Liath rode up beside him. She wiped sweat off her forehead and afterward clasped his wrist with her unbloodied hand. "You're clammy." Her voice shook, but she held steady.

"The griffins have left us," he said to her in a low voice, as if it were a secret. "We have only fifteen feathers left."

"Eleven, now."

"If the galla come upon us again ..."

“Are sent against us again, you mean."

"They must kill to raise them, slaughter men like sheep." It made him sick to think of it.

"Then for the sake of the ones who will die, let us hope they give up." Her smile told a different story. She knew their enemies would never give up.

⁴

FROM Walburg, the king's progress rode west along a grassy track that dipped south through fertile countryside before swinging back north to Osterburg along the Veser River. At length they crossed the Veserling and rode through woodland along the broad track where three years ago Sanglant's soldiers had chased down and broken the Quman army. It was a gray day, so cold that the shallow puddles along the road were iced over. That hard skin of ice cracked and shattered where hoof, foot, and wagon wheel struck. Moisture dripped from branches. Some of the trees had budded, but there was little spring-green foliage in the forest.

In a clearing she saw a hillock that looked strangely familiar, although at first she could not place it. Only when she looked closer did she see scattered bones and the shattered remains of rotting Quman wings. Her chest pulled tight; she found herself short of breath.

"Here, in this meadow, we broke the Quman," he said in a queer voice. "That was a bad day, thinking Blessing was dead."

He could say nothing more. Nor could she. It hurt too much to think about Blessing, yet she did think. In silence, they passed through the clearing. She stared, but except for the tree at the crown of the hill and the unmistakable shape of that odd little hill, she could not relate this peaceful, isolated clearing with the carnage and chaos of a desperately fought battle, one she had seen only in a vision.

They came out of the forest close by a low, isolated hill which was surrounded by boggy ground, brackish puddles, and rotting reeds and bracken.

"There Bayan died," said Sanglant, pointing to the hill. Its crest lay bare of vegetation, as though recently burned. He indicated a patch of open ground in the western hills that rose beyond the Veser River. "There the Quman set their camp."

Liath felt a bite in the air, as at a cold snap of wind, but this was not wind. "A powerful spell was woven here. I can still taste it."

"Two spells, in truth. The first killed Bayan. The second was his mother's revenge on the sorcerer who killed both her son and her self."

"Killed her as well? How?"

"Bayan was her luck. She was a Kerayit shaman." "Ah." She felt the same prickling discomfort along her skin that she might feel before a thunderstorm breaks. She thought of Hanna and Sorgatani, but they were lost, and she had no way to find them. Horns called from the battlements and were answered. Sanglant's straggling troops fell into line as they approached the gates of Osterburg. The hymn surfaced deep in the ranks and, like a storm, swept over the entire army.