Everyone rushed to give her a hand as fast as they could, and some almost turned up their noses when the bald head and long beard numbed by the frost of the Furies' deputy commander emerged from the snow. By some miracle, even in the midst of the avalanche, he had managed not to lose his grip on Athreia, who he had held close to himself, protecting her as best he could.

His body was injured and frozen, and it was clear that in order to save his pupil, who lay unconscious but still alive next to him, he had chosen to sacrifice his own life.

"Please... have mercy on her..." he said, taking his last breath before anyone could try to help him.

Despite that heartbreaking scene, many were not sure they wanted to help an enemy who had injured and killed a large number of them before the avalanche arrived.

"Septimus, find a sled to carry her. And you Sapi, get her out of there."

"Okay."

"Daemon, what are you doing? She's an enemy."

"Maybe, but she's just as much a victim as we are. If we abandon her here, how would we be different from those who made a mountain fall on us just to win?"

Scalia made an examination of her conscience and remained silent, even helping Sapi in pulling the half-dead centaur out from under the snow; she was so big that it was necessary to allocate an entire sled to transport the wounded only for her.

"General, there are movements in the enemy camp." Tecla reported. "They're preparing to advance."

"We have no choice. Let's retreat."

"What about our friends still down here?"

"There's nothing we can do, Scalia. We have no way to oppose such a large army, nor we have time to set up new defenses further down the valley. We need to get away from here while we can."

"But all these bodies..."

"They will stay here where they are. The more bodies we leave behind, the longer it will take them to understand that we're not all dead."

"Daemon..."

"I know it's inhuman Scalia, but right now we need every second we can earn. I promise you that as soon as we can we will return here to honor them as they deserve. For now we can only get away as quickly as possible."

Thus, having hastily collected everything that could be taken away, starting with the wounded and the new weapons designed by Daemon, the army of the Free State descended from the pass with a very different spirit than the one with which it had ascended it.

Theoretically, they came down from up there undefeated, since the enemy had not defeated them in an open battle but only by resorting to a ruthless stratagem, but that didn't matter. What mattered was that the enemy was advancing, and would soon enter their land.



The retreat from the mountains ended in Basterwick, the largest town near the front line.

The atmosphere was tense, and not just in the audience hall of the governor's palace where Daemon had gathered his war council.

Drunk with freedom and satisfaction for having finally freed themselves from imperial domination, as well as by all the well-being that the new economic policies were bringing to the nation, the citizens had ended up forgetting that there were those who had no intention of letting the Revolution go unpunished.

Some wondered if it was not yet possible to go back, trusting in the fact that it was not the imperial army looming over them, but that of Eirinn: brothers of the same lineage.

Only Oldrick and Adrian were missing from the meeting, since both were still in Grote Muren, but the first thing Daemon did as soon as the meeting began was to decide on the immediate abandonment of the fort.

"Defending Grote Muren was still possible as long as we maintained control of our territories, but with the fall of the pass we can consider the eastern border lost. They must retreat now while they still can."

"And abandon the fort like that?" asked Septimus "Without fighting?"

"A fort can be taken back, a dead soldier cannot be brought back to life. Now we'll need everything we have available. What's the situation with the deliveries of the new armaments?"

"The warehouses are full." Borg said. "You could give a sword, a bow, a spear to every man, woman and child in this country and there would still be supplies left."

"Artillery?"

"We just finished building six new twelve-pounder guns." said Zypax "We are already bringing them here from the smelters."

"Wouldn't it have been better to build those new weapons?" Scalia asked. "They seemed very effective in the first battle on the pass."

"They may be small, but they are not at all easy to make and assemble. To build the little more than a hundred that we delivered we had to work day and night for months."

"And to make matters worse, almost all of them remained up there, buried under the snow." Septimus said sadly "Let's just hope that our enemies don't find them, or that they don't know how to use them."

