The Dread Wyrm

Chapter Sixteen

North of Dorling-Ser Hartmut

The army of the Wild came out of the woods behind the Ings of the Wolf like dark water pooling in low ground, and saw the Emperor’s army drawn up on the high ground opposite them, above the Inn itself, covering their camp.

Ser Hartmut gathered a dozen of his best lances and Ser Kevin and rode out along the edge of the long grass to reconnoitre. Minutes later, they retreated into the shadows of the woods with two men and six horses dead, and the screams of the Emperor’s Vardariotes pursued them like laughter.

Ser Hartmut had a brief conference with Thorn and then filled the grass with boglins and other creatures as they came up. The Vardariotes and their psiloi conceded the ground slowly at first, but when one end of the psiloi line was over-run by boglins and eaten, the whole line gave way and the lower fields were quickly cleared.

Ser Hartmut’s sailors and Guerlain Capot’s brigans began to dig a fortified camp on the first good rise, as close to the Emperor’s lines as they dared.

Ser Louis came up, red in the face from a hard pursuit against the elusive Vardariotes. He’d lost no men, but caught no easterners.

“Your face would curdle milk, cousin,” he said, as his squire took his great helm.

“The Emperor beat us here, for all that our dark allies promised us his horses would be dead and his men forced to walk,” Ser Hartmut said. While he was talking a pair of his brigans dragged a Morean-swarthy, middle-aged, a tough man with a long beard-in. His hands were bound, and his legs ran with blood.

“Got him off the bugs,” one man said. “Milord. That is, we killed the bugs and took him, because you said you wanted prisoners.”

Ser Hartmut nodded. He snapped his fingers, and Cree-ah, his latest squire, a Huran boy, came at a run.

“Pay them-a silver soldus each.” He nodded.

Cree-ah bowed, reached into his master’s purse and paid both men. He was a northern Huran, and he seemed to feel it was a great honour to serve the famous knight.

Ser Hartmut looked at the bleeding Morean. “Tell me about your army,” he said.

The man frowned.

“Find someone who speaks Archaic, have him question the man, and if that’s not enough, torture him. Threaten to give him back to the boglins.” Ser Hartmut laughed grimly. “That ought to be enough threat for any man.”

He was brought a cup of water and he sat on his stool and watched the imperial army at the top of the ridge. “He beat us here,” he said, to no one in particular. “But now he’s waiting. Can he be fool enough to fight?”

There was a rapid displacement of air, and then Thorn was there.

Ser Hartmut made a moue of distaste. “Did you hear me, and come?”

Thorn grunted. “No. I cannot hear you from a mile away. Not yet. I came for my own reasons. Tell me what you propose.”

Hartmut looked around. “Where is your master?”

Thorn grunted again. “Close. We are on the ground that is claimed by one of his peers. He is very tense.”

Ser Hartmut pointed up the hill, where men were digging rapidly, deepening the ditch in front of ramparts already eight feet of packed earth and logs high.

“It will not get any better. Unless we wait here for the siege train, in which case this is our whole summer.” Hartmut shrugged.

“I am, if needs be, a siege train,” Thorn said. He gestured with his staff and spoke some slow, old, dark word.

Nothing happened.

Ser Hartmut raised an eyebrow. “Be that as it may,” he said, “we may as well attack before they are reinforced. Right now we have heavy odds-four or five to one, at least.”

“My skywatchers tell me that there is another force behind them on the road-all afoot. My master killed their horses.” He bent slightly at the waist. “We could send your humans further east, moving quickly-cut off this force and destroy it.”

Ser Hartmut shook his head. “No. Send something else. These are soldiers, Lord Sorcerer. If you leave them alone, they’ll get you, one way or another. They are cunning and they have thousands of years of experience behind them. I am your only tool against them-your boglins won’t even take up time dying.”

“So you insist,” Thorn said.

“I do. And so much for your vaunted siege train.” Ser Hartmut finished his water and rose.

He was knocked flat by the concussion, and suddenly the world seemed to swim before his eyes.

Men boiled out of the enemy camp like bees from an overturned apiary, and smoke rose, and dust so thick that they could see nothing.

As the dust began to clear, it was obvious that the enemy had formed all his cavalry at the head of his camp and the infantry was busy-on something. There was fire.

“A small token of my efficacy,” Thorn said. “Five hundred weight of rock hurled farther than a man can ride in fifty days.” He shrugged.

“You threw a huge rock into their camp?” Ser Hartmut asked. “Well-look at them now. All formed for an attack. They know their business. Never fought imperials, but one hears things.” He nodded. He motioned to his own men, and Capot appeared in an old arming jacket, smoking a Huran pipe.

“Double the guard. And keep a double watch at all times, with cranequins spanned and ready. Are my orders clear?” Ser Hartmut was warming to the situation. A dire challenge.

He looked up the hill again. “Tomorrow, I’d like to try their works,” he said.

“With your soldiers?” Thorn asked.

“With your bugs,” Ser Hartmut said.

In the morning, Ser Hartmut marshalled the northern army as best he could, in three thick lines that covered the first slope of the green grass of the hills. The first line, according to his notions, was composed of fodder-boglins and sprites and the little rat-like things with enormous teeth that seemed like lightning-fast dogs. In the second line he put all the men except his knights-willing or unwilling-the Huran and the tame Sossag and the other Outwallers who had come for loot, for fame, or for fear. In the third line, he placed all of Orley’s warband, and the great black stone trolls. His own lances were nowhere to be seen.

Despite which, it was a truly fearsome host.

Thorn reached into the aethereal and produced not one, but two great stones that fell amongst the defenders’ works, shattering two days’ work and collapsing one whole front wall of the earthwork that held the right flank of the imperial army closest to the road.

Ser Hartmut released his first line and they went up the great ridge, flowing over the uneven ground like brown oil, the light of the first truly sunny day in a week reflecting from their rigid heads and wing cases.

Near the top, they were caught and flayed by archery and deadly small war machines-springals on carts and small mangonels throwing buckets of gravel. Closer in and sorcery began to play a part as the Empire’s sorcerers loosed their powers point blank into the boglins.

As soon as they commenced, Thorn began to kill them. The first was a pretty second-year university student with a solid knowledge of fire-her fire wind laid waste to hundreds of boglins and no few irks before he reached out for her and subsumed her without even bothering to use his powers. She screamed as her soul was destroyed-the utter despair of the young choked off without hope.

Then he struck again, and again. And again. In the time it took a thousand boglins to die, a generation of imperial mages was swept away, and he took their powers and their knowledge for his own.

Too late, the survivors shielded themselves, having never experienced anything like Thorn. Too late they attempted to find him and isolate him.

He began to rain fire on the forward walls.

