‘I was in one of the villages,’ she said. ‘I saw your standards. But no soldier was armoured the way yours are, and none rode warhorses, or used those curved swords. Sir, you didn’t kill us.’

For a moment it seemed that the man was about to cry. ‘I have now,’ he said, turning away. He walked off, his shoulders hunched, his steps uncertain.

The young corporal squatted down beside her. ‘Hungry?’ he asked. ‘Thirsty?’

‘Just get that horse,’ she said.

But he did not move. ‘Captain’s a little … measured, when it comes to scribing. There is time, Bordersword. So?’

She shrugged. ‘Water, then.’ As he headed off she closed her eyes. It was me they all listened to. I saw the standards. We could all read the trail. But it was me. You didn’t kill us, captain. I did.

They had disarmed her – even her eating knife was missing from its thin leather sheath. If she had such a weapon within reach, she would take her own life.

But no. I will deliver the captain’s message. Then, before my kin, I will open my throat. I will give them my name to curse. She saw the corporal returning with a waterskin. Hungry? Thirsty? Scratch behind the ear? As soon as he arrived, she reached out and took the skin from him. ‘Now get me that horse.’

* * *

Seven heavily burdened wagons, each one drawn by a brace of oxen, had begun their journey at the Hust Forge, travelling southward to the borderlands where awaited the Hust Legion encampment. Their pace was slow, stalled at times when an axle split or a wheel stripped its rim on the rough cobbles of the road.

Bearing his lord’s command calling the Hust to war, Galar Baras caught up with the train half a day out from the camp. He had ridden hard and his mount was weary, and after the haunting solitude of his journey thus far he welcomed the company of drovers, wagon masters, carpenters, smiths, cooks and guards, many of whom he knew from the Forge settlement where he had been born and then raised. For all that, it was a muted welcome. News of the slaughter at the wedding hung like a pall over everyone. For many, he knew, it was not so much the sudden deaths of Lord Jaen and his daughter that sobered the crew and made conversations infrequent and hushed; rather, it was what the killings portended.

War had returned to Kurald Galain. This time, however, the enemy came not from beyond the realm’s borders. Galar could not imagine the mind of a Tiste in the moments that led up to the slaying of a fellow Tiste. For himself, it was difficult to think of any other Tiste as being anything but kin. Yet now it seemed that every face, with its familiar array of traits, was but a mask, and behind some of those masks lurked an enemy, a stranger with strange thoughts.