Huffort grunted and shook his head. “Of course not.” He thought a moment, and there was a slight shift in his eyes. “I’ll see it done, if that’s your command.”

“It is,” Robbert said, firmly.

“Then we’ll be gone by morning, fear not.”

Robbert left him as quickly as he’d come. Spending any length of time with the man only ever served to put him in a foul mood. He purged himself over the following hours by helping to oversee the repairs to the ships, taking reports from scouts and scavengers as they returned from the cliffs above, distributing water and rations to the starving men aboard Wild Raven, checking on the horses and mules and watching the seas for signs of sails. With luck Lord Gullimer would be sighted by nightfall and he could give Lord Huffort a reprieve.

He wasn’t. The fog was too thick to see through, the rains too heavy, and none of the watchers came down from the cliffs telling Robbert that Orchard was near. All the same, the prince went to bed that night more hopeful than he’d been in a while. Another ship had come in, along with the loyal knight Sir Colyn Rowley, who had served beneath his father for many years, and with luck Lord Wilson Gullimer, and several hundred more men, would soon be joining him as well.

It would bring their total numbers up toward four thousand, perhaps a few more. It was hardly much of an army, but enough to make some difference. He smiled to think of how his brother would react to his return, and his lords bannermen and captains and knights. And when he slept that night, he dreamt of fighting beside Ray on the battlefield, back to back, as one, slaying both man and beast, fighting for the pride of their father, the great Rylian Lukar, as he watched on from the Hall of Green.

He was awoken by a hard shake to the shoulder.

Bernie Westermont loomed above him. His face was cast in a glare of anger. “What is it, Bern?” Robbert asked, voice cracked from sleep. He blinked and sat up and glanced outside through the window by his bed. It was dark still, and foggy, and the rain had not stopped falling. A thin line of colour marked the eastern horizon.

“Huffort,” the big knight said, making the name a curse.

Robbert frowned. “What’s he done now?”

“Come. You’d best see.”

Robbert threw on a pair of breeches and stepped outside, unclothed above the waist. The rain washed down across his agile, youthful frame. The light was so poor and fog so thick that he could barely make out the rest of the fleet, moored along their stone jetties. But it was clear enough that Landslide was gone.

And she was not the only one.

“He took them,” Bernie said. “The Stone Maiden and Mountain. Huffort took all his ships.”

“To find Gullimer?” Robbert asked, his head still heavy with sleep. It was a naive question, and he realised the truth at once.

Bernie Westermont said it for him. “He sailed north, Robb. Home. That traitorous bastard has abandoned us.”

41

The doomed were led out at dawn, a line of four men accused of murder and mutiny.

Outside the broken city walls, a stage had been erected, looking east toward the sunrise. Shards of pale light shone down through the clouds, and a soft cool rain was falling, sprinkling from the skies. It was almost pretty, Lythian thought. He closed a fist, knowing what he had to do.

One of the men was weeping, the youngest of them, a youth of only seventeen. He served Lord Barrow, and had been a stableboy in his former life before the muster called him to war. The lord himself stood at Lythian’s side, shaking his head. “This is foul, my lord. Foul. He is only a boy. He did not know what he was doing.”

He knew, Lythian thought. He was drawn along by the older men, but he knew. “No man can escape justice, Lord Barrow,” is all he said. He spoke in a strong, clear voice, standing tall and straight-backed, bedecked in his misting armour. From his shoulders trailed the cloak that marked him as the First Blade of Vandar, and from his hip glowed the great golden blade that only such a man could bear. He had decided to portray an image of total strength. No more doubt, he thought. No more weakness. Play the role with pride.

The young weeper was walking at the back. Before him went three others, two in the service of House Kindrick and one of the Rosetree men. They were part of a larger group, it had been discovered. There had been eight of them originally, though three had perished during the fighting with the prisoners, and another had died of his wounds a few days later.

Dead by their own steel, Lythian thought. As he had suspected, the men had conspired to gather weapons from the armoury, and throw them down upon a group of Agarathi men they had previously identified as violent. Men they had taunted for weeks, Lythian knew, mocking them and goading them and stirring them into a frenzy. It seemed that this was a long-term plan, involving more men than had likely been identified.

There are some out there now, the First Blade thought, looking across the crowds gathered upon the muddy plains below the stage. Hundreds had come out to watch, perhaps as many as a thousand, and many more were observing from the battlements and broken walls. Most wore hooded cloaks to shield themselves from the rains, shadowing their faces and their dark, hateful eyes. Lythian looked out at them, a fixed expression of defiance on his face. He wondered for a moment what would happen if they all attacked him at once. How many would I kill before they overwhelmed me? Fifty? A hundred? Might I slay them all?

The thought moved through him darkly. His jaw stiffened as he embraced it. There was a hate rising in him, approaching like a tide he could not seem to stop. It had crept upon him, day by day, fuelled by the whispers and the rumours and the dark glances of the men. Men, he thought bitterly. Roaches would be a better term for them. Too few of them were good and honourable, and some had started to leave. Amron had staunched that wound for a time, but the deserters had begun to slip away again, escaping through the breaches in the walls in ones and twos and little groups, up to a dozen disappearing each night.

