Hero Risen
ANDY LIVINGSTONE

HarperVoyager

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street,

London SE1 9GF

www.harpervoyagerbooks.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperVoyager 2017

Copyright © Andrew Livingstone 2017

Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2017.

Cover photographs © Shutterstock.com

Andrew Livingstone asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Digital eFirst: Automatically produced by Atomik ePublisher from Easypress.

Ebook Edition © June 2017 ISBN: 9780008106034

Version: 2017-10-23

For Valerie

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Also by Andy Livingstone

About the Publisher

Prologue

He paused before the door, running his fingertips slowly down the wood smoothed as much by years as by the plane, letting them fall into the curving groove of the traditional mark of luck in its centre. He was prolonging the moment.

The sounds of early evening were all around him, stark in the deserted village, but he heard none. The smells of dusk drifted over him, but he noticed none. Still he stayed his hand from pushing the door.

It was a strange mix of feelings that coursed through him on the final night of a story:

Nerves – that he might not do justice to those whose tale he told.

Pleasure – that the crowd waited on his words: the result of his efforts the previous two nights.

Sadness – that tonight this telling would come to an end.

And eagerness – a quickening of heart and breath. He would be drawn into the telling, the exhilaration confining his awareness within each moment and shortening time.

It was always so.

It was, these days, what he lived for. Keeping the past alive. Ensuring the deeds he had witnessed did not drift and fade with the shifting winds of memory. Helping the lessons of before to be learnt afresh, the mistakes understood, the heroics and sacrifices appreciated.

He pushed on the door, letting the remaining light spill within and hush the murmur of the throng. He moved inside, his adjusting eyes revealing rings of faces turned his way. Close by, one caught his eye. A boy who had decried the stories outside the hall on the first night; the challenging cynicism in his voice now replaced by eager anticipation in his eyes.

He stepped forward.

He was a storyteller. And he had a story to tell.

Chapter 1

She sat beside him each afternoon now. Two high-backed chairs were paired on the balcony, fine sand gathering around their short legs of finely carved wood.

It was curious how change eased its way into your life before awareness caught up. He could not remember when her companionship had become routine; he could only recall the day when, with her called on other business, it had seemed strange that she was not there.

The other servants made no comment. They would not dare, of course, in his presence but he knew from his sources that her companionship provided no domestic scuttlebutt in the corridors. Why would it? Nobles, in particular, royals, had a habit of demanding services far more intimate from servants. Gossip is not born in the commonplace.

Her whisper drifted in the baking air. ‘You hate this.’

‘The heat?’ He snorted. ‘It is the only weather I know.’

‘Not the heat, as you know quite well.’ It was uncanny how a hoarse monotone could yet convey chastisement. ‘The waiting.’

He rested his head against the chair and raised his eyes to the deepness of the sky. The same sky that sat above all countries, above all people, and some more specific than others. ‘You think you can read my mind, crone, but you are wrong. Not the waiting. Waiting lies within the course of every strategy.’ He frowned at the sky. ‘I hate the not knowing.’

She gave a soft grunt. ‘And the not controlling.’

‘I would that I could control you and your prattling tongue.’

It was even more irritating when she did not reply. He let the silence draw out, as if it had not irked him.

‘And you miss him.’

He cursed inwardly, as much at the involuntary start her words had given him as at the suspicion that she could read his mind after all. He turned slowly and looked at her for a long moment. Her gaze never wavered from the horizon but the slightest twitch at the corner of her mouth hinted that she was aware of his stare.

‘On pain of death, do not ever say that in the presence of anyone,’ he rasped. ‘Especially him.’

****

Pain thumping and rebounding within his skull, Brann forced open his eyes and found himself lying in hell.

The stench of gore was so pervasive that he could taste it filling his throat; enough to make him retch, had he not become accustomed to the sensation that seemed half a lifetime before. He heaved at a body – cold, clammy, and limp and as naked as he felt himself to be – to force its weight away from his chest. It slipped from him with a wet slither, allowing him to drag in a breath of welcome depth. Pain flared across his ribs as he sucked in the air, but a pain of a battering and, thankfully, not of broken bone. It was not so much the breaking that worried him, but the piercing and tearing it so often caused inside. Bones could mend, but blood coughed up all too often prophesied the end. He twisted, feeling lifeless limbs shift beneath him, to look further around. He was in a pit as deep into the dry crumbling earth as his father’s mill had been tall. The darkness of night above was tinged with the glow of fires beyond the lip and either the flames or the moon or both combined to lessen the gloom just enough to reveal the silhouettes of arms and legs and bodies and heads, a layer of nightmare shapes with the promise of more hidden beneath.

Low voices approached and Brann lay still, tense and alert. A glow grew brighter at the lip of the pit until the flickering light of a torch brought the detail of the scene around him to his eyes in all its stark gore. Faces stared back at him, some hacked almost beyond recognition as human, while others appeared ready to start a conversation until he saw the eyes, cold and dead as stone. Limbs were strewn at angles, attached still to bodies or not; skin was rent and pierced, and everywhere, coating all, was blood, a dark lubricant that saw the corpses – stripped of everything whether of value or none – shift as, with a scrape of movement at the edge of the pit and a harsh slap on impact, another body was flung onto the pile.

A long moment of silence and shifting shadows was broken by a grunt of satisfaction.

‘That’ll do for today. Tomorrow will see us fill it enough to put the dirt back in over them, then we’ve done our bit. I’ll put the stew on to heat, and you two can start sorting their gear. We’ll divide it once we’ve eaten.’

A harsh laugh and a younger voice: ‘Sounds good to me. It’s hungry work, this. Bodies are heavier than I thought.’

A third voice: ‘But worth it for the loot. Don’t matter that the bodies are heavy when the loot pays you back. You city cut-throats are all the same when you come to this – you don’t realise you can’t just leave the dead in an alley for the watch guards to pick up in the morning. Now you know why I told you it’s good to stick with the sergeant who’s the best cheat at dice. Won us a pit to fill, didn’t he?’

The first voice was further away, presumably at the stew pot: ‘Say again that I cheat and you’ll be in the pit yourself and as dead as the others.’ The sergeant finished with a barked laugh.

The torchlight started to recede but Brann forced himself to lie still; steeling himself against rising bile at the feeling of a cold arm pressing against his face, and waiting until the pit returned to safe darkness. The voices were still relatively close.

‘Of course, boss. You’re just very good at it. But before you start rolling those dice again, I want my name on those black weapons.’

Brann’s eyes jerked wide open.

The sergeant’s voice: ‘Good try, but we all do. I’ll take the sword. You bastards can roll the dice for the axe and knife.’

The young voice: ‘I am happy with the knife.’ A snicker of a laugh. ‘I like knife work.’

‘And the axe is fine for me. So we’re agreed. We can roll for the rest.’

The sergeant grunted. ‘You can sort the rest now, or the food will be ready before you’re done. Get your arses over here. You can use the knife tomorrow. At least the black one won’t take you four tries to cut a throat like that blunt apology for a blade you were using today.’

Brann growled as rage flared, overwhelming the horror and disgust prompted by the gore-smeared bodies pressing around him. He made to rise, but his left arm gave way beneath him as a shock of pain ran from his elbow into his shoulder. He could make out the dark shape of a wound on the arm, and a burning on the side of his ribs led tentative fingers to the split skin of another long gash. Either the bash on his head that was causing the headache or the loss of blood had been the reason he had passed out and appeared dead. Either way, it had saved him from being finished off by a looter’s blade. He had to hope it hadn’t been blood loss, or the strength to even escape the pit would have drained from him with it. He grunted softly. There was only one way to find out. The pain wasn’t enough to stop him from forcing movement had it been necessary, but while he had another good arm, there was no need.

Brann rolled to his right and pushed himself against a torso, chest hair slick and matted with blood and the jagged end of a rib pressing against his hand, and levered himself into a crouch. He tested his legs beneath him. They ached, but only through the stiffness of immobility. Hands and feet slipping and slithering on corpses, he moved towards the side of the pit. The body parts shifting beneath him made progress awkward, but the slick covering of stinking fluids saw them move quietly – just a squelch or a small slap as cold flesh met cold flesh. With almost every movement, his foot, then a hand, then a foot slipped between bodies – corpses that clung on, unwilling to let him go. His head told him that they were dead, that they were empty pieces of meat and bone, that they could not hurt him. But the feeling that they were trying to drag him down among them, to lose him in their midst and accept him as one of their own, overwhelmed him. Panic rose and he started to scrabble faster, one foot sinking even deeper into the grasping cadavers. He dragged in a gasp and forced himself to stop moving, desperately trying to control his impulses. He could feel his leg encased for most of its length against still, cold, wet dead skin. But it was the stillness that he forced his thoughts to accept. While he didn’t move, nothing else did. There were no spirits trying to pull him into their embrace, no fingers grabbing his ankles. He slowed his breathing and withdrew his leg gradually, pushing down within him the revulsion at the feeling of what it slid against. He was no stranger to death or broken bodies; the gods only knew how many he had caused and the brutality involved. But those were dealt with in the moment, reaction and action born of necessity, and driven by the urge at the core of nature to survive. This was the cold eternity of death, and it reminded him of everything he fought to avoid. He blew out a slow breath and moved slowly, each movement placed with deliberate care. A face, eyes dull but staring, almost allowed the panic back in, but he forced his concentration away from what the bodies had been and made his eyes see them as nothing more than a surface to cross. The entire journey was no more than the length of two long spears but to his straining nerves it seemed the distance of an arrow-shot. He glanced ahead – he was almost there. A leg that bridged unseen between two bodies snapped under his weight, the splintered end of the shin puncturing the side of his heel. He caught his balance by throwing himself at the pit wall, bracing his good arm against it and finding it steep. Stomach heaving, he twisted and wrenched free the broken shin bone. He let his vomit go; there was no point in fighting it in this hellhole. Most of the bone was intact, and he stabbed the jagged end into the wall, using it to pull himself up, injured arm dangling and one foot finding a root that protruded enough to let him push against it, dried earth rubbing against his front and mixing with the gore that coated every part of him. His arm found the lip and, legs scrambling behind him, he dragged himself over.

The nightmare apparition – naked body, heaving chest, and snarling face caked and smeared and matted in mud and blood, and broken bone in hand – that he must have presented as he rose to his feet, eyes glaring from a head lowered from effort and shoulders hanging low to one side to favour the left arm held tight to his chest, was reflected in the dread filling the stare of the man who must have been the sergeant. The man froze, a ladle dropping against a rock with a dull clang that alerted his companions.

His reaction stopped the other two also, despite their backs being towards Brann, giving him a moment to absorb what lay before him. The sergeant, crouched beside a steaming pot suspended over a fire, was a wiry veteran, with little hair and fewer teeth. The fact that he had reached this age told of skill with arms or ruthless guile, either of which was as dangerous as the other. The other two, a skinny youth and a taller man, broad of shoulder and girth, were closer to him and had been moving items from a heap of all the plunder stripped from the bodies and sorting them into smaller specific piles.

‘Son of a poxy whore,’ the sergeant breathed.

The other two turned.

The youth’s eyes widened, and his voice was shrill. ‘The dead. Gods save us. The dead are rising.’ He had been handing Brann’s axe to the other man when Brann’s appearance had frozen them, and it hung forgotten in his hand.

Brann growled at the sight.

The broad man tried to speak, his mouth working soundlessly.

Brann started towards them, the stiffness easing from his legs with every step. His movement broke through the men’s shock but, before it could turn to panic, the sergeant recovered enough of his senses to growl at the other two.

‘Back-from-the-dead or never-dead, make sure the bastard stays dead this time. I want a head to fall.’

The boy hefted the axe but still hung back, waiting for his companion to move. Clearly the sort who preferred his victims with their backs to him. His voice was still high and shaking. ‘Should we get help?’

The brute beside him grabbed the nearest weapons to hand: a halberd with a broken tip and an axe-blade with more nicks than edge, but no less dangerous for either. ‘And let them demand a share of our loot in return? Help me gut him and we’ll get our dinner in peace.’

Brann’s eyes narrowed. For all his initial dumbness, this one’s nerves had steadied the quickest. He was the first threat. He angled his approach towards the youth, panicking the boy even more as he fixed him with a stare that seemed intent on him alone. With a roar, the burly man shouldered the youth to the side, sending him staggering, and raised the pole of the halberd high to strike.

Brann’s grin was savage. They may be useless and unskilled, or they may be anything but. Regardless, they were better one at a time. ‘Got you,’ he said, his voice rough and dry.

The man’s eyes widened in surprise, for an instant, before he started to swing the weapon. In that instant, Brann was inside his swing and the jagged end of the shin bone had buried half of its length up under his ribs. Brann had spun away and towards the youth, the bone pulling with it a sprayed crescent of blood before the body had even started to collapse. A wild swing of the axe, born of panic, was easily avoided and the bone was left a hand’s width deep in the youth’s throat as Brann closed his fingers around the familiar haft of his axe and pulled it from already nerveless fingers.

The sergeant spat and crouched, a sword drawn back in readiness. ‘You won’t catch me by surprise, bastard.’

Brann stepped forward and, in a blur, raised the axe high with both hands, gritting his teeth against the sharp agony of the stretched wound along his ribs. As the man swung his sword up to parry the downwards swing, Brann changed to slide one hand up towards the dark metal of the head of the weapon, grasping the wood and slamming the shaft end first into the man’s face. The sergeant barely had time to register his smashed nose and shattered teeth before the axe swung and his head bounced in the dirt beyond the firelight.

Brann, his chest heaving, looked down at the corpse. ‘That was what you said you wanted, wasn’t it?’

He sat the axe against the ground and rested on it. His wounds had sapped his energy, but he had proved that the blood loss wasn’t life-threatening just yet. He needed clothing – he could wash and attend to his injuries once he was safely clear of the area – and, looking around, it was clear that the looters had been diligent enough to provide him with a large selection. He had another concern first, though. You can’t meet an attack so easily with a tunic or a pair of boots. He wiped clean the black axe head on a ripped tunic and moved to the pile of sorted weapons, grunting in satisfaction to see the distinctive black metal of his sword and dagger. Lifting them to one side, he turned to the next pile, one of weapon accessories: scabbards, belts, sheaths, and the like. The three men may have been callous, but they had certainly been meticulous. It didn’t take long to find his belt and the strapping and sheaths he had become accustomed to using to fasten knives to each of his forearms, between his shoulder blades and on his lower legs, inside his boots – he always felt better if a blade was to hand, no matter where that hand may be. His sheaths had been near the top of the pile, so he guessed his knives would be likewise in the heap of weapons. He must have been one of the more recent bodies to have been dragged to the pit.

He chided himself. Of course he had been. If he had been brought earlier in the process, he’d have wakened under a layer, maybe several layers, of corpses. Unless suffocation had seen to it that he never wakened at all. He grunted in annoyance. His thoughts were slow and he needed to be away from this place as soon as possible. Ensuring his main weapons were always within reach, he quickly flicked through the assembled collection of edges and points and soon had assembled his collection. Now for clothes.

As he straightened, the wind shifted and drifted smoke in his direction. There was a strong smell of burning meat, but there was too much smoke for it to have come from campfires. Some of the corpse collectors apparently favoured pyres over pits.

He tensed. The smoke was not all that the shifting wind had brought his way. A sound, no more than a scuff of boot on a loose clod of dirt, mixed for a moment with the crackling of the late sergeant’s cooking fire. He crouched, feeling for his sword and axe, his eyes straining to see beyond the fire’s light. He cursed himself, not only for the time he had taken but more now for his position – he was perfectly lit beside the fire, whilst those approaching could be encircling him and approach from any or all angles with little warning. He whirled back and forth, fighting to see, but all he could discern was a shadow, then two more, slightly vaguish, and all from the same direction as he had heard the noise. He bent his knees, pushing through the pain in his left side to hold the sword forward to parry and the axe back to strike. This time he might not get away with using one weapon.

‘Steady, chief. Not everyone thinks it’s a good idea to fight you.’

Brann relaxed with a sigh, and Gerens stepped into the light. The rangy boy turned and whistled softly into the darkness. ‘He’s over here.’

Konall emerged from the gloom. ‘The gods save me,’ he gasped. ‘There’s an image that will haunt me to my deathbed. For the love of all that’s dear, please get dressed.’

A guffaw exploded as Hakon followed close behind. ‘Little friend, the weapons in your hands are sufficient. One more would not make a difference.’ He reached down and threw a pair of breeches to Brann. ‘Put these on and stick to the weapons you can do harm with.’

Brann grunted and started to dress. ‘I was a bit distracted by these other three. If I’d known you were coming, I’d have tidied up.’

‘I’d have settled for just getting dressed,’ Konall said drily.

‘Wait,’ said Gerens from behind. ‘Don’t put them on just yet.’

‘Oh, make up your minds!’ Brann objected. ‘First you can’t wait to get me to cover up, now you… argh!’ His yelp turned to spluttering as cold water drenched him from his head down. He whirled to find Gerens solemnly regarding him, a now-empty bucket in his hand.

‘Your dead companions had left this water, and it may rinse some of the worst from you until you can wash properly. I don’t know if you had noticed, C, but you are in a bit of a mess.’

Brann just looked at him.

Gerens’s eyes widened with concern as some of the grime rinsed from his arm. ‘You are wounded!’

The other two stepped forward in concern, but Brann waved them away and ignored the pain to pull the tunic over his head. ‘It’s fine, it can wait. We need to leave.’

‘You are right there,’ Konall said. He found a sack. ‘Fasten your black weapons to your belt and put your many knives in this. You can sort them later.’

Reluctantly, Brann did so. He buckled on his belt and slid the weapons home, sliding the leather hood, dangling from the loop for his axe’s shaft, over the weapon’s head.

Hakon tossed over a pair of boots. ‘These do? They look like they’ll fit your dainty little feet.’

Brann felt a smile pull at the corners of his mouth. ‘So says someone who would need to have his footwear made at the boatyards.’ He looked at them. ‘They’re actually better than the ones I had.’ He tried them on. ‘And comfier.’

‘Good,’ Konall grunted impatiently. ‘Now grab another set of clothing and let’s go.’ Brann wondered why, and it must have shown. The tall blond boy added, ‘The state you are in, all that those clothes you are wearing will be good for when you take them off will be the fire. No use being a change of clothing down when we set off.’

Brann nodded his understanding and quickly gathered what he needed, adding it all to his sack of knives.

Konall turned to go, but Brann hesitated.

‘Wait just a moment.’

Konall threw his hands in the air. ‘Oh for the love of the gods. What now?’

‘It won’t take long.’ Brann crouched by the sergeant’s headless corpse and reached under the man’s tunic until he found what he was looking for: a pouch that had hung on a thong around the man’s neck when there had been a neck fit for that purpose. He pulled out a handful of coins and a set of dice.

‘Brann!’ Hakon was aghast. ‘We needed the clothes, that was fair enough, but this is not you. I’ve never seen you loot the dead before.’

‘And you won’t now.’ He scattered the coins on the ground and dropped the dice among them. ‘If you came across this scene, what would spring to mind? That they had fallen out over dicing or that one of the dead woke up, hauled itself out of the pit and slaughtered them?’

Hakon beamed. ‘Good thinking. Wait, is that what you did? The crawling out the pit and killing thing?’

Gerens cocked an eyebrow at him. ‘You think he stripped naked and smeared himself from top to toe in blood for the fun of it? And that these three committed suicide?’

The large boy grinned and slapped Brann on the back, prompting an un-noticed wince. ‘Good man! This will make an excellent story for the others.’

Brann picked up the sack. ‘You tell it then. There is much in it I’d rather not be reminded of.’

Konall snorted. ‘You and me both. At least you weren’t greeted with the sight that we were. Now can we go?’

Without a further word, they left the light of the fire, Konall leading them unerringly into the gloom. They skirted telltale campfires and their progress proved straightforward. Brann could remember nothing of how he had come to be in the burial pit, but it had been obvious from the start that there had been some sort of battle, although the only men remaining were those tasked with clearing the dead, and paid for their troubles with the loot. Those who had fought would seem to have moved on. He glanced around and counted no more than six or eight campfires, two of them with large pyres burning beside them. He pictured the pit he had been in, suppressing a shudder at the memory of slick bodies moving and sliding beneath him, and estimated the dead within it. Even if the men had doubled the number the following day to complete their pit, and assuming that all of the similar groups around them were allocated similar numbers to deal with, then the dead numbered in the low hundreds rather than the thousands. So not a major battle, then.

It still didn’t explain his involvement, though. Or his failure in combat, which worried him more. It was only luck that had kept him alive, and chance was the most unreliable of all factors, and the one he generally tried to avoid having to consider.

His thoughts were interrupted as he stumbled.

Instantly, Gerens caught him by the elbow, taking the sack from him with his other hand. ‘Steady there, chief.’

‘Thank you. I’m fine now.’

But Gerens maintained his hold on Brann’s arm. And Brann, feeling a weariness, hitherto banished by the energy of combat, creep over him, said nothing to shake off the support.

They left the fires behind without incident and found the horses picketed by the three boys in a copse on the far side of a hillock from the small valley where the conflict had been fought, dark shapes scattered in the gloom below and the noise of scavengers – human and animal – moving among them proving that the work to clear the bodies would continue into the next day. Brann shuddered. Had he not wakened when he did…

Gerens sat Brann in front of him, the wiry strength in his arms providing a calming security. As they moved off, Brann decided they were far enough from danger to be able to gain some idea of how fate had led him to a burial pit. The swaying of the horse, however, the weight removed from his legs, the companionship of his friends… it all felt so welcome that he decided to enjoy it for a few moments before questioning Gerens.

He was woken by a shout of alarm. Breta’s familiar booming tone was not happy as her powerful arms lifted him from the horse. ‘What do you bring me, you fools? You return him to us in such a state? He is barely conscious.’

‘Small wonder,’ said Cannick’s calm growl as his fingers pulled the blood-soaked tunic away from Brann’s side.

The sharp pain as the material pulled away from the wound on his ribs dispelled the torpor of his recent sleep and almost immediately threatened to send him back there as his head swam.

‘That’s an impressive nick you’ve got there, son. Looks like more on your arm, too. Breta, lay him by the fire where I can see better. And cut that tunic from him. Marlo, bring me my pack. We’ll see if we can get him sorted out before the others return. No need for them to get the shock we did when we saw him.’

