in the last skirmish. ‘Not even when they realised they would be slaughtered.’
He looked around at his troops. They all bore the scars of the running war they were fighting: half-healed cuts and deep bruises, mismatched armour where some piece had been irreparable. Every skirmish now ended in a flurry of scavenging, belts and boots as valuable as weapons and food. With every day they looked less like a Menin army; more barbarian warriors than hardened, drilled infantry.
Every day Amber felt their eyes on him, the unspoken thoughts that he was the one doing this to them — he was the one asking for this relentless battle, and he could promise only leagues more of it to come.
‘Aye, I heard folk were dumb in these parts,’ Daken said.
‘That’s what surprises me — not that they’re dumb, that they were so fanatical. Tor Salan was as secular a city as I’ve ever seen, founded on magic and science, not devotion to the Gods. Not the most fertile grounds for tales of a saviour.’
Daken made a face and went back to surveying the haphazard shapes before them, the mounds of steel, brass and stone resting where they’d fallen. The Giants’ Hands — Tor Salan’s famed defences — were now lying useless.
‘Oh I don’t know. Your lot cut the heart out o’ this city, remember? You killed every mage here, so those defences don’t work and their way o’ life collapsed around them. Might have made them a little desperate, a little more open to persuasion.’
Amber nodded. For all his bloodthirsty bluster, Daken had travelled far across the Land and seen enough to know how life worked for most folk. His counsel, or the kernel of it, at least, tended to be useful more often than not.
‘At least the Devoted couldn’t use the Giants’ Hands on us,’ Nai said, joining them. The necromancer used his mace as a walking stick, the odd-sized boots he was wearing making him lurch even more than normal.
‘Your king said they would retreat, that they don’t want to fight here,’ Amber pointed out. ‘They never intended to defend Tor Salan, only recruit here.’
‘Well they did that,’ Nai said. ‘The scryer says forty thousand have dug in around the road to Thotel. Too many for us to break through, I’d guess, what with another army marching down from the north.’
‘North? Where did you hear that? The scryers didn’t tell me that,’ Amber said.
Nai shifted uncomfortably. ‘Ah, a different source, that one.’
‘Fucking daemons?’ Daken exclaimed. ‘Tsatach’s fiery balls, you just don’t learn, do you? Bloody necromancers.’
‘I didn’t invoke anything,’ Nai protested, ‘but some covenants still hold true.’
‘So what now? Do we dig in and wait to be attacked?’
‘The army needs a rest,’ Amber said. ‘The king said supplies would follow us once the way was clear. I don’t think we’re welcome in Tor Salan now, and we’ve killed enough civilians for the time being. We advance as far as we can without getting caught in a battle and dig in, but we won’t be attacked. Daken, your Green Scarves can raid the Devoted as much as you like, but the way home is blocked to us, so until King Emin’s army reaches us, we wait.’
He looked east towards the Devoted army, many miles away now. His skin felt cold. Even the realisation that they would have to fight through Ruhen’s armies to find the way home did nothing for him. The first milestone on that journey had been crossing the border, such as it was. The second had been reaching Tor Salan and ridding it of Devoted troops.
Perhaps by the third, I’ll start to feel something again. He scowled and looked up at the sky. Crows wheeled high above.
Isak blinked and uneasily opened his eyes. Slowly his surroundings came into focus: curved wicker struts arched over his body. His feet pressed against wooden boards. Underneath him was a sticky bedroll; above him, a ripped canvas was lashed over the struts, admitting a little light through the various tears. He could just make out a pale grey sky through them, and dark patches on the canvas showed where spots of rain had fallen.
The bed rumbled and jolted beneath him; igniting a dull ache in his skull that made him groan and put his hands to his head — or one hand, at least. Isak blinked at his white palm in confusion until he realised his right arm had been loosely bound to the nearest strut. The dusty black palm was empty, as it usually was when he woke, but clearly someone had decided not to take the chance.
