Soon they were out of the town and into the long grass that undulated all the way to the Sarva forest. A breeze off the bay soughed through the grass. Maquin was sweating when they reached the first trees of the forest. They paused here, drank from water skins and rested a few moments. Maquin looked back, the lights from Ripa’s walls and tower twinkling like starlight in the distance. He thought of Fidele in that tower, remembered their parting, could still taste her lips.

I feel alive again, as if I’ve woken from a long sleep. From a nightmare. He grinned again. He found he’d been doing that a lot since he’d woken from his fever. Although in this new world some of the monsters from my nightmare have followed me. He thought of Lykos, a dark rage bubbling up from the place where it always simmered deep within him, growing as he thought of the pain the Vin Thalun had brought Fidele.

Alben put a hand on his shoulder and he had to stop himself reaching for a knife.

‘You’ll see her again,’ Alben whispered to him, too quiet for anyone else to overhear.

‘How far to Balara?’ Maquin asked.

‘Half a day’s ride. So for us a day and a half of hard walking.’

‘We’d best be off, then,’ Maquin said.

‘Aye. Fidele tells me you’re accustomed to forests.’

‘You could say that. I served with the Gadrai in Forn.’

‘Well then, join me at the front, and let’s see if we can make Balara in a day.’

With that they set off into the forest, the trees engulfing them like a dark cloak.

‘There it is,’ Alben said, pointing. Balara was visible through a gap in the trees, a crumbling stone ruin built upon a tree-shrouded hilltop by ancient giants.

In another lifetime, when the world was a different place.

It was a little past dawn, sunrise gleaming upon the eastern wall of the ancient fortress. All eight of them stood and stared for a while. Maquin saw a wain slowly roll up a track to the east, pulled by auroch, six Vin Thalun riding with it. They were not good horsemen. No one said a word as the wain and riders disappeared within the broken archway of what had once been the grand entrance to the fortress.

‘We didn’t come all this way for nothing, then,’ Alben murmured.

They’d near enough run the whole way, taking them just over a day. Maquin’s body ached in a thousand places, but it felt good to be out in the wide open, no walls, only trees and sky. ‘Get some sleep,’ Alben said to them all. ‘I’ll take first watch. We’ll move at sunset.’