‘Be grateful,’ Konall’s voice said from behind them, ‘that you did not suffer the shock we endured when we first saw him. I have seen some unpleasant sights in my time, but…’

Brann almost laughed, but the pain it caused stopped him. He settled for a weak smile. ‘Glad I made an impression.’

Konall grunted. ‘Fear not, it was one I will struggle to forget. Though believe me, I will try.’

‘At least you can smile.’ There was relief in Hakon’s honest voice. ‘I don’t feel right when you are not smiling for more than a few heartbeats.’

Breta laid Brann beside a small fire set in a small depression cut into the ground to minimise its glow. It had been allowed to burn low – the night was warm enough as it was, and, cooking time over, it served only to provide what little light was safe enough for them to allow. Gerens squatted silently beside him, his dark eyes burning with as little hint as ever of the thoughts behind them, but deep concern born in hope filling the way he leant forward. Cannick brought a water skin and a clean rag, and started washing around the two wounds and the lump on the back of Brann’s head. Satisfied that the bump was no more than that, he turned to the wounds, starting to clean them with short efficient movements. Brann sucked in a sharp breath through gritted teeth as the cloth touched the open wounds, and once more as water was again poured over them. His head grew light, but he forced his breathing to be deep and slow and, the more Cannick’s work was repeated, the more the feeling became bearable and more sensation than pain. Similar, he mused, to the cold plunge pools in Sagia – what seemed an overwhelming shock, at first, soon dissipated against all your expectations to a bearable level. Similar, but a bit more painful in this case. Still, the aftermath of every gladiatorial contest in the Empire’s capital had involved work of some sort to a variety of wounds, so he fell into the familiar process of concentrating on his breathing. The slice along his ribcage was attended to first, and the pricks when the needle and thread pulled together the deep cut on his arm brought him relief, as he knew the ordeal was close to an end.

Cannick grunted, peering at his handiwork. ‘It’ll do. Now get in the river and wash the rest of you before I pass out from the smell.’

Brann smiled his thanks. There was something he had to do first, however.

The horses were restless as he approached, the scent of death that still encased him making them shift nervously against the ropes tethering them but the noise helping him to find them in the darkness. His own horse whickered as he stopped in front of it, eyes widening and nostrils flaring. He stroked its face just as it liked, and spoke softly until it calmed. Moving to the side, he felt in the darkness behind the saddle to feel the familiar heavy cloth of a cloak. His fingers traced the line of a repair, feeling the marks of his mother’s careful stitches.

A throat clearing behind him made him jump. He turned, and then relaxed when he saw Marlo, receiving an apologetic smile in return.

‘You’ve learnt to move quietly!’

Marlo shrugged. ‘It was something I always could do, but Sophaya has been helping me improve, just as you help me with my weapons.’

‘Really? I never noticed.’ He saw Marlo’s look, and raised his eyes to the sky at his own slowness of thought. ‘Of course. That is the point of her speciality.’ Brann nodded, considering. ‘It is good. It helps to be as skilled as you can at as many things as you can. Especially the things that help you to stay alive.’ He ducked to one side and came up to flick the back of a hand at the side of Marlo’s head. The boy fended it off with a flick of his wrist and they both laughed. ‘I hope she is a more patient teacher than I am. And there are at least three others who have trained for years longer than I have.’

‘But you are the best at finding a way to win.’ Marlo grinned.

‘Mongoose moves more similarly to you. She would understand what works for you.’

‘I would not like to upset Hakon. He still has ambitions.’

Brann’s laugh burst from him. ‘You mean he still doesn’t know?’ Marlo shook his head, his eyes twinkling in the moonlight. ‘We really should tell him, but it’s too much fun.’ He laughed again, softly, as his mind pictured an image. ‘Anyway, Gerens is fine with you having private time with Sophaya?’

‘Of course. You know Gerens. Everything is taken as it is.’

‘True. But Breta – she is expert with weapons I have never even seen.’

‘I am quite happy with both of my tutors, thank you. Each is equally adept.’

‘Ever the diplomat, trying to keep us all happy.’

‘Why not? It is only fair, as you all make me happy by allowing me to travel with you.’

Brann gripped the boy’s shoulder. ‘Marlo, never be mistaken. You are as much a part of this group as any of us.’ The silence stretched, almost awkward. Brann turned to the horses. ‘Saddled?’

‘We kept them ready and the essentials already on them, in case we needed to leave in a hurry after we found you.’

Brann’s hand strayed to the bundle behind his saddle, and Marlo smiled. ‘Your father’s cloak is most definitely one of the essentials.’

Brann smiled. ‘Thank you.’ He made to start unbuckling the saddle. ‘Perhaps we can now make the horses more comfortable for the night.’

‘Indeed, but I am afraid that you must have become accustomed to the way you… well… not to put too fine a point on it… stink. It is not good for the horses. Even your own is finding it hard to stay calm.’

Brann paused. It was true. ‘I should wash.’

‘You should wash. I will see to the horses.’

It was only a short walk to the river, a small effort little more than a brook. Kneeling waist deep in the water, Brann savoured the refreshing cold, a welcome contrast to the hot humid air that was oppressive even close to the middle of the night. There was a splash behind him and he whirled, wary of the day’s danger not yet being finished. But it was only Breta he saw, striding through the water as if it were a puddle. He turned his back as quickly as he had first turned, clutching both hands to conceal his groin.

The girl laughed. ‘Fear not, little gnat. It is your arse that my eyes have always preferred to feast upon.’ A massive hand slapped the relevant part of him to emphasise the point. It also served to immerse him, face first, in the water, before the same hand caught his arm – thankfully his uninjured right one – and hauled him back upright. ‘That’s you rinsed. Let’s get you washed. You do the front and I will tend to the side you cannot reach, which also of course contains this firm little arse.’

Brann couldn’t help but laugh. ‘You really are just like a female Hakon, aren’t you?’

An even harder slap answered that, but this time with the other hand holding him in place. ‘He is just like a male me. A pale imitation. Ask the men of the last town we visited.’

Brann grinned his amusement. ‘Only you and he would use a town in the nightmare grip of a siege as an opportunity to bed as many locals as possible.’

‘He did try hard to follow my example with due enthusiasm, I’ll grant him that. It is always good to spread good feelings where otherwise despair would rule.’

‘You have a good heart.’

‘It was not the heart I was seeking,’ she guffawed, slapping him a third time. Brann resolved to end the conversation while he could still walk, and concentrated on washing himself while Breta did likewise on his back.

As soon as he had dried himself, and before he could fully dress, Cannick inspected his wounds and wrapped them in clean cloth. ‘This should keep them clean. I’ll check them each morning and night, but as long as the cleaning has kept infection at bay, they should heal without restricting your shield arm.’

Brann grasped the older man’s arm as a surge of emotion swept through him. ‘Thank you, Cannick. I don’t know what I’d do without you. What any of us would do.’

The broad shoulders shrugged. ‘One day you will have to. Learn enough from my infinite wisdom until then.’ He winked, passed Brann his clean tunic and carried his pack back to the rest of his belongings.

Tended and washed, Brann felt a weariness sweep over him. The others were pottering about with minor tasks, their attention on the minutiae of camp life. He moved to where his pack lay on the edge of the fire’s light, and spread his blanket on the ground as far from the heat of the embers as possible. The night was still warm, but the glow of light was also welcome. He took off his boots, curled up and closed his eyes.

Brann woke slowly but realised quickly that he would not find sleep again easily. His mind filled with thoughts, one racing on to find another waiting, and he tossed from one side to another before deciding a change of scene might help.

He rose and moved to the river bank, dangling his feet in the welcome cool of the water. The eddies swirling before him were lit by the full moon, and his mind whirled in tandem. Images of the pit of corpses merged into the degenerate fighting pits below Sagia where Loku had sent him to die and where the horror had forced him from his own mind to let his body survive. Dead bodies beneath his feet faded into dying bodies at his feet. And all the time, blood ran down his face, smeared his body, dripped from his hands.

Gerens sat beside him, his arrival causing Brann to jerk in surprise. ‘Have you all been practising creeping up on people?’

The other boy’s expression was as implacable as ever. ‘I don’t need to practise that.’

Brann’s irritation had already dissolved. He smiled softly. ‘I’m certain you don’t.’ He sighed. ‘Every time I go to do something since I got to the camp, someone seems to appear beside me.’

‘You wonder why?’ The tone was matter-of-fact, not challenging. ‘You were not in a good state when we found you.’

‘I was in a better state than when Grakk pulled me from the pits of the City Below after Loku had sent me down there to die.’

‘Better is not necessarily good, chief.’

‘I did learn a lot in those pits, right enough. Not so much in the pit of corpses this time.’

‘I suppose you learnt this time that you weren’t a corpse, which is a fairly good discovery to make.’

Brann almost smiled. ‘I was lost to myself in the City Below, Gerens. I will never be able to repay you all for what you did to bring me back.’

He sensed more than saw Gerens’s shrug. ‘You did what you had to do to survive. We did what we had to do to help you live.’

Brann paused to push aside the reluctance to say the next words. ‘There was a change in me, left by the pits. You know that, don’t you? There is a killer inside me.’

Gerens snorted. ‘There is a killer inside us all for when we need it. Some indulge it, some use it. The difference in you, chief, is that you are very good at it.’

‘And that is actually a good thing?’

‘In the world we live; on the road we travel?’ Gerens jerked and there was the sound of a soft plop as a small stone was cast into the water. ‘Without doubt.’

They sat in silence for a while. That Gerens was a more familiar companion than Marlo was reflected in the fact that quiet lay more easily over this pair.

Silence, until Gerens cleared his throat. ‘Warm weather.’ Brann looked at him. ‘Heavy air, hard to breathe sometimes, don’t you think?’

Brann nodded, looking back at the water. ‘It is. Need a storm to clear the air. Rain would help it.’

‘It would. Just enough to clear it. It has been pleasant to be free of quite as much rain as we have in our land.’

‘Indeed. These lands do have that advantage.’ Brann yawned. ‘It’s late, I suppose. Probably best to go back to sleep.’

‘Indeed.’

They walked back to the group of sleeping figures beside the fire. Konall’s space was empty – he would be somewhere in the darkness, keeping watch. Brann lay down once more on his blanket.

‘Gerens?’

‘Yes, chief?’

‘Thank you.’

‘Any time, chief. Every time.’

Dawn was starting to fade the darkness when he woke again. The camp was stirring as Grakk, Sophaya and Mongoose rode into their midst.

Mongoose stopped her horse close to the rising group around the fire. ‘So you found him then.’

Konall grunted. ‘Be glad it was us and not you who found him.’

The girl raised her eyebrows in question, but Hakon cut in. ‘Please do not start Konall on this subject again. He has been badly affected by the experience. He may never be the same again.’

Konall grunted. ‘Will never.’

Mongoose slid wearily to the ground. The other two also, Brann noticed, looked bowed by fatigue as they dismounted. She led the three horses to the river, while Grakk glanced at Brann, then looked pointedly at Cannick. The grey-haired old warrior nodded back briefly, enough to satisfy the wiry tribesman for now. Grakk nodded in return, the soft light enough to make visible the intricate tattoos on his shining scalp that marked him as from the people of the deserts beyond Sagia – people who allowed, and indeed fostered, the misconception of them as simple uncivilised nomads, to maintain the secret that they harboured the accumulated knowledge of the known world.

Gerens’s query was more audible, though barely in more words. ‘You took a while. Trouble?’

Sophaya shrugged. ‘Avoiding trouble, more like. We were on the far side of the field of dead, and had to lay low to avoid a patrol. We also took a trip into the main camp to see if Brann was among the prisoners, which by necessity was not the fastest of visits.’

‘You went into their camp?’ Gerens was aghast. ‘Do you realise how dangerous that was?’

Breta’s laugh boomed across the fire pit. ‘You say that as if we have a safe and dull life as it is.’

Gerens was not to be deterred. ‘But still…’

Sophaya smiled sweetly. ‘Oh, darling dearest, are you worried about me?’ She patted his arm softly. ‘Fear not, the three who were there were the three best suited to slipping through shadows. And I am the best of the three.’

Grakk winked at Gerens. ‘She is undoubtedly correct in that. She is like a shadow herself.’

Gerens nodded in acceptance. ‘She is magnificent,’ he conceded.

‘So,’ Cannick cut in. ‘We know you didn’t find him among the prisoners.’

Grakk’s stare was bleak. ‘We did not find any prisoners.’

‘You wouldn’t.’ They all looked at Konall. He shrugged. ‘What do you expect? This is the remains of an army, in retreat. Thanks to you,’ he looked at Brann, ‘they no longer have their leader, since you cut his head off in the battle that lifted the siege of the town, and they are no better than a rabble, looting to take what they can to, in their eyes, redeem a bad situation on their way, heading home. That does not include keeping prisoners to feed.’

Hakon frowned. ‘That doesn’t need to include slaughtering simple villagers. That was a whole settlement wiped out. Farmers and their families are hardly a deadly enemy to leave at your back.’

Cannick spat. ‘Some people just enjoy the killing. Doesn’t make it right, but it’s a fact.’

Brann nodded. He had seen enough of that in his time to know the truth in it. He frowned, however, frustrated at the fog in his memory that was obscuring something with as much magnitude as the slaughter of innocents, but leaving his questions for now.

Mongoose had tended to the horses and accepted a hunk of dry bread from Hakon. ‘Anyway, they’ll get what’s coming to them. If they had bothered to scout ahead, as we did after we needed to leave their camp on the far side, they’d know they are heading directly towards a proper army coming to teach them why they shouldn’t have come here in the first place.’

‘Good,’ Brann said quietly. They had their own business to concern them, but he was glad to think of the fate that awaited such savage butchers. ‘Let them meet their doom. They are heading east; we are heading north. We have Loku to catch, and we were delayed enough when we got ourselves trapped in that town’s siege. We need to make haste if we are to stand any chance of catching Loku and learning of the conspiracy he is part of. Any animosity we bear him from his misuse of his position as the Emperor’s spymaster and the ills he has done us personally is secondary to discovering the true nature and extent of the threat facing the lands of the North. We have to work our way up through his superiors, remember, if we are to learn both who is the leader controlling all and what actually is planned. We cannot afford to waste any time at all.’

Cannick had brewed coffee, and passed it around. ‘Take some of the Empire’s greatest export – after wine, of course – and settle down. These three need a rest. A few hours today won’t make a huge difference.’

Mongoose stood up. ‘If we stop early enough tonight, I can sit on a horse until then.’

Grakk glanced at Sophaya. She gave a defiant nod, as if any suggestion that she could not achieve the same were an insult. ‘Agreed,’ the tribesman said. ‘Let us saddle the horses.’

Conscious that they should be well clear of even the remnants of the army before they could feel safe, Brann waited a good hour before moving his horse beside Hakon’s to broach the subject he had been given little chance to address since being found the previous night. In truth, he could have asked any of his companions, but Hakon’s affable and guile-free manner would ensure he received the most open of answers.

The large boy proved the point before Brann had even opened his mouth. ‘You want to know how you ended up where you did, don’t you?’

‘Yes.’ He desperately did. He could remember all of his savage primeval time in the fighting pits below ul-Taratac, and thanks to the administrations of the most learned of Grakk’s tribe in bringing him back from the creature he had retreated into as a means of surviving the pits, he had accepted his experience for what it was – a part of his life that had, at its most simple, happened. What it had changed in him, he could never change back, but the shaman Grakk had taken him to had rescued and returned Brann’s soul, his persona, his essence; whatever word was applied to it, and whatever the man had done to him, he had brought Brann back from where he had been hiding from those very changes. Now he was in control, he was the real Brann in normal life. But in combat the other Brann – the animal living only to survive – would re-emerge, only to subside, satisfied, when the danger was past. Or, at least, emerge as much as he would allow. He could not resist the rise of his other self in times of danger, as it was as much a part of him as any other part of his character, but in having the original side of him, the side of emotions, of civilised thought, of memories and the nuances of character that they create – in short, his personality – having that returned had given him an element of control over the cold efficiency of the side buried deep. When that other element rose, it dominated, but there was still a thread connecting him back to himself, like a cave explorer’s rope fed back in his wake to the outside world. But retaining that awareness when his primeval self took over, that knowledge of how he was behaving… did it remove the excuse that acting in such a coldly brutal way was outwith his true personality? Did it mean that he could not escape responsibility for what could, at times, be ferociously savage? And did that make him evil? A killer? Insane? But if those same savage actions and coldly efficient decisions were all that stood between the survival of himself and those he deemed good people, did that then justify them, make them morally the right thing to do? He had spent countless hours agonising over such questions before realising that it made no difference. He could not change it, so to wonder as to its label was immaterial. What did matter was how he acted towards those around him, and that this had indeed kept him, and at times them, alive. The rest of the time, he was much the same person as he had been before his time in the lawless pits in the caverns below Sagia, albeit hardened and less naïve and with lapses into melancholy and occasional nightmares – not all of which were when he slept. He could live with that.

And the thought of surrendering that tenuous link to himself, of allowing the darker side of him to assume total control, to swamp him, to open up the possibility of his true self never finding its way back – the thought made him shudder.

But what worried him more immediately was his lack of memory of the recent events. It reminded him too much of the immediate aftermath of his time in the vicious pits of the City Below, when his mind’s response to the blood-soaked and death-laden distortion of the more skill-based gladiator fights in the mainstream arenas above ground had been to abandon any concept of his real self. Was he slipping back into that shell? Was the cold killer asserting control? Was he losing himself?

‘Yes please,’ he said to Hakon.

Hakon’s look was appraising. ‘How recently can you remember? Sagia? Or the journey along the coast and then turning north through all those really nice small villages with the nice village girls? Or taking the boat into Markethaven during a siege because there had been news of a man matching Loku’s description having been seen there? Or becoming trapped there for the duration of the siege only to find that he had left before it started? Or leaving the city after the siege, and reaching the valley where the village was attacked? Or…’

Brann cut in. ‘The journey from Markethaven: I remember until that and everything before. I don’t remember the village, or setting up camp at that place, or anything after.’

‘Well, you weren’t with us when we set up camp, so you wouldn’t remember that.’ Hakon regarded him again. ‘So you don’t remember coming out of the trees to see those bastards cutting down the villagers. It was only a portion of what is left of the army, maybe a thousand soldiers or so, but the poor sods had no chance. The place was bigger than the smallest villages, but not as much as a town, just a few hundred ordinary folk living off the surrounding farms and the trades that go with their produce. The men were barely armed with working tools, never mind the women and children who were totally helpless.’

Brann stared into the distance. ‘Sounds like what happened to my village.’

The big Northern boy gave a grunt. ‘That would explain your madness. Before we knew it, you were galloping off to take on a couple of hundred armed men single-handed. You didn’t even have your mail on – it was a warm day, and we hadn’t expected trouble. We went after you, of course, but we were beaten back by the numbers. It was just too many. I’m sorry.’ He fell silent, but just as Brann started to reject the need for any apology, Hakon drew a breath and continued. ‘The last we saw, you had worked your way through to a group of men, maybe fifty, who were outside a hall where their families had taken refuge, defending it as best they could against many times their number. By the time we had regrouped, your horse had found its way clear, but you hadn’t.’

It was Brann’s turn to fall silent. Doubtless his companions in the burial pit had been drawn from those brave men.

‘It is I who should be sorry. I could have condemned us all.’

Hakon shrugged. ‘Sometimes the good in us overpowers the sense. This was your time for that. Those people were already dead. They didn’t know it yet and you just didn’t want to accept it.’

Brann frowned. ‘It was stupid. I should have seen that.’

‘We all have a demon inside us. The good you showed is what keeps it under control. It was our fault for not being quick enough to stop you. We know we are all capable of doing what you did, so should have anticipated it in time. But we didn’t, and you did what you did. Should have changes nothing, and pondering it only delays the solution. So we regrouped, waited until we could do something, and then did it. Except that we expected that the something we could do would be to find you and bury you properly – that’s what your people do, isn’t it? Bury your dead.’ Brann nodded. ‘It seemed your time had come. Only Marlo was determined you were still alive, but that’s Marlo for you.’ His face split into a huge toothy grin. ‘Turned out the wee mad bastard was right, after all, which we were all very pleased about. Especially me – I shudder at the thought of telling my sister I had returned but you had not.’

Brann couldn’t help but laugh. For the second time in a few hours, he was grateful for the counsel of his friends, no matter the form it took. And Hakon’s mention of Valdis gave him an extra eagerness to hasten their journey northwards. ‘Thank you, Hakon.’

‘No, thank you. It was worth all of it for the look on Konall’s face when we found you.’

Brann laughed again. Remembering that expression didn’t make the time in the pit worthwhile. But it did help.

Konall reined up his horse where the road crested a rise, and the others bunched around him. A walled town rose from the plain before them, buildings at this distance seeming to have been crammed in by a giant hand, so tightly packed that only a jumble of rooftops could be seen within the grey walls. The morning sun was high in the sky, and glittering around the outskirts suggested a moat of some sort. Farms dotted the plain as if the same giant had strewn them in one scattering sweep of his arm, but they were the only habitation outwith the protection of the walls. This place did not welcome intruders.

‘Belleville,’ Cannick said, staring at it. ‘The beautiful town. In reality, it is anything but. It is drab, dour, and unpleasant, and has the people to match. But the northern coast before we take ship for the Green Islands juts out into the seas at its north-west corner, so if Loku hasn’t wanted to sail round it and is instead cutting overland to sail the short distance to the islands, he will pass through this town. So, to my distaste, it is advisable that we do too.’

Hakon grinned. ‘So you’ve been here before then, Cannick?’

The old warrior leant to the side and spat on the dry ground dismissively. ‘More times than I would have liked. Two major routes, north-south and east-west, meet here, so it holds an important position, and don’t they know it. Still, passing through has been a necessity before, and it’s a necessity now. Might as well get it over with.’

The others readied themselves to move. Most were still mounted, but Brann’s pack had worked loose in its bindings and its rhythmic bumping against him for the past few miles had been irritating him, so he had slipped to the ground to take the chance to secure it more tightly. Grakk also was on his feet, picking a stone from his horse’s hoof, and Brann cast an eye over the road ahead. They were on the highest point and it undulated through a series of ever-lower rises until it met the floor of the plain. On the next rise, a man struggled alone to fix a cart that had lost a wheel. Brann nodded in his direction. ‘Looks like he could do with a hand.’ He glanced at Cannick. ‘I know you want to get in and out of this place as quickly as we can, and pick up Loku’s trail as soon as possible if he has indeed passed this way, but it wouldn’t take us long if it isn’t too badly damaged.’