He fumbled with the leather ties, eventually getting free. He inspected himself, and discovered someone had changed his clothes, put him in breeches and left a shirt and boots to one side. The blanket had slipped off, and he stared down at his body. The indentation in his belly was most obvious: a wide mess of scarring the size of his flattened hand, followed by the raised circle of the rune burned into his chest. That seemed so long ago, his first night in Tirah Palace, but unlike his other injuries he remembered that searing pain with fondness.
‘Still not so pretty,’ Isak croaked and patted the cloth strip that bound the Skull of Ruling to his waist.
He’d not been without the Crystal Skull since taking Termin Mystt. Without it his mind, assailed by the raging power of Death’s black sword, would be torn apart completely.
The faint smell of mud drifted through the hanging canvas flaps at the rear of the wagon, evoking fragmented memories of his life with the wagon-train before the day he was Chosen by Nartis. He flexed the fingers of his right hand. ‘If that’s my father driving,’ he muttered, ‘I’m gonna punch the bastard.’
‘If I were your da,’ laughed Carel from the driver’s seat just behind Isak’s head, ‘I’d have whipped you out of that bed at dawn and told you to set the traces!’
Isak struggled around until he was kneeling on the grimy mattress. Bowing his head to avoid the struts above, he shoved the canvas open to see Carel’s grinning face looking back while another man held the reins. Carel held out a filled pipe to him while the hooded driver turned to acknowledge Isak: Tiniq, General Lahk’s brother. He was one of the few bodyguards who hadn’t been returned to the ranks of the Ghosts — as he disliked riding almost as much as horses hated to be ridden by him, he’d doubtless volunteered to drive the wagon.
‘Thought you’d lost that habit,’ Carel commented mildly. ‘Passing out like some girl on the battlefield? I dunno, smacks o’ cowardice to me.’ He laughed.
The white-eye tried to find the words to respond to Carel’s banter, but his mind was blank.
Carel thumped him on the shoulder and smiled fondly. ‘Don’t worry; I know what you’re like when you’re just woken up. Here, make yourself useful, lazy bugger.’
Isak frowned, but he took the pipe and pressed his thumb into the bowl, lighting it with a spark of magic before handing it back. ‘I thought for a moment I was back on the wagon-train,’ he said as Carel puffed away at the pipe.
‘Relieved, then?’
Isak sighed and scratched the patchy stubble on his cheek. ‘I don’t know, to be honest.’
‘Fate’s eyes!’ Carel exclaimed, ‘I never thought you’d miss that lot! Don’t tell me you’re looking back fondly on life there?’
‘Nah — they’re still a bunch of bastards; the ones I can remember, at least,’ Isak said. ‘I think I’ve lost a few in my head; I can’t remember enough names and faces for all the caravans.’ He shrugged. ‘But life was simpler then. I might not have liked it much, but at least I wasn’t coming apart at the seams.’
‘Ah, well, life ain’t fair. At least people care about your opinion now, eh? All those wagon-folk would pretend you’d never even spoken; now a whole army’s marching on your word alone.’
‘Not my word, the king’s.’
‘Hah! Sure, he gave the order, but he’s following your lead — yours and Legana’s.’ Carel paused. ‘They’re an odd couple those two, but thick as thieves nowadays. You reckon they, ah-?’
‘Reckon what? That they’re-?’ Isak laughed. ‘Bloody soldiers, only one thing on your minds.’
‘Well, he’s a king, ain’t they expected to shag everything in sight? Anyone who gets married for political reasons won’t stay faithful.’
‘Any man tries that with Legana, he’ll find out the hard way how quick she can draw a knife. They’re friends, nothing more. They both — they can see each other as a person, not just a Goddess or king. Brings them close, means they can trust each other, and so can I.’
‘Plus Ardela looks the jealous type,’ Carel added.
Isak looked past the veteran at the column of men, horses and wagons and recognised the broad road they were slowly trundling down: the trader route to Tor Salan. ‘So how long was I asleep?’ he asked.
‘Passed out like a big girl, you mean?’ Tiniq quipped, attempting to join the banter.
