text: Ghrasia was on the wall of Liona when the Tai Mora army arrived. Scouts brought word just ahead of their arrival. She had just enough time to beg for a dozen jistas from the Temple of Para. Only five arrived ahead of the army.
  
  News had already reached her about the fall of the harbor, and the forces headed toward Kuallina. She had sent half her army to Kuallina to shore it up, not anticipating a second Tai Mora army at her gates. Her strategy and tactics classes taught her not to fight a war on two fronts and not to divide one's forces, but with an army as massive as that of the Tai Mora, their sheer numbers defied standard rules of engagement.
  
  When she gazed over the great wall of Liona, it did not surprise her to see her daughter Madah there at the head of the Tai Mora army, swinging a great weapon from her perch atop a low rise where she addressed the long lines of blue-clad parajistas.
  
  She would know her anywhere – the long lean lines of her, the hatchet of a face, the heavy brow she shared with one of her fathers. When Ghrasia went home to wash and prepare her body for the funerary feast, she had looked terribly peaceful in repose, far more peaceful than she had in life.
  
  Madah was a fighter – angry, violent. Ghrasia had kept her out of trouble by pulling a lot of political favors, and Nasaka kept that hanging over Ghrasia. Nasaka had covered up the violence, and even one accidental death. It seemed appropriate that it was she who led the army to the gates of Liona, to burn down her mother's wall with a force of parajistas so large Ghrasia had no hope of pushing them back. The parajistas on the wall with her were already sweating, holding a great wall of air around Liona, but it would not last.
  
  Ghrasia stayed on the wall for the first onslaught from the foreign army that clogged the pass for as far as she could see, far greater than any number of refugees or legionnaires.
  
  The wall shook so hard under the offensive that Ghrasia lost her feet.
  
  She did not stay for the second volley.
  
  Ghrasia strode purposefully downstairs. She felt oddly calm. The little feral girl met her as she rounded the corridor leading to her study, and sniffed at her hand as she passed, then trailed after her.
  
  She found Arasia two doors down, yelling at a group of militia.
  
  "Get the militia off the wall," Ghrasia said. "When the wall falls, we'll be caught in it. Regroup on the other side."
  
  "We'll hold Liona," Arasia said.
  
  "We won't," Ghrasia said. "But we can slow them down. Abandon the wall and regroup outside of it. They'll have to get over the rubble of the wall, and that will give us an advantage with archers and jistas."
  
  "It won't fall," Arasia said.
  
  The hold shook again. Ghrasia caught herself against the wall.
  
  Arasia put out both hands. Two of the militia fell. "All right!" Arasia said. She rounded on the militia. "You heard her! Relay the order!"
  
  Ghrasia paused at the door to her study and stared at the big tapestry of Faith Ahya crossing over the pass into what would become Dhai. She wondered who would come out the hero of this moment.
  
  She moved downstairs, yelling the retreat as she went, and the great fortress trembled and shivered beneath her. One hallway fell in behind her as she went, trapping those who came after. She stayed long enough to huff out a few blocks before she realized it was a lost cause, and then she was moving again, trying to drown out their cries with distance.
  
  Heroes.
  
  Ghrasia made it into the courtyard, falling into a mass of militia and civilian support staff streaming for the relative safety of the woods. She made her way there, calling for Arasia, rallying the confused militia.
  
  She climbed atop a broad tree, its leaves still unfurling in the low spring season, and called at them, "The wall of Liona will fall! When it does you will hold them here. You will delay them to give Kuallina time to muster her defenses. You knew this day would come. Some must fight so others may live peacefully. You are the ones Oma chose to fight. Fight well. Die better."
  
  She slipped down from the tree. "May I take your arm, Arasia?"
  
  "Of course," Arasia said, and linked her thick arm with Ghrasia's slender one. She towered over Ghrasia. Ghrasia patted her shoulder.
  
  "You have the line here," Ghrasia said.
  
  "You–"
  
  "I will be on the wall," Ghrasia said. "I won't let those parajistas die alone."
  
  "Ghrasia, this is–"
  
  "Hold here," Ghrasia said. "This Tai Mora army will crash into Kuallina from the east, and their other army from the harbor will hammer Kuallina from the north. They'll catch them in that fist and crush them hard. You understand?"
  
  "Last stand."
  
  "This is ours."
  
  Arasia nodded.
  
  Ghrasia marched back into the hold. The feral girl found her again as she crossed the courtyard, and Ghrasia yelled at her to go back.
  
  "The people who hurt you are coming," she said. "You understand me? You may not speak, but you know what I'm saying, don't you? I will hold them. But you must go."
  
  The feral girl sat on her haunches, head cocked.
  
  "Understand?" Ghrasia said. "We are not all supposed to die here."
  
  The girl gave a jerk of her head, something very like a nod, and scampered back off toward the woods.
  
  Ghrasia let out her breath. Of all of them, that girl deserved to live.
  
  She mounted the steps while the hold roiled around her, climbing up and up, back to the top of the wall.
  
  The parajistas were sweating and trembling. One was already on her knees, vomiting.
  
  Ghrasia asked permission and helped her up. Ghrasia bent, and whispered in her ear, "Hold them. I need you to hold them while we organize the militia. Give me another twenty minutes. Can you do that?"
  
  The woman nodded. She was Ghrasia's age, maybe a little older.
  
  Ghrasia went down the line, asking them each to hold for twenty more minutes, and in twenty minutes she went down the line again, asking for twenty more.
  
  The two men on the end were sobbing, great heaving sobs that Ghrasia felt more than the shaking of Liona.
  
  She went to the edge of the parapet again and gazed down at row upon row of parajistas at the front of the enemy's lines. There must have been sixty or more of them. The fact that her five had lasted nearly three hours was extraordinary.
  
  Another woman had joined Madah on the rise. Ghrasia peered at her as she pulled the great crimson helm from her head. A confident thing to do, in the middle of a battle. It confirmed what Ghrasia already suspected – this was not a true battle, just an exercise, for these people.
  
  The woman raised her head to the wall and stared right at Ghrasia. Though there was a great distance between them, the recognition was as stark and immediate as it had been with Madah.
  
  It was Kirana, Ahkio's sister, former Kai of Dhai. Come to destroy Liona.
  
  Ghrasia had felt little of anything for an hour, just exhaustion. Emotion had drained from her body like pus from a wound.
  
  Now she was angry. Deeply, bone-chillingly angry.
  
  She raised her voice. "Hold your barrier and prepare a second spell," she said. "Prepare a vortex. At my order, drop defenses on the wall and deploy the vortex at the center of the army. Understood?"
  
  Weak calls of acknowledgement.
  
  The parajista nearest her gave her a wide-eyed look.
  
  Ghrasia pressed thumb to forehead. "An honor to stand with you," she said.
  
  "And with you," the parajista said.
  
  Ghrasia leaned over the edge of the wall. "Drop and deploy!" she yelled.
  
  A rush of air filled her ears.
  
  She saw the vortex open up at the center of the great army, just as a blast of air walloped the wall. The shockwave blew her clear across the parapet and over the other side of the wall.
  
  Ghrasia had four seconds to experience the rush of the fall, four seconds to see the wall crumbling down after her, four seconds before her body hit the courtyard, and the wall of Liona buried what was left of her.