Starvation joined the terrible ravaging thirst, for the Wickans refused to slaughter their horses and attended them with eloquent fanaticism that no-one dared challenge. The warriors sacrificed of themselves to keep their mounts alive. One petition from Nethpara’s Council, offering to purchase a hundred horses, was returned to the noble-born leader smeared in human excrement.

The twin vipers struck again and again, contesting every league, the attacks increasing in ferocity and frequency, until it was clear that a major clash approached, only days away.

In the column’s wake followed Korbolo Dom’s army, a force that had grown with the addition of forces from Tarxian and other coastal settlements, and was now at least five times the size of Coltaine’s Seventh and his Wickan clans. The renegade commander’s measured pursuit – leaving engagement to the wild plains tribes – was ominous in itself.

He would be there for the imminent battle, without doubt, and was content to wait until then.

The Chain of Dogs – its numbers swollen by new refugees fleeing Bylan – crawled on, coming within sight of what the maps indicated was the Nenoth Odhan’s end, where hills rose in a wall aross the southern horizon. The trader track cut through the only substantial passage, a wide river valley between the Bylan’sh Hills to the east and the Saniphir Hills to the west, the track running for seven leagues, opening out on a plain that faced the ancient tel of Sanimon, then wrapped around it to encompass the Sanith Odhan and, beyond that, the Geleen Plain, the Dojal Odhan – and the city of Aren itself.

No relief army emerged from Sanimon Valley. A profound sense of isolation descended like a shroud on the train, even as the valley’s flanking hills began to reveal, in the day’s dying light, twin encampments, both vast, of tribesmen – the main forces of the Tregyn and the Bhilard.

Here, then, at the mouth of the ancient valley ... here it would be.

‘We’re dying,’ Lull muttered as he came up alongside the historian on his way to the briefing. ‘And I don’t mean just figuratively, old man. I lost eleven soldiers today. Throats swollen so bad with thirst they couldn’t draw breath.’ He waved at a fly buzzing his face. ‘Hood’s breath, I’m swimming in this armour – by the time we’re done, we’ll all look like T’lan Imass.’

‘I can’t say I appreciate the analogy, Captain.’

‘Wasn’t expecting you to.’

‘Horse piss. That’s what the Wickans are drinking these days.’

‘Aye, same for my crew. They’re neighing in their sleep, and more than one’s died from it.’

Three dogs loped past them, the huge one named Bent, a female, and the lapdog scrambling in their wake.

‘They’ll outlive us all,’ Lull grumbled. ‘Those damned beasts!’

The sky deepened overhead, the first stars pushing through the cerulean gauze.

‘Gods, I’m tired.’