Blood and Bone

CHAPTER XI

The strategy meeting to consider the attack upon the Thaumaturg capital, Anditi Pura, was a much less contentious affair than the earlier one for Isana Pura. From his seat among the scattered cushions, Prince Jatal studied the reclining figures of the various family heads and could not believe what he was witnessing. In their ease and laughter, their self-assurance and certainty of the victory ahead, he read ignorance, over-confidence — even childish recklessness.

To his sustained astonishment, they merely accepted every assurance the foreign Warleader offered. All would be as at Isana Pura, the ancient promised them. The populace constituted no threat. The Thaumaturgs would be contained within their walled precincts, their Inner City, and the shaduwam, whom they had been waiting for, would deal with them. Throughout the man’s explanations the various chiefs had nodded their acceptance, including Princess Andanii.

‘What of the organized resistance we met upon the road?’ Jatal demanded. ‘Someone is obviously mustering their opposition.’

The Warleader turned his dead grey gaze upon him. He made a vague gesture of dismissal. ‘Yes, my prince. And it has been crushed. So much for it.’

The circle of family heads laughed at that, toasting the victory. It was all Jatal could do to stop himself from damning them as a carnival of fools — but that would win him no allies. Steadying himself with a deep breath, he tried again: ‘And these reports of barricades and roadblocks throughout the city?’

Another impatient flick of a veined hand from the old commander. ‘Yes. By now they understand that they face a mounted threat and some few efforts are being made to block the roads. However, they cannot stop up every entrance. The Adwami will win through, yes?’

The various chiefs and family heads cheered at that and pledged to win through no matter what.

It was precisely this ‘no matter what’ that worried Jatal. Who knew what faced them? Perhaps things would go as at Isana Pura. Perhaps not. To his mind it was too great a risk to blindly thrust one’s head into the leopard’s mouth trusting it to work a second time.

Yet, a voice whispered in the back of his mind, do not great gains demand great risks? Is this meekness speaking? Cowardice?

And so, seeing that the Warleader had won round Princess Andanii and all her Vehajarwi allies, Jatal said no more. Better not to alienate or sideline himself from the general council. ‘The Elites plus your mercenaries will secure the inner precincts then?’ he asked.

The Warleader inclined his head in agreement. ‘Of course. As before.’ The mercenary commander then swept the circle of reclining chiefs. ‘If there are no more questions — then we are decided. We ride before dawn.’

More cheering and toasting — completely idiotic in Jatal’s opinion — followed this pronouncement. Throughout, his gaze held upon Princess Andanii, who sat close to the Warleader. The entire time she refused to meet his eyes. How he wished to send her a yearning glance, a silent plea for a sign — any sign at all. But that would be weakness and so he kept his gaze hard and flat. He would not abase himself before anyone. He excused himself at the first opportunity.

In his tent, he dismissed his Horsemaster and aides and servants then threw himself down on his bedding of piled blankets and cushions. But sleep would not come. Instead he tossed and turned, sweating in the warm humid night. Finally, he sat up and pulled a night table close for a glass of cold tea. He considered his sleeplessness. He should be resting before the attack. Was this the base writhing of a coward before battle? No, let us say not. What, then? Reasonable and understandable nerves in the face of such profound unknowns? Perhaps. Yet it felt so much stronger, so much more visceral. He had it then. Dread. A presaging of doom. An absolute certainty of failure.

He peered round the murky tent walls. What to do? Flee? No. He knew he was without options. There was only one course available — to go through with it. He felt like a man on his way to his execution, his feet bringing him steadily closer to the headsman’s sword. The longing thought brushed through him then: would she come?

No. No more weakness. No more mewling or cringing. He must resign himself to his coming destruction. He remembered, then, what he as a prince of the Hafinaj ought to be doing in preparation for impending death.

He dug out his personal satchel of books and writing materials. He opened the wooden case holding the inkstone, spread a sheet of clean vellum.

He paused, holding himself still, sensing the moment, his mood, his churning spinning thoughts. Then he composed:

The wind blows across the sands

My steps ahead lie as unknown

As those behind

He set down the sharpened quill. There. Last duty done. He dusted the ink then folded up the sheet and tucked it into his shirt over his heart.

Now perhaps sleep would come.

Woken before dawn, Jatal found himself in a rare fey mood. His aides dressed and armoured him. He consumed a light breakfast of hot tea and fruit. Readying to go, he thrust two daggers through his belt, tested the weight of his sword, then tucked his helmet under an arm. At the tent flap he turned to the aides and tilted his head in salute. ‘Good hunting today, gentlemen.’

They bowed. ‘Victory, Prince.’ Jatal accepted this with a nod, let the flap fall. Yes, victory. But whose? He went in search of Pinal.

The Horsemaster found him first. Ash was ready, accoutred in his light armour bardings. Jatal stroked his neck and fed him an apple he’d kept from breakfast. ‘Good hunting today, friend,’ he murmured to the stallion who shook his head in answer, jesses jangling.

‘The Elites are mustering,’ Pinal said as he mounted.

‘You will ride with the regulars today, Pinal,’ he told the Horsemaster, whose brows rose in surprise. ‘Command in my name. And … take good care of them. Yes? That is your first duty.’

His old companion bowed silently, though wonder and hurt warred upon his face. Jatal kneed Ash onward.

The Elites were indeed gathering. Princess Andanii was already in attendance. An even stronger bodyguard of Vehajarwi captains surrounded her. Jatal bowed a greeting. ‘Princess.’

She too eyed him uncertainly, as if detecting something odd in his tone or manner. Jatal thought she looked flushed and wary. For an instant hope flared in his chest as he imagined that it was shame that brought such colour to her cheeks. Shame and regret. Then another voice sneered upon such hopes: She only now is touched by a true awareness of the enormity of what she attempts.

Yet to his admiring gaze she appeared an inspiringly warlike figure in her white robes, with her wind-whipped headscarf hanging dazzlingly bright over her bands of enamelled green and silver armour. Her great longbow stood tall at her back. Her peaked helmet sported its Vehajarwi crest of a stylized leaping horse.

‘Prince,’ she responded. ‘This day we may realize our ambitions.’

‘Indeed.’ But which ambitions might those be?

She reared tall in her saddle to peer back over the assembled Elites. A new fervour glowed in her brown eyes and she thrust up an arm, shouting: ‘Glory to the Adwami!’

