The Inn was empty. There were no people, and no animals—no cups, no plates, no glass in the cupboards. The whole of the great stone complex was so empty that it was as if it had been stripped by robbers, or emptied by a rapacious seller looking to cheat the buyers of his goods. It was uncanny, curiously malevolent, and it cheated two thousand men of their sack, their rape and their looting.

At the base of the hill, Thorn watched and, as he watched, Ash manifested—more swiftly than usual, and more fully, being almost solid to the touch.

“He’s clever, my kin,” Ash said, and spat. His saliva burned the grass. “As usual, he avoids conflict with his cunning and cheats me of a simple contest. He has taken his people elsewhere. The coward.”

“Where?” Thorn asked.

“How would I know?” Ash shrieked.

Thorn tried not to show his unease. “There is a rumour in camp that…” Thorn hesitated.

“That those fools, Treskaine and Loloth, were defeated? They were. Massacred.” Ash’s round, black eyes were themselves uncanny, and they rested on Thorn. “And their Outwallers betrayed them, for which they will pay. But you know who defeated them? My old friend Tapio.” Ash nodded, solemnly.

“I should have killed him,” Thorn said.

“You should have, but you lacked the ability, then.” Ash nodded again. “Not now.”

Thorn considered what the Faery Knight’s position implied. “He is on our flank.”

Ash laughed. “In the Wild, there is only here and now. Flank is a human concept, and thus, worthless.”

Thorn grunted. “Humans excel at war.”

Ash shook his black mane of hair. “No. That is a lie. As well say beavers build great cities.”

Thorn took a great breath, and let it out slowly. “What do you wish of us?”

Ash nodded, pleased. “Take this rabble and go to Albinkirk.”

Twenty Miles East of Dorling—Morgon Mortirmir

The moonlight made it possible to move, and Ser Milus had made it clear that the white banda would not halt until they reached Albinkirk, five days away. At least.

They’d left the road the first day, and tried to pass south and west, skirting the enemy. Instead, they were almost lost in the endless long green hills and valleys, all identical, all laid out in every direction so that no valley ran in the direction you expected, and scouts would climb to the top of one hill to find that they were merely at the base of another.

Most of the men-at-arms were stripped to mail shirts and breastplates, helmets and gauntlets. The rest were with the baggage, or simply left—a fortune in leg armour and war saddles abandoned on the high moors of the eastern Green Hills, for nesting mice and snakes.