“I was there,” he roared, in his “Lachlan for Aye” voice. “I was there when the Queen bore her son. I was there when the King died, killed by an assassin. Both of these things, I saw with my own ee’en. The Queen has appointed ministers. There are writs. The law functions. The Galles are beaten by now—I hope. And the Queen lives and breathes and has the King’s son by her side and at her breast, and any man who doubts, come and sing to my sword.”

Three thousand collective sighs. And then a cheer.

“Three cheers for the Queen!” Ser Ricar roared. “And the new King!”

“I didn’t know you could give a speech,” Sauce said mockingly when the cheers had finished.

Tom flicked her an equally mocking salute. “See you at Albinkirk,” he said.

At his back, Donald Dhu and all his tail roared, swallowed their last wine, and rode away—south. There wasn’t even a trail.

“South?” Ser John asked.

Sauce shrugged. “Let’s dig,” she said.

An hour later, a red-eyed Count Zac came in. At his back were thirty shattered Nordikaan guards on foundering horses.

Harald Derkensun fell to his knees trying to pull the Emperor from his horse, and all the guard were weeping.

Sauce was there in an instant, with Mag right behind her, but they were far, far too late.

The Emperor was dead.

“Our army is destroyed, and the Inn of Dorling lost,” Derkensun said. “All our camp. Our people. Gone.” He made a terrible noise in his throat. “I’d rather be dead.”

The Emperor’s face was as serene in death as it had always been in life.

“How’d—?” Ser Ricar began, but Ser John put a hand on his arm.

He went and held the Nordikaan for a moment. “All safe now,” he said. “We’ll beat them. And have our revenge.”

And the Nordikaans behind Derkensun nodded.

All night long, men came in. Some came in in detachments, like soldiers, riding tired horses but with their heads up—a full troop of city cavalry under a dukas, and twenty Vardariotes under a woman they called Lyka. But most were beaten men without weapons, or hope—men who had, in running, abandoned their wives and children to a horrific fate, and now had to live with their failure. There were men with wounds, and men who had abandoned friends to die. They brought fear and terror and self-loathing.

Ser John was an old, hard soldier, and he had Count Zac separate them from his own people by a wide margin. He sent them food and blankets and hot coals to make fires.

When morning came, he ignored their pleas and made them cut trees, and dig. He pushed his scouts as far north as they dared go, so far that they were in constant contact with the boglins and worse creatures suddenly loose across the hills.