Staring hard into the empty orbs of her murderer, she saw that he did not. These undying had abandoned everything – even their hope for a future for themselves. They had sacrificed everything before the implacable pursuit of their goal. In that moment, as her life fled from her, she saw deeper into the essence of these undying and saw that he was mistaken – that there was something. A possibility. ‘Do not despair,’ she spoke with that last breath, ‘there is yet hope for you …’

Ut’el Anag retreated from the half-breed corpse. He turned to Lanas Tog. His dust-dry words carried wariness: ‘What could she mean … “there is hope”?’

Lanas Tog’s desiccated features, the lips pulled back from her yellowed grinning teeth, the cheeks sunken to the barest strips of leather, remained immobile. The teeth and shell fragments woven into her hanging white hair rattled as she turned away. Her hands creaked clenching into fists of bone. ‘She knows nothing of us. Come, we must go. The Summoner is close. I feel her presence.’

‘We could yet deal with her.’

Lanas glanced back. ‘As I have said – there is no need. Once we have dealt with all these, the argument will have resolved itself.’

Ut’el’s voice still held its wariness: ‘So you say, Lanas. So you say.’

Chapter XIII

CHAPTER XIII

ORMAN, THE REDDIN brothers, Bernal and the Sayer household servants Leal and Ham had three days to prepare before Keth jogged up from the lower valley to report that the outlander army was approaching and would arrive before nightfall.

These last three days it had been alternately raining, sleeting, and snowing. It was as if the weather could not make up its mind. Orman was glad for the damp chill. It would work against the invaders, or so he told himself. He worked piling the last of the equipment and furniture on the barricade of logs and hastily cut down trees they had raised surrounding the Greathall. All bolstered by lashed barrels, heaped sod, and any tangled bric-a-brac they could pull from the outbuildings before they fired them.

And what of his resolve? he wondered as he tied down a great heavy table of solid logs turned onto its side. Has the weather dampened it? He straightened and pressed a hand to the patch over his eye. Hard to know it was still there when he couldn’t see it. Was he an utter fool not to have run off one of these past nights? Bernal said to have faith in Jaochim – easy for him, as he’d known the Iceblood for decades.