In fact, they had been struck; they had watched fifty old comrades immolate and scream to their horrible deaths.

Tapio sighed and looked west. The sky was blood orange at the base of the horizon, and the air was stifling and close, like an old house with the windows closed. There was hot ash falling from the sky.

“If we have lossst my lady Tamsssin, we are indeed doomed,” Tapio said.

“Tamsin is right here,” she said, kissing her love. She appeared as a beautiful mortal woman, in a red houplande with a gold belt of heavy plaques.

Men looked up.

“Lord Kerak is dead,” he said. “I saw his soul in the arms of Sister Amicia.”

No one spoke.

Tamsin bowed her head, and then raised it. Her fanged mouth opened and she sang like a minstrel, “The impossible is now everyday. I have called down fire from the sky, and I have seen an angel of the Lord, and she was the embodiment of a nursing sister named Amicia, and she took Kerak away to heaven. Or so it appeared to me. Is she the Lady Tar? Your confusing Virgin? Or now a God unto her own right?” Tamsin shrugged. “We live in a great tale. Let me say only what I saw. She told me that Gabriel has triumphed in the East; that the dragon Rhun is destroyed. And that we must protect Lissen Carak.”

Tapio looked hard at the magister. “A glowing angel of their god told you this, my love?” He was curious. Cynical, perhaps. “Lissen Carak? Not N’gara?”

“She said, ‘Save Lissen Carak . . . or not.’”

Tapio laughed without bitterness. “No ambiguity there, my love.”

Tamsin looked at the ground in weariness. “I would trust her,” she said simply.

Ser Gavin looked over the army, such as it was. “It is two hundred hard leagues to Lissen Carak,” he said. “Fifteen days. Without rest.”

Ser Gregario had come up, eyes red. “It’ll take us that long to unfuck all this,” he said. “And none of these lads and lasses will be any good in a fight for a long time.”

Tapio looked at the human, and looked, too, at Bill Redmede, who looked sixty years old and not thirty. Redmede nodded. He was having trouble hearing what the others were saying.

“If we retreat, N’gara will fall,” he said.

“Can’t you . . . hide it?” Gavin asked.

“No,” Tapio said. “Not from Asssh. Not anymore.”

“Three times we have stood, and three times been defeated,” Gavin said.

“This was no defeat,” Tamsin said. “Hear what I sing. We have dealt Ash a blow that may prove mortal.”