Riv watched as Aphra led her hundred White-Wings out. They marched down the wide road towards the town, keeping their ranks as they trod the sloping embankment and on across open ground towards Oriens’ open gates. No one manned the town’s walls, no curls of smoke marked the air where there should have been many cook-fires burning. All was still, tension hovering like a thick mist.

Something’s wrong.

More horn blasts and shouted orders, and Garidas’ second hundred rippled into motion, the crack of their iron-shod boots setting a drumbeat for Riv’s heart. Lorina’s hundred waited in reserve as Aphra’s White-Wings marched through Oriens’ open gates, Ben-Elim swooping low over the walls, one alighting above the gates. Riv’s flesh goosebumped, felt like spiders skittering across her skin.

Aphra is in there, maybe risking her life. I should be there, too.

She felt the familiar tingle of anger stirring in her veins, making her bounce on her toes, clenching and unclenching her fists.

The last of Garidas’ White-Wings marched through Oriens’ gates, disappearing into shadow. Still there was only silence from the town, pulsing in almost palpable waves. A creak of leather and rattle of chainmail behind her; giants were slipping between the wains, Balur striding past Riv as they approached the town.

And they waited, and waited . . . silence radiating from the town like heat from a fire-pit. Riv’s anxiety mounted with each passing moment as she stared fixedly at the walls, images of Aphra walking into an ambush flooding her mind. Her fingers clenched white around the hilt of her dagger at her belt.

Worry, fear, shifting into anger at being left behind, at the way Aphra was treating her, her emotions bubbling away inside her.

As usual the anger burned all else away. Common sense. Her sister’s orders. Thoughts of consequences. Riv could almost feel it spreading through her veins, like ink through water, seeping into her head, whispering to her.

You should be a White-Wing already, inside those walls with the other warriors, not out here with unproven, untested fledglings. You’re as good as any of them with a blade, better than most, and they only give you a knife!

Before Riv realized what she was doing, she was running. Not towards the town, because that would take her through Balur and his giants, and even when she was rage-blind she wasn’t that much of a fool. She skidded down the embankment and sprinted across the open space towards the trees of Forn Forest. Dimly she heard a voice behind her, Jost hissing her name, didn’t think to look, and then she was amongst the trees, in an instant moving from bright day to a world of twilight, shadows shifting, branches swaying, vine snagging at her feet.