They’d seen the rider coming up the road, and Gripp had sent him out after telling him to say the things he had said.

Orfantal thought they were going to steal the horse at sword point, since they had no coin. But they would one day pay the man back, even give him a new horse, or two. They would make it right.

Now he watched the old man rise from the body, using the dead rider’s cloak to clean the blood from his dagger. The horse had moved off a short distance and now stood trembling in the ditch. Murmuring under his breath, Gripp approached the animal and moments later held the reins. He faced Orfantal. ‘Now we ride to Kharkanas.’

He scowled at whatever he saw in Orfantal’s face. ‘He was Legion and it was Legion that attacked us. They’re the enemy now, hostage. We’re in a civil war – do you understand me?’

He nodded, though he didn’t – he didn’t understand anything any more.

‘I ain’t hiding the body,’ Gripp said. ‘I want them to find it. I want them to know. More than that, I want them to know it was Gripp Galas who did this, and it’s Gripp Galas who’ll come for them.’ He had drawn his knife with these words and now he handed Orfantal the horse’s reins and limped back to the corpse.

He hacked off the head. Blood poured on to the dusty road. Gripp then carved his initials on the forehead. Once this was done he lifted the head by the hair and flung it on to the centre of the road.

After using the cloak again to clean the knife he re-joined Orfantal. ‘Now, let me get up in the saddle before you – this knee is killing me.’

All the heroes are dead.

I am lost.

We are all lost.

The hand that reached down to pull Orfantal up was red, and the morning air filled with the smell of iron.

Part Three : The Proofs of Your Ambition

PART THREE

The proofs of your ambition

Chapter Eleven

ELEVEN

ON ALL SIDES Arathan saw desolation. Beneath a colourless sky, houses huddled in their own ruin, and to look upon them was to draw inside all the details of failure, until they clogged his thoughts like greasy dust. Between the scattered buildings, low, smoke-blackened walls of stone rose from scorched grasses like smeared teeth. He weathered their skeletal grimaces as he hunched in the saddle, Besra plodding beneath him. The walls were without any order, and none of the haphazard enclosures they made held livestock.