"Now there's no point in crying over spilled milk. Let's focus instead on what we can do. We will use Basterwick as a new command center to coordinate defensive operations."

"Wouldn't it be safer to fall back to the Castle?"

"Scalia is right, it is deeper in our territory, and closing the valleys would be easy enough."

"Did you look out the window? Basterwick and its fields are our main source of food, and to make matters worse the wheat has yet to be harvested. Do you really want to leave all this stuff in the hands of the enemy?"

Both Scalia and Septimus lowered their eyes, ashamed that they had not considered something so obvious.

"We cannot leave the enemy free to devastate and raid our crops. Furthermore, the terraces further west are not yet ready, and it is not certain that they will be ready in time for the next sowing. If we lose this grain, even if we manage to repel the invasion next winter we will find ourselves starving. We must stop the enemy here, or the Free State will die before it is a year old."

"What are your orders?" Septimus then asked

"Let's mobilize everyone. I want every single soldier at our disposal. We will leave only the strictly essential units to defend the bridge and the pass to the north."

Then, everyone's thoughts returned to what had just happened at Gael Pass.

"Do we already have a first estimate of the casualties?"

"Six hundred responded to the last appeal, of which only forty were from the front line. There are one hundred and five wounded, almost two thousand dead and missing."

"Our companions lie buried under meters of snow, and instead that cursed mare is safe." Scalia said. "The gods can be really unfair sometimes."

"How is she?"

"It was less serious than it looked." Mary said. "Her partner really saved her life by sacrificing his own. For now she is still sedated, but she should wake up within a few hours."

"While waiting to understand what to do with her, we locked her in prison." said Septimus "And we also took some precautions. In any case, now we know for sure. She is truly Athreia."

"The commander who survives her army... Good work, Septimus. For now, let's leave her where she is."

"Yes, sir."



When the scouts brought back the news that the fort of Grote Muren had been abandoned, General Lefde could not help but feel a sense of respect towards the enemy commander.

Too many times he had heard of generals and sovereigns who had sent their soldiers to their deaths in useless battles whose outcome was sealed before they even began, out of a dull sense of pride.

Instead this Daemon proved once again that he was a pragmatist; he didn't care about the honor or judgment of nobles like Victor, but he only cared about the practical aspect and what was the right thing to do.

Once the fort was occupied and the garrison established he and Victor awaited the arrival of Philippe, who arrived three days later with his army practically intact.

"And so these would be the new weapons your messenger spoke of." said Victor looking at the said object, the only one that his uncle had managed to recover intact from under the snow.

"We still don't know how they managed to create them or how they work. They look like some kind of miniature cannons, capable of being carried and used by a single person."

"Unusual tactics, never seen weapons." said Lefde. "This guy defies logic."

"And yet, here we are." Victor said. «Victors and with the road paved towards the reconquest of our land.»

"But what exactly happened on that mountain?" Lefde asked with obvious suspicion

"Simply, an avalanche broke out in the middle of the battle, taking away the Furies and almost the entire enemy army."

"And you obviously have nothing to do with any of this, am I right?"

"Let's call it an act of the gods." was Victor's satisfied sentence. "Now we know that even the sky is with us in this endeavor."

No one in there really thought that it had been a case or some divine intervention, but if Victor liked to think so, General Lefde had resigned himself to the fact that the situation was now beyond his control.

"Do we have any idea of the losses suffered by the enemy?"

"In two days we pulled no less than two hundred corpses out of the snow, not to mention those dragged down the valley and fished out from the stream that comes down from the pass. For all we know, even the enemy commander could have remained down there."

"I doubt it. His companions do not seem as savvy as he, and would not have made a wise move such as abandoning the fort and falling back to the west."

Victor thought differently: "A cowardly move, you mean."

"This man doesn't care about honor. He bases his choices solely on logic and practical outcome. And if I may say so, my lord, it is precisely this kind of adversary that one should be most afraid of."