The broad shoulders shrugged. ‘We are passing that way anyway. We can see when we get there.’ He kicked his horse forward without hesitation, accepting Brann’s opinion.

Brann swung himself into the saddle, his mail shirt clinking slightly as he did so. The pain from his ribs irked him more than that from his arm, not only because it hurt however he moved but also because it was a reminder of the folly of charging unprotected into a battle where blows will come from all unseen angles. Although ironically, he mused, had he not suffered wounds enough to render him unconscious, he would probably have fought on to his death. Still, he had donned his mail at the first stop to water the horses after Hakon had recounted his story, hot sun or no hot sun.

His hands automatically checked the helmet, shield, and bow hanging at vantage points around his saddle, and eased his sword in its scabbard, while his eyes fixed themselves on the scene at the cart. His gaze flicked to the area around it, searching for any sign of movement or disturbed wildlife, but his attention was mainly on the working man. Just because the distant figure had his back to them didn’t mean he was unaware of their presence. And just because he worked alone didn’t mean he was alone. Brann watched the man through the shimmering of the hot air, and continued to watch as they moved forward, waiting for a telltale glance towards hidden companions, or even the unnatural pretence of remaining oblivious to them beyond the point where he could not have failed to notice their approach.

His mind settled comfortably into the watchfulness. He felt happier to be putting more thought into a situation as opposed to reacting in line with the impetuous side that had been born in the pits of the City Below; born, admittedly, as a necessity in an environment where stopping to think was the first short stride in a one-step march to death. Thinking was a small sign that his darker side was not extending its control, but it was a small sign that he grasped and held tightly.

They moved at a trot, not wishing to move any faster lest it seem too aggressive. Brann’s eyes continually scanned for movement or shining metal in the area around, returning always to the man, but all that he could see was a carter labouring over a repair in the mid-day heat, the cargo, four large barrels, standing at the side of the road. When they were two bowshots away, the man straightened and turned, his face scarlet with effort and awash from pate to waist in sweat. If it was a ruse, the effort he was putting into his act was impressive. He watched their approach warily – a sizable group of riders, all armed, was a sight to make any stranded traveller nervous – and his hand strayed into the back of the cart for a hammer that, presumably, he had been using in his vain efforts to mend the wheel. He would know it would make no difference in the face of the odds he faced, but Brann guessed that he felt more comfortable with something, anything, but preferably something heavy, in his hand. Brann himself would.

The others drew up in front of him but Brann rode past, circling the area until he was happy that no hidden cut-throats lay waiting for their chance. Not that there was much cover among the small and sparse trees that the road cut through on its way to the plain, but it did no harm to be sure, and took only a moment. He walked his horse up from behind the cart as Cannick climbed stiffly from his saddle and slapped the road dust from his clothes.

‘Look like you could do with some help, feller,’ the grizzled veteran said. ‘Hot enough riding in this heat, never mind trying to sort a wheel on your own.’

The man, around the same age as Cannick but around half his width, relaxed. ‘That I could, friend, that I could.’ He wiped his brow with the back of one hand, but Brann noted that he still held the hammer in his other. These were not totally peaceful lands. ‘It is indeed a touch warm today, but the problem is not so much the heat as the weight of the cart. I have not the strength I once did…’

Breta and Hakon strolled past Cannick. ‘I wouldn’t worry about that, little man,’ Hakon said cheerfully as he continued beyond the carter, slapping him gently on the shoulder and causing the hammer to drop from the man’s hand and narrowly miss his toes. ‘We’ll take care of that.’

The man’s eyes widened and lifted high to follow the pair, regarding them as if a couple of trees had donned clothes and sauntered by. ‘That’s, er, very kind of you,’ he said to Cannick, his eyes still flitting to the large couple. ‘The pin snapped and the wheel just fell off the axle. Nothing else actually broke, so it is just a matter of lifting the cart to let the wheel be slipped back on. I have a spare bit of metal that will serve as a replacement pin in the meantime, if the cart could just be lifted by your two, er, enormous companions.’ He looked quickly at Breta. ‘No offence meant, madam.’

She frowned in confusion. ‘Why would a compliment offend?’ She shook her head as if some people were bewildering and turned to grip the underside of the wagon. Hakon did likewise, and in a heartbeat the pair lifted the heavy wagon level, allowing Brann and Gerens to slide the wheel back into place. Mongoose took a heavy iron nail, around a hand-and-a-half in length, from the man and dropped it through the hole previously meant for the pin, and Hakon lifted the hammer from the ground, bending the pointed end with a single blow to sit neatly flush with the axle and hold the nail in place.

Mongoose looked at the nail appraisingly. ‘Nice work.’

Hakon beamed. He glanced at Brann and Marlo, and winked. Brann avoided catching the Sagian boy’s eye – his own straight face was under enough pressure as it was.

The carter was also beaming, his smile containing considerably fewer teeth than Hakon’s, but no less engaging with simple happiness for it. ‘You are angels of the road, scions of the good gods sent to save a traveller in need. Jacques extends his thanks to the gods and to you for bringing you this way. May fortune bless your every step! May the road bless you with effortless passage! May the sky bless you with fair weather! May your boots bless you with feet free of blisters!’

Mongoose sidled up beside Brann, her voice a murmur. ‘Should have stopped after three blessings. Got a bit desperate by the fourth.’

Brann turned away, his shoulders shaking, as Breta and Hakon eschewed the planks that the carter had used to roll the barrels from the cart and lifted them directly back into it.

Grakk had been quietly watching, having taken the opportunity to seat himself on a rock at the side of the road. ‘Your gratitude is gracious, but unnecessary, my friend. When a man with a predicament such as yours meets a group with capabilities such as ours, there should be only one outcome.’

‘Perhaps in your experience, but not in mine, holy man,’ Jacques said, mistakenly assuming Grakk’s mode of speech and tattooed scalp to be based on religion. He sat on the back of his wagon, clearly glad of the rest before he was on his way. ‘Most armed groups that are met on these roads are wont to take what you have of value and pay you by allowing you to live. If they allow you to live.’

Cannick frowned. ‘And Belleville allows this?’

The man spat. ‘Belleville protects Belleville, and its farms on the plain, nothing more. They patrol the plain and hide behind their walls. It is up to us to get ourselves there intact. In truth, the bandits are fairly harmless and not overly numerous. They are no more than lads made desperate by poverty, and if they get enough to keep them going, they are satisfied. The real crooks are in the town. When we do,’ he spat again, ‘they pay a pittance for what we have and charge a fortune for what we want.’

Brann turned, humour forgotten in the face of injustice. ‘Can you not take your goods elsewhere?’

Jacques shrugged. ‘Nowhere else close enough to make it viable, young man.’

Brann still found it hard to understand. ‘Can you not refuse to sell unless they raise their prices? And refuse to buy at the prices they set?’

The man smiled sadly. ‘They grow their necessities for life; what they buy from us is over and above that, such as this oil I carry today. These goods enhance their life and they would not like to be without them for any length of time, but they can afford to survive on basics, just to make a point, and are stubborn enough to do so. We, however, need what they sell to produce what we do, and need their coin to buy what we eat. If I had a farm that produced all I needed to live, I would never soil myself with visiting that accursed town. Too late in my life, though, to change what generations of my family have done. We are carters, pure and simple. We transport, we are paid for transporting, we buy from our neighbours what we can avoid going to town to acquire, and then we transport some more.’

‘So,’ Brann said slowly, a thought growing. ‘If you didn’t have to go to the town today, you would not be distressed.’

The gap-toothed grin returned. ‘If I did not have to go to the town today, I would be bloody overjoyed, young man. Sadly, however, a consignment must be delivered for the fee to be paid, and the consignment will be paid for in the town.’

Brann looked at Grakk, then Cannick. ‘Unless the consignment and the cart are both bought at the side of a road and delivered by its new owners in your stead.’ His eyes had returned to the carter by the end.

The carter shrugged. ‘Should that be a possibility, it would be a welcome possibility.’

‘What are you thinking, Brann?’ Cannick was cautious.

‘I am thinking that a band of armed riders at the gates of a town renowned for its less than welcoming attitude would arouse suspicion. But a band of armed riders escorting a cart through dangerous bandit-ridden countryside would make more sense.’

‘Could we not,’ Konall said, ‘just escort this man to the gates of the town and pose as an escort in that way without having to pay for it in the first place?’

Hope began to fade from the old man’s face.

Brann shook his head. ‘Jacques has been doing this all his life, which is a considerable length of time.’ He looked at the man. ‘No offence meant.’

The man flashed his few teeth at Breta. ‘Why would a compliment offend, eh, young lady?’

She nodded solemnly. ‘Indeed.’ She turned to Hakon. ‘He called me a lady. Did you hear that?’

Brann continued quickly before Hakon could get himself into trouble. ‘The guards at the gate will know Jacques, and would wonder why he has broken the habit of a lifetime to now employ a guard. Whereas,’ he glanced at Konall, ‘a new man starting his business in this area, made nervous by the stories of banditry, might panic and hire a sizable escort. That might seem natural, might it not?’

The tall blond boy nodded. ‘It could make sense.’

Brann looked at Grakk. ‘We have the ability to pay.’

Grakk looked at Sophaya, having entrusted to her the pouches of coin passed to them by their benefactor in ul-Taratac – as the Sagians called their empire – to fund their mission, wherever Loku led them. Who better to know how to keep safe such valuables than the one natural thief in the group?

She nodded. ‘Of course. If that is what you want, it is there.’

Brann took a selection of coins from Sophaya and collected them into a pouch. He turned back to the old carter. ‘Can you buy a new cart in time for your next delivery?’

‘No need, young man. I have two, in case an accident befalls one with more dire consequences than today’s mishap. In any case, your price is far too high. Half of that would more than suffice, even after I purchase two more horses.’

Konall made to speak, but a glare from Cannick and a dig of Mongoose’s sharp elbow jolted him into uncharacteristic restraint.

Brann handed the pouch to Jacques. ‘It is the right amount.’

Cannick had suggested approaching the town’s main gate a little after dusk had started to fall, when the heat of the day had left the guards tired and thinking more of a refreshing drink than the duty involved in the remainder of their shift.

The wait allowed the others to rest in the shadow of the cart while Sophaya rode with the old man to a nearby steading, where he could borrow a mount to see him home. The glee on his face attested to the infrequency in his life when he could wrap his arms around the waist of a young woman. Gerens’s glare removed the glee for as long as it took, Brann noticed with amusement, for the pair to move beyond the grim boy’s line of sight.

Brann sat on the ground and rested his back against the recently repaired wheel. He folded his arms, rested his chin on his chest and closed his eyes, but found himself unable to snooze as the others were doing. His mind whirled and calculated, thoughts fired by his relentless impatience to reel in Loku. His thinking was hampered, though, by his nagging regret at missing the man at Markethaven by only a matter of days, only to be trapped there by the siege for weeks, the frustration driving his mind in circles.

The irritation was still refusing to leave him alone after they had moved off, the sun low in the sky but the air no less stifling for it. He nudged his horse beside those of Grakk and Cannick.

‘How long do you think—?’

Grakk cut in with a smile. ‘It would take Taraloku-Bana, or Loku, as he calls himself in these more norther parts, to reach here? I am only surprised, young Brann, that it has taken you so long to ask when you had time this afternoon to ponder it.’

Brann frowned. ‘I was thinking about it, yes, but every time I tried to think about it, my head kept returning to the way we came so close to him, and yet still he managed to stay ahead of us, while we lost even more time. It was as if the gods were toying with us like a bully dangling a toy in front of a child: almost in reach but then pulling it away at the last instant.’

Cannick spat into the dusty road. ‘The gods do not toy with us. What happens, happens. All we can do in this game that is life is play the dice the way they fall and not waste time wishing they had shown different numbers, or some other player will step in and play our turn.’

Grakk looked at the old soldier with narrowed eyes. ‘An interesting theological philosophy, my friend. Can I ask your religion?’

Cannick barked a cynical laugh. ‘The religion of real life. I have seen many a soldier gutted who, moments before, had prayed to his gods, and others walk from battle without a scratch who had prayed just as piously. The gods may watch us, but the only people who can keep us alive are ourselves and our friends around us, if we are lucky enough to have them. Forget that, and place trust in great beings whose workings we only know of through priests and priestesses – other people just like us, not magical beings of great knowledge, mark you – and all you will do is let your guard down. Plenty of time for pious men to speak to their gods when they meet up with them.’

Grakk nodded thoughtfully. ‘I see. You term it “their gods”. And so, do you believe there are no gods?’

‘Oh, there must be gods.’ A brawny arm swept to indicate the fields around them and beyond, then up to the sky. ‘How else can all this be explained? Someone or something must have made it all, and must keep it all working. There’s enough work there for an army of gods. Why would they bother whether one of us sticks a sword in another, or falls in love with another, or recovers from a hangover, or wins a wager at the gladiator pit, or whatever else people pray for? But then I’m just an old soldier, and that’s just an old soldier’s opinion.’

‘An old soldier who is still alive, however,’ Grakk pointed out, ‘and whose opinion has therefore been formed and tested in many situations of living or dying.’

Brann thought that Cannick’s views sounded similar to the views of his own upbringing, where practical people lived off the land and prayed in gratitude to gods representing all aspects of nature while, at the same time, learnt to work themselves with all the unpredictable vagaries of nature that each year threw at them. The real problems came from other men, not gods. The thought of home sent a wistfulness through him, prompting in turn thoughts of urgency – and Loku.

He could see that Grakk, the learned gatherer of knowledge, was now intrigued by Cannick’s straightforward philosophies and had another question about to be asked. He cut in quickly. ‘Loku? Distance travelled? Length of time?’

Cannick sighed theatrically. ‘Oh, the impatience of youth. All right, young man, we shall work it out.’ Grakk looked crestfallen, and Cannick patted him consolingly on the shoulder. ‘Worry not, old friend, we can talk more later.’

He closed his eyes, as if to concentrate, and tapped one thumb against the fingers of that hand in turn, as if calculating. ‘Let’s see. From Markethaven, the last place we and he both were, it would be about seven days’ sailing along the south coast and another eight northwards, up the side of the country.’ His eyes flicked open and must have seen Brann’s dismay. ‘But that is in good weather, and in straight lines. He will have been hugging the coast because of the time of year – rough weather in the sea off the south coast and fullblown storms as he turned northward into the big sea. And not only will his winding route and the difficult waters have slowed him down, but he may well have had to put into port a couple of times when the weather got too bad for them.’ He nodded at Konall and Hakon, riding side-by-side in silence ahead of them. ‘The Southern sailors are nothing of the ilk of their lot, who would laugh at a storm and sail through it and out the other side as if the wind were no more than a baby’s fart. But then, the Northerners have such skill bred into them. Those Loku has taken passage with in his journey to meet up with his fellow conspirators,’ he spat again, ‘are not, as I say, that sort of sailor – we already know the first ship he took passage on had needed to put into Markethaven for repairs, causing him to wait until he could leave on the first ship to be headed his way. So I reckon, a good three-and-a-half weeks all in. Then a couple of days overland, east, to this town before us, if he didn’t want to go by boat around the Point of the Last Lands, and I’m fairly sure he will have had quite enough of bumpy seas by then to want to take on the worst part of the sail. Say, four weeks as a good guess.’

Grakk nodded thoughtfully, his hungry mind already absorbed in this new task. ‘By contrast, we were delayed three weeks, roughly, by the inconvenient siege of Markethaven, but were then able to cut diagonally across country to here, a trip so far of nineteen days.’

‘Which,’ Brann said slowly as his thoughts collected, ‘would put us maybe a dozen days behind him.’ He brightened. ‘Which isn’t too bad considering he doesn’t know we are chasing him. And this is his journey, so he will keep moving. We, of course, do not know what business he will conduct when he reaches his destination, as discovering that is part of our mission, but in conducting that business his progress will be slowed, and all the time we will draw closer.’

‘You see,’ Grakk beamed, ‘I was certain we could cheer up your disconsolate face.’ He turned to Cannick. ‘Now, about the gods and nature. Where would you say the gods’ influence ends, and the innate actions of flora and fauna begin?’

Brann groaned and slowed his horse to drop back, out of earshot. He studied the fields around them, quiet as dusk approached. The creaking and squeaking of the cart and the knock of the horses’ hooves were the only sounds: loud enough to mask the few voices that chatted – only Grakk and Cannick, as a matter of fact – but quiet enough to let him realise that work had finished for the day in the fields. The crops around this part of the road swayed slightly in the early evening breeze, their colour combining with the varying hues of other, more distant, fields to form a patchwork broken only by the occasional pasture hosting, in those he had seen so far, goats or cows. It was a scene that reminded him of home despite the harder ground and the irrigation channels Grakk had pointed out to him – a feature unheard of in his own rain-drenched homeland. He sighed. Home was a thought he had tried to avoid for the past year, but it had wormed its way into his head ever more often recently as they moved towards the islands. Depending on Loku’s movements and where they led Brann and his party, he may never travel any further north than the South Island, but even just to head in this direction made repressing memories more difficult by the day.

He shook his head in annoyance. He had to focus on the danger this town presented now. He fixed his attention on the approaching gate, analysing the situation, to force aside his self-indulgent maudlin musings.

Two guards lounged at the entrance, one leaning against the gatepost, his jaded gaze resting on the approaching party. The other rested a shoulder against the outside of the wall, facing his companion as they passed the time, and seeing nothing in the first guard’s expression to cause him to feel the need to turn his head towards the cart and its escort.

Brann’s eyes had already scanned their weapons, though – they were well-tended and to hand. His own hand strayed onto his belt, close to his own sword hilt. Just because someone looked lazy and disinterested now did not mean they would stay that way. And just because they looked as if they would take an extra second to lower a spear or draw a sword did not mean that they did not know how to use them once that second had passed. Just because they obviously did not expect trouble did not mean they were unable to deal with it were it to appear before them.

The hooves of the lead horses clattered for a moment as they passed over the stone at the start of the bridge across the moat, then gave off a deeper rumble as they moved onto the wooden main section. Brann’s eyes narrowed in curiosity, glancing from the bridge surface and then at the gateway, where a stout metal portcullis was ready to be dropped and where thick gates, banded with iron, could further block the way… but where no chains ran to the timbers of the bridge. He moved his horse beside Cannick’s.

‘No drawbridge?’ he said quietly. ‘Strange, given their desire to protect themselves from outsiders.’

‘Look where the bridge meets the other side,’ Cannick murmured.

Brann saw that the wood of the bridge led into a slot in the stone of the gatehouse. Cannick slowed his horse, pretending to check with a glance at the tailgate of the cart, to avoid closing on the guards while they were talking, and Brann followed suit.

‘It slides in?’

Cannick nodded.

Brann’s curiosity awakened. ‘But why? It seems a great deal of extra effort to construct this. And a normal drawbridge provides an extra layer across the gateway to penetrate.’

‘A normal drawbridge remains exposed when lifted.’ He smiled as Brann felt his face light up in understanding.

‘A lifted drawbridge prevents attackers from crossing the moat, but also prevents defenders from doing the same,’ Brann said. ‘If those besieging the place can damage the drawbridge while it is raised, defenders cannot issue in numbers from the main gate for a counter-attack, and if the intent is to starve them, then it will also help to trap them within.’ Brann brightened with enthusiasm as his understanding unfolded. ‘This way, it can be withdrawn and protected. They already have a strong portcullis and gate to protect the entrance, not to mention the moat.’

‘Good lad. I thought you’d get there eventually. The moat flows in from the north and out at the south, but they stop the exit during these drier months to keep the level high, only letting water escape as they need to.’

Brann thought back to the towns of Konall’s and Hakon’s homeland, ingeniously designed to make an attack virtually a suicide mission. ‘Looks like they could give our friends in Halveka a run for their money in designing defences.’

Cannick grunted. ‘No one touches the Halvekans on that score, and certainly not here. When you get inside, you’ll see.’

Marlo reined up the horses in front of one of the guards, who had managed to rouse himself to confront them. The man looked sullenly around their company.

‘What’s this?’

Marlo cleared his throat hesitantly. ‘I am bringing produce intended for the merchant, Patrice, in the Third Quarter, sir.’

The guard grunted. ‘Don’t know your face. And it is not a face that was born anywhere near here.’

‘My family moved here from the Empire, good sir. I work for my uncle, who heard there was good work for carters here.’

Brann had already noticed that, while the second guard still lounged against the wall, his gaze had never stopped watching the riders, flicking from weapons to callouses on hands, from where they were looking to how they looked. These two maybe didn’t expect danger, but they were watching for it.

‘Why so many swords with you?’ the first man asked, with more curiosity in his tone than suspicion.

His eyes scanned the group once more. Hakon was trying to slouch himself into a diminished size, but was still hulking over the man from his mount. Several of the others were no less intimidating: Konall knew no other way to hold himself than with the casual arrogance of one with years of training and of being obeyed; Gerens had a stare that suggested he would cut your throat without a passing thought; Cannick had the scars and the carriage of an experienced campaigner; Grakk just looked downright fearsome; and Breta… when the man’s eyes alighted on her, he froze with a slight gasp. She treated the guard to what Brann knew she would be intending as a winning smile; the reaction from the man was a nervous swallow and a tightening of his fingers on his spear as he took a slight and involuntary step back.

Brann noticed he had not been one of those to elicit a response from the guard – he was happy for that to be the case. To be regarded as not a threat was to gain an advantage before the fight even started. The sentry steadied himself and glared at Marlo, seeming to be reassured by the fact that Marlo looked as nervous under his gaze as the man himself had done when noticing Breta’s intimidating appearance.

‘Pardon me, sir.’ The fact that the anxiety evident in Marlo’s voice was entirely natural was what had made him the obvious choice for the role. ‘Pardon me, but my uncle had heard there was good work for carters here, but also that there was an element of danger. He preferred to err on the side of caution, as far as security was concerned, until we better learnt the true nature of the peril, as he had heard say that there were parts of the route where transported goods attracted the attention of nefarious brigands.’

A rough laugh burst from the man at that. ‘Nefarious brigands? I have heard them called many things, but that is a new one on me. So tell me, well-guarded young carter: why does your uncle the carter not drive his cart?’

