More horns blew and the column rippled to a halt, Riv and those with her running to their allocated warriors. She glimpsed Ben-Elim flying ahead, twelve of them shaped like an arrowhead in the sky.

‘I don’t need you,’ her sister Aphra said as Riv handed her a water skin. She drank deep. ‘I want you at the back of the column. Protect the wains.’

‘But . . .’ Riv said, looking beyond Aphra and the White-Wings to the outline of walls and buildings up ahead.

‘Now!’ her sister snapped, voice cold and hard, no give in it.

No changing her mind when she’s in this mood.

Riv’s shoulders slumped and she turned to go.

‘Stay close to One-Eye,’ her sister called after her. Riv didn’t answer, a petty last victory and protest.

Riv stomped back down the line, saw Vald checking the straps of his shield and setting himself in line with other White-Wings. He nodded to her and flashed an adrenalin-fuelled grin. She tried to return it, but knew it was weak and forced, her shame at not being part of this, at being relegated to the safe place, again . . .

Horns sounded and shields came together with a crack, making Riv’s heart leap. She loved that sound, though she preferred it when she was in the thick of a shield wall herself.

Resignedly, she found Jost waiting for her with the others, gathered about and amongst the wains. Behind them, and curling around the flanks like a protective hand, were Balur and his giants, all with their axes or war-hammers in their hands, their eyes fixed on the walls of the town that the White-Wings were approaching.

It was named Oriens, a way-point upon the eastern road for those travelling to or from Arcona. Since the Ben-Elim had put down the seeds of civil war between the Sirak and Cheren, trade with the east had flourished. Oriens had grown, from not much more than a feast-hall for travellers and a few wattle-and-daub buildings, into a thriving walled town. Reports had reached Drassil that something was wrong, that travellers had heard screaming and the sounds of battle and slaughter echoing from the walls and instead of stopping had galloped on past. Ben-Elim had made aerial assessments but seen no signs of movement. Something was wrong, and they had decided against entering the town’s walls until they had ground support from the White-Wings. They had learned their lesson after the Battle of Varan’s Fall, where many had died because they had rushed blindly into an ambush.

Aphra and her hundred had been told little more than that, although the word Kadoshim had been whispered.