The Forge Born strode purposefully between the great mounds, never pausing nor wasting a sidelong glance at the cairns. The pale grass was long, thin and weedy, flowing in spurts against the wind. The stones were the color of long years and between them the passages into the mounds gaped, at once hungry and gagging. How many such bleak places had this machine walked, uncaring? How many had its metal hands lain low with violence so that they must be placed within such houses of bones and dust? Questions Deglan could not answer. Questions not worth posing to the thing walking in front of him.

It finally stopped next to one of the largest barrows and seemed to be looking down at something. A smaller mound blocked Deglan’s view, but he made no effort to quicken his pace. Slowly, he passed the smaller mound and the object of the Forge Born’s attention came into view. Deglan rushed forward, cursing.

Faabar lay against the wall of the barrow, a filthy heap upon the grass. Even before Deglan reached him he knew the fomori was blind. His once magnificent horned head was titled at an odd angle against the wind, straining to listen, to smell. Deglan had his satchel off his shoulder on the run and slammed to a halt next to his friend.

Faabar’s face turned toward the movement. “I knew you would come.”

“Quiet now,” Deglan told him. He fumbled desperately around in his bag, never taking his eyes off the fomori, hoping that his hand would light upon something that could help. He had so little of use, and, for the first time in centuries, he hesitated. He did not know where to begin.

Faabar’s face was a ruin of stiff, blackened flesh, red raw and seeping from where it peeled away from his skull. A sticky film covered his cheeks, the last remnants of eyes boiled from their sockets. The leg previously injured by the plough had been brutalized into something unnatural to look upon. The rest of his body was covered in horrible burns, skin slick as glass in places, bubbled with blisters in others. But even Fire could not cauterize the wounds suffered from iron blades. They crisscrossed his chest in a dozen angry rends, blood leaking weakly. Only Red Caps were crazed enough to wield weapons as deadly to themselves as they were their enemies.

Deglan’s hand slowed to a halt within his bag, finally pulling something free. Faabar gave no reaction when the wet rag touched his brow. Deglan dabbed gently, uselessly.

“The goblins went south,” Faabar rasped. “Kederic can overtake them if he rides now…”

“Kederic betrayed us,” Deglan said flatly.

Faabar’s face searched blindly for answers.

“I never made the fort. Acwellen ambushed me in the plains…I was lucky. He knew about the Red Caps, of that I am certain.”

“Then the women…the children?”

“I do not know.”