BLOODCHILD
Anna Stephens

Copyright

HarperVoyager

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2019

Copyright © Anna Smith 2019

Map copyright © Sophie E. Tallis 2017

Cover illustrations © Shutterstock.com

Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019

Anna Stephens asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of 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, down-loaded, 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.

Source ISBN: 978008215996

Ebook Edition © July 2019 ISBN: 9780008216016

Version: 2019-07-22

Dedication

For Mark.

For everything.

Forever.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Map

Rillirin

Mace

Crys

Corvus

Tara

The Blessed One

Dom

Crys

Rillirin

Tara

Mace

The Blessed One

Crys

Corvus

Tara

Rillirin

Dom

Crys

The Blessed One

Mace

Crys

Rillirin

Tara

Corvus

Mace

The Blessed One

Rillirin

Dom

Corvus

Rillirin

The Blessed One

Tara

Mace

Crys

Dom

The Blessed One

Tara

Crys

Tara

Mace

Corvus

Rillirin

Tara

Rillirin

The Blessed One

Corvus

Tara

Crys

Rillirin

Dom

Crys

Mace

Dom

Crys

Corvus

Dom

Crys

Mace

Corvus

Rillirin

Mace

Epilogue: Rillirin

Acknowledgments

By Anna Stephens

About the Publisher

Map

RILLIRIN

Sixth moon, first year of the reign of King Corvus

Fort Four, South Rank forts, Western Plain, Krike border

When the fort’s warning bell began to toll, Rillirin knew they were all dead. Rilporin had fallen and the Mireces – and Corvus – were coming. Her luck had run out and she was going to end up back in her brother’s hands. It was over, all the running, all the fighting and freedom, the moments of joy. Her hands went to her belly and she stiffened her spine and found her courage. No. It might be over, but it wasn’t over without a fight.

She snatched her spear from its place by the door and sprinted from the infirmary where Gilda was having the wound in her shoulder checked, out into the drill yard. Soldiers were spilling from the barracks and donning armour.

‘What’s happening?’ she demanded.

‘Scouts are back. Enemy force – big one – heading our way, but from the east not the north.’

‘Listrans? Reinforcements?’ someone muttered. ‘Please, Dancer, please let it be reinforcements.’

‘Tresh, maybe,’ someone else said and was shushed. Officers were shouting the Rank into line, so she slipped free and ran into the corner watchtower and up to the allure before anyone could stop her. On the eastern wall stood Colonel Thatcher, commander of Fort Four, staring through his distance-viewer at the approaching dust cloud. Four was the fort closest to whatever was coming for them; Four was where the battle would begin.

Thatcher took his time and Rillirin was about to scream when he lowered the distance-viewer. ‘Rilporians. Palace Rank in the lead, what looks like Personal Guards at the rear. Civilians in the centre.’ He turned to a captain. ‘Sadler, flag it over.’

The captain complied, whirling red and yellow flags through a complex series of gestures that was repeated on the wall of Fort Three and on to Two and then headquarters. The bell began ringing the all-clear even as the news travelled and Rillirin leant forward and put her forehead against the stone of the parapet, breathing deep to channel the adrenaline flooding her. Rilporians. Did that mean they’d won? The thought stood her up again so fast she stumbled. Below, the drill yard erupted into excited speculation quickly curbed by the junior officers in charge.

Fort One sent a heavy mounted patrol out to greet the advancing troops, General Hadir himself leading them. Within minutes word came back to open the gates and prepare the infirmaries and kitchens for a mass influx.

Rillirin could make out the army now, or what was left of it, marching in weary time. A mass of civilians in the middle just as Thatcher had said, and more Rankers behind to protect them. And to one side, tramping through the dry grass of the Western Plain, a loose, flowing group in boiled leather and chainmail. The Wolves. Her breath caught in her throat. They were here. Dalli and Lim and Isbet and Ash and all the rest. They were here.

She watched until the formation split, groups peeling off to each fort with the Rankers shepherding the civilians in, watchful to the last. As soon as she knew the Wolves were coming to Fort Four she ran back down into the drill yard. Her heart was yammering in her chest, her head swimming with fear and excitement.

Dom.

Would he be here too, among his people or maybe in the Rank’s custody for his … actions? It would be hard to see him in chains, of course, but once everyone understood what had happened, that the things he’d done hadn’t been his fault, not really, it would be different. It might take even Gilda a while to forgive him, but she would, all the Wolves would. They had to.

Her thoughts stuttered to a halt as the gates opened and people began streaming in. Civilians, hundreds of them rushing with glad relief into the nearly empty fort that had once contained the South Rank’s Fifth Thousand, soldiers who’d marched to Rilporin to aid the king and now, maybe, if they were lucky, marched back. A babble of voices rose from soldiers and refugees alike as Rank physicians and any soldier with healing experience hastened towards the newcomers, and a sergeant with a voice that could crack stone directed them to form up in lines before half a dozen hastily assembled tables and chairs to give names and be allocated quarters.

Rillirin hopped from foot to foot, desperately trying to see over and through the press to the Wolves who’d been trailing the group. And then …

‘Dalli! Dalli!’

The short woman turned when Rillirin screamed her name. Her eyes nearly popped out of her head. ‘Rillirin? Fuck the gods, girl, get over here!’

Rillirin sprinted around the edge of the throng, shoving between people with muttered apologies, and flung herself bodily into Dalli’s arms where she burst into tears. ‘You’re alive, you’re alive,’ she sobbed.

‘You’re alive,’ Dalli countered and there was a wobble in her voice Rillirin had never heard before. She pulled back and took in Dalli’s face: sunburnt, freckled, green eyes rimmed with red and sitting in shadows so deep they look bruised. ‘How the bloody fuck are you still alive? You fell off the ship.’

‘Long boring story,’ Rillirin said, wiping her nose on her sleeve, other hand still clutching Dalli in case the Wolf suddenly vanished. ‘I made it to shore, found Gilda in the Dancer’s Fingers and—’

‘Gilda?’

‘Gods, yes, Dalli, Gilda’s alive! She’s here, wounded … but, but recovering; she’s fine. In the infirmary. I can take you there, you and Lim and Ash and Dom.’ Her voice got quieter on the last name, with a rise at the end that made it almost a question, something of a plea.

Dalli’s face went colder than Rillirin had ever seen it, colder even than the mask she donned for battle. That face would not entertain forgiveness or weakness. That face knew nothing of light. ‘We don’t know where Dom is. Nor Ash. They disappeared when Rilporin fell. Lim is dead.’

Now Rillirin did let go. She stumbled back, hands to her mouth and nausea coiling up her throat. ‘Rilporin fell? You mean we lost?’ Her words were too loud and carried to the nearest South Rankers. They’d have found out soon enough, but still; they needed the official version, not some overheard panicked gossip.

Dalli’s expression closed even further. ‘Yes, we lost, and yes, Lim died. So did thousands of others. Doesn’t mean it’s over though. Come, take me to Gilda. She should hear the fate of her sons – blood, adopted and fostered – from me.’ She licked cracked lips. ‘The Wolves voted me their chief.’

Rillirin blinked away tears and managed a shaky smile. ‘I’m pleased for you, Dalli, truly. You deserve it. I … The infirmary’s that way. I’m sure you can find it.’

‘No,’ Dalli said, flint in her voice. ‘You need to hear it all.’

I don’t want to hear it all. I don’t want to hear any of it! But when Dalli began walking in the direction Rillirin had indicated, she followed, and then slid ahead of her and led her to the priestess.

She was unable to take any pleasure in their reunion, knowing some of what was coming next. Was Lim’s death somehow Dom’s fault, too, as Gilda’s wound was, as Rilporin’s betrayal was? She rubbed her belly, beginning to round outwards now and obvious when she was undressed. When Dalli broke the embrace, Rillirin plucked at her shirt to make sure it wasn’t tight over her stomach. She already knew she didn’t want to tell the other woman about the babe, and who its father was. Not now, not ever, maybe, and if that meant hiding it for however long the Wolves were in the forts, so be it.

Gilda sat stiffly in her chair, back unbending despite her age and the toll the wound had taken on her. Her eyes were dry and her hands folded tightly in her lap; she didn’t invite contact, didn’t want emotion. ‘How many?’

Dalli gave a single nod, as if to say, If this is how you want it, this is how I’ll tell it. ‘Too many. Including Lim.’ Her voice cracked and she cleared her throat; she didn’t look away even though agony crossed the old priestess’s face, there and gone like summer rain. ‘In battle against the Mireces, defending his people, defending the city. It … was Corvus himself, Gilda. But it was quick, and I’m not just saying that.’

Gilda flicked a finger for her to continue, not looking at Rillirin even though her gasp at mention of her brother must have been audible to them both. Dalli’s eyes filled with tears but her voice was steady now. ‘Strike to the neck and then … decapitation. He had the charm he’d made in memory of Sarilla. Kept it with him the whole time. She’ll have welcomed him into the Light.’

‘His father too,’ Gilda murmured and Rillirin flinched. Gilda had lost so many and still she kept going, bearing the weight of pain without complaint. She nodded once, with the air of someone excising a wound. ‘Who else?’

‘Dom was—’

‘Dom is a Darksoul who betrayed his people and his gods. He tried to kill me; he failed. Who else?’

‘He’s your son!’ Rillirin burst out, unable to contain herself any longer. ‘You might all hate him, you might think that what he did was of his own free will, but I don’t. I know he was forced. I know it. And I want to know where he is even if you don’t.’

Dalli rose from her seat, gaze fixed on Rillirin’s hands curled protectively across her belly. Rillirin blushed and let them drop to her sides. ‘He put a child in you?’ She whirled to the priestess. ‘You have to do something, Gilda! Crys is the Fox God – yes, I know how that sounds but it’s true – and Dom betrayed him to Corvus. He tortured him on the Mireces’ orders. Cut him open, beat him, ripped out his fingernails for all to see. Rankers saw it happen; they saw him do it! Whatever abomination he’s put in her can’t be allowed to live. He’s brought all of us to the brink of destruction and I don’t care if he did kill the Dark Lady afterwards, I won’t allow some Blood-infected babe to come into this world and push us over the edge! End the pregnancy or I will.’

None of what she said made sense, none of it. Dom torturing Crys? Torture? Killing the Dark Lady? The new Wolf chief was still shouting but her face, pale with fright and fury, vanished into a sea of buzzing black dots, her words drowned beneath waves of roaring.

Rillirin retched and stumbled, lurched against the table and fell back from Dalli’s seeking hands, unable to take a full breath through the tightness in her throat.

She pointed a shaking finger at Gilda. ‘You said … you said it was innocent; the babe is innocent. I don’t … You stay away from me. Both of you stay away!’ Her head was too light, her limbs heavy and not under her control. She took two steps backwards on legs wobbling worse than a newborn fawn’s, and fainted.

MACE

Sixth moon, first year of the reign of King Corvus

South Rank headquarters, Western Plain, Krike border

‘General Hadir, your hospitality is gratefully received,’ Mace said, wincing at the formality of the words when what he wanted to do was hug the wiry old soldier until his ribs creaked. Still might, once his people were settled.

‘Commander Koridam, whatever you need,’ Hadir said. ‘I don’t mind admitting that when you appeared I thought you were the enemy and we were all dead. Can’t tell you my relief when we spotted your uniforms. You’ll have my quarters, of course. How many staff are with you?’

Mace hacked a cough from a dry throat before answering. ‘Me, Chief Dalli of the Wolves and a handful of valiant captains who’ll bed down in the barracks as normal.’

Hadir blinked. ‘That’s it?’

Mace coughed again and the general belatedly handed him a cup from his desk. His office was small and neat, much like its owner, and Mace felt like a ragged beggar in its midst.

‘That’s it. My father is dead, as is Colonel Yarrow. Colonel Edris has gone east to Listre with a small company to tell Tresh he is now our king and to raise an army to take back his throne and country. While he’s only distantly related and I don’t believe he’s ever even visited Rilpor, he’s legitimate at least and the best we’ve got. The rest of my officers and army are captured or presumed dead.’ The water did nothing to prevent his voice hoarsening with the last words.

‘Gods,’ Hadir murmured. ‘My condolences, sir. Do you know the number you bring with you?’

Screams rang in Mace’s ears. So many losses. ‘Almost two thousand Rankers and Wolves who need rest and healing, though the badly wounded were left behind or died on the journey. Nearly four thousand civilians. I know rationing will be a problem, but I wasn’t leaving them to the Mireces.’

Hadir just nodded, a crease between his eyebrows as he no doubt calculated what they had in stores against the number of mouths they’d be feeding.

‘We got on to the Tears and made it look as if we were sailing for Listre, then sent the boats on and doubled back, through the great forest. Colonel Dorcas and Major Vaunt had another, slightly smaller, group and were going to storm the King Gate and join us. They never showed up.’

There was a long silence and Mace got the sense Hadir was giving him time to collect himself. He made the most of it, closing his eyes and leaning back in the chair, feeling some of the tension run out of his shoulders for the first time since they’d fled. No, since the whole godsdamn mess of a war had started.

‘We’ll hold a full council at dusk, General,’ he said eventually, focusing on Hadir again. ‘All your staff and those among my people who have taken on such responsibility in the last weeks. In the meantime, here’s the quick and dirty version. Let the whole Rank know – we’re a long way past keeping secrets from the men who’ll be doing the fighting.’

Hadir nodded, refilled their cups with water, and began to take notes.

Mace hadn’t slept; he hadn’t even closed his eyes, waiting for the uproar that would signal the remains of the South Rank learning what had happened in Rilporin. What he had allowed to happen.

It hadn’t come. Oh, there’d been noise and disappointment and the bravado of men saying what would have happened if they’d been there, but those men had been stared at by Mace’s surviving soldiers, just stared at, all the horror and carnage they’d been involved in bleeding from their eyes, and the bravado had dried up. Mace had been prepared to break up brawls; this was much more chilling. And far more effective.

Still, the sense of failure was acute, even days after the abandonment of Rilporin. Now he sat in stiff silence while the council room filled up, absurdly grateful that Dalli had taken the seat next to him and given his knee a surreptitious squeeze beneath the table. It took him a moment to recognise Gilda and what-was-her-name, Rillirin, Corvus’s sister, and a moment more to wonder why they were sitting as far from Dalli as they could get. One look at the tightness around his lover’s mouth and he decided not to ask.

‘Thank you all for coming. For those of you who marched with me, I hope you find some ease behind the South Rank’s walls. And officers of the South Rank, let me be frank: the Wolves and civilians in this council are people I trust, people who co-ordinated and led the evacuation with me. They may not hold high office, but they have as much right to be here as you do. I know you will treat them as you would any officer. The royal physician, Hallos, travelled with us, but declined my offer to attend this council in preference to treating those who still bear the wounds of the siege. Though he is not here, I consider him a member of my staff.

‘As for high priestess Gilda and King Corvus’s sister, Rillirin, I am glad to see you both still live, and am most keen to learn what has befallen you since last we met.’ Gilda was tired and haunted, made no attempt to hide it. ‘Your son Chief Lim was a great man, high priestess, and he led his people with honour and fortitude. I grieve with you for his loss.’

‘Thank you, Commander, that is most kind. Especially as we both know how intractable he could be. But I take your words to heart.’

Hadir tapped the table with his forefinger. ‘Commander Koridam, it will be as you say. These people have seen more of war and bloodshed than many of my own; they will be treated accordingly. And if I may, this is Colonel Jarl of Fort Two, Colonel Osric of Three, and Thatcher of Four. We thought it best that this first council include the full staff so that there is no confusion.’

Mace nodded at them in turn. ‘A pleasure to meet you all. Let me begin by thanking you for your hospitality. We bring numbers these forts were never designed to hold, and coexisting is not going to be easy. Both my soldiers and the civilians need time and rest and food to recover from the siege and the journey here. Not to put too fine a point on it, General, but you and your Rank are all that stands between Rilpor and disaster for the next few weeks while the rest of us recuperate and formulate a country-wide offensive to end the Mireces threat once and for all.’

Hadir gave a single sharp nod. Mace put both his hands on the table. ‘Let me be clear: this is not over, not by a long way. We mauled them, and they mauled us, yes. Our king and former Commander of the Ranks are dead, and many, if not most, of our senior officers, but they lost the Dark Lady Herself.’ Just don’t ask me how I know or who did the killing – or why.

‘The claim is incredible, if you will allow me to say so, Commander,’ Hadir said. ‘We are all faithful followers of the Gods of Light, but to suggest one of the Red Gods is dead …’

‘Dom did it. The Wolf calestar. Forgive me for speaking out of turn, I know I wasn’t there but I’ve spoken to some of the witnesses, sirs. Dom allowed himself to be captured by the Mireces and – and he fed them certain information in order to become trusted by Corvus and the Blessed One, and then there are rumours that he killed Rivil in a duel to the death. Later on, when the Dark Lady appeared in Rilporin, he killed Her too. Well, stabbed Her so the Fox God could kill Her.’

All eyes turned to Rillirin and she flushed under their scrutiny but raised her chin, defiant. The story wasn’t hers to tell and she’d put a spin on it that didn’t sit easy with Mace, but they were certainly the facts as he understood them.

‘Aye, maybe he did kill Rivil, and that’s a job well done, but why was the Dark Lady there in the first place?’ Dalli demanded, shoving to her feet and knocking her chair over. ‘Because your precious Dom was torturing Crys! Torture, on the Mireces’ orders. Don’t try and make him out to be the hero of this tale. He did nothing but betray us at every turn and cause the deaths of thousands of people. He turned to Blood and you say we should thank him for it!’

Rillirin stood too, shaking off Gilda’s restraining hand. ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she started and Dalli’s eyes bulged.

‘I don’t know what I’m talking about?’ she raged. ‘You said yourself you weren’t even there! Well, I was there and I saw what happened. You think you know Dom because you fucked him, because you’re carrying his poisonous seed? You don’t know the first thing about him, about any of us. You were a Mireces slave for ten years, your brother is their godsdamned king – of course you’ll forgive Dom for turning Mireces himself, it justifies your own weakness, your own treason! Maybe we should be asking about your faith instead of allowing you to sit here in council with us.’

‘Enough.’ Mace slammed both fists into the table hard enough to rattle the cups and cut off whatever Rillirin had been about to scream. ‘Sit down or get out.’ Dalli shot her a triumphant look. ‘Both of you.’ She gaped at Mace and her expression turned murderous; he stared her out and, slowly enough to promise that this wasn’t over, she retrieved her chair and sat. Gilda hauled on Rillirin’s arm and dragged her back into her own seat.

‘General, Colonels, forgive me. The wounds from the siege are still raw for many of us. But let me reiterate – this is a war council. We confine ourselves to the facts and to the plan for victory. If you want to argue allegiances, do it elsewhere. My own thoughts on Dom Templeson’s actions are mixed, but no one can deny that without his aid, the Dark Lady would not have been destroyed. We cannot change his past betrayals and I do not expect that last action of his to make those of you who were there forgive him; I certainly haven’t. But he is not here and arguably he is no longer important. What is important is what we do next.’

The silence was thick with suspicion and burgeoning embarrassment. Mace found Dalli’s leg beneath the table; she moved it deliberately from under his hand.

‘The … ladies do bring up a valid point,’ Colonel Thatcher said. ‘Would someone explain this information about the Fox God and how it relates to Major Tailorson again, please?’ Rillirin and Dalli glared at each other some more. ‘And what the high priestess thinks of it all, perhaps, as the authority on such matters?’

‘Captain Kennett here may be best placed to answer that,’ Mace said and pointed. Kennett flushed under the scrutiny and sat up a little straighter. ‘Tell the council what you know, Captain.’

‘Yes, Commander. Kennett, Palace Rank, sirs. I served alongside Captain Crys Tailorson as he was then before the war, and again during the siege when he was promoted to major. Great leader, sirs, talented and brave. He had command of the southern wall. He found his, ah—’ – Kennett broke off and licked his lips, shot a desperate glance at Mace who kept his face perfectly neutral – ‘—his friend dead, pinned up to a door in a deliberate provocation by the Lord Galtas Morellis, he suspected, who he’d had some sort of feud with and who had infiltrated the city. Morellis was Prince Rivil’s co-conspirator.’

