Other men appeared – four singling him out. They spread around him in a half-circle. Then one in the middle hurtled forwards in a spray of blood, knocked down by Daria’s hooves as she reared behind him and lashed out. Tukul was moving before the others could understand what had happened, sidestepping to the right, his sword sweeping left to right, opening a throat, following through with his momentum to slash downwards, his blade ringing against a rushed block. He rolled his wrists, shifted his feet and his sword was slashing across a face, his enemy reeling back, screaming, hands reaching for his ruined eyes. A lunge and the screams stopped.

One man was left of the four. He looked at Tukul, then turned and ran.

Daria trotted forward and nuzzled his shoulder.

‘Good girl,’ he said as he swung back into the saddle.

Silhouettes loomed on the road above him, one clearly a giant, others on horseback, instantly recognizable as Jehar. More appeared as Tukul looked, and they swept down the embankment to him. A Jehar rider pulled up beside him – Akar.

‘Regroup?’ the warrior asked him.

‘No,’ Tukul said. He blinked away sweat from his eyes, felt the battle joy spreading through his veins, overwhelming the pain in his leg and a dozen smaller wounds.

‘We press on, give them no respite.’

The road above looked clear, the bulk of the fighting appearing to be happening on the meadow before him. Tukul didn’t know if the plan had worked or not, he just saw the black and gold of his enemy before him, servants of those who had set themselves against Elyon, who had already attempted to cut the heart from his Bright Star. A dark anger swelled in him, bubbling hot through his veins.

‘Control it, lest you be controlled,’ he murmured the Jehar mantra, then he raised his sword and charged into the meadow, ignoring the shafts of pain jolting up from his leg, yelling a battle-cry that was taken up by a wave of Jehar and giants behind him.

‘TRUTH AND COURAGE!’

Tukul sat on the roadside. He’d found his axe and was busy cleaning blood from his weapons, then using a whetstone to work out the notches.

His body ached everywhere, but particularly the leg that had been slammed by the charging horse. He’d cared for Daria, checking her wounds, taken her to a spot upriver where the water wasn’t flowing pink and washed her down, did the same for himself, discovering a dozen or so cuts on his body that he hadn’t known were there.