Ser Hartmut watched it-and for a moment he thought the boglins were going to carry the earthworks. But they could not-they had enough feeling to experience dread, and their losses were hideous.

At a nod from Thorn-a better ally than he’d expected-Ser Hartmut sent the second line into motion. The top of the hill was a smoking ruin-no grass grew, and eldritch fire had swept the summit of the earthworks and the grass in front of it, defining the killing ground so well that some of the Outwallers flinched on getting to the edge of the charred ground.

But Hartmut’s sailors went forward, and the brigans. A sheet of black fire passed over the crest and into the earthworks, the only sign of its passing a slight disturbance in the ground-and the screams began. This time, few of the springals and the mangonels managed to get off a rock or a bucket of gravel-but most of their crews were messily dead, sliced in half by Thorn’s latest effort.

Now the enemy released their cavalry, and there was a sudden sortie. The earthworks were cunningly built, with careful angles and many hidden passages, and armoured men came from the front even as light horse poured into the flanks at both ends, riding recklessly through the high grass and loosing arrows as they came. The Outwallers at the far left took the brunt of the charge of the Vardariotes, and they died, cut down like ripe wheat.

Hartmut smiled. He had put the least reliable there, the useless mouths, and they served to cushion the blow of the Emperor’s finest light horse. They took time to run and die.

Out of the woods at their backs appeared the flash of metal, and then his own lances under de Badefol were forming and charging. And from the third line, Kevin Orley’s men ran forward like the Outwallers they were, heedless of the archery in their superior armour.

The Vardariotes didn’t hesitate, but turned, cut their way through the Outwaller line, and ran, but the desperate flight saved only half, and the rest were ground to bloody paste between Orley’s armoured warband and the knights.

Ser Hartmut hadn’t even begun to sweat inside his armour.

He saw a dozen sailors and a pair of brigans vanish over the top of the centre earthwork. And then he saw another man unfurl his personal banner-it flew atop the wall.

He turned to Thorn. “Now we go up the hill,” he said. “I’ll need your trolls for the Nordikaan guard.”

Thorn was black, and no shadow fell from him or on him. “Let us go up the hill,” he said.

But the Moreans had other ideas.

Out on his far right, a column of cavalry in bright silver and scarlet appeared. They had taken their time to work around his right flank, and now they charged-uphill into the unshielded flank of his long assault line of men and monsters.

Hartmut sent his squire to collect Orley and de Badefol and rode himself towards the fighting. Thorn threw a massive working into the front of the bold riders, killing forty of them in a single sweep of his stone talons and as many of his own Outwallers, but the Scholae-for so they were-came on. The right flank of Outwallers-reliable men, southern Huran with good armour and crossbows-was suddenly swept back sharply, and threatened to collapse.

As Ser Hartmut had expected, the Nordikaans, of whom he had so often heard, came over the top of the central redoubt.

With them came a tall man on a magnificent horse. Even a long bowshot away, Ser Hartmut could see the magnificence of his clothes and armour and the dignity of his posture.

The Nordikaans went into his brigans and collapsed them. They tried to stand-their armour was as good or better, but the blond, axe-bearing guard towered over them, and the axes were like scythes for reaping men.

And they had the weight of the hill behind them.

“Thorn!” Ser Hartmut bellowed.

The deadly magus motioned to the ranks of stone trolls-forty of them-who stood like statues at the base of the ridge. “Go,” he said. “Kill them all.”

The lead troll opened his grey basalt lips and roared his challenge, and then they were away, running as fast as a man might charge on a horse, the earth protesting their weight and their stride.

From the woods behind them burst two of the great hastenoch and an even rarer creature-a great brown thing as big as four war horses, with tusks stained by a hundred years of prey and a great transverse mouth with two rows of teeth the size of rondel daggers, and four great feet like those of an oliphaunt’s. Between them, like a wall of horror, was a loose line of Rukh, towering against the afternoon sun.

They flung themselves into the Scholae.

Harald Derkensun watched disaster unfold slowly, as it usually did, and wrap itself around the imperial army like some sort of malign lover.

One of the problems of being in the guard was that you generally knew everything the Emperor knew. So all the sword bearers-the inner guard-knew the Emperor was not supposed to have waited for the sorcerer alone at Dorling, and they knew that repeated messenger birds had begged him not to engage directly without support.

And they knew that the army was weak on healing and magistry because the Emperor had sent all the strongest talents back to help the Immortals, as he insisted on calling them, to struggle over the last of the open passes into the Green Hills, because their horses were dead.

The Emperor sat, perfectly calm, his handsome face serene, his scarlet cloak and boots spotless. He over-rode each of his senior officers, and sent the Scholae to make a flank attack to relieve the pressure on his centre-an admirable tactic, but not one, Derkensun suspected, suited to the current day, terrain, or numbers.

The Scholae obeyed.

In fact, everyone obeyed. Regiment by regiment, the Emperor flung in his army.

Derkensun could do nothing but stand silently and prepare to die. It had become obvious by mid-afternoon that unless the whole army broke, they would be drowned in a sea of monsters.

The Emperor remained serene, showing his military erudition from time to time-commenting on how very like Varo’s arrangements at Caesarae were the enemy’s three lines, and how like Chaluns it was, especially as the enemy was trying to break his centre.

The acting Count of the Vardariotes was an easterner with insufficient command of the language to argue, and too much stubbornness to refuse an order. He led his people out.

Derkensun saw them defeated. The great axe twitched on his shoulder, and then he was still.

Behind the rump of the Emperor’s horse, he chanced a glance no longer than a single heartbeat with Grossbeak. In that one glance, both men knew that there was nothing to be done. Save the arrival of Ser Milus, or the Red Knight, or some other man of authority.

The afternoon failed, the Scholae charged, and for a moment, the whole battle hung on them.

And then a line of monsters came out of the woods and crushed them.

The two regiments waiting to the right and left-good steady stradiotes from the countryside around the city-began to shift uneasily. Now the line of earthworks was going to be outflanked on both sides. On their right, the Inn itself stood like a fortress, its towers full of archers-big men with long yew bows that they would use to effect.

On the left, the grass ran down and down to a distant stream below, and back behind to a series of sheep and cattle folds for the drovers on a set of otherwise bare hillsides that ran into the east, and the road threaded in among them, heading south to Albinkirk.

As the Scholae died in the field before them, the men on the left of the line-the mountaineers-began to flinch away.

The Emperor rode his horse into one of the gaps in the earthworks, heedless of his foes, and gazed out on the field while two Nordikaans held their round aspides up to protect him from darts.

“Tisk, tisk,” the Emperor said, his first words in half an hour. He was unmoved by the death of his personal guard, manned by the younger sons of his friends and closest supporters in the capital. But he was clearly concerned when the mountaineers began to shuffle back.