A great roar answered her as two thousand throats echoed the shout. Jatal bowed his answer. Indeed, may this day bring glory to the Adwami. If only that. Andanii brought her arm down chopping forward and they surged ahead, charging for the road to the capital.

It was not yet dawn. A golden pink light suffused the flat eastern horizon. Behind, the night was purple and dark ocean-green with the clinging sullen glow of the Visitor. The air was crisp and cool. It dried Jatal’s sweaty face and neck. His hands upon the reins became numb. The road was empty — either word of their presence had spread, or traffic was always rather light. From what Jatal had seen so far of the lack of commerce for such a large population, he suspected the latter.

They did pass field after field, some fallow, most crowded with tall stands of rice. The food production at least was impressive. One could give the Thaumaturgs that: they were organized. What was lacking, however, was anything beyond a mere agrarian society. They rode past clutches of farmers’ hamlets, granaries, even corrals for livestock, but where were the merchant houses, the inns, the manufacturers or traders? These magus-scholar overlords seemed to encourage none of those. They were no doubt quite happy to keep their populace chained to the countryside.

As they drew nearer the capital, this populace revealed itself in greater numbers. Figures worked hunched in the fields, bent wretches in rags bowed to them from the sides of the road as they stormed past. No doubt they were required by law to move aside for anyone riding by — under the logic that anyone not busy working the land must be an official.

This lack of reliance on mechanisms and domesticated animals struck Jatal as further serving to subjugate the populace. The work they must do was simply all that much greater. They passed more of those Thaumaturg-altered oxen-like labourers: some toiled in the fields pulling simple wooden implements; others were strapped to irrigation water-wheels or pulling carts.

So far the Warleader’s predictions appeared borne out: this populace constituted no threat. So beaten down were they that anything beyond the limited horizons of their daily grinding round was as alien as travel to another land. Yet this very seeming lack of humanity profoundly disturbed Jatal. They seemed incapable of anything, yet at the same time chillingly capable of everything imaginable.

The outskirts of the capital hove into view. Like Isana Pura in the south, this urban centre lay as a huge rambling conglomeration of low, single- or double-storey brick and clay box-like buildings. Laundry hung drying from flat ceilings or on stands. Striped awnings stretched out over the narrow streets.

Crowds of pedestrians fled from them down side streets or into doorways. They encountered a few pathetic efforts to raise barricades. At their approach the city-dwellers manning these simply ran, abandoning the overturned carts and heaped barrels and wooden chests. These the Adwami jumped or quickly demolished. Their mounted scouts kept reappearing to urge the main column onward.

They reached the Inner City complex. A massive wall of rust-hued brick surrounded it and its main gate, a good two rods in height and sheathed in iron-studded bronze, remained sealed. A broad open marshalling field — or killing ground — surrounded the walls, complete with narrow stone ditches.

The scouts milled here, far back from the main gate. A scattering of dead men and horses littered the paved ground. Tall spears, or javelins, stood from their bodies. ‘What is this?’ Jatal demanded of the nearest rider. ‘Who is defending?’

‘Yakshaka on the walls,’ the Awamir rider answered.

‘Why is the way yet sealed?’

‘We are to await the Warleader’s mercenaries,’ Andanii called. ‘They will open the way.’

What was this? More secrets between them? Here was further evidence of their intimacy. And of his irrelevance. He did not know which writhed in his chest the worse. What more details might they have arranged behind his back? Perhaps this attack was intended to rid her and the Warleader of more than one obstacle to their supremacy. Perhaps he was riding to his death.

Well … she has slain me already. This flesh is but a hollow shell. But my people, what of them? Pinal will protect them. He will withdraw.

The clatter of hooves marked the arrival of the Warleader’s van. He rode at the fore. The giant Scarza loped alongside his horse, a monstrous two-bladed axe over one shoulder. His warhound, Jatal sneered. And yet the man had seemed quite friendly earlier — all the more to quell your suspicions!

Jatal acknowledged the Warleader’s arrival with an impatient wave. ‘Our advance is halted already!’

‘A small matter,’ the Warleader answered. ‘My men will take it.’ Dismounting, he motioned to the half-Trell. ‘Scarza, you will lead the assault.’

The giant grinned, further revealing his great yellowed tusks. ‘We will be within in moments.’ He passed Jatal and gave a conspiratorial wink. ‘Now you will see the professionals at work, yes?’

Jatal found he could no longer answer the man’s jesting banter in kind. The Trell turned away, frowning as if uneasy, and clapped his enormous hands together. ‘Come, lads! Form up!’

From his vantage point mounted on Ash’s back, it appeared to Jatal like an all-out assault. Troops formed to a wide front. He saw teams of shieldmen and crossbowmen gathering, and what one might call sappers, or siegeworkers, who carried coiled rope and large iron grapnels. Behind this attack force rallied ranks of archers who would presumably provide covering fire.

Still mounted on his heavy warhorse, the Warleader walked it to the fore. Turning, he regarded the ranks. More than ever he now struck Jatal as a figure of war and rapine. His battered and ragged mail coat hung iron-grey down the sides of his mount. His equally ashen beard seemed to meld with the neck of his camail. His flat smoky eyes seemed forged from iron. The Grey Man, he sometimes overheard the mercenaries calling him. Or the Grey Ghost.

Behind him, tall gleaming figures now moved slowly at the crenellations of the walls — the yakshaka forming into position. ‘Soldiers,’ the Warleader began, his voice strong, ‘you follow me as a proven war leader. Today you will have your reward! Take this position and this city and all it contains will be yours to choose from. Enough riches to buy estates in any country of your choice. Or you may choose to remain here and share in the rulership of these lands. Victory here could win you everything. Defeat will bring you nothing. From this point onward, the choice is yours.’ And he bowed his head to them, briefly, as if to reinforce: this day is yours.

The mercenaries howled their answer like bloodthirsty wolves. They shook their weapons. Scarza goaded them on, bellowing and roaring. The sound froze Jatal’s blood. He’d never heard the like. This must be how they conduct war in other lands. It struck him as barbaric.

The trained scholar within, however, coolly observed, They are working themselves into a frenzy to do what they must: a direct assault on the gate. Many will die and only chance will decide which.

Desperate men and women making an all or nothing throw against long odds. It was a wager Jatal wouldn’t take.

His gaze found Andanii’s pale and sweat-sheathed face. She watched the mercenaries and their preparations as if mesmerized. The realization came to him then: You fool! You are in the midst of such a throw now. And you may very well have already lost …

Still roaring, the mercenaries charged. Teams spread out to tackle as wide a front as possible. They clambered down the sloping sides of the slit ditches then scrabbled up the far sides. The ranks of archers followed more slowly, stopping to fire salvos that arched for the walls.

