Sark watched it all frozen in his saddle. Unable to speak. Barely able to think. This couldn’t be happening. His perfect battle. His victory. Swept away by shadowthorn witches come singing out of myth. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right.

The shield wall crumpled, battered from the front and eaten away from within. Kraikons looked on, silent and unmoving, deaf to their proctors’ desperate commands. Sark was dimly aware of thundering hooves as the Prydonis castellans charged to bolster the line.

They were an age too late. Desperate men and women streamed back along the road, past the immobile kraikons. Lunassera came with them, steps graceful as a dancer’s. Each spear-thrust placed not with a warrior’s frenzy, but an artist’s grace.

But he couldn’t tear his eyes from the banner-woman and her burden.

Sark had learned from the finest tutors coin could buy. He’d won tourneys of the sword, and always from horseback. He knew, with the certainty of stone, that there was no finer student of that particular art than he. He recognised with equal surety that the banner-woman was a novice, borne to victory through wild abandon more than skill.

Though sheeted with blood, the silk banner glimmered with brilliant light that echoed the sword’s darting flame. Beautiful. Perfect. Too perfect. A witch’s talisman, drawing favour from a heathen goddess.

Determination kindling fire in his blood, Sark spurred forward. His sword, previously so heavy in his hand, deflected a spear blow and swept a lunassera from her feet.

Fleeing soldiers blocked his path. He struck them aside with the flat of his sword. A soldier sprawled face-first on the road, a spear in his spine. Sark rode on through a gorge filling with the dead and dying, haunted by bleak song. And there ahead of him was the banner and the flaming sword.

“Witch!”

He bellowed the word, drawing on hatred learned at high altar. Ashana the Traitor. Ashana the Jealous Sister. Corrupter of Light. He rowelled his steed and levelled his sword. Even the greatest battles ended in a single stroke.

The banner-woman turned. The blow meant to split her skull glanced off the golden circlet about her brow. She flinched in the saddle, the banner drooping. The keening ceased.

Sensing victory, Sark lunged.

White fire checked his steel. Heart pounding, Sark back-cut at her throat.

Again fire blazed between them, the incandescent blade rigid and immoveable. Beyond, dark eyes stared unblinking from a still face. Sark’s fervour melted away. No more the avenging hand of Lumestra, no more the valiant knight. He felt scarcely even a man, but an ant staring up in terror at a boot’s descent. He knew the truth of himself. A failure, a braggart and a bully. A man who in his arrogance had doomed those who took his orders.