“They’re not Fireborn,” Emeric said. “They’re dragons.” The distinction needed no explaining. Riderless dragons were not bound by the honour-duels of the Bladeborn-Fireborn clash.

Mooton knew that too. “They fear me,” he declared anyway. “And I can’t blame them. They all saw me behead their brother and now they want no part of me. Ven’s the same, no doubt.” He stopped to pick up a spear staked into the ground, casually hefting it at a passing rider. It was a paladin knight charging through upon a huge barded camel, his silken cloak streaming at his back in shades of white and gold. The spear took him right in the neck and the knight went flying from the saddle. Mooton grunted. “Might have just killed an ally there,” he said. “Hard to know, isn’t it? With these from the empire.”

Emeric stopped to frown at him. “What do you mean?”

“What do I mean? What do you think I mean? Your friend Ballantris has turned his cloak against the Agarathi, that’s what I mean. I saw him myself. Him and that great moonbear of his. He came leading a host of his own against the dragonfolk. Took them in the flank and near scattered them too.” He scratched at his beard. There was blood in the twisting tangles of hair, and bits of bone. He picked out a chunk of skull, frowning bemusedly as he inspected it, then flicked it from his steel fingers with a ping. “Never know what you’re going to find in there,” he said. “That’s part of the fun of having a big beard.”

“The Lumarans have joined us?” Emeric pressed. He was not aware of that.

The big man shrugged. “Don’t know about joining us. But I saw some of them attack the Agarathi, that I’ll swear by. That’s your doing, Manfrey. Whatever you said to that Moonrider must have gotten through to him. You’ll have your lordship back for this, I’ll bet.” He smiled at him, then his eyes flitted to some nearby fighting, and he roared and charged, adding to his tally of kills.

They’d reached a small slope by then, topped with an old stone watchtower. Emeric continued up the rise, beating back any enemy who came near him. The fighting was well dispersed now. Not like the beginning, when the armies had first come together. Back then the press had been so thick it was hard to move, the noise so loud it was impossible to hear the thoughts inside your own head. It was all shouts and grunts and curses and barks of pain, the screaming of dying horses, the howls of dying men, sounds so near they seemed like they were calling right in his ear. He at least had the fortune to be armoured all in godsteel, but that was not true for almost everyone else. How many times might I have died without it? How many swords and spears and axes had come crashing against his armour, only to bounce away, barely leaving a mark?

He pushed aside his guilt for that and continued up the slope. There was fighting at the top, a host of Tukoran pikemen in brown and green cloaks defending the tower against a surge of Agarathi, coming up from the other side. Emeric did not know why they were protecting the tower, other than to give them somewhere to rally, a physical point that they must defend. From the windows, archers had taken their places and were firing down on the enemy host. On the steps outside the thick wood doors, the men held tight together, defending the way in with their lives, thrusting out with their pikes and spears. A man in an emerald cloak and armour was shouting commands, a big ugly bald man who Emeric knew to be Sir Kevyn Bolt, once of Janilah’s Six. That gave him pause. He was one of the prince’s guards now.

Sir Mooton came striding up the hill behind him, a new crop of butchered bodies sown in his wake. His beard had been splashed in a fresh coat of blood which dripped grimly through his smile.

“That’ll be another ten,” he said proudly. When he joined Emeric, he saw the watchtower, the archers at the windows, the violent press around the door. He did not stop long to consider what might be happening. “What are you standing here for, Manfrey? Those are your people dying out there.” He raised his greatsword aloft and gave a mighty roar, shouting, “Blackshaw!” and “Elmhall! and “Vandar!” as he charged.

Emeric followed after him, thrusting and cutting his way through the throng until he reached the tower steps. He pushed his way up toward Sir Kevyn Bolt, hailing him loudly. The man turned. “Manfrey.” He wore the essentials of godsteel armour, the rest castled-forged but strong, his cloak torn and singed. In his grasp he held a blade with a bull-head pommel, one of two he kept at his hip. That was custom among the Six, to have dual blades. Though no longer a sworn sword, he’d served at Prince Raynald’s side, acting as part of his protective escort and had ridden at his flank when first they stormed the field.

The tower, the knight, the desperate defence. It painted a story.

“Where is the prince?” Emeric shouted. The noise was fearsome, the shouting and cursing.