‘My uncle, sir, prefers to organise the business and to let his nephews carry out the simple task of driving the carts.’

‘Your uncle prefers to sit in the safety of his home and let his nephews face the dangers he sees in the shadows, more like.’

Marlo was proving so effective that Brann found himself hating the fictitious uncle and warming to the sentry.

The guard stepped to the side and flicked his head towards the gateway. ‘Typical Sagian. As if we don’t have enough of your lot here already. Better get yourself and your many helpers into the safety behind our walls then. On you go.’

Marlo flicked the reins. ‘Thank you, sir.’

They filed in after the cart. Breta winked at the guard, winning herself a flinch of fear. The young woman looked hurt.

Cannick had noticed as well. He slapped Breta heartily on the shoulder. ‘Would you help me, good lady, find a suitable inn for us? I don’t know about you, but I need an ale.’

Breta brightened immediately. ‘First decent suggestion I’ve heard all day. Hopefully there are some men in this town who are less scared of the fairer sex than that mouse at the gate.’

And hopefully, Brann thought, there were plenty of them willing to talk. They needed information, and they needed it fast.

Chapter 2

The girl was still nervous in his presence. He liked that. It was a refreshing change from the confidence of the crone, and the fact that the old woman was usually right in what she said. But since the young one had started working for him, learning from him, striving to impress him, she had grown more adept at covering the nerves from all but eyes that sought it. He liked that more.

He did not look up from the fire. He also liked to maintain the nerves. And in the fire, he also saw welcome heat in the chill of the evening.

‘You have news?’

‘I expect you know I do, my lord.’

The nerves may still have been there, but had lessened sufficiently to allow room for boldness to creep in. Not a bad asset if she were to be effective for him, but he could not allow her to know he approved in even a small way where the boldness was directed at him.

He barked at her, his dry voice harsh. ‘You forget who you address, girl. You served the princess well, but she is here no more and you have but one master now, regardless of what the Steward of the Household Staff may think.’ His head snapped round, eyes boring into her. He could see from the slightest of flinches before she caught herself that his glare had retained its potency despite his years. Maybe the age added to it. There must be some few counter qualities to infirmity, surely.

She dropped her eyes. ‘Apologies, my lord. I do not forget your eminence, but do forget myself. Forgive me.’

If it was an act, it was the right act. He grunted and waved a hand dismissively, looking back at the fire. ‘Your news, now that you have remembered your manners?’

‘The boy and his companions. They were heading in the direction of a town called Belleville.’

‘I know it.’

‘You know a town in the north of the Vine Duchies?’ The surprise was clear in her voice. ‘I do remember who you are and who you were, my lord, but this town is not a part of Sagia. Not even close to the border.’

His voice grew softer – slightly – as his mind drifted decades into the past. ‘Sometimes to rule an empire, you must act outwith the empire. By accident or design, that town is located with great strategic advantage. There was no need to waste resources in a campaign against the Vine Dukes to add their lands to ours. We already had beneficial trade agreements and the dukes were merchant dukes, not warrior dukes. They were no threat, and we had what we wanted from them. But it was clear to me that Belleville had potential. It did no harm at all to make a gift of enough Scribes to help them establish an effective administration.’

He could hear the smile in her voice. ‘No harm at all, when there are Sagian Scribes running a town along Sagian principles.’

Innocence suffused his tone. ‘We are a benevolent people. I saw a chance for our principles to enhance the prospects of the people in a town where there was potential for commercial growth. Under our guidance, many there have become wealthy by the passage of travellers and trade through their town.’

‘Passage that is carefully controlled and documented, I am sure. With records available to the higher echelons of the Empire’s Scribes, should it be desired. And certain individuals among those record-takers who would report instead to someone other than the higher echelons of the Empire’s Scribes.’

He shrugged slightly. ‘There were, of course, fortunate benefits.’

‘So if the boy…’

‘The boy is a man now, in life if not in years. And he had better be, or he is of no use to us.’

‘Apologies, my lord. If the…’ She could not bring herself to say it, he noted. The remnants of bitterness may prove useful or may require handling. ‘If he does pass through there, he will find available to him records that could tell him of he whom he follows?’

‘Possibly.’

‘There will possibly be records?’

‘There will certainly be records. But he may or may not be able to gain access to them, or even know they exist. Our associates there do not know of him, or the significance of his prey. But that prey, remember, has his own network, greater than mine in numbers.’

‘That is to be expected. He is the Emperor’s Source of Information, after all.’

‘Greater numbers is rarely an advantage in the war of knowledge. To be overwhelmed with information is as paralysing as having too little. With spies, it is far better to have a shrewd person picking gems than a hundred shovelling piles of ore that take days or weeks to sift through. Fortunately, I have pickers while Taraloku-Bana has labourers.’

‘If I may say, my lord, I doubt it is left to fortune to govern your recruitment policy.’

‘That, you may say.’ He grunted. ‘So, the party we follow with interest. How long before they reach the town, if they hold to the same path?’

‘Already or soon, given where they were and how long it took my source to reach here.’

‘And your source is reliable?’

‘Even apprentice Scribes are meticulous. Even more so, in fact, in that they must impress to advance.’

‘Meticulous, but not known for being any more free with information than a corpse.’

‘Scribes are not celibate.’

‘You took him to your bed? I understood your bed companions were drawn from the gender banned from the Order of Scribes.’

‘Where information is concerned, my bed companions are governed by necessity. But no, I did not take him to my bed. Nor did I visit his. After several weeks on the road, merely the suggestion of such was enough to spark his tongue to life.’ She laughed suddenly – an unusual sound from her recently. ‘I mean he talked.’

It took him a moment to mask his amusement – something else that was rare in recent times. ‘And did he know who you asked about?’

‘He did not. I had to do a little sifting and prompting before I could pick your gem for you.’

‘You are learning. Make sure you continue.’

‘You require obedience and wit, my lord.’

‘Then leave me now, and persevere to give me more of both.’

‘Yes, my lord.’

Three words only, but enough to let him hear that she had heard the compliment he had given her. Or, at least, as close to a compliment as he would give. The girl was growing into her role, and he could see it before him, which was good.

The one of whom she had spoken had grown into what was needed – now that one needed to rise to what he must do – and all this old man could do was sit and hope, events unfolding unseen, and unknown, until they were weeks in the past.

He hated that.

He felt the chill of the evening. He looked into the fire, and saw danger.

****

Brann thumped into a seat in the tavern, the weariness of travelling in his bones but the fire of enthusiasm in his head. Marlo was ensuring the horses were well-tended by the grooms at the livery yard across the road, and Hakon was ensuring that sufficient food and drink were going to be available from the innkeeper’s wife, while managing at the same time to eye the woman in the corner with the laces of her top just loose enough to show most of her cleavage; she in turn was eyeing Hakon’s purse.

‘So,’ Brann said, ‘once we have eaten, we can start trying to gather information.’

Gerens nodded across to the stairs leading to the bedrooms, where Hakon was disappearing with the loose-laced woman. ‘Looks like you may have to wait for the big man.’

Brann slapped the table in frustration. ‘Does he ever think with his head?’

Grakk laid a calming hand on his arm. ‘Fret not, young Brann. He means that it might be best to wait until Hakon has returned to plot our next move. It seems that Hakon is more keen even than you to start gathering information.’

Brann frowned. He was not convinced.

Cannick grinned. ‘Take it from me, Brann. If you want to know what is happening in a town, spend a week talking in markets and taverns or spend five minutes talking to a whore.’

Brann grunted. ‘Maybe you’re right. But I still don’t think that’s all he’ll be doing up there.’

Breta guffawed, startling a man behind her into almost choking on his ale. ‘There is truth in that. Better give him ten minutes, then.’

It was almost exactly ten minutes when Hakon rejoined them, oblivious to the amused looks passing between his companions.

‘You took your time,’ Sophaya said, as Brann and the recently returned Marlo stared at the floor, shoulders shaking.

Hakon’s big shoulders shrugged. ‘We had a lot to talk about.’

It was too much. Brann’s spluttered laughter was replicated around the table. Grakk just smiled gently and slid along on the bench to leave room for the perplexed Northern boy. ‘Ignore them, they are releasing accumulated stress at your – if I can describe it as such? – method of releasing accumulated stress.’ The hilarity only redoubled at that, and Grakk raised his eyes to the ceiling. ‘Sit, young hearty fellow. The food will arrive soon, and once these buffoons have composed themselves, you can tell us what you have learnt.’

Hakon cast his confusion aside as an irrelevance in the face of impending food, and lowered himself beside Grakk. Brann wheezed as his laughter subsided, his face and his ribs aching alike. The learned tribesman was, as ever, correct – he had not laughed as helplessly for as long as he could remember, and he felt better for it.

The appearance of the food and another round of ale forced them to compose themselves, although the mistress of the tavern, who looked no stranger to a sharp word if she thought it warranted, showed no sign of disapproval at their raucous behaviour. Laughter in an inn spoke of happy customers, and happy customers attracted more customers who wanted to be happy. And they needed more liquid fuel than those nursing their sorrows.

‘So,’ Cannick said once the food was served. ‘What can you tell us, Hakon my lad?’

Hakon’s shaggy head leant forward conspiratorially, although the noise in the rest of the common room was enough to make even those at the other end of his own table strain to hear him, never mind anyone elsewhere.

‘Loku was here.’

Brann felt himself tense.

‘He stayed a few days, then left a week ago.’

Brann leant forward. ‘Left for where?’

The big shoulders shrugged. ‘Don’t know.’

‘Was he with anyone?’

‘Left with two men.’

‘Who?’

‘Don’t know.’

‘How does she know?’

Sophaya snorted. ‘Men lose secrets as soon as they lose clothes.’ Gerens looked at her, and her smile in return was sweet and innocent. ‘So I have heard, my darling. And once a secret is out, all the girls know it.’

Brann was anxious, however. ‘So who did speak to him?’

‘Don’t know.’

He felt his palms burn as hot as his frustration as he slapped the table. ‘Oh, for the love of the gods, Hakon! Do you know anything?’

That Hakon was puzzled was painted across his big honest face. ‘Of course I do. Why else would I come to tell you something?’

‘Well why don’t you tell us?’

Hakon frowned. ‘Because you keep interrupting me.’

‘I’m asking questions to try to find out what you know!’

Hakon was now quite obviously confused. ‘But how do you know the right questions to ask if you don’t know what I have to tell you?’

Brann paused. It was a good point. ‘I don’t.’

Hakon nodded sagely. ‘That became clear when you kept getting it wrong.’

Konall flicked a chunk of bread at Brann’s head. ‘Perhaps,’ he suggested in his languid tone, ‘you should let the boy speak?’

Brann saw Cannick looking at him as Grakk leant to speak in the veteran’s ear. He realised everyone was looking at him, and felt his cheeks grow hot. ‘Sorry,’ he mumbled.

‘Right,’ Hakon said cheerfully. ‘What she did know is that her friend took money from the captain of the Duke’s personal guard.’

Sophaya perked up. ‘Her friend is a thief?’

Brann grinned. His brain was starting to work at last. ‘Her friend was doing what whores do with captains of guards. And at the end, one purse was heavier and one lighter.’

Sophaya grunted and took a bite from a chicken leg. ‘Always warriors and whores. Why do we never get to meet any nice thieves?’

‘Maybe there are just no nice thieves about,’ Marlo offered brightly. Sophaya glared at him. ‘Oh,’ he said, colouring, and taking a sudden interest in tidying the crumbs on his platter.

Hakon cleared his throat. ‘Anyway, the captain of the guard is a regular customer of Joceline’s friend. Joceline is the nice girl from upstairs.’

‘We guessed,’ Brann growled. ‘Anyway…?’

‘Yes, well, he told Joceline’s friend that a man calling himself Loku had stayed with the Duke for several days, and had been locked away in discussions with him for much of that time. He said that the man must have been important, because the Duke wasn’t rude to him.’ He looked around at the questioning faces. ‘Apparently, the Duke is rude to everyone, so that was a big thing.’ He laughed. ‘I know, it sounds a bit trivial, but it seems that he is ruder than most around here, and this is not a very polite town as it is.’

Cannick snorted. ‘I can vouch for that.’

‘So,’ Mongoose said, ‘I think we need to have a chat with this rude Duke.’

‘Just what I was thinking, too,’ Brann said. He looked at Hakon. ‘Do you think Joceline could arrange to let us meet with her friend, so we can work out our best approach?’

Hakon’s face split into a proud grin. ‘Already asked her. It cost me extra, but if we go up to her room in an hour, they’ll be there. The man the friend meets with has tastes in gratification that had, of late, turned to a more, er, painful type for Joceline’s friend, but while the friend would like to end the relationship, the man is controlling and powerful and, it appears, even gains gratification from his power to keep the friend visiting unwillingly. I get the impression that if we can help with this situation in any way, the friend will be amenable to helping us in return.’

Grakk filled Hakon’s flagon with ale. Even in a land renowned for the quality of its wine, the Northern boy’s tastes remained constant and straightforward. ‘Well done, young Hakon,’ the tribesman said. ‘You have indeed been a credit to yourself tonight.’

Hakon drained the flagon and reached for the pitcher to refill it, burping happily. ‘Thank you, Grakk. It was hard work, but it was worth it in the end. I think my father would have been proud of me.’

Marlo almost spat his own drink across the table, and the laughter of the others filled the air above it. Brann, though, felt a stillness creep through him, and he stared into the large fire in the hearth, but the flames he saw were not those warming the room. He saw a mill alight, and a man in the doorway, holding off attackers before being driven inside the building. His home and his family, burning together. He shuddered and got to his feet, muttering about needing some fresh air.

The courtyard at the back of the tavern was quiet, a place of sharp contrast against the boisterous cheer of the common room inside, and a small barrel provided a convenient seat against the back wall of the building. Night had fallen completely, and a thin crescent moon slipped occasionally into brief sight between drifting clouds. Darkness had dropped across the sky in ul-Taratac in what seemed like a single breath compared with the gradual change he had been used to as a child, and while the dusk had been longer here than in the Empire, still it seemed fleeting here than at his home.

Home. He sighed and rested back against the wall, staring at the sky. Movement from the doorway to his right saw him relax almost as quickly as he had tensed. It was strange how, on a journey, you become attuned to the tread and breathing of your companions to an extent where you know who approaches without even realising what your ears have heard.

Cannick pulled over a small crate and sat beside him, groaning as he eased himself down. He laughed. ‘You know when you are getting older when you make a noise every time you sit down or get up. Every so often you forget to try to hide it from those around you.’

Brann smiled, and touched his fingers to the ribs on his left side. ‘Just like an injury.’

‘We all try to hide what bothers us, lest it betray a weakness.’ The grey head turned in the shadows to look at him. ‘Don’t we?’

Brann sat for a moment, then sighed. He waved a hand upwards. ‘That sky. We could be anywhere. I was just wondering if the same sky is looking down on my home.’ He stopped, his breath catching sharply in his throat for a moment. ‘But then I wondered if I have a home any more.’

‘You have seen much. You have changed and grown and are not the boy who left that village. You have seen and endured more than most people would ever experience in a dozen lifetimes.’ A big hard hand rested itself on his shoulder. ‘It is only natural you would question where you fit in.’

The hand on his shoulder felt good, comforting, protective, understanding… fatherly.

He stood up quickly, tears stinging his eyes. ‘It is that, yes. I meant it that way.’ He wiped a sleeve across his eyes and cleared the roughness out of his throat. ‘But I also meant it in a literal way. The last sight I had of my village was to see it under attack from those pirates you fought after I… after I came aboard your ship. The last sight I had of my home was it aflame. And the last sight I had of my father was him fighting men at the doorway. They forced him inside.’ He took a deep breath. ‘At least he was with my mother and my sister when he died.’ His voice was a whisper. ‘The last words he ever said to me were to drive me away over my brother’s dead body. He wished it had been I who had died. The irony is, if he hadn’t rejected me, he would have got his wish – I would have been in the house with them.’ He sat down again and looked at the shadow of Cannick’s face. Honesty lives more easily in the privacy of dark than the glare of day. ‘There are times when I wish I had been in there with them. And with them now, wherever we go after,’ he waved an arm expansively, ‘all this.’

Cannick sighed. ‘The life we live and the things we see, boy, there are times when we all think that way. But we still cling to life, and fight to cling, and use every last bit of strength to fight. It is what we do.’ His hand ruffled Brann’s hair. ‘You are not alone. Remember that.’

Brann leant back against the wall again with his shoulders and head, staring at the darkness of the fragments of sky and the darker clouds framing them as silence fell over the pair. The clouds filled a space they could see but could never touch. Occasionally clouds came to earth and touched people, but people could never go up there to meet them. It was a world they knew was there, but could never reach. And beyond that world… Who even knew what was there?

‘Cannick?’

‘Yes?’

‘What you were talking to Grakk about before. About the gods, and religions, and priests, and all that. Do you think there really is something after this life?’

The silhouette changed as the veteran warrior turned towards him. ‘I think we don’t know if there is or there is not. If there is, and we have lived life as well as we can here, then we can face whatever lies beyond as it comes to us. But if there is not, then it would be a terrible waste being given this life if we were not to live as much of it as we could, don’t you think?’

Brann nodded. It made sense. ‘But what do you believe? You must have seen so much. You must have heard so many priests, and listened to men talking about their gods. Is there nothing that makes sense more than the rest?’

Cannick laughed. ‘In the right words, they all make sense. But let me ask you this: you have seen a fair bit yourself, and you were brought up respecting your own gods. What do you think?’

Brann stared into the darkness. ‘I think,’ he said slowly as his mind worked. ‘I think that it is the people who matter, because religions are guided by people and followed by people.’

‘Exactly. There are temples that preach violence and hatred, but they are few and badly followed. Why? Because of what people mostly want from religion: reassurance, understanding, hope, all connected with the things we don’t understand or know.’

Brann remembered a comment from the campfire several weeks before. ‘But Breta said that religions have started more wars than anything else.’

Cannick barked his harsh laugh. ‘Take it from an old soldier, people start wars, not religions, and for all sorts of reasons. Power and fear being two of the main ones. Religion is a tool some use to do that, but it is the most powerful tool man has ever known for that end. Like everything else, what one man can use for good, another can use for bad.’

‘So it is just a sham? A tool for controlling people?’

Cannick laid a calming hand on his arm. ‘You tend to overthink things, Brann. It is what it is. It feeds needs that we all have, and if it makes people get on, take care of each other and respect the world around them, if it gives people peace and calms them when they worry about answers they can never know for sure in this life, then what does it matter what names they give their gods or what position they adopt to speak to them?’

Brann sat in silence. This simple soldier’s life had given him an outlook that strangely mixed common sense and cynicism to create tolerance. But there was something else. ‘But what about those savages Loku had gathered in the mountains of Halveka? The ones who captured Hakon and Gerens, and who tried to overthrow Einarr’s father. They seemed to worship death, and gods of death. They revelled in torture and suffering; they lusted to inflict pain and despair, and not just there – it was the same with the story we heard when the ship put into the South Island.’

Cannick spat between his feet. ‘That was no religion, that was Loku. That was a sham, used to control carefully selected people, not a message of belief spread to anyone who would listen. That bastard took the scum, the dogs who enjoy dishing out suffering. The bullies, the cut-throats, the murderers, the sort who revel in disorder and feed off any opportunity to indulge themselves. You will find them in a hysterical mob, joining for the fun of it; you will find them in the shadows when they see a vulnerable victim; you will find them in the crowd at an execution, baying with bright eyes when the axe falls or the noose tightens. It is a thrill they crave.’

A chill ran through Brann. ‘Gerens?’

‘No. Gerens is different. Whatever has happened to that boy, there is not that love of inflicted pain these others have. Were there that in him, he would not be with us. He would not be one of us. When he does anything, he does it without any feeling at all, like if that innkeeper in there killed a rat in his food store.’ Cannick sighed and sat staring ahead, as if choosing the right words to fit his thoughts. ‘Some people come arrive in this world to a life that is close to nature. For some – like him – it seems there is little difference between animals and men in certain respects: we are all creatures, and there is a certain amount of truth in that.’

Brann frowned. ‘But he is not a monster.’ His loyalty to Gerens had forced out the words more harshly than he had intended, and he gathered himself before continuing. ‘He is practical. The way he sees it, if something needs to be done, he just does it.’

Cannick put a big hand on Brann’s shoulder. ‘No, he is not a monster, but he is different. There is no getting away from that fact, and to deny it is to deny Gerens for the person he is.’

Brann shrugged. ‘We are all different.’

Cannick smiled gently. ‘Some differences make more of a difference. But you are right, and I say again, he is not a monster – he has feelings.’

Brann nodded. ‘For Sophaya.’

‘For Sophaya, yes. And for you.’ Brann looked at him sharply, and Cannick snorted in amusement. ‘Not in that way. He feels a loyalty. A protective urge without reason, without question.’

‘That’s Gerens, though, isn’t it? He doesn’t question; he just acts.’

‘Well,’ Cannick said quietly, ‘be thankful that he acts in your favour. And I do mean: be thankful. Few men have their back guarded so fiercely.’

Brann looked at the veteran warrior pointedly. ‘Einarr does.’

Cannick nodded. ‘For different reasons.’ He stared at the sky with the expression of a man who looked not over distance, but back through time. He grunted. ‘Those are reasons for another conversation. But simply put: yes, you are right. So never forget, or underestimate, his place in your life. And never see him either just as he who would kill in aid of your safety as easily as blinking. Yes, put a knife in his hand and he is coldly efficient without compassion or remorse – but remember always that, though his emotions work in his own way, they still exist. They are as much as part of him as the other side.’

It was true. ‘Like me, now.’ The thought frightened him when he allowed himself to consider it. ‘After the City Below. And after the… the treatment in Khardorul. One me normally, another me when I fight.’

Cannick grunted. ‘Like all of us have to be when we fight. We do not have the luxury of being able to care in those moments. It is what humans do to survive. With Gerens it does not need the heat of conflict to do that, it is there all the time, ready. But he is different from those others, Brann, the ones who Loku gathers, who he fosters. Gerens may not do it with regret, but also he does not do it with pleasure or desire.’

‘But others do. We saw as much at the village in the mountains before we travelled south with Einarr: people acting worse than animals; people craving the suffering of others and finding some sort of euphoria when they inflict it. Is this common?’