‘Slimy, one-eyed bastard,’ Jarl muttered. ‘Wouldn’t be the first soldier he’s provoked.’

‘Anyway, he found his friend and, well, I mean I was there, but it’s hard to explain. He started shouting about doing whatever was needed to bring Ash back from the dead, screaming at the Dancer for allowing him to die and then … well, he broke all the glass in the district and cracked the paving stones beneath his feet. There was a sort of silver light that shone out of him, brighter than sunlight, and then Ash wasn’t dead any more and Crys – Major Tailorson, that is – was the Fox God.’

Kennett broke off and wiped sweat from his upper lip. His face bore the expression of a man who believes he’s made a terrible mistake but is determined to see it through to the bitter end. The silence was pregnant with scepticism.

‘I was there, too,’ Dalli said, backing him up; Mace let out a silent huff of relief. ‘We thought you’d prefer to hear it first from a Ranker, but I was there and everything the captain has said is true. I found Ash and I know a corpse when I see one. He was dead and then he wasn’t and Crys did it. He did other things too, after that, during the siege. Held the breach almost single-handed through the night, rallied troops on the verge of breaking. Killed the Dark Lady after Dom wounded Her.’ Her voice was level again and her thigh bumped Mace’s in what might have been a silent apology. ‘Fought Gosfath, too. Crys is the Fox God come to aid us.’

There was a snort of something like derision from Osric. ‘And where is this so-called god now?’ he asked.

Unfortunately, that’s a good question.

‘We don’t know,’ Mace admitted. ‘He vanished during the retreat.’

‘The Fox God lives, and lives inside Crys.’ Gilda’s tone held all the calm assurance of a woman who’d spent most of her life being the voice of authority among powerful people. ‘I felt the god’s awakening even from here. He will return when we need Him.’

‘How convenient,’ Osric muttered, though not quietly enough.

‘You have something to say?’ Dalli snapped, her temper fraying again. ‘Because while you were sitting here with your cock in your hand, the rest of us were fighting and dying. Why don’t—’

‘Enough, Chief,’ Mace said, and the use of her new title was just enough to bring her down again. Gods, he loved her fire, but sometimes he could throttle her. ‘My father ordered the South’s three Thousands to remain here and that decision was the right one.’

Jarl cleared his throat. ‘The enemy will be consolidating its hold not just on Rilporin but the whole country, and as it stands we don’t have enough soldiers to break that grip. What are our next steps?’

Mace shot him a grateful look. ‘You know that Colonel Edris has gone to Listre to recruit King Tresh and an army; we hope and expect to hear from him in a matter of weeks. Until then, we need to infiltrate the major towns and gather intel on the enemy’s movements and intentions. With luck, the Mireces don’t know that we doubled back and will believe us to be in Listre, but keep sending out scouts to watch the approaches as you have been. If our presence does go unnoticed, then when we get word that Tresh is coming at the head of an army, we can pour out of here like ants and catch the bastards in a pincer, end them once and for all.’

‘And the Mireces’ numbers?’ asked Colonel Jarl.

‘No definitive idea,’ Mace said. ‘It was hand to hand in the streets for the last part of the siege. Before that, it looked as if they had six or so thousand, maybe more. More than us.’ He took a deep breath. ‘We need more troops and although I have confidence in Edris reaching King Tresh and raising an army, I’m not willing to risk the country and its inhabitants on anything less than absolute certainty. As such, I intend to send emissaries to the Warlord of Krike and negotiate a deal for their aid. It is my hope that Tresh will forgive my actions, but the survival of Rilpor is more important than lines on a map. With that in mind, I plan on offering the Krikites—’

‘Forgive my interruption, Commander,’ General Hadir said, ‘but that’s not an option. Commander Koridam, that is your father, Commander Durdil Koridam, sir, at the time he sent orders for our two Thousands to reinforce Rilporin, he also asked me to explore the potential for aid from Krike. The Warlord was … less than forthcoming.’

‘He said he looked forward to our forces wiping each other out so the Krikites could expand north into Rilpor,’ Jarl added in an acid tone.

‘If they wouldn’t agree to supply us with troops when we were, ah, winning, Commander, I think it’s unlikely they will now we have suffered a reverse,’ Hadir added in an apologetic tone.

Suffered a reverse. At least he’s phrasing my crushing defeat tactfully.

‘That is not news I was hoping to hear, gentlemen. And there’s no way we can go back to them with an offer – say, half the Western Plain – in return for aid?’

‘The Warlord and his witch, the Seer-Mother, threatened to kill any envoys they came across, regardless of whether they carried the flag of parley, Commander. Once a decision is made in Krike, it’s made.’

‘Shit,’ Mace said. ‘So we wait for Listre and pray King Tresh is eager to claim his kingdom.’

‘Train the civilians,’ Colonel Thatcher said. All eyes turned to him. ‘I’m a commoner, sir, rose through the ranks to where I am now. Always dreamt of being a soldier. These civilians we’ve got, they’ve been through a siege, they’ve seen death and destruction and been unable to prevent it. Put weapons in their hands now, get commoners like me training them, and you’ll see their spines. Not just a chance to fight back, but the ability, too? We need forces – these might be all we get. Best to start working with them now.’

‘Women too,’ Dalli said before anyone else could speak. ‘I’m chief of my people and we know the importance of recruiting warriors whatever their gender. There’ll be women amongst this lot who spent every day of that siege waiting to be raped and killed, by their own as well as the enemy. It’s what war does. Tell them they can protect themselves and they’ll jump at the chance. I’ve spoken to dozens myself on the journey here. Give them the chance, Commander. They won’t let you down.’

‘I agree,’ he said. ‘We’re not just fighting for our lives; we’re fighting for our way of life, for our children and their children. We’re fighting for freedom and the Light. I won’t deny training and weapons to anyone who wants to stand at my side.’

‘You had that woman captain, didn’t you?’ Osric muttered.

‘Major Carter, yes,’ Mace said in a bland tone. ‘Your point?’ It appeared Osric didn’t have a point. ‘Right. General Hadir, I want your rested three Thousands on patrol. I want them scouting Rilporin to see what Corvus is up to and visiting Yew Cove and Pine Lock, Shingle too if the bridge over the Gil is intact. Maybe even Sailtown if the roads are clear of Mireces and you’ve men who’ll risk crossing hostile territory. Let the civilians see you’re alive and you haven’t given up hope or given up on them. Tell them aid is coming, but don’t specify from where. Tell them to stay alive. And for the love of the Dancer, buy as many supplies as you can or we’ll all starve.

‘But’ – Mace raised a finger to stress his point – ‘no one – and I mean not a single Ranker – is to confirm the presence of anyone from Rilporin within these forts. The longer Corvus believes us to be in Listre, the more likely he is to leave us alone and let us plan our next move. If he knows we’re here … well, let’s just say I for one have had enough of being besieged.’

‘And we’re sure he thinks you’re in Listre, are we?’ Jarl asked.

‘No,’ Mace said, ‘but let’s not hand definitive proof to him on a platter, eh? Meanwhile, let it be known across the forts that we’re taking volunteers for a militia and that it’s open to women. We’ll start training them in a week. Until then, they rest and they eat. We all do – with our safety in your hands.’

‘Understood, sir,’ Hadir said. ‘All right, gentlemen, let’s show Commander Koridam what the South Rank is made of.’

CRYS

Seventh moon, first year of the reign of King Corvus

Green Ridge, Southern Krike

Two out of the three of them woke screaming – again.

By the time Crys flailed upright out of the nightmare, sweat sticking his shirt to his back, Ash was stoking up the fire and the calestar was huddled by it, gaunt and rocking. Dom’s nightmares were a product of him killing the Dark Lady. Crys’s were the result of Dom nearly killing him.

‘Morning,’ Crys croaked, scrubbing sweat from his face and reaching for the waterskin. Ash grabbed his hand, grazed a kiss across the knuckles. Neither of them looked at Dom. Despite the Fox God’s insistence that he should accompany them, Crys’s skin crawled every time the Wolf came near.

It will fade.

Crys grunted and drank. Weeks of running and hiding from Mireces and their own people to get over the border into Krike hadn’t improved his mood much, but at least now they were here and safe. Unless the Krikites decided to kill them. An archer, a god and a one-armed madman walk into Krike … Worst joke ever.

They picked through the remains of the previous night’s meal, slung weapons and blankets scavenged from a burning Rilporin over their shoulders, and began to walk. Dom was silent. Dom was always silent and that was just how Crys liked it. He and Ash walked a few steps apart from him, unwilling to forgive – and unable to forget – what he’d done. Everything he’d done.

Not all the choices were his. Not all the betrayals were willing.

And not everything he did to me was felt by you, Foxy, Crys countered. But I felt it. All of it. I looked into his eyes and saw joy.

I looked into his soul and saw despair, the Fox God said. Crys told himself he didn’t care.

‘So, this Warlord,’ Ash said, picking up the threads of the conversation they’d been having for the last few days, perhaps in response to the faraway look Crys got whenever the Trickster within spoke to him. ‘Rules all of Krike?’

‘Sort of. He’s the military and secular arm of the government. They have a seer – Seer-Mother or Seer-Father, depending on who’s elected – who leads the priesthood and arbitrates those disputes that can’t be settled by local priests. When I served in the South Rank, the Warlord was Brid Fox-dream and the seer was a woman.’

‘Fox?’ Ash asked.

‘No relation,’ Crys said and grinned, the change of subject blowing away the last tendrils of memory and nightmare. ‘They’re quite particular about it, though. They have some ritual, performed by the priesthood once a year, I believe, when they take children of a certain age on some sort of spiritual journey and they are confronted with a … creature that they’re particularly attuned to.’

‘Ridiculous,’ Ash snorted. ‘Mine would be a majestic wolf, of course, with a silver pelt and noble aspect.’

‘Flea-bitten badger, more like,’ Crys teased him. ‘But maybe we’ll get to find out when we meet her.’

‘Riders,’ Dom said and pointed.

Ash’s hand went to his bow and Crys gripped the axe he’d taken from Rilporin. Not a favoured weapon, but all he had. Dom just cradled the stump of his arm – hand severed by the same axe – and watched them come. The Fox God rumbled wariness but not danger.

The small band cantered up and encircled them, spears pointing down at their chests. Ash twitched again but then Crys was stepping forward. ‘Greetings, warriors. May the Fox God shine His light upon you and the Dancer bless you with plenty.’ He dropped his axe into the grass and raised both hands, shirt sleeves falling back to expose the scars on his forearms. ‘You have heard of the war in Rilpor, the invasion by the Mireces and their Red Gods? We’ve come to see if you will fight alongside us – fight for your gods – to repel the heathens? May we speak with your clan chief?’

‘I am Cutta Frog-dream,’ a woman said. ‘I am war leader of Green Ridge and clan chief. We know of your troubles, Rilporian, but they trouble us not. We have already answered your emissaries and promised to shed the blood of any more who came.’

‘Well, that’s awkward,’ Ash muttered. ‘This is no normal emissary,’ he shouted and nearly took out Crys’s eye with his pointing finger. ‘This is the Fox God Himself, the Great Trickster in a mortal’s flesh. He fought – and killed – the Dark Lady of the Mireces! He brought me back from the dead! He healed thousands of wounded soldiers and civilians! You owe him your allegiance.’

Crys waited for the laughter followed by the spears. Neither came.

‘The Two-Eyed Man,’ someone whispered. ‘The old tales …’

‘You make a bold claim for your friend, Wolf,’ the war leader said. ‘Yes, we know your clan by your look. A bold claim and one that will see you all dead if it is untrue. You think us savages and wild, our beliefs childlike, but you are wrong. If you think to trick us, it will be the last thought you ever have.’

‘Thanks for that, Ash,’ Crys said as the Krikites turned their horses and clicked them into motion back the way they’d come, the three men in their midst.

‘May as well start as we mean to go on,’ Ash replied with a tight smile. ‘You never said this would be easy, after all. But I’d quite like to live, if it’s all the same to you.’

‘Wouldn’t we all,’ Crys muttered. ‘Come on then, Foxy. No pressure.’

It wasn’t exactly a private audience with the war leader and her priests, but the Fox God didn’t seem to mind. Crys stood on the green at the centre of the town, where a single finger of rock twice his height had been erected. Something about its outline, its presence black against the sky, called to him. Before anyone could speak – and it looked as if the whole town had been summoned to bear witness – he found himself drifting across the grass towards it, goats and chickens ambling from his path. Inside him, sharp teeth grinned with anticipation.

‘This is where you come to soul-dream with your priests,’ he said, his voice lifting across the green.

‘It was,’ Cutta Frog-dream replied. Crys frowned. ‘Now all soul-dreams are performed at Seer’s Tor, our capital, by the Seer-Mother herself.’

‘You don’t dream without her?’ Crys called. ‘Why not?’

‘It is not done any more,’ the war leader replied. ‘And how do you know of our magic?’

‘Because I am the Two-Eyed Man,’ he said and the claim spoken aloud caused a susurrus of disbelief and outrage. None of them believed him, not yet anyway. But they would. They had to.

They will.

Up close, the surface had been carved with whorls and spirals and sinuous connecting lines that dizzied the eye and drew it upwards. Lightheaded, heart speeding, Crys placed both palms against the carvings. The hair on his forearms stood up as if he was in the centre of an electrical storm. He’d moved before anyone could question him or tell him what to do, and over the rushing in his ears he just made out the muttering and shifting of the crowd. Part of him wondered if he was committing sacrilege, but the stone and its patterns didn’t care and neither did the Trickster.

Some of the carvings called to him and he traced them with his fingertips, aware of the tiny trails of silver light he left in their grooves as he made his way around the rock, touching here and there, wonder and rightness and homecoming and duty and the Fox God expanding until he could feel fur brushing the inside of his skin.

‘Two-Eyed Man,’ someone shouted and he ignored it, ignored all but the carvings and the guiding instinct within.

‘This is home,’ he whispered. ‘This is us.’

When the pattern within the pattern was done, Crys stepped back. The middle of the stone glowed, the carvings bright as starlight in winter. The air hummed. Ash had already knelt and bowed his head and Crys opened his mouth to tell him to get up, silly bollocks, and stop embarrassing them both. The Fox God stopped the words.

‘Two-Eyed Man,’ Cutta shouted. ‘Our legends tell of you. The teachings of our old priests talk of your appearance and how you will lead us.’

‘To death and beyond,’ Crys muttered, though none heard him. ‘I do not lead you,’ he shouted back. ‘I do not seek to take command, but the Gods of Light need you. I need you. If Rilpor falls, the Mireces will come for you next. Your faith and your way of life will be forbidden. Krike will drown in its people’s blood unless we stop them in Rilpor. Unless you help me stop them.’

The war leader walked forward into the empty space between them. The stone at Crys’s back was still humming, as though a million sleeping bees fanned their wings as they dreamt inside it. ‘Is this magic? Blood magic?’ she asked quietly, loosening the knife on her belt.

‘This is me,’ the Fox God said and she took a step back, awe and fear chasing across her features. ‘This is the fate of Gilgoras and the part you may play in it.’

‘May?’

The Fox God spread His hands. ‘I do not command.’

‘You killed the Dark Lady?’ she asked. A tiny frog was tattooed in front of her left ear.

‘I drank Her and destroyed Her,’ the Fox God replied. ‘But She seeks a way back and Her followers aid Her. If they succeed all will turn to Blood and madness. While I can stop the Dark Lady again, I cannot stop Her forces alone.’

‘You are not alone, Two-Eyed Man,’ Cutta Frog-dream said, and knelt at his feet. ‘Green Ridge is with you and together we will convince all Krike, including the Warlord.’

That was easier than expected, Foxy.

There was a rustle of amusement from within. Don’t get used to it.

CORVUS

Seventh moon, first year of the reign of King Corvus

Throne room, the palace, Rilporin, Wheat Lands

‘The thing about control that you Rilporians have never quite understood is that if you don’t believe in it, neither will those you rule.’

Corvus examined the nobleman kneeling on the marble before his improvised throne, the original now a charred heap of wood and gold leaf. ‘Take us, for example, and them.’ He pointed at the fresh corpses. ‘I have control over you, because I have proved beyond doubt that if you disobey me you will die. As such, our relationship is established and both of us can be content within it – me as owner, you as slave. Oh, don’t look so horrified. You’re alive, aren’t you, still in possession of your limbs, your tongue, your eyes and your cock? So you have to serve me instead of others serving you. You’ll get used to it. And when you place your feet upon the Dark Path, you’ll be freed and can buy slaves of your own. The sooner you understand that, the sooner we can all get along.’

Lord Silais shifted, clearly unused to the discomfort of kneeling on cold stone.

This is the breed of man who ruled this country? Corvus allowed a sneer to twist his mouth. No wonder Rivil was weak.

‘Your Majesty, I am a child of Light. I will never walk the Dark Path – but that does not mean I cannot be of assistance to you. Advise you,’ he added quickly. ‘There are many things you will encounter as you consolidate your rule. Rebellions, laws, heirs to the throne who may seek to seduce loyalty away from you.’

Corvus looked at Valan, his second in command, and rolled his eyes. ‘I know about Tresh in his little castle in Listre,’ he said. ‘You’re beginning to bore me, Slave Silais.’ He grinned as the man twitched again – it really was too much fun.

The former noble met his gaze with an expression of earnest surprise. ‘Oh no, Your Majesty, there are many more heirs than just Tresh. They’re like rats, Sire – kill one and another rears its head. It’s a shame so much of the palace burnt, really. All the records of the full line of the Evendoom dynasty were in the royal library.’

Corvus’s humour vanished. ‘Let me guess – you know who these heirs are and you’re bartering your freedom in return for the knowledge?’

Silais’s smile was silky-smooth. ‘It appears we can assist each other, does it not?’ he asked, straightening a little, feeling he was on firmer ground.

‘It does,’ Corvus said and jerked his head. Valan stepped down from the dais and held out his hand to help the lord up. Silais nodded his thanks and was on his feet before he realised Valan had ducked behind him, snaking his arm around beneath his chin and grasping his ear firmly. Valan tucked his elbow and pulled Silais’s head into his chest, stretched his ear out further, and sawed it off with his knife.

Silais was screaming like a bloody woman by the time it was done, legs treadling and hands slapping uselessly at Valan’s constricting arm. Corvus wandered down from his throne and bent to look into his face, still tucked lovingly against Valan’s chest.

‘Control,’ he whispered into the bloody hole where his ear used to be. ‘I have it, and you don’t. And you’re going to tell me the names and locations of Rastoth’s heirs, aren’t you, my lord Earless? Or Valan here will show you just what an artist he can be with that knife.’

Silais tried to nod, snot bubbling from his nose. ‘Y-yes, Your Majesty. Anything. I’ll tell you anything.’

Corvus patted his head. ‘Not anything,’ he clarified, straightening up with a wink at Valan. ‘Everything.’

The problem, of course, despite his fine words to the contrary, was that Corvus didn’t have control. Or not as much as he’d have liked, anyway.

Oh, Rilporin was mostly peaceful as the slaves adjusted to their new way of life and any uprisings were put down with the usual brutal efficiency, but the rest of the country was kindling awaiting a flame. And Mace fucking Koridam, General of the West Rank, was running around out there somewhere striking sparks.

Best guesses put him in Listre, but in the chaotic aftermath of the fall of Rilporin and the days afterwards with Mireces and East Rankers struggling to come to terms with the loss of the Dark Lady, the man could have marched past the city with drum, flute and flag and no one would have noticed.

Corvus had never had this much territory to control before and his influence – or lack of it – had never extended so far from his power base, and he’d never had to function with his heart torn from his chest.

The Dark Lady’s absence was madness clawing at the edges of his mind, questioning his every decision, whispering at him to lie down and die. Every night, when he pulled a blanket around him, the temptation was there, at the tip of his dagger. Every morning, the grief mocked his cowardice. Corvus survived by packing the hurt down inside himself to fester, like an abscess beneath a tooth, buried and stinking.

It was different for the common Mireces and East Rankers – all they had to do was follow the orders given them by their leaders. For Corvus, his surviving war chiefs, Lanta and General Skerris, it was like trying to stand against an avalanche to make sure others survived. And what should have united them was driving them apart.

