Listen to "Surrender" on Words From Friends #2, or read on below.
Art by @reindrawthings
On the battlements of Iafeld, General Igin faced an invasion force of four hundred thousand. White furs against gray stone coated miles of her native soil like snow-capped rock, stretching beyond the horizon. Igin had stood spine-straight on and off duty for twenty years, but today she listed right, a bowed tree. Someone had managed to clean the blood from her uniform, but not to patch the ragged hole in the fabric.
Igin’s arm trembled. Her calloused palms closed around the pulley rope, and on behalf of her people she raised a white flag.
An hour later, their answer came. A flaming arrow, shot through the folds of the white fabric. It caught, and burned.
*
Igin held herself up with a palm pressed into the makeshift war table. “What rations do we have remaining?”
Silence among her cohort for a beat, reluctance to admit it was a number capable of counting. “With our current numbers, with half rations for soldiers and quarter for civilians…enough to last one final meal. Maybe.”
Igin nodded. “Box one up.”
*
Reivan, the soldier’s name was. He volunteered, and General Igin saluted him, and he walked unarmed through the city gate with a white flag in the crook of his arm and a wooden box of food in his hands.
From the battlements, a scout watched. They flinched hard, and it was answer enough. Still, they called down, “Dead at twenty paces.”
*
The second soldier, they dressed in civilian clothes. Sarain. No weapons, no uniform, no threat. No flag, only a strip of cloth tied on their sleeve for surrender. A wooden box, one of few precious final meals.
General Igin held her breath, watching through the scout’s eyes.
They lowered their spyglass. “Dead. Fifty paces.”
*
Pleony was the third. A curly-haired, black and white dog Igin had fed from her plate since he was a pup. He was equipped with nothing but a harness on his back affixed with a canister of food, and a T of pink on his nose.
It took a few tries to convince him to leave through the gate, but he understood eventually.
This time General Igin held her hands over her mouth as she waited.
The scout cringed and lowered their spyglass. Igin didn’t hear the count over the blood rushing in her ears.
*
The fourth would be the final. No matter what.
Nia was her name. Her black hair was cut short at her chin, her cheeks round, though thinner from recent weeks, her eyes large as she looked upward. Igin had bandaged her knees and taught her how to bake bread and carried her beneath her own heart for nine months. She would turn eight this next week.
General Igin took a knee. She nearly stumbled, but caught herself. Her calloused hands took hold of the laces of Nia’s little shoe and tied them.
“It isn’t far. You only have to carry a little box to the people in white. Do you understand?”
General Igin waited for Nia to ask why, ask anything, but she didn’t. She nodded, and held the box of rations closer to her chest.
“Good girl.”
When Nia walked through the city gate and it shut behind her, General Igin dropped to the ground. She shook, though she no longer felt the cold, and steadied her hands on the hilt of the sword at her side.
She would follow only moments after, if the worst happened.
A minute passed. Four, eight. The scout’s spyglass didn’t lower. For twenty minutes Igin’s only discipline was the railing of her chest and the slow seep of blood from her opened wound into the coarse cold of the dirt.
Twenty-one minutes. The scout stood, spyglass still raised.
They ordered the gates open.
Nia stepped through, baring a single feather of rich cobalt blue.
