The road south had never carried anything like this.
Forty leagues of it, wound through gray hills and dead riverbeds, and the column filled it from shoulder to shoulder for as far as a rider could see and beyond. Imperial banners hung heavy in the windless air. Legion standards swayed. And behind the human armies, marching in ranks that would have shamed most kingdoms' house guards, came the thousand.
Raven's women.
They rode and walked in disciplined files, armored and armed, silent as a field of drawn blades. The allied generals kept finding reasons to look back at them. Then finding reasons to look away again.
At the head of everything, Raven rode alone on a black mare, hands loose on the reins, violet eyes on the horizon.
Seraphina's delegation pulled alongside him just past midday. Three delegates in silver-trimmed blue, sweating under their formal collars, flanked by the Empress's own banner bearer.
