Stalker’s long face hardened. ‘Been away too long already.’ His tone brooked no objection.

Fisher sent a despairing glance Cal-Brinn’s way.

The battered Dal Hon mercenary pursed his lips. ‘There’s always the chance of a small desperate group breaking free of any encirclement.’

Badlands had been drinking from his tankard and he slammed it down and wiped his mouth. ‘That’s us I’d say. Small and desperate.’

*

The hall possessed no outer defences and so they started digging a ditch and piling up the earth in a ring all along the inner slope. It wasn’t particularly deep, but it was something to stand behind. They set sharpened sticks, pointing outwards, along its top.

Stalker also set them to filling every vessel and container the hall possessed and scattering these about the inner walls. Of what animals the Losts had collected – a few cattle, sheep, and chickens – they drove off the cattle and slaughtered the rest. No one said it aloud, but the possibility of a lengthy siege wasn’t even considered.

At the end of the second day, Cal-Brinn’s pickets sent word that a large force had crossed the border, marching in column and heading straight for the Lost Greathall. They would arrive on the morrow.

That night they gorged themselves on a full sheep carcass Stalker had roasted over the hearth. The weather had remained cold and rainy through the days and Kyle sat close the fire, attempting to dry himself. He imagined he must have looked as dispirited as a wet dog, for Badlands cuffed his shoulder and said, laughingly, ‘Don’t worry yourself! You’ll probably kill so many of them they’ll run away!’ Then he called loudly: ‘Hey! Songster! Let’s have us a tune!’

Fisher, off in the darkness, stirred at that, nodding. ‘An appropriate request.’ He lifted up his box-like instrument and strummed, adjusting it and humming to himself. And then he sang as he slowly drew his fingertips across the strings.

‘And when our blood mixes and drains in the grey earth

When the faces blur before our eyes in these last of last days

We shall turn about to see the path of years we have made

And wail at the absence of answers and the things left unseen

For this is life’s legion of truth so strange so unknown

So unredeemed and we cannot know what we will live

Until the journey is done

My beautiful legion, leave me to rest on the wayside

As onward you march to the circling sun

Where spin shadows tracing the eternal day

Raise stones to signal my passing

Unmarked and mysterious

Saying nothing of me

Saying nothing at all

The legion is faceless and must ever remain so

As faceless as the sky’

A long silence followed the last muted tones from the instrument as they faded into the emptiness of the hall. The song was far too grim for Kyle – though certainly appropriate. He noted, blinking as he came out of its spell, that Fisher’s gaze, glittering in the flames, had held the face of Jethiss throughout, while the Andii had kept his night-black features as immobile as stone.