“Go and tell the mountaineers to hold their positions,” he said, as if speaking to an unreasonable child.

“And then keep riding south,” muttered a Nordikaan guard.

The Emperor looked around, his face mild. “Friends, I fear the only way to restore this day is through our own endeavours.” He looked down into the chaos. “A stout blow now-and the day is ours.”

Derkensun exchanged another look with Grossbeak.

But then they were moving. The Emperor never even favoured them with an order, but simply rode out of one of the sortie gates without a further word, leaving his sword bearers and his Nordikaans to follow as best they could.

“Oh, Christ,” intoned Grossbeak, to his right. “We’re all about to die. Let’s kill a lot of them first. Amen.”

“Amen,” called the guard.

There were many men missing-men who’d fallen in the early spring, in the north, against the Traitor. But the Nordikaans still had two hundred axes, and when they went into the front of the Galles, the Galles staggered and gave way.

For a few glorious minutes, the Nordikaans and the Emperor’s inner circle-his Hetaeroi-cleared the ridge in front of the entrenchments. The mountaineers returned to their duty. The line held.

And then the great stone trolls started up the ridge. They were fast-fast enough to catch the eye-and huge, each as big as two men.

“What the fuck is that?” asked Grossbeak.

No one answered. The great black stone things rolled up the hill and the earth shook under the pounding of their feet.

Grossbeak-the Emperor’s spatharios and technically one of his senior officers-took the Emperor’s bridle. “What the fuck are they, sire?” he demanded.

The ground shook.

The Emperor sagged slightly. “We must meet them-and hold.”

“Don’t you worry, Lord.” Grossbeak was shouting. “If they can die, we’ll kill them. You get out of here. Now.”

The Emperor drew his sword. “I will not-” he began.

A slingstone, buzzing like a wasp, caught the Emperor in the side of the head. His head snapped back, and he gave a cry-lost his stirrups, and fell.

A moan went up from the imperial lines.

Grossbeak didn’t even pause. “GUARD!” he roared. “BACKSTEP!”

The trolls struck.

No line of men, however gifted, however strong, armed with any weapons, could stop that charge.

Many of the Nordikaans were knocked flat, and some never rose again. Others were merely batted aside-Derkensun was smashed back, as if a boulder had struck his shield, but the runes on his helmet held and he swung his axe with both hands, letting go the shield boss, and the weapon bounced painfully off raw rock.

At his side, Erik Lodder swung and his axe broke off a sizeable chunk of the thing that then caved in his chest.

Derkensun reversed his axe in the air and swung it low, into the thing’s heavy legs. It was exactly like cutting at rock, except that every blow did some little damage and the great stone things roared and screamed and their stone fists were like flails crushing men.

The guard began to die. Their beautiful cloaks could not save them, nor their rune-encrusted armour.

Derkensun took a piece of a blow. It knocked him flat and when he rose, he had no helmet.

He was dazed. He was almost under one of the things, and he raised his axe and cut-into the back of the knee as it took a long stride, bent on reaping Grossbeak.

To his shock, the blow went in-and stuck, more like an axe into wood than flesh, and black blood spurted. The thing whirled, the axe was torn from his grasp, and then its leg failed it and it fell.

“Backs of the knees!” Derkensun shrieked. Other men were calling other things-that their faces were weak, that their groins were like wood.

The guard was dying.

Now the stone trolls were dying, too.

The Emperor fought well. Good breeding and the best training were not wasted on him, and he used a spear with miraculous properties until it broke, and then he drew his sword and was knocked from his horse.

Grossbeak got his arms under the Emperor and pulled him away from the trolls, and backed away, step by step, and the survivors of the guard closed around him. They made a shield wall, as best they could, and fell back, step by step, every step paid for with another veteran dead.

In the sortie gate they made a stand. A pair of brave wagoners had crewed a springal, and they managed to put a great bolt into a troll, breaking him in half so his oily juices sprayed across the parapet, and then they dropped another, a bolt that took the head clean off a second. But by then there were fewer than a hundred guardsmen left.

Most of the Emperor’s officers and friends were dead in the bloody gate or on the grass in front.

Grossbeak had the Emperor over his shoulder. He turned to Derkensun. “We need to get out of here.”

“Is he alive?” Derkensun asked.

“Yes,” Grossbeak said. “Go for the horses.”

The Nordikaans wore too much armour to march, and they rode everywhere. The horses were just behind the Emperor’s position, a hundred paces away.

“No,” Derkensun said.

“Yes,” Grossbeak said. “Go.”

Derkensun turned and ran. He ran back over the packed earth where the working soldiers had dug the day before-back over the first trench line they’d thrown up when they’d arrived, a whole day early, to find that they’d won the race to the Inn of Dorling. Back to the horse lines.

The pages were standing, as if they, too, were guardsmen.

“Follow me,” Derkensun said. “The Emperor is down. We must save him.”

He ran back, his leg armour winding him, his maille too heavy, dragging him down to the dirt, his notched axe accusatory that he was not fighting and dying with his brothers.

He got back before they lost the gate to the monsters outside. He managed a look to the left-and saw that the mountaineers were running. The officers looked at him.

“Retreat!” he roared. “Get your horses!”

The horses were picketed all along the back of the earthworks, and the city regiments didn’t need a second invitation.

Grossbeak grinned at him even as two more of their brothers died under the stone fists.

“Best day’s work you’ve ever done,” he said. He threw the Emperor over Derkensun’s horse. “Go, boy. Go live. That’s an order. My fucking last.” Grossbeak took his axe, and flung himself on the troll who’d just burst through the gate.

For ten heartbeats of a terrified man, his axe was everywhere.

And then the grey troll fell.

He stood on its chest and roared his battle cry, and three of them went for him-the last of the guard in the gate, alone against them all. His axe went back.

“Save the Emperor,” he cried.

Derkensun had his leg over his saddle, his weight already forward, and the Emperor’s chest in front of him. He got his horse’s head around to see the chaos of a rout-twelve hundred men of the city regiments running for their horses, or pulling pins from the loose soil or simply cutting their reins. All around him, men were fleeing, and suddenly there were boglins and other creatures among the horses.

At some point, Derkensun had determined he was not going to die there. He threw his axe at the trolls, backed his mount three steps and turned her.

“Follow me!” he roared. And ran for the road to Albinkirk.

As night fell, Ser Hartmut sat in his camp, on his stool, and listened to his army feed on the defeated. There were no prisoners. Even their single captive from the morning had been taken and stripped to his bones when the enemy broke and the battle collapsed.

He sat and wished he had wine. After a time, Thorn came.

“I wish you the joy of your victory,” Ser Hartmut said.

“Your victory, surely,” Thorn said in his deep, a-harmonic voice.

