A kernel of thought had formed at the back of his mind and was growing, gathering speed, inexorable. An idea, or an image of one. There was something on the bridgeway ahead, a small celebratory decoration of sorts, coloured tassels waving in the wind. He looked up, sharply, up at the darkening sky and the approaching towers, white as washed bone, soaring from the elegant bridge. Strange things they were, with flared tops, odd balconies and projections.

Was that—?

‘Now I know what you’re thinking, Vedren, but we’ve stationed men—’

There, on the middle tower’s exterior: a dark shape, nestled in the winding crevices of its structure. Moving. Climbing. Moments from the projecting balcony overlooking the bridge’s span.

‘Vedren, honestly, listen … Vedren. Vedren! Where are you going! Come back! Your king commands— Vedren!’

The dun’s hooves threw sparks from the pale stone as he raced away.

***

It took far too long to find the tower’s entrance, a narrow doorway guarded by a couple of city watch. His screams to let him pass carried insufficient weight to move them, so he simply charged at them, bundling them out of the way with his good shoulder on dismounting. Then he was inside, pounding up the narrow stairway within, curling higher and deeper into the tower, only the slivers of pearly light from the stairwell’s slot windows for company. The surprised guards gave chase, but slowly. They couldn’t catch him. No one could catch him. Chel ran.

His breath echoed hoarse from the walls over the pounding of blood in his ears, each step sapping ever more of his frantic energy as he climbed above the bridge. He expected – hoped to hear a guard’s challenge at any moment, the frenzied clamour of his progress should have been audible long before he hove into view.

But the tower remained silent above him, empty but for his commotion and the echoes of plodding pursuit from below, only the widening windows giving any sense of progression. A grey glimpse of the bridge below showed the column’s advance, the first riders tramping grandly onto its re-laid white stone. Chel redoubled his pace, lungs burning, legs burning, the old stone of the steps flaking and crumbling beneath his boots.

It was almost a relief when he found the guard. The man lay face-down in a cramped hallway of ugly grey stone close to the tower’s summit, his back to a wide window arch. His throat had been carved, and the floor was dark and viscous from his oozing blood. Panting and dizzy from the climb, Chel leaned down and touched the man’s cheek. Cold, too cold for the recently deceased. From the volume of tacky fluid surrounding him, the man had likely been dead for hours.