‘Fortunately not, son, fortunately not. There are just some people, Brann, and thankfully only a few in every hundred, who like that sort of thing but they are usually not bright enough to do anything more than inflict random violence when a chance presents itself… unless a leader finds them. Look in every army and you’ll find one for every score or more of ordinary soldiers. Loku set himself up as a leader for them. The “religion” he gave them of sick and twisted viciousness was not a religion at all, of course, it just took the pleasure they already had and built up its flames with constant feeding and by surrounding them with similar people, like taking a man who is a slave to ale and putting him with others the same and giving them an endless supply of the stuff.’ He spat into the dust at his feet. ‘In his case, it was a sham and a way of controlling people to his own purpose, but they became intoxicated so much that life without it would seem lacking – and they were enjoying themselves too much to want to change it, anyway. It justified their actions and encouraged them. We were lucky you found that group in time, but there will be others in Halveka and in the South Island, as we know.’

Another memory came back to Brann. ‘When I was first taken onto your ship, there were riders who came to the beach, who we narrowly escaped from. They wore masks – hideous masks – like I had never seen before.’

‘I’m guessing those were leaders, recruiters, instructors, call them what you will. They were too organised for the slavering rabble we have seen in action.’

Brann’s breath caught in his throat. ‘But it means they were on my island. Close to my home.’

Cannick’s tone was grave. ‘I would expect so. They will spread, and endeavour to do so, like a pox.’

Brann felt several emotions surge through him as one. ‘My family may be dead, my village may or may not still exist, but the thought of them walking on the ground where I am from… I feel sick.’ He looked at the figure beside him. ‘Cannick, why are they doing this?’

‘That is the question that is driving this journey of ours, remember, young man? We need to find Loku, find his master and his master’s master, find whoever is driving this plot that is spreading savagery and terror across entire countries and ask them that question, and then you will have your answer.’

And with that, Brann felt his resolve return. ‘And first we need to find this Duke. We have plans to make.’

He stood, and Cannick laughed as he did likewise. ‘And I am sure that by the time we discuss them, they will already be made in your head, young thinker.’

He was right. Brann’s head was already moving, running through scenarios, information they had and information they needed. Actions and possible consequences, consequent actions, and further consequences, and on and on. Who would do what, and who could do what best.

But then the old soldier in front of him opened the door to step back into the inn and the light spilled out over his lined and weather-beaten face, a face with eyes that had seen so much and still spoke of the caring within, and Brann’s thoughts stopped.

‘Cannick,’ he said, and the man turned. ‘Cannick, I… You…’

The creases in the soldier’s face multiplied as he smiled. ‘I know. An old sergeant had the same sort of conversation with me when I was not much older than you. I reckoned if he was an old sergeant then he must know a thing or two about how to get old without dying first, and he must have picked up a thing or two along the way since then. If I’ve helped you tonight, I have repaid him.’ He winked. ‘When you don’t know if there is something or nothing awaiting you in death, it puts a little warmth in an old heart to know you have left something of you in those who come after.’

Brann stepped forward and wrapped him in a hug, and the brawny arms gripped him back. It felt like it said more than the words he couldn’t find.

Breta’s voice boomed from the passage that bent its way to the back door. ‘Brann, Cannick! Are you out there?’

Brann jumped back at the thought of her seeing him that way, and his heel kicked over the small barrel Cannick had used as a seat. The lamplight from the doorway illuminated it as it rolled and spilt the remnants of what it had once contained, a trickle running through the dust on the flagstones of the yard to mix with a small puddle in a gutter. Watching it, a thought entered his head and he smiled, his head filled once more with plans. Again they were interrupted, this time by Breta as she filled the entrance.

‘That’s trollop’s friend has arrived, apparently, and is waiting upstairs.’

Brann smiled. ‘I note that she is “a trollop” but the handsome young men you spend time with when you pay for some pleasure are “handsome young men” when you talk of them.’

‘Of course,’ Breta said, a frown betraying her puzzlement. ‘If the men were not handsome or young, why would I spend money on them?’

Some arguments, Brann thought, were just not worth having.

The others were still at the table and Cannick waved at them all to remain seated.

‘Yes, we know: this friend of Joceline is waiting upstairs. I don’t think all of us traipsing up as a group would be as low-key as we would want. Maybe just Brann and Grakk?’

Nods of agreement saw Grakk rise, but Gerens got to his feet also. ‘How do we know this is not a trap? We do not know this girl. Her friend might be half a dozen armed thugs looking to cut their throats and take their coins.’

Brann looked at Cannick, who shrugged and nodded.

‘Top of the stairs, turn right, third door on the left,’ Hakon said.

The door creaked almost as much as the stairs and the floor had on the way to the room. There was little or no chance of sneaking up on someone here, which was probably exactly the way the inhabitants liked it. Brann had his long dagger, its black blade that seemed to absorb light rather than reflect it, drawn and he noticed that the others had done the same. The door had swung only half open, blocking their view of most of the room and, before he could move forward, Gerens shouldered him roughly to the side and pushed the door wide.

The dark-eyed boy must have seen his surprise. ‘Don’t want to be unmissable for a crossbow bolt, do you?’

Brann nodded that indeed he did not.

No missile had come their way, however, and Gerens pushed past him. Grakk did likewise, and it was only when the wiry tribesman had moved clear of the entrance that Brann was able to make his way into the room.

Joceline, the woman he had seen with Hakon, stood to one side, while across the room from them a couple, just a few years older than Brann and fine-featured with such similarity that they could only be brother and sister, stood nervously in front of a large bed draped in ostentatiously colourful fabrics. The man stood slightly forward and, while his fingers toyed apprehensively with the hilt of the knife on his belt, Brann sheathed his own weapon. The dagger was the only apparent weapon on the man and, although he had learnt many times that looks could be deceiving (and had used that fact to his own advantage on more than one occasion), he felt fairly sure that if this girl was placing her trust in her brother for protection from rough violence, it was trust misplaced.

He nodded past the man at the girl behind him, trembling at the sight of the three who had walked in with blades in hand, although it was not clear what scared her most: the situation, the appearance of Grakk or the stare of Gerens. ‘We will not hurt you. We are grateful that you have agreed to talk to us.’

‘Actually,’ the young man said, coughing to try to clear his throat of nerves. ‘Actually, it is I with whom you have arranged to speak.’

‘Eloquent of speech,’ Grakk said approvingly.

The timid girl shrank into herself even further at the sound of Grakk’s own words, incongruous from a tribesman of such fierce appearance.

Brann stared at him. ‘You?’ He looked from brother to sister to brother in confusion. ‘But…’

The man raised his eyebrows. ‘You think all whores are women? That all men prefer women? You are unaware that this is not the case?’

‘Actually,’ said Gerens solemnly, ‘you would be surprised at the number of things he is unaware of.’

The man turned to Brann and spoke patiently. ‘Would it help you to know the background?’

Brann nodded vaguely. He couldn’t think of anything else to do.

‘I did not plan this career. My sister, Eloise, and I – I am Philippe, by the way – we came here as members of a troupe of actors. Some months before, I had met a man in another town and, to my surprise, he had offered to pay for, shall we say, what I had expected to be a fleeting experience of mutual enjoyment. I became aware that there were men who were willing to enter into the same sort of transaction with me in every town and village our show visited, and it became a more than useful method of augmenting an income that, let’s face it, could have been improved by a change of career to pig herder. It became even more lucrative than I had envisaged, in fact, because these men pay for two elements, gratification and discretion, and when the transaction is between two men rather than a man and a woman, the desire for discretion transpired to be greater, and therefore more expensive. However, in this fair town, my efforts to keep my lucrative sideline hidden from the leader of the troupe ceased to be successful and, on his discovering my infidelity to him in both a professional and emotional sense, I found that I was no longer a member of the troupe. And so I stayed here, and my sister with me, this new profession replacing, rather than augmenting, our acting.’

‘Believe me, my dear,’ Joceline drawled as she sauntered across the room, ‘all whores play a dozen parts every day. It just so happens that these two play them with more skill than most, and are lucky enough to have the stunning looks to help them along the way.’

Brann looked at the girl, a picture of nervous innocence. ‘These two?’

Eloise straightened and gave him a brazen smile. ‘Admit it, you felt sorry for me, didn’t you? Would you have found it easier or harder to cut my throat with that fancy knife of yours, having felt compassion towards me?’

Brann nodded weakly at one more surprise to rock him. ‘Not all would have felt so reluctant, though.’

Joceline put an arm around Eloise. ‘Men as bad as that would have done what they were going to do, regardless. Better to reduce the chance though, my love, don’t you think?’

Brann sat on the edge of the bed to process his thoughts. Philippe looked at him enquiringly and Grakk coughed politely.

‘Should the rest of us retire from the room, young Brann?’

He looked at Grakk, then at the man standing by the bed. His eyes went wide and he jumped to his feet, taking a quick step away. ‘No!’ He edged closer to Grakk and Gerens. ‘No, I… er… I mean…’ He looked at Philippe, waiting patiently. ‘Oh! I mean no offence. You seem a very nice person and I’m sure you’re very good at your job, but…’

Joceline’s laugh cut through the room, and Brann saw the amusement on the faces around him. He smiled sheepishly. ‘I think we had better move the conversation on.’

Brann composed himself. It did make some sense. And it opened up new possibilities for his plans. A guard captain with even more to hide…

‘Please excuse my ignorance,’ he said. ‘We have much to discuss.’

Brann awoke the next morning in a chair in Joceline’s room, having slept where he sat after plotting through the night. The others seemed to assume that Brann would devise a strategy, and he had pushed aside his initial discomfort at being left to do so by people with far more experience or education in such matters to use the time productively. In ones and twos, the others had returned to join the discussion after Brann had worked out the skeleton of the plan and, once they were all sure of the role each would play and how it connected to those of all others, most of the party had retired to the room they had taken for the night. Most of the party: Breta had decided that the large bed where they were was much more suitable than the bunks in their own room, and had thoughtfully left Joceline a small space at one side of her own mattress, where the whore was still sleeping despite the stentorian snores of the huge warrior beside her.

Brann stretched, feeling the sharp pain of the wound down his ribs as it pulled against the stitches. The gash on his arm was healing more quickly, but he had to be careful not to open the big wound whenever he twisted or reached, and it was annoying him. Still, he had suffered worse, and survived worse.

He ran back over the plan in his head. It was not intricate – the simpler, the less there was to go wrong and the easier it was to adapt as, inevitably, any plan has to do – and it didn’t even involve all of their group, but he was happy it should serve the purpose. It was not even a complicated job they were attempting. After all, they just wanted to gain access to the Duke of this region in his bedchamber at the top of his tower home, with an entire contingent of his soldiers filling the grounds around the building and the floors beneath the man’s quarters.

Despite Breta’s sound snoring, he woke her with an ease born of a warrior’s instant readiness and padded down the corridor to the other bedroom where he roused Marlo and Hakon – the three would complete the delivery of the oil before joining Cannick and Mongoose outside the town, ready to greet, and if necessary defend, the exit of the small party who would visit the Duke.

Brann thought of the barrel he had kicked over in the yard the night before, and shook Marlo’s shoulder as the boy sat rubbing his eyes, slower to alertness than the experienced fighters. ‘Remember, when you take the barrels…’

‘Yes, yes,’ the Sagian boy grumbled. ‘Only take two and pick up the other two from here to take out of the town to the others. But what about the merchant? He will be expecting four.’

‘Did you not hear last night?’ Brann was exasperated. He only felt comfortable if everyone understood what needed to be done.

‘The fire was warm and the night was late,’ Marlo shrugged. ‘How could I not fall asleep?’

‘Next time, stay further from the fire,’ Brann growled. ‘All you have to say is that when the wheel fell off, two of the barrels dropped from the cart and smashed. He will only pay you for two, but we already covered the full cost to the carter, so all is fine. He’ll grumble and you can look apologetic, and there will be nothing else anyone can do about it, so he’ll just have to accept it.’

‘Excellent!’ Marlo beamed infectiously as ever, and Brann found himself unable to resist smiling back, as ever. ‘I can manage that.’

Brann nodded. ‘Good. We’ll see you outside the walls. Cannick will organise you all out there.’

The hours of the day stretched out interminably, as waiting always did. It was with relief that night fell upon them, and they eventually left the inn, guided by Joceline and Eloise as they wound their way through the cobbled streets. It was a clearer sky than the previous night, allowing them to see their way without the revealing light of lanterns, and making for a more marked contrast between moonlit areas and the shadows cast by buildings, but Brann would have preferred by far to be moving through a deeper and more general gloom, particularly when he thought ahead to trying to remain unseen in the grounds of the Duke’s tower.

He need not have bothered worrying about the weather. Moon or no moon, clouds or no clouds, it made no difference. Eloise had halted them at a corner across a narrow street from the plain stone wall around the tower’s compound, around a man-and-a-half in height and with a gateway fronted by two lounging guards halfway along the wall to their left. What had caught their attention, however, was not the expected barrier but what came from behind it: even from here, the glow from lanterns or torches that must illuminate the area within was bright enough over the top of the wall to suggest that they may as well have been in daylight. Philippe’s assignation with the guard captain was after the man had overseen the final shift change of the sentries, and if the young man was to be able to distract the guards from outside the door to the Duke’s chambers, then the time when the captain slumbered after his exertions would be the perfect opportunity. The only opportunity.

He looked around the group. Konall, Grakk and Gerens were frowning as strongly as he was at the blazing light, but Sophaya merely squinted at it appraisingly. She looked around at the others.

‘What? You thought they would create some nice shadows and maybe a hedge or two to let intruders hide on their way to the tower?’

Gerens still wasn’t happy. ‘You are incessantly magnificent, it is true, but you still think you can get us into that tower? With the guards watching that whole area?’

‘Look at them, dear Gerens,’ the girl said with an impish smile. ‘Like any sentries, they look outwards, and only inwards if something should catch their attention.’

Konall’s look was cold with disdain. ‘We could hardly fail to catch their attention if we wander about in that light.’

But Brann looked at Sophaya and smiled. ‘People only see what they are looking at. So if they are looking at something else…’

‘So,’ Grakk murmured, ‘this would require their eyes to be diverted away to something else. Would you have a suggestion?’

‘Oh, that’s easy.’ They all turned at the sound of Eloise’s voice, which changed in the space of a breath to a tone of exaggerated despair, supported by extravagant and flailing gestures. ‘Oh, how seldom people see beyond the wafer-like crust of a surface to the depths beneath! Oh, how quick people are to disregard the years that went before the last day they have seen!’ She snapped back to herself, grinning. ‘I am an actress. If you can somehow help my brother in his situation, then I can be for those guards whatever we need me to be.’

She tousled her hair and smeared a little dirt from the gutter across her face as if the result of a fall. That fall quickly seemed liable to be repeated as her eyelids drooped and her body sagged and swayed, working to stay upright in the face of the excess of intoxication that she had never actually imbibed. She paused, seeming not quite satisfied with the effect, then pulled at the front of her blouse, ripping it open slightly and just enough to expose an expanse of what lay within. A button fell free and she bent to pick it up, staggering as her fingers closed on it and lurching into Brann.

He felt her lean into him to steady herself and looked at the face that turned to leer up at him. ‘Oh, you are a lovely one,’ she drawled at him. ‘I’ll save you for later.’ She pressed the button into his hand, and winked. ‘Remember me by this, my lover.’

Joceline laughed softly at her antics as Eloise pushed herself away from Brann. He slipped the button in beside the coins in his pouch as, in a low voice, she said to them all, ‘Remember, further along to our right and then, immediately around the next corner, ivy has grown unchecked on the wall. Not a great deal, but enough to let you gain the top of the wall.’

Sophaya was not impressed. ‘Sloppy. I’m surprised others haven’t tried to rob him.’

Eloise shrugged. ‘The walls of the town protect him from those without, but it is his reputation that protects him from those within. To catch the eye of the Duke does not usually end well, and no one in this place wishes to court the possibility. Why run towards the danger they fear and hide from?’

Grakk was curious. ‘What is it that is so terrible? I have seen rulers who rule by fear, but the impression you give is that it goes beyond the normal.’

Joceline spoke, her face as dark as her tone. ‘He has tastes. Desires that he satisfies. He calls it study, but…’ A strange look came into her eyes.

Grakk frowned. ‘He does what, precisely?’

Eloise started to speak, then hesitated, looking at Joceline, who herself shrugged. Eloise seemed to gather her resolve, a troubled look on her face. ‘I don’t know, nobody really does exactly. Sometimes noises come from the tower, sometimes fragments of stories emerge, but not one person who is taken there has been seen to return.’ She hesitated again. ‘People don’t like to make trouble about it, or even talk of it, because then they come to the notice of the Duke’s men. And… well… who would risk losing a child?’

Brann looked sharply at Grakk and then Gerens. He could see they had the same thoughts: they had all been present on a ship off the coast of Cardallon, the southern of the Green Islands, when a shore party had returned with news of the slaughter of a village; a massacre of a sort that had sounded chillingly similar to the love of torture and killing that they had witnessed among Loku’s recruits in the mountains of Konall’s homeland. And prominent amongst its victims, too, had been children. ‘I feel more than ever we need to have a word with this Duke.’

Eloise gathered her skirts as she continued. ‘No one knows the full truth, and that is exactly why I do not like Philippe being so close to that man. If we are to do this, I would that we do it without any more delay.’

Without waiting for a reply, she pointed at them and then at an alleyway running parallel to the road between them and the wall, then slipped into its equivalent heading in the opposite direction. Moments later, the rambling shouts of a drunkard were heard arguing with a rat, before they saw her stagger into the open near the compound gate and lurch in surprise at the sight of the guards. She weaved her way towards them, her words inaudible to Brann’s ears but her demeanour making it clear that the two men were targets of her desire. From the way they came alert, it appeared that the attraction was mutual.

Her less than quiet antics had, however, attracted further attention, and a shout from behind the wall saw one of the guards open the gate. A brief explanation from him and further instruction from inside saw her ushered within, much to the apparent irritation of the guards on the gate, although her swaying gait maintained their attention after she had disappeared from Brann’s view.

Joceline nodded back down the street they had come up. ‘At the next junction is the edge of an area where girls can be seen offering their services. I am not usually so public about my work, but I can look like I fit in there. I will wait there to guide you on your return.’ She cast another look back at the gate to the compound. ‘Now go, for the sake of both of them. Please ensure they come back from that place.’

Brann nodded, as did the others. The courage of Eloise had affected them all. They ran quietly along the alley and turned to meet the road at the first opportunity. They were only a bowshot from the corner, and they reached it in a few rapid heartbeats. Brann blew out his breath in relief as he saw the ivy, and before he could say anything, Sophaya was on top of the wall, lying along it on her stomach. She nodded and dropped silently from sight.

Brann tested the strength of the plant and then realised that it mattered not – he had no option but to try dragging himself up without any further delay. It held well as he grabbed large handfuls to try not to put too much pressure on individual roots, and with Konall using his height to advantage and pushing from below, he managed to haul himself to the top with his one good arm, the light dazzling from countless lamps on tall stands that were dotted across the expanse within. The wall was the length of his forearm in thickness, and he blinked his eyes shut and open rapidly as Konall started to follow. A glance down saw Sophaya moving tight to the wall, and Brann hurriedly dropped to the rough ground below to leave space for the Northern boy, looking for Eloise as he landed in a crouch. She had wandered towards a tall guard who seemed to hold some level of authority, from the way that the other two guards with him on the short flight of steps to the door of the tower moved back instantly at his wave. Two sentries between Brann and the unfolding scene were amusedly watching her, while another just inside the gate was equally engrossed.

The tall guard stepped forward and took Eloise by the arm, looking to usher her inside the building. Brann froze. He did not like the thought that she should be taken inside by those men at all, but it had been inevitable from the moment she had stepped through the gate, and should the watching men lose the object of their interest from view too soon, at least one of them would notice the four figures who would be running around the perimeter of the compound. Admiration filled him, though, as Eloise remained both in character and true to her purpose, pulling free from the man and embarking on a drunken rant. Only the occasional word reached Brann, but it was enough to understand that she was berating the onlookers for only being interested in one aspect of a woman. If that was what they wanted, she yelled, why not feast their eyes, and she started peeling off her clothes with the combination of extravagant flourishes and staggering lack of balance that only intoxication can perfect. Grinning, the tall guard folded his arms to enjoy the spectacle, and if the other onlookers had not been giving every shred of their attention to her before then, this was no longer the case.

Brann set off immediately in the footsteps of Sophaya. Konall had already landed and followed closely behind, and soft crunches in the dirt told him that the other two had dropped from the wall only a few breaths later. As he ran, his eyes scanned the area, as much in wariness of coming across guards as to discover the nature of their surroundings. The ground was flat and mostly paved, empty of any character and populated only by the tall poles supporting the lamps that bathed the area in near as much brightness as daylight and stretching from the wall the length of around a hundred paces to the tower, which had been built exactly in the centre of the compound. The building itself was square and around twenty paces on each side; Philippe had described seven storeys in all, with a roof terrace, and only the top four levels had windows, each with shutters as a means to keep the weather at bay, but each with those shutters lying open to the world to encourage what little comforting breeze the humid night offered. The Duke’s chamber occupied the top two levels, accessed on the sixth level where his living quarters were, from which a stairway led to the sleeping area – a sleeping area that was sacrosanct, where no one, without exception, was permitted to set foot. If they could corner him there, it was likely they could do so without risk of being disturbed.

He cast a look back. Eloise was now completely naked and twisting with flailing arms to make it difficult for two laughing guards to take hold of her. Difficult, but not impossible, and they soon had her in their grasp, starting to lead her towards the entrance to the tower. Brann redoubled his efforts, chilled by thoughts of what may await Eloise inside the building and anxious as much to be in a position to help her as he was to escape being spotted. As he approached the next corner of the wall, the rear of the compound became visible and he could see the difference that brother and sister had described to them: a garden area that filled the space from the back of the tower to halfway to the outer wall. Trellises, low shrubs, and stone animals with decorative paths snaking among them were not the best of cover, but it was better by far than the exposure that lay on every other side.

The three following caught him as he rounded the corner. Sophaya was out of sight and presumably already in the garden, and the quartet left the wall together and angled directly towards the shrubbery in their haste to reach what little cover was available before the guards resumed their duties. Brann vaulted a knee-high hedge and caught his foot, tumbling and rolling onto short grass that muffled the sound of his fall but was not soft enough to prevent the flash of pain from his ribs. The hedge enclosed the grass on all four sides and, with a grunt, he gathered his legs under him and made for the side closest to the tower, stepping over it carefully this time and dropping to lie hard against it. He found Sophaya and Konall already doing the same, and the boy pushed a lock of his white-blond hair from his face as he looked at Brann.

