A least he could ride now. The splints had come off that morning, and Jezal's sore leg knocked painfully against his horse's flank as it moved. His hand was numb and clumsy on the reins, his arm weak and aching without the dressing. His teeth still throbbed dully with every thump of the hooves on the ruined road. But at least he was out of the cart, and that was something. Small things seemed to make him very happy these days.

The others rode in a sombre, silent group, grim as mourners at a funeral, and Jezal hardly blamed them. It was a sombre sort of place. A plain of dirt. Of fissures of bare rock. Of sand and stone, empty of life. The sky was a still white nothing, heavy as pale lead, promising rain but never quite delivering. They rode clustered round the cart as though huddling for warmth, the only warm things in a hundred miles of cold desert, the only moving things in a place frozen in time, the only living things in a dead country.

The road was wide, but the stones were cracked and buckled. In places whole stretches of it had crumbled away, in others flows of mud had covered it entirely. The dead stumps of trees jutted from the bare earth to either side. Bayaz must have seen him looking at them.

'An avenue of proud oaks lined this road for twenty miles from the city gates. In summer their leaves shimmered and shook in the wind over the plain. Juvens planted them with his own hands, in the Old Time, when the Empire was young, long before even I was born.'

The mutilated stumps were grey and dry, splintered edges still showing the marks of saws. 'They look as if they were cut down months ago.'

'Many long years, my boy. When Glustrod seized the city, he had them all felled to feed his furnaces.'

'Then why have they not rotted?'

'Even rot is a kind of life. There is no life here.'

Jezal swallowed and hunched his shoulders, watching the chunks of long dead wood file slowly past like rows of tombstones. 'I don't like this,' he muttered under his breath.

'You think I do?' Bayaz frowned grimly over at him. 'You think any of us do? Men must sometimes do what they do not like if they are to be remembered. It is through struggle, not ease, that fame and honour are won. It is through conflict, not peace, that wealth and power are gained. Do such things no longer interest you?'