His gaze travelled to the jug he had given her, and then away again. Sighing, he collected his cup and filled his mouth with the tart liquid. A soldier needs no excuses to drink. You can’t just walk away from dancing with death, after all, and no wall holds you up for long.

There was a sound at the tent entrance and he looked up to see Sevegg peering in. He gestured her to enter.

‘I saw her march out,’ she said.

Hunn Raal nodded. ‘We’re leaving soon. Inform the others. Have them depart quietly and singly. Leave the wagons and animals.’

‘Our horses, cousin?’

‘That’s “sir” to you, lieutenant.’

‘Yes sir. Your pardon.’

‘They remain hobbled well outside the pickets?’

‘As instructed, sir.’

‘Take four soldiers with you. Saddle up our mounts and then lead them to the east track. We will all rendezvous there. I want us riding before dawn.’

‘Yes sir.’ She saluted and left.

He looked down at the tankard in his hand, and then tilted the cup, spilling the contents to the dirt floor, and set it upside down on the centre of the commander’s small map table.

All I wanted, Toras Redone, was peace.

* * *

Captain Ivis climbed the ladder and emerged on to the parapet of the northwest tower. He came up alongside Corporal Yalad. ‘Well, what is it I need to see?’

The man pointed to the ridge of hills to the west. ‘Another army, sir. But this one is not passing through – see them? I’d swear they were presenting for battle.’

Ivis squinted. He could make out riders working into position along the centre hill, arraying in ranks. With the rising dust behind them, it was impossible to tell how many there were. To either side, more soldiers had dismounted and were forming up in skirmish order. ‘Can you make out that banner, corporal?’

‘No sir.’

Ivis rubbed at the back of his neck. His eyes felt full of sand. He’d not slept well since his journey into the wild forest – since his visit to that cursed goddess. At times, he managed to convince himself that he had but dreamed the whole ordeal, but then, he had not the imagination to conjure such horrors. What few nightmares he experienced in his life were all singular and banal in their obsessions. The loss of teeth, walking naked into a crowded hall, the maddening inability to find the stirrups on a panicked horse rushing for a cliff edge, a broken sword in the midst of battle. There were no sharpened stakes rising from a glade’s matted grasses, and no woman lying impaled upon them and regarding him with calm eyes.

‘What should we do, sir?’

Blinking, Ivis shook himself. ‘Call to arms, corporal. With luck, we’ll have the time to assemble. I see nothing in the way of siege weapons.’

‘No sir. We could let them circle the walls until their horses drop from exhaustion.’