The Black Army were here to stay.

Tapel's mother was starving, her arms growing thin and the skin of her cheeks tight like a drum. Tapel could now encircle her waist with one arm when he hugged her, and her golden hair, usually the colour of wheat in the summer, was showing more than a third grey. Tapel hadn't eaten a proper meal in as long as he could remember, and the gnawing in his stomach had become truly painful. He and his mother had long ago sold every item of jewellery, traded every last winter coat and pair of boots. Tapel knew Amelia was feeding him more than she took herself, but he couldn't help eating the food she put in front of him, and he felt guilt every time his stomach rumbled.

So,the day after the battle, Tapel did what all the other boys were doing: he went to the battlefield to search the corpses of the dead.

It was worse than he could ever have imagined. Much, much worse.

Corpses littered the field, interspersed with the familiar shapes of constructs, from charred woodmen to a shattered colossus, dwarfing the hill it had made its final resting place.

Tingaran legionnaires in black lay entangled with brown-clad Halrana pikemen. The green of the Alturan dead spotted the landscape like withered plants. The colour red was shared by all, although exposure to the air had oxidised the blood to a dark, evil shade.

The field stank, the worst smell Tapel had ever encountered. Men had voided their bowels, and had their guts ripped open by swords, their heads smashed and bodies broken. The carrion birds had started to feast, and as Tapel picked his way through the carnage, he disturbed a crow as it feasted on the matter in a Halrana soldier's skull.

Tapel wondered if the young man had left a family behind, and suddenly he was sick, falling to the earth and heaving up the contents of his stomach violently and painfully. He closed his eyes as his throat constricted, trying to use the darkness to blot out the visions of death and macabre destruction.

When the retching ceased and his body again came under his control, Tapel climbed back to his feet. He put his hand to his forehead, momentarily light-headed. He breathed slowly in, then out. He fixed his mind on his mother, and, his face set with determination, deliberately walked towards the next dead soldier he saw.

The dead legionnaire stared at Tapel with glazed eyes. The soldier's head was shaved and his face was flat and round. A tattoo decorated his cheek: the sun and star raj hada of Tingara.