Maquin dipped his fingers into black mud beside a stream, wiped streaks across his cheeks, rubbed the rest across the pommel and cross-guards of his sword and knives. The others were performing similar acts, going through their own rituals that reassured them before the prospect of battle. Maquin reached inside his leather jerkin and pulled out a piece of red velvet. Fidele had given it to him when they parted, cut from the hem of her dress.

‘Ready to move,’ Alben said close by. ‘We are to investigate the ruins. Our orders are to find out why the Vin Thalun are here. No killing.’ He shrugged. ‘Not until I say so.’ Men grinned around him.

They hate the Vin Thalun almost as much as I do.

Alben drew a circle in the mud with a stick. ‘This is Balara.’ He drew a smaller circle at its centre. ‘This is the heart of the fortress, a tower and foundations where we found the Vin Thalun fighting-pits.’

That made Maquin snarl, an involuntary reaction.

Another line from the outer wall to the tower. ‘This is the main route in, most likely the bulk of the Vin Thalun will be contained within this area.’ He drew a line circling the area between the gates and the central tower.

‘That’s all we know about the fortress.’ He shrugged. ‘We will search first. Perhaps that is all we’ll do. We may leave without drawing blood. That decision will be made later, and by me alone. Do you understand me?’

Alben looked around the half-circle of men, held each one’s gaze a few moments.

‘Good. Then let’s move.’

They followed Alben up the slope. The trees thinned and the men broke out into open meadow, the weak light of a new moon and stars gilding the hillside and ruin towering above them in silver.

The main gateway, where they had seen the wain enter, lay to the east. Alben led them in a wide loop, eventually ending up beneath the western stretch of crumbled and ruined wall.

As they climbed across huge boulder-sized blocks, a scattering of rock dislodged and fell, rattling loud in the dark. They paused – ready for an alarm to be raised – when none came, they went on.

They entered the ruins, slipping from building to building, the flicker of firelight ahead. They edged closer, fires burning in iron-wrought bowls edging a wide flagstoned street. At the end of it a broken tower loomed, an orange glow pulsing from a wide-open doorway at its base. Vin Thalun stood guard about the tower, four that Maquin could see. The wain they had seen arrive earlier was sitting in the shadows, the auroch nowhere to be seen.

Alben moved towards the tower, Maquin and the others following. They circled wide again, approaching the tower from the north side. Creeping up to one of the windows, Alben beckoned Maquin to join him.