The Fell Sword

Chapter Seventeen

Ticondaga and Albinkirk – Ser John Crayford and Amicia

In the end, Amicia won the old knight over to the notion of passing the Adnacrags again in winter. It took him a month to heal – a month of enduring the ruthless enquiries of a woman untramelled by the least restraint as to manners or morals. Amicia had never known anything like the Lady of the North, and she hoped that she never would again.

On the day when Ser John announced that they would take their merchants and march, Ghause smiled at Amicia across her solar. ‘Do you miss him so much?’ she asked, and Amicia’s heart almost stopped beating.

But Ghause swept on. ‘Do you know the Queen’s friend, Lady Mary?’ she asked.

Amicia was, by this time, adept enough at defending herself. She answered cautiously.

‘I met her in the aftermath of the great battle,’ she said.

Ghause laughed. ‘There are no “great battles”, woman,’ she said. ‘Yon Lady Mary is betrothed to my Gavin.’

‘Yes, I believe I knew there was somewhat between them,’ Amicia said without lowering her guard, and Ghause laughed aloud.

‘This is my dotage!’ she said. ‘To sit in my solar and gossip about the lovers of my sons.’ She leaned forward. ‘I like you, witch.’

Those words stayed with Amicia to the end of her life.

The Earl of the North sent twenty knights and almost a hundred soldiers to march with the caravan across the winter snows, and they went in sleighs. The Northwallers had many ways of moving in winter that were almost forgotten in Albinkirk, if they’d ever been known there, and the Etruscan merchants were shocked, and a little delighted, to see how fast a horse-drawn sleigh could move along an Adnacrag lake. They could easily make ten leagues in two hours – sometimes more – and then they’d face another weary climb up a ridge to the next lake. Sometimes the military road was clear enough to take the sleighs, and once, they had to unload every bundle and carry it.

The Earl’s youngest son accompanied the convoy, commanding his father’s men. He was dark and morose, like many young men, and yet Amicia found him easy to like – not just a pale reflection of his older brothers, but a youth already giving signs of being a solemn, cautious man. He found her watching the bundles of furs moved by ropes up a ridge.

‘Winter is always with us,’ he said. ‘We make war in winter, and we travel if we have to. It is the one time that most of the Wild is asleep.’ He leaned close. ‘What is Gabriel like, now?’ he asked.

She closed her mind with a snap and closed her expression, as well. ‘He is a good knight, ser. That is all I can say.’

It took them just six days to reach the crossing of the river where the whole adventure had begun, and the sleighs crossed on ice – breaking through in many places, but never so deep as to spill their loads. The wagon beds were shaped like boats and waterproof.

The Northwallers knew all about winter.

And when she could see Albinkirk between her horse’s ears, Amicia allowed her eyes to mist over a little.

Riding gave her too much time to think.

She kissed Ser John goodbye in the yard of the citadel of the town, and the thin population cheered their captain, the merchants, and the young nun.

She had a serious meeting with the bishop, and went back to her duties at South Ford.

Lonika – Duke Andronicus

Three hundred leagues and more to the east, servants were removing the spruce wreaths from the beautiful mosaicked hall. It was almost a month since Epiphany. The old Duke of Thrake sat in his Great Hall with his son and a dozen other of his officers arrayed before him like supplicants – including the magister, Aeskepiles, who lurked at the back like a criminal.

‘I had to, Pater. He was the very spawn of Satan – he was driving our people out of the city and beating us everywhere.’ Demetrius stood straight before his father. He didn’t appear to feel any remorse.

Andronicus sat, chin in his hand, on a heavy chair very like a throne. ‘You asked me, and I said no. Then you went behind my back with that sorcerer and you had him killed.’

‘What matters it?’ Demetrius asked. ‘He’s dead and buried. The princess is dismissing his company. She’s being careful – wouldn’t you, when dealing with such a nest of vipers? But they’ll be gone in a few days, and then we can march south.’

Aeskepiles cleared his throat. ‘We are months behind our schedule, and we need to move.’

Andronicus raised his eyebrows. ‘Schedule? Master sorcerer, I do not have a schedule. I intend to save my country from a usurper and from a long reign of bad government. That will take years.’

Aeskepiles was very still for a moment, and when he spoke, his voice sounded unctuous. ‘Of course, my lord. I only spoke in the most general of fashions. Please forgive me.’ He leaned forward. ‘I am still surprised at the ease of his unmaking.’

‘Ease?’ Demetrius spat. ‘Three botched attempts and then he was killed when an amulet exploded?’

Aeskepiles smiled. ‘I could not have hoped for better,’ he said.

Andronicus looked at both of them as if they were children. ‘You imagine she will invite us back,’ he said.

‘If she does not, we can simply tell the people that she betrayed her own father,’ Demetrius said.

Andronicus raised his head from his fist. ‘And everyone will believe us, of course. Listen, you two fools. What you have done is to win this stalemate – and for her. She has the army, now – this Red Knight saw to that. She has her own fleet and it has been paid. The Etruscans, may they be damned to hell, will now pay her a tax.’ He sat back and rested both arms on the arms of his huge chair. ‘In a way – in a strange way – I admire this Red Knight. He did many of the things I’d have liked to do myself.’ He looked at Demetrius. ‘I suspect that when she is ready, she will offer you marriage, my son. And you will accept it. My titles will be restored, and you will be her consort. If you are lucky, you will be allowed to lead armies. At some point, some impious man will put a knife in her father’s throat or wrap a bowstring around it.’

Aeskepiles looked at the old Duke as if he were a pile of dung. ‘What foolishness is this? And no man living calls me a fool to my face.’

The old Duke sneered. ‘You are a fool. An arrogant, power-mad fool, just as the Patriarch warned me. Arrest him.’ He waved at two soldiers. ‘Never fear, Magister – I was never going to make you Patriarch anyway.’ He turned to his son. ‘But what am I going to do with you?’ he asked.

Liviapolis – The Red Knight

The company marched out of Liviapolis at the break of day, and it was clear from the moment that they cleared the palace gate that the princess was not going to trust them even in the streets of the city. The Vardariotes took post all along their line of the march, and all the city stradiotes followed at their heels. Two hundred Nordikans rode along behind their baggage train, threatening instant retribution for any misdeed.

Ser Jehan led the column, with Ser Milus at his side carrying the furled black banner. Men wore their scarlet surcoats with an air of surly defiance. Most of the archers glared at the bystanders who came to gape – most of the men-at-arms rode with their eyes down. The company’s women rode palfreys, now, and most wore short swords and scarlet cot-hardies too, but uniformity couldn’t hide their air of desperation.

