‘It is.’

Clucking to contain her fury, Crone hopped towards the tent’s back wall. ‘Take me as an example in the future,’ she murmured as she began edging her way under the fabric.

‘What do you mean?’ Brood asked behind her.

She ducked her head back inside, opened her beak in a silent laugh, then replied, ‘Did I lose my temper?’

Growling, he stepped towards her.

The Great Raven squawked and fled.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The First Child of the Dead Seed

dreams of a father’s dying breath

and hears in eternal refrain

the scream trapped in his lungs –

Dare you step behind his eyes

even for a moment?

The First Child of the Dead Seed

leads an army of sorrow

down hunger’s bone-picked road

where a mother dances and sings –

Dare you walk in his steps

and dearly hold her hand?

The First Child of the Dead Seed

is sheathed in the clutter of failed armour

defending him from the moment of birth

through years of dire schooling –

Do not dare judge him hard

lest you wear his skin.

Silba of the Shattered Heart

K’alass

The Tenescowri rose like an inexorable flood against every wall of the city. Rose, then swept over, a mass of humanity driven mad by hunger. Gate barricades buckled to the pressure, then gave way.

And Capustan drowned.

Four hundred paces from the barracks, Itkovian wheeled his blood-spattered mount. Figures reached up from below, clawed along the horse’s armoured limbs. The beast, in cold fury, stamped down repeatedly, crushing bones, caving in chests and heads.

Three Manes of Grey Swords surrounded the Shield Anvil where they had been cut off from the barracks atop the gentle hill that was the cemetery of pillars. Most of those upright coffins had been toppled, shattering to spill their mouldy, cloth-wrapped contents, now jumbled among their cousins in death.

Itkovian could see the barracks gate, against which bodies were piled high – high enough to climb, which is what scores of Tenescowri were doing, clambering up towards the flanking revetments only to be met by the serrated blades of long-handled pikes. Pikes that killed, that wounded peasants who made no effort to defend themselves, that whipped back and forth trailing banners of blood and gore.

Itkovian had never witnessed such a horrifying sight. For all his battles, for all the terrors of combat and all that a soldier could not help but see, the vision before him swept all else from his mind.

As peasants fell back, tumbled their way down the slope of corpses, women leapt at the men among them, tore at their clothing, pinned them in place with straddled legs and, amidst blood, amidst shrieks and clawing fingers, they raped them.

Along the edges of the dead and dying, others fed on their kin.