The Lady in the Tower
The Marukan’s war goddess stood the Pagoda of Infinite Strategy’s high battlement, but she had put her panoply aside. The lacings on her lamellar had gone loose, her slashing sword grown tight in its scabbard. She had pulled the eagle pinions from her hair and set them aside in a wooden box. But, most telling of all, she had muted her bright brass trumpet. She was tired, trapped by more than the twisting rose-vines, the sword-edged thorns, the beastmen horde that filled the valley below. She was hurt to the core of herself.
Fell the foe; bitter the fight.
Her hand touched the rail around her tower’s high lookout, but only spectrally, for her commander had forbidden her the anchor of flesh in even her familiar fortress. It wasn’t her home that caught her attention, though; her mind was with her men.
Now, friends lay dying upon the field.
They had been an army, once; a golden cavalry full of pride and promise. But they broke like a wave upon the shore, all but drowned beneath the fury of their foes. They died in ones and twos, or ran back to their stables, soldiers no more but only sheep. But still they prayed to her.
How I long to hear the fanfare of blessed relief.
She had stayed as long as she could, visiting them in their pain, bringing succor to answer their prayers. But a war goddess is for armies, not for men, and the loss took her away; loss of her army, loss of its leader her poor, broken husband. Now she waited, prisoner of her duty, hostage to her grief. She was trapped in her fortress by those twin chains, locked away and waiting for her heart to beat again.
Where is that sound? Where is the Sweet Voice of Brass and Glory?
But even as she waited a warband marched into the valley below and their presence called her to attention. Even in the dark of the night she knew them; like your reflection in an unlit mirror, they were at once alien and familiar. The black prince rode first, armed with a sword to ruin armies; his thrall was next, the enslaved princess; and their foot soldiers followed after, in creaking armor of ancient design.
The war goddess read their intent from the sway of their tattered banners in the chilld wind and the whispered inflections of the harbinger-thrall. They would have to hack through their beastmen and their wilds to get to her, but Sweet Brass had little doubt that they could. It seemed her wait was over; her heart was racing as the enemy approached.
