Hendrick heard none of it, and yet he heard it all. When it was over, he knew for sure that, though he might still walk and breathe and see, he was every bit as dead as the brother he had lost.

Hendrick sat on the corner of his stone bed-pallet and watched dawn creep back into the world. Rosy fingers of light caressed the ancient stonework of the monastery, spilling through an ancient archway then diffusing across the silk hangings in Hendrick’s chamber. It limned the screens with soft gold and seemed to halo the depictions of Sigmar, acting out his great deeds of myth across their swaying surfaces. It was a beautiful sight, especially when accompanied by the soft sigh of the breeze through old stonework and the faint scent of the incense that the villagers burned to ward off evil.

Hendrick knew that it should have stirred something inside him. All he felt was hollow.

No, he realised. Not just hollow, he felt resentful. How could the light of Hysh return after what had happened the night before? How could it show its face in the skies above after witnessing such horrors? How dare it? How could the realms continue with such a gentle and lovely dawn when his brother was dead?

The first dawn without Varlen.

It should have been grim and grey as a dead crone’s hair. It should have been dark as damnation. But no, the light bled back into the skies just as it had for all thirty-seven years of Hendrick’s life, and the absence of his older brother gave it no pause at all.

A shape moved beyond the screens. Hendrick’s hand twitched towards Reckoner. He found himself hoping that the townsfolk had reneged upon their agreement, that they were coming to take him now. It was only because the Swords of Sigmar had seemed to renounce their leader in the end that the villagers had permitted them a night’s refuge before casting the mercenaries out. That, and the fear in their eyes at what they thought the Swords might be capable of if pushed.

He relaxed as Aelyn slipped between the screens and stopped, ­staring down at him. The aelf stood silent and unnaturally still. She regarded him with black-and-amber eyes that most humans found disturbing, but to which Hendrick had long ago grown accustomed. The two stared at each other in silence, long enough for Hendrick to draw and release a heavy breath.

‘Have you slept?’ Aelyn asked.

‘Have you?’ he challenged. A muscle twitched in her right cheek, a minute tell that Hendrick knew indicated her displeasure.

‘You sat there all night, hmm?’

‘And if I did?’ He could hear his own belligerence, knew it was ill directed at this, his oldest friend. He knew, too, that she wouldn’t take it personally.