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“May today be not our time.”

“May today be not our time,” Revni and her mother repeated. The blood-mud caught the breeze, two cool stripes across her face, but as her father marked her mother—a long stripe down the center, all the way to her chin—Revni had a flash of gratitude that he’d only done her cheeks. She didn’t want to taste that poor dead boy on her lips.

Revni sucked in a breath. What was wrong with her? Did she want to bring a curse upon them all? Revni sent a quick apology to the gods and followed her parents to join the others. It was the boy’s time. It was not her place to question it.

Fens was another word Revni didn’t know—but she did know she hated them. The water looked only a few inches deep, but at every other step the boggy earth sucked her leg to the knee. Tiny insects swarmed in clouds that refused to move, except to occasionally launch down her throat. Holding her ax and shield high against the muck ached her muscles and made the weapons feel twice their weight, and rotten eggs and rancid fish filled her nose, with an undertone of wet dog.

She wasn’t alone in her misery. Her mother kept using her free hand to slap at some new insect biting her neck, and her father’s curses grew louder and more inappropriate.

Tall grasses grew in sporadic clumps. “Put your foot near the roots,” Ulf suggested. “There’ll be soil.”

Only there wasn’t. Ulf sank to his thighs and had to fight his way to something more solid.

“I don’t remember it like this,” Ragn confessed. “Perhaps there’s been a rain.”

Revni felt as sour as the stench that surrounded them, and the mood of the whole party seemed the same. The sun was climbing. Never mind a surprise at dawn. A raid seemed impossible to manage in the time they needed, and Revni understood her mother’s nervous glance behind them: how would they even transport their spoils back across this muck? More bad omens. More bad luck. That curse Revni feared she might have brought upon them swelled, like bellows pumping air into its heat. If the gods gifted her another kill, she swore she would be grateful.

Knuf gave a whoop of satisfaction and Revni’s lungs thankfully released. He’d found a way to cross. He waved the others over, but Revni’s father held up a quieting hand.

“Shh.”

It could be wind in branches. Birdsong. But the hairs on Revni’s neck prickled with excitement and others registered the sound. Metal. Jangling in the distance, a song of feet. Niall took the nod from Ragn and retreated. Niall had been assigned to stern, the quickest among them even if he was not the strongest, and he veered west towards the noise. Knuf was supposed to serve as bow, but the clan was spread wide, all sense of hierarchy or strategy vanished in their attempts to navigate the marsh.

Waiting quietly for Niall to return felt impossible. Revni's heartbeat pounded in her ears. A few people pulled themselves out of the worst positions, but they were shushed by the others, with fingers to lips and hands raised to stay still. The buzzing of insects grew louder. Revni huffed a grouping away from her face with a sharp exhale.

Niall reappeared, face flushed but grinning.

“No need to go all the way to the monastery, friends. The raid has come to us.”

Relief traveled through them all like a breeze on a single wind. The clan pulled themselves back out of the fen, back the way they had come, huddling for news and to make their plan. They could salvage this day, still make the good tide. It wasn’t a monastery full of gold, but Niall assured them there was still bronze and weapons and riches—traveling with coin purses!—and all it would take would be a few moments of battle. A few strikes with her ax, a few strides of holding her shield strong. It wasn’t the same, but easy pickings were better than empty hands.

Revni swallowed and steeled herself as they readied positions and began to crouch forward.

There was nothing to fear, she reminded herself. It was the enemies’ time.

THREE

Ricaea Marceas Eavus was not going to get sucked in.

“Ghosts,” Maener insisted again.

Eavus kept his focus on his stiffening legs, flexing one thigh then the other to keep them from turning useless. The commander had mustered them all just after dawn, issuing spears and ordering them into lines, but then he’d left them standing here for what felt like hours.

“You’re an idiot.” Sev shifted his grip on his shield. “Ghosts don’t use weapons.”

“Is that in all your vast experience?” Costae couldn’t help but chime in, but he kept his eyes forward.

Eavus stayed on his own concerns: Knee one, knee two. Knee one, knee two. The rhythm took on its own little song. Maener and Sev were both idiots, and they were going to cost the whole tent party the chance at meat with dinner. Sev had already gotten them in trouble once this morning. He’d overslept, as usual, but the commander had spotted his prone body before Eavus’ daily toe-prod could work its magic. At the crack of the commander’s spear pole to his shins, Sev had jumped to standing. The whole party would make fun of him later—the heaving gasp, his mouth hanging open, his long eyebrows disheveled in all directions like a nest of caterpillars crawling to escape—but right now they were still bitter about getting screamed at.

Eavus squeezed his eyes while the commander’s back was turned. How Sevenius could sleep so heavily, night after night, Eavus would never understand. Eavus felt like he’d barely slept a full night since arriving in this gods-forsaken country, with its cold ground and its weather and its trees. So many trees. It made him claustrophobic. The sun shone bright enough on cloudless days, but it never seemed to warm. And why was everything always so wet? The ground never seemed to dry off between the relentless showers, the mornings plagued constantly by thick, damp fog. Even that enigmatic sun seemed watery.

No, if it were up to Eavus, the Arneans could keep their cold, wet island.

But of course, it wasn’t up to Eavus. Nothing was up to Eavus. What time he woke, the way he rolled his blanket, the sequence in which he tied his belongings to his spear-pole, what he ate, the order in which he ate—second in his tent party, which was eighth in the division, which was seventh in the cohort. He went through the morning ritual without a thought by now, but even when he’d first joined, a scrappy little piece of onager fodder, protesting his lack of autonomy never would have crossed his mind. Obeying orders was how you survived.

“I’ve seen a ghost,” Sev volunteered. Eavus could feel the collective groan. “This one time—Hey!” Albin’s shift of movement knocked his spear, and Sev spun on him. “I was only saying⁠—”

“Legionary Rilepa Sevenius!”