The word was that the mercenaries were being evicted unpaid.

Near the gate, a pair of Nordikans saluted Ser Jehan, and Wilful Murder spat.

Just behind him, Nell giggled. As they rode through the great Gate of Ares, she poked Wilful in the ribs. ‘You’re over-acting,’ she said.

‘Shut up, hussy,’ he hissed. ‘You’ll wreck it all, and the spies’ll hear you and we’ll all be killed. Mark my words.’

When the company passed under the Gate of Ares for the last time, the two Nordikans on duty saluted with their axes until the last woman had passed under the iron portcullis. And then they mounted horses already saddled, and joined the company of Nordikans and the stradiotes shadowing the company.

They marched west on the road to Alba. After the crossroads, the pace picked up. A mile past the crossroads, a hundred Vardariotes galloped past them, spraying dust from the newly hardened ground. The snow was already melted in the valleys, although the rivers were full, and there were flowers in the lowest ground. And the sun was rising earlier.

The man-at-arms behind Ser Milus – the only man in the whole column with his helmet laced on – raised his visor and took a deep breath. Toby leaned over and helped him unlace the great helm he wore, and Father Arnaud helped him with the catches.

When it came off his head, he smiled, his black beard framed in the mail of his aventail, and he swept his great horse out of the column and galloped along.

If there had been watchers in the hills, they’d have heard three ringing cheers.

But the scouts and the Vardariotes had seen to that. The Nordikans joined the company columns, and the city stradiotes fell in as well. And six leagues north of the city, Mag waited with Ser Giorgios and forty more wagons, smuggled out of the city two at a time over the last two weeks.

The Red Knight formed his army in two ranks on either side of the road. He rode all the way along their front, so that they could all see him with his helmet off.

‘Listen, my friends,’ he shouted. They were perfectly silent. ‘I’m a devious bastard, and I don’t always share my plans. But here’s the word – we’ve slipped out of the city, the roads are hard, and in the next few days we’re going to rescue the Emperor.’

For the Nordikans and the stradiotes, the promise of heaven wouldn’t have been better. A cheer belted out to the sky.

He waited until they were done.

‘And then Andronicus will have to come for us,’ he said. ‘We’ll have the better men. He’ll have the numbers.’ He turned his horse in a circle. ‘Every man here, whether a Morean or a mercenary, wants this over with. I intend to force him to commit to a battle. And then I intend that we win it.’ He grinned. ‘We don’t want him to hole up in a fortress. We want him to find us and attack. So follow orders, be alert, and remember – we’re going to have the Emperor with us.’

They cheered again.

Gabriel Muriens wondered what it would be like to exert such power over men’s minds that they would cheer like that for him.

‘March,’ he called. And the army swung onto the road by sections, and followed him.

At Kilkis they turned north. Lord Phokus joined them with another hundred stradiotes, and as many archers mounted on ponies, and they didn’t march north – they dashed north, into Thrake. On the first day they managed almost forty miles. They made a hasty camp where the scouts led them. Before dawn, a barely recovered Gelfred, still white around his own edges, dashed away, and the army rose in the chilly dark, donned armour, cursed the darkness and did not light a single candle. The ground of their fireless camp was littered with forgotten items – but the army passed over the Thrakian hills that day. They had another day of sun, and the roads stayed hard. They were on the ancient Imperial road and the bridges were stone-built.

On the third hard day they made a camp and surrounded it with felled trees in a long criss-crossed abattis like a temporary cattle fence, and they slept with fires lit. They were only fifty leagues from Lonika, and forty from the coast, through the steepest mountains many of them had ever seen.

That day, the flying column detached from the main army – sixty Vardariotes, a dozen lances, and as many Scholae and Nordikans, all with multiple horses. They crossed a tall bridge of ancient stones that towered over a river rushing black beneath its three arches. Chunks of ice were piled against the bridge, and it shuddered as further ice floes struck it, but the bridge was a thousand years old and an early spring was not a serious threat to it.

They rode east, the Red Knight and Gelfred and Count Zac at their head. With them rode Jules Kronmir. He wore a sword and armour like the rest of them.

After an hour of cantering over winter grass, the column halted and every man changed horses.

Ser Michael was with the priest. He knelt briefly in prayer, and then rose to check his girth. He looked at Ser Michael and raised an eyebrow. ‘Why is it that I’m guessing I’m going to hate every minute of the next few days?’ the priest asked.

‘I don’t know any more than you,’ Ser Michael said. ‘But my gut tells me you’re spot on.’

An hour later they emerged from deep fog to find themselves cantering across dead grass and bracken that reached to their horses’ bellies. All the Vardariotes but Count Zac and his immediate staff were gone – vanished into the fog.

They halted and changed horses, and they were off again.

At sunset, they stopped long enough to put feed bags on their horses’ heads, and eat some sausage. The Red Knight walked from man to man, down the column. He said the same thing to every man.

‘We’re taking an insane risk, and playing for everything,’ he said with a grin. ‘No sleep tonight. Just keep going. Ignore the fog. That’s what scouts are for.’ He passed back up the column, leaving Ser Michael and Father Arnaud to speculate as to what he intended. At the head of the column stood a man holding a pony. The Red Knight bowed to him.

‘This is more help than I ever expected,’ he said. ‘Again.’

‘From which you may – again – assume that things are worse than you imagined,’ said the guide.

There was a long silence – made more epochal by the totality of the fog and the quiet around them.

He’s taking us straight across the aethereal, isn’t he? asked Harmodius. Blessed Virgin, think of the power required.

He’s saving us about forty miles of brutal mountains. We’ll have to pass them on the way out. Or be trapped against them, unable to manoeuvre, and cut to pieces.

Well, aren’t you the optimist?

When they stumbled out of the snowy fog, they were in a broad, flat marsh, frozen solid, at the foot of a ridge that seemed to fill the sky as the sun rose somewhere far, far to the east behind it. A castle stood at the top of the ridge, and well off to the north sat the town of Ermione. The sea was on the other side of the ridge; the Red Knight could smell it.

The Red Knight gathered them all together. ‘Now we rescue the Emperor,’ he said.

They all nodded.

‘Where are we?’ asked Ser Michael.

‘Eastern Thrake,’ said the Captain. ‘That’s the Imperial castle of Ermione. Last night we moved very fast indeed.’

