Dara — The Bait Knew

The Lost Scrolls of Herodotus, Book Five

Dara, in the tent, on the morning of the reeds. The horses are out on the grass. She has two hundred and fifty of her own and the halls' hundred and fifty with her, and she will hold them out of sight until his riders are in the trees.

Nobody told her what she was for that day. Nobody had to.

"She was the bait, and she knew it when she rode out; she told me so herself, at the tree, after."

She rode out with four hundred and came back without a hundred and five of them. At the end of the day she was sitting at the wood's edge with her back against a tree and her helmet in her lap. She did not get up.

"She stayed where the bait is meant to stay."