‘You never cease to entertain,’ he said drily.

Sophaya looked up at the building, and Brann followed her eyes. Some of the windows were dark, some let light spill out, but one – on the second-top level – had a lantern sitting directly on the sill. Philippe had left his sign. The lamp was placed not only to signify the window that was their target, but also that the guards on the Duke’s door had been lured away to tend a sudden and violently painful illness afflicting the captain and brought on by a powder supplied by Grakk and slipped into his goblet by Philippe. The two windows to the right of the lamplight were in darkness, lending credence to what Philippe claimed was common knowledge among the staff: that the Duke would retire religiously to the top floor at fall of darkness every evening, never to be disturbed and with only dire consequences awaiting any fool who risked doing so.

‘No time like the present,’ Sophaya murmured and rolled into a crouch, but Brann grabbed at her ankle.

‘Wait,’ he hissed.

She scowled at him, either from irritation at being stopped or from the insult to her professional judgement, but she slid back down to hide once more, her head close to his. Her voice was a whisper, barely more than a breath. ‘The boy said that the guards are lazy, that they patrol only occasionally.’

Brann kept his words equally as quiet. ‘But when would they be more likely to wander around than right after they have been disturbed from whatever they have been doing?’

She looked at him as she considered it, then nodded.

They waited.

It seemed at first as if he had been overcautious. Then they heard the voices. Two men rounded the corner at an amble, one grumbling at the sergeant always taking whatever benefits came their way, the other content that they had been treated to entertainment beyond the ordinary. The grumpy one stopped at the edge of the garden. Brann caught his breath, his hand moving to the hilt of his sword. He watched through the sparser branches in the lowest few inches of the hedge, slowly gathering his legs ready to roll and spring. He heard a soft scrape – Konall must be doing the same. He reached out a foot, feeling the boy’s arm, and pressed against it in restraint. Wait, he thought, cautioning himself as much as the other boy. Nerves erode judgement. Wait until you know you cannot wait. He eased his head round with excruciating slowness to find Grakk and Gerens; the tribesman was curled behind a waist-high bush clipped into an onion shape, while the boy was kneeling behind a statue of a boar, his eyes flicking fast between Sophaya, Brann and the two guards. With Grakk and Gerens further away, Brann and Konall would have to deal with any discovery themselves, and swiftly.

Still grumbling to his companion, the guard turned to face them. Brann’s fingers tightened on his sword, and his toes dug slightly into the surface of the soil. But the man did not peer in their direction; he did not call his colleague’s attention to something unusual; he did not reach for his sword or ready his spear. The man reached only to loosen the front of his breeches, and he relieved himself beside a small bush.

Brann felt the tension release him from its iron grasp and fought instead to stifle laughter born as much of relief as of the ridiculous situation he found himself in. The guard finished and, spear tucked under one arm, fixed his clothing as he walked away. Not one of the hidden group dared to move until the two men had disappeared around the corner of the tower.

The instant they were out of sight, however, Sophaya rolled and rose, moving in one motion to a sprint to the wall of the tower. All of the others remained where they were, keeping to as much cover as was possible until they, too, would have to move – all but Gerens who, with sword drawn, was crouched beside the girl. While she faced the tower, he had his back to the rough stone, head swivelling constantly, eyes scanning for danger, ever the protector.

Sophaya settled a coil of rope, stained a similar colour to the stone blocks of the tower, more securely over one shoulder and down to the opposite hip, and without hesitation reached up and started to climb. Brann had witnessed her agility many times and knew of feats she had achieved in defeating every physical barrier that was placed before her, but this was the first time he had seen her in action, and he marvelled at her. He would have been amazed had a creature of the forest found purchase on such a surface, so his mind could barely grasp the way that Sophaya moved with sure and rapid grace up the wall: fingertips and toes – clad in soft tight-fitting boots barely thicker than hose – finding grip where he could conceive of none.

His wonder seemed to freeze time and his brain, and it was only when Konall’s soft words broke his trance that he jerked his attention back to the surroundings to check for any danger that Gerens might have missed, however unlikely the baleful boy was to do that.

‘Squared corners.’ The Northern boy’s voice was thick with scorn. ‘A few flung boulders and that’s knocked away, and then all above is coming down.’

Brann looked at it. ‘I suppose they reckon it is far enough from the town walls that it is liable never to be a target for siege catapults. Squared corners mean more conveniently shaped rooms inside. This is built for comfort and prestige, not defence.’

Konall’s disgust was undiminished. ‘A whole town should be built for defence.’

Brann grinned. ‘Not every populace is as well versed in siege architecture as yours, you know.’

‘Cretins.’

Smiling, Brann looked back at the wall, Sophaya had closed on the window with the lamp. She reached the lip and, after a brief look over the edge, slipped inside in a fluid movement. The lamp receded until the glow grew instead in the windows to the right, growing brighter beside one opening as it was, presumably, set close. Moments later, the rope uncoiled down the side of the building, and the three joined Gerens as he grasped the end, tying it in a large loop.

His dark eyes locked on Brann’s. ‘Remember, this goes around you and under your arms. Do not attempt to pull yourself up – you are in no fit state. Konall and I will pull you up once Grakk has reached the room.’

Konall held the end of the rope steady to let Gerens start to climb, walking his legs on the wall. The blond head turned to Brann. ‘Konall may not bother. Konall is wondering why we let you insist on coming along in the state you are in.’ His eyes turned to the bush still dripping at the edge of the garden. ‘Although I suppose you do have your uses.’

‘At least,’ Grakk said, ‘that incident did prove one thing.’ They both looked at him, and found his calm eyes looking back impassively. ‘They have no expectation that danger will visit them within these walls.’

Brann frowned. ‘Because one guard has no respect for his superiors and is not afraid to talk about it?’

Grakk smiled. ‘Because there is one part of a man’s anatomy that he will never risk taking out if he thinks there is the slightest chance of sharp-edged objects being swung about at any point in the near future. And that was it.’

Brann was about to laugh at a rare Grakk joke when he saw the look in the tribesman’s eyes. And, when he thought about it, Grakk was right. He looked up to see Sophaya help Gerens through the window and moved to let Konall grasp the rope to start his climb. That his ascent was slightly slower than that of Gerens owed more to physique than anything else – while Konall was lean and strong, Gerens’s rangy build lent him an agility beyond Konall’s assured but steady style, although when it came to Grakk, the man of the desert tribes scampered up the wall as if the rope were a bannister on a stairway and made Gerens look sluggish in comparison.

Brann looked around, suddenly very aware that he was alone. The area in sight was empty, which was good, but the bright light and the sense of danger made him want to shrink against the wall. Even though he knew the guards’ rounds were seldom carried out, still he couldn’t help looking back and forth, expecting at every moment to see armed figures appear. He felt at the loop of rope that Grakk had dropped over his head before he had left him, tucking it into place and patting him on the head with a wink. It was rough, the thickness of a finger, and seemed strong. He hoped it was. He nestled it more securely under his armpits and, just as he did so, he started as he felt the rope pull tight against him.

Grakk’s head popped out of the window to satisfy himself that Brann was ready and, at a nod from the bald head, he felt the rope tighten and lift him from the ground. He started to spin and, alarmed, grabbed the rope with both hands, scrabbling with his feet at the wall to try to keep him facing the surface. His ribs and the wound on his left arm stung, but he managed to get into a rhythm, half-walking and half-bouncing with his feet as he was pulled upwards in rapid lurches. He was concentrating so much on maintaining his balance that the thought of discovery from below was forgotten. One step, then the other, he was jerked upwards. He looked up, and was surprised to see the window only the height of a man above him. He could just make out the sound of soft whispers, and grinned at the thought that he would soon be among his friends.

The whispers stopped. The movement of the rope stopped. Everything seemed to stop. In the silence and stillness, Brann became aware of the soft wind blowing his hair across his eyes, a breeze that would have been welcome at ground level but served here only to remind him how exposed he was. How vulnerable. He was at the mercy of others from above even more than below. Who would think to look up, much less launch any sort of missile almost six storeys upwards with any accuracy? On the other hand, any loosening of the rope above…

He hung, totally dependent on the rope. It was bearing his weight without even the slightest give; it could only be that it was tied off. But why? His mind raced. The whispered voices had stopped abruptly, but there had been no further noise. They must have heard something and be either trying to remain unnoticed or preparing to defend themselves. If it was the latter, it went against his nature not to help them. And in either case, he hated not knowing.

He flinched at the sound of a door crashing open. Shouts burst briefly, then a quiet voice spoke. Brann could not make out the words, but they were shortly followed by the clatter and clang of metal hitting stone: dropped weapons. His stomach knotted. His breath came loud in his ears. He started to haul himself up, hand over hand, his left side searing with pain, the agony overpowered by his urge to reach his friends. The rope creaked as he moved, but softly; he could only hope it was soft enough to merge with the noises of the town beyond. In any case, the consequence of it being heard, grave as it would be, was still preferable to being discovered a short distance below the window and a long drop above the ground.

And in any case, the idea of doing nothing while his friends were in danger had started his muscles moving even before his mind had debated the issue.

He reached the window undiscovered. He forced his heaving breath to be still and eased the last few inches that let his vision clear the sill. And he froze.

His friends stood unarmed, each with a lightly armoured guard on each arm and a blade at their throat; Sophaya closest to the window and just to its right, the rest extending away in a curved line. To the left, regarding them calmly across the room, was a well-dressed man, diminutive in height and almost unhealthily slender, who pulled thoughtfully on a bottom lip that was as thin as his face was pinched and pale, features that merely emphasised the sunken depth of his eyes. He ran the hand through thin dark hair and sighed. ‘But you are all so ordinary! How could you possibly think you could succeed?’

A door beyond him stood open and Philippe, his face wild with fear and marked with a swelling on one cheekbone, was dragged through by a lean guard with hard eyes, unarmoured but wearing a tunic that was black like the tabards of the other guards – in his case with a red stripe down the centre.

The small man smiled. ‘Ah, you thought yourselves so clever, did you not? A man on the inside; a man with a potion.’ He took a goblet from the guard holding Philippe. ‘Thank you, captain.’ He sniffed the dregs curiously. ‘No odour. Instantly dissolved, I believe.’ The captain nodded. ‘Fast acting, too, I hear. Interesting. Most interesting. If any of you have more of this most effective powder on you, I will enjoy investigating it further in due course.’ He looked at them. ‘Yes, effective, though you see my captain standing here before you, most decidedly awake. You see, you thought you knew everything, I am sure, but you did not know me. You did not know that I have no interest in the minor issue of how my captain or anyone else sates their desires as long as they can still serve me as I require. My captain has no need to be secretive from me, and no fear of anything needing to be hidden from me. So when your pretty boy here did not hide well enough his inept attempt to slip powder into a drink, my good captain was able to subdue him and alert me that something must be afoot. The rest was simplicity, waiting to see if someone would come to me, as the boy is incapable of doing anything of any great importance himself. Waiting, moreover, to see who would come, how they would come, why they would come.’ He chuckled with the contentment of a man who is more clever than all around. ‘We have seen the if and the how – and soon we will hear the who and the why.’

Brann’s arms were beginning to shake, but he forced his fingers tight around the rope. Now was not the time to give himself away. Or to fall, for that matter. The rope groaned as his weight rolled slightly to one side. He caught his movement and his breath in the same instant.

But the small man was pacing nonchalantly as he looked at the sullen faces staring at him, his footsteps loud enough to mask any small noise from across the room and outside the window. ‘What, no conversation? Let me start it off, then. What was your purpose? Robbery? Or perhaps murder?’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘No answer?’ He looked at one of the guards holding Sophaya, her eyes defiant and glaring. ‘If these gentlemen remain so rudely unresponsive the next time I ask, please cut her throat. Keep the head unmarked, though, as I have plans for it.’

Gerens’s eyes bulged, and his voice growled. ‘You said she would not be harmed if we gave up our weapons.’

The Duke, as Brann assumed he could only be, smiled indulgently. ‘Of course I did, and she was not harmed, was she? But that was then, and this is now. I have further use for this bargaining tool, do I not? Especially as it proved so effective the first time.’ He pursed his lips in consideration. ‘Maybe we should just slice her soft throat now as a statement of intent…’

Gerens roared and strained at his captors, managing a step forward. The Duke turned again to regard Sophaya, but Grakk’s calm voice dragged his attention away once more.

‘Strangely enough,’ he said, ‘it was actually a quick chat with yourself that brought us here. Perhaps we could dispense with the unnecessary gripping of arms and just pull up a chair.’

The Duke looked with intrigue at the precise speech and cultured tone, then laughed in delight. ‘I think I will keep you till last. But unfortunately, you do not seem willing to give me a sensible answer, so…’ He looked at Sophaya again. ‘Kill her.’

Brann moved.

He yanked at the rope to fling himself forward, all of his senses focused on the scene before him and far from any pain in his wounds. In the instant between his hands leaving the rope and reaching for the inner edge of the windowsill, he felt a coldness settle over him, his eyes hungry for movement that made his choices for him. He pulled at the sill and his legs came up under him, bracing on the ledge. As he launched, he saw the Duke’s eyes widen with the sharp surprise that hits hardest at a man who is convinced he has control, and then he was tumbling to roll on one shoulder. On the way down, his long knife slashed, parting, like thread, the rope as it tensed against the wall sconce it had been tethered to, and as he came out of his roll it sliced just as easily across the back of the knees of the guard lifting his blade to execute Sophaya.

The man screamed as his legs buckled and the girl wheeled, the soldier’s knife in her hand. Almost faster than Brann’s eyes could follow, she had cut across the back of the hand of the man to her right, his fingers spasming and releasing his sword and, as her second movement opened his throat, Brann came to his feet and battered his shoulder into the dying man, knocking him into the next guard along. The guard had let go of Konall and was turning towards them, but now found himself entangled in the arms and slipping in the blood of the body thrown against him. Brann’s hand flicked his axe up from his belt and, with a roll of his wrist and a wild swing, cut the black metal through the dead man’s arm and into the neck of the struggling soldier. It was not a time for finesse.

He wrenched the axe free and blood sprayed into the face of a man poised to stab a short spear at him. He dropped to a crouch, away from the line of the lunge, and thrust his axe forward, hooking the head behind the man’s ankle. Jerking the axe as he stood, the man was upended and he continued the movement to swing the axe over and down to stop with a crunch in the centre of the man’s forehead. It was quicker to draw his sword than drag the axe free, and he spun in a crouch, blade held ready, as he sought the next danger.

He saw carnage. It had been a natural reaction for the guards to turn towards unexpected danger, but it had also been a fatal reaction. As the captives were released, each had instantly reached for the closest weapon, either their own from the floor or whatever they could reach from the belt of the guard.

‘Wait!’ The Duke’s voice cut across the room, and they stood, chests heaving, blood dripping, every guard lying dead. Every guard but one – a sound came from a man curled around his entrails, a low bubbling moan was all that could emerge from the half of his face that was left.

Gerens bent down, and now every guard lay dead. They faced the Duke, and saw the captain beside him, Philippe held in front with a knife at his throat. The captain grinned.

Brann’s hand reached fast behind his neck for the throwing knife he kept strapped at the top of his spine, but Konall grabbed his wrist.

‘Too risky a target for anyone, and I have seen you throw when you have time to think about it.’

He let out his breath, the cold fire of combat fading. The Northern boy was right. Brann’s throwing was atrocious.

He flinched as a flash flickered past him, and the captain screamed in agony, his hand clutching at an eye suddenly gushing blood. Philippe stumbled and ran from him and, as the man swung wildly with his knife, Grakk neatly ducked under the swipe and finished him with a thrust of a sword up under his ribs and into his heart.

With a low growl, Gerens leapt for the Duke, but Grakk was quicker, placing himself in the way. ‘Not just now, young Gerens.’

The boy’s eyes burnt darkly still, but he halted and nodded, looking at the captain’s corpse and then at Philippe. ‘Well, at least that has saved us the bother of stopping in to visit that bastard for you on the way out.’

Philippe smiled weakly, but the relief in his eyes was strong.

The Duke glanced at the door, but saw Konall standing in its way, arms folded and a cold smile on his face.

Without taking his eyes from the Duke, the boy closed the door and, with exaggerated deliberateness, slid home the bolt.

The Duke’s eyes lingered on the broken and bloody bodies of his guards but, rather than fear, his expression was lit by an excited fascination.

Grakk came to stand before him. ‘Now,’ the tribesman said, ‘perhaps we could have that chat we mentioned.’ He looked around the room. ‘Although perhaps it might have been easier to have it when I first suggested it.’

The Duke’s eyes were still alight. ‘But then I would have missed your exhibition of such magnificently efficient brutality.’ He turned his lascivious gaze on Brann. ‘And this one – oh, I could find some wonderful uses for one such as he.’

Brann looked back impassively. He had seen this man’s sort before, baying and slavering in the crowds at the pits of Sagia’s depraved City Below. Such people meant nothing to him.

A noise came from behind them and all spun, weapons in hand. A small girl, aged no more than six years, stood at the bottom of a winding staircase, staring up at the group. Barefoot and dressed in just a simple shift, she looked around the room. With a cry, Sophaya rushed to her, sweeping the girl into her arms. She felt over the small figure quickly. ‘Unharmed, I believe,’ she said over her shoulder.

Brann looked at Grakk. ‘And unmoved by the gore,’ he said quietly.

Grakk nodded. ‘Unhurt physically, perhaps, but…’

Sophaya took the girl to a chair at the far side of the room, sitting to cradle her and speak soothingly to her.

Brann turned to Gerens and Konall. ‘I’ll take a look up there with Grakk.’

‘You will not dare!’ the Duke screamed, fury filling the words. ‘No one goes up there but me. No one!’

Brann looked at the sudden emotion with interest. He pointed at the girl in Sophaya’s arms. ‘She did. And now we will.’ The Duke screamed in rage, his eyes bulging, and Brann looked at Konall and Gerens. ‘You two keep an eye on him. If you have to ensure he stays still and quiet,’ he gave a half-smile, ‘please do it in a way that will still allow him to speak.’

The pair said nothing but turned to stand and stare at the Duke. His ranting continued, and Gerens punched him hard in the face. The man fell silent but still quivered and stared, his anger barely controlled.

Grakk followed Brann up the stairs, and they emerged into a room the same size as the one below. A lavish bed sat against the far wall and a desk strewn with documents lay between them and it, but it was the shelves around that drew their eyes. Jars contained organs and body parts, the former suspiciously human-looking and the latter definitely so, all floating in liquid. A trolley lay in front, the top lined neatly with an assortment of shining blades, saws, pincers, and other instruments that Brann had only seen before in the rooms of the top physicians in Sagia, those who tended the elite, and expensive, gladiators. His eyes moved past the trolley and came to a table of metal and…

His head swam. He felt his knees go from under him. He staggered to one side and retched onto the floor.

A boy – a boy’s body – lay on the table. His face was untouched, revealing that he had been much the same age as the girl downstairs, but his torso had been sliced to allow the skin to be peeled back to either side. Ribs had been clipped away to allow complete access and for the organs to be exposed. Some of those organs had been removed and lay neatly to one side. The rest were still visible.

And the heart was still slowly beating.

‘Oh by all the gods,’ Brann whispered. ‘What evil is this?’

A sheet of notes in neat and precise script lay beside the boy, and as Grakk moved to seek some clue from it, he noticed a small empty vial near the child’s head, and sniffed it briefly. ‘What little consolation there can be is in the fact that he has slept through this.’

Pain constricted Brann’s throat, making his voice hoarse. ‘But when he wakes?’

‘He must not wake.’ Grakk picked up a slender blade, its tip curved, from the trolley and deftly nicked a vein in the small boy’s neck, dark blood swiftly pooling on the table top. ‘He will not wake.’ A single tear ran down his cheek, but the tribesman seemed unaware. ‘The gods will have him now.’ He moved beside Brann and put a hand on his shoulder. ‘You wondered about the gods? This is where we need to believe they are there to care for those such as this poor soul.’

Brann nodded, but felt a fury building in him. He rose and reached for his knife.

Grakk’s hand tightened on his shoulder. ‘I know,’ the man said. ‘I know. But we are here for a purpose. We have seen the monstrosity of our enemy in the past, and for the sake of other children like this, we must not let further examples of the same divert us from our course.’

Brann nodded, and forced his breathing deep and slow. He looked away from the table. He would not look back. He gasped as his eyes lit on two cages, tall as a man’s waist and narrow – in one, a small boy crouched. Brann almost slipped as he rushed to it, but as he drew close he saw his haste was wasted. The eyes were open but unseeing. The hands were missing several fingers, but still grasped the bars with what ability they had possessed. He had been cut and stitched with precision in multiple places, with some wounds having partially healed while others were clearly more recent. Again, a sheet lay alongside – a quick glance revealed a list of dates and notes, but a quick glance was all Brann could bring himself to give it. The body was stiff to the touch, but he still felt at the small neck for a pulse. He had never thought he would find himself glad to find a child to be dead.

Two similar cages sat alongside, both empty. On one, the latch was bent and the door ajar – it seemed most likely to have been the home of the little girl.

Grakk was at the desk, looking through the documents. ‘Look here,’ he said. ‘This is what we seek.’

Brann moved across, averting his eyes from the boy on the table and glad of something to take his attention that did not involve the torture of children.

Grakk indicated piles of paper, one a map and the rest covered with text or diagrams. ‘There is more here than we can peruse at this time.’

Brann shrugged. ‘So we take it all.’ He pulled a sheet from the bed and laid it by the desk, lifting the papers onto it. Grakk nodded and helped him, tying it into a bundle when they had finished. Brann looked back at the bed. ‘To think he slept here, chose to sleep here, in the midst of all of this.’

They couldn’t leave the room quickly enough, and wound their way back down the stair.

The scene was much as they’d left it, except that the Duke had acquired a swollen eye and was clutching one wrist to his chest. Brann stood in front of him, staring, and wondering what happened in the head of such a man that made him capable of such things.