Count Zac scratched his beard and strove to appear his usual phlegmatic self. ‘Where are the rest of my lads?’ he asked.

‘I very strongly hope that they are storming and holding the high pass for us, and choosing a camp for the main army,’ said the Red Knight. ‘If not, this will turn out to be a very unfortunate trip.’

Men began to ask questions, and the Captain held up his arms for silence. ‘It’s not your business if I cut a deal with Satan,’ he said coldly. ‘It’s your business to storm the castle on those heights. I am told that the enemy has a force within a day’s march. There will be no siege but we’ll only get one shot at this.’ He smiled in the growing grey light. ‘You’ll find if you examine your recent training that you have all practised this.’

Men looked around and realised how many times in the last sixteen weeks they had stormed mock castles.

‘How do we open the gate?’ Count Zac said. ‘Sorcery?’

The Red Knight shrugged. ‘Better,’ he said. ‘Alchemy.’

Ser Michael and Gavin had, as they discovered, practised the whole thing.

Bent and Wilful Murder waited a long time in the growing light at the edge of day, arrows on their bows, watching the men in the towers. It was so cold that the very hairs in your nose seemed to freeze – so cold that sentries kept moving smartly or froze to death. But tired, cold men tend to move in patterns.

Ser Michael opened his mouth, and the Red Knight shook his head and pursed his lips.

The two master archers raised their bows in perfect unison, and all the other archers with them raised theirs, and two dozen shafts flew in the crystalline air. The spent shafts rattled against stone where they missed, but few of them missed.

The two sentries died.

Ser Gavin and Ser Michael picked up the thing like a bronze bell that had materialised at the last halt and ran it to the postern gate of the castle. At their heels came all the men-at-arms, while Count Zac and his men and all the archers remounted and waited at the edge of the woods.

Ser Michael’s hands shook and the backs of his arms and edges of his biceps tingled with what felt like weakness.

The snow crunched under his sabatons, and he made himself run faster.

The two strongest men lifted the bronze bell, mouth to the great iron-shod oak postern door, and seated it against the door.

There was a blur of power, and the bronze somehow mated to the iron on the gate. Ser Gavin let go of the thing as if it was poisonous. Michael backpedalled, almost fell as his heel caught on a piece of frozen dung in a horseshoe print, caught himself with a wrenching motion of his hips that made noise.

‘Run!’ hissed the Red Knight. ‘Here – flat to the wall!’

Twenty armoured men-at-arms held themselves flat to the wooden palisade, just around the corner from the postern gate. The Red Knight’s mouth moved.

There was a sound like all hell breaking loose, and the stench of hell, too.

In what seemed like silence, the Red Knight waved his sword and ran into the foul-smelling smoke, and they all followed him in.

Ser Michael’s responsibility was the main gate. He led six men-at-arms across the frozen yard and fell flat on his face when the ice under foot betrayed him. Harald Derkensun got him to his feet and the other men passed him. There were men sleeping in the gatehouse, but no guard. They killed the sleeping men in their beds and Derkensun, who knew his way around a gatehouse, tripped the gate mechanism and the chains rattled as the portcullis went up and the two big gates opened on counterweights-

Ser Milus followed the Captain’s steel-clad back into the nearest door in the main hall – which proved to be nothing but a covered passage dividing the Great Hall from a barracks area.

‘Ignore them!’ the Captain said softly and ran through a curtained door into the Great Hall. There were a dozen men sprawled on log benches and two men were awake. One shouted.

The Captain ran through the hall, and none of the Thrakians seemed to see him. So they turned on Milus and Gavin, and the fighting began. Milus set his feet and swung his axe and the Thrakians backed away, and Ser Giorgios ran right past the melee and followed the Captain with two more Scholae at his heels – as they’d been taught to.

Milus’s pole-axe caught an unwary Thrakian who didn’t know how long his reach was, cleanly severing almost a third of his head as well as the arm he’d raised to defend himself in the last heartbeat. He had enough head left to scream in stupefied horror as the top of his head fell in his lap.

The surprise was over.

Ser Giorgios followed the Captain up the steps of the tower, which twisted like a corkscrew. It was all he could do to breathe, and he was wearing less armour than the Albans.

They reached the top to find four men cramming the landing, using swords to break down the door of the room at the top of the tower.

The Red Knight put one down before the fight started, by slamming his long red sword into the man’s unarmoured ankle from three steps down – a long thrust and a wrist cut. It was almost the end of the fight – the man staggered, screamed without comprehending what had happened to him – and fell down the stairs. His death on their swords almost threw the Scholae back, and gave his mates time to prepare.

The Red Knight grunted in exasperation. He leaped up the last three steps, absorbing two heavy blows – one to his helmet and one to his right pauldron – and his basilard clenched in his left fist gutted the nearest man.

Ser Giorgios was so close on his heels that he used the dying man as a shield, shouldered him into the third man on the landing and then stabbed through the dying man – repeatedly – until his adversary gurgled.

The Scholae finished the last man standing when he fell to his knees begging for mercy.

The Red Knight put his gauntleted hand against the door. ‘He’s in there,’ he said. ‘Majesty!’ he called. ‘Open your door! It is your rescue!’

The men pouring out of the barracks had begun to form a line in the icy yard – unarmoured, but with a workmanlike collection of short swords and heavy falchions, sabres and horse bows. An officer shouted, and they raised their shields and gave a Thrakian war cry.

Count Zac led the mounted men through the now-open gates. Arrows flew like snow flurries and the yard, already muddy, turned red-brown. The garrison had nowhere to go, no armour, and no hope of fighting twenty mounted men.

The rest of the armoured men were pouring into the Great Hall to help Milus and Ser Gavin, who had the only serious fighting. Both of them took wounds, outnumbered, fighting alone for as long as it took the sun to rise one finger above the horizon.

Ser Michael had one more duty to perform – a self-imposed one. He collected his team and ran through the bloody yard – the ice was gone – to the kitchens under the eastern tower. The yard door was unlatched, a woman screamed and they were in.

‘Lie down!’ he shouted. ‘And you will not be killed.’

The Red Knight hadn’t ordered him to save the women and children, but Michael was newly married, and he had his own notions about war.

Before the last screams were done, the Red Knight came into the yard with Giorgios and two more Scholae carrying the Emperor. Every man in the yard fell to his knees – even the archers, with a little help.

The Emperor smiled. ‘Oh, my braves,’ he said. ‘Please spare the rebels.’

They got him into a horse litter rigged up on the spot.

