‘Oh, that,’ said Gorlas, resuming his rocking motion once more, ‘I’ve changed my mind.’

One insult too many. I never learn.

Murillio felt his heart pounding. The scar of his last, near-fatal wounding seemed to be throbbing as if eager to reopen. He could feel blood pulsing down from his pierced shoulder muscle, could feel warm trickles running down the length of his upper arm to soak the cloth at his elbow.

‘Blood drawn,’ he repeated. ‘As you guessed, I am in no shape to duel beyond that, Gorlas. We were agreed, before a witness.’

Gorlas glanced over at his foreman. ‘Do you recall, precisely, what you heard?’

The old man shrugged. ‘Thought there was something about wounding…’

Gorlas frowned.

The foreman cleared his throat.’… but that’s all. A discussion, I think. I heard nothing, er, firmed up between you.’

Gorlas nodded. ‘Our witness speaks.’

A few hundred onlookers in the pit below were making restless sounds. Murillio wondered if Harllo was among them.

‘Ready yourself,’ Gorlas said. So, it was to be this way. A decade past Murillio would have been standing over this man’s corpse, regretful, of course, wishing it all could have been handled peacefully. And that was the luxury of days gone past, that cleaner world, while everything here, now, ever proved so… messy.

/ didn’t come here to die this day. I’d better do something about that. I need to survive this. For Harllo. He resumed his stance. Well, he was debilitated, enough to pretty much ensure that he would fight defensively, seeking only ripostes and perhaps a counterattack-taking a wound to deliver a death. All of that would be in Gorlas’s mind, would shape his tactics. Time, then, to surprise the bastard.

His step and lunge was elegant, a fluid forward motion rather quick for a man his age. Gorlas, caught on the forward tilt of his rocking, was forced to jump a half-step back, parrying hard and without precision. His riposte was wild and in-accurate, and Murillio caught it with a high parry of his own, following through with a second attack-the one he had wanted to count from the very first-a fully extended lunge straight for his opponent’s chest-heart or lungs, it didn’t matter which-

But somehow, impossibly, Gorlas had stepped close, inside and to one side of that lunge-his half-step back had not been accompanied by any shift in weight, simply a repositioning of his upper body, and this time his thrust was not at all wild.

Murillio caught a flash along the length of Daru steel, and then he could not breathe. Something was pouring down the front of his chest, and spurting up into his mouth.

He felt part of his throat tearing from the inside out as Gorlas slashed his blade free and stepped to the right.

Murillio twisted round to track him, but the motion lost all control, and he continued on, legs collapsing under him, and now he was lying on the stony ground.

The world darkened.

He heard Gorlas say something, possibly regretful, but probably not.

Oh, Harllo, I am so sorry. So sorry-

And the darkness closed in.

He was rocked momentarily awake by a kick to his face, but that pain quickly flushed away, along with everything else.

Gorlas Vidikas stood over Murillio’s corpse. ‘Get that carter to take the body back,’ he said to the foreman, bending down to clean his blade on the threadbare silk sleeve of his victim’s weapon arm. ‘Have him deliver it to the Phoenix Inn, rapier and all.’

From the pit below, people were cheering and clanging their tools like some ragtag mob of barbarians. Gorlas faced them and raised his weapon in salute. The cheering redoubled. He turned back to the foreman. ‘An extra tankard of ale for the crews tonight.’They will tost your name, Councillor!’

‘Oh, and have someone collect the boy for me’

‘It’s his shift in the tunnels, 1 think, but 1 can send someone to get him,’

‘Good, and they don’t have to be gentle about it, either. But make sure-nothing so bad he won’t recover. If they kill him, I will personally disembowel every one of them-make sure they understand.’

‘I will, Councillor.’ The foreman hesitated. ‘I never seen such skill, I never seen such skill-I thought he had you-’

‘I’m sure he thought so, too. Go find that carter, now.’

‘On my way, Councillor.’

‘Oh, and I’ll take that purse, so we’re clear.’

The foreman rushed over to deliver it. Feeling the bag’s weight for the first time, Gorlas raised his brows-a damned year’s wages for this foreman, right here-probably all Murillio had, cleaned right out. Three times as much as the interest this fool owed him. Then again, if the foreman had stopped to count out the right amount, intending to keep the rest, well, Gorlas would have two bodies to dispose of rather than just one, so maybe the old man wasn’t so stupid after all.

It had, Gorlas decided, been a good day.

And so the ox began its long journey back into the city, clumping along the cob-hied road, and in the cart’s bed lay the body of a man who might have been precipitous, who might indeed have been too old for such deadly ventures, but no one could say that his heart had not been in the right place. Nor could anyone speak of a lack of courage.

Raising a most grave question-if courage and heart are not enough, what is?

The ox could smell blood, and liked it not one bit. It was a smell that came with predators, with hunters, notions stirring the deepest parts of the beast’s brain. It could smell death as well, there in its wake, and no matter how many clumping steps it took, that smell did not diminish, and this it could not understand, but was resigned to none the less.

There was no room in the beast for grieving. The only sorrow it knew was for itself. So unlike its two-legged masters.

Flies swarmed, ever unquestioning, and the day’s light fell away.

Xx

He is unseen, one in a crowd whom none call

Do not slip past that forgettable face

Crawl not inside to find the unbidden rill

As it flows in dark horror from place to place

He is a common thing, in no way singular

Who lets no one inside the uneven steps

Down those eyes that drown the solitary star

We boldly share in these human depths

Not your brother, not anyone’s saviour

He will loom only closer to search your clothes

Push aside the feeble hand that seeks to stir

Compassion’s glow (the damp, dying rose)

He has plucked his garden down to bone

And picked every last bit of warm flesh

With fear like claws and nervous teeth when alone

He wanders this wasteland of cinder and ash

I watch in terror as he ascends our blessed throne

To lay down his cloak of shame like a shroud

And beckons us the illusion of a warm home

A sanctuary beneath his notice, one in a crowd

He finds his power in our indifference

Shredding the common to dispense with congress

No conjoined will to set against him in defiance

And one by one by one, he kills us

– A King Takes the Throne (carved on the Poet’s Wall, Royal Dungeons, Unta)

With a twist and a snarl, Shan turned on Lock. The huge white-coated beast did not flinch or scurry, hut simply loped away, tongue lolling as if in laughter. A short distance off, Pallid watched. Fangs still bared, Shan slipped off into the high grasses once more.

Baran, Blind, Rood and Gear had not slowed during this exchange-it had happened many times before, after all-and they continued on, in a vaguely crescent formation, Rood and Gear on the flanks. Antelope observed them from a rise off to the southwest-the barest tilt of a head from any of the Hounds and they would be off, fast as their bounding legs could take them, their hearts a frenzied drum-roll of bleak terror.