Instead, the Hust Legion sought a rebirth. Walking into the camp, where men and women sat in clumps around morning cookfires, she could feel nothing of the surety that belonged to a military gathering. Instead, the atmosphere swirled with resentment, defiance, fear and dread.

These new soldiers were killing each other. Those that didn’t desert. They spoke of freedom as if it meant unfettered anarchy. It was a wonder to Faror that this camp had not already burst apart. She did not understand what held it together. Or, perhaps, I choose not to understand. How that, beyond all the resentment and fear, there can be heard a soft whisper, a voice filled with promises, yet strident with need.

The weapons of the Hust never shut up. Bound and wrapped tight, still they sing. Faint as a breath upon this chill wind.

If the prisoners fear, they also desire. And few, I wager, understand that this desire came not from them, but from the guarded wagons, from the stacks of blades and bundles of chain armour. From the greaves and vambraces, from the helms and their rustling camails. Voices whispering without end.

She fought against that terrible music. She did not belong here.

The command tent was directly ahead. Two Hust soldiers flanked the entrance. Muttering and something like soft laughter rained from them although they stood mute, faces impassive, and as Faror passed between them she fought off a shiver.

Within, the quartermaster, Seltin Ryggandas, was crouched before a free-standing woodstove in the centre of the chamber, feeding it dung-chips. Captain Castegan – the last of the surviving officers of that rank, apart from Galar Baras himself – was standing near a portable table. He had been near retirement, a man whose weak bladder had saved his life the night of Hunn Raal’s visit, as he would not drink alcohol. It was clear, from his bent form and sunken expression, that he cursed his caution, although Faror suspected that Castegan’s deepest hatred belonged to all those in Kharkanas who had refused to let the Hust Legion follow its soldiers into extinction.

Galar Baras was sitting on a travel chest, half turned away from everyone else, and nothing in his demeanour invited conversation. To Faror’s eyes the man had aged beyond his years in the past few weeks.

Moments later, the officers drawn from the prisoners began arriving. The first man, Curl, had been a pit blacksmith, pocked by half a lifetime’s worth of burns from embers and spatters of molten metal. He was hairless, his skin black as Galar’s, with soft, blunt features that looked vaguely melted. Bland, empty eyes, pale as tin, slid across the others in the tent, hesitating only an instant upon Faror Hend.