“Where is your master?” Hartmut asked.

“Away,” Thorn answered.

Ser Hartmut cleared his throat. “Now what? The enemy is beaten. Was the Emperor killed?”

Thorn spread his stone claws. “I fear, given our army’s propensities, that it is difficult to ever ascertain who was killed. I saw him fall before I could turn my workings upon him. It’s as well-he must be mightily protected.”

Ser Hartmut shook his head. “If he went down, we can have the whole thing,” he said. “There’s no one to hold it but a slip of a girl and their militia. Not a knight amongst them.”

“That is your dream, not mine,” Thorn said. “Yours and Ser Kevin’s. I gather he won his spurs today?”

“Most men fight well, when the enemy has broken and shows his back,” Ser Hartmut said.

“You mean he did not fight well?” Thorn asked.

Ser Hartmut shrugged. “He killed men as they ran. He had no opportunity to show his metal.” He leaned back. “I ask again-now what?”

Thorn shook his great horned head. “We smash the Inn of Dorling into the earth as a message,” he said. “And then we turn on Albinkirk.”

“Albinkirk and not the Empire?” Ser Hartmut asked. “Must we? The Empire is ours for the plucking.”

“Do you think your compatriot, de Vrailly, will face us?” Thorn shrugged again. “It matters not. Tomorrow, every beast and creature that hears the call of my power in the Hills-aye, and all the way north to the ice-will come to my bidding. The greatest victory won by the Wild in a century.” Thorn straightened, and his stone fists shot up. “Now we will be masters in our own house.”

As if conjured, Ash came. This time, he came like a tail of black cloud-the ash of his name-and he twined about them for a moment before manifesting. He came as a naked man.

Half of him was jet black, and the other half ivory white.

“Oh, the Wyrm will dance to my tune tonight,” he said. “A mighty victory, as men reckon such things. Utterly unimportant in the great turning of the spheres, but what is? Eh? Is anything worth all this striving and dying?” He laughed. “It’s worth it if you win. Not so worth it if you get digested while you’re even a little alive.” He laughed again. “I have waited in this pivot moment for almost an eternity, and never the Wyrm faces me! Storm the Inn and kill all his people.”

“Then Albinkirk?” Thorn asked, gravely.

“Then Lissen Carak, boy. Then we see some real fun.” Ash cackled. “Then I open the gates and let in my allies, and we feast for eternity!” Then, soberly, “You did very well. I like to win. It is so much nicer than losing. Thank you both.”

He vanished.

Farther to the south and west, night was falling on the rout, and tired men gave way to despair, lagged, and were eaten.

Janos Turkos was not yet one of the victims. His Huran warriors had not fought at all, but simply watched the disaster unfold with wary eyes. When the stradiotes began to mount their horses, Big Pine trotted back to the slight rise where the imperial riding officer sat on his small horse and smoked.

“We go,” he said. “You, too, unless you want to be food.” The Imperial Standard had gone down, and there were boglins above them in the great earthworks.

Turkos sighed, barely resisting tears. He knocked the dottle out of his pipe. He hadn’t even drawn his sword, but he knew his duty-to both his Emperor and to his people.

The Huran psiloi were in among the sheepfolds at the leftmost end of the imperial line. Despite hours of effort by boglins and stone trolls and now by the antlered hasternoch, not one Wild creature had flanked the Emperor’s line to find the ambush he had laid for anyone foolish enough to believe that the flank was open.

Long experience of war in the woods had also caused him to secure his retreat. He raised a hunting horn and blew it once.

Two hundred Huran rose from their places-many had lain without moving all day-and ran. They did it with no fuss and no discussion.

Six miles to the south the Huran rallied. It was the place they had chosen, and they ran to it and lay down behind a long stone wall, flanked on one side by a marsh and on the other by a stand of trees-a reaching tendril of the Wild woods that were just in sight across the last miles of downs and green hills.

They had run the six miles in a little less than two hours, without stopping, and now they lay down, drank water, and ate pemmican.

Turkos climbed a tree. When he came down, Big Tree was waiting with crossed arms.

“Going the wrong way,” Big Tree said.

“We are not done yet,” Turkos said. “There’s another army out there-the army our Lord Emperor was supposed to have waited for.” The light was failing, but there were men coming over the green fields. Men, and other things.

“Why do we wait?” Big Tree asked.

“Now we gather survivors, if we can,” he said.

Big Tree looked into the distance and spat on the ground. “Like a busted ambush?” he asked.

Turkos nodded.

The first men to reach them were cavalrymen. Most were survivors of the Scholae. There was a full troop in good order on exhausted horses.

Turkos met them in the field and their officer all but fell from his horse in surprise. “Christ is Risen!” he called. Closer to, Turkos could see the man was a rich aristocrat in a superb scale corselet and filthy silk breeches. The front of his horse was crusty with black blood.

“Dismount!” the man croaked, and his troopers-more than twenty of them-slipped from their saddles. Some slumped to the ground and sat until veterans pushed them and their tired mounts towards the stream.

“Ser Giorgos Comnenos,” the man said. “Thank Christ you are here. I don’t think we could have lasted another hour.” The man was all but crying.

Turkos put his arms around the man, although a stranger. “And the Emperor?” he asked.

Comnenos shrugged. “I have no idea,” he said. “We charged three times. Then the monsters came. I confess-we ran.” He looked off across the hills. “We were lucky-we were in the second line, resting, when the centre broke.”

Comnenos nodded politely to the painted warrior who appeared at his side and offered him a flask of very strong liquor. “You must be Turkos,” he said.

The riding officer bowed. “My apologies-I am Janos Turkos, and I thought we might make a stand here, and see what we could collect.”

Even as he spoke, a Huran gave a long call like a heron, and all the warriors took cover but, again, the men who appeared out of the hillside were imperials-first, some stradiotes from a city regiment, and then some of the moutaineers.

They were hollow-eyed men, who had seen the loss of the centre.

One man begged them to let him go back. “My wife is in the camp!” he cried.

Another, an older mountaineer, insisted that the Emperor was dead.

Big Tree shook his head. “These men are broken,” he said. “We should run.”

Eventually, morning came. Ser Hartmut had slept ill, and he armed in a sullen silence that his squire dared not disturb, mounted his spare horse and rode through the fortified camp his men had constructed, aware of how many men were missing.

He found them at the top of the hill, as he expected-in the wreck of the captured imperial camp. There, thousands of victorious Outwallers and their allies paraded their captives or abused them-three thousand new slaves who had, the day before, been wives or husbands or children and were now mere objects for lust or drudgery.

He watched with disgust as two of his brigans drew their hooked swords and cut at each other over a woman already so abject and destroyed that he wondered she could be the cause of even a moment’s erotic urge, much less a murderous rage.

