Through her broken chest plate, Gwin could feel the spit of mountain air. It wicked her nipples, lapped at the rapidly cooling blood running down from her wound. She shivered and covered herself with the tatters of the flag.

Margarita had died from a similar wound. Astrid lay not far away by a willow tree, her head nowhere in sight.

Gwin wasn’t alone; several other rebels darted around, collecting themselves while they could, but she certainly felt alone.

She took up her axe, wrapping the tattered flagged tighter to cover the armors newfound breach and marched past the bodies. She took no joy in the dead foes surrounding, they simply were.

Just as her fallen sisters lay dead. Cold was cold no matter what flag you flew… or wore.

Ahead, to her relief as much as shock, was Commander Isa. She lay with her back against a tree, tending to a map with one hand while an attendant fussed with her other, now missing, hand.

“Commander,” Gwin offered, with head lowered.

“Speak.” Even the commanders words were shaking.

“We’ve lost the West bank. And the left flank. We’re scattered and—“

“Damn you, woman I know what we’ve lost. Why have you come to bother me?”

“…with a question, milady.”

“Speak.”

“Are we lost? Is… is all hope lost?”

There was a long pause, long enough where Gwin worried the commander might silently succumb to her injuries.

But then, in clear English: “It is.”