He rose to go and heard footsteps behind him, running into the distance.

A short cut led through to an iren, a trading area located in a courtyard of stone. As he stepped through a high and narrow alleyway, seemingly endless, his heart began to beat a little faster.

He quickened his pace.

He burst out onto the busy iren…

Then he felt as if his chest had exploded and its contents were spilling onto the cobbles. Except it hadn’t, he was still in one piece, he was still alive, but he gaped down at the wound as it expanded, at his shredded robes exposing his flesh to the cold, damp air.

A truculent pain shot through him, and he screamed, trying to look behind him, but through welling eyes saw only a silhouette heading back, bizarrely upwards, into the darkness. He stumbled forwards, his hands clutching for wet stones, then began to spit blood on the ground. People were now crowding around him, watching wide-eyed, pointing. Sensing his life fluid filling the cracks between cobbles, the blood beetles came and began to smother him, till his screams could be heard amplified between the high walls of the courtyard. One even scurried into his mouth, scraping eagerly at his gums and tongue. He bit down so he wouldn’t choke, split its shell in two, and spat it out, but he could still taste its ichors.

Councillor Ghuda was violently febrile.

Standing outside a bistro with a rumbling stomach and a small pie raised in one hand, Randur watched the unsteady figure shamble towards him. People scrambled in fear, men holding their women protectively, as glossy beetles began to pullulate around the victim’s gaping wound.

Randur stepped aside into an alley by a gallery, too stunned now to take a first bite of the pie. A small child screamed and turned to run, while the dying man – eyes wide and aghast, and coughing blood – stumbled on into the same small passageway.

He stared straight at Randur, hunching to his knees just paces away from him. He continued to howl as the insects ripped at his flesh, tossing it into the air in a fine pink mist. He fell forwards, and was silent.

Within moments, a banshee appeared in the passageway, as if she had been following the incident all this time. Cocooned in a shawl, her face was gaunt and striking against the untidy strands of jet-black hair. With a distant look in her eyes, she sucked in a deep breath, then began her keen, her mouth opening impossibly wide.

The sated blood beetles having scurried out of the passageway, a gathering crowd soon cast a shadow over the body. Randur, having lost his appetite, handed the pie to an urchin in filthy rags.

‘Welcome to Villjamur,’ Randur muttered.

TWO

It was the explosion that woke him, a bass shudder that seemed to shift the ground beneath him. Commander Brynd Lathraea opened his eyes, panting in the cold air, and looked up to realize that he was lying on the floor of a betula forest with dead twigs stabbing into his back. By his fingertips were wet knuckles of roots. He used them to help pull himself up, but his grip failed. He fell back, nauseous.

He tried to make sense of things.

Through the gaps in the trees, he watched a corkscrewing cloud of smoke, as branches swayed in the chilling wind. His ears were ringing. Strands of white hair blew across his face.

How had he got here?

The deck of a ship.

Then a blast.

He pushed himself upright, realizing how much his entire body hurt.

Next to him lay the remains of a wooden door, which he recognized as a hatch on his longship. His sabre and short-axe were nowhere to be seen. Had his knife remained in his boot? Yes – good.

Through his daze, thoughts gradually returned.

As a commander of the Night Guard he had sailed to the shore recently, following the Emperor’s useless orders. He had set out from Villiren, that sprawling mess of a trade city, their mission ensuring that Villjamur had a good supply of firegrain before the icy weather became too severe. He considered it a pointless task.

At the next attempt he managed to stand. Brynd then stumbled through the aphotic fagus forest, peering between its mottled bark for any sign of movement. His eyes caught subtleties, as he gripped branches, slipped on moss-laden rocks. At some distance on, he passed the disaggregated body of one of his Night Guard – and could tell it was Voren by the elaborate bow cast to one side. Dog-like black gheels lingered around the corpse, their triple tongues and double sets of eyes shifting in rhythmic twitches around the open wounds, in a ritual as old as the land itself. Bones crunched.

Shapes shifted in the far umbrage either side and he questioned their meaning.

He recognized the boundaries of the Kull fjord, hills towering on either side of it, then fading into the distance. This was Dalúk Point, a natural port, but one rarely heard of outside military circles. Its rocky shores led down several feet to where the deep saline waters began.

The horizon was gradually filled with black terns flying in arcs towards the north. A strange serenity, as ominous skies loomed over the snow-tipped tundra in the distance. Brynd noticed an arrangement of stones on one dark hillside, signifying an upsul. It meant the Aes tribe had already moved further west across the island, perhaps to reach their winter camps. They’d be staying there a long time.

Above the constant sound of water on stone, the screams came echoing back, along the shoreline.

He limped around a nook of the forest that leaned over the water.

‘Fuck.’

Two of his three longships had been totally destroyed. The smell of burning fuel was pungent. Tiny pyres floated on the water’s surface, shattered wood and cargo were strewn around the shoreline, once-proud sails had become burning rags, propped up by masts that were sinking even as he watched. Three Night Guardsmen floated face-down, their cloaks ballooning with trapped air. Several soldiers were still fighting on the shore. At that moment one of them fell under the incoming arrows. They were fighting in close combat, with dozens of clansmen already dead or dying at their feet.

More tribesmen kept streaming towards them from beneath the trees, axes in hand. One shambled across his line of vision, his half-severed left arm gripped in his right hand. Blood stained the man’s furs, war paint mixed with the sweat streaking down his face. Then an arrow exploded into the back of his head, shattering his skull.

Attempting to assess the situation, Brynd glanced across to the forest clearing nearest to the ships, where a few horses were still tethered to the trees.

As he shifted closer to the engagement, an arrow whipped across his face, and it skimmed across the stones to pierce the water. Following its origin, more figures were moving amongst the trees further up the shore, their axes glinting dully within the gloom.

He heaved an axe from a dead man’s head, and shambled through the shadows until he came alongside a tight cluster of four of his men fighting under the remnants of the third and surviving ship. They looked to him when they could, then followed his directions.

He didn’t recognize the attacking tribe’s origins, but they fought inefficiently. He cleaved one in the head, then snatched the man’s sword from his slackening grip. He pulled the axe free and threw it at another assailant. It wedged into his shoulder, and while the enemy was pinned in agony, Brynd rammed his sword through the front of his ribs. Warm blood poured onto his hands as Brynd tugged to free both weapons.

By now the remaining tribesmen were looking at him with wary fear – not for his fighting skills, but because of his colour.