No. What mattered was that if she hid until the horror was past, warriors would look on her in pity. They’d acclaim it a sign that no woman could ever be worthy of the Imperial throne. After all, it would never be enough for Melanna to prove herself their equal. She had to prove herself their better.

That realisation galvanised courage. Or at least the guttering trace of what might grow into courage. And she was not wholly defenceless, after all. Nor wholly foolish.

Melanna unslung her bow and drew a black-fletched shaft from her thigh-quiver. With numbed fingers, she nocked the arrow.

“Ashana, guide your ephemeral daughter,” she whispered. “For I fear she’s about to do something rash.”

But if the distant moon offered any answer, the mist swallowed it.

Melanna picked her way north along the roadside. She travelled swiftly, but not without caution. Around Tevar Flood, there were more dangers than the purely supernatural. Tressian patrols were lighter here than in the turbulent Southshires, but a chance encounter would end her life as readily as any of the Raven’s minions.

She almost tripped over the woman’s body. She lay face-down by a spent fire, blood glistening at the base of her back and pooling in the dirt below. A sword lay close by – the emerald on its hilt a fit match for the knight’s green surcoat. Melanna swallowed, uncertain how to proceed.

The woman moaned.

Melanna scrambled away, heart in her throat.

The moan came again. The breathy agonies of the severely wounded, not the guttural cry of some grave-woken cannibal. Chiding herself for skittishness, she crept forward.

The mists billowed, revealing another body beside the fire. A man. Above him loomed a shape from Melanna’s childhood nightmares. A black silhouette straight from legend. Crow-voices shrieked through the mists. The thunder of their wings grew louder and nearer.

She scrambled away as the shape reached out, metal talons hooked in beckoning. Blood ran red across his fingertips, and trickled away.

“What have we here?”

Melanna was too far gone to terror to recognise that he’d spoken in the clipped Tressian tongue. Nor did she note that a pale face lay beneath the hood, rather than a revenant’s silver death-mask. Those realisations would come later. In that moment there was only the bow, the arrow and a desperate need.

Her hands shook as the arrow sped away, and the shot aimed for the man’s heart took him in the shoulder. She lost his bellow of pain as the crows swept over her in a crescendo of frenzied wings. Casting the bow aside, Melanna dropped to her knees and covered her head with her hands. She offered a ceaseless, mumbling prayer to Ashana. Wingbeats buffeted her about the head and back. Talons plucked at her hair.

And then, as suddenly as it had begun, the crowstorm passed. Silence reigned.