And where are these vaunted Thaumaturgs? Duelling the shaduwam within, I hope.

At the walls yakshaka appeared with what looked like javelins. These they heaved in mighty throws far outstripping anything a common man might manage. The missiles landed with earsplitting clanging and ringing. They slammed into the stone-flagged grounds to stand erect. Where they stuck mercenaries, shieldmen or no, they passed straight through, pinning the unfortunate to the spot.

Those are solid bronze rods, Jatal realized, awed. Now he knew why the horses had fallen: they had been completely run through as well.

The assault wave reached the walls. Grapnels flew, trailing knotted ropes. The yakshaka moved to respond. Men and women climbed with desperate speed. Here and there yakshaka took hold of the grapnels, and, despite the astounding weight of several attackers, heaved the line free to send them falling in a screaming heap.

Arrows stood from the armoured giants like forests of quills; they seemed to pay them no attention. They dropped their bronze spears straight down. The missiles wrought a horrific price among the clumped besiegers. Yet it looked to Jatal as though there were far more lines than defenders. Mercenaries now made the battlements atop the walls. Here they met the yakshaka, who cut them down as they came.

With attackers on the walls, the archers eased off. The Warleader barked a command and they roared their own growling throaty answer. They charged, adding their numbers to the assault.

Had this been an attack on any other wall in any other place with the attackers so outnumbering the defenders, Jatal imagined that the outcome would not have been in doubt. But these were armoured yakshaka guards. They swept the mercenaries from the walls. Cut them down with great blows of their two-handed blades. The attack appeared to be stalling.

Jatal spotted Scarza climbing a rope at one of the uncontrolled sections of wall. He rose hand over hand, his axe swinging at his back. Making the battlements, he charged for the front line. Jatal glimpsed him between crenellations, dodging and ducking as he made his way closer to the line of defenders. Then a yakshaka came tottering from the battlement, overbalanced, then fell in utter silence. It crashed to the ground, shattering upon the stone flags in an explosion like an enormous pot breaking.

An answering cheer arose from the mercenaries waiting their turn on the ropes.

Jatal again glimpsed the broad form of the Trell as he shouldered aside another of the defenders and straight-armed it over a low section of the crenellations. This one also fell in complete silence to burst like a dropped pot.

Do those things not even know fear? Jatal wondered. Why no scream or roar of protest?

Scarza charged the gatehouse tower. ‘He might just make it,’ Jatal murmured to the Warleader.

The mercenary was stroking his grizzled beard. ‘Scarza has never failed me,’ he answered, in the smug tone one might use when discussing a prized dog or horse.

That tone drove Jatal to flinch in distaste, only to realize: I am no better. He returned to studying the battle. Have I wronged you, foreigner?

The Warleader nodded to Andanii, who pulled her rapt gaze from the wall and jerked a curt answer. She turned on her mount to the marshalled Elites, yelled: ‘Ready to advance!’

Jatal thought her voice a touch too choked and shrill. Perhaps she had lost her taste for adventure and daring, now that the price to pay was so bitter. It occurred to him that their positions had seemingly reversed: he, once reluctant and fearful, was now completely open to whatever the day might bring.

They waited. Horses nickered their tension. Fittings jangled and rang. Jatal was surprised to find his breathing even. He glanced to Andanii and found her eyes on him; she quickly looked away. Checking my resolve? Searching for signs of fear? Today you’ll find none. Today we shall see who is truly weak.

I swear to that.

The foreign mercenaries kept climbing; by now most of the archers had gained the wall. Sounds of fighting echoed from within. Then the crash of cavalry reached them: it was distant, from elsewhere about the city. The Adwami tribes invading from all quarters. Jatal glimpsed pillars of smoke climbing into the sky over the low roofs.

The tall twin leaves of the gate shook as if from a great blow. Dust sifted down their iron-studded faces. They creaked and groaned, moving. Then slowly swung apart revealing Scarza and the cheering mercenaries.

The Warleader raised his arm. Andanii too thrust her arm high. He brought his swinging down like a scythe. She echoed the gesture. Jatal bellowed a war cry and heeled Ash into a gallop. He drew his sword and bent forward over Ash’s neck aiming the curved blade ahead.

The crash and reverberation of a storm of hooves marked the column following. He passed the narrow ditches, the litter of fallen men and horses. Ash jumped one dead Saar mount. Ahead, Scarza beckoned from the wide gate. Jatal’s heart hammered even louder than Ash’s hooves. What awaited them? The Warleader had said to make for the central complex.

A wide main approach faced Jatal. It was flanked by long buildings looking like dormitories or housing of some sort. As before at Isana Pura, the architecture offered almost no hint as to which buildings were more important than any other: all were low and uniform. A glimpse into the Thaumaturg mind and philosophy, of course. Following plain logic, Jatal urged Ash onward, making for the centre.

The approach ended at a wide set of stone stairs leading up to a broad columned building — a reception hall perhaps. Jatal yanked Ash to a halt and dismounted. Here, the first sign of violence within the gates offered itself. Corpses in dark robes lay sprawled on the stairs, black fluids dribbling like treacle. Ash flinched away, rearing and sounding his unease. The horrific stench raised Jatal’s gorge, yet despite this, or because of it, he climbed the stairs. His boots slipped and slid on the thick flowing mush. The corpses consisted of dead Thaumaturgs plus a few attacking shaduwam — the first he’d seen since Isana Pura. Like their brethren, these were mostly naked, filthy and unwashed. By their bent shattered bones and burst flesh, it looked as if their deaths had been as grotesque as they seemed to hope for. The Thaumaturgs, on the other hand, appeared to have succumbed to some sort of rotting curse: their bones lay still articulated by ligaments and sinew within their robes, yet mostly sloughed of all soft flesh. That flesh — skin, fat, muscle and organs — ran as a melted slush to spread from under the lips of their robes and sleeves and come seeping down the stairs in a broad red carpet.

Jatal pressed the back of his hand to his mouth and turned away. By all the gods of the world! He was leading Andanii into this? He glimpsed his bared sword and nearly laughed at the ridiculousness of the gesture. The Warleader had come up behind him. He surveyed the ghastly scene without a flicker of expression, though he did nod as if satisfied. ‘Good,’ he murmured. Then, advancing, gestured, this way.

