Errant, heed me please. If you are indeed the god of the Letherii, deliver no surprises on that day. Please. Give us victory.

The column marched on, towards the ancient shore of a dead sea. Clouds were gathering on the horizon ahead. Rain was thrashing down on that salt-crusted bed of clay and silt. They would fight in a quagmire, where cavalry was useless, where no horse would be quick enough to outrun a wave of deadly magic. Where warriors and soldiers would lock weapons and die where they stood, until one side stood alone, triumphant.

Soon now, they would have done with it. Done with it all.

Since noon Redmask had driven his people hard, out onto the seabed, racing ahead of the rain-clouds. A league, then two, beneath searing sun and air growing febrile with the coming storm. He had then called a halt, but the activity did not cease, and Toc Anaster had watched, bemused at first and then in growing wonder and, finally, admiration, as the Awl warriors set down weapons, divested themselves of their armour, and joined with the elders and every other non-combatant in pulling free from the wagons the tents and every stretch of hide they could find.

And the wagons themselves were taken apart, broken down until virtually nothing remained but the huge wheels and theit axles, which were then used to transport the planks of wood. Hide and canvas were stretched out, pegged down, the stakes driven flush with the ground itself. Wooden walkways were constructed, each leading back to a single, centrally positioned wagon-bed that had been left intact and raised on legs of bundled spear-shafts to create a platform.

The canvas and hides stretched in rows, with squares behind each row, linked by flattened wicker walls that had been used for hut-frames. But no-one would sleep under cover this night. No, all that took shape here served but one purpose-the coming battle. The final battle.

Redmask intended a defence. He invited Bivatt and her army to close with him, and to do so the Letherii and the Piste Edur would need to march across open ground-Toc sat astride his horse, watching the frenzied preparations and occasionally glancing northwestward, to those closing stormclouds-open ground, then, that would be a sea of mud.

She might decide to wait. I would, if I were her. Wait until the rains had passed, until the ground hardened once again. But Toe suspected that she would not exercise such restraint. Redmask was trapped, true, but the Awl had their herds-thousands of beasts most of whom were now being slaughtered-so, Redmask could wait, his warriors well fed, whilst Bivatt and her army faced the threat of real starvation. She would need all that butchered meat, but to get to it she had to go through the Awl; she had to destroy her hated enemy.

Besides, she might be less dismayed than Redmask would think, come the day of battle. She has her mages, after all. Not as many as before, true, but still posing a significant threat-sufficient to win the day, in fact.

Redmask would have his warriors standing on those islands of dry ground. But such positions-with reserves on the squares behind them-offered no avenue of retreat. A final battle, then, the fates decided one way or the other, Was this what Redmask had planned? Hardly. Praedegar was a disaster.

Torrent rode up. No mask of paint again, a swath of red hives spanning his forehead. ‘The sea will live once more,’ he said.

‘Hardly,’ Toc replied.

‘The Letherii will drown nonetheless.’

‘Those tarps, Torrent, will not stay dry for long. And then there are the mages.’

‘Redmask has his Guardians for those cowards.’

‘Cowards?’ Toc asked, amused. ‘Because they wield sorcery instead of swords?’

‘And hide behind rows of soldiers, yes. They care nothing for glory. For honour.’

‘True: the only thing they care about is winning. Leaving them free to talk about honour and glory afterwards. The chief spoil of the victors, that privilege.’

‘You speak like one of them, Mezla. That is why I do not, trust you, and so I will remain at your side during the battle.’

‘My heart goes out to you-I am tasked with guarding the children, after all. We’ll be nowhere close to the fighting.’ Until the fighting comes to us, which it will.

‘I shall find my glory in slitting your miserable throat, Mezla, the moment you turn to run. 1 see the weakness in your soul; I have seen it all along. You are broken. You should have died with your soldiers.’

‘Probably. At least then I’d be spared the judgements of someone with barely a whisker on his spotty chin. Have you even lain with a woman yet, Torrent?’

The young warrior glowered for a moment, then slowly nodded. ‘It is said you are quick with your barbed arrows, Mezla.’

‘A metaphor, Torrent? I’m surprised at this turn to the poetic’

‘You have not listened to our songs, have you? You have made yourself deaf to the beauty of the Awl, and in your deafness you have blinded that last eye left to you. We are an ancient people, Mezla.’

‘Deaf, blind, too bad I’m not yet mute.’

‘You will be when I slit your throat.’

Well, Toc conceded, he had a point there.

Redmask had waited for this a long time. And no old man of the Renfayar with his damned secrets would stand poised to shatter everything. No, with his own hands Redmask had taken care of that, and he could still see in his mind that elder’s face, the bulging eyes, vessels bursting, the jutting tongue as the lined face turned blue, then a deathly shade of grey above his squeezing hands. That throat had been as nothing, thin as a reed, the cartilage crumpling like a papyrus scroll in his grip. And he had found himself unable to let go, long after the fool was dead.

Too many memories of his childhood had slithered into his hands, transforming his fingers into coiling serpents that seemed not satisfied with lifeless flesh in their grip, but sought that touch of cold that came long after the soul’s flight. Of course, there had been more to it than that. The elder had imagined himself Redmask’s master, his overseer to use the Letherii word, standing at the war leader’s shoulder, ever ready to draw breath and loose words that held terrible truths, truths that would destroy Redmask, would destroy any chance he had of leading the Awl to victory.

Yet now the time drew near. He would see Bivatt’s head on a spear. He would see mud and Letherii and Tiste Edur corpses in their thousands. Crows wheeling overhead, voicing delighted cries. And he would stand on the wooden platform, witness to it all. To his scaled Guardians, who had found him, had chosen him, rending mages limb from limb, scything through enemy lines-

And the face of the elder rose once more in his mind. He had revelled in that vision, at first, but now it had begun to haunt him. A face to greet his dreams; a face hinted at in every smear of stormcloud, the bruised grey and blue hues cold as iron filling the sky. He had thought himself rid of that fool and his cruel secrets, in that weighing look-like a father’s regard on a wayward son, as if nothing the child did could be good enough, could be Awl in the ways of the people as they had been and would always be.

As the work continued on all sides, Redmask mounted the platform. Cadaran whip at his belt. Rygtha axe slung from its leather straps. The weapons we were once born to, long ago. Is that not Awl enough? Am I not more Awl than any other among the Renfayar? Among the warriors gathered here? Do not look so at me, old man. You have not the right. You were never the man I have become-look at my Guardians!

Shall I tell you the tale, Father?

But no. You are dead. And I feel still your feeble neck in my hands-ah, an error. That detail belongs to the old man. Who died mysteriously in his tent. Last of the Renfayar elders, who knew, yes, knew well my father and all his kin, and the children they called their own.