Two weeks after Rilporin’s conquest, Skerris and the East had left the capital, flooding west and north to occupy the major towns along the Gil and the Tears to take control of supplies, stores, wealth and crops. It made military and economic sense, and it left Corvus with an altogether unfamiliar sense of loneliness. Despite his mild contempt for the fat general, Skerris was a talented commander and a faithful son of the Red Gods, and he needed someone he could trust in Sailtown. On the other hand, aside from the one-eared, snivelling Silais, Skerris was the only other who truly understood the workings of Rilpor. And he needed to restore order as soon as possible. The question was how – and which sort of order. Rilporian laws and customs, or Mireces? Prisons or executions? Persuasion or forced conversion?

It was a new way of life, requiring new thinking, and Corvus hated it.

Now that parts of the palace were habitable, he’d taken up residence there, as befitted the King of Rilpor and because he thought he should. There was a suite for the Blessed One, though she never used it. She never left the temple district or the shrine that she had constructed on the flagstones in the great temple square that were stained by the black splats and sweeps of divine blood. The site of the Dark Lady’s manifestation and destruction.

Valan lived in the heir’s quarters, both because they were close by and because he was, until Corvus produced a son, his successor. War chief Fost had a suite of rooms and so did the other surviving or newly made chiefs, but there was no communal living, no longhouse camaraderie like back home in Eagle Height. The palace was empty and Rilporin was too big. Corvus hated that, too.

Outside, the endless sounds of hammering and of dragging stone, the shouts of slave labourers and their Mireces overseers, painted a backdrop of noise both like and unlike his home village. This is home now, he reminded himself firmly. They had thousands of slaves, soldiers and civilians, though the number of deaths since their victory was far higher than the usual attrition rate as Mireces offered their wealth to the Red Gods, seeking to fill the voids in their souls with Rilporian blood.

In the last weeks they had cannibalised entire sections of the city to gather enough stone to fix the walls and wood to repair the gates, and while they weren’t pretty, they were high and sturdy once more. Holy Gosfath had left them more than enough shattered stone after His rampage through the city to fling it at any enemy who approached, using the East Rank’s trebuchets. Those slaves who were carpenters were attempting to fix the catapults and stingers, too. When Listre came, when any enemy came, they wouldn’t find him unprepared.

They’d scoured the city: every house, alley, building and cellar had been looted of people and goods both. Corvus had given every Mireces two slaves, more wealth than some of the lowest warriors had ever had, but all were expected to lend them to the great rebuilding of the city. The remaining slaves were awarded to those who’d fought hardest. Corvus had accepted only six, three strong men and three pretty women, though the surviving war chiefs and most of the warriors had clamoured for him to take more. He declined; he had an entire country, and enough riches had survived the burning to tempt the greediest of men, something Corvus had never been, despite what his enemies said of him.

And so by seeming to take less than his due, his men cleaved still more closely to him. He would need such loyalty in the months to come. Rilpor might be beaten, but it wasn’t subdued, not by a long way. More Mireces would die in the next few years than in an entire generation of raids. Perhaps more than they could afford to lose.

The marketplace that had once stood in the killing ground in First Circle was operating again, albeit run by the victors now, and the flesh trade was brisk as men bartered slaves for goods and goods for slaves. The sealing of the gates had done much to curb the escape attempts and the city was loud with Mireces voices, sullen with fear and pregnant with violence.

It almost felt like home – unlike the echoing palace.

‘It’s time to send Fost to fetch our women and children, Valan. It’ll do much to steady the men, having their consorts and legacy back with them, and once the women are running the households and keeping the slaves in check, we can look to the rest of the country. There is still much work to be done. Besides, it will be good to hear more Mireces voices than Rilporian. The consorts will make the city our home, and this country ours too.’

Valan grinned. ‘It will be good to see Neela and my girls again, I admit. I’ve been too long from them.’

‘That we could all find such contentment in the arms of a single woman,’ Corvus said, feeling his mood lighten. Teasing Valan for his unusual fidelity never got old.

‘There’s only one Neela, Sire. But perhaps you will find some pretty Rilporian who will walk the Dark Path at your side. The Lady’s …’ He faltered, tongue tripping over the words.

Corvus swallowed against the spike of hurt and he found the healing cuts on his left arm without conscious volition, wounds he’d carved into himself in the moments after Her destruction, blood that hadn’t been enough to save Her.

‘The Lady’s will,’ he said deliberately, pressing against the stitches and offering the pain to the gods. ‘She’s coming back, Valan. The Blessed One and high priest Gull work tirelessly. Whatever happened, She is still our Lady. Our pain calls to Her, the Blessed One calls to Her, and She will come back. She must.’

‘I pray it is so.’

The old banter was swallowed by the new world and the loss of Her, and Corvus strode restlessly to the window. The fine glass was missing, but the view was one of industry and scars being repaired, and besides, the weather was warm down here in the flatlands and the breeze soft against his face, unlike the ice-edged winds of the Gilgoras Mountains. Everything down here was soft – the women, the weather, Rilporian courage.

A world rebuilt in honour of the Red Gods. Washed clean in blood. It would be hard, but it was his sacrifice to the gods. He would build paradise in Gilgoras for Them. His will – Their will – crystallised. ‘She will return, and She will look down on this new world we have dedicated to Her, and She will be pleased. All Rilpor will worship. And all Gilgoras will follow our example.’

‘Our feet are on the Path,’ Valan murmured and Corvus’s mood lifted again. ‘Sire, the food situation isn’t what we hoped. Some of the fires we set when taking the city burnt grain stores, and more was ruined or consumed by the defenders before they fled or were captured.’

Corvus’s mood dropped. He squinted out at the blue sky and strove for calm. ‘We’ve felt lack before, Valan. I know we expected rich bounty, but war is different to raiding. It’ll be a lean harvest and a hard winter, but when Fost returns, they’ll bring any stores they have left and all the livestock. If it’s still not enough, we take more from the towns. Let winter cull the slave population so that when spring comes our people have plenty of land each and the optimum number of drudges to work it for them.’

He turned back. ‘In the meantime, we need to deal with these fucking Evendooms. How many did Silais name?’

Valan consulted the papers scattered across a small table. ‘Fourteen, Sire. Women and bastards, mostly, but he’s right: the Rilporians will be so desperate they’ll rally to anyone with a drop of royal blood who might be able to save them. Simultaneous attacks?’

‘I don’t know if we’ve the numbers to spare,’ Corvus admitted; then he grinned. ‘Bring the royal women to me instead of killing them outright. Perhaps one of them will be pretty enough to rival even the luscious Neela. A consort of royal blood could legitimise my rule in the eyes of some, including Listre and Krike. If it allows us time to consolidate our hold and recruit more warriors from converted Rilporians, as well as crush any surviving rebellion within our borders, then I suppose I can lower myself to fucking a princess, illegitimate or not.’

‘A noble sacrifice,’ Valan said and chuckled.

Corvus returned to his throne. ‘Speaking of princesses, any news of my sister? She’s a few months gone now, isn’t she? The Blessed One is beginning to devise the ritual to bring back the Dark Lady’ – another pain in his heart, hinting at the depths of agony rolling like a slow swell deep within – ‘but it would be better to have Rill in our possession in good time. With proper instruction, by the time she births the vessel that will hold our Bloody Mother, she’ll have come round to our way of thinking.’ And if not for your loyalty to skinny Neela, you could have had her, Valan. Then if I don’t sire an heir, at least my blood still sits the throne when I am gone.

‘Nothing yet, Sire. The East Rank is consolidating its grip on the main towns and villages, recruiting from or replacing the local watchmen. There’ve been uprisings, of course, but nothing serious. They’ve all got a description of your sister, though.’

‘Tell them to keep looking and to send me those royal women,’ Corvus said, ‘and then get me Fost. It’s time to make Rilpor a true home for the Red Gods and all the Mireces people.’ He stretched and gave a self-satisfied grunt as Valan’s face lit up. ‘It’s time to show our women and children the wealth of their new land.’

TARA

Seventh moon, first year of the reign of King Corvus

South barracks, Second Circle, Rilporin, Wheat Lands

‘Tomaz? Tomaz, my love? Call to me, darling. Tell me where you are.’

Tara rushed along the rows of beds with their manacled, staring occupants, easily outstripping her guard, skirts bunched in a sweaty fist and praying none of the soldiers outed her as one of them. She passed an open-mouthed Captain Salter, a man who’d served under her for a year and had never once in that time heard Tara call anyone ‘my love’. He looked down and away.

Too many weeks of eyes-down, mouth-closed hard labour and a dedication to duty that would have astounded Mace, and Valan, her owner, had finally allowed her to visit the makeshift prison and her husband. Valan himself stood by the entrance with the other barracks guards, the door open to clear some of the miasma of sweat, shit and sickness from his delicate nostrils. Tara barely noticed it, both out of respect for the Rankers chained here and because if this went wrong, she could measure her remaining life in breaths, not years.

You better figure out the ruse fast, Tomaz my lad, or we’re both dead.

‘Slow down, wench,’ Bern, the barracks guard escorting her, grumbled, a note of warning in his voice.

Tara gritted her teeth and complied. ‘Forgive me, honoured, I am anxious to see my beloved after so long. I’ve been so worried …’

‘He’s a heathen traitor, an enemy of Rilpor, and a bastard,’ Bern grunted. ‘You want to get anywhere in this life, you’d be better off finding yourself a real man. Your so-called marriage laws count for nothing now, remember. It’s only because you belong to Second Valan that you haven’t been fucked seven ways from midsummer already. Though I bet he’s done a good job of showing you what a real man can do, hasn’t he?’

Tara didn’t answer. Instead she hurried for the row of small rooms at the rear of the barracks, the officers’ quarters, where word had it that the captive high command were imprisoned. Not dead. Not dead yet, anyway.

‘Tomaz?’ she called again, and this time a bearded face appeared at the barred window in one of the heavy wooden doors. ‘Darling!’ she shrieked, running to the door and pressing her face to the bars. ‘I’m your wife,’ she hissed. Major Tomaz Vaunt blinked once in confusion and Tara’s stomach threatened to exit via her throat, and then the guard was unlocking the door and she shoved her way inside and fell into his arms, showering his face with kisses and clutching his unresponsive body to hers.

‘Oh my love, my love,’ she said breathlessly, ‘I never thought I’d see you again. Oh, my darling Tomaz, my husband, my Tomaz.’

Please, please, you fucking idiot. Play along.

She could feel the disbelief in Vaunt’s rigid frame and dug her fingers hard into his back. He coughed. ‘Tara?’ he said hoarsely and squeezed her to him. ‘You there,’ he added a moment later as Tara was swallowing tears of relief, ‘any chance you can piss off for a while? This is my wife.’

The man staring through the door sniggered and made a few comments, but they heard the turning of the key in the lock. ‘One hour,’ Bern said, ‘and if you come out of there with a babe in your belly, you’ll still work until you drop it. No light duties, no extra rations. And if Valan wants to put one in you, you’ll abort it and thank him while you do, understand?’ He spat at them, the thick glob of saliva clinging to the window bar, and left.

Tara gave it a few more minutes, murmuring endearments and pressing kisses to Vaunt’s face and neck. He thawed quickly and soon enough was playing the part of loving husband with vigour.

Eventually, Tara pushed him away. ‘Put a curtain up over the window, my love,’ she said huskily and he grabbed up a blanket, hooked it awkwardly over the frame; they heard a cheer, and more ribald jests that made even Tara blush. As a soldier, she’d thought she’d heard them all. Apparently not. Fucking pig.

Vaunt sat cautiously next to her on the bed, close enough to drag her into an embrace if needed. ‘You’re alive.’

Tara snorted. ‘Of course I’m alive. What do you think I am, some soft Palace Ranker?’

Vaunt’s mouth quirked. ‘No. Though you do appear to be married to one.’

She shrugged. ‘I didn’t fancy being passed around the Mireces, thought a high-ranking husband’d be my best bet. Working so far.’

Vaunt shook his head. ‘What the actual bollocking fuck are you doing here, Major?’ he hissed. ‘I mean here, in Rilporin? Last we heard, you were cut off in the city, no idea if you were dead or not. Why didn’t you get out?’

Tara took a second to rub the taste of him off her mouth, her chest suddenly tight at his use of her rank. A reminder of who she really was, not this, this drudge, this slave.

I’m a soldier. An officer. I’m a godsdamned West Ranker.

‘Assassination, rebellion, insurrection. The usual,’ she said flippantly, but Vaunt wasn’t taken in by her act.

His face paled. ‘Assassination? Corvus?’ he guessed and she blinked acknowledgment. He ran distracted hands through his hair. ‘That’s a big ask, Carter.’

She waved it away. ‘First things first: what do you know?’

He looked ready to argue, then slumped. ‘Not much. I haven’t been out of this room since they caught us at the King Gate, even though the rest labour from dawn to dark every day repairing the walls and gates.’

‘All right, listen up. You’re the only captives who haven’t been sold as slaves yet,’ she told him. ‘You and any soldiers still alive in the north barracks, but as I have no reason to go there, I can’t find out who’s left. Everyone else, every other civilian, now belongs to someone. You belong to the city itself, or the Mireces as a group, maybe. I don’t know why they haven’t sold you, but it can’t be out of a sense of fair play. So they’ve got something planned. I’m trying to find out what, but no luck so far. I’ll keep digging.’

‘And you?’

She tapped the heavy metal collar around her neck. ‘Oh, I’m special, I am. I was a gift to Valan the king’s second himself. Hence the need for a husband, though he’s … got a sort of honour, in a way. Hasn’t touched me yet, anyway.’

‘Carter—’

‘I’m your wife. Get used to calling me Tara. And don’t worry about it.’

Vaunt was grim, but he didn’t press and she was glad. ‘What else?’

‘The East Rank has been sent up the Tears and the Gil to subdue the towns and villages and take a tax in food and goods to send here. So that means there’re only Mireces guarding this place. That could give us an advantage.’

‘You want to start a riot?’

‘I want to start a fucking war,’ Tara snarled and then interrupted herself with a string of endearments and a giggle she could tell by Vaunt’s face he never expected to hear from her. The footsteps outside the cell paused and then carried on. More than one guard now, ready with their fists and clubs no doubt.

‘My orders are to kill Corvus and Lanta too, and for that I’m going to need a distraction. I’ll ready the palace slaves to fight and if we co-ordinate with an uprising among you lot, we can take this city back and kill every Mireces Raider we find, those two included.’

‘Shitting hell, Cart— Tara. You want to ghost Lanta and Corvus? That’s insane. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a decent plan, but the risk is huge,’ Vaunt said; then he pressed a finger to her lips and listened hard. Tara held her breath until he shook his head slightly and gestured at her to continue.

‘I think we’re past worrying about risks. Besides, no one knows I’m a soldier,’ Tara said with more confidence than she felt. ‘I’m in a good position as Valan’s property. There’re a lot of logistics to work out, but it’s doable. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t. But it’s not just my orders. That Blessed Bitch Lanta has apparently come up with some insane plan to bring the Dark Lady back from death, a plan that involves Corvus’s sister Rillirin, who’s at large somewhere in Rilpor. Yes, I know how it sounds. The woman’s touched by the moon, madder than a frog in a skillet, but she believes, so if it comes down to it, I reckon she needs killing more than Corvus does. He’s just a man, after all; she’s got the power to resurrect a goddess.’

Vaunt scrubbed his fingers through his short beard. ‘Maybe I’m the one who’s gone mad,’ he muttered, ‘because that’s the craziest bloody story I’ve ever heard.’

‘Try being on this side of the slave collar,’ Tara muttered and then threw Vaunt back on to the bed and followed him down, a leg over his hips. A sudden rattling of the door, shaking it hard enough to dislodge the blanket, and faces crowding the window.

Vaunt shouted a curse and tucked Tara behind him against the wall as if to shelter her. His acting was good, and she felt a sudden urge to stay there with him and let him protect her for real. Just for an hour. Just a little while. Please, gods. Please.

Colonel Dorcas’s voice rose loud from the next room – cell – along, and the guards drifted reluctantly from the door again. Vaunt replaced the blanket, threading it between the bars this time to hold it firm.

He came back to the bed and managed a smile. ‘Good ears,’ he whispered approvingly, ‘I’d no idea they were there.’

‘You learn to sense it,’ she said and an involuntary shudder rippled down her back.

Some of the gleam went out of Vaunt’s face. ‘Are you really all right? Have you been hurt?’

‘Yes, I’m all right and yes, I’ve been hurt. What did you think would happen, I’d be showered with gifts? I’m a thing.’ She waved away his concern and her own scalding bitterness. ‘Sorry, ignore that. It’s nothing I can’t handle.’

Again, he didn’t press and again, she was grateful. ‘All right, I’ll let this lot know we’ve got someone on the inside and to be ready to fight. With luck and the Dancer’s grace, they’ll get word to the soldiers in the north barracks too. Anything else?’

‘Code words,’ Tara said. ‘Something to identify friendlies. It needs to be—’

Three metal-on-stone taps on the wall from the next room interrupted her and this time it was Vaunt who jumped on her, pinning her to the cot and forcing her legs apart with his knees.

Tara heard a mumbled ‘sorry’ against her mouth before his hand was inside the neck of her gown and fumbling at her breast band. She stiffened, hooking her fingers into claws to drive at his eyes, when the lock rattled and the door swung open without so much as a knock.

‘Godsfuckingdamnit, sir!’ Vaunt roared, leaping up off Tara and leaving her thoroughly dishevelled, one breast peeking from its restraint and her skirts halfway up her thighs. Vaunt stalked towards the guards smirking and staring and poked Bern in the chest with his finger. ‘One hour, you said. One hour of privacy for myself and my wife. Get the fuck out of my quarters immediately!’

Tara scrunched against the wall next to the cot, tidying herself and not having to fake the shock and anxiety on her face. She held out an imploring hand. ‘Tomaz, darling, don’t. They’ll hurt you.’

‘Listen to the little wifey, soldier,’ Bern snarled, ‘or you’ll lose that fucking finger and more besides.’ The flat of a dagger slapped Vaunt between the legs and he grunted, twitched and took a halting step back.

‘Hour’s up,’ Bern added and Tara slid off the bed.

‘No, it bloody well isn’t,’ Vaunt snapped and this time the guard sheathed his knife and then slapped him so hard across the face it spun him around. His eyes narrowed to murderous slits and Tara stepped quickly past him.

‘Your will, honoured,’ she said quietly, eyes downcast.

‘It isn’t,’ Vaunt insisted, but Tara turned and put her palms on the sides of his face.

‘Hush now, don’t make them angry. I’ll be back soon.’ She kissed him, and even meant it this time, wanting something of warmth and softness to remember. Something real. It seemed Vaunt wanted the same, because he wrapped his arms around her and his mouth parted under hers and his tongue flicked, gentle as a butterfly’s wing, over hers.

And then he pushed her away. ‘Stay safe, Tara,’ he murmured. ‘Do as you’re told and no harm will come to you. I love you.’

‘I love you too. I’ll visit again soon, I swear it.’

Vaunt kissed her knuckles. ‘I’ll be ready,’ he promised, his eyes telling her they all would. She stepped back, nodded once, and then walked to the open door and the waiting Mireces.

‘Touch her and I’ll kill you,’ she heard Vaunt promise as she left the room. It didn’t matter that the threat was empty; it comforted her nonetheless.

Bern fell in beside her, the other guard behind, as they walked the length of the barracks through the shit-stinking, red-stained gloom of a thousand shackled, despairing men. Salter gave her the barest nod, which she ignored.

‘Get yer wet, did he?’ Bern asked as they reached the exit; Valan was just outside. Tara didn’t answer. ‘Asked you a question, bitch,’ he grunted.

‘I am an officer’s wife,’ Tara said, ‘and that is no sort of question to ask a lady.’

Bern’s hand was big enough to encircle her throat and he slammed her back-first into the wall next to the door. ‘You are a fucking slave,’ he muttered, teeth stained and cracked and foul breath blowing in her face. ‘You are fucking nothing.’

‘You’re right,’ Tara gasped, struggling to prise his fingers away. ‘I am a slave. I am Second Valan’s slave. I belong to him, not you.’ Her collar was biting into her neck under his hand and she could feel the sting of skin parting.