Bolt thumbed at the door. “Inside. He took a wound. The bastards are trying to get at him.” The bald knight looked out; more foemen were coming up the hill in a flood as though sniffing the blood of a prince in the water. Further off a dragon was wheeling around, a big dragon, umber brown with scales of mossy green coming their way with a rider on its back. “That dragon’s coming back,” Bolt said. “Wants to finish the job.” He spat

“We have to get the prince out.” Emeric spun and pushed at the door. It didn’t yield.

“It’s barred,” Bolt shouted at him. “From the inside.”

Fools. If that dragon burned the tower down they’d be trapped. Emeric kicked at the wood. “Open up. It’s Emeric Manfrey. Quickly!”

He heard the bolts go, heard whatever they were using to block it moved aside. The door opened a crack and a pair of eyes peered out to confirm it was him. Then it opened wider, enough so Emeric could slip inside. The roar of battle weakened as the door was pushed shut again.

Emeric took the room in at a glance. Crates and casks sat along the curve of a wall to the right, being hastily searched by a pair of soldiers. To the left a stair crawled around the interior, leading to the upper floors, the tower-top above them. Bowmen were shouting and firing up there, their voices echoing down through the stone drum.

The prince was up against the far wall, holding a steel hand to his gut. His helm rested on the floor beside him, his skin wan, hair wet, mouth bloody. Several men-at-arms were fussing about him. One was a knight that Emeric knew; Sir Ernold Esterling, called Ernold the Shy, another Emerald Guard in the prince’s service. The sobriquet ‘shy’ was ironic. Sir Ernold was anything but.

The man heard him enter and stood to face him. “Manfrey. Bloody good to have you. How is it out there?”

“Not good.” Emeric stepped forward. “The men are overwhelmed and more enemy soldiers are coming up the hill. We have to get the prince out.”

Prince Raynald Lukar groaned, propping a bloody hand to the stone floor to try to stand. He winced and flopped back down.

“Be still, my prince,” said one of the armsmen at his side. He turned and barked to the men searching the crates. “Quickly. Find something, damnit.”

The boy did not look in good shape. “What happened?” Emeric asked Sir Ernold.

“Dragon,” the knight told him. “Tail-blade cut through his armour. Savage strike. He’s got a six-inch gash across the gut. It’s deep, Emeric. He takes his hand away and who knows what’ll come squirming out.”

“I found some,” a man shouted. He stood from a crate and raised aloft a bale of clean bandages, as though he’d won a great duel. At once they surged into action, wrapping the prince up, but it would only do so much. He needed that wound sewn and seared shut, else he’d bleed out, and there was no way he’d be able to fight in his condition.

There was a roar outside, shuddering through the air. Panicked shouts rang out from the bowmen above them. Then screams as the fire took out the men on the roof, shattering the stone summit. Emeric looked up as the stone came down, a shower of debris collapsing through the hollow tower to crash down onto the floor. “Look out!” He shoved Sir Ernold aside as men threw themselves over the prince, stone blocks and shards of timber smashing against their shields.

It all happened in an instant. Above them, fire swirled where the tower ceiling had been breached, and Emeric could see clear sky above. There was a deep thwump of wings as the dragon wheeled about. “We have to get him out!” The tower would not survive for long before collapsing. Sir Ernold nodded and rushed to the door, but Emeric shouted, “No. We go out the back.”

“There is no back.”

“We’ll make one.” The exile heaved his blade and began hacking at the stone of the rear wall. Sir Ernold hurried to join him. Chips and sparks flew as they carved open a rough door, kicking with their boots to widen it, stone and mortar tumbling. “Get the prince up!” Emeric shouted, as the open field appeared through the breach. “Get him up! Carry him!”

“I can walk.” Prince Raynald laboured to stand, swatting aside the men who tried to help him. They’d wrapped him around a dozen times in the bandaging, but already the blood was starting to seep through, red on pristine white. How long it would hold Emeric Manfrey could not say, not without inspecting the wound. “You’re going the wrong way,” the prince said. His voice was hoarse, but determined. “They’re out that way.” He pointed at the door and grimaced in pain. “We have to fight. I cannot abandon my men.”

Sir Ernold Esterling moved over to him. “That is noble, my prince, but Emeric is right. Our first priority is to protect you.” No sooner had he said the words than the dragon swept by in another assault. The tower shook as more stone came down, fire flooding through the open roof. “Now! Out now!”

