Vaelin watched the wretched men fidget, some unable to keep the terrorised tremble from their limbs. The song rose as he saw their fear, a familiar complex note that denoted the birth of a stratagem. He turned to Orven, captain of the only company he could trust with this duty. “They’re coming with us,” he said. “Make sure they’re suitably fed and watered. And keep them well away from Captain Nortah’s people.”

? ? ?

Crossing into Cumbrael brought sights of an even greater level of destruction and murder than those already witnessed. The succession of ruined villages along their line of march seemed endless, littered with so many rotting corpses Vaelin was forced to order them left where they lay as they couldn’t afford the time needed to give them all to the fire. Unlike the Nilsaelin villages, these were extensively vandalised, mills and chapels burned, many bodies mutilated and showing signs of torture. Also the surrounding fields were often black from burning, the crops turned to ash and every well they found spoiled with a sheep or goat carcass.

“Doesn’t make any sense,” Adal said as they rode through a ruined cornfield. “All armies need to be fed.”

“The Volarians didn’t do this,” Vaelin replied. “I suspect the Cumbraelin Fief Lord was keen to deny them any succour from his own lands. May explain their viciousness towards the people.”

They came upon a macabre sight in the evening, ten men hanging from a large yew, eyes and tongues removed and the first two fingers of their hands severed and stuffed into their mouths. Vaelin saw his sister pale at the sight, swaying in her saddle a little.

“We’ll see to them,” he said, pressing his hand to her shoulder. “You don’t have to linger here.”

“Yes,” she replied, dismounting and extracting parchment and charcoal from her saddlebags. “I do. Leave them there a moment, please.”

She walked stiffly to a nearby tree stump and sat down, fixing her eyes on the scene and starting to draw.

“Must be archers,” Nortah commented. “Taking their fingers like that. Saw our own men do something similar in the Martishe.”

Vaelin saw that Alornis was crying as she sketched, tears streaming from her eyes as they constantly shifted from the hanging men to the image forming on the parchment. Dahrena went to her side as she finished, hunching over and weeping softly. “People will need to know,” he heard her whisper as Dahrena pulled her close. “They’ll need to remember.”

? ? ?

The town had been named Two Forks for the branching streams that surrounded it. Vaelin had once passed through it with the Wolfrunners during one of their fanatic-hunting expeditions prior to the Alpiran war. He recalled a bustling place of winepresses and merchants bartering for the best price on the latest casks. The people had been guarded but not so hostile towards him as most Cumbraelins, their priest a hearty fellow of broad girth and rosy cheeks who happily offered Vaelin a prayer of the Father’s forgiveness, wine cup in hand as he quoted the Ninth Book.

His church was a ruin now, the only sign of him some anonymous blackened bones in the scorched wreckage. The Seordah had found the place, the warriors standing in the streets and staring at the various horrors, more baffled than enraged. The town hadn’t been easily taken, barricades had been constructed across the roads and the surrounding waterways made for effective defensive barriers. Vaelin judged it had taken several days to fall from the bodies in the factor’s house, all lying in a row, bandages visible on the putrefying flesh. Fought it out long enough to have a care for the wounded, he thought.

“Children all in one place,” Hera Drakil said, his face like stone. “No sign of wounds, but smelling of poison.”

“Killed by their parents to spare them the torments of enraged men,” Vaelin said. It seemed the Volarians had been obliged to visit their frustrations on the few surviving adults. A pile of dis-constituted corpses lay in the centre of the town, not one left whole. The limbs were arranged in a circle about a central mass of severed heads, a thick cloud of flies buzzing amidst the miasma of decomposition. Vaelin was glad Alornis wasn’t here to feel compelled to draw the scene.

“I would be grateful if you could bury them,” Vaelin said to Hera Drakil, deciding this was worth the delay.

“We shall.”

He nodded and went to where Flame was tethered, pausing as the Seordah called after him. “We were right.”

Vaelin turned back with a questioning look.

“To heed the wolf’s call,” Hera Drakil said. “A people that would do this need to die.”

? ? ?