‘Asked if he got you wet,’ Bern grunted. ‘You don’t answer, I got to find out for myself. Don’t need no fucking permission for that.’

‘Stop,’ she choked. ‘Please. Please, honoured.’

The worst of it, she thought as Bern’s fingers dragged up her skirts and she pushed at arms thicker than her thighs, wasn’t even what he was doing. It wasn’t that she couldn’t kill him without revealing herself as more than a simple slave woman, even though she could practically taste his death she wanted it so badly.

No. The worst was that she could just make out, over his shoulder, the faces of both Major Vaunt and Colonel Dorcas at their windows. Dorcas turned away, unable to watch, but Vaunt was bellowing threats and curses in their direction. Tara closed her eyes.

You die first, Bern.

Believe me, shithead, you die first.

‘What is this?’ The voice was soft and cold and very, very lethal. Bern disappeared, to the sound of flesh smacking flesh and tearing cloth. Tara looked down at a long rip in her skirt. Her thigh was visible, as were the red fingerprints Bern had left in her skin. The man himself was sitting on his arse and clutching his bleeding mouth.

She fell to her knees in front of Valan. ‘Forgive me, honoured, forgive me. I didn’t want … but he insisted and I, I was afraid. My husband is so angry, but …’ She let the tears come, tears from weeks of fear and responsibility and grief. ‘I told Bern that I belong to you now.’ She whispered the last, casting a guilty glance in Vaunt’s direction, and then dared to look Valan in the eye. ‘Although my heart forever belongs with Tomaz. Please don’t hurt him for my error, lord.’

Valan hauled her to her feet, not unkindly. ‘The error was not yours. The error was Bern’s, who failed to realise that a slave collar means a woman is fucking claimed by another.’ He roared the last in Bern’s face and all of them flinched.

Bern fought his way to his feet. ‘Just checking that fucking Ranker hadn’t had a go at her,’ he whined. ‘Didn’t want you raising no bastard of a Rilporian.’

‘Touch her again and I’ll cut your cock off, roast it and make you eat it – do you understand?’

Bern spat blood. ‘Aye, Second,’ he said, tone sullen and eyes defiant. ‘I understand.’

‘Get out.’ Bern and the other guard sidled through the barracks entrance and Valan glared at the men chained closest. They turned away. He put a finger beneath Tara’s chin and raised her head. ‘Did he hurt you?’

She looked into his face and let a hint of fire show through. ‘Yes. But that is the lot of a slave, isn’t it? To be hurt.’

Valan’s mouth twitched, as though he appreciated her answer even as he didn’t deny its truth. ‘Bern won’t bother you again, but if he does, tell me. Work hard, do as you’re told, and you can visit your husband again.’

‘Yes, honoured,’ Tara said and followed him from the barracks, absurdly grateful for his intervention. Vaunt’s kiss was still on her mouth, but it was Valan who’d kept her safe.

THE BLESSED ONE

Seventh moon, first year of the reign of King Corvus

Red Gods’ temple, temple district, First Circle, Rilporin, Wheat Lands

‘Sire, how may I serve?’

If Corvus resented having to trek through the city to the temple in order for her to ‘serve’ him, it didn’t show on his face. Nothing showed on Corvus’s face but what he wanted people to see.

She padded out of the shadows of the temple and watched him drink in the sight of her, the godblood adorning her skin, the marks and the wisdom they imparted painting her in truth and promise and hope. The blood of the Dark Lady, stained forever in swirls and sigils on Lanta’s body, tingling and whispering like the breath of a lover.

She curtseyed and he offered a stiff nod in return, declined wine or water or food. Annoyed, then, and straight to business. Lanta suppressed a sigh.

‘We have thousands of slaves and not enough food to feed them all,’ Corvus said. Lanta blinked. What did she care about stinking Rilporians? ‘You said we would offer a mass sacrifice to bring back the Bloody Mother, and yet there is still no date set for the ritual. May I know the reason for the delay, Blessed One?’

‘You think hungry slaves determine when a work as great as this will be carried out?’ she asked. ‘This is why you come to me, interrupt our devotions, our ritual-crafting?’ She stood in a swirl of skirts. ‘I don’t have time for this.’

‘Hungry slaves are rebellious slaves,’ Corvus said doggedly, staying her with his voice. ‘I have sent Fost to bring home the women and children from the mountains; soon the city will have even more mouths to feed. You told me to spare as many lives as possible for your great rite and there are two prison barracks bursting with angry, hungry soldiers and I cannot keep them alive indefinitely. Would you have me take bread from our young to give to them?’

‘I would have you do your job as king and sort out such matters. Do you need me to wipe your arse for you as well?’ She was tired and frustrated – the ritual they needed didn’t exist and she and high priest Gull had no previous lore to draw upon – but still, she shouldn’t have said it. The temperature in the room plummeted, chilled by the ice in Corvus’s expression.

Lanta inhaled through flared nostrils. ‘Sire, forgive my hasty words. I am very tired. I thought I had made myself clear – the slaves will be needed in the great rite that restores the Dark Lady to us in the body of your sister’s child.’

Corvus thumped the arm of his chair. ‘You want me to keep them alive until – when, Yule? Another half-year? Impossible!’

‘This is the richest country in Gilgoras, Sire. Are you telling me you cannot find enough grain to feed slaves a starvation diet? I need their bodies and blood and fear, not sleek muscles and healthy minds. They can be raving skeletons for all I care, just keep them alive.’

‘We trampled through most of the Wheat Lands during the siege. We have ruined half the crop.’ Corvus was standing too now, anger gleaming just below the frustration.

‘Then it is a good thing we only need to feed the half of the population that walks the Dark Path,’ Lanta snapped. ‘Sire, please. I don’t have time to come up with all the answers for you. Back in Eagle Height you made it clear that I should confine myself to spiritual matters while you dealt with the rest, and now you come here expecting me to magic bread out of the air and take control of those very matters you have excluded me from. I cannot. I will not.’

‘We will have a rebellion on our hands, Blessed One. Slaves and Mireces will die in that rebellion.’

Lanta gritted her teeth. ‘You swore that everything you did was for the glory of the gods. They need more than glory now; They need an act of faith so enormous that it returns the Dark Lady to us. All other considerations are as nothing in the face of that. What we are attempting has never been done and I will not have you jeopardise it. I will not, so I don’t care where you get it from, just find the food and keep my sacrifices alive until I need them.’

Corvus’s hand was squeezing the hilt of his dagger, but not in threat, she thought. ‘You ask too much.’

‘The gods always ask too much, Sire,’ she said softly. ‘And we always provide Them with what They demand. We are Mireces; sacrifice is in our blood.’

He had no answer to that, of course, as she’d known he wouldn’t. It furthered his frustration and added another crack in the bond that had united king and Blessed One thus far in their great conquest. Corvus stalked from the temple without another word, and when he was gone Gull detached himself from the shadows and joined her.

‘You are concerned?’ he asked.

‘He was the perfect king to lead us to victory – even a victory such as this, that cost us our Bloody Mother. But is he the king to rule Rilpor in the gods’ names? Is he the king who will do all that is necessary to see Them ascendant?’

‘You doubt his loyalty?’ Gull was surprised.

‘Never,’ Lanta responded instantly, and was a little surprised to find it was the truth. ‘I doubt his … ability. Corvus is a killer and a leader of men, but is he a governor? Can he provide for his people and keep the slaves in their places? When he killed King Liris, he took over an established and stable world. This one he is building from scratch and I don’t think he knows how. I don’t think he really wants to.’

‘He wants to go to war.’

Lanta rocked her head from side to side. ‘He knows war, but he knows subjugation too. Sending the East Rank rather than Mireces to occupy the towns and villages was a master stroke – it’s easier to give up your liberty to people who look and sound like you. But taxes and crops and laws? Where’s the glory and excitement in that?’

‘Do you want him removed?’ Gull asked.

Lanta pursed her lips. ‘Not yet: we need stability, at least for now. Corvus understands the importance of keeping the slaves alive; despite his frustration here, he will not risk the great rite out of pettiness. But he needs aid, someone who can teach him what he needs to know, provide answers to the questions he doesn’t know how to ask.’

‘I may be able to help with some of the governance,’ Gull offered. ‘I was a silk merchant here in Rilporin for a decade. I understand trade, supply and demand.’

Lanta turned away from the door through which Corvus had exited. ‘Your offer is generous, but I need you here. Corvus will monopolise you if he thinks he can pass such things into your hands. But if there are others among the slaves who would suit …’

Gull nodded and left her, understanding her moods well enough, and Lanta wandered through what had once been the Dancer’s temple and was now sworn and blooded to Holy Gosfath and His absent Sister-Lover. Not dead. Absent. It was the only way she could bring herself to think about it despite the great work they were preparing, despite her every waking – and some dreaming – moments being dedicated to it.

She passed the godpool, sanctified now with the blood of scores of sacrifices so that the once-clear water was red-tinged and thick, clotted and reeking. It was unpleasant, but the last of the Light needed to be chased from this newly hallowed place. Besides, it served as a potent reminder to any slave who thought to raise the defiant eye to their betters.

As always, her footsteps led her outside and into the temple square, to the wooden, open-sided shelter that had been erected over the place where the Dark Lady had been taken from them, the ground still stained with Her divine blood, much as Lanta was herself. There was someone in the shrine, kneeling on the unmarked stone and staring fixedly at the black droplets just in front of him. He looked up at her approach, and scrambled to his feet.

‘Second Valan, forgive me. I had no wish to intrude on your prayers.’

He bowed, his eyes running hungrily over the marks on her skin. He wanted to touch them, as he wanted to touch the stains on the stone. He didn’t dare. ‘It is I who should beg forgiveness. If this place belongs to anyone, it belongs to you.’

Lanta sat on one of the benches circling the shrine and gestured for him to join her. ‘It belongs to us all, Second. You are welcome here whenever you wish, but if you are looking for Corvus, he has left.’

Valan was silent for a while. ‘I was not,’ he said. ‘I came here to pray for my family. Their journey is long and may be perilous, and Ede is only three.’ He met her eyes briefly and Lanta noted the flash of indecision. She gave him a reassuring smile. ‘I worry my daughters won’t remember me,’ he confessed in a rush. ‘What will they have been through while I was here fighting? What trials or sicknesses that I could not comfort? They might not even be alive now.’

Lanta was surprised. Valan rarely spoke of his family and she couldn’t even remember his consort’s name. Such open love was rare among Mireces men, such loyalty even rarer. ‘Their lives will have been what the gods decreed for them,’ she said. ‘Be at peace knowing that if they suffered, they did so to prove their devotion. But there is no saying they did,’ she added.

They sat in silence for a while longer. ‘You are a good man, Valan,’ Lanta said and he blinked in surprise. ‘I hope Corvus knows how lucky he is to have you as his second.’

‘The honour is mine,’ Valan said automatically. ‘My life to serve.’

‘Yes,’ Lanta said, examining him in light of the idea sitting fresh and a little shocking in her mind. ‘We are all put in Gilgoras to serve the gods and do Their will, whatever it may be.’ She stood and he rose with her. ‘I will pray for your family,’ she said and strode back towards the temple before he could respond.

DOM

Seventh moon, first year of the reign of King Corvus

Green Ridge, Southern Krike

They’d given the three of them a small house to sleep in, the Two-Eyed Man and his faithful companions. Or faithful companion, singular. Dom wasn’t sure he qualified. Dom wasn’t sure Crys and Ash would allow him to qualify, regardless of his own opinions on the matter.

As the sun went down, the others had gone to the town’s council house and Dom had stayed behind. He lay on the floor, head pillowed on a pile of blankets, and watched the flickers of orange light dancing among the roof beams and spiders’ webs. He’d managed to untie and retie the laces of his trousers eleven times, each one a victory against the memory of the crushing embarrassment at asking Ash – a man he’d once considered a brother and who now hated him – to help him in the first days after the loss of his hand.

But being able to take a piss unaided and being able to fight were two different things. Dom hadn’t managed to scavenge a weapon when they’d fled Rilporin, but he’d found a reasonably sharp knife in the kitchen that might break the skin of an enemy if they didn’t mind holding still for a while.

He snorted and spun the blade awkwardly in his fingers, his right hand so less nimble than the one he’d lost, and fumbled it so the hilt knocked against the stump of his arm and sent a bolt of lightning through the twisted nerves and flesh. He yelped at the pain, and then did it again because it felt, in some indefinable way, good, opening a well inside him he hadn’t realised was there and demanding he jump in.

Dom sat up. Holding his breath, he jabbed the tip of the knife into the scar tissue this time. More lightning, searing up his arm and into his heart until it seemed to skip in his chest and pump delight and darkness. A bead of blood formed along the knife tip and he stared at it with unblinking intensity, fascinated by the firelight reflected in miniature in the crimson. He pushed harder, a little deeper, more blood welling and with it relief. Purpose. All the promises he’d told himself and Crys – all the lies – fell away to reveal the red, sharp-toothed truth.

The words came of their own volition, words of power and ecstasy and glorious surrender. ‘Dark Lady, beautiful goddess of fear and death, accept this my offering. Holy Gosfath, Lord of War …’

And there He was, the God of Blood looming over Dom in the sudden echoing darkness of the Waystation between Gilgoras and the Afterworld. Dom’s breath stuttered, mingled longing and terror freezing his thoughts. How was he here? How had Gosfath summoned him with such ease, such swiftness? And for what?

Yet Gosfath ignored him, sitting in the flames of His own burning, wrists resting on His bent knees as He watched His own shadow writhe and dance across the cavern’s wall. Tongues of red fire licked His red skin; He paid it no more attention than He did Dom.

Dom took a stealthy step backwards, and then another, but however he’d arrived, that path was closed to him. He was here until Gosfath said otherwise. Trapped. Bladder clenching, Dom eased himself to his knees. ‘I am here, Lord.’ The god didn’t respond. ‘Holy Gosfath, Red Father, what is your will?’

Now He did move. The great horned head rose ponderously in his direction, and small black eyes, dancing fire reflected in their depths, met Dom’s. If the god recognised him as the murderer of His Sister-Lover, Dom had no doubt he’d be killed, slowly, over months or years, for Gosfath’s pleasure.

‘Gone.’

The word was so loud and huge, the meaning behind it so vast, that Dom struggled to process it. All the loss and hurt that filled Dom to the brim was as nothing; Gosfath’s pain would drown the spaces between the stars, His rage hotter than those distant points of light, His loss a winding-sheet black enough and big enough to cover the face of Gilgoras itself.

Gosfath raised both hands, palms up in an expression so human, so lost and bewildered, that Dom’s throat constricted with shared grief. ‘Gone.’

‘We’ll bring Her back,’ he said impulsively, his hand extended towards Gosfath’s, finger to black talon. It was razor-sharp and Dom sealed the oath with blood.

‘Gone,’ Gosfath repeated, as though Dom hadn’t spoken, and the pain tore his heart into shreds.

‘What are you doing?’

Ash’s voice was so sudden, the return to the firelit room in Green Ridge so unexpected, that Dom yelped and the knife scored a deep cut through the remains of his arm as he stumbled to his feet. He yelped again and dropped the blade.

‘Gods, you scared me,’ he said shakily, pressing the hem of his shirt to the cut and backing rapidly behind the table.

‘I said, what are you doing?’ Ash demanded, following him. ‘Who were you speaking to? You were making promises. Which lord?’

Dom blushed and retreated again until his back was against the wall. ‘I didn’t, it wasn’t, it’s not what you think,’ he tried, but Ash reached out a long arm and hauled him close so that Dom was forced to look up at him.

‘You better not have been doing what it sounded like you were doing,’ he snarled. ‘I came back because Crys sent me to fetch you, because he wants to find a way forward, a way for you both to live with what you did to him – aye, and what he did to you. Though if he hadn’t cut that hand off, it would’ve killed you. But he sent me here because he’s not healing and neither are you and we need you both if we’re to have any hope of winning this. And I was starting to think we had a chance, that today was the beginning of something, and then I walk in here to find you cutting yourself and praying to the Red fucking Gods.’

Dom couldn’t meet his eyes. Shame and the hollowed-out emptiness of grief churned uneasily together. His vision blurred with tears and he kept his head down, blinking savagely. He brought me into His presence. So desperate is He for companionship that He’ll snatch at anything offered Him. Even me.

Ash’s arms came around him, one hand pressed to the back of his head, an embrace Dom neither expected nor deserved. He hesitated, snatched out of his thoughts and into this most surprising of moments. Gingerly, he hugged Ash back. More tears, and a wrenching pain deep inside that would never go away.

‘I’m broken, Ash,’ he whispered, and the confession was a catharsis. ‘There’s nothing left of me, nothing inside but hurt and hate and death.’ He tightened his arms, wanting to hold Ash to him even though he knew the archer must be disgusted. ‘I crave Her, Ash, Her touch, the … delight of the agony She brought, as wrong as I know that is. I don’t know how to live without Her. Everything the Dark Lady did to me was cruel, evil, but … I still love Her. I always will.’

He heard Ash swallow, felt him lean away, just a finger’s width, but one that threatened to become a chasm they could never bridge. ‘But you have to live without Her,’ he whispered. ‘Because She’s gone and She’s not coming back, no matter what crazy plans that blue-clad bitch has. We’re going to stop the Mireces, stop Lanta, and then send Gosfath into death after His Sister. And you’re going to help us do it, because that’s what we do, it’s who we are.’ He pushed him away to arm’s length, hands on his shoulders. ‘It’s who you are, as well, deep down.’

‘Is it?’ Dom whispered, the remembered expression in Gosfath’s face mirrored now in his own. ‘When all I can think of are ways to help the Blessed One? When every night is haunted with dreams of Her even though every day all I long for is to see Rillirin again? There’s even a part of me that would offer up her and our child if it would bring back the Dark Lady, and I hate it, I hate myself, but I can’t stop.’

Revulsion flashed across Ash’s scarred face and now he did let go, took a decisive step away. To the other side of that chasm. ‘Yeah? Well, we don’t always get what we want, do we?’ He touched the notch in his jaw, another scar just visible through the open neck of his shirt. ‘I got killed by Galtas; didn’t want that. Crys got tortured – by you; he didn’t want that. The man I love above all others is a fucking god, and one that you prophesied would have to die to end this war, or have you forgotten your own words? “And the godlight will lead us, to death and beyond.” Do you really think either of us want that? Because Crys knows this will kill him, he knows there’s no coming back from this, and he’s doing it anyway. Because he understands.’

‘Understands what?’ Dom whispered across the gulf, trying to reach his friend. Failing.

‘That sacrificing his life to save Gilgoras is worth it. That doing everything he can to spare innocents from the horrors of the Dark Path is worth it. That’ – Ash swallowed again, thickly this time – ‘that me losing him is worth it.’

He cleared his throat and blinked hard. ‘You killed Her, which was the only good thing you did in those months of your madness, and you’re not going to return there no matter how much you want to. I’ll kill you myself rather than see you lost to Blood again. So you’re going to help us make sure She stays dead, and you’re going to repent for the lives you took and the betrayals you perpetrated, because otherwise—’ He broke off, perhaps knowing that no threat he made could ever scare a man who wanted to give himself, body and soul, to madness.

‘And believe me, you have no idea how much courage it’s taken Crys to send me here with the prospect of forgiveness. It’s certainly not something I suggested, because I have seen every last one of those scars you put into him, and those that live only on the inside, too, that even he might not know are there.’

Ash paused to get his voice back under control. ‘Those are the scars we’ll have to deal with when this is all over, if any of us are alive to do so. Those are the ones that will define the rest of his life, his ability to sleep peacefully, our chance at happiness. Those are the ones I don’t want you to ever forget inflicting. And with all that said, he’s still trying to find a way to forgive you.’

Dom’s chest was heaving with repressed sobs. ‘Can he? Can you?’ he choked out.

Ash’s face twisted. ‘No. Maybe. I don’t know. But I do know he’s the one you pray for,’ he added, jerking a finger out at the night. ‘Pray for Crys, and pray to the Fox God. Not Her, never again Her. Got it?’

‘Got it.’ Dom licked his lips and nodded, looking away. ‘Are you … going to tell him?’

