Toras Redone rocked back slightly, waving the jug. ‘Come all, my friends! One last drink for the Hust Legion! Then we will be done, and we can walk into that desert and greet those sour-faced gods! We’ll make of their puritanical misery a virtue, and set upon it the holiest of words! And what word might that be? Why, it is suffering.’

She raised the jug to drink.

Someone shouted a warning. Galar Baras drew his sword and the weapon shrieked. The blade lashed out, struck the jug. Clay shards exploded. Wine erupted like blood from a broken skull.

On all sides, the Hust weapons awoke. From every tent, from every scabbard, the swords howled.

Galar Baras staggered beneath the assault, dropping his weapon and clapping hands over his ears. But the sound was inside him, wailing through his bones, clawing through his mind. He felt himself torn free, severed from his body and flung skyward, buffeted by the cries, the ever-rising screams. Through tears, he saw wooden scabbards burst apart at the belts of the surrounding soldiers as the men and women fell or staggered, as they opened their mouths to add to the howls.

Poison. They’re all dead.

Toras—

She was on her hands and knees, gouging up clumps of wine-soaked clay, pushing them into her mouth, coughing, choking – Galar saw himself spinning high above her. He saw how the first of the wagons had reached the descent, but the oxen were collapsing in their yokes, thrashing, legs kicking, and the lead wagon’s front wheels cut sharply to one side, and then the wagon toppled, spilling out the wooden crates on the bed.

He saw those crates burst apart, revealing Hust Henarald’s last gift to the Hust Legion – chain hauberks of the same iron, and helms and greaves and vambraces. The armour was answering the cry of the weapons in the valley below. The drovers were upon the ground, bleeding from their noses, their ears and eyes.

And still the howling built. It rent the canvas of the tents in the camp, snapped guide ropes. In the distant corrals to the west, the horses broke down the fences and fled in terror.

Galar was a battered kite in the rising storm of those terrible voices.

‘Corporal Ranyd came running in. He drew his sword. He should never have done that.’

Abruptly, the howling stopped. Galar plunged earthward, and in the moment he struck the ground, blackness engulfed him.

‘Never, and never again.’

Chapter Twenty

TWENTY