They rushed for the breach, Sir Ernold bundling the prince out into the open air. The rest of the men followed, just as the flames licked down to tongue at the floor. They hissed and spat, raging for a moment and then retreating just as quickly. Emeric pressed back inside the tower, through the smoke and fume, and pulled open the door. The battle had swelled outside. Mooton was in the midst of it, swinging wildly with his greatsword in one hand and his greataxe in the other, the rest of the Tukoran soldiers trying to keep the horde at bay. More were coming up the hill, hundreds of them screaming their warcry. “Sir Kevyn!” Emeric shouted.

The Bull of Bolt turned.

“We’re taking the prince through the back. Hold them. Hold them here, sir!”

The man nodded.

Emeric spun. He did not want to leave Mooton, but what could he do? I am Tukoran, no matter where my life has taken me. Raynald is my prince, no matter who his grandfathers were. Emeric had a duty to help protect him.

He rushed back through the tower and out of the breach. Sir Ernold was shouting commands as he took the lead. To either side of the prince, several other household knights and men-at-arms formed a cordon, while another helped him along. It was a force of only a dozen.

Emeric hurried to join Sir Ernold at the front. The Emerald Guard was of an age with the exile, not yet forty, with a high forehead, thinning hair at the crown, short brown beard well salted at the sides, and a misshapen nose that had never properly set after a bad break. He scowled at the skies; the dragon had circled off out of sight to the south, and they had to hope it would keep nibbling at the tower or else fly off after some other prey. “The city’s too far,” Esterling called. “And burning besides. We’d never make it.”

“We make for the woods,” Emeric said. They were burning badly to the east, but further north small thickets clothed the land and among the boles they might find salvation; a place to stop and take stock and try to mend their prince.

Sir Ernold had the lead and did not see any other way. He shouted a command and set off at a run, the company pressing on through the swirling smoke, puffing and boiling from fires and pits. The earth was treacherous underfoot. Bodies lay everywhere, men of north and south scattered as far as the eye could see. Is there no end to this battlefield? Emeric had always heard tales of the Battle of Burning Rock, but the scale of it always sounded unimaginable. Two hundred thousand men and mounts clashing across miles of hills and plains. That might have described today. The Battle of Burning Woods, he thought. The Fight of the Barrel Knight’s Folly.

Borrus had been a fool. He would not hear of Rikkard and Torvyn’s calls for calm. He did not listen to sense. The moment he saw his father’s head in a bag, that was it. He’d bellowed for the men to muster and charge, and out of the gates they’d stormed. Oh, it was a stirring sight, no doubt. All those banners cracking in the wind. The warhorns blasting their long rousing calls as they poured out into the dawn. But how many had died for it? How many tens of thousands of men and boys had Borrus doomed when he looked into that bag?

Emeric could not think of that now. What’s done was done, and the horse had bolted, and now they must make do. Yet all the same he could not help but wonder which of his friends were dead. The men he’d travelled with since the Tidelands in particular. Jack and Braxton, Pete and Sid. Even Turner, back in the city, was not safe from harm. These men were sailors, not soldiers, and none of them should be here. Sir Bulmar will watch over them, he tried to tell himself. The Blackshaws will keep them safe. But that was the thought of a child, devoid of sense and logic. In truth the Blackshaws too could be dead. It would take one dragon, one gush of flame, one charge of dragonknights or a surging horde and that would be it, none would survive.

A shout intruded on his thoughts, and that was all for the good. It came from one of the men defending the flank. “Sunriders!” he called. “Brace!”

Emeric turned in time to see the pack charging through the smoke. It was not just Sunriders; several Starriders prowled and leapt among them, and there were paladin knights too atop their mighty camels, all loping and galloping in a fierce formation, crying out and swinging their curved blades as they went.

“Defend the prince!” bellowed Esterling.

Men jumped ahead of him, throwing up their shields, as Sir Ernold and Emeric and a pair of other men rushed for the front, blades brandished. The riders were on them quickly, a storm of shouts and thrown spears. Emeric deflected one with his blade, pinging it away into the fog. Another took one of the men-at-arms in the chest, punching through his caste-forged breastplate as he was thrown backward off his feet. The company came charging through, knocking two more of the guardsmen aside, hacking with swords and long-axes. A scarcat leapt atop one man, slashing with its claws before pouncing away as the defenders lashed out.

And then they were past, surging beyond them. Amid the din Emeric heard their commander give a shout in Piseki; an order to circle and charge again. His hopes that they would carve their way onward through the battlefield were dashed. “They’re coming back!” he roared.

They turned to meet him. Emeric got a better look at them this time. They were a gleaming force, lords and Lightborn, and the Sunrider in their middle, the leader…