‘You saw my workroom, then?’ the man said brightly, almost proudly. ‘So much has been learnt in that room. So much has been discovered, such advances achieved, such help that will be brought to those who seek to progress the human condition. If you can grasp even a fraction of the enormity of what has been achieved in that room, you will thank your gods for the work wrought by such higher thought.’ His eyes glittered, and he shook with excitement. ‘If you will but permit me to share just some of my findings…’

Brann fought to control himself. ‘Right now, I thank the gods that I am ordinary.’ He looked past the Duke. ‘Gerens, it is time for this man to answer our questions.’

Gerens nodded solemnly. ‘The slow way or the quick way?’

‘To be honest,’ Brann said, ‘I would love the slow way, but we are not blessed with time. Those who knew that something was amiss, I would expect, are all in this room, dead or alive, so we can do what we have to do. But I would rather we were on our way,’ he thought of the scene in the room above, ‘sooner rather than later.’

‘The quick way, then.’

He marched the Duke to the window and pushed him backwards until he was lying on the sill. Grabbing an ankle in each hand, he tipped him until the man was hanging upside down above the drop.

‘He’s gone quite rigid, chief,’ Gerens said. ‘I think he’s a bit frightened.’

Brann was sure he was. ‘Are you sure you can hold on to him? Remember we need information.’

‘He really is very light,’ Gerens reassured him. ‘There’s actually nothing to him.’ To demonstrate, he let go with one hand, then leant out of the window slightly. ‘Now, don’t wriggle. You might break free, don’t you think?’ He reached out and grabbed the free ankle again. ‘There, we go. Don’t want him to get too scared to speak, I suppose.’

‘Good,’ Brann said. ‘Ask him about Loku.’

Gerens leant forward. ‘My friend would like to know if you have encountered a man called Loku recently. Or maybe you know him as Taraloku-Bana?’ There was a muffled sound from outside, and Gerens spoke over his shoulder. ‘He knows him as Loku, and he was indeed here when we thought he was. It appears he is a colleague.’

‘Ask him who he reports to.’

‘My friend would like to know who your boss is in your affairs with Loku.’ He turned his head again to Brann. ‘He says Loku was arranging a meeting across the water with others like them, to report to he who controls them and receive instructions. This dangling man is to meet this boss for the first time at that meeting.’

‘Ask him where Loku is now.’

‘My friend would like to know where that bastard Loku has gone.’ He relayed the message once again to the room. ‘He says there is a camp near here, a day’s ride to the east. He might still be there. Some have already been sent to the next stage of fulfilling their purpose, and he was to assess who would be ready to go next.’

Konall strolled across and looked with interest over the top of Gerens. ‘I must say, this Duke is being fairly eager to help.’

‘Would you not, in that position?’ Brann asked.

Konall frowned. ‘It would be impossible. I am too heavy for Gerens to hold for such a length of time.’ He noticed something and eased partially past Gerens to peer out of the window at an angle. ‘Excuse me,’ he said politely to Gerens.

‘Of course,’ Gerens said, leaning flat on the sill to allow Konall to lean further. A moan came from outside the window.

Konall turned back to the room. ‘Two guards have come round the corner. The fools are chatting enough that they are unlikely to look up here, but the man hanging from Gerens’s hands will be able to see them very soon, and I’m pretty sure he will start shouting.’

Brann looked at the others, and saw that they were looking at him. He considered the options and the situation. ‘We need to shut the Duke up, and we need to divert the attention away from the front door.’

Gerens turned from the window, empty-handed. ‘That’s easy. Anything else?’

The Duke’s wail was cut short by an audible thump, precipitating shouts of alarm.

Brann shrugged. ‘That should do it.’

‘A quicker end than he deserved,’ Konall reflected.

Brann kicked a stool, sending it careering across the room. ‘You don’t know the half of it. Let’s go.’ He looked at Sophaya. ‘Ready?’

She nodded and stood, the waiflike figure still huddled in her arms. Grakk ripped a curtain from its hanging at the opening to the stairs leading upwards, and they wiped the worst of the blood from their faces and hands. They retrieved what weapons were still protruding from the various bodies lying around the room and cleaned them also, sliding them back into their sheaths. Grakk pulled the object from the captain’s eye and wiped it on the curtain, turning it over curiously in his hand. It was a flat piece of metal, shaped into a star with barbed points, and the tribesman looked at Sophaya. ‘An interesting weapon,’ he observed. ‘I have heard of such among some guilds of assassins in the Empire.’

She stroked the child’s hair. ‘You mix with all sorts when you work in certain sections of society in a big city. It pays to develop contacts, especially when you can learn from each other.’

Grakk was still examining the star, weighing it on his hand and turning it on his fingertips.

‘Keep it.’

Grakk smiled. ‘Thank you. You are kind.’

She shrugged. ‘I have several.’

Brann sheathed his axe, eager to organise their exit. ‘For the first few floors, at least, we will try to pass unobtrusively. Or, at least, as unobtrusively as can be managed by a group that looks like us.’ He turned to Philippe. ‘We need someone to lead us down.’

Konall looked at him askance. ‘We just keep going down stairs, surely, until we reach ground level. How much leading does that need?’

‘No,’ Brann said, his eyes still on Philippe, ‘we need someone to look like they are leading us down, at least for as long as we can manage before someone realises that something is wrong. Every step we don’t have to fight for, hastens our departure.’ He put his hand on Philippe’s arm. ‘Can you act a part?’

The young man smiled weakly. ‘I may be useless at drugging someone, but I have spent so many years acting in one way or another that I’m not sure if I can do anything else. What do you want?’

Brann chewed his lip, gathering his thoughts. ‘People in here recognise you. If you are directing us, explaining loudly about things as if we were guests of the Duke and you have been asked to show us out, it would be good. The more you look to draw attention to yourself, the less people think you don’t want them to look closely. They just get irritated and hope you go away quickly. Or at least, I hope they do.’

Sophaya grunted. ‘Only one way to find out. Now can we go? There may not be much to this little one, but she’s not made of feathers.’

Gerens made to reach for the snuggling girl, but she just pressed harder against Sophaya, who shook her head briefly. He nodded in acceptance, but stepped close, loosening a large knife in its sheath. No one would harm either girl while he could still move.

Brann took a deep breath. ‘Yes, we should move, but one more thing, Philippe. Eloise is downstairs. In the guard room.’

His eyes widened. ‘You only thought to tell me this now? Why have we dallied here?’

He made for the door in a rush, but Brann restrained him.

‘I’m sorry, but we came for a purpose and could not leave without it. And to rush without thought would be to rush to death, and we cannot help her if we are lying bleeding on a stairwell.’ He gripped him tighter. ‘Can you do this?’

Philippe stared at him for a moment, before the actor returned to his eyes. He straightened. ‘I can. But we do it now.’

No more words were needed. They followed his abrupt exit. No more words on that matter, but Philippe had already slipped into the overbearing conversation of one who looks to show off their petty importance. ‘If you follow me, I’ll show you the guard room, as the Duke requested of his most trusted servant.’ He turned and said in a low voice. ‘If people think you are going somewhere else inside, they won’t think about you heading outside. Do you think that’s right?’

Brann wasn’t sure it was necessarily so, but nodded with a smile. It did no harm to encourage Philippe, and the main thing was that he kept talking. As Philippe continued his guided tour, each proclamation more strident and pompous than the last, Brann ran over in his mind the layout the young man had described to them. A single winding stairway ran from top to bottom, wide enough for three men abreast and with a landing at each level. Below the Duke’s chambers on the top two floors were the late captain’s rooms, and then the kitchens situated where they could serve those above and below equally as quickly. The next floor down housed storerooms: half for the cooking staff and half for the guards’ equipment, while the level below that held sleeping quarters for guards and servants. At ground level were more sleeping rooms and the main guard room, and below was a cellar with half-a-dozen cells around a central area where prisoners could be questioned in view of those awaiting the same fate.

They passed the captain’s level quickly, Philippe averting his eyes from the interior as they did so, and approached the kitchens. ‘I will show you the guard room as agreed,’ Philippe pronounced even more loudly than before, his words audible over the work of those servants preparing for the next day. ‘But if you care to look into the kitchens on the way past, the Duke said that you would be welcome to do so.’

At the sound of the reference to the Duke, Brann noticed the heads of the servants stare down, every one wishing to avoid being noticed. That was fine, it suited them.

The store level was passed quickly, but, as they approached the upper sleeping quarters, three drowsy guards stumbled into the stairwell, roused by the shouting outside.

‘Quick!’ Philippe yelled, his voice filled with panic and his hands grabbing the first soldier and propelling him down a few steps. ‘There has been a most terrible accident! The Duke! A fall! The garden! Oh my, we must all help, we really must! Please hurry!’

Clearly dreading the consequences of not being on hand to help the Duke in his time of need, the men almost fell in their haste to run down. Brann and the others followed fast – who would question anyone rushing in the company of guardsmen?

They reached the ground level and Philippe cut past the front entrance and flung open a door with clearly no consideration of his own safety. They piled into the guard room behind him with weapons drawn – and stopped.

Alone in the room, Eloise crouched in a corner. She had managed to retrieve a shift from the pile of her clothes on the floor, but had dressed no more, as if she only had the energy for the minimum to cover herself. Her hands were pressed to her lap, where the pale material was stained red, and she turned a face to them that was swollen and cut beyond recognition of the girl who had left them on the street outside. It was her eyes that struck Brann hardest, though. As a child, he had been at a friend’s house when old Rewan, who tended the ailments of villagers and animals alike, arrived to end the misery of a working dog that was too injured to recover. The animal had seemed to know Rewan’s purpose, and Brann now saw the same look in Eloise’s eyes: a cornered fear, a shrinking from the inescapable, a desperation for mercy.

Philippe cried out as he rushed to her. His arms wrapped her into him, and he rocked, singing a soft tune into her ear, a melody Brann could only guess had seen the pair through times both hard and lonely. He looked up at them, his own eyes stricken, his voice a whisper of horror. ‘How could you let her face this? How could you leave a girl to face them?’

Brann couldn’t answer. He was asking himself the same questions.

Grakk knelt beside the pair. ‘It was beyond our power,’ he said softly. ‘All we thought, all she thought, was that she would dally by them at the gate, turn their eyes to her. When they took her inside, when she went with them, what she did – it was bravery on a par with anything I have seen on a battlefield.’ He put a hand on Philippe’s shoulder. ‘She did this that we might help you.’

Philippe looked again around them. ‘Those last words do not exactly make me feel better.’ But the anger left him in a long sigh, leaving abject acceptance in its place. ‘We both knew something like this can happen; does happen. Everyone in our… our line of work knows that. You just have to think it will not happen to you or those you love, or you could not carry on.’ He smiled weakly, humourlessly, grimly. ‘I know, that sounds stupid.’

Brann walked over. ‘Not to a fighting man, it doesn’t.’

Philippe nodded, and drew strength into him with a slow breath. ‘Eloise, my darling, we need to go.’ He leant in close and spoke into her ear, and his words gradually had effect. She unwound her body to stand, leaning on her brother.

‘Yes,’ she said, her tone as flat as her eyes. ‘Go. We must get go. Away from here. Far, far away.’ She looked at him. ‘Take me away.’

Konall lifted a cloak from a hook on the wall and wrapped it around her as she passed, while Gerens took her free arm, supporting her at that side as well.

Brann glanced around the room. His attention had been so caught by Eloise that he hadn’t noticed a large opening in the floor: a stout wooden hatch lying open and allowing him to peer cautiously over the edge. Steps led down and, as Brann moved to a better angle, he could see a wide square room, the central features a slab of a table with metal restraints set into the wooden top stained with blood old and new and, around the sides, barred cells.

Memories stirred at the sight of the cells, and he pushed them away. Approaching footsteps indicated that another room lay beyond his vision, and he held his breath, reaching for the hatch. When the three guards came into his vision, though, they walked across the way, never thinking to look up the stairway. It was the prisoner held between two of them that caught his attention and stayed his hand on the hatch. A young woman, her build athletic and strong, her hair the colour of the summer sun and framing a face golden of hue and heart-shaped, who moved as can only a dancer or a warrior. When pale blue eyes turned to meet his, he knew she was no dancer.

On impulse, he slid the knife from the sheath strapped to his right forearm, and reached down to set it on the step at the extent of his reach. A slight frown creased the space between her eyebrows, then a nod was the last he saw of her as the guards continued their way to a cell. He suspected that his knife would be put to use before long, but whenever it would be, they would be gone by that time. Still, it pleased him that it would be put to use by her.

His intention had been to close the hatch and bolt it to trap any guards below, but instead he rested it back open as he had found it. If events in the cells reached the conclusion he was sensing they would, there would be no guards able to exit in any case.

The others were already out of the guard room and he ran quietly to catch up. They moved as quickly as Eloise could manage, down the steps at the front of the tower and straight for the gate.

Brann looked around. The courtyard was empty – all must be around the rear of the tower, at the Duke’s body. There was certainly enough noise and consternation echoing from that direction. He fixed his eyes on the gate.

Thirty paces. Twenty. Ten.

It was at five paces that two guards ran around the corner of the building. They saw the bedraggled group and veered away from the tower entrance to face them. They stared at each other.

‘Philippe,’ Grakk said from the corner of his mouth. ‘How many guards are there here in total?’

‘At least two dozen, maybe more,’ he said, his voice starting to tremble.

‘We can’t engage these two without them raising the alarm,’ Brann said. ‘And we can’t take on all of them without at least some of us dying.’ He looked at Eloise. ‘And we can’t outrun them.’ The men were coming towards them, shouting across questions. ‘So maybe we need to wrong-foot them.’

He waved his arm frantically, urging the guards to hurry over. ‘Please, hurry! There is someone else hurt. We need to get them to a healer.’

The guards stopped, one with his spear lowered, the other with a sword held warily. They both eyed the four armed men before them. ‘What are you talking about?’ one said.

Brann automatically ran his eyes over them. A spear thrust would come across the attack line of the swordsman, hampering his movement forward. Neither had a shield. The distance could be closed in moments. They were not even wearing helmets, dishevelled hair as if they had just woken all that lay between a blade and a blow to the skull. Their eyes moved nervously…

He paused. The faces seemed familiar. The hair… as if just out of…

They were two of the three men they had run into in the stairwell. They had just been roused from sleep. They knew nothing about Eloise’s arrival at the tower. It opened up a possibility.

‘It’s this young woman,’ he said, pleadingly, indicating the figure hanging between Philippe and Gerens. ‘She seems to have been brought in for the Duke. We don’t know what happened, but she is in a bad way. She needs help.’

The guards looked at each other, and one nodded at the other. ‘Well, it’s not as if the Duke has any need of her now.’ The spear lowered and the sword was sheathed.

The older of the two, a bearded man, smiled slightly. ‘Look, friend, I have no idea who you are, or what the Duke wanted of this girl, though I could come up with a few suggestions. But he’s not in a position to want anything any more and some would say that’s not a bad thing. Probably best for all if we open the gate to check the street outside and you just go about your business. Better for us, better for you and,’ he looked at Eloise, ‘best of all for her. Take her as far from this tower as you can.’

Brann relaxed. ‘Thank you.’

The man shrugged, unbolting the gate and swinging one half inwards. ‘Sometimes straightforward is as complicated as life needs to get.’

They all breathed a little easier.

Then Eloise lifted her head. She did not see the faces. She had not heard the words. But she saw the tabards, and the Duke’s insignia. She shrieked and hurled herself at the nearest guard, Gerens’s knife in hand. Before he could react, she had sliced across his throat, blood spraying beneath a face frozen forever in disbelief. She launched herself at the other, who had stumbled back in shock, his spear coming up in defensive reflex. The point took her in the chest but her momentum took them both down, the spear ripped from his hands in the fall. Amid screams and snarls that turned to coughs, she stabbed three, four five times into his chest and throat and horrified face. She stabbed for the few short moments that she had left to live, then lay still in the shared mess of their blood.

Grakk and Brann reached her just as she stilled, Gerens and Konall casting around for danger with weapons drawn. Sophaya kept the child’s head turned from the bloodbath. Grakk bent over Eloise and checked the obvious, then shook his head to confirm it. Philippe was on his knees, hands held in supplication, eyes struggling with comprehension, every part of his face straining, a silent scream tearing itself from his soul.

‘So what now?’ Konall said.

Brann took a last look at the scene, as Konall hauled Philippe to his feet.

‘Now we run.’

Chapter 3

When he had ruled, the world came to the Emperor. Now it seemed that some things had relaxed.

Arrogance that relaxes standards will build complacency from indolence just as easily as it builds dismissiveness from pomposity. Either forms weakness, and weakness offers less resistance to pressure.

A cracked wall will never again be truly strong, no matter the patches. In some cases, a wall will, weakened, still serve its purpose, for the pressures it will face are less than even the reduced strength of the wall.

But when the wall faces strong and repeated pressure, even the smallest cracks will spread and widen and fracture and bring the wall to rubble. When even the first small cracks appear, one remedy alone will suffice: tear down the wall and build one anew; the only question being when, not if. But the new wall must be completed before the old is destroyed, for even a weakened wall is better than none.

Such is the wall of an Emperor’s power.

He had known it, had maintained an Empire on it. Set the minimum standard at the highest level, and tolerate no relaxation.

Those who ruled now did not know it. They governed for their pleasure, believing they governed efficiently, never knowing that they benefited from the decades that had come before. Place the running of the Empire before all, and the pleasure will come in its wake; rise each morning with the first thought of your own contentment, and the source of the contentment will be pulverised by inattention.

The wall will crack.

A guard’s rap at his door heralded the entry of the current incumbent of the throne. He slumped in his chair and fixed a bland ghost of a smile to his lips a moment before the Emperor strode in.

He mumbled pleasant inanities in response to the eloquent and almost-believable claims of successes and assertions of wise rule that followed the cursory enquiry after his well-being and were intended, he was sure, to bolster the man’s own self-belief as much as the ostensible purpose to reassure a venerated elderly relative that all was well with the world.

As soon as the door closed, renewed determination drew his posture straight once more. He moved to his desk and drew up rapid notes in handwriting that few could read and in a cypher that none but he could understand. To a reader, they were the scratchings of deranged senility; in reality, they formed architectural plans.

Plans for a new wall.

A wall already under construction.

The cracks were growing.

****

They ran.

Joceline saw them coming and started to ask, presumably about Eloise, but the question died on her lips at the sight of the stricken Philippe. Konall’s handful of tunic propelled him and horror and disbelief filled his eyes. She glanced at the small girl, now in Gerens’s arms, stronger as they were than those of Sophaya, but postponed any curiosity in favour of turning and lifting her skirts to allow her to match their pace, leading them through the winding streets with an assurance that defied the darkness of the hour.

Not for the first time, Brann tumbled on cobbles. Ignoring the pain, he glanced enviously at Gerens, the only one of them not to have fallen – a fortunate fact given his burden. Moonlight allowed the other boy to see his look.

‘The slopes around my home were rock, not nice smooth grass. Rock teaches you early on how to keep your balance… and that you want to learn it.’

Streets blurred into one twisting, slipping, frantic journey. At first, their footsteps were the only sound but, before long, bells began to ring their message of alarm.

Joceline half turned, gasping at them. ‘If we can stay ahead of their messengers, we should reach the gate you asked for before the various barracks near the walls know exactly why they are being roused.’

‘Good.’ Brann was panting as much as she was. ‘As long as the messengers don’t use horses, we should have enough of a start to stay ahead of the communication, and they won’t know that they are to look for us, or in fact search at all.’

Joceline stopped at the edge of an open area that lay between the last of the houses and the town walls, a killing ground perfect for archers should an enemy breach the defences. She pointed at the base of the wall, where they could just make out the darker colour of a door.

‘There,’ she said. ‘It bolts on this side, as does the door on the far side of the wall. As you wanted, the nearest gates in either direction are distant enough that you should be able to get enough of a start on any pursuers to see you away.’

Brann nodded. ‘And the size of the tunnel? And doorways?’

‘Small enough that nothing bigger than a man can fit through. Dogs, yes, but no horses.’

Sophaya frowned. ‘Not much use as a gate. Not many options.’

‘It will be a sally port, young lady,’ Grakk said. ‘Far enough from the gates that defenders may issue from it unseen to take unawares besiegers at those gates, or even sneak a messenger away to request help from elsewhere.’

‘Right, so they can’t chase us on horseback. Good,’ Gerens said.

Shouts broke out in the distance to their left, spreading quickly through the streets behind them. The pattern was repeated shortly after from the right.

‘It seems they can send messages on horseback, however. Maybe time to leave?’

Sophaya lifted the little girl from Gerens, and set her before Joceline. ‘This is Antoinette. Do you think you could manage to find her parents?’

The woman nodded, but the girl looked up with eyes that were as dead as her voice proved to be. ‘My mummy and daddy are dead. They shouted at the soldiers when they took us away.’

A tear started in Sophaya’s eye, but Joceline merely crouched and took the girl’s hands in hers. ‘Well, I will just have to take care of you, won’t I? We will find you work to occupy you and train you in skills you never imagined you could learn.’

Brann was shocked. ‘She is no more than six years! You don’t mean to bring her up as a…?’

Joceline’s glare cut him off. ‘The seamstress across from the inn has need of an apprentice.’

He was glad the darkness would hide his blush. ‘Good. Of course. We should go.’ He looked at her. ‘Thank you, for all of this.’

She shrugged. ‘Just tell me this: does the Duke still govern?’

‘Not in this world.’

‘Then the thanks are mine to give to you.’

Shouts drew closer. Without a word or a look back, Joceline took Antoinette by the hand and ran for the shadows. Brann looked at Philippe, who looked after the receding pair, almost out of sight already, and then turned back. ‘There is nothing here for me now but sorrow,’ he said. ‘If you will allow me, I would like—’

Brann’s answer was to grab his tunic and drag him with him as, without further hesitation, he bolted for the wall. The others, impatient to leave, needed no encouragement to run with them.

To expect to reach the cover of the door without being seen would have been pushing optimism too far, but they almost made it. A score of paces from their target, a group of men rounded a distant corner. The open ground and full moon gave the guards a view that was sufficient to show several figures behaving suspiciously, and to men already enthused by the chase, anything questionable became prey. The men began to shout and run in the same instant, although one lingered long enough to sound three blasts on a horn. Answering horns sent back single notes from at least four locations.

Brann thumped into the wall, his chest heaving, at the same time as the others. Gerens paused for nothing, hurling his shoulder at the door without missing a stride. The wood shattered inwards and the boy tumbled through, already back on his feet by the time the others piled in.

