throwing insults every few minutes.'
Isak slumped back down on to his bed. 'By the Gods, I'm too tired for this. I'm not going to waste the energy explaining myself to you.'
'Well then, conserve your energy and get dressed. You will have to explain yourself to your Lord. Being just a white-eye, you seem to have forgotten that our nation is only recently rebuilt. Reopening old wounds for no reason hurts us all.'
'Actually, I do remember,' Isak said crossly. 'I just don't intend to deal with it through a veil of pomp and breeding. I was told that in war you play to your strengths – well, politics isn't one of mine. Strength is, and now, authority. If I have enemies within the tribe, that's what I'll use to deal with them.' As he spoke, Isak levered himself up into a sitting position and pointed to his clothes.
Before he could ask, Vesna passed them over and helped Isak to dress. In the thick woollens, he looked more like a monk than a suzerain, but he didn't relish the idea of the tightly buttoned tunic around his ribs. He pulled on a pair of winter fleece boots, then belted on Eolis. He stopped before he reached the tent flap when he saw his white cloak hanging up. It had been cleaned of the mud and gore, but no one had been able to repair the burned material. As he rubbed the charred edges with his fingers, a piece came off in his hand, leaving a swirl of soot. He traced a shape too faint for the others to make out, looked at it intently for a few seconds and then rubbed it away on his shirt.
The sky outside was overcast. Isak blinked as he took in the state of the camp. Long lines of tents were now missing, and the forest of colourful banners much reduced.
'Vesna, isn't that Fordan's banner?' he asked. 'I saw him die, I'm sure of it.'
'He did, my Lord,' the count said sadly, 'but his son was among his hurscals and survived, so the banner remains. As for the others, well, Danva took a spear in the thigh and bled to death on the field, and Amah had his skull crushed by a troll.'
'How many did we lose?' A breath of air on his neck made Isak shiver suddenly. The wind was cold but listless; it felt to Isak as though men had been carried away by the breeze, along with their tents and flags.
'In total? Roughly three thousand. One hundred and fifty of your own men, three hundred Ghosts, counts from Tori, Ked, Tehran and Vere. We've lost another three hundred chasing the survivors down.'
'Did any good come from this?'
'For those who died?' asked Tori icily.
Isak looked over to the suzerain, but Tori obviously had nothing more to add.
'I meant for anyone,' Isak said. He shrugged. Tm famished: I need to eat before I see Lord Bahl.'
He followed a column of smoke around a tent to where a huge pot bubbled over a fire, but when he tried to lean down he winced, clutching his ribs tenderly. 'Can you give me some of that?' he asked the man attending it. The man bobbed his head, eyes wide with fear as he slopped some broth into a sturdy wooden bowl.
Isak accepted the bowl with a broad smile. 'Bread?' The man reached in to the bag hanging from a post and handed him half a loaf. As soon as the man saw Isak's attention return to Suzerain Tori, he began to back away and after a few steps he turned and hurried off, getting out of sight as soon as he could.
Isak frowned and sniffed at the bread suspiciously. 'What was that about?'
Vesna kept silent, eyes on the ground, while Tori stared past Isak's shoulder. 'Ah, Lord Bahl, good morning,' he said smoothly.
'Tori,' acknowledged Bahl, then turned to Isak. 'What that was, my Lord, was your legacy from the battle.'
The old Lord had shrugged off the air of weariness that normally surrounded him. He looked alert, rejuvenated, even in full armour. The crested helm, an ancient-looking bowl-shaped piece of grey metal with a Y slit at the front for eyes and mouth, was tucked under his arm.
Bahl walked up to Isak and placed a hand on his shoulder, a public gesture of comradeship. 'How are you feeling? You've been recovering a long time. We were starting to worry.'
'I feel exhausted. Drained.' He gestured to the bowl. 'And famished.'
'Drained is a better word than you might realise. The more you draw on the magic, the harder it is to resist the flow and stop. If you're not careful, part of you will be swept away with it.'
Isak didn't reply, but nodded as he crammed a soaked corner of bread into his mouth. A murmur of pleasure was the only sound Bahl heard, but he took it as a cue to continue; the boy didn't seem to understand quite how it had looked on the battlefield. 'You forgot yourself out there. The men were expecting to see a white-eye in battle, but they saw worse than that. You fought like a daemon, and more than once you almost killed one of your own men through sheer bloodlust. If you hadn't collapsed, I don't know how we'd have stopped you.'
Bahl kept his voice low but there was no mistaking the anger there. Isak stopped chewing and looked into the Lord's eyes. They said clearly enough:
'I…1 don't know what to say.' Isak dropped his gaze. 'It felt like my dreams, like I wasn't quite myself.' 'What do you dream of.7'
The question took Isak by surprise. He didn't think the question was as idle as it sounded.
'Sometimes just that I'm somewhere else, looking through another man's eyes. It's as though I'm remembering things I've not done.'
'Hmm. What about your magic? Has it been released or was it just the battle?'
'I don't know, I hadn't thought of trying it again yet.' 'Well, do so now. Nothing grand, just draw energy into your hand and imagine it as fire.'
Isak did as Bahl ordered. For a moment he felt nothing. Suddenly, energy rushed to his hand, coursing like a stream of water over every inch of skin and into his hand. The air shimmered and swirled, yellow threads building and spinning together until a flame shot up from Isak's hand.
'Good, that's enough. Now stop.'
With a slight reluctance, Isak halted the flames and they melted into nothing. He flexed his fingers, savouring the tingle of magic in them as it faded away.
'Well, it looks like your block has gone, whatever the problem was. I'll start teaching you the finer points of control when you're feeling stronger.'
'Thank you.' Isak paused. 'Lord Bahl, I'm sorry. It won't happen ain.'
'I know you didn't mean it, but you do need to make sure it doesn't happen again. Next time it'll kill you.' There was an edge to his words that chilled Isak.
'Just so you know, it was I who bandaged your chest.'
Isak's stomach clenched. This wasn't a conversation he wanted to
have. He didn't have any answers himself, so explaining it to someone
else would be next to impossible.
'I don't expect you to tell me all your secrets,' Bahl said. There are
some things that are your own business. But tell me, here and now,
whether there's anything I need to know. I will not allow anything that might endanger the tribe or work against my rule. There is nothing you will have done that is so foul that we cannot counteract it, as long as we know where the problem lies.'
'There's nothing,' Isak muttered. 'I don't understand it myself, but I don't think it's anything for you to be concerned about.'
'Good, we seem to have enough of that already. Just remember that others feel the same about their own affairs. Some of my business has nothing to do with you. You will extend me the courtesy of neither asking nor investigating.'
'Of course, my Lord. What did you mean when you said 'enough of that'?' The two white-eyes were walking slowly west and Isak suddenly realised that they were close to where the battle had been fought. This was where the cavalry had passed him to reach the stream… The wind caught Bahl's long white cloak and carried it high, away from the packed mud of the ground and off towards the heart of the mountains where home lay. Count Vesna and Suzerain Tori and a couple of messengers trailed behind them, all waiting for a moment of their Lord's time. None of them looked hopeful of being acknowledged soon.
Bahl looked up at a wood pigeon winging its way high over the camp to the woods beyond. From their left, a