‘Are you going to do it again?’

Dom shook his head – and meant it.

‘Then no. But don’t let him down like that again.’

Ash picked up the knife Dom had used and examined its edge, then shoved it deliberately through his belt. Dom fidgeted, wanting to ask for it back, knowing how it would sound. No hand, no weapons, no way to hurt himself or others. Bitterness rose in him to mingle with the guilt, the hope, the grief.

Ash wiped his hands on his shirt as though they’d touched something foul. ‘Come on, then,’ he said in a voice cold as an axe blade. ‘He still wants to see you.’

CRYS

Seventh moon, first year of the reign of King Corvus

The Belt, Krike

Green Ridge could field two hundred warriors, and all of them followed Crys when he left the town three days later. He’d expected to leave them behind, pick them up on his way back through towards Rilpor, but they elected to follow him instead.

‘And by follow,’ Crys hissed to Ash on the fourth day out of Green Ridge and through the thick pine forests known as the Belt, ‘I mean everywhere. I’m pretty sure I saw one watching me have a shit yesterday.’

Ash glanced behind at the Krikites; Crys didn’t. He knew what he’d see. Cutta Frog-dream walked half a dozen paces behind with Dom, and behind them were ranged the warriors. They watched his every move like stoats watching a rabbit burrow. Unblinking.

‘Yeah, that’s creepy,’ Ash said when he turned back. ‘But they’ll get used to it. I have, despite the yellow eyes lighting up the night when I’m trying to sleep.’

‘You think you’re hilarious, don’t you?’ Crys demanded, tapping his fingers on the pommel of his sword; he’d traded the axe he’d brought with him and the new blade was decent quality, well weighted. However curious about him they were, the Krikites at least boasted some talented smiths. The pine needles underfoot were springy, lending energy to his steps, the rich scent sharp in his nose. He had an urge to sprint off ahead and leave them all behind – leave everything behind. Prophecies and legends and the prospect of war.

Ash pressed his lips together but couldn’t suppress a hoot of laughter. ‘It’s not their fault,’ he said with an air of implausible seriousness, ‘they’ve never actually met a god before. I don’t think any of them expected you to be so handsome. Oh yes, I’ve seen the women – and a fair few men – eyeing you up, don’t think I haven’t. Should I be jealous?’

‘Hilarious,’ Crys muttered again, blushing. ‘You have no idea how weird this is, though. Half the time I think I’ve just gone mad and no one’s had the heart to tell me.’

‘Crys, my love, you’ve gone mad. We just didn’t have the heart to tell you.’

‘Stop it,’ he snapped. Ash raised his eyebrows. ‘I’m not who they think I am. I mean, I am, but I’m me too. No one wants to know me; they just want to see Him. I’m invisible.’

‘You looked pretty visible when you were getting dressed this morning,’ Ash teased. ‘I remember it distinctly. The manly sweep of shoulders, the pale curve of your arse—’

‘This is serious,’ Crys almost screamed, fingers curling into claws in his hair. ‘I don’t know who I am any more.’

We’re us, the Fox God said, as if it was simple.

‘You’re you, you’re Crys, heart-bound to Ash.’ Ash echoed the internal words so closely it was eerie. The laughter fell from his face. ‘You’re mine,’ he added, ‘and you were mine before all this happened. You’ll be mine again afterwards.’

‘I’ll be dead afterwards,’ Crys said and the silence between them then was so profound he nearly fell into it. He caught Ash’s hand in his, waiting for his lover to denounce his words. He didn’t and Crys’s gut twisted within him. Every time they’d skirted the subject before, Ash had been vehement in his denials. Now, maybe because of what had happened with the Fox God and the stone in Green Ridge, his opinion had changed. He believed Crys was going to die and that meant Crys believed it too, bone-deep for the first time. Nothing could save him.

And the godlight will lead us all, to death and beyond. Thanks Dom, you always were a cheery fucker even before you tried to kill me.

Crys glanced back to where the calestar walked alongside Cutta Frog-dream. The knowing that had meant nothing for so long, that had been empty words easily forgotten, was coming true. The Fox God brushed against him, reassurance and gentle mockery, humour and love. Crys pushed Him away, feeling as if he was an intruder in his own body.

‘Maybe none of this would’ve happened if you hadn’t brought me back,’ Ash said and Crys registered the guilt in his face. ‘I mean, you made that promise in return for me. If you hadn’t—’

‘If I hadn’t I’d already be dead,’ Crys said, squeezing his hand hard and feeling a flush of guilt himself. He’d never considered how Ash must feel. They stopped walking. ‘I’d have got myself killed during the siege. Nothing mattered to me in those minutes when I knew you were dead, love. Nothing. I’d have made any promise, done anything, to have you back. And … the Fox God was always here, I know that now. He’d have found a way out when He needed to, no matter what. This way I got you. I got a whole life to cram into however long we have, and I intend to make the most of it. If you want?’

Ash wiped at his eye with a thumb, his palm sweaty in Crys’s grip. ‘I want,’ he said in a scratchy voice. ‘I want it all, but I’ll settle for this. For you and these next …’ He trailed off.

Crys swallowed and forced a smile. ‘Days. Weeks. Months. How about we don’t count?’

‘Numbers are overrated,’ Ash said, and although it wasn’t funny, they laughed anyway.

The snake of warriors had come to a halt behind them instead of carrying on, waiting in a respectful hush. Crys faced Cutta. ‘We’ll catch you up,’ he said. She paused; then she nodded and led her warriors on.

‘What’s wrong?’ Ash asked before he caught the glint in Crys’s eye. ‘Oh. Oh. Catch you up. Got it.’ His smile was hot. ‘Well, you know what they say: a bow long bent grows weak. Some time off should do us both some good.’

They wandered off the main track and Crys could feel eyes on them as they went, knowing they were seen. He squeezed Ash’s hand. He didn’t care.

‘You really need to stop saying “gods” when we make love,’ Ash said later, leaning on one elbow to pick pine needles from Crys’s hair. ‘It’s like you’re talking to yourself.’

Crys felt a flicker of annoyance at the words and suppressed it ruthlessly. Instead he arched an eyebrow. ‘Didn’t hear you complaining about my godlike abilities,’ he said.

Ash screwed up his face and slapped his bare shoulder, laughing. ‘Damnit, you’re not supposed to join in the teasing. I don’t have an answer to that one. As long as my merely mortal prowess is enough for you.’

‘Oh, it’s enough,’ he murmured, ‘believe me.’

Ash ran gentle fingers over the myriad silver scars in Crys’s skin and Crys relaxed, enjoying the caresses in the aftermath of their urgency. ‘Not sure when we’ll have time to be together again,’ he murmured eventually, knowing he was breaking the moment, unable to stay quiet. ‘Especially not once we’re back in Rilpor. Just because Mace didn’t arrest us when he found out doesn’t mean we can shove it in their faces.’

‘I have no intention of shoving anything in Mace’s face,’ Ash protested and Crys smiled. ‘But you’re right, I suppose. Let’s just hope your godhood means we don’t get arrested at all.’

‘Godhood? Is that a more impressive name for man—’

Ash clapped his hand over Crys’s mouth. ‘Worst. Joke. Ever,’ he warned, though he was struggling not to laugh. Crys kissed the palm against his lips, moved it aside and replaced it with Ash’s mouth.

‘Hate to say this, but we need to get back,’ Ash said after another breathless few minutes. ‘Unless you want Cutta’s warriors spying on this too.’

Crys grunted, horrified by the thought, and that’s when the attack came.

The Fox God screamed warning and Crys was up and on his feet, scanning their surrounds, an instant before the first warrior sprinted from the trees into the glade. ‘Up!’ he roared at Ash and leapt in between him and the assailant, naked and shining silver. The attacker, stunned by the nudity or perhaps Crys’s strange markings, missed his strike. Crys slapped the spear down and this time the warrior didn’t hesitate, driving the butt end towards him in a flat trajectory that just skimmed the flesh of his belly as he jumped backwards.

Four more pounding out of the trees, and Ash’s arrows took three but missed the fourth, who ducked and threw himself on to the archer. Crys’s new sword was somewhere beneath their clothes with his belt and dagger and the rest of Ash’s weapons, and the spearman was fast. Very fast.

Surely he could just let himself be skewered and then heal?

Move, the Fox God barked. Crys moved. He couldn’t get inside the spear’s reach, so he led his attacker further into the trees where the weapon’s length would be a hindrance. Jabs came fast and hard, aiming for his naked chest or gut, and Crys was feeling backwards with his bare feet; if he tripped, he was dead.

A grunt ratcheting up into a scream from the clearing and Crys’s blood turned to ice. If that was Ash … The spearman attacked, sensing his distraction. Crys jinked right and the spear tip scored a hot, ripping line through the inside of his upper arm. He bellowed hurt and got the tree between them, a second’s rest, wasted it looking for Ash instead of a weapon.

The spear came around the bole and Crys leapt high, left hand closing around a branch. Tucking his feet, he pulled himself into the tree, on to the branch – too thin to support his weight – skipped out along it and threw himself off the end even as it began to crack.

He landed in a tumble, came up on to his feet and burst into the clearing. Ash, on his back in the leaf-litter, brawling.

Sword. Crys dived forward, scooped up the weapon by its scabbard and clubbed Ash’s attacker between the shoulder blades as though he was splitting wood, reversed the blade and ripped it free, spun to deflect the spear thrust with the scabbard and punched the sword into the spearman’s ribs.

His attacker dropped his weapon to clutch at the wound and Crys spun again, almost dizzy with it, but Ash rammed an arrow in his enemy’s thigh, fishing for and finding the main artery, and people rarely think about killing someone when their life is pumping out of their leg.

Ash heaved the man off him and staggered to his feet, gasping and wiping blood out of his eyes. Two of the three he’d put down with arrows were dead, the third wounded and trying to crawl to safety. Ash went over and stamped on his back, shoving him into the dirt.

‘Start talking,’ he growled as Crys finished the other two, who were dying already, and then crouched at the injured man’s side. One side of his head was shaved and tattooed with a stylised hare.

‘Shit,’ he breathed. ‘Krikites.’

‘Fucking Rilporians!’ the man raged. ‘The Seer-Mother has forbidden you to set foot in Krike! All Rilporians to be killed on sight. We’ll lend you no aid in your war!’ He had an arrow in his shoulder, through and through, and he was pale with shock and blood loss.

‘The Seer-Mother made this pronouncement, not the Warlord?’ Ash demanded. ‘Who is she to give such orders?’

‘The Seer-Mother sees all, knows all,’ the Krikite snarled, hand clamped around the arrow. He groaned. ‘The Warlord bows to her wisdom.’

‘Wisdom?’ Crys spat as the Fox God rumbled discontent. ‘This is not wisdom. Has the Seer-Mother forgotten her oath to Trickster and Dancer? To me?’

‘You?’ the Krikite tried, but then he squeaked as Crys’s eyes flared yellow. ‘Rilporian demon,’ he muttered. ‘Please. Don’t hurt me.’

‘I’m not going to hurt you, Hare-dream,’ Crys said, touching the tattoo. ‘But the Seer-Mother is wrong in this. Rilpor needs aid and sends me to garner it. I am no demon, Krikite. I am the Fox God and you will lead me to your people.’

‘You what?’ the man asked, and then gasped as Ash snapped the tail from the arrow in his shoulder.

‘Waste of a good shaft,’ he murmured as he bent the man forward and and drew it on through and out, fighting the sucking pull of the flesh. The man screeched and thick pulses of blood leaked from the entry and exit wounds. Ash batted his hand away. ‘Go on, then. Do it.’

Crys put his palms against the wounds and let the light rise. The man’s pain became terror, became awe, and by the time it was done, the fervour of belief shone in his face. He looked at the place where the arrow had been and flexed his arm, then at the newly sealed scar in Crys’s own arm from the spear thrust.

Ash helped him to his feet. ‘When they ask, you tell them the Fox God Himself spared your life and then saved your life. Wait here.’

The Krikite’s jaw was slack and he held out a wondering hand, brushing it gently over the scars on Crys’s chest. ‘I see you, Lord.’

Crys straightened his shoulders. ‘And I see you.’

They dressed hurriedly and Crys looked at those they’d killed, wondering whether he should have tried to save them.

There have to be consequences, the Fox God told him.

Ash buckled his belt and winced as the adrenaline faded and the hurts made themselves known. ‘One way to start a legend,’ he sighed. ‘No healing for me,’ he said, slinging an arm around Crys’s shoulders and pressing a kiss to his temple. ‘I don’t know if you’ve got a limit on that silver light, but use it for something more important than bruises. Besides, sometimes we should hurt. Keeps us sharp.’

Crys squeezed his waist. ‘You’re wiser than you look, heart-bound,’ he said. ‘One of the reasons I love you. But let’s catch up with Cutta before anyone else decides to try and kill us.’

‘Once this one tells his tale to all who’ll listen, we’ll have even more warriors on our side. At this rate we won’t even need to meet the Warlord,’ Ash said as they began walking, pointing to the Krikite now following so closely he almost trod on Crys’s heels.

Crys frowned. ‘No. There’s something I can’t quite put my finger on, but I have to go to Seer’s Tor. There’s something wrong in Krike. All those stories I learnt in the South Rank, everything I told you before Green Ridge about the Krikites and their way of life … well, we haven’t seen any of that, have we? No, there’s something going on here.’ He shrugged. ‘Besides, it’s only fair to meet the man we’re stealing warriors from and give him the chance to join us.’

‘Think he will?’ Ash asked.

‘I really don’t know.’

The Krikite’s name was Sati Hare-dream, and when he burst into Belt Town shouting news of the Two-Eyed Man, Crys was relieved to find Cutta and her warriors already there. He didn’t much fancy explaining having killed four of their number and then asking them to ally with him and Rilpor.

Cutta’s relief at seeing them again was palpable, and it was clear she’d already spent some time trying to convince the town elders of Crys’s double identity, because they didn’t fall about laughing at Sati’s pronouncement.

‘Where is the rest of your hunting party, Hare-dream?’ an elder asked and Ash tensed.

‘In our ignorance we attacked the Two-Eyed Man and his lover,’ Sati said. ‘It was the Lord’s will only I survived.’

I wouldn’t say will, exactly, Crys thought. More like terror. He decided it wouldn’t be particularly godlike to tell them that, though.

‘I would be happy to speak with your priests,’ he said instead. The elders exchanged mutters and embarrassed looks. ‘You do have priests?’

‘The Seer-Mother dispenses wisdom from the tor,’ Cutta said when no one would answer him. ‘I told you this.’

Crys rounded on her. ‘You mean there are no priests left in the whole of Krike, not just Green Ridge? What did you do, kill them?’

‘Of course not,’ Cutta protested. ‘But when the Seer-Mother’s gifts made them obsolete, they were given other work.’

‘Horseshit,’ Ash muttered. Even Dom looked shocked and Crys couldn’t remember an expression other than self-pity on the calestar’s face since they’d left Rilporin. He swallowed bitterness and put him out of his mind.

‘What is a community without priests?’

‘The Seer-Mother dispenses judgement,’ Sati ventured.

‘I did not say judgement; I said community. Your priests are still here – you have just stopped recognising their wisdom. Bring them to me.’

As war leader of the region, it seemed Cutta outranked even the elders, for soon enough an old woman hobbled towards Crys, labouring along the rutted road from a dark, ramshackle house on the outskirts of town. Ostracised. Crys favoured them all with a disgusted look and jogged to meet her; he could hear her whistling breath from ten paces away. He stopped her with a gentle touch and stooped to meet her eyes.

‘Priestess of Trickster and Dancer, I am the Two-Eyed Man and I see you as the vessel through which wisdom passes. Tell me, how can I prove my identity?’

She examined him for long enough that he started to get uncomfortable and doubt began to rear its head. ‘It is for the Seer-Mother to say who you are and who you are not,’ she said in the end, her voice thin as paper. ‘It is she who sees and knows all.’

Crys took her hand, dry as a bundle of sticks, in his and straightened up. ‘Thank you, priestess, but no one is the arbiter of my identity. I ask how you would have me prove it, not whether someone else allows me to be who I am.’ She flinched and he raised her hand to his cheek, acting on instincts that weren’t quite his, despite his fine words. ‘The fault is not yours, priestess. Can you tell me what has happened here, why the Seer-Mother has broken up the priesthood?’

‘I said,’ the old woman began, her voice quavering.

‘And only I am here to listen. I am not Krikite, priestess. You can tell me the truth.’

She sucked her remaining teeth, cheeks hollow, as she examined him. ‘The Seer-Mother has … she has broken our people’s connection to the land and the gods. All prayers must pass through her; all decisions come from her. There is no truth here any more, no reverence. She is the dam that separates us from the river of divinity.’

Her thin chest was heaving under her rags; the grip of her hand was fierce. ‘Save us, Two-Eyed Man. Save us all.’

And there it was, another burden for Crys to bear. And yet how could he say no? If he could do it, then he had to do it. ‘I will go to the tor. I will do all I can to fix this so that you are recognised as priestess again and the land remembers its people and its people the land.’ He kissed her hand. ‘I see you, priestess. There is no dam between us.’

‘I see you,’ she whispered. ‘I see. He is the Two-Eyed Man,’ the priestess called out in a wavering voice. ‘He will restore the gods to us. Follow him.’

A storm of muttering rose from the gathered Krikites, abuse hurled towards the old woman. Crys held his arms out in a barrier as a few began edging forward with clenched fists. Would they tear her apart for daring to speak out? Was this how far their faith had fallen – or been claimed by the Seer-Mother?

Crys headed towards the crowd and they fell back before him. ‘War leader, you will guarantee the priestess’s safety. I want three warriors you trust to look after her while we are gone. This behaviour towards the priesthood – regardless of the Seer-Mother’s pronouncement – is unacceptable.’

She withered beneath his anger and the noise of the dissenters faltered. Wordlessly she pointed to three Krikites and they shoved out of the crowd and passed Crys with bowed heads, taking up position around the priestess. One of them murmured reassurance to her.

‘Does some distant woman’s word mean more to you than decency and respect for those in your community? Does it mean more than the harmony of the land and the voices of the gods? Is this how you show your allegiance?’ Crys was disgusted and made no effort to hide it, uncaring whether he alienated those who were wavering in their decision to follow him. In light of their inability to think for themselves or treat each other with respect, he wasn’t sure he wanted them at his back when it came time to face down the Red Gods.

Ash and Dom fell in on either side as he stepped forward and then Cutta and her warriors behind, with Sati sliding into their ranks. Crys didn’t look back to see whether any others joined him as they marched through the parting crowd. He had a war to win but, first, he had to get to Seer’s Tor and cut out the rot that was infecting Krike.

Seer’s Tor? the Fox God barked. No. My tor.

RILLIRIN

Seventh moon, first year of the reign of King Corvus

Fort Four, South Rank forts, Western Plain, Krike border

Rillirin squinted into the approaching night and jabbed her spear at the pell, pulling back, stepping and then striking upwards with the butt. It skittered off the wood and past, but if it’d been a person, it would have broken their knee, she was sure. She spun to the imaginary enemy behind her and lunged; Dalli’s spear parried and then the shorter woman had her weapon at Rillirin’s throat.

Rillirin froze in shock – she hadn’t even known the Wolf chief was there – and then sidestepped, batting Dalli’s spear down.

‘You’re dead,’ Dalli said. ‘Never hesitate in battle because you’re surprised; train until defence is as instinctive as breathing.’ She flipped her spear around her head and drove it for Rillirin’s temple; Rillirin staggered back, her parry clumsy and weak.

‘You’re dead,’ Dalli said again. ‘Don’t get distracted by your opponent’s words.’

Rillirin gritted her teeth and lunged, then feinted left and snapped the head of her spear towards herself, driving the butt in a flat arc. Dalli knocked it up and countered with a strike that finished a hand’s width from Rillirin’s eye.

‘You’re dead. You need to commit to a feint, otherwise your opponent knows what you’re doing and will ignore it to prepare for your true strike.’

Growling now, Rillirin lunged hard for the centre of Dalli’s chest; the Wolf sidestepped and snatched Rillirin’s spear, jerking her forward and finishing with a short jab towards Rillirin’s gut. She shrank back, dropping the spear to protect her belly and the child nestled within.

