When he saw Shield and Storm pounding across the open space he had cheered, screamed, exhorted them to greater speed, the voices of Swain and Sif mingling with his own.

If there had been any doubt in Haelan’s mind that Corban was the greatest hero the Banished Lands had ever known, that succession of events had confirmed it beyond all question. He’d fight anyone who dared to say differently.

And now the whole plain along the western wall boiled with battle.

‘We’re going to win,’ Swain was yelling, putting his two cubs back in the basket and leaping up and down.

Of course we are.

After Corban’s duel and escape from Jael’s shieldman, it seemed that victory was inevitable. He was only worried now about who might fall along the way.

Tahir is down there, fighting for me.

His eyes scanned the field, but it was so hard to make out individuals amongst the press and heave of battle. Giants were easy enough to follow, Balur One-Eye particularly, with his silver hair and black axe, swathes of blood consistently bursting around him, from this distance looking like droplets of dew on morning grass. And Corban he could see, still mounted, with Storm always close to him, leaping and tearing.

The cubs under his arms began to squirm so he put them back in the basket, stroking his favourite, a brindle bitch with a face as black as night.

He saw Jael’s banner flying in the centre of the battle, then it moved steadily northwards, a single rider breaking out from the heart of the battle, a steady motion towards the northern flank. Then the banner disappeared, the rider still visible, heading further and further out, men of Isiltir gathering in a great mass about him.

They are fleeing. Hope swelled in his chest, something telling him that the battle was coming to its last stages now.

Then he saw Jael, his white horsehair plume blowing in the wind, still upon his horse, a knot of warriors with him. They headed steadily towards the southern edge of the battlefield, reached the treeline, then stopped as a handful of giants stormed through them. Haelan gripped the battlement walls, knuckles whitening, praying, begging for Jael to fall. All was confusion, flesh and iron and blood merging in a chaotic explosion for a dozen heartbeats. A giant fell, of that Haelan was sure, and then figures were disappearing into the trees. Jael was nowhere to be seen.

From Haelan’s vantage-point it looked as if the whole battlefield paused for a moment, then rippled, like the death-spasm of a dying animal.

The trickle of those fleeing turned into a flood now, red-cloaks falling away from the mass of combat in tens and twenties, and then they were all fleeing, the warband of Drassil following, slaying with impunity.

Then a sudden thought struck Haelan.

Those men fleeing are men of Isiltir. My people.