The column fell in behind the Warleader. Jatal peered sidelong to Andanii. The Vehajarwi princess had paled to snow. She swallowed nervously and wiped her gleaming sweaty brow, her gaze darting everywhere.

Good, Jatal thought. Her conscience plagues her. She knows doubts — yet it is too late. Far too late.

More corpses littered the hall in smeared fluids. The warm humid air stank of excrement. Jatal stepped over the sprawled, obscenely flattened bodies. ‘The shaduwam appear to have won through,’ the Warleader observed.

Ahead, stairs descended into an interior sunken court surrounded by smaller, separate buildings. Statues bordered the court on all sides. These were the first depictions of the human form Jatal had seen from the Thaumaturgs: they were uniform, a figure bent in reflection, hands clasped, yet mouth open as if about to speak. The Warleader led the way down the stairs and across the court. Here were the bodies of several shaduwam. They lay contorted, hands at throats, their faces sculptures of agony. They had actually gouged bloody wounds at their necks with their own dirty broken nails. The sight made Jatal unbearably uneasy. Was this some sort of Thaumaturg curse?

As the leading element of the column reached the top of the opposite stairs, stones shifted behind in a loud grinding and Jatal spun. A mist gusted from the mouths of the surrounding statues in one long loud exhalation. The troopers caught in the sunken court, some thirty of them, clutched at their throats. Weapons clattered to the stones. Andanii lurched down the stairs as if she would rescue the nearest, but Jatal thrust an arm across her chest, stopping her. ‘They are dead already,’ he told her.

Across the court the rest of the column halted, glaring left and right, their eyes wide. ‘Go round!’ Jatal called. The leading ranks acknowledged this, saluting. They led the way to the sides, searching for a way through. Somehow, Jatal did not think this would be easy; they had entered a labyrinth of traps or dead ends. All prepared by the Thaumaturgs for unwary invaders long ago.

‘What now?’ Andanii asked the Warleader.

The man’s perpetual expression of impatient disapproval twisted even further as he peered ahead. He motioned aside. ‘This way, I believe.’ He strode on without waiting.

Jatal moved to follow but Andanii stilled him with a hand on his arm. ‘We need to talk,’ she whispered, low.

Her voice, so husky and close, raised an answering thrill in his blood. Yet he clamped down on the sensation and kept his expression indifferent. A final confession, my princess?

‘Regarding what?’ he asked, and applauded himself for the casual steadiness of his voice.

Her brows wrinkled prettily as she eyed him sidelong. How beautiful you appear, my princess — even here surrounded by death.

‘I’ve had no time. He has been watching me. I have suspicions …’ she shook her head and dabbed her sleeve to her sweaty lips, ‘but you will think me mad …’

I, too, have my suspicions, my princess of death. Their remaining troops waited for orders a respectful distance away. Jatal noted that every one of them was a member of her picked Vehajarwi bodyguard. Ahh, my princess … So this is how it is to be?

Up the hall, the iron-grey figure of the Warleader paused. He glanced back over his shoulder. ‘You are coming?’ Andanii flinched, her mouth clamping shut. She motioned her bodyguard to fall in line.

How meekly she follows this man! His merest gesture is her command!

Andanii … I do not understand you at all.

He searched her face as if he could read some hint of the workings of her mind there; she answered with a discouraging curt jerk of her head as if to demand silence.

So be it, my princess. Silence it shall be.

Their route brought them up a hall lined by narrow cells. Most held the slumped figure of a Thaumaturg, in robes that were once white but now bore the broad stains of spilled blood. They appeared to have been felled while in meditation. When the Warleader reached the end of the hall a metallic note rang out, clear and throbbing. It sounded like a struck bell. Its reverberations hung in the air as if suspended. The tone strengthened with each pulse. It stabbed at Jatal’s ears. The Warleader paused. He cocked his head as if puzzled.

Andanii said something but Jatal heard nothing of it over the throbbing of the bell. A hand took hold of Jatal’s arm. He glanced round and was horrified to see a female Thaumaturg in her bloodstained robes. Whether she was dead or yet alive it was impossible to tell. One-handed, he ran the woman through. Despite the sword thrust through her stomach she held on. Her face betrayed nothing; just an inhuman curiosity, as if everything was a surprise to her.

From every cell up and down the hall the fallen bodies now emerged and closed upon them. The Warleader contemptuously batted one down. It slowly climbed to its feet again. The bodyguard strove to cut them down, but the narrow confines of the hall limited their swordplay. Most switched to their heavy fighting dirks and thrust at faces and chests.

It became obvious that even the worst slashing or head wound did nothing to slow the creatures. Jatal saw one of Andanii’s bodyguards push a dirk blade through one eye and into the brain behind yet the creature continued to grip the man’s arm. It carried the hilted weapon in its eye as no more than some sort of grisly decoration.

Yet he sheathed his own sword and also frantically drew a fighting knife. Next to him, one of the things had hold of both arms of a bodyguard. It drew the man close while at the same time throwing open its mouth to an unnatural degree. Out poured a vomited torrent of ghastly steaming fluids straight on to the guard’s face and neck to run down his front over and beneath his armour. The man howled and writhed in the creature’s grip.

Jatal stared, gagging and sickened, yet also mesmerized by the appalling sight. The man’s flesh smoked where the greenish-black muck had sprayed. It dripped and ran as if melting, falling away. White bone appeared beneath the mess at jaw and collarbone. The man threw back his head in a shriek of utter insane agony. His neck burst in a spray of blood as the flesh of the throat was eaten through, collapsing. The head fell backwards at an impossible angle, half decapitated. The corpse would have fallen but for the support of the creature’s grip. It bent forward now, mouth open, and took a great bite from the tangle of wet ligaments and sinew at the angle of shoulder and ruined neck.

All this Jatal witnessed in a frantic instant while fending off the swipes and searching hands of the creatures surrounding him. Now he turned to the one that had hold of his arm. It was all he could do to resist screaming his own mindless panic at the thought of what awaited him. His gorge rose in unspeakable terror and anticipation. An idea came to him and he threw down his knife to take hold of the grip of his sword once more and yank it free. Up and down the hall the men of the bodyguard were falling beneath the grasping hands of the Thaumaturg-warped creatures. Ahead, the Warleader appeared to be hacking his way free. Andanii, he saw, was close behind.

Desperate with disgust and terror, he swung at the creature’s wrist. It parted from the arm — though the hand yet maintained its grip on his bicep. Jatal pressed forward. Every hand that reached for him he swung at, leaving blunt waving stumps behind.

