They were the Seventh Guard, not the elite of the army, no, not by any stretch of the imagination, but hardly the casting-offs of the other Guards. Solid, reliable troops, not as creative as the Third or as powerful as the First, but they never faltered, even when they'd been faced by three companies of the Chirrum. And that was due to the fact that very few of the Seventh Guard had anything to return to, once the Ayinha would finally win the war or collapse from the costs of maintaining thirty years of aggression. They'd come from the slums of Tal Eilum, the back alleys of Tal Eidri, from Kir Teldran and Kir Felsar and the hundreds of smaller, unknown towns that covered the Ayinha territories. Why else would they be unafraid to clamber into the steepest breaches, to fight vastly unnumbered, to confront any danger?

Well, almost any danger.

Ejnar, Sergeant Major and occasional brevetted Captain, stood just outside the gates of Kir Teldran, leaning on his spear with an expression usually reserved for those about to be hung. Twice a year, his Guard passed through this neighbourhood. Ten chances. Yet only now, when age and wounds had forced him to take two moon's leave from the Seventh Guard, had he dared even to consider walking through those gates.

He didn't want to. None of the Seventh wanted to, not even those who had lived there originally. Every time one went on leave, or when they marched past Kir Teldran, they would look at one another, wishing that one of them would go and do the duty, but none wanted to. But he was Ejnar, Sergeant Major, and if the latest Captain wouldn't do it, then the duty fell to him.

Five years was long enough. It needed to be done. He drew a deep breath, and walked through the gates.

The Ayinha-Chirrum war was nothing new. Ever since the Chirrum and Ayinha had crossed over the Hal Draketh Mountains, they'd fought. Fought for the land controlled by the Ragne, fought for the ocean coast that would bring trade of copper and gold, fought for the sheer sake of fighting, until they were compared to the Tevarii of the east. Not true, of course: The Tevarii were all insane. And though the Ayinha might have liked to call their ages-old foes mad, it would have suggested that they were unable to defeat someone who was insane, and that would never do. There was a treaty, once, that lasted almost a decade, but no one had ever dreamed that it would last that long. And then it was broken, though no one knew which side had done so, and the Huntress Queen Aidana led the Ayinha back to war. This was the thirtieth year of that war. It had lasted longer than many of the Seventh Guard had been alive.

Ejnar could remember, vaguely, a time before the war. He'd been born the second child in as many years, the population shooting upwards as the hundreds of men taken away by the war returned to their homes and found partners. His father, doubtful that any peace could last very long, took it upon himself to train his children for war and, as though he were a prophet, the war resumed a little after Ejnar had turned eight, dragging him back to the ever-shifting borders. Yet since his father had insisted that it would continue, Ejnar was baffled as to his mother's surprise. He'd said it would happen, hadn't he?