‘High king,’ Ulfilas grumbled. ‘There has been no high king in the Banished Lands since Sokar and the fleet of Exiles set foot upon these shores.’

‘I must go,’ Jael snapped.

Ulfilas frowned. What hold does Nathair have over him?

‘High king is a tradition more than a reality, true,’ Jael said, calmer. ‘But Nathair is an ally. Without him I doubt that Isiltir would be mine, or in fact that I’d still be breathing. Or you, for that matter. It was a close thing, that day on the bridge. Nearly ended with our heads out there, not Gerda’s and her cronies.’

Ulfilas remembered. They had been hard pressed, close to breaking, and then he had seen the black ships on the river.

‘Aye. But still. We need him no longer. Best he keep his nose out of Isiltir’s affairs.’

Jael laughed. ‘Hah, you are a true patriot, Ulfilas. But I will not make more enemies when there are already so many of them to choose from. No, we will go to Mikil, and see what our high king has to say.’

A hand touched Ulfilas’ shoulder and he jumped, half-standing from his chair and reaching for his sword.

It was Dag, Jael’s huntsman, and rapidly becoming Jael’s spy-master, as well. He was clearly good at creeping.

‘Don’t do that,’ Ulfilas muttered.

‘You must come,’ Dag said to them both. ‘It is urgent.’

‘What is it?’ Ulfilas asked.

‘A messenger has come.’

‘It is the season for them, it would seem,’ Jael remarked. ‘What messenger?’

‘A giant. One of the Jotun. He has news.’

Jael stood without another word and followed Dag to the rear of the hall, Ulfilas following and gathering a dozen shieldmen along the way. He knew Jael’s talk of enemies was more than just paranoia.

They wound down a wide spiral staircase into a twilight world of flickering torches and damp, dripping walls. Dag led them through the bowels of Dun Kellen. Ulfilas glanced down a side corridor, recognized it as the one that led to the cell where Gramm’s grand-children were kept under guard.

Dag led them on until they stood before the thick iron-banded door that opened into the escape tunnel, the one that Haelan had fled through, leaving Maquin and Orgull to hold it. He remembered that sight, the two of them gore-spattered, a mound of the dead clogging the corridor. Dark stains still patched the cold stone.

Dag pulled a huge key from his belt and unlocked the door, opening it with a rusty creak. Jael and the others filed through, lighting torches from a burning sconce, only the echo of their feet and the sound of their breathing magnified in this ancient tunnel.

They walked a long time, the silence about them suffocating.

‘How did you come by those scars?’ Ulfilas asked Dag, more to break the oppressively monotonous silence than out of any real desire to know.