He grimaced, gazing out, wondering which of the men would be gone by tomorrow. It was a leak he could not stop, a drip drip drip of deserting men driven to return home to their loved ones. If that was a motive he could understand, it was not one he was able to forgive. I will leave this gallows here, he thought. I’ll decree that any man caught trying to flee will get a length of rope as well…

“You’re going to regret this, Lindar,” sneered a voice. “You hear me. You kill those men and…”

“And what?” Lythian turned, cloak swaying, to look Lord Kindrick in the eye. He loomed over him. Lythian was no Amron Daecar, but he was no small man either, and in his armour he was grand as a god. “If I kill these men, then what will happen to me?”

Kindrick shrunk away at the force of his voice. His eyes moved aside like the frightened weasel he was. “It’ll…it’ll rest on your conscience, is all. These men…they didn’t do anything. They…”

“We have testimony from trusted men that says otherwise. These men plotted to cause a riot. They stole weapons from the armoury. Several of them walked into the square and armed the Agarathi prisoners. They armed them, my lord. That in itself is treason. And how many died as a result? How many, Kindrick? Answer me.”

“Six…sixteen, my lord.”

“Sixteen northmen. Four were their allies and deserved what they got. That leaves another twelve. A dozen men who had no part in these plans, and yet died as a result of them. And how many Agarathi were slain?” He waited. “How many?”

“I…I don’t know, my lord.” His voice was a squeak. “Sixty, or…”

“Ninety-four,” Lythian said. “It was butchery, sparked off by the men lined up before you. And you dare tell me I’ll regret this?” Lythian’s hand was on his blade, the knuckle-plates of his gauntlets crunching and grinding together. A mist pulsed and swirled up out of the golden scabbard, moving sharply, angrily. Kindrick drew back from him, inching away as a man does from a predator about to pounce, eyes lowered. Some of the men in the crowd nearby had heard, and were watching, but Lythian Lindar was past caring. He bore the greatest blade in all the world, and held one of its greatest offices. It no longer mattered to him what lesser lord worms like Kindrick and his men thought.

He turned away, showing the man his back. “Sir Guy. Get them noosed.”

Sir Guy Blenhard had command of the executions. The four plotters had been led beneath the gibbet, their heads covered in soaking black hoods. Before each of them a stool awaited. Good Guy gave a nod and his men began moving the prisoners forward, forcing them up, tightening nooses about their necks. The youngest one at the back was sobbing uncontrollably, piss leaking down his leg, begging for mercy. I should have muzzled them, Lythian thought. The other three men made not a sound.

Before long all of them were in place. It was time for the last words.

One by one, their hoods were pulled back, so they could observe the time-honoured custom. Lythian had warned them already not to make a show of it. “Die with dignity,” he’d said in the dungeon where the men were being kept. “Speak a prayer or tell your mother you’ll see her soon. Incite hate or anger and you’ll see a slower end.”

He wondered now if that threat would be heeded. The first man was the eldest, but still no older than thirty-five, a bull-shouldered blacksmith who’d hacked up half a dozen Agarathi with a massive axe he’d made. “Made it special,” he’d sneered at Lythian, when he confessed his part in the crime. “Nice edge for killing scum.”

I ought to have given him the same edge, Lythian thought. I should be doing this myself. That was the way of it among the Varin Knights. In the few occasions where treason had been committed in the ranks of the order, it was the First Blade who swung the sword. But these men weren’t Varin Knights, or knights at all. They weren’t men-at-arms or long-serving soldiers, but swineherds and farmhands and butchers out for blood who did not deserve to see their lives ended by the First Blade of Vandar.

So the rope it would be.

Sir Guy stood before the man. “Any last words?” he asked. “Speak them now, and go in peace.”

“Peace?” the blacksmith snorted. “I’ve seen men hanged before, Blenhard. Ain’t nothing peaceful about it. Just see it done. I’m proud of what I did and would do it again. So you kick that stool you snivelling runt. I’ve made my peace with that.”

“As you say.” Sir Guy kicked the stool. The man did not go in peace.

It took a while for him to stop wriggling, and all the while the youngest of the prisoners continued to sob and whimper, his legs so weak it looked like he might collapse. There was a certain cruelty to making him go last, but that was custom too. The four men had drawn lots and here they were. It just so happened that those lots had lined them up from oldest to youngest, but there was nothing Lythian could do about that. The gods are cruel, he only thought. This is their doing, not mine.

The second man’s hood was removed. He was thin as a spear, gaunt-faced and grim, the very vision of an Ironmoorer, and one of Kindrick’s men. Lythian had seen him guarding his lord by night sometimes, and walking in his retinue as he moved about the city. Sir Guy invited him to speak. “Any last words?” he asked, as he had the first. “Speak them now, and go in peace.”

The gaunt man sneered, the rope tight about his throat. “Was Vandar’s work we did. Work that our First Blade refuses to do himself.” He managed to gather a gob of spit, to send out in Lythian’s direction. “You should be ashamed of yourself, traitor. We all know what you did…”

Sir Guy Blenhard kicked the stool to shut him up and the man went jerking on his rope. His gaunt face reddened, eyes blaring, legs flailing. There was murmuring in the crowd.

We all know what you did.