Shit, I forgot to ask him about Rance.

* * *

‘Priest.’

Endest Silann looked up, saw a woman in the livery of a Houseblade. His attention proved brief, as inevitably he resumed staring at his hands where they rested on his thighs.

‘Are you fit to stand?’ the woman asked.

‘What do you want?’

‘We need a burial place consecrated.’

He thought to laugh at that, glancing briefly at the valley floor below, with its hundreds of corpses, its dead and dying horses.

‘Not there, priest. But it’s not far. We’re building a cairn for just one man.’

Endest held up his hands. ‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘what do you see?’

‘Old blood.’

‘Anything else?’

‘What else would there be to see?’

He nodded. ‘Just so. Her eyes are gone. Not even a scar remains. She’s left me.’

A few moments passed. ‘Ah, you were that one, then. From the market. The one who spoke with a dragon. More to the point, you were one of the priests who stood against Hunn Raal. Now I wonder, why is no one attending you?’

‘I sent them away.’

She stepped forward and hooked a hand under his left arm, lifting him to his feet. ‘You did damned well, priest. Gave us a chance. We just didn’t take it.’

He couldn’t make much sense of this woman, or what she truly wanted from him, but he let her guide him up the track. They passed through the exhausted soldiers of the Hust, but the sight of so many broken men and women was too much, and Endest dropped his gaze, studied the snow and sleet-crusted mud and stone at his feet.

After ascending a short slope they left the track, and the woman drew him over to where a huge old man was busy piling the last of the stones to a cairn. This man’s breaths were harsh, and when he glanced over at them, Endest saw why. He had lost most of his nose. But the injury was old. He wore the same livery as the woman.

All around them, on this faint summit, horse hoofs had stamped deep into the mud, and nearby waited three horses, one bearing a filigreed saddle.

The woman spoke to the other man. ‘They gave up, then?’

‘They didn’t like it, Pelk. Didn’t like it at all. But it seemed they didn’t want to cross me.’

‘No one wants to cross you, Rancept.’

She finally halted Endest close to the cairn. ‘In there,’ she said.

‘Who?’

‘Lord Venes Turayd.’

‘The lord is dead?’

The woman glanced at her companion, who wiped at his weeping nose and then shrugged. She then turned back to Endest Silann and said, ‘I should think so, by now.’

* * *

Faror Hend found Prazek and Dathenar sitting on the muddy road. Both men still wore their chain hauberks, but their helms and gauntlets were on the ground beside them, and from the scabbarded swords sounded a low, incessant mutter.