The cloud descended on Coltaine, swallowing him entire and covering the cross itself – at that distance they were to Duiker like flies swarming a piece of flesh.

And when they rose, exploding skyward, the warleader of the Crow Clan was gone.

Duiker staggered, leaned hard against the stone wall. Nether slipped down through his motionless arms, her blood-matted hair hiding her face as she curled around his feet.

‘I killed him,’ Squint moaned. ‘I killed Coltaine. Who took that man’s life? A broken old soldier of the High Fist’s army – he killed Coltaine ... Oh, Beru, have mercy on my soul...’

Duiker wrapped the old man in his arms and held him fiercely. The bow clattered on the platform’s wooden slats. The historian felt the man crumpling against him as if his bones had turned to dust, as if centuries stole into him with each ragged breath.

Commander Blistig gripped the bowman by the back of the collar and yanked him upright. ‘Before the day’s through, you bastard,’ he hissed, ‘ten thousand soldiers will be voicing your name.’ The words shook. ‘Like a prayer, Squint, like a Hood-damned prayer.’

The historian squeezed his eyes shut. It had become a day to hold in his arms broken figures.

But who will hold me?

Duiker opened his eyes, raised his head. High Fist Pormqual’s mouth was moving, as if in a silent plea for forgiveness. Shock was written on the man’s thin, oiled face and, as he met the historian’s gaze, a flash of raw fear.

Out on the barrow Korbolo Dom’s army was stirring, like reeds in eddies, a restless, meaningless motion. The aftermath was now upon them. Voices rose, wordless cries, but they were too few to break the dreadful silence and its growing power.

The crows were gone, the crossed spars of wood stood empty, rising above the masses with their blood-streaked shafts.

Overhead, the sky had begun to die.

Duiker’s gaze returned to Pormqual. The High Fist seemed to shrink into Mallick Rel’s shadow. He shook his head as if to deny the day.

Thrice denied, High Fist.

Coltaine is dead. They are all dead.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

I saw the sun’s bolt

arc an unerring path

to the man’s forehead.

As it struck, the crows

converged like night

drawing breath.

Dog Chain

Seglora

Faint ripples licked the garbage-studded mud beneath the docks. Night insects danced just beyond the water’s reach, and the bank itself seethed in the egg-laying frenzy of some kind of eels. In their thousands, black and gleaming, the small creatures writhed beneath the dancing insects. This silent breaching of the harbour’s shore had for generations passed almost unnoticed by human eyes – a mercy granted only because the eels were wholly unpalatable.