Free A Clash of Shadows by Elí Freysson

She was headed for mortal danger, but here alone on the highest spot in the region she could let herself forget that for a moment. Forget about killings and monsters and villains and even her nearby mentor.
    Katja stretched her arms out and briefly imagined that she could fly off the highlands over all this empty landscape.
    Look at me, Dove , she thought.
    But then she felt a stab of hunger and let her arms drop. The moment of peace had passed and she again felt her savage warrior nature. She snorted a bit with a smile on her lips and started sliding down the hill.
    Silly .
    “Well, what was I supposed to see here?” she asked once back at the campsite.
    “Look around a bit,” Serdra said. She had sat down to eat.
    Katja looked over the area again, feeling slightly insulted. Serdra had again and again stressed for her to pay close heed to her surroundings, especially when she thought herself safe. She had already checked for signs of danger.
    She was about to demand clarification when she noticed that some of the bulges in the earth were quite straight for bulges. She peered between the young trees dotting the campsite and spotted another elevated row mirroring the first.
    “Ruins?”
    “Yes,” Serdra said. “A fort was raised here shortly after Baldur Reo founded Baldur’s City.”
    “To repel Vegraine-men?”
    “No. To repel the petty kings.”
    “Ah, those,” Katja said with some surprise and began walking around to examine this long-gone fort.
    They were hardly ever mentioned. People were just vaguely aware that various small kingdoms had risen near the Inner Sea between the Shattering and Jukiala’s eastward expansion.
    These days Baldur’s Coast belonged to Amerstan. It was strange to think that once her little homeland had been the very periphery of civilization; the outskirts of Jukiala’s campaign to restore order to the world. And Amerstan had been dangerous, mysterious and unknown.
    “Just how long has it been?” she asked after finishing her examination.
    “Baldur’s City was founded in 190 after Jukiala’s founding,” her mentor replied. “I know one sister of ours who knew a brother of ours who was involved in those conflicts. The Coast dwellers who didn’t accept Jukiala’s rule went north and strengthened the kings remaining there. So the need was felt to plug passages through the highlands until the expansion claimed the area later known as Amerstan.”
    Katja pushed on the foundations with her foot. That had been more than eight centuries ago. Amazing.
    “This fort was probably built in 191 by the old calendar,” Serdra said.
    “Do you know if there was fighting here?”
    “Won’t you just check?”
    Katja looked at her mentor to see whether she was serious. It certainly seemed so.
    Serdra glanced at the mound in front of herself and then back at Katja. Katja arranged herself on it and began the fight to relax her mind.
    She had never tried seeing something so old. Not even close. She tried to dismiss that thought. A battle in this rather narrow highland could hardly have been very big. She tried to dismiss that as well.
    Katja lost her sense of time as she sat there. She lost sense of her body and the time of day. She had forgotten almost everything when she thought she heard something. Feel something. The screams of men and clashing of arms. Fires. Pain and death. A large event that shaped the future in its wake.
    It lasted only a moment. Then she opened her eyes.
    Night was falling in earnest and she could barely see Serdra as the woman sat and watched her.
    “Did I really see that?” she asked in a slurred voice.
    “Perhaps,” Serdra said and Katja sensed she would get nothing further out of the woman.
    They finished eating and then crawled into the tent.
    --------------------
    Arvar sat reading when Vajan came to him.
    “You have presumably been told the news?” Arvar asked when he looked up after a few moments.
    “Yes,” Vajan said. “This is certainly interesting