Ahead, the Warleader had hacked his way clear to reach a set of stairs leading down. He spared one brief glance backwards; his dead ashen-hued eyes seemed to grant his followers nothing — not even a common humanity. He turned his back and continued on, abandoning them. Close behind, dodging and ducking, leaving scraps of her robes in clenched waving hands, Andanii also made the stairs. She too paused to glance back, all the while bending and stringing her longbow. Her gaze briefly brushed Jatal’s only to flick down to where the Warleader had disappeared. She followed the man at a run.

In that brief contact, Jatal thought he read a desperate agony mixed with a ferocious ruthless resolve. So it was done. The coward! Relying on others to do what she couldn’t face herself. She would discard him to follow the foreigner!

Her actions so shocked Jatal that he fell backwards into the arms of one of the creatures. It moved to wrap its limbs around him but he managed to bring his blade up inside the hug and hack through the wrists to duck free.

I will have her head!

His rage saw him through: kicking the creatures down, decapitating in wild swings, not caring who was near, stepping and slipping on the fallen. His onslaught opened up a route that five of Andanii’s bodyguards followed to reach the stairs. Here he paused, his chest heaving in his ecstasy of near blind rage and terror, until he saw that the surviving fiends were still following.

He pointed his sword and gasped, his voice almost completely gone, ‘This way …’

They entered a maze of subterranean tunnels, just as at Isana Pura, yet even more terrifying and grotesque. They passed what were perhaps a series of operating chambers. On stone slabs lay the current victims of experimentation: a female cleanly flensed of all skin; the twined ropy muscles and gleaming bone of her frame perfectly revealed as if she were an anatomical sculpture. Here, one of the bodyguards came close, a lantern held high, and they all jerked as her bared lidless eyes shifted towards the light. Her throat moved, her naked jaws working. But as she had no cheeks, her words came out as gurglings and hissings.

Snarling his horror and disgust, the guard swung his blade to decapitate her. Yet he failed. His sword jammed in her neck — perhaps her ligaments and bones had been hardened for preservation — in any case, he yanked but could not free the blade. She rose then, swiftly, and her fingers, all sinew, bone and long, curved, yellowed nails, found his face to gouge and dig in.

He howled, abandoning the sword to grasp her hands. Everyone hacked at the thing. They finally managed to dismember it but not before the guard had fallen, his face and throat a bloody torn ruin. Jatal picked up the lantern where it had rolled aside, luckily not extinguishing. ‘Do not touch anything!’ he snarled, and limped onward.

They passed a chamber where rank after rank of small short figures, children in Thaumaturg robes, sat as if in meditation. They faced away towards the far wall. Jatal stepped into the room, raising the lantern high. ‘Flee, all of you,’ he called. ‘The shaduwam are here.’

Heads turned. Some forty pale faces regarded him silently. Jatal’s vision darkened in abhorrence; the eyes and mouth of each child had been sewn shut.

Behind him, the guards cursed softly and gagged. Jatal pushed them back as he retreated from the room. He lowered the lantern and the heads calmly turned away as the children — children! Was that what they were? — returned to their meditation. Jatal stood in the hall, unsteady on his feet. His heart hammered and his throat was as dry as kiln-heated sand yet it burned with suppressed acid bile.

A madhouse! Inhuman!

All Jatal wanted now was escape. He urged the men onward. Was this why the Thaumaturgs offered no resistance? They no longer thought like humans, no longer shared common human values and fears? Were no longer even human? Perhaps they considered them no more a threat than an ant or a lizard? Who could know? None of this seemed remotely sane.

Unfortunately, the path led downward. They descended narrow slick stone stairs. At the bottom they found a heavy iron gate that had been smashed aside. Beyond lay a large chamber with halls leading off into utter darkness. Jatal raised the lantern; the stairs descended into dark water that covered the floor. It stank like a sewer and gnawed, half-skeletal corpses floated about, both Thaumaturg and shaduwam. He had no idea of the water’s depth, or what it might contain. The lantern’s weak light just brushed a distant figure somehow raised above the surface of the pool — a figure that wore the remains of tattered white robes over gleaming armour.

The guards surged forward. They descended the stairs into the water up to their waists. Jatal followed, holding the lantern high. They pushed their way through the water. The sloshing and splashing echoed about the chamber and halls to return loud and distorted.

It was Andanii; she had pulled herself on to, or been laid upon, a stone slab similar to the other operating platforms they’d seen everywhere. She bled from numerous wounds — what looked like vicious bites that had gouged rounded chunks from her flesh.

‘Princess!’ the men called, outraged, choked with tears. Their voices seemed to rouse her; she stirred, her limbs shifting. Jatal pressed forward. She has earned this! Why then am I terrified for her?

‘Andanii,’ he whispered, his face almost pressed to hers. Blood smeared her mouth and chin.

She shook her head, mumbled something.

‘What? What is it?’ Say it, something in him urged her. Say it was all a mistake!

‘… no … trap …’ she gurgled in a mouthful of blood.

Jatal set down the lantern to scoop her up in his arms. ‘Ware! Trap!’

The remaining four of Andanii’s bodyguard spread out, surrounding them. One picked up the lantern to hold it high. ‘There!’ he called, pointing his sword. Hunched shapes came lurching their way up the halls. They appeared naked, hairless, with long ropy arms ending in great taloned hands.

The group retreated to the stairs. Water surged, rising and splashing as a number of the creatures straightened from the murky waves to block their path. Closer now, Jatal could see that they were of basic human stock. No real monsters here — the true monsters are the Thaumaturgs.

Yet things had been done to them. Thaumaturg experimentation. Their heads were narrower than any skull ought to be, the flat eyes devoid of emotion or intelligence; Jatal read in their opalescent depths hunger only — no recognition of a common humanity. Their mouths hung open to make room for teeth that stood out as sharpened and serrated weapons. Jatal did not think that they could close their mouths even should they try. They raised their clawed hands and made blood-chilling noises all the more horrific for sounding almost like words.

‘Keep going!’ Jatal urged. ‘Make for the stairs!’

The group charged. Swords slashed and the creatures fell. Yet more of them surged from behind, falling upon the guards and dragging them down below the water to disappear. Jatal rushed for the stairs. He shouldered his way through the melee. The man holding the lantern fell, his scream ending in a mouthful of the foul water. The light snuffed out, hissing.

