“My Firewoman,” he said huskily, “I and all my men are yours, for as long as we live Tomorrow we will stand with you when you are made High Diviner. And afterwards we will carry your laws to every place, and see that they are enforced. In all that you do, you have our loyalty.”

I stared at him, dumbly. When I tried to thank him, my lips moved but no sound came. He smiled, took the Firelord’s sign from his neck, and hung it about mine. His fingers lingered a moment on my face; then he bowed, and went back to his soldiers. I watched them form into much-diminished ranks, and march off the plateau and down to Kasimarra. Only ten horses were left, and those were led away. Someone – Laken, I think – took my arm, and told me to come away. I shook my head, and was left alone.

I went down onto the battlefield, among the dead and dying and those who grieved for them. The wounded were being laid on stretchers and blankets and carried back to Kasimarra to the surgeons there, to face more horror. I glimpsed some of the men as they were taken away. They had appalling injuries. A man on a stretcher was carried past me, close, and I felt waves of despair and torment from him. I glanced at his face; it was covered in blood, unrecognisable. One leg was severed to the bone; blood pulsed from the wound, and dripped through the stretcher to the ground. Impulsively I reached out, and his bearers stopped. I touched his arm, his cold hand. It was slippery with blood. Feelings tore across me – dark, powerful feelings of earth spinning and rock on fire. I was drawn down, deep down, into the force and soul of him. I released his hand and drew back, shocked, knowing it was Zune.

I bent my head to his. “Yours will be a firelord’s funeral,” I said, “because he chose you first; and only other men at war, and fate, chose me.”

His hand moved a little, touched mine, then they bore him away. I was told later that he died just outside the walls of Kasimarra, below the high road to the Firelord’s door.

After a while I realised that I stood alone. The field was abandoned, stark and desolate under a deepening sky. Vultures hung there, swooping on the corpses of the horses, and on the remains of human agony. The air stank of death. I looked towards Kasimarra, and saw a fearsome thing. The sky beyond was streaked with red. The highest towers of the temple were stained with that terrible colour, and it touched the mountains on the far horizon, tainting them the shade of blood.