He reached down and, with a flick of his arming sword, killed her.

She sank forward over her knees, and her head rolled a foot or two before coming to rest, still jetting blood.

Slowly, her body relaxed into the earth in the final embrace of the dead, where every muscle surrenders to gravity.

The two soldiers paused, swords drawn, and looked at him.

“I’ve saved both your lives, you fools,” he said. “Get back to camp.”

An hour later, with a hundred lances at his back and all of Orley’s men, he began to clear the enemy camp. He and his knights systematically killed the enemy’s camp followers and terrified their own allies into quitting the ground. At some point, the routiers and the sailors joined the massacre. It didn’t take as long as he’d expected.

He ordered the whole camp burned, and turned his back on it.

Still there were new faces in his camp-haunted women, mostly young, and a dozen boys. And hundreds-even thousands-of their north Huran allies took their booty, which was by Outwaller standards immense, and their slaves-the cannier warriors had saved them-loaded their horses or their travois, or even their new captives, and abandoned the army, going north.

He went to Thorn.

“You must stop this, or we will have no Outwallers at all,” he said.

Thorn stood on the hillside, looking down at the column of Hurans and other northerners quitting the army. “You know that most of the captives they take will be adopted, and become Huran?” he said. “Unlike your people, who rape their captives to death.”

Ser Hartmut shrugged. “Sure, war has little beauty to it. I believe the poet said it was only sweet to those who’d never had a taste. I propose we attack the head of the column at last light and kill enough of them that the rest get the message.”

Thorn turned his great stony head to look at the Black Knight. “You would massacre our allies to force them back to their allegiance?” he asked. “Are you a complete fool?”

“It would work, given time and a firm hand,” Ser Hartmut insisted.

Thorn’s voice held an unaccustomed bitterness. “It wouldn’t work on the dead ones. I think you still underestimate the stubbornness of the Outwallers. But the thing that surprises me most is that men think I’m evil. That the Wild is the enemy.” His eyes bored into Ser Hartmut’s. “You have just massacred three thousand innocents to make sure your schedule is kept.”

“It is not my schedule, but yours,” Hartmut snapped. “And I merely do the hard things that need doing. I do not enjoy killing children. But sometimes such things must be done. If you are finished with your lilly-white moralizing, perhaps we can get the army into motion-the army that took more losses from defection than from battle.”

“We will gain that many again in new adherents,” Thorn said wearily, as if the process bored him. “They are already coming in.”

“We need to march, nonetheless.” Ser Hartmut was adamant.

Thorn waved a hand. “Let us wait a day. The northern wardens are close-let us at least bring them in.” He paused. “And my master will want to take the Inn.”

Indeed, the Inn still stood, its out-walls untouched, and was still heavily garrisoned. It had taken in many fleeing Morean soldiers and their women.

“An inn? I’ll have it in an hour. Not a full day,” Hartmut spat. “There are other armies in the field. So you have said.”

Thorn stirred. “My master says little.”

Ser Hartmut struggled with his temper and instead said, “Perhaps it is time to collect information ourselves?”

Thorn looked at him a long time. A man screamed-two Galles held him while a dozen boglins began to eat him. Men began to wager.

People laughed.

“This is who people really are, you know,” Hartmut said quietly.

Thorn grunted. “So my master says. The two of you must get along well.” He watched the atrocity and tried to remember who he had once been. He sighed. “I will try and get the wyverns to fly. Their losses have been terrible. All our flying creatures have been decimated.” Thorn shook his head. “I love the wyverns.”

Hartmut spat. “This is not a time for petty likes or dislikes. I’ll speak plainly, Lord Sorcerer. Your master is either mad, or has a plan that does not-mesh-with the plans my own royal master has made-or worse. I suspect betrayal. I wonder at his disinterest in our battle, our victory, the Emperor-I’m not a fool, Lord Sorcerer. He has a different objective than mere military victory.”

Thorn regarded him again for a long time. One of his great arms moved, and his spear-staff traced lines in the leaf mould.

“Beware of voicing such things,” Thorn said. “For myself, I have no doubts.” He looked around. “Put your energies into taking the Inn.”

Thorn turned on his heel and walked away, leaving the Black Knight standing in the leaf mould. He turned to walk away, and a thought struck him, and he paused, looking back.

I am never alone.

There it was, scratched in the dirt.

Hartmut ran two fingers through his black beard.

“By Satan’s crotch,” he whispered. And then, smiled.

Gilson’s Hole-Ser John Crayford

Two days’ march south of the ruin of the imperial camp, Ser John Crayford was sitting, utterly indecisive, in the clearing that had once been the village of Gilson’s Hole.

No one lived there. It was just three good cabins and the ruins of six others, and a common that had once been grass and was now mud and raspberries.

Ser Ricar and Ser Alison-Sauce-reined in by him.

“I mislike it,” he said. He was tired and saddle sore. They’d had two fights in the woods and he’d had to come back to the road-the rain had turned the southern Adnacrags into the Adnabogs, as his archers were saying to each other at every step.

Sauce flipped her great helm back on her shoulders to hang from its strap. “Sun’s a nice change,” she said. “Where the fuck’s the Emperor?”

Ser Ricar shook his head. “What do you intend, John?”

John Crayford shook his head. He unbuckled his chin strap and pulled his light bascinet over his head and gave it to his squire. His face was writ large with his indecision. He leaned forward in his heavy saddle as if he could see through twenty miles of heavy forest and discern what was ahead of him.

“I intend-” he began. He scratched his beard.

“Look,” he said-mostly to Sauce, whose endless and accurate criticisms were a source of real pain. “If the Emperor fights and loses, we could run into the sorcerer-”

“Any fucking time now,” Sauce spat. “I’ve been saying that for two days, and we’re still strung out on a forest road with no front and no cover.”

Passing archers looked away.

Ser John reined in his temper. “But if he’s holding, he’ll need us.”

“Captain said Albinkirk. This ain’t Albinkirk.” Sauce didn’t moderate her tone. “This is a fucking noose, my lord, and you have put our heads all the fucking way in.”

Ser Ricar sighed. “Sauce,” he said quietly.

Sauce took off a gauntlet. She’d hurt her thumb cutting wood-they’d all cut wood in the rain-and it had swelled. “Sorry, John. But what the fuck? I know it’s on you-I know it ain’t my command. But-no offence-fuck the Emperor, one way or t’other. He’s got a third of the company and that’s my business, but the captain said Albinkirk, and here we are, almost to the Inn. Captain’s trying to get the armies to combine.”

There were hoof beats-definite and audible and coming fast, from behind. Count Zac had both ends of the column covered with his superb men and women-Ser John never considered attack.

But he stiffened.