Jatal blundered on, reaching the stairs and finding the opening by slamming an elbow into its stone lip. He charged up without pause. He leaned against a wall to support himself and when that wall ended in an opening he tumbled into a side chamber, crashing into furniture that broke beneath him. Yet he managed to keep Andanii out of the way, cushioning her with his own body. He laid her down and bent over her. In the absolute dark he remembered his waist pouch and a nub of candle that he kept there. He found it and the small tinderbox. He set the box on the cold stone floor, opened it, and set to striking into it. The flashing sparks each revealed the room for an instant, leaving lingering after-images of a broken frail desk, of walls dark with painted frescoes.

The tinder lit and he gently blew. He used it to light the thin wick. The candle caught, filling the room with a light that was incredibly bright to his starved eyes. He took Andanii’s head on to his lap. ‘Andanii — my princess … can you hear me?’

The eyelids fluttered. A smile came to the lips — followed by a wash of blood that spilled down her chin. As awareness rose within her, the smile twisted into a panicked grimace and her hands fought him then clenched his arms. ‘Flee …’ she breathed.

All anger was gone from him now. All resentment. He thought he understood her at last. She’d had ambition and the ruthlessness to chase it. In short … he’d cursed her for doing nothing more than acting like a man. Acting as any of his brothers would have done. For acting as he could not bring himself to do.

‘I understand,’ he whispered to her tenderly. ‘You made your choices. Why should I be resentful? You acted in the best interests of your people.’

She smiled now, almost wistfully. ‘You understand … do you?’ She gripped him tighter, convulsing. ‘Jatal — my prince … promise me this … Promise!’

He ducked his head. Tears fell from his eyes to wash the blood from her cheek. ‘I promise.’

She nodded, easing her arms. ‘Good … Go. Flee. Return to the tents of the Adwami. Read your books. Write your poetry. And try … try to forgive me …’

‘Forgive! Andanii … You are my life!’ But she did not answer. Her head eased to one side.

Jatal pressed his own hot face to her cooling cheek and wept.

How long he crouched there, trembling and weeping, he knew not. At length, he gently set her head down on the cold stone and rose. He picked up the tiny stub of candle. Its weak light barely illuminated the room yet he could make out a painting of a dark throne and a seated figure. Its face had been chiselled from the stone — deliberately disfigured. He was hardly conscious of his surroundings as he staggered into the hall.

What followed struck him as a carnival of horrors. Nightmare images came and went as he stumbled through room after room. Which were real, and which he imagined, he did not know. At one point he lurched into a horde of the black-robed children all gathered around a corpse, feeding. As one they raised their pale faces to him, their mouths bright crimson.

But no … their mouths had been sewn closed …

At some point later he faced a lone Thaumaturg in an empty hallway. Half the man’s head was gone, smashed in by a brutal blow. Yet awareness and intelligence filled the remaining eye. This wandering eye found him, and winked. ‘Where does life end?’ the man asked, his voice listless and dull. ‘With the mind or with the heart?’

Then the mage stiffened. The single eye widened; awareness of some secret known only to him dilated the pupil. The mouth opened as if he would speak but only fouled fluids poured out in a thick dark red sheen. He toppled — but not before the ghost of a sad smile touched those painted lips. Behind stood the begrimed and blood-smeared figure of a shaduwam. He held out his hand to show something to Jatal. It was a lump of muscle; a heart still quivering.

The shaduwam raised it to his mouth and took a great bite. Swallowing, he licked his lips. All the while his eyes gripped Jatal’s numbed gaze, eyes like black subterranean pools. ‘That is where we differed,’ he explained. ‘They say the mind. We say the heart.’

Everything came crashing down upon Jatal at that moment and he staggered against a wall. His stomach heaved and he vomited up what little remained. He felt as if he were sinking into that abyssal underground pool of icy water, drowning. He tried to speak but nothing came. The darkness swallowed him.

Roaring woke him. A distant constant roar as of a storm, or a herd of horses running. He raised his head, blinking. He sat beneath a smoke-filled night sky. The moon, which had been waxing, shone a watery silver light that was occluded by the burgeoning Visitor whose jade glare nearly flickered, so near did it loom. He was among a crowd of men and women: a mix of Adwami troopers, Thaumaturg acolytes and civilian peasants. Even one or two of the foreign mercenaries sat with them, their heads hanging. Everyone bore wounds, from sword strikes to beatings. All were disarmed.

They were crowded together in one of the stone courtyards of the Thaumaturgs’ Inner City. Shaduwam priests carrying clubs and staves guarded them. Now and then, two of the Agon priests came to collect one of the captives and drag him or her up the stairs and into what Jatal presumed was a temple or cloister. What went on within, he did not have to imagine.

Dully, he noticed that the roaring came from without — from beyond the tall walls of the Inner City where plumes of smoke coiled all about. The noise resolved into the sound of a city that has roused itself like a kicked beast. It struck him that even an anthill would rally to defend itself when disturbed. He hoped that Pinal had had the sense to pull the Hafinaj from the engagement. Yet he registered the concern distantly, and hazily.

Nothing, it seemed, troubled him at all at this moment. Not even his impending death at the hands of these betraying defilers. The only thing able to raise a slight crease in his brows was the utter stupid waste of it all. What could the damned Warleader hope to gain from all this? He could not possibly hope to rule here. Nor among the Adwami. What was his purpose — beyond the sowing of chaos and destruction? No doubt such was the goal of the shaduwam: the eradication of their rivals. But what of this old traitor general — if that was what he was. Mere vengeance? All this blood merely to wipe out the sting of some thwarted or blocked ambition? The idea that this was all his own life — and the lives of all those who had fallen around him — was worth just made him tired. In fact, everything made him tired now. Every breath. The idea of continuing to live through the next moment utterly exhausted him.

The group of captives dwindled as the night wore on. Eventually, as he knew they would, two Agon priests came for him. They had to lift him by the arms as he made no effort to put strength into his legs — he saw no reason to cooperate. Oddly, he felt as if he was watching the proceedings as from a great distance, looking down on a play, or a dance of meaningless shadow figures.

They dragged him up the stairs and into the darkened hall. Pools and streaks of messy deaths marred the polished set flags of the floor, as did bloody handprints and smears on the walls. Tapestries lay torn and wet with fluids. The heat of many fires struck him as a furnace exhalation and made him drowsy. He hardly registered a thick greasy miasma of roasting flesh.

