Uthren immediately galloped in pursuit, heedless of the score or more bleeding cuts to his flanks. As we drew close to the site of the abandoned struggle, the cause of our enemies’ flight became clear. The ducal banner of Rhianvel lay in the mud, torn and spattered with muck and blood. Lying beside it was the duke himself, pierced through the belly from front to back by a shattered lance. My grim satisfaction at the sight quickly turned to utter dismay upon seeing the body that lay alongside the fallen duke.

  With Uthren still intent on further slaughter, I was forced to abandon his back, landing heavily on my side but barely feeling it. Struggling to my feet, I splashed through red puddles towards the fallen figure. Viruhlis’s arm lay across his chest. I shoved it away, finding the breastplate beneath streaked with blood.

  “Bastard… got me in the armpit,” Wilhum sputtered, revealing red teeth as he grinned at me. “Stuck a lance… all the way through him… and still… he wasn’t done…”

  A shrill, panicked voice called out for a healer, a voice I only recognised as my own when my throat began to hurt. “Lie still,” I croaked as Wilhum made a vain effort to rise. A hasty inspection of his wound revealed it as deep and still gushing. Reaching for the duke’s fallen banner, I ripped a strip off to staunch the flow, packing it into the wound and provoking a pained shout from Wilhum.

  “I would prefer…” he groaned at me, “not to… die in the mud… I find it rather… undignified.”

  “You’re not fucking dying!” I snarled at him before resuming my shouted demands for a healer.

  “We’ll see to him,” Juhlina said, appearing at Wilhum’s side with Adlar in tow. At first glance, she looked to be in need of a healer herself, her face painted an unpleasant shade of reddish brown. Peering closer, I breathed in relief when it became apparent the blood wasn’t hers. Adlar was not so fortunate, his neck and jerkin stained red by a deep cut along his jawline.

  “Lord Scribe,” a soft but insistent voice said and I turned to see Sir Ehlbert’s tall form looming above. “The day is not done. Your soldiers await your orders.”

  He nodded to the fog-shrouded field to the north-east from where I could hear the steady tramp of marching feet. The Rhianvelan duke and his knights had been vanquished, but his infantry apparently remained undaunted. I could hear that dreadful, hated chant echoing through the haze: “We live for the Lady! We fight for the Lady…”

  My first impulse was to snap a dismissive insult at Ehlbert, Wilhum’s unfocused eyes and increasingly pale features being all that I could see in that moment. However, Juhlina had a remedy for my distraction.

  “Wake up!” she snapped, shoving her palm hard into my forehead. “You take care of this—” she jerked her head over her shoulder before moving to take hold of Wilhum’s arms “—we’ll take care of him.”

  I watched her and Adlar carry Wilhum away, his wound still leaking blood across the churned, body-littered field, before Ehlbert gave a pointed cough. “Rally your riders,” I told him. “Form up on the right flank. I’ll see to the infantry. Do you know where Lord Roulgarth is?”

  Ehlbert began to shake his head, then paused as the chants of our approaching foe abruptly shifted into discordant alarm. I could see nothing of the struggle, but the fog echoed with the sound of a great many whistling arrows shortly followed by the ugly clamour of combat.

  “I think I may have a notion of his whereabouts,” Ehlbert commented dryly.

  It took me a good deal longer than I liked to organise the Crown Host infantry into an assault line, shortening my temper and causing me to deliver more than a few cuffs to the most laggardly soldiers. My anger was ill aimed and unjustified, for they had just stood off an armoured charge without suffering a single break in their line. Many had sold their lives in doing so, and a good deal of the folk I harried into formation bore bleeding scars in evidence of the fierceness of the fighting. Still, the sight of Wilhum’s limp body loomed with terrible clarity in my mind and I was impatient to conclude this business. Fortunately, by the time I was able to order an advance, it transpired that Lord Roulgarth and the toalisch had done the work for us.

