In the province of Aperleon the kingdom of Rhone meets the duchy of Gelleth and the principality of Scorron. Monuments to the dead of a hundred battles crowd the elevations, most in ruin, but the land is lush and people return to resettle it time and again, as people are wont to. Snorri led the way along the approach to the town of Compere, famed for its cider and for the quality of tapestries woven there. Where he learned this stuff I couldn’t say, but the Norseman would always win some new fact or other from even the shortest of exchanges with passersby.

The summer found us at last and we rode in bright sunshine, sweating beneath our travel-stained rags, throwing dark shadows and swatting at flies. We saw few people, then fewer still, all steering away upon their own paths, drawing back as if we might carry contagion.

Further on, the land took on a neglected air. Ron and Sleipnir plodded placidly between high hedgerows, Snorri’s white skin turned red in the sun, and for a moment I started to feel at ease, lulled by the heat and the arable peace. It didn’t last. We soon found fields untended and overgrown, farmhouses empty, their animals gone. In one place churned earth, an abandoned helm, a crow-pecked hand. A chill returned to me, despite the warmth of the day.

The castle of Rewerd’s Curse—the ancestral seat of the House Wainton—stands on a high bluff of pale rock some miles from Compere Town. It watched us with empty eyes, the walls black with smoke, the cliffs beneath it still stained a rusty colour as if the blood of the last defenders had poured from the gates and overflowed the plateau. The sun had started to sink behind the fortification, making serrated silhouettes of the battlements and sending its shadow questing towards us, an accusing finger, long and dark.

“This is fresh.” Snorri drew a long breath through his nose. “You can smell the char.”

“And the rot.” I regretted sniffing so deeply. “Let’s find another path.”

Snorri shook his head. “You think any path is safe? Whatever happened here has passed.” He pointed to a faint haze ahead, indistinct trails of smoke rising to join it. “The fires have all but burned out. You’ll find more peace in ruins than in any other place. The rest is all waiting to be ruins. Here it’s already happened.”

And so we rode on and came by evening to the desolation of Compere.

• • •

“This was vengeance.” The walls had been toppled, standing nowhere higher than three stones atop each other. “Punishment.” I stepped over the rubble. Heat still rose from the ground. Beyond a forest of blackened spars a carpet of cinders marched into the distance until the drifting smoke overwrote it.

“Murder.” Snorri towered at my shoulder, a stillness in him.

“They never meant to hold this place,” I said. “Whoever ‘they’ were.” It could have been Gelleth troopers, a raid out of Scorron, or even a Rhonish army reclaiming what had been taken. “I’ve never seen the like.” I knew the Hundred’s squabbles left such damage in their wake, but I’d not seen it, not like this.