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"I am enjoying that my people will live," Akayoroi answered. "Joy finds strange shapes on days like this."
The second push came with mantlets — low, rolling sheds of layered reed and iron scraps, ugly and capable. The front lip of each shed hid a rake that wanted to pry shields up by their secrets; behind each, three men crouched with poles to smack Crown-roar into jelly if it dared be a sound instead of a weight.
"Do we break them or we bleed them?" Shadeclaw asked.
"We misplace them," Silvershadow said, and slid away to become a lesson in how to make a thing forget which way is down.
