Iarius had seen combat before. He had witnessed men marching to battle, songs on their lips, and watched as those same lips expelled their final breaths. He had seen blood spilled in honorable duels and in cowardly ambushes, seen mighty warriors reduced to simpering children as their lives bled out from their battle-wounds.

  As a slave, he'd see men beaten and whipped by their masters, been forced to watch torturous executions where the condemned took days to die as a warning to others. At the Acadaemium, he'd chronicled the exploits of soldiers, and he'd left Remura with his head full of songs of glory. But Iarius had seen soldiers put down uprisings, seen simple tavern brawls spill over into riots. Bit by bit, those glorious songs that had once filled his head were replaced by the screams of dying men and the sharp notes of blade sliding into flesh.

  Yes, Iarius ex Maritoris was a man who had seen combat, and who now harbored no illusions about it. He recognized it as the base, horrible thing it was, a necessary evil that must taint the soul of every man, no matter how noble, who engages in the act. That youth who'd once dreamed of glory had matured into a man who knew that warfare was ugly and vile, the terrible price we pay for peace, justice, and prosperity.

  But now, standing on that mountain, watching as Nessalir the Red faced down the Equine Centuria, Iarius saw that combat could be something else as well.

  It could be beautiful.

  The woman with crimson hair hanging in a braid from her head and dragon's blood flowing fierce through her veins did not flinch as she approached the steed of Pilus Opaedes. In her human hand she held a sword, and in her dragon's claw she held an ax. She moved with the certainty of one who knew no fear, of a warrior who could not even imagine the awful death which surely awaited her at the end of her foe's spear and his horse's hooves.

  The Pilus laughed to see her. He raised his spear, and his horse charged. But Nessalir did not hesitate, did not stumble. She rushed to meet him, and at the very last moment, as the Pilus thrust his spear forward, she ducked to the side, raised her sword, and with a single, powerful strike, she drove the blade upward into the horse's throat, muscles bulging and flexing in her arm as she pushed the weapon as far as it would go.

  The point of the sword, now painted red, jutted out from the back of the animal's neck. An awful gurgling noise, half a terrified whinny, poured forth from its ruptured throat, even as blood fell to the dirt beneath it.

  Nessalir let go of her sword, let horse and rider pass, and charged at the remainder of the Centuria. Behind her, the horse collapsed into the dust, and Pilus Opaedes screamed as he was thrown from the saddle, and his steed's bulk fell upon his legs.

  Beyond him, the dragonblooded woman leapt into the air. A rider jabbed with his spear, but she hooked her axhead around the shaft, used the soldier's own weapon to propel herself forward, where she gave him a hard kick in the chin. Now she sailed through the air, pirouetting her body until she landed gracefully upon her feet, tail lashing around behind her. Yet she did not pause. No sooner was Nessalir sturdy on the ground than she was rushing forth once more.

  Another horseman bore down on her, and instead of sidestepping it or leaping upon it, Nessalir fell to her knees. She slid in the dirt beneath the horse, artfully dodging its hooves, and buried her ax in its side. Using the beast's own flesh as leverage, she hauled herself with her ax's hook up and clung to the horse's underbelly, reaching out to grab the ankle of the rider and yanking him as she did so.

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  The centurion was not pulled from his saddle, but he swerved in it, and the sudden motion, combined with the pain of the ax buried in its gut, was enough to send the horse to the side with a cry of panicked confusion. There it collided with another horse, and Nessalir rolled out of the crash and jumped back to her feet.

  She tossed her ax from her draconic hand to her human one, and did so just in time to meet a footsoldier who had lost his steed in the bandits' rockslide. The Remuran soldier came at her with a sword, his gladius which gleamed in the light of the sun. But Nessalir parried his blow with her ax and ducked beneath his frenzied slashes. With a motion so quick Iarius could not hope to track with his mortal eyes, she lopped his head from his shoulders.

  By now the two riders who had collided managed to disentangle themselves from their terrified mounts, and they too charged at Nessalir on foot. But the virem draconem was ready for them. One centurion charged at her with a spear, but the mercenary simply hooked its haft under her ax and redirected him to the side. As this happened, the other centurion attempted to run her through with his sword, but as Nessalir remained firmly in control of her own momentum, even distracted as she was with the spearman, it was no great difficulty for her to dodge the thrust and bring her claws up to the centurion's face.

  Said claws buried themselves in his flesh, and the centurion screamed as the dragonblooded woman lifted him off the ground by his own face and threw him away. Her ax remained hooked over the spear, and the spearman retained his grip on it, and she jerked him closer to her and, laying out her clawed hand flat, thrust her dragon's talons into his soft throat.

  Blood and soldier fell to the dust, and Nessalir returned to the first horse she had felled, and the Pilus who remained beneath it, struggling to break free.

  "I will kill you, you barbarian whore!" Pilus Opaedes screamed, his voice cracking in fear and desperation, his bravado a laughably obvious facade to all who saw him. "Remura does not forget! I will have your head, and I will mount it upon a stick, and it will watch as my men and I take turns violating your body!"

  Nessalir did not reply to him. She merely returned her ax to her left hand, and withdrew her sword from his horse's throat. She paused for a moment standing over the Pilus, then brought the blade down upon him, and Marcus Opaedes, Pilus of the Eight Legion's Equine Centuria, was silenced forevermore.

  It was then that Iarius realized a figure was crawling toward him. He thought at first it might be a survivor of the warrior woman who continued to carve a bloody path through the Remuran Centuria, but soon he recognized the bearded face, and the tattoos that adorned his bloodstained flesh. Iarius rushed to kneel beside Jeskar, who clutched at his open gut with one hand.

  "She is… incredible," Jeskar said, watching as Nessalir charged once more into the oncoming enemies. "In our duel, she could have ended it in an instant."

  Iarius nodded. "She told me it was the threat of your archers which stayed her hand."

  Jeskar laughed. "Aye, bows have served me better than blades, I'm afraid." He pointed his chin up the sides of the canyon, where his archers remained letting loose arrows into the remains of the Equine Centuria.

  "I need to take you to your sister, or to someone who can treat you," Iarius told him.

  "No, Remuran," said the half-elf. "There is no treating this wound. I'm afraid I won't be accompanying Orla to Lorveg."

  Iarius looked to the trail of blood he had left smeared behind him as he'd left the carnage. Truthfully, it was a wonder Jeskar still yet breathed, much less continued to speak.

  "Stay with me, Remuran," Jeskar said. "Please. Stay with me. I would spend my last few minutes watching as my enemies join me in death."

  And Iarius did so. He remained kneeling beside the dying man, and the two watched as Nessalir the Red, beautiful and terrible in her own ways, put an end to the Equine Centuria of Remura's Eighth Legion.