The dogs were the first off when the barge ground ashore on the south side, barking wildly as they splashed through the reeds, and Itkovian was glad for their departure. Only half listening to Gruntle and Stonny exchanging insults like a husband and wife who had known each other far too long, Itkovian readied his horse to await the laying down of planks, and watched with mild interest the Rhivi elders following in the wake of their dogs without heed to the shore’s churned mud and matted reeds.

The low, worn-down hills on this side of the river still held a haze of dust and dung-smoke, draped like a mourner’s veil over the army’s score thousand or more tents. Apart from a few hundred Rhivi herders and the bhederin herd they were tasked to drive across come the dawn, the entire force of the invaders was now on Pannion territory.

No-one had contested the landing. The low hills to the south seemed devoid of life, revealing naught but the worn tracks left behind by Septarch Kulpath’s besieging army.

Gruntle moved up alongside him. ‘Something tells me we’ll be marching through razed land all the way down to Coral.’

‘That seems likely, sir. It is as I would have done, were I the Seer.’

‘I sometimes wonder if Brood and Dujek realize that the army that besieged Capustan was but one among at least three of comparable size. And while Kulpath was a particularly effective Septarch, there are six others competent enough to cause us grief.’

Itkovian pulled his gaze from the encampment ahead to study the hulking warrior at his side. ‘We must assume our enemy is preparing for us. Yet, within the Domin, the last grains of the bell-glass are even now trickling down.’

Treach’s Mortal Sword grunted. ‘You know something the rest of us don’t?’

‘Not specifically, sir. I have but drawn conclusions based on such details as I was able to observe when viewing Kulpath’s army, and the Tenescowri.’

‘Well, don’t keep them to yourself.’

Itkovian returned his gaze to the south. After a moment he sighed. ‘Cities and governments are but the flowering head of a plant whose stalk is the commonalty, and it is the commonalty whose roots are within the earth, drawing the necessary sustenance that maintains the flower. The Tenescowri, sir, is the Domin’s surviving commonalty – people torn from their land, from their villages, their homes, their farms. All food production has ceased, and in its place has arisen the horror of cannibalism. The countryside before us is indeed razed, but not in answer to us. It has been a wasteland for some time, sir. Thus, while the flower still blazes its colour, it is in fact already dead.’

‘Drying from a hook beneath the Crippled God’s shelf?’