Milus found the Red Knight with Ser Michael. ‘Do we spare them?’ he asked.

The Red Knight grinned. ‘Ser knight, you have a flap of skin the size of a flapjack hanging off your thigh.’ He knelt in the bloody snow and put pressure on a wound Ser Milus hadn’t even seen. ‘But yes – if the Emperor wants to be clement, I’m not going to countermand him.’

‘You said to kill them all,’ Ser Michael said accusingly.

‘I said that when we were desperate,’ the Red Knight said, as if talking to a fool. ‘Now we’re merely in a hurry.’ He glared at Wilful Murder, who was trying to pass unnoticed into the kitchen, and nodded to Michael. ‘Saving the kitchen staff? That was well done,’ he said. ‘I didn’t even think of it,’ he admitted.

Bent and two more archers were holding Ser Milus, and Long Paw was wrapping his thigh with clean white linen. ‘Missed your prick,’ the archer said comfortingly.

‘If we bind them, they’ll be dead in an hour from the cold,’ Ser Milus said.

‘That’s a chance I’m willing to take,’ the Red Knight said. ‘Sorry. I know you are all gentle, perfect knights on errantry, but I’d rather not see these gentlemen again today. And when Andronicus’s relief force reaches here, every one of our prisoners will turn into a blood-mad Thrakian.’

‘Emperor said not to kill them,’ Ser Michael said. ‘If we tie them, the women will just untie them.’ He set his hips. ‘I won’t let you kill the women.’

The Red Knight rolled his eyes. ‘I wasn’t proposing to kill them, my young idealist. I was hoping you’d come up with some noble, but efficient, way of protecting us – and them from your excellent friends, like Wilful Murder here, who merely want a bit of rape.’ He shrugged. ‘Very well. Lock them all in the basement of the eastern tower, and let the fates see our mercy.’ He leaned over. ‘Michael – we did it!’

Michael shook his head. ‘Of course we did,’ he said.

The Red Knight sighed. ‘Sometimes I think you all take me for granted,’ he said and went off to wash the blood off his hands.

Father Arnaud laughed so hard that he almost fell down.

Demetrius’s relief force arrived at the seaside castle of Ermione six hours later.

His scout officer knew they were too late as soon as he saw the place on the horizon, with no smoke rising from the chimneys, but he kept his mouth shut. Demetrius was in a murderous mood, and looking for scapegoats and victims after his latest savage row with his father, ten leagues behind them with the main army.

They rode into the silent yard and Dariusz busied himself climbing the tower – just in case the guards had followed orders and held the room against all comers. Or killed the Emperor, as they’d been ordered to.

All four guards were dead on the landing – purses empty, weapons gone. The door to the Emperor’s room stood open. Dariusz walked around the room where the Emperor had been a prisoner, looking at it with the eyes of a man who analysed things. He came down via the Great Hall, and then walked in – and out – of the gate tower.

By then, Demetrius’s Easterners were killing the rescued prisoners, one by one. Demetrius sat his milk-white horse, a beautiful man on a magnificent horse in the midst of a courtyard awash in mud and blood. The men who had been the garrison fell on their knees – some for the second time – in the bloody slush and begged for mercy. This time they found none, and the Easterners coldly shot them down.

Dariusz waited until the worst of it was over, and then picked his way across the yard. ‘Sixty men,’ he said. ‘They took it by coup de main, at dawn. I don’t think that they lost a man in the process.’

Demetrius spat. ‘Fucking fools,’ he said. ‘If we kill them all, we make a lesson for the future.’ He spat in the bloody snow. ‘We have to pursue them. We’ll lose everything if the Emperor escapes.’

Dariusz looked at Aeskepiles, who was unmoved by the massacre. ‘My lord, we have equal numbers and they are hours ahead. If they choose to set an ambush, we’ll fall into it. Or we will pursue them too slowly because of the possibility of ambush. Either way, there is no point.’ He didn’t add that if he’d been the enemy commander, there would be another force – a blocking force – somewhere close by ordered to destroy any pursuit. Or that Lord Andronicus had fielded his entire army in late February, and the enemy’s force was as yet undetected.

Dariusz felt something like admiration for the Red Knight. They clearly read the same books.

Demetrius growled.

There were screams. Women’s screams.

Dariusz put his heels to his mount so that its head touched the head of Demetrius’s horse. To get the lord’s attention. ‘Spare the women,’ he said.

Demetrius laughed. ‘Oh, they won’t die,’ he said.

Aeskepiles drew a deep breath, snapped his fingers and Demetrius’s horse tossed him over his head into the muck of the yard.

Dariusz found his hand locked behind his back.

Aeskepiles backed his horse. ‘I won’t be party to this,’ he said. ‘Spare the women and children, or by dark gods, I will kill both of you right here.’

Dariusz wondered why the magister assumed that he was in favour of the rape and murder, but he was helpless and unlike many other helpless men, when Dariusz was helpless he relaxed.

Demetrius bounced to his feet. ‘You might have just asked, man-witch. Instead, you humiliated me.’ He smiled. ‘We’ll see. For now, they may live, their virtue unsullied.’ He rubbed his hip. ‘The virtue of some army women, saved by a warlock’s honour,’ he said. ‘You’re fools.’ He turned to Dariusz. ‘I hear what you say, scout. I worry-’

Dariusz shrugged. Since the mid-winter raid in the west, his assumptions had received blow after blow. He no longer assumed that his side was the side of right, and he was quite sure they were the side that was going to be beaten. And the loss of the Emperor-

Demetrius narrowed his eyes. ‘I hate to lose,’ he said. ‘Stay with me, Captain. I’m not beaten yet.’

Twenty leagues south and west of the castle where Demetrius vented his ire on the survivors of the garrison, the Red Knight’s army made a camp. Around the commander’s tall red tent lay a snug encampment; six hundred tents, each hordled in local brush and wood so that they appeared to be a small forest. A late winter squall had dropped three fingers of snow over them, which insulated the tents, but the army’s thirst for firewood had driven every peasant in the village out into the winter, their houses stripped for wood or disassembled, their own crucial woodpiles destroyed as if by incendiary locusts.

Most of the peasants ran to the next village. The poorest died of exposure.

