Phaedra's face was stony. Eudoxia set her jaw in a familiar expression that Phaedra had seen directed at many Imperial officers in the past. Phaedra could read the expression clearly: Was this man was kicked in the head at birth? The transperency of her second made her smile and broke her own tension. She didn't know if Brasidas really thought the town would be loyal to the Empire but if he did he was a bigger optimist than she even dreamed of being. In four centuries of warfare these border towns had changed hands many times but the Atvari would be back here, in a week or in a year and these peasants would give their loyalty cheerful to whichever army held the ford.

"See that the wood you have gathered goes to the dead from the ambush Second," she said formally. 

"I'm sure that their Syndi are already asking for it." Miravet riders grouped into social groups of four in formal ceremonies. The four women formed would share campfires, tend a wounded member and, most importanly carry out the proper funeral rites if a sister fell. Though the group was primarily religious in origin, for practical reasons the women were always from different Tets. The practice meant that all four were unlikey to fall in a single battle, and was good for the cohesion of the whole force as different elements were kept in contact by the small groups. Those who had lost sisters in the ambush two nights before, would doubtlessly be eager to kind the fires for their departed friends whose bodies by now were blackening in the heat. The Miravet religion held that a woman's soul would remain close to her body until it was destroyed either by fire or decay. Fire was seen as the quickest and healthies way of releasing the spirt. Although there was no hierarchy, it happened Eudoxia, Zoe and Iona were the other members of Phaedra's Syndi.

"Tandi Pey," Phaedra added in the tribal language of the Miravet. The expression didn't translate precisely but was probably closet to 'it is what it is.' Eudoxia sighed.

"Tandi Pey," she agreed, too wise to say anything more even though it was unlikely anyone other than the Miravet would be able to understand.

"Better set to recovering arrows and stockpiling what you can find," Phaedra added as the thought occurred to her. Likely that had already started, Phaedra didn't doubt her troops were systematically stripping the dead of anything valuable and arrows, their own and others were always in demand. She might have suggested gathering spears and armor for Brasidas' troops also, but she doubted that would have gone over very well.

"Lets get it done Doxy," she told her second in command dryly.