‘You’re dead. Don’t let anger make you clumsy. If you over-extend, you’re off balance and your enemy will take advantage.’

Rillirin snatched up her spear by the end and flailed it for Dalli’s knee, then backed away, trying to set her hands. Dalli slammed the shaft of her own spear down and ricocheted Rillirin’s spear tip off the flagstones. As it bounced back up in Rillirin’s stinging hands, Dalli skipped past it and put a knife against her cheek.

‘You’re dead. If you lose your weapon too close to the enemy, draw another. Don’t step into their range to pick it back up.’

Panting, Rillirin eased away from the knife and then raised her spear and lifted the fingers of both hands from where they wrapped the wood to signal she wasn’t going to attack. Dalli sheathed her knife and stepped clear anyway.

Rillirin grounded the butt and let it take some of her weight. ‘Is that what I am then?’ she asked as sweat trickled down her back. ‘Your enemy?’

Dalli shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Are you?’

Rillirin wiped her free hand across her face. ‘We were friends not too long ago, or I thought we were.’

‘People change. Loyalties change. Yours is quite clear.’

‘And Gilda made it quite clear that my baby is innocent. Even if you won’t believe me, you should believe her. Everything Gilda’s been through and you think she’d lie about something like this?’

Dalli spat. ‘Everything she’s been through, aye. Like Dom trying to kill her. Like him betraying Rilporin and everyone inside it. Like him being a Darksoul.’

‘He didn’t choose any of those things!’

‘How do you know?’ Dalli flared. ‘You haven’t seen him in months. You’ve just got a memory of him you’ve put up on a pedestal and you can’t see past it to the truth.’

‘Neither have you. All you’ve got is rumour and hearsay and things glimpsed during battle that have been distorted or misremembered.’

Dalli shook her head in disgust. ‘Gods, but you’re naive. Will you damn us all, that child included, by believing he can be saved?’

Rillirin slammed the butt of her spear into the stone, the flat crack echoing across the drill yard. ‘Yes! Because he taught me that anyone can be saved, including me.’ Dalli flinched but Rillirin held up her hand. ‘No, you’ve said enough. Just, just fuck off, will you? I don’t need your poison poured in my ear. Dom’s the only one of your precious Wolves who saw past my accent and the things I was forced to do and loved me despite it all. Who understood not everything that happens to us is a choice. If you can’t see that, then just leave me alone. There’s talk of sending the civilians away somewhere safe – if there is such a place. I’m sure you know more about it, being chief, as well as the lover of someone respectable. You’ve made it clear I’m no warrior, and I’m pregnant too, so I’ll stay out of your way until it’s time and then I’ll leave with the other civilians, go wherever Mace thinks I won’t be able to infect anyone with my treason.’

Her face twisted with bitterness. She turned on her heel and stalked across the drill yard. When Dalli called after her, tentative and too quiet, it was easy to pretend she hadn’t heard, to pretend there were no tears clogging her throat. She wouldn’t cry for Dalli’s spite. Rillirin stalked up the southern watchtower’s steps and out on to the allure, staring into the night. Krike was out there somewhere and for a mad, intoxicating moment, she thought about slipping out of the fort and crossing the border, losing herself in a foreign land and never coming back.

There was a fluttering in her stomach, a weird shifting. Rillirin leant her spear against the wall and put her palms on the small mound. Is that you in there, little warrior? Is that you? Do you want to go to Krike? Nothing. Or do you want to stay in Rilpor? Another flutter.

Rillirin huffed. ‘All right then,’ she muttered to the first stars and the stirring life within her, ‘that’ll do. Rilpor it is. But if we’re staying, I really hope we win.’

‘Colonel Thatcher?’ Rillirin hurried to catch up as the officer crossed towards the mess. He paused and waited, giving her a distracted smile. ‘Colonel, I’d like to volunteer.’

He glanced sidelong at her spear. Despite general Rilporian attitudes to women fighting, her status as a sort-of-Wolf had guaranteed her a weapon when she and Gilda made it to the forts. ‘Volunteer for what?’ he asked.

‘Anything, really,’ she said. ‘Anything that gets me out of the forts. Or a transfer to one of the others.’

He paused by the mess hall door. ‘Transfer? I know we’re tightly packed in here, but the other forts are just as crowded.’

‘Away from the Wolves,’ she said in a rush. ‘I’ll go when the civilians go, so it won’t be for long, but I’d like to help out. Riding patrols, perhaps?’

He gestured her into the mess and followed and they joined a line of people waiting for breakfast. ‘You’re pregnant, aren’t you?’

‘Yes, but I can still ride and fight and scout,’ Rillirin said, annoyed at how everyone assumed she was incapable. ‘I’m barely even showing,’ she added.

Thatcher frowned. ‘Pregnant women get extra rations,’ he said and pointed at the soldier doling out bread and porridge. Rillirin blushed, stammered an apology. ‘As for volunteering or moving barracks, let me see what I can do. Ride and scout and hunt, you say?’

‘Well, I’ve done it before a few times,’ she admitted and took the bowl offered, added a spoonful of honey. ‘I want – I need – to be useful. I can’t just sit here doing nothing.’

‘I appreciate your enthusiasm, but I need experienced people performing those tasks – the security and provision of the forts isn’t something I can trust to a novice. But I’ll sign you up to train with the militia, and we might get you out on a foraging party or something. There are lists of things that need doing, if you don’t mind hard work.’

‘I don’t mind,’ she said. ‘I just need to be busy.’ He nodded, already distracted by another soldier waving a sheaf of papers, and slipped away into the press. Rillirin examined the long trestle tables packed with soldiers and civilians. A knot of Wolves eyed her from a corner; Isbet beckoned with a wave.

Rillirin took her bowl outside and ate in the early sunlight. Two hours later, she joined three hundred civilians in the drill yard and began to learn to fight like a Ranker. In the afternoon she rode out with a firewood party, and by nightfall she’d been transferred to Fort Three.

It was exactly what she wanted, so it had to be the pregnancy that made her cry herself to sleep.

TARA

Seventh moon, first year of the reign of King Corvus

Marketplace, First Circle, Rilporin, Wheat Lands

Tara didn’t know what to think of the shopping list Valan had given her, didn’t want to examine what it said about the man who owned her, who lived a life of brutality and violence, who only three days before had flogged one of his other slaves for breaking a plate.

The very first of the Rilporian merchants had arrived, those bastards who didn’t care who they sold to or what it was if it turned a profit. The same merchants who sold opium to the rich or the desperate, or stolen goods to the unsuspecting poor, had arrived in a small, wary group outside the gates and Corvus had allowed them entry.

Tara had to admire their ingenuity even as she cursed their greed. Livestock and grain, jewellery and weapons, fish and information: all were for sale. Some merchants were even accepting slaves as payment and then bartering those for more goods and reselling on again, a loop of wealth that gained them a few copper knights more with each transaction.

She stared at their bare necks with hungry intensity. Rilporians without slave collars – how was it they were allowed to walk free? She stopped at a stall holding thin bolts of cloth, all of them dyed an uneven blue. The quality was poor, but the price was high and it was the only stall selling material in the required colour.

‘How much for eight yards?’ she asked.

The man leered at her, brown teeth in a pockmarked face. ‘For you, pretty? Depends on what you got to offer. Knock a bit off the price if you’re a good girl.’

‘I’m not a good girl,’ Tara said and then cursed as the merchant winked and leered some more. ‘No, is what I’m saying. How much?’

‘No? Say no to your owner too, do you? Bet you don’t. How’d it be if I told him you offered yourself to me in exchange for your freedom, eh? How’d that be?’

Tara rounded the stall and grabbed the man by the front of his shirt, hauled him close until they were nose to nose and she was enveloped in the stink of his breath. ‘How’d it be if I choked you to death with your own shitty linen, you traitorous little wank-stain? I want eight yards and I want a good price.’

‘Royal a yard, royal a yard and no less,’ the man croaked.

Tara shoved him away. ‘I’m not paying you eight silvers. I wouldn’t pay two silvers for this quality of dye.’

The merchant spat at her. ‘Fucking Mireces can afford it, why shouldn’t I make a profit serving scum like that?’

Tara could’ve told him why not, could’ve mentioned the fact many of the slaves here in the market would be beaten, starved or executed either for failing to purchase the goods or for buying at too high a price. She knew none of that would matter to this man.

She put her back to him and snatched up the tailoring shears, started measuring the linen. When he tried to stop her she shoved the shears towards his face and he fell back squealing, though not loudly enough to attract attention.

Tara hacked off eight yards and threw two silver royals on to the table. ‘And just so we’re clear,’ she snarled in his face. ‘You’re all scum.’ She stalked away before he could reply and made it twenty yards before she remembered to drop her head and slow her steps, kill the fire in her eyes.

A slave was watching her, standing with a couple of others. A big man, huge in fact, with a beard halfway down his chest. He had a trowel in his hand and was supposed to be shovelling mortar on to the inner face of the wall, right about where it had breached. Where Durdil had died. She blinked and looked away, looked back. The man went to wipe his face, then tapped his fingertips quickly against his heart. Tara faltered, then kept walking. When she was almost past she glanced back, gave him the tiniest nod. A Mireces overseer snapped something at him and he bent to his task again.

A mason. That could be useful, either to bring the wall down or to blow the fucker up, maybe. Somehow. Failing that, he’s as big as an ox and if he had a shield he could hold a stairwell indefinitely.

It wasn’t much, but it was a start. Tara checked her list and bought those items she could find. Combs and hair ribbons; four fine cups and plates with a matching pattern of flowers around the edges; linens and breast band, linens for children. The underwear was the only thing she got for a good price, there not being any free women or children in the city who might need such things. So cheap, in fact, that Tara took the enormous risk of buying fresh ones for herself and then, on a whim that could see her executed, she bought two painted wooden horses.

The slave woman who was selling them wept with silent hopelessness as she handed them over. ‘Your children’s?’ Tara whispered as she paid. The woman nodded; then she looked fearfully over her shoulder at the Raiders crouched in a circle and betting on dice.

‘I’m so sorry,’ Tara said. ‘Have they gone to the Light?’

‘I don’t know,’ the woman choked. ‘I lost them in the smoke. I let go of their hands and they were gone, taken in a heartbeat. I lost them.’ Her voice began to rise and Tara shushed her, but it was no good. One of the Raiders looked up, scowling, and Tara did the only thing she could: she shoved the toys into her basket and walked away. She wasn’t even around the corner before the screaming started.

As King’s Second, Valan occupied the large suite of rooms formerly belonging to the dead Prince Janis. Familiar with the palace’s layout from the siege, Tara knew exactly which corridors and shortcuts led from the suite to the king’s chambers. Handy, for when the time came, and the brief moment with the mason today gave her hope it would be soon. Getting the Rankers on side was easy enough, but they needed every slave rebelling at once, rising in every Circle and every district and causing so much chaos that no one would notice her slipping through the palace and putting a knife in Corvus’s heart before drowning Lanta in her own filthy, sacrilegious godpool.

If only it could happen now. Tara didn’t do regret as a rule, but right now she was regretting buying those wooden horses with rare intensity. It had taken hard work and luck and the exact right mixture of defiance, ability and humility to charm Valan, but it could all come crashing down around her if he took exception to her decision-making.

Tara had laid out the purchases on the big table in Valan’s suite and moved to her place by the door to await his return, when she’d have the honour of taking his weapons and boots and presenting him with wine and food. She got to remove his armour and then pour his bath, a luxury he couldn’t get enough of down here in the warm lands.

So fucking honoured.

She also got to tell him about any infractions by the other slaves during his absence, what the kitchens had prepared for him, and any messages that had arrived while he’d waited on the king. She tried to convince herself it was the same as being Mace’s adjutant back before the world had gone to shit, but then Mace had never insisted she scrub his back while he sat bollock-naked in a bathtub. She shuddered and reminded herself it was nothing like being an adjutant, because she’d never been one. She was an officer’s wife, not an officer.

Her palms began to sweat when she heard his footsteps in the corridor outside. The other five slaves were locked in what must have once been Janis’s study. They were always locked away when the second left his apartments; Tara’s disguise as the wife of Major Vaunt had convinced Valan that she wouldn’t risk her husband’s safety by attempting to escape.

‘Welcome back, honoured,’ she said, as she did every single time, an affectation he enjoyed. He shoved his sword at her and strode into the main room, threw himself into a chair. She knelt at his feet and tugged off his boots, put them in the corner and then handed him a cup.

‘I got everything you requested,’ she said and gestured at the table. Valan grunted, rolling the wine around in his mouth as he wandered over. The fabric was arranged in what she thought was an artful sweep that hid the ragged edge where she’d cut it. The four cups and plates occupied the centre of the table along with the linens, and behind them stood the wooden horses.

A muscle flickered in Valan’s cheek. ‘I did not ask for those,’ he said.

Tara curtseyed. ‘No, honoured. Forgive me, honoured. The linens were so reasonably priced I had enough left over and more. I … was not sure whether your daughters would be able to bring any toys with them and I thought you might want to show you’d been thinking of them.’

Valan’s expression was unreadable.

‘I can try and sell them on, honoured,’ she added quickly, voice quickening with anxiety, ‘or … or use them as kindling for the fire.’

‘Expensive kindling,’ Valan commented and drank some more.

‘Forgive me,’ she said again, ‘I should not have done it. I’ll get the money back somehow, I swear. I thought—’

‘You’ve done well. Where’s supper?’

Tara bit off any more excuses and bobbed another curtsey, hurried to the smaller table set by the window where Valan liked to eat and lifted the heavy wooden cover off the plate. Cold meats, bread, cheese and greens and Tara’s stomach gurgled at the sight, wooden horses forgotten.

Valan pushed past her and sat, gestured for more wine and Tara stood by his side and watched him eat and drink food and wine that didn’t belong to him while thousands of slaves went hungry.

Her stomach rumbled again and a brief smile crossed Valan’s face. He picked up a half-eaten roll of bread and tossed it on to the floor. She stared at it, and then back at him, and then she picked it up and brushed it off and ate it.

It was three days before she could get back to the market, but the mason was still there. He’d moved along the wall a little, and while she knew nothing about masonry it didn’t look like he’d made much progress. Perhaps Vaunt had managed to get word out to slow the work and it had spread beyond the Rankers forced to do the labouring.

Tara circled the market a couple of times, wondering how best to approach the mason and what she could say, when he solved it for her. She was a dozen strides away when he reared back from the wall with the bellow of a wounded bull, a scarlet spray arcing out of the shade and across the discarded and broken stone.

The man went to his knees, clutching his hand to his chest, and Tara moved for him with the instinct of a soldier to a wounded comrade. ‘Let me see, let me see,’ she said, prising at his supporting hand. The slice across his palm wasn’t deep but it was long and bleeding freely.

‘Merol, son of Merle Stonemason who died defending this wall,’ the man hissed and then let out another bleat of pain.

‘You! What are you doing?’ a Raider demanded.

Tara stood up in order to curtsey. ‘Forgive me, honoured, I have a little skill in healing. I only thought to help so he would be able to continue working.’

‘Healer?’ the Mireces said sharply.

‘No, honoured. Just some skills I picked up over the years. I can clean and stitch this. Your will, honoured.’

Merol bleated again. ‘I can’t lose me hand, milord, please. Forgive the interruption, I’m sure I’ll be able to work again once the bleeding’s stopped.’

Tara was sure of no such thing but she held her tongue. ‘Get on with it then,’ the Raider snapped. ‘Over there, out of the way of those doing actual work. And I’ll be reporting this to your owner, bitch. What’s his name?’

‘Second Valan, honoured,’ Tara said and both Merol and the Mireces sucked in a breath. ‘Come, man. Sit down. You’re lucky my master sent me out for needle and thread among other things.’

The mason sat carefully on a broken-down crate that creaked under his weight. ‘Tara Vaunt, wife of Major Tomaz Vaunt of the Palace Rank, currently imprisoned in the south barracks in Second Circle,’ she breathed.

Merol pulled his hand out of hers. ‘Know Vaunt by reputation,’ he said quietly. ‘Didn’t know he had a wife.’ Tara got ready to run. ‘But then it’s a big city and I don’t know everything, do I? I mean, I know about walls and buildings. I know about gates.’ His eyes bored into hers. ‘I know about quiet routes from the harbours to First Circle, even, in the slaughter district.’

Tara licked her lips. ‘You know a lot, Merol; you’re clearly a useful man. But are you a loyal man?’

‘Loyal to who? I got my da’s reputation to live up to and that’s enough for me,’ Merol said and put his hand back in hers.

She broke eye contact and examined the cut. ‘Does it hurt?’

‘Nah,’ Merol said. ‘Just opened up an existing scar; barely felt it. I saw what you done the other day, how that stall-holder threatened you and you stood up to him. Made me think you were someone worth knowing.’

‘You cut your hand open for the right reasons then, Merol,’ Tara said as she dabbed at the wound and then threaded the needle and began to tug it through the flesh. ‘There are plans. I can’t say more now, but I’ll come and see you again. Where are you staying?’

‘That slimy fucker who was talking to you owns me and another lad. Think he wanted a woman – he’s ever so disappointed, keeps threatening to sell us ’cause he knows if he tries to fuck either of we’ll squash him like a fucking flea, pardon my language. But we work hard – and slow. Staying in the cloth district.’

Tara finished the stitching and bit off the thread, dabbed it some more and then wrapped a new napkin around it. So much for her spare linens – she’d have to tear them up to replace what she’d used here. ‘Sound out the other big men with hammers and wait for my word. I’ll be in touch.’ Tara stood up and repacked her basket. She turned to his owner and bobbed another curtsey. ‘He’ll need to keep it clean, honoured, or it’ll kill him.’

The Raider sucked his teeth and then spat, but he didn’t contradict her, just waved Merol towards the western wall. ‘Don’t work, don’t eat, slave,’ he growled. ‘Back to it.’

Tara made her way back to the palace and passed a knot of chained Rankers hauling stone in barrows. She slid past one, a man she vaguely recognised, definitely housed in the south barracks. ‘Mason named Merol’s with us,’ she hissed as she went past. ‘Tell Vaunt.’

She didn’t wait for a reply.

MACE

Seventh moon, first year of the reign of King Corvus

Road to the South Rank forts, Western Plain, Krike border

Three separate reports of bands of Mireces, a few hundred strong each, had come in from three locations within a ten-mile radius of the South Rank’s headquarters. Whether or not they knew the survivors of the siege were there, they were doing what they could to prevent patrols or intel moving in and out of the forts.

A week of rest had turned into a month as the Rankers finally began to let go of the state of heightened awareness and battle-readiness that had characterised their time under siege and their flight across Rilpor. Exhaustion had bitten them all deep, and for days they moved around the forts like ghosts unless a sudden sound or sight triggered them into violent motion. Mace himself couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept so much or his thoughts had been so hard to assemble. As though the siege had stolen his wits.

But now, finally, he felt close to his old self and determined to prove it to everyone by tagging along with Colonel Jarl’s Hundreds. The largest reported force was northeast between the forts and Rilporin, with others reported at north and northwest of their position – the three directions from which they were most likely to receive potential reinforcements or vital information. It didn’t feel like a coincidence that they’d be there and not elsewhere in the Western Plain.

Hallos had glowered from beneath eyebrows no less fearsome for being more grey than black these days, but Mace wasn’t letting the physician talk him out of another patrol and the chance at a scrap, even as he’d ordered the shattered remnants of the West and Palace Ranks to stand down. The fires that had led every one of them to perform extraordinary feats during Rilporin’s defence were still banked embers, and they needed time to coax the flames back into life.

Dalli had come too, which didn’t surprise him. She’d been spikier than usual since her fight with Rillirin and the girl’s removal to Fort Three, and as the days passed the outrage iced over and now they were little more than brittle strangers on the rare occasions they were in the same place together.

All of which Mace put out of his mind as they rode out of the gate in the midst of two hundred marching Rankers. ‘How are the supplies looking, Colonel?’ he asked as his skittish mount sidestepped into Dalli’s. He couldn’t even remember the last time he’d been on a horse. Somewhere back in the west, he supposed.

