But the Dark Sun was no casual enemy, and he stood in a place of power surrounded by friends. And he had made Thorn blind, as he did on a regular basis. Carefully, with the forced calm that, in a mere man, would have involved the gritting of teeth, Thorn mended the small gap in the aether made by the calling of his name, and went back to crafting his working.

But his patience had been interrupted and his rage—Thorn thought dimly around the black hole in his memory that once he had been against rage—flowed out. Some of the rage he funnelled into his working against Ghause—what better revenge? But still he felt that the Dark Sun made him small, and he hated.

And so, without further thought, he acted. A raid was redirected. A sentry was killed. A warden—a daemon lord, as men would call him—was suborned, his sense of reality undermined and conquered.

Try that, mortal man, Thorn thought, and went back to his casting.

In doing so, like a bird disturbed in making a spring nest, he dropped a twig. But consumed by rage and hate, he didn’t notice.

“Attacked Lissen Carak, and we beat him. He made a dozen mistakes to every one we made—eh, Tom?” Gabriel smiled.

The giant Hillman shrugged. “Never heard you admit we made any mistakes at all.”

Ser Gavin chose to lean against the bar on the other side. “Imagine how Jehan would tell this tale if he was here,” he said.

“Then it would be nothing but my mistakes,” Gabriel said, but with every other man and woman in red, he raised his cup and drank.

“Any road, we beat him,” Tom said. “But it wasn’t no Chaluns, was it? Nor a Battle of Chevin.” Both battles—a thousand years and more apart—had been glorious and costly victories of the forces of men over the Wild.

Gabriel shrugged. “No—it was more like a skirmish. We won a fight in the woods, and then another around the fortress. But we didn’t kill enough boglins to change anything.” He shrugged. “We didn’t kill Plangere or change his mind.” He looked around. “Still—we’re not dead. Round one to us. Eh?”

Bad Tom raised his mug and drank.

“In summer we rode east to the Empire. To Morea.”

“That’s more like it,” said the Keeper.

“It’s a tangled thread. The Emperor wanted to hire us, but we never knew what for, because by the time we heard, he’d been taken captive and his daughter Irene was on the throne. And Duke Andronicus was trying to take the city.”