An Arak who had spoken earlier now stepped close to the sapper. ‘Stay only the night, then ride on hard, Gral. Your kin will pursue you.’

‘Tell them,’ Fiddler said, ‘I won the horse in a fair fight. Tell them that.’

The Arak frowned. ‘Will they know the story?’

‘Which clan?’

‘Sebark.’

The sapper shook his head.

‘Then they shall ride you down for the pleasure of it. But I shall tell them your words, anyway. Indeed, your horse was worth killing for.’

Fiddler thought back to the drunken Gral he’d bought the gelding from in Ehrlitan. Three jakata. The tribesmen who moved into the cities lost much. ‘Drink my beer this night, Arak?’

‘We shall. Before the Gral arrive. Ride on.’

As they rode onto the road and approached G’danisban’s north gate, Apsalar said to him, ‘We are in trouble now, aren’t we?’

‘Is that what your instincts tell you, lass?’

She grimaced.

‘Aye,’ Fiddler sighed. ‘That we are. I made a mistake with that outcast story. I think now, given your performance back there, that the threat of your curse would have sufficed.’

‘Probably.’

Crokus cleared his throat. ‘Are we going to actually watch these executions, Fid?’

The sapper shook his head. ‘Not a chance. We’re riding straight through, if we can.’ He glanced at Apsalar. ‘Let your courage falter, lass. Another temper tantrum and the citizens will rush you out the south gate on a bed of gold.’

She acknowledged him with a wry smile.

Don’t fall in love with this woman, Fid, old friend, else you loosen your guard of the lad’s life, and call it an accident of fate ...

Spilled blood stained the worn cobbles under the arched north gate and a scatter of wooden toys lay broken and crushed to either side of the causeway. From somewhere close came the screams of children dying.

‘We can’t do this,’ Crokus said, all the colour gone from his face. He rode at Fiddler’s side, Apsalar holding her mount close behind them. Looters and armed men appeared now and then farther down the street, but the way into the city seemed strangely open. A haze of smoke hung over everything, and the burnt-out shells of merchant stores and residences gaped desolation on all sides.

They rode amidst scorched furniture, shattered pottery and ceramics, and bodies twisted in postures of violent death. The children’s dying screams, off to their right, had mercifully stopped, but other, more distant screams rose eerily from G’danisban’s heart.

They were startled by a figure darting across their paths, a young girl, naked and bruised. She ran as if oblivious to them, and clambered under a broken-wheeled cart not fifteen paces from Fiddler and his party. They watched her scramble under cover.