The Red Knight stood over a camp table with his officers gathered around him. The air outside his pavilion was bitterly cold – in the mountains, it was still winter – but inside the presence of fifteen men and five braziers made the air temperature tolerable. At the head of the table, the Emperor sat on a heavy oak chair that Wilful Murder had stripped from the richest of the local peasants, with Count Zac kneeling at his side feeding him chicken, and Harald Derkensun, axe on shoulder behind the Emperor’s right shoulder while Ser Giorgios stood at his left. Ser Gavin and Ser Michael stood by their Captain; Ser Jehan and Ser Milus sat on stools, and Ser Bescanon stood with Ser Alison. Gelfred stood at the end of the table, his light helmet under his arm, whispering fiercely with Father Arnaud.

‘Now you know why great lords require big tents,’ the Red Knight said.

There was an uneasy ripple of laughter, and the Moreans looked pained.

‘Gentlemen, thanks to Gelfred’s noble efforts, and those of Count Zac and his men, we have the enemy located. They have a strong force at Ermione, and their main army is about thirty leagues to the north, concentrated near the Nemea.’ His long finger indicated the towns’ locations. He smiled at them. ‘Unfortunately, the former Duke’s forces considerably outnumber ours, as he has apparently performed a miracle of late winter recruiting.’

Ser Jehan gave a slight shake to his head.

‘On the other hand,’ the Red Knight said, ‘we now have the person of the Emperor.’

Every man present bowed. The Moreans went down on one knee.

The Emperor smiled benignly. ‘I thank every one of you for rescuing me,’ he said. ‘If my legs worked, I would kneel to you. I would, if allowed, kiss the hands of every man and woman in this camp.’ He nodded and tears glistened in his eyes. ‘But that shocks you, I see. So let me say that your rescue is God’s work, and with God at our backs I see no reason why our temporal sword will not triumph.’

The Red Knight’s face twitched.

God is on your side, Gabriel.

Harmodius was laughing in his head, and he had a building headache of epic proportions. The truth was that his hours free of Harmodius had taught him that he had to rid himself of his guest. Without meaning to, his eyes flicked over to where Morgan Mortirmir stood, behind Ser Alison.

Please leave me alone, Harmodius.

Oh – are we sensitive now? Harmodius laughed. I have a major work under way now. I’d love to show you what I’m forging-

Shut the fuck up.

The Red Knight focused on the tent and saw them all looking at him. He forced himself to nod agreeably – he held onto his temper and his irritation about the Emperor’s intrusion. Anger would gain him nothing.

Although, in fact, it was increasingly difficult to be chivalrous when his temples seemed to clang against the bones of his skull like loose shoulderplates and his guest continued to indulge in remarks he clearly found witty.

Slow recovery from the wound he’d taken at Christmas – two wounds, really – left him weaker than he wanted to be. His left arm hurt whenever it was cold, and right now that was all the time.

All that, in the blink of an eye.

‘As usual,’ he said lightly, ‘I have a plan.’

The ancient citadel of Nemea towered above the plains and looked across a shallow gulf at the beaches of Ermione to the south. The mountains behind Ermione were still capped in snow, but here on the coast, the day was hot and flowers were already in bloom.

Andronicus sat with his chin in his hand, contemplating a variety of futures. His son and his magister had just crossed the town’s main bridge.

Andronicus was an old campaigner, and he knew from the postures of the men riding behind his son that they had failed, and the Emperor was free.

Andonicus sighed. He swirled the wine in his golden cup. He smiled grimly at the former Grand Chamberlain.

‘My lord?’ the man asked. Defeat had not spoiled the man’s ability to be obsequious, Andronicus noted with some inner amusement.

Andronicus took a careful sip of wine. ‘I’m going to wager that we’ve lost the Emperor.’

The Grand Chamberlain flinched visibly.

Andonicus nodded. ‘Time, I think, to send a message to the city and seek terms.’

The Grand Chamberlain knew that that was a death sentence for him. Andronicus was the Emperor’s cousin. He’d have his estates restored, and be slapped on the wrist. But someone would have to be the scapegoat, and the man’s fear showed in his eyes.

Andronicus took another measured sip and watched the snow-capped hills. ‘Etrusca might be nice,’ he said.

He hadn’t quite finished drinking the wine when his son, resplendent in golden armour, was announced by his staff.

Demetrius sank to one knee. ‘He was gone,’ he said. Behind him, the magister, Aeskipiles, entered. The man looked worse than usual – paler, with heavy, dark circles under his eyes.

Andronicus had seldom loved his son as much as he did in that moment. He put out a hand. ‘I know,’ he said.

Demetrius’s eyes were bright. ‘Listen, Father. We must crown you emperor. Today. Now. Declare the true emperor dead. And-’

Andronicus smiled. ‘No,’ he said.

Demetrius shook his head. ‘No, listen! This Red Knight has made a fool’s error, for all he has the body of the Emperor. He’s trapped against the mountains. We have the whole weight of our spring levy. We catch him, crush him, and kill the Emperor.’

‘As we should have in the first place,’ Aeskipiles put in.

Andonicus shook his head. ‘No. Listen, my friends. I wanted to unseat the Emperor to save the empire. He is – a fool.’ He looked around. ‘But if I lead my levies and my infantry and my stradiotes down into the valleys of Morea to war – who then is the fool? What will we leave? More carcasses for the Etruscans and the Outwallers – and the Albans – to pluck. We threw the dice and we failed. The fool found friends. Now, we are the enemies of our own country.’

‘Irene betrayed us,’ Demetrius said.

Andronicus’s eyes crossed his son’s with a little of his former fire. ‘I should have been more wary of a woman who would betray her own father,’ he said.

Demetrius was still kneeling at his feet. ‘I am not prepared to submit,’ he said.

Andronicus smiled. ‘You are a brave young man,’ he said.

‘We can win!’ Demetrius insisted.

‘I agree that you can win the battle. At the end of it, many hundreds of our best men will be dead. So will the mercenary force and many hundreds of the Emperor’s best guardsmen. So? Irene will still hold the city. The war will go on. But the Empire will be weaker by every man either side loses.’ Andronicus sipped his wine. ‘Wine for my council. Let us compose our submission.’

Aeskipiles made a motion.

Demetrius was still kneeling by the Duke’s chair. ‘Father,’ he said, and his voice held a rare note of pleading. ‘Father!’ he insisted.

Andromicus smiled at him.

Demetrius said, ‘We will not submit.’

Andronicus nodded. ‘You and the magister and the Grand Chamberlain?’

Demetrius stood suddenly, towering over his father in his gleaming golden armour. ‘Yes!’

Andronicus nodded. ‘I reccomend the three of you board a ship, then,’ he said. His voice hardened. ‘Because, before God, I am the Duke of Thrake. And the army camped outside obeys me.’ He caught the movement of the Grand Chamberlain. He frowned. ‘Guard!’ he roared.