  I would learn later that the Caerith had managed to maintain a reasonably disciplined formation when approaching the Rhianvelan line from the rear. Veilisch archers skirmished ahead to exact a fearful toll with their bows, apparently unhampered by the fog. When the two lines clashed, however, all order disappeared and a general melee erupted, one that suited the toalisch perfectly. By the time the Crown Host line reached the scene only a few clusters of diehard Rhianvelans remained, each shrinking rapidly under the steady rain of Caerith arrows. Spying one particularly large knot of hold-outs nearby, I led two Crown Host companies towards it. These Rhianvelans were a resolute lot, still calling out their chant to the Anointed Lady, ranks solid as a wall. Before we could close with them, however, the Caerith lashed them with a veritable blizzard of arrows. The toalisch fell upon the thinned ranks of Rhianvelans en masse, hacking them down in very short order.

  I led the Crown Host on for another quarter-mile, finding only corpses and the crawling wounded. My mood was so fouled by worries over Wilhum that I raised no objection when soldiers paused to finish off these unfortunates with dagger or billhook. When at last we walked upon grassland bare of bodies, I called a halt. Victorious realisation spread through the ranks, heralding a cheer, ragged at first but soon building in volume until it echoed through the befogged landscape. As if in response, the mist finally began to thin, the occluded golden flare of the sun shimmering above. Those soldiers of devout leanings began to proclaim this as a sign of the Seraphiles’ favour. If so, I reflected sourly, we could have done with their assistance a good deal sooner.

  As the cheers wore on, Uthren came plodding out of the diminishing haze. His pelt was matted with blood but he held his head as high as ever. When I climbed on to his back, the acclaim of the Crown Host rose to yet greater volume. Pikes and billhooks stabbed the air and I heard my name chanted much as the Ascendant Host chanted Evadine’s. I almost hated them for it.

  Wilhum Dornmahl lay on a bed of furs beneath an awning raised atop the bluffs. The canvas snapped in the stiff wind and waves pounded the rocks below to spectacular effect. Wilhum had refused the various pain-banishing concoctions offered by the healer, irritably waving the fellow away and avowing a desire to meet his end with faculties undimmed. The tired, blood-spattered healer, a former Supplicant of the orthodox Covenant with many years’ service in wars uncounted, bore my raging invective with the stoicism common to his trade.

  “It’s a simple stabbing!” I hissed at him in a desperate whisper. “I’ve seen men rise from worse.”

  “A simple stabbing that severed two of his most vital vessels, my lord,” the healer replied, tone low and careful. “They lie deep in the body, beyond our reach and so cannot be stitched. I’m sorry.” He bowed, taking a backward step. “If you will excuse me, there are many souls in need of my care this night.”

  “Supplicant Delric could have saved him,” I said, anger mounting. “If you had a fraction of his skill—”

  “Leave the poor fellow alone… Alwyn,” Wilhum interrupted, his voice a thin rasp. “He’s needed… elsewhere.”

  The healer bowed again and pressed a small bottle into my hand. “Should the pain get worse,” he said, voice lowered to a whisper. “This will ease his passing.”

  I consigned the bottle to my pocket and slumped down at Wilhum’s side, watching Juhlina press a cloth to his forehead. I wasn’t sure what good it did but she appeared to be in need of something to do. Ayin apparently could find no such refuge in distraction and so wandered back and forth continually, sometimes folding her arms, sometimes not. The scouts and Wilhum’s riders, those who had survived the charge against the Rhianvelan knights, sat together a short way off, passing a bottle among them. By the looks of him, Adlar Spinner was already drunk, which at least spared him the pain of the long, stitched cut tracing along his jawline from ear to chin.

  “We won… I take it?” Wilhum said, the third time he had asked this question.

  “We did,” Juhlina told him. “A great victory. Thanks to you.”

  “The duke…” Wilhum’s gaze lost focus for a second before he blinked and spoke on. “I trust… they buried him with… all due honours?”

