He caught the sudden attention from his horse — the ears flicking forward — and looked up to see a small figure on the track ahead. A boy, filthy with mud, standing as if waiting for him.

Perhaps some brat from the Deniers said to be living in these hills. Scowling, Renth gestured the boy from his path as he drew closer.

But the boy remained where he was, in the centre of the road.

‘What is this?’ Renth demanded, reining in. ‘Do you wish to be run down? Get away!’

‘I am named Orfantal,’ said the boy, ‘of the House Korlas, and I claim the right of protection.’

‘Highborn?’ Renth snorted. ‘That I doubt.’

‘I was being escorted to the Citadel,’ the boy said. ‘But we were waylaid. Everyone else died.’

‘A highborn would be better protected than-’ He caught a flicker from the boy’s eyes and then something punched through the chain shirt he was wearing, stabbing under his right arm. Sudden cold slid between his ribs, from which fire erupted. A hand took hold of his weapon belt and dragged him down from the saddle. Flailing, trying to push away from that blade buried in him, Renth fell to the ground.

He couldn’t speak. Strength left him in a rush. He stared up into the face of an old man, a face twisted with venom, though the eyes, fixed on his own, were empty as pits into the Abyss itself.

‘For Haral,’ he heard the man say, twisting the blade before tugging it back out.

The effort jolted Renth’s body, but the motion seemed to have nothing to do with him. Haral? I know no one named Haral. He wanted to tell the man that. He wanted to explain the mistake that had been made, but nothing came from his mouth except blood. Hot, tasting of the iron that had taken his life. Bewildered and hurt, he closed his eyes for the last time.

Orfantal stared in horror, and when he saw Gripp spit into the dead man’s face, coldness filled his insides, and he knew it for the flood of fear. The old man had said they needed a horse. Because they were being hunted and people wanted to kill them both.

They’d seen the rider coming up the road, and Gripp had sent him out after telling him to say the things he had said.

Orfantal thought they were going to steal the horse at sword point, since they had no coin. But they would one day pay the man back, even give him a new horse, or two. They would make it right.

Now he watched the old man rise from the body, using the dead rider’s cloak to clean the blood from his dagger. The horse had moved off a short distance and now stood trembling in the ditch. Murmuring under his breath, Gripp approached the animal and moments later held the reins. He faced Orfantal. ‘Now we ride to Kharkanas.’

He scowled at whatever he saw in Orfantal’s face. ‘He was Legion and it was Legion that attacked us. They’re the enemy now, hostage. We’re in a civil war — do you understand me?’

He nodded, though he didn’t — he didn’t understand anything any more.

‘I ain’t hiding the body,’ Gripp said. ‘I want them to find it. I want them to know. More than that, I want them to know it was Gripp Galas who did this, and it’s Gripp Galas who’ll come for them.’ He had drawn his knife with these words and now he handed Orfantal the horse’s reins and limped back to the corpse.

He hacked off the head. Blood poured on to the dusty road. Gripp then carved his initials on the forehead. Once this was done he lifted the head by the hair and flung it on to the centre of the road.

After using the cloak again to clean the knife he re-joined Orfantal. ‘Now, let me get up in the saddle before you — this knee is killing me.’

All the heroes are dead.

I am lost.

We are all lost.

The hand that reached down to pull Orfantal up was red, and the morning air filled with the smell of iron.

PART THREE

The proofs of your ambition

ELEVEN

On all sides Arathan saw desolation. Beneath a colourless sky, houses huddled in their own ruin, and to look upon them was to draw inside all the details of failure, until they clogged his thoughts like greasy dust. Between the scattered buildings, low, smoke-blackened walls of stone rose from scorched grasses like smeared teeth. He weathered their skeletal grimaces as he hunched in the saddle, Besra plodding beneath him. The walls were without any order, and none of the haphazard enclosures they made held livestock.

This was nothing like any village he had seen. Trapped between walls as if snared in a giant web, the houses were far apart, defying the notion of streets. They refused to face one another and there was something shameful in this unwilling regard, as if community offered no gifts and necessity was cause for resentment. Most doorways were without doors and the blackness they framed seemed strangely solid; even in surrender something remained that was impenetrable, mystifying. They did not invite inside with the lure of curiosity; he felt pushed away, and whatever remained in the hidden rooms, behind shuttered windows and beneath sagging ceilings, was a secret tale written in wreckage.