‘Father!’ Demetrius shouted. ‘Stop and listen!’

Demetrius drew the heavy dagger at his hip. He stared at it a moment, as if confused.

Andronicus froze. ‘Oh, my son!’ he said.

Demetrius was shaking his head. ‘I won’t!’ he cried.

Andronicus had not risen to be the warlord of the Empire by failure to grasp threats. His eyes went to the Grand Chamberlain, already moving to flank him, and to Aeskipiles, who stood silently, by the door, his staff emitting a pair of thick black threads – one to the Grand Chamberlain, and one to Demetrius.

Andonicus didn’t flinch or give a speech. He drew his own belt dagger and threw it – at Aeskipiles.

It struck an invisible shield and vanished in a shower of sparks.

Aeskipiles smiled.

Andronicus’ throw had got him to his feet and now he stepped to the right, still trying to believe that his son was going to protect him.

Demetrius’s dagger went into his left side, under the arm. He felt the blow like a punch – felt the hilt against the silk of his shirt.

Without meaning to, he rotated his son’s body and got a thumb onto his son’s right eye, even as he realised that he was dead. His sight was going. But the urge to fight back – to kill – was strong.

The dagger had struck straight to his heart.

With his last thought, he released his grasp on his son’s head.

‘My-’

He hit the floor.

‘We need to dispose of the body immediately.’ He heard the man-witch say it, as if from a hillside far, far away. He craved to hear something of his son. He willed-

And then he was gone.

A day after the loss of the Emperor to the Red Knight’s men, one of Dariusz’s patrols picked up a pair of peasants who had a report of rape and murder from the hills to the west. Dariusz lost half a day following these reports up and by the time he made it back to report, the Duke was absent and he was reporting to Demetrius. The Prokusatores officer left Despot Demetrius’s tent and approached the khan of Demetrius’s Easterners.

The man shrugged and looked away.

Duke Andronicus apparently no longer rode with the army he’d raised. Captain Dariusz knew many of the retainers. Eventually he asked Ser Chritos’s squire, who shrugged and admitted that the Duke hadn’t left Nemea. Many men were aware that the Duke had vanished, and Dariusz kept his ear to the ground, but heard nothing. He assumed the Duke was sick, and his sickness was being hidden, but he had darker suspicions.

He snatched a few hours sleep in the castle of Ermione and then took a powerful patrol west, following the tracks. To his own satisfaction he found the place where the enemy had waited in ambush.

He showed his two best men the place, like a deer lie writ large – snow trampled flat, a small fire, a lookout post complete with closely woven branches and a wall of snow.

Verki – one of his best – stirred the fire with a stick and made a small magic.

‘Ten hours. Last light, maybe?’ He shrugged, his gesture exaggerated by his long fur coat and heavily padded armour.

Dariusz raised an eyebrow. ‘Let’s see,’ he said.

He followed the tracks left by the enemy horses. They’d done well enough in covering them – swept the snow with branches – but by luck, there hadn’t been a snowfall since, and there were places where shod hoof marks showed clear, and where horse dung lay frozen in the snow. Sixty cavalrymen moving quickly are very difficult to hide in a winter landscape.

It was almost noon when they climbed a long ridge. There were horsemen above them, and they had a brief skirmish – a horse died. A man broke his back when another horse fell, and had to be killed.

They seized the ridge top and looked down into the next valley. The enemy rode away.

‘You know this country?’ Verki asked.

Dariusz shook his head. ‘Not really. I’ve hunted here.’

Verki frowned. ‘Something is wrong,’ he said. He peered down into the valley. The snow reflected the bright sunlight and made everything difficult to see even though, lower in the valley, the snow was melting and the streams were filling.

Dariusz spotted the walled village protected by a switchback in the winding stream. ‘There’s the town,’ he said.

‘With no smoke from the chimneys,’ Verki spat.

They looked at the valley for longer, and saw the patrol of enemy horsemen they’d pushed off the ridge riding along the floor of the valley far below. They crossed the stream.

Dariusz put a wrap on the wound he’d taken in the left hand and began to feel cold.

‘I’ve got the bastards. Follow the line of the ford. Look at the ridge top.’ Verki smiled savagely.

The faintest smudge of smoke was visible.

Dariusz nodded. ‘That must be their camp.’

Verki shook his head. ‘Just covered by the ridge. Someone knows his business.’

‘Leave a post here. Take two men you trust and get a look at their camp.’ Dariusz was breathing easier. The enemy had seemed almost ghostly until now. He still had no idea how they’d got over the mountains. But now he had them fixed in place, and Lord Demetrius would bring up the army.

As he turned his horse and rode east, he had time to consider a number of problems, not the least of which was that he didn’t know where Duke Andronicus was.

‘You have them?’ Demetrius asked. He looked as if he hadn’t slept in days.

‘We brushed a patrol. We saw the smoke from their camp.’ It sounded thin, put that way.

Demetrius glared at the khan of his Easterners. ‘Better than anyone else has done. Christ Pantrokrator, one of these fools proposed they’d come by sea!’

Dariusz leaned over the Count’s rough map. ‘He’s trapped against the mountains, exactly as you suggested, my lord, and he’ll be out of food in a few days. The villages up there won’t feed an army.’ Dariusz shrugged. ‘I think perhaps we will not even need ot fight.’

‘You sound like my father.’ Demetrius spat.

Dariusz flinched – it was such an odd comment and so uncharacteristic.

Demetrius looked at the warlock, Aeskepiles. And the former Grand Chamberlain.

Aeskepiles nodded. Very quietly, he said, ‘As I have said before, we must kill the Emperor. And then we must ensure it appears that the enemy killed him in desperation. I will take care of the latter. But he must be killed, and to achieve that we must attack.’ He shrugged. ‘If the Emperor is spirited away over the mountains-’

Demetrius laughed. ‘Over the Penults? In late winter?’ He shook his head. ‘A bird would die.’

Dariusz, who had hunted the Penults since he was a boy, disagreed. ‘My lord,’ he said.

Demetrius raised a hand. ‘I’m not interested in your carping. I’m not interested in skulking about in the snow waiting for them to starve. Or worse yet, surrender, so that we have a horde of witnesses.’

Aeskepiles smiled. ‘That could be dealt with.’

