It was a plan that might see most of them dead by nightfall of the next day, and they nodded agreeably and went to inform their men. They didn’t ask, and I couldn’t say, why I thought we should make our stand at Oneia. I had made my decision, and they had made theirs.

It was well into the night before I was finished with plans and staggered up to my rooms to find Nomenus waiting for me.

He was sitting on a stool not far from the fireplace. His hands were clasped together on one knee, and he was miles away in his thoughts, not even realizing at first that I had arrived. When he saw me in the doorway, he stood. He looked me in the face briefly before lowering his eyes.

“Your Majesty,” he said softly.

“I thought you would be long gone,” I said.

He shook his head.

“Nowhere to go?” I asked. “There are ten thousand Mede soldiers in Tas-Elisa to welcome you.”

He nodded. “I know.”

“Brimedius won’t take you in?”

“I am not his man,” Nomenus replied. I knew whose man he was.

“I killed Hanaktos,” I said.

“Yes.”

I walked closer to him. He was less calm than he appeared. “You’re shaking.”

He shrugged again, the barest shift of a shoulder. “I would kill me if I were you,” he said.

I didn’t know what else to do with him. I certainly wasn’t going to let him walk away free and clear after he’d served me with lies and deceit.

“Your Majesty, they have cells here,” he said, “in the outbuildings. I might yet serve you if you didn’t—if I wasn’t—” Finally he said flatly, “Things might not go as you hope.”

“If Akretenesh wins?” I had to laugh. “If I am installed as his puppet, you are saying that I could call you back to lie to me?” I made no effort to hide my amazement.

“I could serve you. As well as—”

“As well as they’d let you?”

He gave up a shaky sigh and dropped to his knees. He bowed his head, and then he just waited.

I’d had an entire day of whining, self-serving patronoi denying their every transgression and vomiting up excuse after excuse. This was a man who at least didn’t try to pretend to stainless virtue. It was probably calculated, and if so, it was well done. He knew me better, after all, than the barons did and knew what was most likely to sway me. I found I had no desire to see him die.

I called in the guards from beside my door and sent him off with them to be locked up somewhere.

“See that he’s fed,” I called after them, “and taken out occasionally for air.” At my words Nomenus struggled briefly in their arms. As he looked back at me over his shoulder, I saw the fear in his face. He didn’t say anything, though, just stared at me as they led him away.

If Akretenesh did defeat me, and if he didn’t kill me outright, I would have Ion Nomenus to attend me in my puppet show. At least I’d know he was a liar; I wouldn’t have to wonder.

In the dark hours of the morning, I exercised the privilege of a king: I slept. I never even heard the noise as the Eddisians and the Attolians I had asked the magus to send me arrived. I had more than five hundred men among the barons and their retinues. I’d been correct about the weapons that had been concealed. Every baron and his men were armed, but they weren’t an army, and altogether we were fewer than two thousand against ten.

When the sky was growing light, my father knocked on my door. I washed my face and dressed, missing Nomenus already, and then went down the stairs to find something to eat before the day began.

By the time the sun was up, we were far down the narrow road to Oneia. The first spot I had in mind to stand and fight was more than two-thirds of the way to the sea. The road followed a watercourse, and the hills for most of the way were too steep to climb without care and attention, but the narrow valley began to open out as it neared the coast. The hillsides beside the road were both less high and less steep. I knew, as I hoped that the Medes did not, that just behind the rise of those hills there was a level spot. Then, out of sight from the road below, the hillside rose much higher. I put my Attolians just behind the top of the lower hill and sent my barons and the Eddisians to find cover on the upper slope.

When the Medes came, their weapons glinting in the sun that had burned off the sea mist, the Attolians brought their crossbows to bear, firing down with accuracy too deadly to ignore.

The army was traveling only ten abreast and cheek by jowl on the narrow roadbed. At a shouted command, a block moved forward and reordered itself as it came, shaping into a phalanx of twenty by twenty and moving up the hill at top speed. The Attolians’ fire slowed them not at all.

The Attolians on the hill formed into their own blocks and charged down. That did slow the first of the Medes, but as more phalanxes came up, they pressed forward. I was on the upper hill, screened by takima bushes, but I could see very well. The noise was overwhelming. I didn’t remember noise like this at the battle near Brimedius. The hammering sounds of weapons ran together and were so loud that very soon, instead of hearing it, I felt I could hear nothing at all.

The Attolians couldn’t hold the hillside. Step by step they were forced back. Suddenly, they broke ranks and retreated. The Medes followed, lured out of their phalanxes, their mouths open in inaudible shouting.

They topped the hill, and their expressions changed. Too late they looked for their side men, but their side men were out of reach. On my command, the Eddisians charged from above. Their momentum carried them through the disordered enemy and across the brow of the lower hill. The weakened Mede phalanxes disintegrated, like trees losing leaves in a high wind. The Eddisians continued on down the hill toward the army below, still in its tight marching formation.

All the ten thousand men of the Mede fighting force were trapped behind their own front line. Those in the frontline troops, with the enemy bearing down on them, recoiled. The front line pushed back into its own pikemen, who couldn’t stop the men behind them, who were pushing forward.

I should be humble, but I’m not. I was delighted. Everything was working just as I’d hoped. I stood on the hillside and cheered. The men around me shouted with me. We watched the confusion traveling back up the line of the Mede army like the contractions of an earthworm, while the Eddisians continued to hack at the front line. Then we scrambled and slid down the hill to the road and hurried on toward Oneia.

We could have stayed and replaced the Eddisians in the battle line as they fought to the last, but we would have been putting ourselves in the same position as the Medes: most of our men in back with just a few at the head of the line to fight. With both armies limited by the narrow roadway, the Medes would soon prevail.

Instead we hurried away. Once the road was clear, the Eddisians would turn and follow us at a run. The curves of the road were all that would protect them from the Mede fire until they reached the open ground around Oneia, where we would be waiting to give them cover. We would have the advantage of space to spread out and fight. The Medes would still be in the roadway, and as they issued from it a few at a time, we would take them. Sooner or later the great pressure of men would overwhelm us. That would be the time for each man to kill as many as he could before he died.

I ran, with my father just behind me. I slowed, but he didn’t move up, and I realized he was shielding me. My armor plate would stop an arrow or a bullet at that range, but not a crossbow quarrel. There weren’t any crossbow quarrels, however, or bullets, and all it did was slow me down. I was staggering by the time I heard the shouting ahead of us, and the clanging of metal against metal. My father suddenly passed me and then slowed and looked backward, clearly undecided which enemy to face.