Near the castle he stooped at the banks of the River Wye and opened the flask of mist King Orden had given him. He struggled to hold it as fierce winds howled from the bottle’s neck.

By opening the flask over water, he’d doubled the amount of mist it normally would give. So he stoppered the bottle when it was still half-full.

Yet as the smell of sea fog swept across the little valleys around Castle Sylvarresta, Borenson tasted the salt in the air and thought of home. He dreamt how it would be to take Myrrima back to his new manor at Drewverry March. He knew the estate—a fine manor, with a hearth in the master bedroom.

He quickly drove such thoughts from his mind, ordered his archers to string their bows and charge through the dawn woods. Five minutes later, his men surprised the nomen, sleeping in trees. Arrows flew; nomen dropped like black fruit from the oaks of the Dunnwood—some of them dead, some seeking the safety of the castle.

His men thundered and screamed across the downs, herding nomen before them, a great mass of dark fur, snarling fangs, red eyes blazing with fear and rage.

Borenson always laughed in battle, he was told, though he seldom noticed it. It was an affectation he’d learned young, when Poll the squire used to beat him. The older boy had always laughed when he dished out punishment, and as Borenson grew old enough to mete out some retribution, he’d taken to laughing, too. It terrified some foes, angered others. Either way, it caused his opponents to make mistakes while his comrades took heart.

Thus he found himself in the midst of the plain, in a thick fog, surrounded by a dozen nomen. The creatures hissed and roared.

He put his warhammer to work, parried blows with his shield, called on his horse to kick and paw the air, clearing away attackers.

Lost in the rhythmic rise and fall of the warhammer, he was surprised when a great wall of flames shot through the fog to his left.

He shouted for his horse to retreat, to run for its life. It was a force stallion, after all, able to outrace the wind.

But then the wall of flame veered, stretched out tendrils to grasp them all, like some living monster groping for them. The nomen saw their own deaths racing toward them, and one yanked Borenson’s foot, trying to pull him from his mount, so that they might die in one another’s embrace.

He hacked at the creature with his warhammer, realizing that he might die, that he might never deliver the message King Orden had asked him to bear to Raj Ahten. He planted his warhammer in the noman’s face, kicked the creature away, and his horse lunged through the mist.