‘At the current rate of consumption, we’ll be on half-rations for all personnel in two moons, quarter-rations in four, and eating our horses and boot leather in six. If we go on to half-rations now—’

‘That won’t be necessary, Jarl, at least not yet. Once the civilians are gone, even with the provisions they’ll have to take with them, remaining numbers will be almost back to normal. We managed to buy up a decent amount of grain before the East Rank garrisons moved into the towns.’

‘I admit I’m hesitant about sending them so far through hostile territory though, Commander,’ Jarl said. ‘Even if the Mireces border is as empty as you believe, that’s a two-week march for Rankers, so easily three for civilians with old folks and little ones.’

‘You’re not the only one, but there simply isn’t anywhere else for them to go. If we could broker a deal with Krike to house refugees, that would be ideal, but you say we can’t.’

‘Sorry, Commander, if it was possible we’d all be suggesting it. I’ve served here for six years now and we’ve never known the Krikites to change their minds about international relations. They said no – they mean no.’

‘So, we’re going to send them to learn to be Wolves instead,’ Dalli said with half a smile. ‘Or at least, they’re going to occupy our land. Our village in the foothills is small and won’t fit them all, but it’s empty and the only place without an enemy garrison. They’ll have to dig in and build – and try not to strip the land of resources while they’re there. Some of us would quite like to go home when this is all over.’

‘Even once we’ve cleared out these Raiders it’ll be a risk,’ Mace said heavily, ‘but there are forty-two pregnant women in the forts and almost six hundred children of varying ages, as well as the old and those who can’t move fast. We can’t feed them and we can’t protect them, not indefinitely.’ He gestured at the empty, innocent-seeming land rolling away ahead of them. ‘They’re going to come for us. Sooner or later, whether or not they ever learn exactly how many of us are here, the Mireces are going to come. They can’t let us live.’

It soured the mood somewhat, but it had to be said. They weren’t safe down here in the south. Mace’s presence and that of the refugees made no difference – Corvus couldn’t allow a rested, untested fighting force like the South Rank to live. If he was to have absolute power over Rilpor, they needed to be crushed.

‘Let’s not forget Colonel Edris, though. He and King Tresh and a Listran army could be just the distraction we need to get the civs safely away,’ he added in a belated attempt to restore their spirits.

‘He’ll certainly have some decisions to make about where to attack first,’ Jarl agreed, ‘and unarmed non-combatants will be the least of his worries.’

‘Precisely.’

Turned out Jarl was like a dog with a bone, though. ‘They’ll need scouts and guards, too, someone who knows the way, wagons full of provisions. The civilians, I mean – Tresh’ll have Edris and his own supplies, of course. Then there’s deciding who goes first and how many go at once. Your march here all together was a feat worthy of a song, Commander, but the chances of you managing it undetected a second time, if you even did the first …’ Jarl trailed off.

‘You’re not telling me anything I don’t know,’ Mace grunted. He’d already talked it to death with Hadir, but Jarl struck him as the thorough type. It was possible he’d see something they hadn’t.

‘The first decision is whether we send them in small or large groups, or even one huge one – just get them out and away all together. Multiple groups increases the risk of some being seen and attacked. One large one will be slow and chaotic, hard to control. Exactly how we do it is the focus of the first meeting when we get back, but if we don’t make it, Hadir’s tasked with ensuring all four thousand civilians, minus those who have joined the militia, get out and get on the road west. Whatever it takes.’

That soured the mood even further and they rode in silence for a while, stationed ten ranks back, allowing the forward scouts a clear view not obscured by horses’ arses.

There’ll be utter fucking chaos when they know we’re sending them away. They’ll think we can’t protect them, or that we’re getting rid of them to spare our own lives. All the panic and vicious ignorance from Rilporin will be repeated. And I don’t blame them at all. If I were one of them, I wouldn’t want to face open country again. Not ever.

He gave himself a little mental shake. One problem at a time, Mace. Clear the area around the forts so they can get out undetected, and then pray to the Dancer they make it all the way to safety.

Dalli had done the scouting when the campfires were spotted and Mace had nearly managed not to panic at the length of time she was gone. The sky was a riot of stars that did little to hide any of them, and still somehow she slid in close enough to count their weapons and piss in their stew without anyone noticing.

Mace and Jarl huddled around her so their voices wouldn’t carry on the breeze. ‘About three hundred, maybe more if we assume four to a fire and forty on watch,’ she breathed.

It was more men than Mace had, but fewer than he’d feared. ‘All right, we’ve got the night and the element of surprise, and they’ll have shit night vision from standing around the fires. Split up and approach from north, east and west. If they’re fleeing anywhere, I want it to be straight towards the forts so our close patrols can pick them off. Pass the word for quiet. I’ll draw their attention: try and get in amongst them before the alarm sounds so it looks like we’re everywhere.’

Jarl showed his teeth and Dalli’s face shifted into a feral mask. They faded into the night, Rankers following. Mace took a breath and felt the adrenaline mix with the fear, drew his sword and advanced, moving steadily so his gear made as little sound as possible. At his back crept sixty Rankers, silent, disciplined.

‘Who goes there?’ came a Mireces voice from out of the blinding light of a handheld torch, flames flickering on Mace’s plate and the chainmail of the men who followed.

‘For Rilpor!’ Mace roared and broke into a sprint. His men followed, screaming, the other two wings holding back in silence until all attention was firmly on Mace. They ploughed into the light and into the line of Mireces scrambling to their feet, fumbling for weapons and screaming questions and alarms and, soon enough, pain.

Mace ducked a hasty swing and carried on past, flicking his sword backwards into the Mireces’ exposed hamstring. He went down howling and Mace left him to be picked off by those following. A knot of Mireces charged him and he tightened the grip on his shield, took an axe blow high on its face and smashed the boss in his attacker’s chest, pushing him back a step, parried a sword with his own and insinuated his blade past the man’s guard and into the side of his neck, a raking slice that put him out of the fight and possibly out of life. Another sword battered into his pauldron and he grunted, stepped back and spun, lashing out with sword and shield, blocking low and cutting high, high, low and then thrusting.

Another axe blow on to his shield was almost enough to break his wrist and he bellowed, kicked the man wielding it in the knee and rammed him off his feet, bringing the shield rim down into his face and hearing the snap of bone and teeth. Screaming filled the night.

‘’Ware!’ shrieked a voice and he dived, rolling over his shield and into clear space, up between two Mireces just turning to face him, stabbed one and missed, the chainmail turning the point, flicked the blade down and opened the man’s thigh instead, kicking into the open wound; he took the blow from the second Raider on the edge of his shield, chips of wood spraying his face and the blade skittering off and squealing down his breastplate.

Spun side on and forced the man back with the shield, herding him until he tripped over a corpse, lashing out with a blow more a bludgeon and staving in helmet and skull. Sucking in lungfuls of air and letting all the rage of Rilporin surge up his throat and out of his mouth in a scream of pure violence, spinning to defend his back when his spine prickled warning, tucked in behind his shield so the attack was a glancing blow off the metal boss and his upward diagonal sweep made it below the chainmail and into groin and belly. Stink of entrails and the scream of a dead man, glimpse of Dalli darting like a fish from the darkness, spear red along a third of its length, twirling and ducking and dealing death.

Another presence behind him and he twisted again, sword already cutting, and Jarl threw up his shield to deflect it. ‘About a dozen slipped through south if you want them, Commander,’ he panted when he saw the need for more violence, for release, in Mace’s expression, indicating a score of soldiers arrayed behind him with torches and bloodstained faces, ready to run.

Mace took another deep lungful, adrenaline crystal-bright and singing in his veins. ‘Mop up here,’ he snarled, bloodlust thickening his voice. ‘I’ve got the runners.’

THE BLESSED ONE

Seventh moon, first year of the reign of King Corvus

Red Gods’ temple, temple district, First Circle, Rilporin, Wheat Lands

Lanta, Blessed One and Voice of the Gods, and High Priest Gull crouched in the dark of the temple.

They had the beginnings of a plan now, an outline that they were filling in through ritual, through communion and intuition and invention. The godblood Lanta had ingested and which even now stained her skin had lent her wisdom and understanding she’d never before experienced. She understood the gods; knew Them, in ways no other mortal could or ever had.

The secret lay in learning how the Fox God had entered the mortal man Crys Tailorson. If they could understand that, they’d know better how to bring back the Dark Lady.

Lanta had already offered her own flesh as host, but the connection had failed. They needed a focus, something for the Dark Lady to sense from wherever She was imprisoned, something big enough, bright enough, to draw Her back past the veil and into Gilgoras. And then into Her new body, mortal and divine mingling into a living goddess to tread the earth among Her children forever. Between them, the Blessed One and Gull were beginning to understand what that beacon might be.

Holy Gosfath. God of Blood and Lord of War.

The sheer audacity, the magnitude, of what they were attempting frightened her, but the alternative – a world without the Dark Lady, the endless agony of abandonment – terrified her far more. And Lanta did not deal in fear of this type.

If they could … anchor Gosfath here in the temple, when the time came for the ritual, the Dark Lady would find Her way to Him through the channel of Lanta’s soul and the souls of sacrifices, the promise and whisper of blood spilt in Her name, and from there they could direct Her into the Bloodchild – the holy vessel – and restore Her to life and the world. For that, they needed to be able to bring the god to them. They needed to offer Him something. Tempt Him.

Lanta took a deliberate breath of the rank air, the heat and smoke, tasting her fear and embracing it, and then she focused. The knife was sharp, but not so sharp she didn’t feel it slice into her arm; what would be the point in not feeling the pain?

‘I swear in Holy Gosfath’s name that I will not rest until I have brought the Dark Lady out of death and into Her glorious vengeance.’

She cut again.

‘I swear in the Dark Lady’s memory that I will fly past what remains of the veil and search the Waystations and the Afterworld itself to find Her.’

Another cut. The temple was thick with tension and the stink of old blood and new, sweat and death and fierce, brittle defiance.

‘I swear by my blood and my hope of meeting the gods in death that I will not cease until we have resurrected our Bloody Mother.’

She cut once more, the pain lancing through her and making her stronger, more determined. A blood oath, carved in flesh and bone and will, new scars on top of old: a promise to the gods, to the Dark Lady wherever She was; and a promise to Lanta herself.

This is faith. This is determination. This is how we win.

Lanta gave the blade to Gull and he touched its tip to his lips, licking her blood from the steel. And then he swore the same oath, one cut at a time, and the heat in the temple grew, the stinking slaughterhouse smell drifting from the altar and the godpool they’d blessed with the blood of sacrifice, its clotted surface so thick it echoed back their words and the harshness of their breathing.

Beneath Lanta’s hands a brass dish full of coals smoked and hissed as her blood dripped into it, filling her head with the path to the Waystation. Opposite her, Gull’s nostrils flared as he inhaled the fumes. Lanta’s fingers coiled through the smoke, sweat sheening her face.

‘Holy Gosfath, God of Blood, lend us your great strength in the quest to return your Holy Sister to you and to the world. Grant us the strength to do your will. God of Blood, we honour you.’ The glowing coals sizzled and burst into flame. Lanta smiled cautiously; He was listening.

‘Gosfath, God of Blood, separated from your loved and loving Sister, we beseech you to search beyond the veil for the Dark Lady, snatched from your loving arms and our yearning souls. We seek your mighty aid in helping us bring Her back from beyond death. Will you come to us?’

A breeze rippled through the dry heat of the room, tickling Lanta’s skin, lifting her hair, stealing fingers inside her gown, beneath her breasts and between her legs. It carried the whiff of corruption, the tang of sulphur.

‘He’s near,’ she whispered and Gull scuttled further forward, his face a skull ill lit by the glow from the brazier. The heat was so strong it took all her will to keep her palms close to the coals. She sucked in a breath of smoke, held it against the urge to cough, tears stinging her eyes, and exhaled.

‘Bring Him,’ Gull murmured.

Lanta strained, opening herself to Gosfath as she had for years to the Dark Lady. A tickle, a tentative poking, and then nothing. She strained harder, but He wouldn’t come. Gull had more experience with the god, but for this plan Gull would not suffice.

‘The God does not desire,’ she said.

‘The God always desires,’ Gull said. He put his hands on top of Lanta’s and, with one savage move, pressed them into the coals.

Red screaming agony coursed through her hands and up her arms and Lanta shrieked, fought to pull away. Gull held her tight and suddenly there He was, bright and dark and vast in her head.

Want. Need. Want.

Lanta felt herself pulled along the Path, flying from the temple into the presence of her dread lord, pain and terror mingling into the perfect alloy of devotion.

Heat pulsed around her, fingers of hot air stroking her now naked skin. Ahead, a shadow loomed among the stalactites of the Waystation, massive and misshapen. He was supposed to come to them, not her to Him. It wouldn’t work here. It had to be the temple. It had to be. Gosfath’s bellow brought her thoughts to a crashing halt and ignited her tongue.

‘As we call to the gods in times of pain and terror, so They take as Their due our blood and breath,’ she chanted. There was no time to worry about what had gone wrong; Lanta was in the presence of the Red Father. ‘As fear brings us to the gods’ presence, I welcome you. Fear is your call; devotion is our answer.’

Fear indeed, as the darkness parted to reveal Him sitting on a throne carved from the bones of a mountain. Or perhaps it was a mountain of bones. He rose, head bowed to avoid the cavern’s high vault, and stepped down, the black talons on one huge hand skirling across the wall, gouging lines, striking sparks, the noise an unholy screech that made Lanta’s eardrums flutter. She dropped to her knees and looked away as He shrank, a giant still but of a size she could comprehend now. Half her height again, three times her weight, muscles rippling like eels in oil.

‘Lord Gosfath, God of Blood, most mighty Lord of War and chaos, I am honoured by your presence, and honour you in turn with—’

‘Want,’ the God of Blood hissed, hauling her to her feet with one hand wrapped around her upper arm. ‘Want now.’

‘Your Sister wants you too, Father,’ Lanta gasped, raising her hands in a barrier as effective as a spider’s web. ‘The Dark Lady yearns for your arms around Her, Father, She yearns for you. We must find Her, bring Her back to you and this world, restore the balance—’

Gosfath leant close. ‘Alone,’ He grunted and flung her down. ‘Want.’

Lanta cried out as her head struck stone, again as Gosfath threw Himself on top of her, and then screamed as His talons and then His fat red cock dug their way inside her, screamed in an agony so close to ecstasy she understood they were the same. Screamed as the god honoured her.

Lanta woke with a wail of mingled pain and exaltation, her consciousness slamming back into her body where it lay in abandon on the temple floor, her head pillowed on Gull’s knees and her skirts cast up around her legs. She exhaled a long, drawn-out moan as her hurts made themselves known in a rush that rippled through her body from the back of her head to her ankles.

She gestured with scabbed fingers and carefully, so carefully, Gull undid her gown and peeled it down to her waist. Among the black god-stains and disappearing beneath her breast band, her skin was hatched with cuts, claw marks, bite marks, and at her core throbbed a deep ache that spiked into pain with every movement.

Lanta looked down at herself and a slow smile spread across her face at the ruin of her flesh. She placed one hand between her legs. ‘The god honoured me,’ she whispered. Tears started in her eyes.

‘Then we have taken the first step,’ Gull replied. ‘The next time, you must draw Him here rather than go to the Waystation. We must be able to bring Him through the veil if the Dark Lady is to return.’

Lanta forced herself to sit up, groaning against the flare deep within her pelvis. Next time? Even if she could go through this again, there was no saying that Holy Gosfath would come through the veil and into the temple. Not next time, maybe not ever. She breathed through the pain and pushed her doubts aside. It would work. He would understand and He would help them. He would be rewarded, first with Lanta to appease and comfort Him, and then by the restoration of His Sister-Lover.

It would work.

Gull scooted around to face her, put his hands on her shoulders, reverence lightening his features. ‘This is monumental, Blessed One,’ he said. ‘We have made great progress here today. No one has ever communed with the god so … thoroughly.’

‘Great progress, yes,’ she said, ‘but I will need time to heal before I call Him again. His desire and loneliness were so great, you can see what it has done to me.’

‘And yet time begins to run short. Perhaps some of the slave women could be trained to pleasure the Father until Mireces women arrive,’ Gull mused.

Lanta’s guts twisted, not in pain this time. ‘No,’ she snapped. ‘It must be me. Only me. I am the Blessed One and this is my task, my holy purpose. I will see it done. I will bring the Father to Rilporin, to this very temple. He will come and we will make Him a beacon to guide the Dark Lady home.’

I have known the love of the Father. May it sustain me until our Bloody Mother is brought back.

‘Come, let us get you to a warm bath and then the healer. You have done great work.’

‘It is only the beginning,’ Lanta stuttered as Gull helped her stand, the pain shortening her breath. ‘For the rest we need Rillirin and the bairn. We have to have her, Gull.’

‘I will speak to the king on your behalf, Blessed One,’ Gull soothed her. ‘I will inform him of our progress, of the urgency, the need, to find his sister. You should concentrate only on the god for now, on encouraging Him to leave the Afterworld and the Waystation and visit His worshippers here. Visit you.’

She paused, tightening her grip on her priest’s supporting arm and then hissing as the blisters on her palm ruptured. ‘He said He was alone, Gull,’ she whispered, and her tears this time were of sorrow. ‘It broke my heart.’

‘You will soothe him, Blessed One, and tend to His divine needs as often as you are able. We must explain all we are doing to return His Sister-Lover to Him. Once He understands, it may be that His demands are less … onerous.’

Lanta’s ice-blue eyes frosted over and she pushed away to stand unaided. ‘No task performed in service of the gods is ever onerous,’ she grated. Gull dipped his head in silent apology. ‘I will rest and sleep, take herbs for these wounds. Our great work begins now. All that has come before is as nothing.’

CRYS

Seventh moon, first year of the reign of King Corvus

Seer’s Tor, Krike

Despite the presence of the southern war leader and her warriors, the reception for the Rilporians at Seer’s Tor, Krike’s capital, was less than friendly.

Warriors picked up their approach when they were still a few miles out and by the time the group had reached the outskirts of the great circular town with the tor rearing from its centre, the Warlord’s honour guard were ranged across the main road and the gates were shut tight.

‘There’s something very wrong here,’ Dom muttered to Crys as they walked steadily towards the line of warriors barring their way. He rubbed tenderly at his right eye. ‘Very, very wrong. Be careful.’ He hissed in pain and stumbled and Ash caught him under the arm, helped him along a few strides until he found his balance again.

Crys didn’t miss that Ash let go as fast as he could. Dom didn’t miss it either. ‘Is there anything else you can tell me?’ he asked the calestar. Dom blinked, surprised and pleased to be spoken to. Grateful just to be acknowledged. A twist of shame rose up Crys’s throat even as his palms dampened in animal instinct at the man’s proximity.

‘Things will not be as they seem. Truth and lies entwine like mating snakes and faith broken and put back together is stronger than faith forgotten and remembered.’ He stopped walking, stopped talking, his neck stretching long and to one side, blank brown eyes staring into the future. Crys and Ash got ready to catch him, but after long moments he came back to them and was still himself.

‘All right?’ Crys put his hand on Dom’s back. ‘Do you need some time?’

Dom coughed, cleared his throat, spat, and then took several deep breaths. His right eye was screwed shut against pain that writhed across his features, but he began to walk, limping slightly. ‘Be on guard. We’re in more danger here than at any point since we fled Rilporin.’

‘Fantastic,’ Ash muttered, but he’d noticed the hand that Crys still had on Dom’s back and subsided. Relief, confusion and disgust warred for possession of his expression, but he matched his pace to Dom’s and the three of them moved slowly to the line of warriors in front of the shut gate.

‘The tor’s here,’ Crys said, though it was pretty obvious, looming over not just the town but the entire landscape, visible for miles. ‘It’s where I was born, you know. The Fox God, I mean.’

Cutta stepped in front of them. ‘Cutta Frog-dream, war leader of the south and confidante of the Warlord, with information about the war in Rilpor and god-news for the Seer-Mother. The Trickster has returned to Gilgoras in mortal form.’

