With dawn streaking the east horizon, she would leave her tent, and set out in the direction of that growing light, drawn to its red slash, the fires of a new day’s birth. With each and every night a realm of ashes and despair, she fled into the light. An army encamped was a creature of routine, mechanical and obstinate in its witless, dull-brained way. It offered nothing new, no change in its surly, trudging mood.

Out past the pickets, facing on to a snow-smeared plain, she would stand, wrapped in her heavy cloak, and look for a figure, walking on foot, coming out of dawn’s blazing fire. New day, new life. Those who play at soldiers stir behind me, and before me, somewhere out there, a man striding out from a soldier’s end.

Mechanical things will break. Dirt and rust to bind the gears, millstones worn down, ratchets and brackets weakened by strain unto snapping. But some, no matter how carefully fitted the assembled parts, are destined to not work at all. And even then, look into the east, out on to this empty plain. There he walks, a broken cog, seeking a new routine. Husband. Wife.

I flee, but in truth, there is nowhere to run to. The future chases me, hunts me.

On this day, Commander Galar Baras had summoned her to join him in his staff meeting. She saw no reason for that. She was a Warden, not an officer of the Hust. More to the point, she needed to leave, to ride for her own company – back to Commander Calat Hustain, and Spinnock Durav.

Would Kagamandra be there as well? Hunched over some table, his vein-roped hand curled round a tankard, enwreathed in the smoke from the hearth, a grey figure with hooded eyes? Or was he in fact somewhere between here and the fort of the Wardens? And if so, which path would she take upon her return? Do I meet him? Or do I leave the tracks, journey at night and hide well during the day?

Such shame in these childish thoughts!

After some time, she turned about and made her way back into the Hust encampment. It was not the army she had expected to find. The machine might well rattle on, like the vast bellows of Henarald’s forge, all iron arms, wheels and cogs, but it was a sickly assemblage now.

The horror of Hunn Raal’s poisoning dwelt in Faror Hend’s mind like some vast fortress, isolated, rising from an island surrounded by forbidding seas. Every current pushed her away, and she was reluctant to fight that tide. Ambition was one thing. The desire for restitution held at its core a righteous cause. Sufficient for a civil war? She could not see that. But then, had not Hunn Raal sought to prevent such a war? With no legions to stand against Urusander’s, that civil war was as good as done.