A shout halted the two dragging him along. Another priest stood before him; Jatal raised his gaze up the man’s completely naked form, caked in drying gore, to the grimed shining face and wild, mud-hardened nest of kinked hair. The man smiled a mouthful of small white teeth filed to sharp points. He looked vaguely familiar.

‘Greetings, Prince Jatal of the Hafinaj,’ the Agon priest announced. He motioned and the two holding Jatal released his arms. Jatal straightened, swaying slightly. ‘I am told you are an educated man. A philosopher.’ He gestured for Jatal to join him. ‘Come. You may appreciate this.’

‘If you would take my heart — go ahead,’ he told the priest. ‘You are welcome to it. I have no more use for it.’

The priest gave a small deprecatory wave. Jatal now recognized him as the one who had confronted their council what seemed now so long ago. ‘If that is truly the case then we do not want it. We are only interested in what others value.’

Jatal frowned, puzzled. ‘You mean gold?’

‘Oh no. Not wealth. I mean what people really value about themselves.’ He leaned close to whisper and Jatal smelled the stink of rotting flesh. ‘The delusions people hold about themselves.’ The priest took his arm to usher him into a side chamber. Here a figure writhed, gagged and bound, on one of the ubiquitous stone operating platforms. It was a Thaumaturg captive. Shaduwam priests appeared to be in the process of burning the flesh from him piece by piece. They pressed white-hot irons to him then lifted them away taking the melted flesh with them. The figure flinched and squirmed with the hiss and smoke of every application.

‘So much for their vaunted negation of the flesh,’ the priest murmured, sounding greatly satisfied.

Jatal understood now; it came to him as an epiphany that somehow lightened the load upon his shoulders. ‘For you there is only the flesh.’

The priest smiled, pleased. ‘Exactly, my prince. I knew you would see through to the truth of it. For us there is only the flesh. No good or bad. Only the flesh and its demands. We are all nothing more than that. Why deny it? It follows, then, that there are no opposites. Nothing can be said to be negative, or positive.’ He waved his hand dismissing all such figments as he urged Jatal along. ‘That is all illusion. Constructs of epistemologies that are at their root flawed, deluded, or self-serving.’

Jatal felt dizzy once more. ‘You are saying that morality is an arbitrary construct?’

The priest steadied him as they came to a large chamber. He brightened even more. ‘Exactly!’ He squeezed Jatal’s arm. ‘You are a philosopher. You begin to see the absurdity of it all, yes?’

Jatal knew he ought to argue, but a strange numbing fog smothered his mind. He strove to rally his thoughts, but all that fell away when he saw that the room ahead was an assembly hall. Corpses littered it; the Thaumaturgs appeared to have put up quite a resistance here. But what he’d seen so far of the shaduwam suggested they were even more fanatical. At the end of the hall, slouched in a high-backed chair carved from black stone, was the Warleader. Shaduwam attended him. They were attempting to treat a wound in his side — though he still wore his mail armour. The priest marched Jatal straight up to him.

Something about this man seated in a tall chair, his mail hood thrown back, his long iron-grey hair sweaty, his gaze utterly dismissive, sent a chill up Jatal’s back that was so strong it penetrated the strange numbing haze that blanketed his thoughts.

‘Why is this one here?’ the Warleader demanded of the priest.

‘You are done with him?’

‘Yes.’

Jatal hardly understood that they were discussing him. All he knew was that he faced his rival. He swallowed to clear his throat. ‘She’s dead,’ he murmured — or tried to.

The Warleader eyed him, frowning. ‘What’s that?’

‘She is dead. Andanii is dead.’

Pain twisted the man’s features. He gestured impatiently to the priests who were busy lighting candles and preparing some sort of draught. ‘Do not despair,’ he told Jatal, his voice tight. ‘Soon you will be as well.’

Puzzlement and outrage wormed their way through the fog of Jatal’s thoughts. He stood weaving, suddenly exhausted beyond all effort. ‘That is all you have to say? After all she chose to give you?’

The Warleader’s thick brows rose. ‘Ahh,’ he breathed. ‘I understand. All she gave me, you say. She gave me a great deal of her time, that is true.’ He pointed to the tall tankard of fluids the priests were mixing. ‘Now!’ he ordered. ‘We will do this now.’

‘But … my lord …’ one objected. ‘You must prepare further.’

‘Do you question me?’

The priest fell to his knees. ‘Forgive me, lord.’

The Warleader gestured impatiently for the drink. Another of the shaduwam handed it to him. He drank it in a long series of swallows, wiped the spilled thick dark fluids from his beard. He regarded Jatal once again with his dead flat eyes. ‘She encouraged me to talk — to tell stories. And I did. More than I ought to have. I was perhaps pleased by her attentions though I certainly knew better. And from listening to me all those evenings your princess came closest of anyone to grasping a certain secret. One not even she could believe. One she dared not pass on to anyone — not even to you. Especially not to you.’

He pointed to a lit candle and a priest brought it to him. The Warleader passed a hand through its smoke, wafting it to his face and inhaling deeply. This he did several times. Jatal assumed he was deadening the pain of the wound in his side, from which a great deal of blood had spilled to smear his armour.

‘And so, my prince,’ the man said, straightening, ‘I choose to give you something in her honour. Something which you do not want. Because, you see, I understand you now. You are just like me. You are a jealous man.’ He reached out and pulled a gripping tool from the table nearby. It was an instrument Jatal had seen physicians using in field infirmaries. ‘Now,’ he said through gritted teeth.

‘But, lord, who …?’

The Warleader cuffed the priest aside. ‘I shall. Now.’ He pressed the instrument into the wound at his side, turning it and gouging. He gasped at the agony of it, even mitigated by the drink and the fumes he’d inhaled.

He withdrew a blood-smeared object and extended it to Jatal who took it, wonderingly, in both hands. The arrow must have passed almost completely through the Warleader’s body, for the point and most of the shaft had been broken off, leaving perhaps two hand’s-breadths of wood, and the fletching, embedded in the wound. Jatal turned it over, wiped the blood from its slick surface. All the while, the Warleader watched, his eyes glittering with something that might have been cruel satisfaction.

Jatal pinched the wet feathers to let their colour come through — though he suspected he knew already what to expect.

‘She did choose to follow me, Prince Jatal,’ the Warleader said, his voice now relaxed, even content. ‘She had something to give me, you see.’

The colours of the fletching showed through as Vehajarwi.

‘She gave me that. Because, you see, she had given everything else she had to you.’

