Chapter 32 (not quite alone)

                                    

                                          
 Humility used to sing. Back when he and Perseverance were teens, training with whole ranks of kids preparing to be soldiers.
	This was before the Lost Fortress. The Night Warriors had a good thing going; a whole, dotted row of forts and castles defending the southern border. They were building a navy, to assail the southern coasts and mount a pincer offensive--somebody's grand title for the plan to attack from the north and also the coasts and squeeze the sun slaves between them, wring them dry.
	Teens in training, they pictured fields and beaches of glory, conquest, reigning under a long night and a shining moon.
	In the kitchens after daily practices, Humility and a few other kids would make up chants about their future dominion. They made an octet, sometimes a quartet, sometimes a choir.
	Humility's memories remember most of their names; Mercy, Charity, Benevolence, Valor, Prudence, Prowess, Wisdom. A few of the sometimes-singers' names have gone fuzzy.
	Perseverance's memories remember only Humility, reading lyrics from a little gray book, grinning, tapping a hand on his thigh to keep the rhythm, voices echoing off the grand kitchen walls around him.
	In their late teens, a navy ship lost a battle down south, returning with haggard survivors, broken masts, charred holes in the hull. The Empress warned that instant retaliation was too risky, she demanded meetings, more information, plans, ideas to replicate the enemy crossbows that blasted the ship anchored half a league offshore.
	Humility wrote lyrics and whispered them in the training grounds instead of singing after practice in the kitchens. "Might we be the new saviors of our kind? Will our enemies shrink before our might? Yes, if we are prepared we cannot fall, we'll take up the fight and heed the dark's call."
	Humility convinced them they should take the fight to the sun slaves, that the Empress was going to wait too long and the sun slaves would build their single victory into an offensive into Night Warrior territory. There was a camp of them not far south from the castle, wouldn't it be smart to raid it and steal plans before those deadly crossbows were used to attack their castle walls?
	"If we are prepared we cannot fall," Perseverance whispered back, "we'll take up the fight."
He convinced half their training group to join in, to follow Humility's lead. They snuck over the walls when they were supposed to be cleaning the strawmen stands and putting away their blades and armor. They walked to the river, but only two of them could shadowwalk the raging distance. So the rest took logs big enough to support their weight and their armor and paddled across the wild rapids, arriving on the opposite bank soaked and tired and half-drowned. They left the logs in a pile on the grass so they could ride them back across.
	Then they marched off to the camp of sun slaves, somewhere to the south, to steal plans for long-range crossbows.
	Hours passed, stars cycled overhead, and they stumbled upon the river again, curling across their path. Stomachs growling, feet blistering in wet socks, they turned and went back, grumbling about their lousy Empress and how she should send out an army right now to avenge their navy ship.
When they returned, the single bridge over the river had been lowered, wood planks shiny with subtle streaks of night magic. A pair of salamander riders stood guard, and when the fifteen or so of them appeared, identifiable as the missing trainees, the guards lifted blaring trumpets.
Half a dozen search-riders came back, and all the salamander riders escorted Humility and the others inside, pulling the bridge back and swinging the gate shut. They were taken to the Empress' hall, to be scolded for rashness, ignorance, disobedience, causing a panic and search party, etc. etc. etc.