Khevsur warrior beside him shuffled their feet, closing the new gap in the line. The body of the fallen guard was a lump of discarded robes under their boots. There was no time for ceremony.
— They are not tiring! — the Khevsur next to him growled, the first full sentence he had spoken. His voice was rough, like stones grinding together.
Fedor knew. He had killed five, maybe six. His arm was beginning to feel the strain, a deep burn in the muscle. But for every soldier he cut down, another stepped forward, its face just as blank, its stride just as steady. They did not feel pain. They did not feel fear. They did not seem to feel anything at all.
They were not soldiers. They were weapons, pointed at the shield wall until one or the other broke.
He parried a clumsy sword stroke, the force of it vibrating up his arm. He saw the soldier’s eyes. There was nothing behind them. No thought, no soul. Just an order to advance. How do you break an enemy that is already broken? How do you make a man fear death when he does not seem to be alive?
The pressure was constant. It was not a battle of charges and retreats. It was a contest of erosion. They were a tide of flesh, and he was a rock. He braced himself, planting his feet again as another wave of silent men surged forward. He could feel the strength in his arms beginning to fade, the shield growing heavier with each impact.
The sun beat down on his helm. The air was dust and the smell of death.
He looked past the man he was about to kill and saw the endless river of them still pouring into the pass. They would not stop. They would never stop. He knew, with the cold, simple certainty of a veteran, that his strength had a limit.
Theirs did not.
The canyon wind whispered over the hot stones, carrying away the worst of the heat. A single hawk circled in the vast, silent blue of the sky above the carnage.
He knew with cold certainty that their strength had a limit. The enemy's did not, and the line was beginning to fray.