"He may be good, but wars can't be fought without soldiers." Philippe commented. "And he lost several thousand in just one night. We have an army of almost twenty thousand men and almost as many mercenaries. According to the most recent news, the rebels have a maximum of twenty-five thousand soldiers, and almost all of them are recruits who have never seen a battle."

"Even small dogs can bring down a bison, if they are guided by an experienced hunter."

"And then, we will hunt the hunter." Victor declared.

"If I may My Lord, I would suggest that we wait before advancing further. A portion of our army is still coming from the east under my second, Captain Abel, and will not be here for four days."

"And give those rebels time to reinforce themselves?" replied Philippe "You have to strike while the iron is hot. Basterwick is a stone's throw away. A rapid advance, a determined assault, and we will have stripped the enemy of almost all of his food reserves."

Not far from the command tent, in the archery area of the fortress, Medea was tearing all the targets to pieces, riddling them with arrows and stoically ignoring the pain that still made her shots inaccurate.

There was only anger in her eyes.

In the end, her shoulder gave way, and the young woman almost fell to her knees after exhausting yet another quiver, destroying not only her target but also the tree it was hanging from.

"You won't get anywhere this way." said a voice behind her, lovingly but firmly.

"My sister is dead, Kassia. And I won't feel satisfied until I've killed every last one of those rebels."

"Dying on the battlefield is the fate of a centaur. It was the same for your parents, for mine, and for those of all our companions. We were born for this."

Their father had used the same words the day they buried their mother; Medea was still so young at the time that she barely remembered her face, but she could still hear that sweet song of hers in her ears.

She had often wondered how someone could kill enemies on the battlefield and put her daughters to sleep in the evening with such a beautiful voice.

After her death, it was Athreia who sang her the same song to put her to sleep, and by now those sweet words were burned into her mind, so much so that she often found herself whistling them without realizing it.

"Now you are our commander, Medea. And even though there are few of us left, it is your job to lead us into battle with the same determination and courage you have always had, as your sister, your father and your grandfather have already done. And if Gaia wills it, the time will soon come when we can avenge Athreia, Stavros, and all our friends."



The last thing Athreia had thought a moment before that mountain of snow overwhelmed her was that she would soon meet her gods, ready to judge her.

Instead, when she reopened her eyes, she was still in this world, lying on a pallet inside a small room, barely big enough to allow her to get back on her feet and take a few steps.

Even though there wasn't a single point on her body that didn't hurt, she understood that she had been treated, because everywhere she had plasters and bandages, the most annoying of which was a conspicuous, rather tight bandage that wrapped around her neck.

Since there were two monsters guarding the door, she understood that she had ended up in the hands of the enemy before she even realized she was in a cell in some dungeon, wondering if her other companions had been as lucky as her.

The two guards, when asked about this, did not pay her any attention, and from the way they looked at her every now and then it was clear how they felt towards her.

She didn't blame them; even though she had never spent much time in the company of monsters she was all too aware of what they thought of her kind.

"The mark of traitors is not easily erased." a voice full of hatred said at a certain point while she was trying to understand where she was, facing the small window opposite the door

"I remember you. You were there on the mountain too."

"If there is a god willing to listen to you, you should thank him. None of us would ever think of disobeying my brother's orders, and it seems he has found some reason to want to keep you alive."

"What happened to my soldiers?"

"You're the only one we found. Many of our comrades, including several of my friends, were not so lucky."

When the pain in other parts of her body began to fade, Athreia distinctly felt a discomfort on the back of her neck that refused to go away. If she touched that point, she had the impression of feeling a sort of small hump that she hadn't had before.

"We took the liberty of inserting a Servant Stone into you." Scalia said almost grinning, and enjoying the astonished expression of the centaur.

So, to prove to her that she wasn't joking, she used a command stone to put her through a few seconds of hell, literally.

"Tell me, what does it feel like to be on the same level as us?"

"It wasn't necessary." replied Athreia, hardly pretending that such torment, however brief, had not affected her.

