Kam blinked in astonishment at the old man's speed. He trapped Corast's axe with his sword and lunged forward with a dagger in his left hand to skewer Corast's right shoulder. But despite his speed and undeniable skill, the numbers were against him. While Kam attacked from the right, Boren managed to clip the old man's left arm. As he recoiled, Boren smashed the glaive's weighted handle into his skull.

'Keep going,' Kam panted, shoving his companions on, not allowing himself to look at the fallen. They reached a narrow staircase, and found themselves ploughing into more soldiers. Someone -Kam didn't know if it was his boys or the enemy – knocked the only torch from its holder, plunging the place into sudden gloom. Cries of alarm and pain were shortly followed by the sounds of bodies crashing into each other and the clatter of weapons falling onto stone floors. The sudden spray of sparks skittered over their heads and caught in Boren's hair. Kam ducked and struggled to stay on his feet as Boren roared in pain and flailed around, trying to extinguish the smouldering sparks, while the group barrelled on down the stair.

At last the men from Siul stumbled into the lower guardroom, trampling two black-and-white-liveried Palace Guards under their feet and finishing the job with their clubs and maces. Two more were driven back against the rear wall of the guardroom by the onrush of fight-maddened men, and with no space to swing their swords they were battered to the floor and brutally dispatched.

Kam looked around. The dimly lit guardroom was low-ceilinged, barely an inch higher than him, with grimy grey walls and the mingled stench of shit and sweat and fear thick in the air. An unlit brazier stood in one corner. The only other door in the room opened onto a narrow corridor lined with cell doors at regular intervals.

'Find the keys,' he ordered as he headed towards the cells. Boren, Gren, Corast and Tol began to search the bodies as Kam called Duke Certinse's name, looking for the correct cell. A dozen voices replied, all calling for rescue, and he started to pound on each door in turn. He finally found the right door by listening for the only voice that sounded anything like a young duke's. He started fumbling with the unwieldy ring of rusty keys Boren had handed him.

He tugged the door open and shouted, 'We've got 'im! Back up those stairs, now.' He started checking the keys on the ring for one small enough to unfasten the duke's manacles, but they were all too big.

'Not that set,' Certinse croaked. 'Swordmaster Kerin has the key.'

'Who's that?'

'He was here just a few minutes earlier; I heard him. Blue tunic with a gold eagle.'

'Boren, key's on the man at the top of the stair,' Kam called, and Boren grunted and disappeared. Kam took a moment to examine the man he'd given up his life for. He didn't see much to impress: Duke Certinse was smaller than he'd imagined, a slender, smooth-cheeked young man who still managed to look haughty, even when manacled to a wall.

'What's your plan from here?' he asked.

Kam shrugged. 'Get out. This place is a maze – we'll find a window to slip out of and make for our horses.'

'That's the extent of your plan?' The duke sounded angry.

'Stop bitching,' Kam said calmly, 'we're not going to get that far, not if Lord Isak's as good as they say he is.'

As though in response, a flurry of shouts came from the staircase, immediately followed by the clash of swords.

'We're trapped.' Kam went to the door and saw his remaining comrades gathering at the foot of the staircase, their weapons at the ready. No one spoke, not even Petril Corast, who generally had something foolish on his lips. Kam could almost see the man's two children rolling their eyes every time Corast spoke – but they'd not he embarrassed by their da now. He was lined up with the rest, blood running freely from the wound in his shoulder. He'd transferred his axe to his left hand.

'See you in the Herald's Hall,' Kam said quietly.

Beside him, Boren nodded and roughly embraced his oldest friend before joining the others. Trying to fight off that awful sinking feeling in his gut, Kam walked over to one of the dead men and pulled a pair of short-swords from his swordbelt. He returned to the cell, dropped the swords at the duke's feet and used his axe to bash at the chains binding the young man to the wall. The links were thick and well-made, and even with Kam's sharp axe blade and the strength of desperation, it took too long to sever the first chain.

He paused and pulled a vial from his pocket. It was made of thick glass and bound with wire. 'Take this,' he said.

Duke Certinse looked at it in confusion. 'What is it?'

'Poison. You want to be sure they don't take you alive, then drink it. The swords are so you can die fighting; poison's in case you don't.'

Certinse gave a grim nod, suddenly looking less of a child. He prised out the wax stopper, lifted the vial as if in silent toast and downed the liquid. They both tried to ignore the sounds of men screaming in the guardroom as he fought back the urge to vomit up the poison.

Kam picked up his axe again, but before he could attend to the other chain, Certinse, stopped him. 'Arm's no good, it's not healed right.' He gestured at the swords and Kam handed them up to him. He grasped one in his manacled right hand, then hefted the other in his left.

Kam nodded approval and turned to face the door. He could hear Boren's roar, and recognised Tol's nasal cry of pain over the commotion.

'Hope your mother's as good as her word,' he said, raising his own glaive and stepping slightly away from Certinse to give them each room. 'If she's not, I'll haunt the Dark Place itself for the pair o' you.'

There was no time for a reply as the Ghosts charged in.

CHAPTER 8

Haipar needed no help to look desperate. No longer the proud mercenary, the shapeshifter, the leader; the years had finally caught up with her and now she was just a broken relict. Where once she had proudly smeared ash in her hair, now there was only grey, both natural and unnatural. Her limbs, once corded with hard muscle, were now as brittle as those of a starving refugee. Only her prominent nose and brow looked almost unchanged by their trek and an all-too-brief pregnancy. Ilumene had treated her kindly on the journey south, surprising even himself. Unlike that snivelling wretch Jackdaw, whom Ilumene had been glad to see head north with Venn, Haipar had been too fragile, too broken, to really incur Ilumene's contempt. It had been easy for the former member of the Narkang Brotherhood to restrain his vicious nature. If nothing else, King Emin had taught him the importance of self-control when on a mission.

Haipar's mind was fractured, unable to follow any thought to its conclusion, but something unconscious, primal, made her check the bundle in her arms. When she looked at the child, her own face lit up with wonder and fear. He looked back, the curl of a smile on his lips and shadows in his eyes – watching, always watching.

The crowd around her had swelled in the last hour. She had been one of the first to arrive in the big square in the city of Byora, just where the main highway led out of the quarter. Byora was the largest and most prosperous of the Circle City's four self-governed quarters that nestled around the huge shape of Blackfang Mountain.

Sipping disgustingly sweet tea from a dirty cup, Ilumene continued to watch his charge as she shielded her child from being buffeted as a sudden swell ran through the assembled beggars. They assembled there hoping – mostly in vain – for casual work of any sort. Ilumene had told Haipar to go there and there she'd gone, but she most likely had no idea why she waited there now. There was no recognition in her grey eyes, only bewilderment at a Land she no longer recognised.