Taim shrugged, making himself meek. He was reasonably confident he could kill these men if he had to, but he had no intention of picking a fight when there were so many more dangerous opponents abroad.

“We’ve no food to spare, if that’s what you’re looking for,” the third man muttered.

“I’m not hungry. I only wanted to rest for a time.”

The men remained suspicious, but seemed to conclude that he was not worth any further time or trouble. They disappeared into the farmhouse. Taim moved a little further away and leaned on the wall of a cattle pen. He could hear crashing from within the house. They would take whatever of value they could find, of course. The sound of that ransacking was in his ears as he watched the day’s second, brief battle.

The Black Road came out of the north in fragments. There was no line drawn up, no structure. First in a trickle, then a flood, warriors threw themselves against the Kilkry-Haig army assembling within sight of Kolkyre’s northern gate. There was little wind, and no sound reached Taim above the noise of wreckage being created in the farmhouse behind him. The companies of warriors were too far away to be anything more in his sight than smudges drifting up and against each other, merging and mixing. He watched the stain of their struggle swell and spread. Like thickening smoke from some far-off fire, more and more Black Road warriors flowed down the road and into the battle.

Taim turned away. He could guess the outcome and had no desire to witness it.

Twilight was descending. If there were White Owls, or even Hunt Inkallim, amongst the host spreading itself over Kilkry lands, darkness would offer more threat than protection. He meant to move on through the night.

He glanced up at the farmhouse, and saw a face at a window: one of the looters, staring out at him. Taim recognised the danger in that attention, and trotted off down into the valley of the Kyre.

Taim reached the river around the middle of the night. There was no moonlight. He had slowed to a walk, picking his careful way across the empty pastures of the valley floor. He heard the road that hugged the Kyre’s northern bank long before he saw any sign of it: the trundling of wheels on cobbles, the fraught voices of frightened, lost men.

As he drew closer, just as he began to hear the river itself, he almost walked into a group of men lying in the wet grass, wrapped in dark cloaks that rendered them all but invisible. One sprang up in his path, crying out and lunging at him. Taim knocked the man down and ran on before his comrades could rouse themselves.

The confusion on the road was dangerous. All but blind in the darkness, warriors and farmers and villagers were milling about. Almost all were heading upriver, away from Kolkyre, but many strayed from the road, stumbling into fields and the clumps of trees along the riverside. A great wagon, hauled by long-horned cattle, nearly crushed Taim when he had to duck into its path to avoid a horseman cantering recklessly along. He found himself caught up in a great throng of country folk who had fled their village. Some of them grasped at him, reaching out in hope or desperation, asking for news. He had none to give, and shrugged off their hands.

He left the road, and went tentatively onto a marshy bit of ground by the river. Water closed over his booted feet, but there was a huge tree stump and he sat there for a time, thinking. There was no crossing of the Kyre downstream, he knew, save the bridge at Kolkyre itself. That would be in Black Road hands by now. The only other bridge he had heard of was the one that led to Ive, and that must be the best part of a day’s walk up the valley. There would be ferry boats somewhere, but he did not know where. He briefly considered attempting to swim the river, but it was broad, and sounded to him powerful and fast. He had never been a strong swimmer. Reluctantly, he made his way along the riverside until he found a tree strong enough to hold his weight, and he wedged himself into the fork of a low branch to wait for dawn, and the clarity of daylight.

In the morning, Taim found more than he could have hoped for: forty or so Lannis men riding up the road. Only then, filled with relief at the sight of them, did he recognise how deeply he had slipped into despondency and uncertainty. Like a man tasting clean water for the first time in days, he embraced their leader, and went from man to man clasping hands and laughing. And they were as glad, to have the Captain of Anduran returned to them. They had no spare horses, but one man climbed up behind another and gave his own mount to Taim.

“Do you know where the rest of us are? What became of them?” Taim asked.

There were only shaken heads and downcast eyes in response. He had not expected more.

“Did you feel it, in the battle?” someone asked him. “There was a shadow across us, across every man’s spirit. Nothing of our own making.”

“I felt it,” Taim grunted. “It passed, though, didn’t it? You’re men still. You’ve swords still, and horses.”

“We do.”

“Good. We’ll make for Ive. Everyone will gather there, or at Donnish.”

“We’re to submit ourselves to the Bloodheir again, then?” grumbled one of the men.

Taim cowed him with a single fierce glare. “We’re to find another chance to face the Black Road, that’s what we’re to do. There’ll be no way in or out of Kolkyre by now. Whether we like it or not, it’ll be Haig that decides this war, so if you want to be a part of the decision that’s where we go.” And, he thought, it’ll be to Haig that Orisian must go, if he can. There was nowhere else now. If their Thane still lived, he must find his way to the Haig army sooner or later. And if he was no longer alive… Taim did not know the answer to that.

They followed the river up into the hills. Behind them, beyond obscuring ridges, pillars of smoke climbed into grey skies. There were fewer people on the road now. Those who did share it with them were mostly the slow ones: whole families, the sick and the aged.

There was a young girl, no more than eight or nine years old, sitting on the grass, holding a wailing baby in her arms. She watched them pass by. Tears had run streaks down through the dirt on her cheeks, but now she was silent; just watching, in defeated resignation. Taim reined in his horse and stared down at the girl. She looked back at him, without fear or hope, without any sign of emotion.

“Come,” he called down to her, bending down and holding out a hand.

She shuffled backwards across the grass. The baby was screaming, a sound of such undiluted distress that it cut Taim to the quick.

“We can carry you, if you’re too tired to walk,” he said.

The little girl shook her head and hugged the babe tighter against her chest.

“You shouldn’t stay here.” Taim’s men had passed him by now, riding on. “It might not be safe.”

“I’m waiting,” she said, so soft and shy that he barely caught it.

“Who for?” he asked. But she did not reply. She would not look at him any more. Taim left her, not knowing what else to do. Thinking of Jaen, and of Maira their daughter.

The river grew more turbulent. The rich pastures bordering it gave way to sparser, poorer grasslands and stretches of bare rock. The hills bulged up ever higher, and colder air blew around their haunches.

In the afternoon, the silhouettes of riders appeared above and behind Taim’s band. They kept pace for a time, paralleling the course of the road. A group of villagers trudging along a little way ahead saw them too, and began to run.

“Haig or Black Road?” one of the warriors near Taim wondered.

“I don’t know. Black Road, if I had to guess.”

The distant figures fell away beneath the ridgeline after a while. Taim picked up his pace. He looked back down the road. It wound its way off towards the coastal plain. There was bad weather out there, coming in from the sea: fat clouds and a wall of rain or sleet that hung like a curtain from the sky. All down the road’s winding path people were scattered, crawling their way up the valley. It could not be long, Taim knew, before the wolves of the Black Road descended upon this straggling flock.