“Twenty men,” he said. “All right, Sauce. We camp. And dig in.”

“Not what I want!” Sauce all but shouted.

“It’s the compromise you get from me. Let Zac make contact with the Emperor. Maybe one of those precious black and white birds will show up with all the answers-but for now, we’ll dig in here with a big marsh covering our front and this nice fort already built and this village for pre-cut logs.”

He turned to Wilful Murder.

“Strip the village. I want redoubts either side of the road on the lower ridge and a palisade.” He waved to the men behind Wilful Murder. “Get all the women and all the wagoners. Cut every tree out to a long bowshot and clear them. Close in, weave me an abattis. Find every thorn-apple you can. Mag-can you get a lot of poison ivy?”

“By our lady, Ser John, you’re a cruel bastard.”

“Aye, madame. We’ll see.” He didn’t grin. “Sauce, I mean to hold here until I know something.”

Sauce saluted crisply. “I’ll shut up and soldier,” she said, but muttered, “Captain said Albinkirk.”

As if she’d said a charm, the riders burst from the far tree line into the remains of the little village. She knew Bad Tom instantly, and so did Ser John.

Tom Lachlan rode into the command group on a horse so tired that it had foam flecks at the corners of its mouth. He dismounted as soon as he rode in among them.

“Sauce, you’re a sight for sore eyes.” He grinned, and she leaned down and kissed him.

He turned. “What news? Oh, aye, and the cap’n was rather expecting you to be closer to Albinkirk, like.”

“So I’m told,” Ser John said.

“Well, this is better for me,” Tom said. “I’ve orders to go save the Emperor from his own wee daft heid, so to speak. And raise the Hills.” He looked around.

“The Emperor made it to the Inn of Dorling. That’s our last word,” Ser John said. “He was supposed to march for Albinkirk.”

Tom grinned. “Aye, well, that could be said o’ others, too, eh, Ser John?”

Ser Ricar made a visible effort to stifle a laugh.

Tom took in the work around the clearing-the thud of axes, and the six men with chalk lines at work on the areas either side of the road on the low ridge that dominated the Hole.

“Digging in?” he asked.

Ser John nodded.

Tom looked at the sky. “When did you hear the Emperor was at Dorling?”

“Two days ago,” Ser John said. “No imperial messengers since then.”

Tom shrugged. “I know another way to Dorling,” he said. “The high drove road-the way Hector took. Gi’ my lads a change o’ horseflesh and we’re away.”

Ser Ricar frowned. “Christ’s wounds, Ser Thomas! We could use a sword as strong as yours.”

Bad Tom laughed. “If you’re lucky, you won’t need me at all-but I’ll need you. Where’s Zac?” he asked Sauce.

“Out ahead-on the road to Dorling,” she said.

Bad Tom made a grunting noise. “Aweel, aweel, my lads and lasses. I’ll away then. I was going to ask for the loan of him, but I can’t wait.”

Sauce frowned. “Stay the night and listen for the news.”

Tom shook his head. “I fear the worst. Woods is silent-not an irk, not a boglin. Eh? No Outwallers. Eh? I need to know now. My kin are at the Inn and above it, and I won’t leave ’em. And the cap’n told me to raise the folk-and that the Wyrm might not be able to help.” He turned to Ser John. “Want my advice?”

John looked at the big man. “Yes,” he said, not sure what he wanted.

“Dig in, wait one day, and then get gone. If the Emperor’s coming, he’ll be here tomorrow noon at the latest. If he’s not coming, he’s been eaten. Captain’s sometimes wrong, but he says the fight’s at Albinkirk.”

“You’re going the wrong way, then,” Sauce said.

“Hillmen sail the Wild like Outwallers,” Tom said. “Look for me and my folk at Albinkirk.”

Ser Ricar leaned over. “I’m sorry to hold you, Tom, but… messages said the King is dead? The Queen has borne an heir?” He was very hesitant.

A hush fell. They were all King’s men, except the company people, and before Ser Ricar-the King’s Lieutenant in the North-was done speaking, a crowd was forming.

Lord Wishart brought Tom a big stallion.

Sauce caught his hand. “These men need to know, Tom,” she said.

He nodded and pursed his lips like a girl. He stood, lost in thought a moment.

The sound of axes stopped.

He mounted, a sudden explosion of movement.

“I was there,” he roared, in his “Lachlan for Aye” voice. “I was there when the Queen bore her son. I was there when the King died, killed by an assassin. Both of these things, I saw with my own ee’en. The Queen has appointed ministers. There are writs. The law functions. The Galles are beaten by now-I hope. And the Queen lives and breathes and has the King’s son by her side and at her breast, and any man who doubts, come and sing to my sword.”

Three thousand collective sighs. And then a cheer.

“Three cheers for the Queen!” Ser Ricar roared. “And the new King!”

“I didn’t know you could give a speech,” Sauce said mockingly when the cheers had finished.

Tom flicked her an equally mocking salute. “See you at Albinkirk,” he said.

At his back, Donald Dhu and all his tail roared, swallowed their last wine, and rode away-south. There wasn’t even a trail.

“South?” Ser John asked.

Sauce shrugged. “Let’s dig,” she said.

An hour later, a red-eyed Count Zac came in. At his back were thirty shattered Nordikaan guards on foundering horses.

Harald Derkensun fell to his knees trying to pull the Emperor from his horse, and all the guard were weeping.

Sauce was there in an instant, with Mag right behind her, but they were far, far too late.

The Emperor was dead.

“Our army is destroyed, and the Inn of Dorling lost,” Derkensun said. “All our camp. Our people. Gone.” He made a terrible noise in his throat. “I’d rather be dead.”

The Emperor’s face was as serene in death as it had always been in life.

“How’d-?” Ser Ricar began, but Ser John put a hand on his arm.

He went and held the Nordikaan for a moment. “All safe now,” he said. “We’ll beat them. And have our revenge.”

And the Nordikaans behind Derkensun nodded.

All night long, men came in. Some came in in detachments, like soldiers, riding tired horses but with their heads up-a full troop of city cavalry under a dukas, and twenty Vardariotes under a woman they called Lyka. But most were beaten men without weapons, or hope-men who had, in running, abandoned their wives and children to a horrific fate, and now had to live with their failure. There were men with wounds, and men who had abandoned friends to die. They brought fear and terror and self-loathing.

Ser John was an old, hard soldier, and he had Count Zac separate them from his own people by a wide margin. He sent them food and blankets and hot coals to make fires.

When morning came, he ignored their pleas and made them cut trees, and dig. He pushed his scouts as far north as they dared go, so far that they were in constant contact with the boglins and worse creatures suddenly loose across the hills.

He sent a steady stream of mounted messengers back to Albinkirk.