Demetrius paused. His gaze hardened. ‘Warlock, I realise I need you. But have a care. We need there to be an Empire when this is over. If I massacre the guard, who exactly will protect me when I am Emperor?’

‘Who will guard your father, you mean,’ Dariusz said carefully.

‘My father has – mm – withdrawn from the army,’ Demetrius said. ‘He has no further interest in this contest, and will enter a monastery.’

For some reason, it was Aeskipiles, and not Demetrius, who looked away.

Dariusz pursed his lips and then nodded. ‘I see,’ he said.

Ser Christos led the main cavalry force. Every Thrakian stradiote had two horses, and they made excellent time over the snow now the scouts had cleared the ground. Demetrius came in a second division, with all of his father’s veteran infantry, and Ser Stefanos brought up the rear with a strong force of Thrakian peasants armed with axes, bowmen from the estates around Lonika, and Easterner mercenary cavalry.

They took just four hours to traverse what the scouts had taken all day to cover. They pitched a hasty camp at the base of the great ridge and made contact with Verki’s piquet at the top of the ridge. They stripped the forest for wood and built big fires, protected from view as they were by a horde of frozen sentries and the bulk of the snow-covered mountain between them.

Before first light Verki led the army up the snowy ridge. The moonlight on the snow made the road – if it could be called that – like a black slit of frozen mud in a white wilderness, but they moved fast enough. By the last grey light before dawn, they could just see a line of motionless sentries in red tabards, the bright wink of forty fires, and the smoke rising to the heavens. They could smell the smoke. And they could see the magnificent red pavilion in the middle of camp and the forty heavy wagons of the enemy baggage parked in a wagon fort.

Dariusz had thought the plan rash, and had said so, and now he watched in amazement as Demetrius carefully marshalled his men.

Aeskepiles, at the young commander’s request, sent a small fireball whizzing into the heavens.

The Thrakians screamed like monsters out of the Wild. The veterans of Duke Andronicus went forward fast, singing a hymn. The cavalry closed from the flanks.

Off to the east, over the sea, the sun crested the horizon, but here in the mountains behind the coast, it was just an orange and pink outline on the mountains behind them. They crossed the ground, lumbering heavily in deep snow.

Someone screamed – the sound of a man in soul-wrenching pain.

A horse went down.

The enemy sentries weren’t moving and weren’t calling the alarm.

Another man went down. It happened close enough to Dariusz that he saw the pit open under the man’s feet, saw him fall and impale himself on the stakes at the base of the pit. A snow trap.

Dariusz stopped running.

It was a beautiful camp and they took it intact. They took the store of firewood and the fires, which must have been huge, because they had burned down to coals and were still big and warm. They took the wagons – forty beautiful wagons, some full of stores, some full of useful things, including a portable forge for an armourer.

There were a dozen hogsheads of wine, and that wine was open before the officers could get involved.

There was a flash, and a noise like a bolt of lightning in the centre of the camp.

Aeskepiles was seen to hurry there.

Dariusz found Verki watching one of his scouts die. The man had drunk the wine and it was suddenly pretty obvious it was poisoned. His heels drummed on the packed snow, and he retched blood while more leached out of various other parts.

‘Fuck their mothers,’ Verki swore.

‘How long have they been gone?’ Dariusz asked.

Verki looked miserable. ‘At least two days,’ he said. ‘The patrol we fought must have been the fire-tenders.’

They were negotiating a particularly brutal double switchback, where the Nordikans had to clear the snow with shovels so that anyone could pass, when the Red Knight stiffened in his saddle.

Heh. Harmodius was gloating.

Your little gift?

He’ll know it’s the same working he used on the amulets.

So now he knows we have Kronmir?

And that he’s been had. He’ll be mad as hell.

What happens if he turns around? He can still march back to Lonika the long way around as fast as we can go through the hills – probably faster.

In the comfortable room of the Red Knight’s memory palace, it was warm. Harmodius sat with his legs over the armrest of a huge chair. He raised a cup of steaming hippocras. He won’t. He’ll be stung, and his ego will be pricked. And he’ll follow you.

Do I sound that cocky to other people?

Harmodius shrugged.

I should stop. You sound so smug I don’t care if we win – I just want you to be wrong.

Harmodius nodded. May I show you my finest work? he asked.

The image of the young Captain nodded agreeably. They found themselves in a workshop – an aethereal setting that reflected several workshops that Gabriel Muriens had known. Against the near wall was a bench – a very plain wooden bench lined with tools, each of which had a sigil burning on it.

On the bench lay a sword.

What is it? asked the Captain, through a burgeoning headache.

A Fell Sword, said Harmodius.

For me? asked the Captain. He was suddenly afraid.

Harmodius laughed. It was a dreadful, terrifying laugh.

Oh, no, my boy. I am not that much of an ingrate. He picked it up and flourished it, like a boy with a new sword. It’s for me.

Mag missed her wagons. She missed the comfort and solidity of the brutes, but most of all, she missed having dry, warm feet. Sitting on a wagon – even in driving snow or freezing rain – kept your feet out of the wet.

Climbing a mountain pass leading a recalcitrant donkey had a different feel entirely.

John le Bailli was somewhere well ahead of her. The whole army was now a single animal wide, strung out over six miles of high ridges and steep-shouldered mountains. They were above the current snow line, which, in a way, made her life easier, as the ground was frozen. But her toes lost feeling every time she stopped, and she was fifty-one years old, and the great adventure now seemed like a horrible exercise in endurance.

At noon, they came to a stream – or what might, at other times of year, be a dry watercourse or a small trickle of water.

On the first of March, it was a stream twenty feet wide that flowed so fast that small rocks were constantly being rolled along the bottom. While Mag watched, a whole tree from somewhere upstream came by, bobbed, struck a boulder with a resounding crash and continued on its way.

The column was bunching up on the flat by the stream, and increasingly desperate men and women were trying to warm their feet by any expedient they could. It wasn’t even a cold day.

The Red Knight had taken most of the mounted across the traditional way – with ropes and horses. Two men had fallen in, and on the other side there were two great fires burning and parties of men trying to save the wet, cold victims.

Mag didn’t even pause to argue. She flung three bridges of ice across – one mostly acting as a dam, and the other two with high arches and redundant supports.

Corporals and veterans began to bellow orders. They’d all seen the tree in the current.

‘I can get you a horse,’ the Red Knight said. He’d ridden up to her where she watched the women crossing.

‘Can you get a horse for every woman?’ she asked.

He pursed his lips. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘The ice bridge is a nice trick. I need to learn that better. Mine wastes too much ops.’