‘It may have been open, you know,’ Konall pointed out.

‘It definitely is now,’ Gerens said.

They hurried into the short corridor through the wall, barely more than a few hands of space to either side of their shoulders.

‘I dare you to do the same to the next door,’ Konall said.

Gerens grunted. ‘I don’t mind getting wet. Better than waiting to be stuck with a sword.’

Light penetrated no more than a few yards behind them into the passage, and they felt their way at a trot through the black, feet slipping on the damp stone of the floor. Brann strained his eyes for the slightest hint of light ahead but still discovered the door with his hands rather than his eyes. The others piled up behind him, then backed off slightly as his fingers found three large bolts and slid them free. He yanked at a handle, and old hinges groaned as he heaved it open at the second attempt. The moon was shining from the far side of the town, but outside was lighter than the tunnel and some little vision returned to them, the water of the moat a deeper black than what lay beyond. He knelt and felt in the darkness.

‘There should be a plank lying at the side of the tunnel,’ he called urgently. ‘Run it across the moat and we are away.’

‘I have it,’ came Grakk’s voice. ‘But it will not be our bridge. Wet floors and wood are excellent for rot, but not for strength.’

Brann cursed. There was no option. ‘Gerens, you will get your swim after all.’

The shouts behind were nearing the broken door behind them. Brann launched himself blindly into the moat, hitting the water and hearing the muffled splashes of the others doing likewise before he regained the surface. The distinctive taste in his mouth was expected – and welcome, under the circumstances – but had obviously come as a surprise to Konall.

‘What in all the hells have we jumped into?’ the boy spluttered.

Brann grinned. ‘Just don’t drink any of it.’ At least it meant that the others were waiting for them.

Grakk called to him. Brann saw his dark silhouette crouched at the doorway and was handed the bundle of documents. He took them in one hand while his other kept his head above the water, then watched in alarm as the gangly figure leapt wildly past him in the general direction of the others.

‘That was Grakk!’ he yelled above the sound of the splash. ‘Remember he can’t swim.’

‘Got him, chief,’ came Gerens’s voice. ‘What are you doing back there?’

‘I’m on my way.’ An explanation seemed irrelevant. ‘Just get him to the other side quickly.’

He heard the water thrash as they struck out and followed in their wake, swimming one-handed as fast as he could while carefully keeping the bundle of documents clear of the water. He made the far side as figures, lit by a torch, started to appear at the doorway. Cries from the guards increased in excitement as the splashing of Brann and his companions being helped from the water by strong arms from above told them how close their quarry was. A scrape of wood on stone was followed by a curse.

‘Sounds like they have discovered the rot in the wood,’ Brann said to Cannick as the man pulled him to the bank of the moat with an ease that belied his age, while Hakon and Breta could be heard helping the others. ‘Is all prepared?’ He received a nod. ‘The horses?’

‘It was too noticeable from the wall to have them waiting here. They’ll be on their way soon.’

‘They are not here?’ There was panic in Philippe’s voice, the alarm increasing as the splashes of men jumping into the water started to be heard in rapid and unceasing order. ‘It doesn’t matter how far we are from the nearest gate, if we are on foot they will ride us down with ease.’

Konall swept his wet hair from his face and reached to tie it behind his head, as he always did as a precursor to a fight. ‘He has a point, if a little dramatically expressed. And we are fairly outnumbered by those already on their way.’

A soldier started to drag himself from the moat, and Gerens casually swatted him with his sword, looking across the water as the baying of hounds could now be heard from the tunnel. ‘And then there is that development, too.’

Philippe grabbed Cannick by the arm. ‘So when will the horses come? When?’

Cannick gently disengaged his grip. ‘Just as soon as they see the fire.’

‘Fire?’ Philippe cast about wildly. ‘What fire?’

Cannick lifted a lamp that was shuttered to send light only towards the empty land outside the town, and smashed it onto a towering pile of dry, brittle branches loaded into the back of the cart, now empty of its barrels of oil. The dry wood flared up in seconds.

‘Ah,’ said Konall. ‘That fire.’

‘Not quite,’ Cannick said, as Breta and Hakon leapt forward to run the blazing cart at the moat and tip it headlong at the water. ‘This fire.’

Fire arose from the water as if by magic. Swimmers screamed as much in shock as agony, and the men at the doorway, lit by the spreading flames, shrank back against those behind. The light gave them vision at their own side of the moat as well, revealing two large barrels lying at the side of the water, their tops staved in and contents gone.

Gerens grinned with cold humour. ‘The oil.’

Brann nodded, remembering the trickle of oil in the rear yard of the inn the night before, when the idea had slipped into his head. He was glad it had worked; the still water of the moat letting the oil stay concentrated at that spot for the short time since it would have been poured there.

Two arrows flickered at the corner of his vision and thunked into the ground not far from Grakk.

The tribesman looked at him then raised his eyebrows. ‘Shall we move?’

‘In the gods’ names yes,’ Brann gasped, aghast at his complacency. The flames that kept men and beasts at the foot of the wall from following also made their little group perfect targets for archers at the top of it. In any case, he had no idea how long the fire on the water would last.

They had little to gather and less to entice them to delay, and were running into the darkness in seconds. As soon as they had stumbled beyond the range of an arrow, tripping and bumping each other in blindness, Konall stopped them.

‘Squeeze your eyes shut, and count to ten,’ he said. ‘Your eyes still want to see in the firelight. So remind them what dark looks like.’

When they opened their eyes, the way was clear to them, even with the moon behind clouds. Brann looked at him approvingly, and Konall shrugged.

‘Old hunting trick from where the winter nights would show you what real darkness is.’

They ran again, but this time faster.

Every thirty paces, Grakk gave a shrill whistle.

Sophaya moved alongside Brann. ‘If he is trying to attract those who bring the horses, would he not be better advised to use light?’

‘The source of light is easier to pinpoint over distance, such as from the town gates,’ Brann panted. ‘The direction of a sound is easier to find up close than from far away, so we give less away to our enemies pursuing than we do to our friends seeking us.’

She grunted, accepting his reasoning. He wondered, at first, at a girl of obvious intelligence not seeing this for herself, but remembered her background. When you spend your life, and make your living, in the confines of tightly packed buildings and narrow streets, the accepted wisdom is that light can be concealed by walls or even a cloak, but sound carries greater distances and around corners, and is the greater danger. Different circumstances, different lessons.

Brann’s breath was loud in his head, but the growing sound of hoof beats was louder. They stopped, and Grakk whistled again, giving final confirmation. Despite reason telling him that only their own companions could have reached them so quickly, still Brann’s heart quickened and his sword found its way into his hand as he watched the dark shapes gallop towards them.

Then a rider vaulted from his saddle, and Marlo’s cheerful voice greeted them.

Brann relaxed, finding his horse and swinging onto its back, gratefully feeling the familiar power of the beast beneath him. Marlo was beside him, and he pointed at the dark shape of Philippe. ‘We have brought an extra passenger for you.’

‘Why me?’

‘You are light enough that the horse will not mind as much taking the extra load.’

‘Mongoose is lighter.’

‘You are skinnier.’

‘Sophaya is skinnier.’

‘You want to suggest to Gerens that another man rides with Sophaya?’

A short pause ended with a flash of white teeth. ‘Philippe, you may ride with me.’

Hakon guffawed. ‘You might want to watch how you put that!’

Breta slapped the back of his head. ‘Restrain your ribald comments in the presence of ladies, pig man.’ She hawked and spat as hoof-kicked dust swirled and caught at her throat. ‘Men!’

Hakon looked at her, but thought better of responding.

They rode as quickly as rows of vines would allow, until they reached a road.

Brann wheeled his horse. ‘Konall? Hakon? East.’

Without hesitation, both pointed to where the road led to their left. He saw Philippe’s quizzical look.

‘Born as seafarers. Under the sun or the stars, they always know.’

The clouds had cleared and the moon lit the road to allow a gallop to be risked until they had crested three successive rises, after which Brann slowed them to a loping canter, being more concerned with ensuring the horses could last the pace as long as possible. He moved alongside Marlo’s horse, looking at Philippe.

‘You know the town,’ he called above the noise of the hooves. ‘Will he be mourned?’ Thoughts of the Duke clearly brought back the reality of his sister’s death and, as Philippe crumpled into himself, regret at having to seek information clenched his gut. Brann was on the verge of leaving him to his grief when the young man pulled himself tall in the saddle once more, drawing strength into himself with a long slow breath. Brann’s remorse turned to a surge of emotion as he watched courage gather in Philippe’s eyes.

‘They will rejoice.’ His voice was flat, controlled. ‘They will rejoice, but they will do so behind the walls of their houses, for no one under the Duke’s rule was safe from betrayal, and it takes time for trust to grow and feelings to be expressed openly.’

‘And the loyalty of the soldiers?’

Philippe shrugged, having to grab at Marlo’s waist to regain his hold as his hands moved with his shoulders. ‘They are loyal to the job. Like every other job, some are in it for the money, some like to feel important; some are good men, others are bastards. And like everyone in that town, all were in fear of even the appearance of disobedience.’

‘So what I’m wondering is, how much will they be inclined to follow us?’ He paused as he thought of Philippe’s background. ‘I’m sorry, how could I expect you to know? You were not one of them.’

The level gaze never left him. ‘But I do know people. And I know that when he,’ his head nodded at Gerens, ‘let loose his grip, he not only rid the town and these lands of a madman, but in one heartbeat he also created uncertainty. No one stood ready to step into his place, because he trusted no one to repress the ambition he would have held in their place. And the Captain of the Guard was also killed. They will not follow after they know the truth, and dawn is more than time enough for that.’

Brann bit on his lip as he considered it. Once the officers realised fully what had caused the alarm and that their leader was no more, and once those holding positions of power in the town – and those who would wish to do so – discovered that the Duke was dead, all concern would focus on the question of who would assume control, and any interest in the small group of unknown people would disappear along with the shapes into the dark of the surrounding countryside. Philippe was right. ‘Thank you.’

The young man turned his face forward once more. Brann saw the glisten of tears start to shine in the moonlight, and was struck by a memory of a voice of feigned coarseness in a dark alley. Remember me like this, my lover. He fished in his coin pouch, fingers finding the button Eloise had handed him immediately before walking into the danger of the Duke’s keep. Leaning across, he pressed it into Philippe’s hand.

The young man stared at the button in silence, the tip of his thumb rubbing gently across it as if to confirm it was real. An object of such simplicity, but holding an enormity of sentiment. His chest constricted sharply as a violent intake of breath was prevented from becoming a sob only by a jaw clenched with fierce determination. His fingers closed tight over the button, and eyes drenched in conflicting emotions turned to meet Brann’s. He nodded, once.

Brann steered his horse away, allowing him his sorrow.

They continued at a canter until light started to creep from above the horizon ahead. Brann slowed them to a trot, and then a walk and, when the sun was fully in sight, Mongoose spotted a brook not far from the road.

As the horses drank, they broke out dried meat and bread, noticing their hunger now that they had stopped. Brann untied the bag of documents and pulled out the map, spreading it on the ground before him. He called Cannick over.

‘What have you there?’ the old warrior said.

‘A present from the Duke.’ Brann grinned. ‘I suppose it’s now a bequest.’

Cannick smiled back. ‘Very good of him. Is it any help?’

‘That’s what I want to know. You know this area – what do you think?’

The older man groaned slightly as he knelt beside Brann. ‘I don’t know these lands intimately, but enough to understand this easily enough. There is Belleville, and we are here.’ He indicated a spot. ‘See where the river runs in close to the road, just after the road bends sharply?’

Brann traced a finger across eastwards to a symbol marked onto the map in fresher ink than the main design. ‘So this must be the camp the Duke said Loku headed for.’ He frowned. ‘There are three more of those symbols in the area around the town. I don’t like the look of that.’

‘There is much of this whole affair I don’t like the look of,’ Cannick growled. ‘The sooner we have a chat with that bastard Loku, like we did with the Duke, the better.’

‘You are right.’ He called to the others and wrapped the map up once more with care. ‘At least we know it is a single road to reach it, with just a fork near the camp.’

Cannick nodded. ‘If I am picturing the distances right, we should reach it shortly after noon.’

As it transpired, they reached the fork late morning, though it proved to be less of a fork in the road than it had appeared when drawn on the map, and more a narrow offshoot of a track, overgrown with the bushes, thick and thorny of branch, that grew abundantly on both sides of the road.

Konall rode close, his hunter’s eye drawing his curiosity. ‘Someone has worked hard to make this look unused and unwelcoming. Look.’ He leant to the side and cautiously grabbed the end of one branch, taking care to avoid the large curved thorns. As he nudged his horse to walk it away, the entire bush moved with him, opening the start of the track to allow easy passage.

‘Very good, young lord,’ said Grakk, and dismounted to lead his horse with care between the narrow path between reaching branches.

They followed him up a short but steep slope, eyeing the wicked barbs of the thorns and imagining easily the damage just one could cause if ripping the skin of a passer-by, whether human or animal.

On cresting the rise, they saw a dramatic transformation. Where the track was unable to be seen from the road, it had been cleared to allow easy movement, and was clearly well used.

Despite the caution that potential proximity brings, they moved with as much haste as they could manage. Well used meant the chance of meeting one of those well-users was high, and uncomfortable. The way ahead started to lead upwards again, though not as steeply as the stretch from the road. Brann saw a rocky outcrop a couple of bowshots to the right, and whistled softly to attract Grakk’s attention. He pointed that way, and the man nodded, realising, as Brann had, that they did not know what lay over the crest of this small hill.

Mongoose pulled up alongside him. ‘Don’t fancy knocking on the front door, then? Pity, you lot had all the fun back at the town.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Brann reassured her. ‘I’m not ruling out any fun here too.’

They led their horses into the outcrop, great angular rocks jutting at angles but with space to pass easily between.

Brann looked around. ‘We are far enough in to be hidden. Marlo, watch the horses while we have a look.’

For once, Marlo’s face was missing his smile. ‘Why am I always the one to stay behind?’

‘You have a way with the horses, and it is important to keep them quiet.’ He didn’t want to say that the real reason was his reluctance to place the boy in any greater danger than was ever necessary, but relented at the disappointment written across Marlo’s face. ‘Fine. Gerens, show Philippe how to keep the horses quiet but ready for a quick departure if necessary.’ He looked at Marlo. ‘Grumpy, you come with us.’ The smile returned.

They crept through the rocks, reaching the highest point of the small hill. They crawled the last few yards, rough ground scraping beneath them but otherwise silent. The whole group, bar the two at the horses, eased their heads in unison to look at what lay beyond.

Brann gasped slightly. The sight that greeted him was familiar, similar in so many ways to the village he had seen in the mountains of Konall’s homeland. The squalor, the hovels, the impalement stakes that were almost like religious focal points and, most of all, the people, with their air of belligerence and degradation and, no doubt, the same dead eyes. Similar in so many ways, but different in one: here there were no women or children, leaving the scene both more tense and less horrific. For Brann, worse than any other aspect of the previous village had been the acceptance of casual brutality and torture as commonplace and routine by children who knew no other way of life.

They slid away from the edge and moved back to the horses before anyone spoke. Brann saw Konall, Hakon, Cannick, Grakk and Gerens, who had also travelled south with Einarr from Halveka, look at each other, the same grimness in each gaze.

Breta growled. ‘What in the darkest hells was that?’

‘We have seen such before,’ Brann said, ‘in the North.’

‘Ach, shit.’ Gerens spat in disgust. ‘When that fool dangling from the window mentioned a camp, rather than town or village, I had suspected such but hoped for different.’

Brann realised that Breta, Mongoose, Sophaya, Marlo and Philippe were looking at him intently. He shook his head at the memories that filled it. ‘In the mountains of Halveka, near the home town of Konall and Hakon, a camp had been secretly established by Loku, and populated by the worst in society: those who glorify in inflicting pain and torture, who feast on suffering; the scum of every society brought together and with their basest and cruellest features encouraged and fed.’ He looked at Hakon and Gerens, his eyes flitting from them to Grakk. ‘Some of us were taken there and subjected to their degradation.’

Hakon stood from where he had been scratching meaninglessly in the dirt with a dagger, knuckles white where he gripped the hilt. ‘And two of us went there voluntarily to bring the three imprisoned in it to safety.’ He looked at Brann and Konall. ‘Some things are not forgotten.’ He sheathed the knife and slipped an axe from his belt. ‘I also do not forget that we gave those bastards a beating, and we can do the same to their cousins here.’

‘Easy, big man.’ Cannick put a hand on Hakon’s shoulder. ‘No use in all of them and half of us getting killed.’

Brann nodded, thoughts competing as he weighed what he knew with what might be possible. ‘If Loku is still here—’

‘We net two fish on one hook,’ Konall said. ‘So we go in fast and hit them before they realise they are under attack.’ Like Hakon, his weapon was drawn.

Brann held up a hand. ‘You Northmen will be the death of me! Literally.’

Grakk said: ‘What if Loku is killed in the confusion? Or is not there at all and we have wasted time when we could be on his trail?’

Brann paced, options being dismissed or compared. ‘Indeed.’

‘Still, if the bastard dies,’ Hakon was not deterred, ‘how is that in any way a bad thing?’

Konall sighed. ‘They are right. His death will be a thing of great joy, but our vengeance, and the service such an occurrence will bring to the world in general, is secondary. First, we must determine the greater threat posed by the conspiracy he serves, whether it aims to sow discord, topple rulers or anything in between, and he must be able to talk to lead us further on that path.’

‘The young lord is correct, my friend,’ Grakk said, patting Hakon on his broad back. ‘We need to catch him, to learn what we can of this enterprise, of his superiors. If we know there is activity in the Green Islands, in Halveka and now here also, this is even more widespread than we envisaged. We must find Loku, and learn what he knows, whatever it takes to do both.’

Hakon grumbled and kicked a stone. ‘Can we at least kill some of his little friends down there?’

‘Actually,’ Brann said, ‘it would be a good idea, I think.’ Hakon brightened immediately, and there were signs of enthusiasm from several of the others. ‘We need to know if Loku is there or not, and quickly, for if he is not we can’t afford any further distance growing between us. But we cannot live with any sort of conscience if we leave this nest of death behind us.’

Cannick walked across. ‘So, what are you thinking?’

Brann saw every pair of eyes upon him and pushed aside the discomfort of wondering why his opinion should be decisive to let his thoughts gather. ‘Well…’ He spoke slowly as the leaves grew on the branches of the plan that was forming in his head. ‘We cannot kill them all without sustaining casualties ourselves, and in the most practical sense, that would slow us down further. But we can disperse them. And such people tend to cowardice, so remove the bravado of the crowd and all they have is the life they lived before this. A cut-throat thief is not something I would wish on any community, but they exist already in every town and city, and better that than the slaughter and terror these are gathered to wreak, whether the murder of innocents we heard of in the South Island or the attempt to wipe out Konall’s entire ruling family in Halveka.’ He looked at Hakon. ‘And we can kill a few of them in the process.’

‘Fine,’ said Konall. ‘Kill a few, disperse the others, that’s the idea. So how?’

‘I always find,’ Brann smiled, his confidence in his ideas growing as they flowed, ‘that panic is an excellent weapon. Especially amongst those who enjoy the suffering of others but fear their own. So we make them think they are doomed. Sharp weapons and confusion should do the trick.’ He pointed at Marlo and Philippe. ‘You two take half the horses each: one of you to this side of the hill at the path into the settlement, and the other slightly further along this hill. Keep below the skyline and, at our signal, run them round in circles to make as much dust as you can. Feel free to shout a lot, too.’

‘Sounds fun,’ grinned Marlo. ‘But what will the signal be?’

‘Screams,’ said Brann.

The rest of them were in place in minutes. Creeping close to the edge of the camp was not difficult when danger was not anticipated and standards were slovenly at best. He looked in both directions. They were in pairs – Gerens protectively beside him, Cannick with Grakk, Konall with Hakon, and Breta with Mongoose – spread wide to give the impression of a large attack. He glanced back where elements of the rocky outcrop broke out from the slope that led down towards the camp, and saw Sophaya with the vantage point she needed, placing arrows ready on the top of a slab.

He looked again into the camp. The sun was high and the air thick with heat, making for torpor and quiet; few moved among the basic huts of brittle-dry branches stacked into squat cones. Insects buzzed and birds called from on high. It would seem tranquil, if they didn’t know what sort of people the inhabitants were. And then there was the tall slender stake not more than a score of paces from where he lay, a corpse with less than half its tissue remaining a third of the way from the top and a scattering of well-fed carrion birds close by. As they watched, a thin man clumsily speared one of the birds, pinning it to the ground while another threw rocks at the writhing creature until it eventually lay still.

‘That’s the way to do it,’ the rock man snickered. ‘Feed it till it trusts you, then it won’t suspect when you come looking for dinner. Beats hunting any day.’

The first man jerked his spear free and jabbed it in the direction of his companion. ‘Don’t be thinking you get equal picks. It was my spear that did the business. It was me that pulled the bits of meat from her,’ the spear tip jerked in the direction of the impaled corpse, ‘to give to the bird. I get first pickings.’

‘All right, all right.’ The man held his hands up in acquiescence, and the other laid his spear close by his side as he knelt over the dead bird.

But Brann noticed that a rock was still in the standing man’s hand, and that the first man never turned his back on him, feeling with his hands as he hacked chunks from the body, his eyes never dropping. With a squashed mass of dripping meat and feathers cradled in his arms and his spear awkwardly gripped in one hand, he scuttled towards the far side of the camp. As soon as he moved away, the other man seized the bird by the neck and made off with what remained, looking from one side to the other all the way as though expecting another to be attracted to his prize.

‘No time like the present,’ Brann muttered to Gerens once the pair were out of sight. At least there was none of the long waiting before action – time that bred nerves and ate at confidence.

Winding a rag across his face to cover nose and mouth, he stood and walked calmly past the first hut, finding a broad-shouldered man crouched over a cooking pot. The man’s eyes widened and mouth opened to shout as he saw Brann, but in looking up he also left his throat exposed, and the keen edge of the black-bladed sword cut almost completely through his neck. Brann lifted a burning branch from the fire beneath the pot, and Gerens did likewise. He touched the flame to the man’s hut, the dry wood accepting the fire with fervour, and the pair split left and right, walking behind the next hovels in line and setting each one alight as they went.

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