Morning wore on, and still the Moreans came in-more than two thousand already.

“Time to go,” Sauce said.

Ser John shook his head. His mind was made up, now. He knew what he was about. “Not as long as we can cover these poor bastards, Sauce. Two days or three, and we’ll have saved enough to make an army.” He pointed at a file of Morean women who’d stolen horses in the rout and ridden for two days. “That woman says they were saved by what they called ‘the rearguard.’ So out there somewhere is a formed body, still fighting.”

“An army of wretched men who ran away?” she asked with contempt. “And a handful dying…”

“Sooner or later, everyone runs, even you.” Ser John made a face. “They lost everything. That makes them very dangerous. And every day that the sorcerer doesn’t come down this road is a day we get more of them. And then…” He paused. “There’s your Ser Milus. Where is he?”

Sauce chewed on the end of her hair. “That’s a very good question,” she said. “Two hundred lances, and they wasn’t in the rout. Where are they?”

The second full day at the Hole, and the insects were the worst they’d ever been-clouds of mosquitoes and some black flies rising like an evil miasma off the swamp water. From the north, no news. More refugees, and a steady trickle of desperate routiers, looking for salvation beyond hope and finding it in Sauce’s hard-eyed pickets.

At noon, a single rider came in from the west, moving at a dead gallop with three riderless horses behind him.

“Galahad D’Acon, as I live and breathe,” Ser John said, offering the boy a glass of the diminishing store of red wine.

The young man took the wine, drank it straight off, and sat rather suddenly. “The Queen is one day short of Albinkirk. She’ll reach it tonight,” he said. “She’s raised the Royal Standard at Sixth Bridge, and the Red Knight’s got five hundred lances. He says, he asks all your intelligence and all your guidance.”

Sauce leaned in. “He didn’t say, get your arse back to Albinkirk?”

Galahad managed not to smile. “He said that as a veteran captain, Ser John doubtless had his reasons, and would he be so kind as to communicate them. The Queen adds she has made you Count John of Albinkirk.” D’Acon reached into his belt pouch and took forth a chain, which he deftly put over the older man’s head.

Ser John was struck dumb. A life of the comparative indifference of princes had not prepared him for any kind of promotion.

“Go to bed, son,” Ser Ricar said to the young man, “and we’ll send a rider-”

“Saving your pardon, my lord, but I’m magicked, or hermeticized, with some working that makes me-unseelie the enemy. And I’m under orders to take your best reports and return.” D’Acon shrugged. “Certes I was little troubled on my way here.”

Ser John snapped his fingers. “If there’s an army behind us,” he said.

Even Sauce looked different. She grinned. “Now we’ve got something.”

Strong in the knowledge that the company was behind him, Count John of Albinkirk threw his best knights forward in the early afternoon, and by the fortune of war they rescued the imperial rearguard-two hundred Hurans under a war chief and an imperial officer, and another hundred mixed imperial cavalrymen. It was a small victory, but they stung the pursuers, charging into an open rabble of boglins and enemy Outwallers on both sides of the road and sending them, in turn, running. But the woods behind them were alive with monsters, and Count John had no reserves to spare.

Fifteen minutes’ fighting sufficed to break the rearguard, exhausted but suddenly full of the energy of hope, free from the enemy. It also sufficed to teach Count John that he lacked the power to fight in the woods without either a mage or a lot of archery.

He had his knights and squires each take up one of the imperial Hurans on his saddle, and they trotted back to safety.

“Anyone behind you?” Count John asked Ser Giorgos.

“Not still alive,” the imperial officer said.

The Outwallers were useless for building anything. They expressed disinterest and wandered away. None of them-except Orley’s warband-could be made to build ladders except by force, and even then, the ladders they built were useless.

“Animals,” Ser Hartmut spat.

But the sailors had a more proper view of work, and they produced a dozen heavy siege ladders in short order-wood being in abundant supply. The wreck of the Morean camp was stripped for lumber, and trees were felled-not without some anger on the part of the creatures of the Wild. It was a long day, and an exhausting one.

The men on the walls of the Inn mocked them. They were loud and Ser Hartmut was curiously tender to it.

As the light began to dim and it became clear that early morning would mark the first assault, he went to find the sorcerer.

“We could save a good deal of time if you’d drop a rock on the castle,” he said.

Thorn stirred his great limbs. “It would,” he admitted. “But it is protected beyond my ability to affect it. It would take less time to send for your siege train from Ticondaga.”

Ser Hartmut’s temper exploded.

“That will take weeks,” he said. “Weeks we do not have.”

“We have won a great victory,” Thorn intoned.

“Most great victories aren’t worth the sweat of a single dead man,” Ser Hartmut said, “and this is like to be one of them. Do you mean that all your vaunted sorcery is useless against a stone-built inn?”

“You have no idea what you are talking about,” Thorn said. “Beware. When you speak of making war, I have learned that your wisdom is deeper and better than mine. Accept my word on this. I have no sorcery that will breach the Inn.”

“Summon your master,” Ser Hartmut spat. “If the student cannot pass the test, let’s have the master.”

“Beware what you wish for,” Thorn said. “My master is in the west. And all is not well. Storm the Inn with ladders-surely you care nothing for the losses.”

Ser Hartmut growled in his throat. “You confuse the killing of useless mouths who lower the condition of my men with the waste of precious soldiers, without whom there is no victory,” he said coldly.

Thorn nodded. “I suppose I do. They all look the same to me.” In the dirt, he scrawled, As we all appear the same to my master.

At first light the assault went over the ridge. The assault was entirely conducted by men-none of the monsters could be made to carry ladders or even understand them, except the stone trolls, and no ladder would hold one of them. Given time, Ser Hartmut imagined he might use slaves to build a ramp of earth…

Then he was pounding forward, his sabatons ringing on the hard ground of the old road and the Inn’s outer yard.

For this kind of thing, you had to lead from the front.

The brigans had been storming towns all their bloody-handed professional lives, and they were quick and efficient. The great ladders-six of them-went up almost silently in the first light of day, and not a single arrow came down to kill a man.

The garrison was asleep. Ser Hartmut had hoped for some such sorcery from his allies, and he led the way up the first ladder against the lowest wall, the gate wall at the front of the great Inn. Neither oil nor red-hot sand greeted him, and he ran up the ladder in his full harness, and his sword flamed in his hand.

At the top-the first man on the wall-he let loose his mighty roar of battle, a wordless cry, and the brigans and sailors and knights at his back echoed it with a cry so savage that the boglins in the valley below shuddered, and the irks looked away from the savagery of man.

But the defenders didn’t answer his war cry. They didn’t face him on the empty walls, and they were not huddled in the courtyard, and they were not waiting at the Inn’s great doors or in the common room or upstairs, or down.