She met his eye. ‘Is this really your plan?’

He shrugged. In full plate, with two great circle cloaks as a sheath of wool, he looked like a giant. The shrug barely raised the magnificent gold brooch on his right shoulder an inch. ‘My plan perished when Andronicus fielded five thousand men in the dead of winter. I didn’t expect that. This is my – hmmm – my third alternate plan.’ Just for a moment, the look of bland indifference he wore all the time cracked. ‘I was probably a fool to try this in winter. But – Master Smythe said we had to hurry. And Kronmir said they would kill the Emperor.’

Mag shook her head. People were watching them. ‘Another day and we might start losing people. Some of the Scholae aren’t used to this kind of life and there’s no forage for the horses. We have another day of food and fodder on the mules-’

‘-and then we eat the mules,’ he said. ‘I know.’

But he was as good as his word, and by the next halt, every woman was mounted on a spare horse. Including Kaitlin de Towbray, who had womanfully walked with her pregnant belly all the way up the east side of the mountains.

They didn’t stop at dark.

The Red Knight was seen to have a hurried conference with Ser Gelfred; fires were lit, and food cooked – or rather, cold food was eaten and hot tea, or just hot water, drunk in enormous quantities. And then they marched again.

Immediately after leaving their fires, the army started going down. They had been up and down the ridges for three days, but now they descended steadily, and the icy track, cleared by the exhausted Nordikans, became a two-rut track with less snow, and then a snow-covered stone roadbed.

An hour before dawn, when Mag was a jumble of old joints, nerves, lack of food and lack of sleep, they turned a long curve on a spur that stuck out from a mountainside – and every man and woman who came to the edge gave a gasp.

On their right side, a cliff fell away. The road continued, with enormous stone arches, buttresses in still more stone, cascading down the hillside like a waterfall frozen in rock, but the cliff was half a thousand feet high and the stream at the bottom was so far down in the darkness as to be lost except for the echoing thunder of its icy passage.

The cliff was imposing, but it was the sight of twinkling lights like distant faery folk that raised the shouts. Somewhere – somewhere within reach, at last – there was light, and warmth.

Aeskepiles looked at the stumps of the ice bridge abutments and cursed.

‘How strong is he?’ he asked aloud. And after a small ritual of gathering, he built a single bridge.

Demetrius pointed his sword. ‘He made three,’ he said.

‘I must conserve my power,’ Aeskepiles said. ‘If he squanders his, all the better.’

Amphipolis was the name of the town, and her gates were stormed. The veterans of the company offered no warning and no formal summons to surrender – and the town had no idea that an enemy army was above them in the mountains. The veterans put ladders against the low curtain walls before sunrise, just as if they’d been in Arles. Fifty Thrakian soldiers died very quickly on the wrong side of the main gate, tricked, trapped, and annihilated. Ser Jehan didn’t bother taking prisoners.

Father Arnaud and Gelfred sat on their horses in the central square and shouted at the Red Knight until they were joined by the Emperor, and together with a hundred men-at-arms he led them to clear the archers – the victorious archers – out of the streets.

‘If you let this town be destroyed, you are no knight,’ Father Arnaud said.

The Red Knight leaned over and vomited in the snow.

‘Is he drunk?’ Arnaud cried.

Toby shook his head.

Ser Michael grabbed the priest’s bridle. ‘He’s tired. And this, pardon me, padre, is war.’

‘We don’t make war like this on the Wild!’ Father Arnaud said.

‘The Wild doesn’t have silver candelabra or handsome girls,’ the Red Knight muttered. ‘Damn you and your moral certainty. We are not fucking paladins. We are soldiers, and this town is an enemy town taken by storm. These men are cold, and exhausted, and an hour ago they had almost no hope of warmth.’ He pointed as John le Bailli kicked in a door and led three armoured men in emptying the cowering family and their servants out into the snow. Then a dozen of the company’s women took the house.

While they watched that drama, Ser Bescanon dragged Wilful Murder out of a building while a dozen other men with leather buckets tried to put out the fire he’d started.

‘This is senseless. If I cannot appeal to God, I’ll appeal to your basic humanity,’ Father Arnaud said.

‘Who says I have any humanity at all?’ the Red Knight shouted in the priest’s face. ‘You want me to save the world, and you don’t want any innocents killed? It doesn’t work like that. War kills. Now get out of my way, because I have tomorrow’s atrocities to plan!’

Toby waited until his lord was gone into what had been the mayor’s house.

‘He’s not doing all that well,’ he said. ‘He’s sick, and he’s worried. In case you gentleman can’t tell. You’re all very helpful, I’m sure.’ He shrugged, seized an apple from a basket that a looter ran past carrying, and took a bite. Then he followed his lord inside.

After a warm night and a lot of stolen food, the army marched again at dawn.

The town, stripped of preserved food, pack animals, and grain, watched them go in surly silence. Even the presence of their Emperor could not make them cheer.

‘If you ever come to rule Thrake, that town will belong to you,’ Father Arnaud said, as they rode west.

‘Then I’ll do something nice for them. Father, I am aware that you are a good man, and, despite appearances, I like to think of myself as a good man. In fact, I pride myself on it. We are, if you will pardon me, in a situation that cannot be resolved by prayer or a noble cavalry charge. So could you, perhaps, leave me alone?’

Father Arnaud smiled savagely ‘Never, Gabriel. I will never, ever leave you alone.’

The Red Knight put his hand to his head, which throbbed as if he had spent several nights drinking.

The army marched west, moving as fast as two thousand tired soldiers and their women and baggage animals could manage.

‘You swore he wouldn’t make it across the Penults,’ Aeskepiles said quietly.

Demetrius was looking down at the town below him.

‘Now his army is between us and Lonika,’ Aeskepiles went on. ‘How much of a garrison does your capital have?’

Demetrius chewed on his thumb. He worked on the callus, biting it, chewing the bits. ‘Son of a bitch,’ he said.

‘We have to catch him in the plains,’ Dariusz offered. ‘The road will be clear, and good.’

Ser Christos shook his helmeted head. ‘We’re haemorrhaging men.’

‘So is he,’ Demetrius said. They’d picked up a dozen city stradiotes who’d simply surrendered as soon as they could. They’d already captured almost a hundred stragglers.

Ser Christos let out a long, harsh breath, but said nothing.

‘Advance the banner,’ Demetrius said. ‘Get the scouts well out. Put all the Easterners out. Let us make the usurper’s life a living hell.’