“I once had occasion,” Vaelin told the Volarian captive, “to meet the Alpiran Emperor. He presided over my trial, of course, but he came to my cell afterwards to talk to me alone. Just once.”

The captive stared at him with bright but uncomprehending eyes. Vaelin had chosen him for his youth and the greater pitch of his terror. His fellow captives were hanging from the branches of a willow tree on the riverbank south of Two Forks, the ropes creaking as they swung in the breeze.

“It’s not widely known,” Vaelin went on, “but the Emperor is a very frail man. Victim of a bone disease since childhood. He’s very small, very thin, and has to be carried about on a litter as his legs will break if he attempts to walk. But there’s a great strength to him, I could feel it burning away inside when he looked at me. It’s a very humbling thing to look into a man’s eyes and know yourself his inferior.

“They brought him to my cell after the trial, servants placing him before me and leaving us alone, even though I was unchained and he must have known I could crush the life from him in an instant. I bowed and he told me to get up. I had been taught Alpiran at his instruction, for a man should understand every word spoken at his trial according to Imperial law. He asked if I had any complaints about my treatment, I said no. He asked if I felt any guilt over the death of the Hope and again, I said no. He asked why. I told him I was a warrior in service to the Faith and the Realm. He shook his thin, bony head and called me a liar. ‘The song tells you,’ he said. ‘That you did no wrong.’

“He knew, you see. Somehow he knew, though I could hear only the slightest murmur of a gift within him. He said those chosen to sit in the Emperor’s chair share the same gift, the ability to discern potential. Not greatness, not compassion or wisdom. Just potential, and the nature of that potential would only be revealed over time, sometimes with unfortunate consequences. Shortly before the war he had begun to discern the temper of the Hope’s potential and found it worried him greatly. Also there was another within his court who offered a far brighter prospect, though choosing them would invite accusations of favouritism, a serious charge in a land where anyone may ascend to the throne with the favour of the gods, a mystical force for which the Emperor is merely a conduit. My actions had solved his dilemma, and so I would be allowed my life and suffer no torments. However, he loved his people and their suffering at the hands of our army made such mercy his own torment. ‘If I have any claim to greatness,’ he told me. ‘It will lie in the victory I won over the hatred you tried to place in my heart. An Emperor can allow no such luxury.’

“As I said, I knew myself as his inferior, even more so now. I should like you to know I have tried to follow his example, to act without hatred in prosecuting this war. Sadly, your people have contrived to defeat me in this ambition.”

Vaelin took a leather satchel containing the message he had dictated to Brother Harlick and lifted the strap over the captive’s head, making him flinch and utter a whimper, calming a little when Vaelin smiled. “For the general,” he said, recalling Harlick’s words. “Tokrev,” he repeated, patting the satchel.

The captive just stared back in unblinking terror. Vaelin took a moment to study his face, feeling the song swell as he committed it to memory.

“Put him on a horse,” Vaelin told Orven, “and let him go.”

CHAPTER SIX

Lyrna

So many ships. The harbour was jammed with them, the masts resembling a gently swaying forest, the crews crawling over deck and rigging like ants as she looked on from her balcony.

“Must be over a thousand by now,” Iltis surmised.

“I make it twelve hundred,” Orena said. “If you put them end to end, maybe we could walk home.”

“Right now I’d rather swim,” Harvin muttered, straightening as he caught Lyrna’s glance. “Not that I would, Highness.”

Lyrna turned back to the harbour without reply. Her decision to accompany the Meldenean fleet when it sailed forth had not been well received, Iltis protesting about the obvious dangers whilst Harvin had the additional worry of Orena who, along with Murel, refused to be left behind.

“My queen needs her ladies,” she had stated. “She said so herself.”

She had expected some obstruction from the Shield but he had just frowned and said, “Of course, Highness. I would have you nowhere else but at my side if the choice were mine.” His dazzling smile was almost enough to order Iltis to strike him down there and then.

She could see him now, striding along the quay, exchanging words with various captains and sailors. Whereas he was all charm with her, his countenance when dealing with his own people was one of grim toleration, for all their obvious respect and relief at his presence. They disappointed him, she concluded. He wonders whether they were truly worth the sacrifice he was prepared to make.