Tom laughed. “Well, for me, I would na’ ha’e it any other way. A red sword and a bright sunset, that’s me,” he quipped, quoting a popular epic poem. He shrugged. “Ye’ll gi’ me somewhat ta make Sukey a great lady?”

Gabriel wondered if this wasn’t Tom putting his own dreams on Sukey’s head, but he smiled. “Tom, I’ll make you Grand Duke of the Moon if that’s what you want.”

Lachlan laughed. “Now that’s my cap’n,” he said.

Gabriel smiled at Tom. “Sukey is already a great lady,” he said. “The title won’t change her.” He raised an eyebrow. “But mayhap it should be a title for each of you? And not just a reward for you.”

Tom’s beliefs didn’t always run to equality of any kind. “Hoot, hoot,” he said thoughtfully. “Aye, mayhap. In point o’ fact, I can all but hear her shoutin’ at me now.”

Chapter Six

Chapter Six

The Adnacrags—Aneas Muriens

In a summer that had been the hardest of his life, entailing the loss of his ancestral lands, his mother and father’s death, constant warfare, wounds, fatigue, and hardship, the day after Ash’s attack was the hardest day Aneas had ever known.

There were dead people everywhere, and they had to be buried in the sodden, thin leaf mould and sandy soil, and legions of normal Adnacrag predators and carrion eaters gathered in the evening shadows to feast on the dead; Kevin Orley’s legions were not the immediate threat. Wolves and coyotes and ravens, and even raccoons, were.

But beyond the grim work of pulling the dead out of tree roots and high tree branches where lake and fire and sorcery had flung them; beyond the backbreaking labour of digging through the topsoil and lifting the endless small rocks to make graves, there was the work of reclaiming their supplies from wind and water and devastation; a ton of split peas soaking in the clear waters of the lake, acres of wet canvas drowned like linen counterfeit jellyfish on a storm-wracked beach.

And atop it all, there was the threat of attack from Orley; the need to complete the boats that lay, half finished or merely ribbed, floating atop the calm waters of the lake.

Aneas was everywhere, and so was Nita Qwan, and so was Irene. Looks-at-Clouds lay in a coma, wrapped in blankets, teeth chattering; Skas-a-gao sat by hir, working what healing he could. The changeling’s eyes were half open, skin pale as parchment, breathing very shallow.

Aneas was terrified that s/he would die. He had not examined his feelings for the changeling, but faced with hir death, he . . .