Rising, the man closed his hard hand over Jatal’s on the shaft. ‘And now I give it to you. The gift of pain. True soul-destroying anguish. It is yours now. Carry it in your heart.’ He waved Jatal off. Turning aside, he addressed the priest: ‘Let him live. Let him live long.’ The man’s words seemed to come from a great distance. A hand pushed Jatal away. ‘Go,’ the Warleader called. ‘Go with my blessing and with my curse.’

Aware of nothing, Jatal stumbled away. He found himself under open golden sky, on a set of stairs; it was late afternoon. He looked down: he still held the bloody shaft in both hands. His cheeks were cold and wet. Shaduwam priests shouldered him aside, ignoring him. They led prisoners up the stairs: some were from among the mercenaries who had followed the Warleader, others were of the Adwami. None he saw were of the Hafinaj.

Blinking, Jatal started forward once more, his eyes on the arrow shaft. When he looked up again, strangely dizzy, he found he walked a narrow alley that opened on to a broad main thoroughfare. This he entered. A party of shaduwam brushed past him; they paid him no more attention than if he’d been a shade.

The wide approach ended at tall double gates in the walls of the Inner City. Jatal passed through the open gates to enter the narrow ways of the city proper. Its peasant citizens stared from open doorways as he passed. He stepped over corpses, through the ashen remains of burned-down barriers, past the bodies of horses, the still-wet remains of Adwami troopers, torn into fragments.

Oh Andanii … I betrayed you even while you held true. I am not worthy of your sacrifice.

A few of the peasant inhabitants followed him now, at a distance, as he stumbled along. Some, he noted, stooped now and then to pick up rocks. Something struck his shoulder, hard. He blinked, confused. The words of the poet came to him: Blood is brightest / Against the purest snow …

A blow to his head spun him into a wall. He leaned against it, dazed. Stones smacked into the brick wall about him. The crowd of inhabitants closed now, emboldened. Frenzied enraged eyes glared their murder at him. Clawed hands reached for him. They tore the bloodied robes from him; their ragged nails gouged his flesh; they yanked his hair as if meaning to tear the top of his head off. Hands fought to unbuckle the straps of his armour. Men and women spat and screamed their rage at him. Thumbs jammed into his eyes. Fingers pulled and tore at his lips. Their press squeezed the breath from his lungs.

My love … I come to you … Please do not turn from me.

A petrifying bellowed roar shook the stones beneath him. Light reached his eyes as the piled-on bodies scattered. An immense figure was there, straddling him, throwing the peasants like children to smash into the walls. His armour hung from him in tattered links and hanging straps. He swung the broken haft of his axe, pulverizing heads with each blow: Scarza, bloodied yet whole.

The half-giant lifted Jatal to his feet. ‘You’ll live?’ he growled.

‘Yes — no.’

The lieutenant eyed him with a strange expression. ‘Well, this way. The bastard betrayed all of us but we can still get away.’

‘No.’

‘What?’

‘No.’ He peered down: he still held the shaft in both hands. The blood had dried, sticking his fingers closed.

‘Ah. I see.’ The fellow peered up and down the street, empty now that the mob had fled. ‘She’s gone then?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m sorry, lad.’

‘Sorry?’

‘For this.’

Jatal frowned, blinking. The axe handle blurred for him and he knew nothing more.

Pain brought him to consciousness. He brought his hands to his head and held it; a great bump had swelled up on the side of his skull just behind the temple.

‘Not broken, is it?’ Scarza’s low voice enquired from the dark.

‘I wish it were.’

‘I understand.’

‘No, you don’t.’ They were in a copse next to fields. A distant yellow glow marked what Jatal imagined must be the fires of Anditi Pura.

‘I wouldn’t be too sure of that,’ Scarza answered from where he sat up against a tree.

Jatal simply waved to grant the man the point. He shifted over to lean against another trunk. ‘You shouldn’t have intervened.’

‘I was just happening by. Spur of the moment thing.’

Jatal eyed the dark hulking figure, half obscured by a shadow cast by the shafts of the Visitor. ‘Why are you here?’

‘Those were my men. Bastards, half of them. Murderers, rapists. But still, mine. Can’t let some jumped-up Warleader sell them out. Or me, to be honest.’

‘Do you know who he is?’

‘Him?’ The wide dark shoulders shrugged. ‘Does it matter? Some renegade general. Maybe years ago he tried to take over from these Thaumaturgs — fails. Flees abroad. Gathers himself a mercenary army. Makes a deal with the neighbouring country. Comes back and makes them pay. It’s an old story. Seen it a thousand times.’

‘I think there’s more to it than that.’

‘Think what you will. You can question him all you want after we catch him.’

Jatal studied the shaded figure. His eyes gleamed hungrily in the dark. A spark of humour actually animated the man’s expression. Is he as mad as I should be? Am I mad? Am I imagining this? ‘What do you mean? He’s surrounded by his shaduwam pets.’

‘No, he isn’t. He rode off alone like the very fiends of the Abyss were after his spirit. Which they are, I’m sure.’

Jatal half rose, then fell back, slumping. ‘Then he’s gone. We’ve missed him. And …’ He stopped himself from going any further.

The half-Trell was silent for a time in the dark. At length he spoke, his voice gentle: ‘She was something, Prince of the Hafinaj. She truly was. I am sorry.’

Yes. Sorry. I am sorry. He is. Yet nothing will bring her back. And nothing can redeem me. Unless. Unless I finish her task for her. Then finish myself. Only that might serve to redress so great an injustice.

‘When did he leave?’

‘Half the night ago.’

Jatal gaped. ‘What? Then why … you are cruel. Is this your revenge? Tormenting me so?’

‘Not at all. You needed to recover. We will track him and ride even harder.’

Jatal snorted. ‘Ride? You?’

‘For this I will run.’ The half-Trell’s voice held an unfamiliar chilling resolve.

‘And me? Am I to run as well?’

Scarza tapped a finger to the side of his wide flattened nose. ‘There are horses nearby. I smell them.’

‘Then why aren’t we on our way?’

The dark glittering eyes regarded Jatal closely. ‘You are ready? You are resolved?’

‘To the end.’

The giant was on his feet in an instant. ‘Good. Let us collect as many horses as we can. I may even ride one for an hour or so! Just to catch my breath.’

Jatal stood as well. He felt rested; he was bruised and battered, but that was a minor matter. He hungered also but he would deal with that when he could stand it no longer. After all, what were such demands of the flesh compared to the task he had vowed to see through to the finish.