Whatever they’d been expecting, it clearly wasn’t that. The warrior who she addressed opened and closed his mouth a few times, having no idea how to answer such claims. Eventually he clicked his fingers and sent another back to the town through a postern gate. ‘You’ll wait,’ he grunted, easing the axe in his grip.

‘As you say, honour guard. Two-Eyed Man, are you content to wait?’ Cutta asked, voice loud enough to carry to the warriors opposing them. There were startled exclamations and Crys approved the tactic. Whatever happened here, Cutta had both named him and given him authority over her. The rumour of that would flood through the town faster than anyone could think to curb it.

He waved a hand. ‘We’ll wait.’

It didn’t take long. More of the Warlord’s honour guard flooded out to surround Cutta and her warriors, and then the Warlord himself arrived with the gold torc of his office glinting on his thick neck beneath his blond beard and braided hair.

A woman who had to be the Seer-Mother followed him out, dripping in ornaments and beads and charms, tattoos around her eyes.

‘Rilporians are not welcome in Krike,’ the Warlord shouted, his hands on his hips next to axe and knife. ‘And liars are welcome nowhere.’

The Seer-Mother stalked past him and up to the Rilporians standing a little ahead of the others. The Krikites who’d followed Crys stepped away, shuffling their feet like children caught stealing apples. She circled the trio and Crys’s back prickled, waiting for a knife. Even without the Fox God’s confirmation or Dom’s partial knowing, it was clear this woman was not their friend.

Want to come out and wow them, Foxy?

There was a feeling of amusement but no corresponding change in his nature. Still, Crys hoped he wasn’t going to have to do this alone.

The Seer-Mother stopped in front of him and peered at his face. He arched his eyebrow and waited. So did she, but if she was expecting deference she’d be standing there a long time. ‘You have destroyed Krike’s priesthood and forbidden the old worship,’ he said; breath hissed from her. ‘You have made yourself the sole conduit between the people and the gods. That must be a heavy burden.’

‘I bear it gladly,’ she said, tossing her head.

Crys indicated the bronze and brass bracelets and necklaces, the many fine beads threaded into her hair. ‘So I can see. And do you think people beggaring themselves in return for your intervention with the gods is just?’

The Seer-Mother barked a sharp laugh. ‘You are the one who is here to be judged. You are the one whose truth is to be discovered – and the consequences of it.’

‘I don’t think so,’ Crys said softly and felt stillness gather in Ash standing at his left shoulder. His lover was readying for a fight. ‘I do not need your judgement,’ he continued, raising his voice for the Warlord to hear. ‘I am Crys Tailorson, officer, soldier, heart-bound to the Wolf Ash. I am the Fox God in mortal form, the Trickster. The Two-Eyed Man. There is rot in Krike, and though I came here to secure aid for Rilpor’s fight against the forces of the Red Gods, I will not leave before I have done all I can to bring harmony back to your land and the gods back to your hearts.’

The Seer-Mother pounced on his words. ‘The gods, you say? The gods, not “Me”. You proclaim yourself our lord and then refuse to acknowledge your place in those hearts you speak of so lovingly.’ She pointed a finger between his eyes. ‘I name you liar.’

‘I name you Tanik Horse-dream, false Seer-Mother,’ Crys replied easily and a ripple of surprise ran through those gathered.

Tanik scoffed. ‘Anyone you travelled with could have told you my name. There are no secrets among Krikites, Crys Tailorson, false prophet. I am Tanik: what of it? You think that makes you divine?’

‘False,’ Dom said and his teeth clicked together as he bit off the word. ‘False.’

‘See?’ the woman demanded, gesturing. ‘Even your accomplice agrees with me.’

Neither Crys nor Ash were listening. ‘He’s going,’ Ash said, ‘this’ll be a full one, he’s too close to the edge after that moment just now.’ He leant in close, hands on Dom’s shoulders. ‘Let’s sit you down, Dom, eh? Come on now, right here, that’s it. Come—’

Dom’s arms flew up and knocked Ash away and then he stiffened and fell like a tree. Crys slid in behind him and caught his shoulders, but Dom began to convulse before he managed to get him on to the floor and he wriggled, hit the dirt back-first so all the breath was driven free, and then the thrashing started, the arching, the guttural grunts.

A spear appeared in the ground by his hip and Ash spun to face the Warlord’s warriors. ‘Don’t you fucking dare,’ he roared at them, turned away before anyone could reply, and threw himself down at Dom’s head, murmuring the old charms to soothe him, let him know he wasn’t alone. ‘Hush now, hush,’ he said, thumbs tracing circles on Dom’s brow. ‘We’re here; you’re safe. You’re safe. We’ve got you.’

Crys knelt at his side and studied the writhing face as Dom’s boot heels drummed the hard-packed earth, foam splattering from his mouth. He put his hand on the calestar’s stomach and pushed. ‘Be still,’ he commanded and Dom relaxed, a sudden boneless collapse as though he’d been brained. There was a chorus of murmurs from those around them as all crowded in to see, but Crys paid them no mind.

‘Tell me,’ he said.

Dom’s eyes opened, brown and bloodshot, glittering with pain. He spat out pink saliva. ‘Lies live here,’ he grated to the assembled Krikites as much as to Crys. The Seer-Mother and even the Warlord leant close to listen, though warriors stood ready in case this was some ruse. ‘Someone here dissembles, cloaked in lies and false prophecy. Someone tricks.’

Sharp looks in Crys’s direction that raised the hairs on the back of his neck. Unfortunate choice of words, Calestar.

‘There is deception here, and it stifles the divine,’ Dom continued. ‘Someone lies, someone trusted. The gods are leaking from Krike as the faithful turn their hearts away. Water from a broken bucket. Turn them back, or all is lost. Worship again, worship as your ancestors did, or be lost.’

Crys sat back on his heels as Dom rolled weakly on to his side and vomited. Ash snatched a waterskin from Cutta and helped him to drink. Despite the situation, the war leader kept her place by their side and Crys was thankful for it. He had an uneasy feeling he’d need her and her fighters.

‘Warlord, is there somewhere we may go so my friend can rest?’ Crys asked, standing. ‘He’ll be exhausted after his knowing and in a lot of pain. He needs somewhere warm and dry to sleep. You may guard us however you see fit; we won’t resist. And if you’d like to question our presence here, I am happy to come with you.’

Ash jerked his head up at that and Crys put his hand out.

‘Lies and falsehoods and secrets and fear,’ Dom mumbled, gazing into some inner vista that haunted him. ‘Lies, all lies. Only dreams are true here and they forget their dreams.’

The muttering this time was angry, hostile.

‘See?’ Tanik demanded. ‘They know nothing of us and our way of life to speak so. The Fox God would never allow anyone to speak of the soul-dreaming with so little respect. They are moon-mad; it can be nothing else. This one has been born with the sign of the god in his eyes and uses the blessing to cheat and corrupt the weak of mind.’

Ash scowled at the implication. ‘Fuck’s sake, I’m not listening to any more of this shit. Crys, help me get him up; he needs to rest. With luck we can be gone in the morning.’

Dom’s legs would barely support him and he hung between them like wet washing as they started towards the gate. Warriors shuffled and looked at each other, at the Warlord and the Seer-Mother, at Cutta Frog-dream and her two-hundred-strong war band.

‘Let them through. House them in the travellers’ quarter and put a dozen guards on watch.’ The Warlord’s voice was clear and he radiated puzzlement more than hostility, as though something didn’t quite make sense.

‘They will be questioned one at a time,’ Tanik said. ‘That one’s insane claims will be investigated in the sight of the gods. When his heresy is laid bare, he will be dealt with accordingly.’

The honour guard formed up around the three of them before Crys could respond and marched them through the gates and into the town, laid out like spokes on a wheel with roads lined with vegetable plots all leading in towards the centre – the tor. Crys felt it pull at him as they walked, felt a sudden sharp-eyed attention from within.

The tor. It will happen at the tor.

What will?

All of it.

Crys wasn’t reassured. He was pretty sure the Fox God had said something similar shortly before he was almost tortured to death.

CORVUS

Eighth moon, first year of the reign of King Corvus

Throne room, the palace, Rilporin, Wheat Lands

‘The first of the Evendoom women turned up,’ Corvus said as he lounged on the throne, one leg flung over the arm. ‘Three of them.’

‘How’d they look?’ Valan asked.

Corvus screwed up his face. ‘Even when they weren’t wailing and tearing their hair and so forth, mostly like the bastard offspring of a dog and a horse’s arse. I got rid of them.’ He studied Silais, who’d decided kneeling was by far the lesser evil compared with having body parts cut off. ‘But Slave Silais tells me some of the others have reputations for being quite pretty. In fact, he’s staked his other ear on it.’

The man twitched and Corvus sniggered. ‘As for the male heirs, two currently reside in Pine Lock. Brothers. I don’t trust the East Rank to handle it; sort it out for me, Valan. Silais will give you names and descriptions.’

‘Your will, Sire. With your permission, I’ll leave at dawn.’ Corvus nodded. ‘Regarding your safety in my absence, Tett’s a good man, steady and loyal and a bastard with a knife. He’ll make you a decent bodyguard.’

‘Hails from Crow Crag, not Eagle Height?’ Valan nodded. ‘Good. Always easier to trust one of our own. Brief him tonight and send him to me before you leave. Now, how’s the mood?’

Valan drummed his fingers on his knee and stared out of the window for a while. ‘Worried, Sire,’ he said eventually. ‘Now that things are settling down, now that we’re consolidating, well … some of the men are wondering if our victory was actually a victory? Our enemy is still out there, skulking through Listre or holed up in the South Forts – and we’ll have news on that any day now. In the meantime, our allies are spread thin across the rest of Rilpor. The Dark Lady is gone, and while the Blessed One’s plan will see Her restored to us,’ he added hastily as Corvus’s nostrils flared, ‘that plan made no mention of whether or not She will return as an infant. The men worry that there are more battles to come and our goddess will be helpless to aid us while in that form. And the food …’

Corvus licked his lips and strove for calm. Nothing Valan had said differed from the thoughts that chased around his own brain each night. Not that he would – could – ever admit that. And if the Blessed One wasn’t being so fucking secretive, so godsdamned stubborn, we could put all their minds at rest. Mine included. Because the truth was he had no idea if the Dark Lady would somehow transform the infant into a grown woman – a grown goddess – at the moment of Her return. Deep in his heart, he suspected Lanta didn’t know either.

‘Listre is being dealt with. I’ve sent correspondence to their government stating we have no quarrel with them – which they’re probably stupid enough to believe – and Tresh won’t be a problem soon enough. Skerris has scouts on the border just in case. They’ll take ship on the Tears as soon as anything untoward is spotted. And I’ve received confirmation from our friends in Krike that they won’t aid any rebel Rilporians.’

Valan looked at him steadily. ‘I know it, Sire, but the men don’t. I think that’s what has them worried. They know threats are out there and they don’t know what’s being done about them. The Godblind and the mortal Fox God are still missing, as is your sister. We are … forgive me, Sire, we are sitting still. We are shoring up our walls and then hiding behind them. And the longer we wait, the stronger our enemies get. Patrolling the Western Plain is one thing, but why not besiege the South Rank forts? Break the threat on our flank ready to face the Listrans if they come?’

Corvus stood and strode to the window and then back again. ‘You tell me nothing I haven’t thought already myself,’ he said eventually, and Valan’s shoulders relaxed a little. ‘And while our warriors are fit again, if we leave Rilporin now, we lose it to our own fucking slaves. Make no mistake, if we abandon this place, we’ll have to fight to retake it. If we pull the East Rank back to secure Rilporin, we lose the rest of the country. I’ve been waiting for Fost. Our women are well used to dealing with rebellious slaves, and with them in place to rule our households for us, aided by a few hundred of the men, we can leave Rilporin in safe hands.’

Valan sat back with a soft whoosh of air. ‘I had not considered that,’ he admitted.

They were interrupted by a pounding on the door, which was thrown open before Corvus could give leave to enter. He leapt on to the dais, banging his knee into the small table before the throne. ‘Fuck! Fost? Gods, we were just talking about …’ Fost’s face was grey beneath the sweat and stubble. He looked like a man with a hidden wound. ‘Tell me.’

Fost bowed jerkily, gaze flickering from Corvus to Valan and back. He stopped well out of reach of either of them and weight settled in Corvus’s gut, black and heavy. ‘You don’t … didn’t my messenger reach you?’

‘Tell me.’

Fost swallowed hard. ‘Dead, Sire. They’re all dead.’

Valan grabbed his shoulder and threw him into the chair opposite Corvus. Corvus didn’t sit; he leant on his knuckles on the table. ‘Explain.’ His voice was quiet, deadly.

Fost’s throat clicked as he swallowed and hurried to clarify. ‘Well, not all. I bring you one hundred and six children and seventy-two women, Sire. The only survivors of all our towns along the Sky Path. The rest are corpses, or missing in the storms in the mountains. A few weeks after we destroyed Watchtown, hundreds of Wolves took the Sky Path and slaughtered every woman, child and priest they could find. Our women and boys fought hard, but they were overwhelmed. The Wolves freed the slaves, who fled with the livestock, and we found a few children who’d survived the attack only to starve to death, it looked like. Those I have with me were clever or lucky enough to be overlooked, and although a few swear they saw the Wolves stealing children—’ Corvus’s breath hitched. He’d been a stolen child, stolen by the Mireces and brought into the Red Gods’ embrace. Saved. ‘—everyone else – everyone – is dead.’

Now Corvus did sit, and Valan too, perching on the edge of the table with no thought for propriety. His second breathed as though he’d sprinted the length of the city, greasy sweat darkening his hair. His hands shook.

They stared at Fost, and the war chief swallowed again. ‘Forgive me, Sire. I did not … There was nothing I could … They were already dead, months dead, by the time we reached Cat Valley, let alone all the way to Eagle Height.’

‘Who are the survivors?’ Valan asked, his voice hoarse. ‘Is Neela with them? My girls?’

Fost’s shoulders hunched. ‘The women are all minor consorts from Falcon’s Landing and Cat Valley; a storm blew in and they were able to flee, invisible. The children are from all our towns, but Neela’s gone, Second, and your girls too. I’m sorry.’

Corvus and Fost turned from Valan’s ragged grief, shuffling in their seats as he bent double, arms wrapped around his waist as though to ward off a blow. A strangled keening came from him that grated like stone against Corvus’s nerves.

‘I sent a messenger as soon as we reached Cat Valley, Sire, I swear. If I’d known he didn’t make it through …’ He blinked, then coughed. ‘We’re holding all the survivors outside the city for now, Sire. I wanted to inform you first, before the men see how few they are.’

Almost all our women, our children. Our future, gone. We tore apart their people and they did the same to us. So be it. If they want a war of fucking attrition, they’ve got one.

Corvus’s face was hot with rage, but an ice-cold, ice-hard ball of hate sat heavy in his chest. ‘Fost, you have a list of the women and children, who their consorts and fathers are?’ Corvus barely recognised his own voice, it was so harsh with sickening anger. He’d had a few consorts, at least one daughter, both in Crow Crag and Eagle Height. Fost’s refusal to even mention them said all he needed to know. The man nodded and held it out. Corvus didn’t look at it.

‘Bring the men to the women, not the other way around. Women whose man is dead will be reallocated on a merit basis in the first instance. I will announce the … tragedy at dusk, and ask the Blessed One to say a few words about what has happened.’

‘Your will, Sire.’

‘Valan, I grieve for your loss. Go to Pine Lock for me and kill those Evendoom brothers. Take out your rage on them and make sure everyone knows who they are and why they’re dying. I want everyone knowing the royals are dead, that my claim is uncontested.’

He couldn’t even be sure Valan had heard him, but his second nodded and stalked from the throne room without another word. Corvus pitied anyone who got in his way. He poured ale, drank without tasting, then hurled the cup to shatter against the far wall.

I will kill every last fucking one of them, roast them on spits, wind their guts out, peel their faces off. I will kill them all for this. Dark Lady, Gosfath, God of Blood, witness my oath. Now it’s personal.

TARA

Eighth moon, first year of the reign of King Corvus

Heir’s suite, the palace, Rilporin, Wheat Lands

Tara stood quietly by the window, sunlight sparking strands of gold from Valan’s light-brown hair as he sat with his back to her and the afternoon, staring into the cold fireplace and drinking. He was drinking a lot, and early in the day. Tara didn’t like it, or that one of the toy horses rested in his lap. Every so often he turned it over in his hands. Once he’d rubbed it against his cheek.

She didn’t dare move. Whatever had happened had made him dangerous and not because he was her enemy. He wanted to hurt something. He wanted to kill something and she was the only available target. Violence drifted from him like smoke.

He reached for the bottle on the table next to him and sloshed the last of the wine into his cup. Another, already empty, sat by his elbow. She was surprised he was still conscious. Tara padded silently to the shelf and selected a third, hoping after that cupful he’d pass out. She twisted off the cork, placed the bottle gently on the table and stepped back. Valan caught her hand in his, his thumb stroking along her wrist.

‘Fetch another glass and sit. Drink with me.’

Oh, fuck.

‘Your will, honoured,’ Tara said. She fetched a cup and then set her chair opposite, out of the candlelight the better to see his shadowed face, poured a small measure and sipped.

‘Fill it.’

She did as she was told, drinking to quiet the butterflies in her stomach. Valan drank some more, still focused on the fireplace and not her. ‘Neela’s dead.’ The words were so unexpected in the long silence that she jumped, wine splashing her skirt. ‘My girls too. All dead. Killed. Murdered. Hacked apart by the cunting Wolves months ago. Months, and only just able to mourn them.’ He flailed his free hand. ‘Did all this for them, give them a better life under the blessings of the Red Gods, an easier life down here, and by now they’ll have been eaten by cats and crows. They’ll never see any of it.’

He put his hand over his eyes and she saw the glistening of tears on his cheeks.

‘Fuck,’ Tara breathed and drained her cup. ‘Valan, I’m so sorry.’ And she was. She took a deep breath. ‘Is it … just her?’

He shook his head ponderously. ‘Everyone. All of them bar a couple of hundred survivors. Corvus is going to tell the men at dusk and then this city will erupt. Maybe he thinks they’ll be less likely to massacre Rilporians in the dark, I don’t know. Fucking idiot. So sure he didn’t need to leave fighters back home to defend the villages. Arrogant fucking cunt.’

Tara pressed her lips together. Dusk. She had enough time. ‘Would you like to talk about her?’ she asked, taking the cup from his unresponsive fingers and refilling it.

‘What?’ He sniffed and rubbed his face, downing half the wine when she handed it back.

‘Your wife, Neela. Tell me about her and your children. If you wish.’

‘Why?’ he demanded, focusing on her. ‘So you can gloat?’

Tara lowered her gaze. ‘Forgive me. I thought it might help.’ She stood. ‘I will leave you to your thoughts, honoured.’

‘Fucking sit,’ he snarled, so close to violence that Tara was back in her seat before he’d finished speaking, heart yammering against her ribs.

You’ve got one chance, Carter. Do not fuck this up. And please, Valan, don’t do anything stupid. Having to kill you now will ruin everything.

‘Neela wasn’t so highborn as you,’ he said after a long silence, surprising her again. The wine was warming her, but she couldn’t afford any more of it. ‘Born and raised in Crow Crag like me, but her father was a low warrior and a thief. Childhood toughened her, taught her guile and strength, enough to turn down consort offers from other low warriors. Lot of the women hated her for that, and one or two men tried to force her. She cut the first one on the face, second in the groin, and then they left her alone.’

‘I’m not surprised,’ Tara said with genuine respect. ‘She sounds formidable.’

Valan smiled, sad and full of memory. ‘She was. She knew what she wanted, what she deserved, and that was a better life than the poorer warriors could give her. I thought I’d lose her to Corvus, you know,’ he said and met her eyes, gesturing that she drink.

Tara complied, then spat it back into the cup when his gaze drifted away.

‘But she didn’t want a Rilporian, it seems, even one who’d converted and risen as high as war chief. But his second? She’d settle for that. For me.’

‘Maybe your gods had a hand in it,’ Tara said carefully. If he got much drunker and carried on talking about Neela, she’d a fair idea what he’d want from her next. ‘Sounds like you were a good match,’ she added. ‘Perhaps They wanted to reward you with a woman worthy of you.’

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