“Just the parts of your harness you want most, if you face a couple of dozen boglins on a dark night,” muttered Ser George Brewes. His curses were reflected a hundred times—almost all the rouncys were gone and almost all the war horses, so that the archers and the men-at-arms alike were walking. Every surviving horse, including a dozen magnificent chargers, were harnessed to the baggage wagons without which they could not move at all.

Morgon Mortirmir walked on, working carefully on a couple of different invocations simultaneously. He knew that something had gone awry from the soul-screams of his fellow practitioners a day back. That haunted him. He knew those aethereal voices, and they were gone.

He thanked God, guiltily, that none of them were Tancreda Comnena, whose family would never have allowed their daughter out of the confines of the city. A wise choice.

In the security of his palace, he could see Thorn as a nimbus of green power almost due west. He could feel the comings and goings of other powers, and he was aware that in the last hours there had been some mighty shift in the currents and breezes of Power—something had been done, some great invocation cast, some massive working engendered.

As he walked in the real, he was building traps and fall-backs in the aethereal, for whatever had killed his peers.

The hilltops that flanked the road held life, but no thaumaturgy that he could detect—merely wandering flocks of sheep and goats, and some herdsmen who were chary of the armoured men in the defile.

When all the herdsmen vanished, Morgon sought Ser Milus.

“My lord, the herds are gone. They were there—above us, towards Mons Draconis, and now they are gone.”

Ser Milus was one of the few men besides wagoners and scouts still mounted. He put a fist in the middle of his back to ease the pain. “Son of a bitch,” he muttered. “What the hell?”

Mortirmir shook his head in the darkness. “I have no idea, my lord, but I think there are men moving on the ridges—perhaps worse than men. But my notion is that there are horsemen.”

Milus was grey in the moonlight, but eventually he summoned a few of his scouts—his own archer, Smoke, and Tippit and No Head.

“I’ll put it to you straight, boys,” he said. “I need you to ride up slope and see what the hell is happening.”

“Ambush?” No Head asked. He sounded interested.

Mortirmir shrugged, a useless motion in the darkness. “Men on horses, I believe.”

“You coming, smart boy?” Tippit asked.

Mortirmir stiffened his spine. “I’d be delighted,” he said.

Tippit spat. “Let’s get it done.”

The four men rode up the slope slowly, without speaking, fifteen paces between horses. They were hard to see even in the moonlight, and Mortirmir kept drifting, but always managed to find his way back into the line.