Fidele splashed water on her face, then dipped her hands into the bowl before her. The water turned pink. Events since her rescue by Krelis were a blur.

In a seeming hurricane of movement she had been swept through the gates and into a hard-packed courtyard, hands lifting her from a horse’s back to others that checked her for wounds, half-dragging her up wooden steps into a feast-hall, through it into the giant’s tower. She remembered cold stone beneath her feet. Eventually she had pulled herself from the gripping hands and demanded to see Maquin.

It turned out they were being taken to the same place. A series of rooms on a lower level of the tower that were being used as an infirmary for the injured from the town.

Well, she was wounded – a score of cuts and bruises all over her body – but nothing serious. Maquin, however, was a different matter. He had been stabbed, slashed, kicked. A memory filled her mind – him striding forward into the massed Vin Thalun, carving his way through them like some untouchable demon, always moving, always striking. She had seen the blow that felled him, seen him kill the attacker – his body failing as even then he tried to force a path for her to the tower – saw him collapse. She’d killed the Vin Thalun standing over him, recalled the sensation with a shudder: she had plunged her knife into him, punching through leather into the body beneath. Twice, now, I have killed in Maquin’s defence. Her hands shook as she put them back into the bowl, scrubbing at them with a hard-bristled brush.

‘Will he live?’ she asked as she turned away from the bowl. Maquin lay upon a cot in a stone room with white walls. A row of large windows were open, shutters flung wide, letting in streaming sunshine and a strong breeze that diluted the cloying scent of blood and sweat. Other beds filled the room, the injured or dying groaning as they were tended by a score or so of healers. Tables were being carried in, more injured stretched out upon them.

A man was bent over Maquin, white-haired and thin. Alben was the swordsmaster of Ripa and, ironically, one of its most skilled healers.

‘A man can die of many wounds,’ he murmured. Maquin was still unconscious, his breathing shallow. Alben cut away the prone warrior’s leather vest and linen shirt, revealing a dark wound above his hip. It pulsed blood rhythmically, with every beat of Maquin’s heart. Alben probed it, fingers pushing around the wound. Maquin stirred and groaned.

‘Knife or sword?’ Alben asked.

‘What?’ Fidele asked, eyes still fixed on Maquin’s face.

‘What made this wound – knife or sword? It will tell me how deep the wound is.’

‘Knife, I think. I’m not sure, it was so quick.’