  Another question he had already asked. I couldn’t fathom why this concerned him so. “Yes,” I said, patting his forearm. “All due honours.” In fact, Leannor had ordered the traitorous duke’s head removed from his body and stuck on a pike before decreeing his lands, riches and titles forfeit to the Crown. Under the law, at least, the duchy of Rhianvel was now a possession of the Algathinet dynasty. Whether the folk who lived there would accept this was another question entirely, and not one I felt inclined to ponder. One war was enough, at present.

  “You remember… that day at Walvern Castle, Alwyn?” Wilhum asked, blinking his dulled eyes at me. “The day they brought the ram… against the walls?”

  “I remember,” I said.

  “I was… on the verge of running… you know.” He licked his lips as they formed a wry smile. “Had my horse saddled… and everything. If the walls had fallen—”

  “They didn’t,” I cut in. “And you would never have run.”

  He frowned, apparently about to argue the point, but I saw his grasp on the moment slip and he sank deeper into his furs. For a time, he drifted between torpor and wakefulness, his words become more slurred as he talked of shared times.

  “That mysterious Ascarlian brute… what did he called himself?”

  “Margnus Gruinskard,” I supplied. “The Tielwald.”

  “That’s him. Had a sense of something… not right about him… something arcane.”

  “More than just a sense. I’d say he was steeped in it. It’s how he seized Olversahl.”

  “Olversahl…” Wilhum huffed a humourless laugh. “That was quite a night… We saved her, may the Martyrs curse us for it.”

  “We didn’t know.”

  “Didn’t we?” For a second, clarity shone in the gaze he settled on me. “Or was it just… that we didn’t want to?”

  I could only return his stare, helpless in a barely contained welter of anger and guilt.

  “Well,” he said, blinking and turning away, “at least I’ll die… in some way redeemed. I hope the Seraphile noticed…” He trailed off, his attention drawn to a new arrival at this wake for the not yet dead. Desmena Lehville approached the clifftop with a stiff, hesitant gait, cloak wrapped tight against the wind. Her face, marred by the bruises and scratches of recent combat, was set in an inexpressive mask that bespoke rigid control.

  “You came,” Wilhum said, managing to raise a hand in greeting. “Thank you.”

  Desmena halted a few paces away, meeting Wilhum’s gaze with much the same fierce dislike she had always shown him. “My brother…” she began, pausing to cough before forcing the words out. “My brother would have wished me to be here.”

  “I suppose.” Wilhum beckoned her closer. “Come. I have… words for you.”

  Juhlina stepped back as Desmena moved to Wilhum’s side, her features betraying a distinct wariness now. I rose to depart, recognising this as a private conversation, but Wilhum gestured for me to stay. “I should like… a witness for this dying man’s… testament.”

  Turning back to Desmena, Wilhum took a long, shuddering breath. “I, Wilhum Dornmahl, disgraced and disinherited son of Lord Arther Dornmahl, do hereby make final testament. I wish it known that, as a boy, I did relate unto my father the whereabouts of one Wildar Redmaine, famed master of the arts martial, father to Aldric Redmaine and Desmena Lehville, and a former servant to my father’s household wanted for treason. By surreptitious means, I did follow Aldric and his sister to the house where their father, wounded in a recent skirmish, had concealed himself. Upon relating this information to my father, Master Redmaine was seized…” Wilhum paused, coughing again and staining his lips red. I began to proffer a flask of water, but he waved me away, continuing in a halting wet rasp. “And… under Crown law, he was put to death. I hoped…” a sob coloured Wilhum’s voice as he spoke on, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth “… by this act, I would win my father’s acclaim. In this… I was, as ever, disappointed. I know… both brother and sister suspected each other of… this act, so, by this testament… I set the truth before all.”

  He subsided into a gasping repose while Desmena stared in silence. “I never,” she said eventually, “once suspected my brother. But I always suspected you.”

  Wilhum’s lips shifted into a weak smile. “You were right…”

  Desmena let out an ominous growl, stepping towards the bed then halting when my sword scraped free of its sheath. “I’ll thank you to step back, my lady,” I said, levelling the blade at her throat.

