Bivatt said nothing. The merchant no doubt had skill with numbers-his claim to talent. And she was an officer in the Letherii Army, and could well gauge the likely complement of each enormous craft without his help. A hundred, give or take twenty.

‘Preda?’

‘What?’

The merchant gestured helplessly. ‘These canoes.’ He waved up the beach, then down. ‘There must be…’ And t hen he was at a loss for words.

She well understood him.

Yes. Rows upon rows, all drawn up to this forbidding shore. Drene, the nearest city of the kingdom, was three weeks away, to the southwest. Directly south of here was the land of the Awl’dan, and of the tribes’ seasonal rounds with their huge herds virtually all was known. The Letherii were in the process of conquering them, after all. There had been no report of anything like this.

Thus. Not long ago, a fleet arrived upon this shore. Whereupon everyone had disembarked, taking all they had with them, and then, presumably, set off inland.

There should have been signs, rumours, a reverberation among the Awl at the very least. We should have heard about it.

But they hadn’t. The foreign invaders had simply… disappeared.

Not possible. How can it be? She scanned the rows once again, as if hoping that some fundamental detail would reveal itself, would ease the hammering of her heart and the leaden chill of her limbs.

‘Preda…’

Yes. One hundred per craft. And here before us… stacked four, five deep-what? Four, maybe five thousand?

The north shoreline was a mass of grey-wooded war canoes, for almost as far as she could see to the west and to the east. Drawn up. Abandoned. Filling the shore like a toppled forest.

‘Upwards of a half-million,’ the merchant said. ‘That is my estimate. Preda, where in the Errant’s name did they all go?’

She scowled. ‘Kick that mage nest of yours, Letur Anict. Make them earn their exorbitant fees. The king needs to know. Every detail. Everything.’

‘At once,’ the man said.

While she would do the same with the Ceda’s squad of acolytes. The redundancy was necessary. Without the presence of Kuru Qan’s chosen students, she would never learn all that Letur Anict held back on his final report, would never be able to distil the truths from the half-truths, the outright lies. A perennial problem with hiring private contractors-they had their own interests, after all, and loyalty to the crown was, for creatures like Letur Anict, the new Factor of Drene, always secondary.

She began looking for a way down onto the beach. Bivatt wanted a closer look at these canoes, especially since it seemed that sections of their prows had been dismantled. Which is an odd thing to do. Yet, a manageable mystery, one I can deal with and so not think about all the rest.

‘Upwards of a half’million.’

Errant’s blessing, who is now among us?

The Awl’dan, following the Edur conquest

The wolves had come, then gone, and where corpses had been dragged out from the solid press atop the hilltop-where the unknown soldiers had made their last stand-the signs of their feeding were evident, and this detail remained with the lone rider as he walked his horse amidst the motionless, sprawled bodies. Such pillaging of the dead was… unusual. The dun-furred wolves of this plain were as opportunistic as any other predator on the Awl’dan, of course. Even so, long experience with humans should have sent the beasts fleeing at the first sour scent, even if it was commingled with that of spilled blood. What, then, had drawn them to this silent battlefield?

The lone rider, face hidden behind a crimson scaled mask, drew rein near the base of the low hill. His horse was dying, racked with shivers; before the day’s end the man would be walking. As he was breaking camp this dawn, a horn-nosed snake had nipped the horse as it fed on a tuft of sliver-stem grasses at the edge of a gully. The poison was slow but inevitable, and could not be neutralized by any of the herbs and medicines the man carried. The loss was regrettable but not disastrous, since he had not been travelling in haste.

Ravens circled overhead, yet none descended-nor had his arrival stirred them from this feast; indeed, it had been the sight of them, wheeling above this hill, that had guided him to this place. Their cries were infrequent, strangely muted, almost plaintive.

The Drene legions had taken away their dead, leaving naught but their victims to feed the grasses of the plain. The morning’s frost still mapped glistening patterns on death-dark skin, but the melt had already begun, and it seemed to him that these dead soldiers now wept, from stilled faces, from open eyes, from mortal wounds.

Rising on his stirrups, he scanned the horizon-as much of it as he could see-seeking sight of his two companions, but the dread creatures had yet to return from their hunt, and he wondered if they had found a new, more inviting trail somewhere to the west-the Letherii soldiers of Drene, marching triumphant and glutted back to their city. If so, then there would be slaughter on this day. The notion of vengeance, however, was incidental. His companions were indifferent to such sentiments. They killed for pleasure, as far as he could tell. Thus, the annihilation of the Drene, and any vengeance that could be ascribed to the deed existed only in his own mind. The distinction was important.

Even so, a satisfying conceit.

Yet, these victims here were strangers, these soldiers in their grey and black uniforms. Stripped now of weapons and armour, standards taken as trophies, their presence here in the Awl’dan-in the heart of the rider’s homeland-was perturbing.

He knew the invading Letherii, after all. The numerous legions with their peculiar names and fierce rivalries; he knew as well the fearless cavalry of the Bluerose. And the still-free kingdoms and territories bordering the Awl’dan, the rival D’rhasilhani, the Keryn, the Bolkando Kingdom and the Saphinand State-he had treated with or crossed blades with them all, years ago, and none were as these soldiers here.

Pale-skinned, hair the colour of straw or red as rust. Eyes of blue or grey. And… so many women.

His gaze settled upon one such soldier, a woman near the hill’s summit. Mangled by sorcery, her armour melded with the twisted flesh-there were sigils visible on that armour…

Dismounting, he ascended the slope, picking his way round bodies, moccasins skidding on blood-soaked mud, until lie crouched down at her side.

Paint on the blackened bronze hauberk. Wolf heads, a I pair. One was white-furred and one-eyed, the other furred silver and black. A sigil he had not seen before.

Strangers indeed.

Foreigners. Here, in the land of his heart.

Behind the mask, he scowled. Gone. Too long. Am I now the stranger?

Heavy drumbeats reverberated through the ground heneath his feet. He straightened. His companions were returning.

So, no vengeance after all.

Well, there was time yet.

The mournful howl of wolves had awakened him this morning, their calls the first to draw him here, to this place, as if they sought a witness, as if indeed they had summoned him. While their cries had urged him on, he had not caught sight of the beasts, not once.

The wolves had fed, however, some time this morning. Dragging bodies from the press.

His steps slowed as he made his way down the slope, slowed until he stood, his breath drawn in and held as he looked more closely at the dead soldiers on all sides.

The wolves have fed. But not as wolves do… not like… like this.

Chests torn open, ribs jutting… they had devoured hearts. Nothing else. Just the hearts.

The drumbeats were louder now, closer, the rake of talons hissing through grass. Overhead, the ravens, screaming, fled in all directions.