"You know, I almost feel sorry for you. You centaurs betrayed your comrades five hundred years ago to become the war dogs of humans. You thought they would consider you their equal just because you fought together against the Dark Lord and your own brothers. And yet for them you will always remain monsters, to be sacrificed and thrown away at the first opportunity."

"What do you mean?"

"You really can't imagine it? My brother says that avalanche didn't fall by chance. It was your friends who crashed it in hopes of killing us all, and they used you as bait."

Scalia laughed when she saw the dismay appear in the prisoner's eyes: "From your expression I'd say you weren't expecting it."

"You're lying. It is not possible." but it seemed that not even Athreia believed her own words.

"Humans use you, monsters hate you. I have to congratulate you. That choice you made has paid off in a big way."

Scalia would have gladly continued to rage, but a sergeant came with news.

"Captain, the noble Daemon has convened the War Council. Your presence in the meeting room is required."

Athreia gasped, having only managed to understand the last part of the message: "What's happening?"

"We are at the moment of reckoning. I hope you haven't made any friends in Eirinn's army, because this time Daemon doesn't seem willing to go easy."



The entire War Council had never been convened in its entirety in the short history of the Free State, because there was always someone busy elsewhere with other activities.

Everyone was there: General Adrian, commander of the Great Revolutionary Army, division commanders Oldrick, Jack and Septimus, Scalia, and even Natuli. The latest arrival was Richard, a native of the Principality of Patria, recently appointed commander of the First Heavy Infantry Division; a lion, in name and in fact.

"I think the situation is clear to everyone." Daemon began by self-criticizing. "The battle on the pass, in addition to being a substantial defeat, opened the doors of the nation to our enemies. And as much as it helps, I take full responsibility for what happened to Gael. I wasn't far-sighted enough to see how determined the Earl of Hatlen was to win."

"There's nothing to apologize for, boy." Richard said, nervously scratching his mane. "As a slave warrior I fought in almost every battle of the last thirty years between Patria and the Sultanate, but I have never met any general crazy enough to come up with such a thing."

"Anyway what matters is that we lost many men, and what's worse we had to abandon Grote Muren to the enemy." Adrian said, calm but visibly worried. "I doubt that the damage we managed to cause in the short time we had will have any effect."

"We've gathered every single soldier we had, but even so only General Adrian's First Army is at full strength." Oldrick said. "The others, in addition to being largely made up of recruits, were partly broken up to ensure the defense of the borders."

"So we cannot retreat lest we lose our crops, and we cannot advance due to lack of soldiers." Jack said. "I'm starting to wonder if this was a good idea."

"Absolutely yes!" Scalia snapped. "I prefer to die free and with the sword in my hand than as a slave and in chains. And I'm sure others feel the same way."

"Retreating without a fight is for losers." Natuli observed acidly. "On the other hand, riding straight to your death isn't an attractive prospect."

"None of us will die." Daemon said. "But Scalia is right, we all knew what we were getting into. After all, if we don't prove ourselves capable of defending our country, no one will take us seriously. In a certain sense this situation helps us. If we repel this invasion it will be proof that the Free State can defend itself, and anyone else will think twice before coming to bother us."

"We're all ears, Daemon." Oldrick said. "What do you suggest we do?"

Daemon stood for a long time staring at the various maps scattered on the table, muttering incomprehensible reflections with his hands behind his back.

"We'll take position here. On the easternmost of these two hills."

"It makes sense." Adrian observed. "It's the highest hill in the area. From there you can almost see the ramparts of Grote Muren, assuming you don't have your view obscured by the damned fog that always covers that area."

"I guarantee you that you will observe Grote Muren very closely. In fact, while I and the others take up our positions, you will have to go to the fort with a small embassy."

"What for?"

Daemon stared at him enigmatically, one of those looks that even Adrian was incapable of holding without feeling his legs trembling.

"Don't you imagine? To discuss the terms of our surrender."