  She glowered at me before fixing her blazing countenance upon Wilhum. “You utterly worthless, vile wretch of a man,” she grated. “How many times I pleaded with my brother to cut you away like the diseased limb you are. I shall rejoice at your death.” With that, she turned and strode away.

  “Actually,” Wilhum murmured, “she took it better… than I expected. You will… write it all down. Won’t you, Alwyn?”

  “If that’s your wish.” I reached out to grasp his hand, finding it cold, and soon to be colder still. “Though, my scholarly tendencies chafe at the prospect of recording a lie.” I smiled at the faint creasing of his brow. “It was Aldric, wasn’t it? He told your father where to find Redmaine. One beating too many, I suppose.”

  “Not just the beatings. Aldric… had grown old enough… to recognise that Redmaine’s interest in his daughter… was far from… natural. Strange, that so brave a soul, could be so… monstrous. But then—” he coughed out another laugh, blood speckling the blanket that covered him “—that’s a lesson… we both took too long… in learning, eh?”

  His body began to shake then, face flushing with what reserves of blood his body could summon. “I think,” he grunted, “I’ll take a taste… of that healer’s bottle… if I may.”

  I held it to his lips and he gulped it down to the last drop before subsiding, all but the last mite of strength seeping away. He lingered only for a short time, the light fading from his eyes until one final blossoming of life. The words that accompanied it were so faint I had to put my ear to his lips to catch them.

  “You know… you’ll have to kill her, don’t you? Even if… it costs… the life of your… son.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  We laid Wilhum to rest in a mass grave alongside the riders who had fallen in the charge. There were twelve in all. Orthodox Supplicants said words I barely heard after which we shovelled the earth to cover them. This was but one of several such graves dug that evening, although most were filled with Rhianvelan corpses. Ayin reckoned the Crown Host losses as near four hundred. Our enemies she put at near three thousand. The Caerith dead could not be counted as the toalisch had swiftly carried them away to the nearest woodland to lay them to rest among the trees. They, and much of the army, spent the succeeding night in muted repose. I had noted before that victorious armies tend to subside into morbid reflection once the initial rush of triumph fades. This quietude was not shared by the Paelith, however, who spent the evening clustered around large bonfires, voices raised in furious, shouted exhortations.

  “What are they celebrating?” I asked the Eithlisch. “I don’t remember seeing any of them on the field.” Drawn by curiosity, I had wandered close to the Paelith encampment, finding him standing alone at the edge of the firelight.

  “They’re not celebrating,” he said. “What you see here is a rite of shame.”

  Looking again at the many figures encircling the nearest bonfire, I saw that most had stripped either partially or fully naked. Also, all seemed to holding knives. As I watched, a Paelith warrior, teeth bared in an angry grimace, called out something in a dialect I didn’t fully comprehend. However, as the fellow ranted on I did catch words similar to the Caerith for “obligation” and “disgrace”. When his diatribe ended, the warrior promptly slashed a diagonal cut across his chest and fell to his knees.

  “He makes an oath to seek death in battle,” the Eithlisch explained. “They all do. To have arrived late to this field of slaughter is a great stain to their honour, one they may spend the rest of their lives seeking to wash clean.” From the grimness of his sculpted features, I divined he bore his own weight of guilt. The Caerith of the plains were still Caerith, after all.

  “Then,” I said, finding myself indifferent to his distress, “in future I trust they’ll deign to stay with the army.”

  His eyes narrowed at the rebuke evident in my tone but the expected caustic rejoinder failed to rise to his lips. Instead, he shifted to cast his gaze north. “Do you feel it, Alwyn Scribe?” he asked, voice soft and possessed of a worrying note of uncertainty. Whatever his faults, I hadn’t yet known the Eithlisch to lack surety.

  “Feel what?” I said, my own focus on the surrounding fields. As ever, the curse of the stone feather was inconstant and hadn’t yet to reveal any wandering dead, but I had no confidence I would escape this night without a visitation of some kind. Please, I implored the feather. Don’t let it be Wilhum…