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Elide dropped back into the saddle, nudged
the horse with her heels, and tugged Farasha
farther toward the glittering silver expanse.
He had to have gone to the lake.
The horse plunged into motion, her chest
heaving like a mighty bellows.
On and on, black and golden armor, blood
and snow and mud. The dam still held.
But there—
Elide yanked on the reins, slowing the
charging horse.
There, not too far from the water’s edge,
lay a patch of felled Morath soldiers. A swath
of them. Not a single set of golden armor.
Even where the khagan’s army had swept
through, they had lost soldiers. The
distribution across the battlefield had by no
means been even, but there had been corpses
in golden armor amongst the mass of black.
Yet here, there were none. No arrows or