The Inn was empty. There were no people, and no animals-no cups, no plates, no glass in the cupboards. The whole of the great stone complex was so empty that it was as if it had been stripped by robbers, or emptied by a rapacious seller looking to cheat the buyers of his goods. It was uncanny, curiously malevolent, and it cheated two thousand men of their sack, their rape and their looting.

At the base of the hill, Thorn watched and, as he watched, Ash manifested-more swiftly than usual, and more fully, being almost solid to the touch.

“He’s clever, my kin,” Ash said, and spat. His saliva burned the grass. “As usual, he avoids conflict with his cunning and cheats me of a simple contest. He has taken his people elsewhere. The coward.”

“Where?” Thorn asked.

“How would I know?” Ash shrieked.

Thorn tried not to show his unease. “There is a rumour in camp that…” Thorn hesitated.

“That those fools, Treskaine and Loloth, were defeated? They were. Massacred.” Ash’s round, black eyes were themselves uncanny, and they rested on Thorn. “And their Outwallers betrayed them, for which they will pay. But you know who defeated them? My old friend Tapio.” Ash nodded, solemnly.

“I should have killed him,” Thorn said.

“You should have, but you lacked the ability, then.” Ash nodded again. “Not now.”

Thorn considered what the Faery Knight’s position implied. “He is on our flank.”

Ash laughed. “In the Wild, there is only here and now. Flank is a human concept, and thus, worthless.”

Thorn grunted. “Humans excel at war.”

Ash shook his black mane of hair. “No. That is a lie. As well say beavers build great cities.”

Thorn took a great breath, and let it out slowly. “What do you wish of us?”

Ash nodded, pleased. “Take this rabble and go to Albinkirk.”

Twenty Miles East of Dorling-Morgon Mortirmir

The moonlight made it possible to move, and Ser Milus had made it clear that the white banda would not halt until they reached Albinkirk, five days away. At least.

They’d left the road the first day, and tried to pass south and west, skirting the enemy. Instead, they were almost lost in the endless long green hills and valleys, all identical, all laid out in every direction so that no valley ran in the direction you expected, and scouts would climb to the top of one hill to find that they were merely at the base of another.

Most of the men-at-arms were stripped to mail shirts and breastplates, helmets and gauntlets. The rest were with the baggage, or simply left-a fortune in leg armour and war saddles abandoned on the high moors of the eastern Green Hills, for nesting mice and snakes.

“Just the parts of your harness you want most, if you face a couple of dozen boglins on a dark night,” muttered Ser George Brewes. His curses were reflected a hundred times-almost all the rouncys were gone and almost all the war horses, so that the archers and the men-at-arms alike were walking. Every surviving horse, including a dozen magnificent chargers, were harnessed to the baggage wagons without which they could not move at all.

Morgon Mortirmir walked on, working carefully on a couple of different invocations simultaneously. He knew that something had gone awry from the soul-screams of his fellow practitioners a day back. That haunted him. He knew those aethereal voices, and they were gone.

He thanked God, guiltily, that none of them were Tancreda Comnena, whose family would never have allowed their daughter out of the confines of the city. A wise choice.

In the security of his palace, he could see Thorn as a nimbus of green power almost due west. He could feel the comings and goings of other powers, and he was aware that in the last hours there had been some mighty shift in the currents and breezes of Power-something had been done, some great invocation cast, some massive working engendered.

As he walked in the real, he was building traps and fall-backs in the aethereal, for whatever had killed his peers.

The hilltops that flanked the road held life, but no thaumaturgy that he could detect-merely wandering flocks of sheep and goats, and some herdsmen who were chary of the armoured men in the defile.

When all the herdsmen vanished, Morgon sought Ser Milus.

“My lord, the herds are gone. They were there-above us, towards Mons Draconis, and now they are gone.”

Ser Milus was one of the few men besides wagoners and scouts still mounted. He put a fist in the middle of his back to ease the pain. “Son of a bitch,” he muttered. “What the hell?”

Mortirmir shook his head in the darkness. “I have no idea, my lord, but I think there are men moving on the ridges-perhaps worse than men. But my notion is that there are horsemen.”

Milus was grey in the moonlight, but eventually he summoned a few of his scouts-his own archer, Smoke, and Tippit and No Head.

“I’ll put it to you straight, boys,” he said. “I need you to ride up slope and see what the hell is happening.”

“Ambush?” No Head asked. He sounded interested.

Mortirmir shrugged, a useless motion in the darkness. “Men on horses, I believe.”

“You coming, smart boy?” Tippit asked.

Mortirmir stiffened his spine. “I’d be delighted,” he said.

Tippit spat. “Let’s get it done.”

The four men rode up the slope slowly, without speaking, fifteen paces between horses. They were hard to see even in the moonlight, and Mortirmir kept drifting, but always managed to find his way back into the line.

The slope was deceptive, both steeper and longer than it had seemed from the base.

The burst of a partridge from cover shattered the night.

A dog barked. Shapes moved suddenly at the crest of the stony ridge, which rose steeply above them-still higher than Morgon had imagined.

“Freeze!” hissed No Head.

A voice shouted far away, and a horn sounded.

Sheep gave voice at the sound of the horn.

“I know that voice,” No Head said.

“Shut the fuck up before we’re all made into someone’s breakfast,” spat Tippit.

“Sod yourself, ya whack.” No Head stood in his stirrups. “Hullo!” he roared.

The shout rang, and echoed off two great hillsides. A dozen No Heads greeted each other.

“Ya daft weasil!” growled Tippit. “Fuckin’ scout? Fuckin’ dimwit is what you are. That’s what comes of readin’ books!” He was sidling away.

Another horn sounded, this one closer, and then there were horsemen-at least a hundred of them-pouring over the ridge.

“Fuck me!” Tippit shouted. “It’s the Wild Hunt.”

But No Head had been in the company since its earliest days, and he sat on his small mare and waited while Tippit started noisily down the slope. “Wager you ten silver, hard coin, it’s friends,” he said.

Tippit pulled in his horse. “Yer only saying that ’cause if ya lose we’re all dead anyway.”

“That’s just stupid,” No Head said. “Death against ten silver?”

Smoke was a man of few words. But he put out a hand. “Shut up,” he said gently. “Shut up and listen.”

Nonetheless, his hand went to his sword.

Three horns sounded, and one was already down slope of them.

“Hulloooooo!” No Head roared.

The horsemen were close enough to be more than movement and noise. They were big men on ponies, their feet incongruously close to the ground, but the leader rode a war horse that stood seventeen hands, black as the night.

“Bad Tom,” No Head shouted.

“You’re in the wrong valley, you loons!” Bad Tom roared back. “Tar’s tits, we almost gave up on you!”