Saska stiffened, peering at him. His eyes gave nothing away. “You mean…” She chose her words carefully, glancing at the Tigress, at Gutter and Gore, though their eyes were still inspecting their toes and would likely stay there until commanded otherwise. “Others who know…who I am?”

“There are. There were. But fear not, the Surgeon has cut these cancers free and removed the tainted flesh. They will not trouble you anymore.”

She swallowed. “You’ve…been killing for me?”

He stared, cold-eyed. “I have killed, cut off tongues, fingers, hands, threatened the lives of loved ones. All for you. To shield your true identity. When a secret slips out it becomes a plague. It spreads, like the bloody flux beyond the walls. And soon everyone has it. Soon everyone knows. I have been working to contain the spread.”

She knew nothing of this. “By whose authority?”

“Need,” the Surgeon said. “By the authority of necessity.” He fingered a long flaying knife at his belt, nestled beside a plain-looking broadsword and nine-inch godsteel dagger, curved and cruel. He had some smaller blades as well, surgical instruments, scalpels of various shape and size fixed to a leather belt worn diagonally across his chest. “Rest assured. Only men of ill design have been blooded over this. The flow has been staunched, for now.”

Saska was beginning to understand why people feared this man. Pete Brown, she thought. That’s his true name. A plain name for a plain-looking man, but behind those eyes…

She gave a firm nod, swallowing again. Once upon a time she might have condemned him for this, but not now. The authority of necessity, she thought. He isn’t wrong.

“How many of your own people know?”

“Few. Only those I trust. These will be the men I bring with me, when we go.”

“And all this from the kindness of your heart?” She continued to peer at him, trying to get a better read. “Or are you hoping to reap some reward, Captain, from all this fine work you’ve been doing?”

“My only reward will be to accompany you on your quest. And if it should succeed…then perhaps we can talk.”

She gave a snort of laughter. Sellswords. They’re all the same. It was all about coin after all. “That’s a big risk for a risk-averse man. The Butcher told me you only ever choose the winning side.”

“The winning side is invariably the one I choose.”

Braggarts and boasters, she thought, pondering. Though really, what was there to ponder? She had wanted them along anyway. That they knew already of her path and purpose only made it all the easier. She reached out a hand. “I accept.”

He took it in callused fingers, kissed the back of her palm to seal the contract, and released her. His lips were dry as dust, crinkly to the touch. Her hand withdrew.

“When are we to leave, Serenity?”

With this about the secret slipping out, she had no time to waste. I cannot wait for Ranulf anymore.

“Tomorrow,” she said.

5

“He asked for you specifically,” said the burly hedge knight, breath misting in the cool of dawn. “He says he knows you, my lord. Wants to help, he claims.”

“Help?” Lythian Lindar frowned. “In what regard, Sir Hadros?” The man was like a gnarled old oak, with a bulbous nose, thick with broken veins, skin like bark, and hair the colour of dirty straw. All those days sleeping in barns, Lythian thought. Such was the life of a homeless hedge knight, going where the winds took him, serving this lord or that master to earn a bit of coin. Serve me well through this war, and you’ll earn more than just coin. When the dust settled on this Last Renewal, there would be a lot of empty estates and castles in need of men to restore them, the Knight of the Vale did not doubt. A man like Sir Hadros could do very well for himself…so long as he survived.

“He did not elaborate on that front, Captain Lythian,” the knight told him. “Could be any manner of things, I suppose. Or some trick. Wouldn’t put it past a Fireborn to try to trick us, my lord.”

“A Fireborn?”

“Aye, so it would seem by his raiment. Rich scaly armour, you know the sort, and a fancy cape to match. Says he lost his dragon during the battle. Not sure if he means it was killed by one of ours or flew away. Quite a few of them abandoned their riders when the Dread showed up, that I saw. Guess that bond isn’t so strong as they think.”

“No,” said Lythian, reflecting. He had seen with his own two eyes how easily Eldur could sever the bonds between dragon and rider, or fasten them anew. It seemed that Drulgar the Dread had the very same influence upon the dragons. And perhaps that’s something we can use, Lythian thought. There was nothing a dragonrider feared more than the breaking of their bond. “This Fireborn. Did he give a name, at least?”

“He didn’t. But I’m sure he’ll be happy to share it with you. Older man, he is. Kinda spindly, a bit lost-looking, haunted, you know the type.” Sir Hadros gave a glance around him, as men trundled here and there, collecting the dead in barrows, picking through their corpses for weapons and armour, clothes, food, whatever other provisions they could use. “Plenty of those looks about here these days, my lord. Some men just can’t hack the horror of battle. Too many of them are wet behind the ears.”

“This was no normal battle, Sir Hadros. I would not judge a man for withering when confronted by an ancient calamity like Drulgar.”

A pair of muscular shoulders went up and down. To experienced soldiers like Sir Hadros, those who wilted in war, no matter the conditions, were considered to be lesser men. Lythian would not agree with the word ‘lesser’, perhaps, but they were certainly less reliable. “If you say so, my lord. Good to sort the men from the boys, though. A man shows his true face when looking death in the eye, and I’m sorry to say it, but a lot of these lads don’t have it.”

“And many do, Sir Hadros. Let’s not deal in generalities.”

“Aye, fair enough.” He clapped his gloved hands together, rubbing them against the chill of dawn. “So, this Fireborn, then. You want to talk to him now, or…”

“Now,” Lythian said. And the pair of them stepped away.

The captives were being kept outside the city, housed in a makeshift pen erected in the ruin of the warcamp, bordered by a ring of sharpened posts, a deep, stake-lined ditch, and watched over by a strong complement of spearmen, swordsmen, and bowmen. Before the battle that camp had been occupied by the Taynar forces; now it was a broken blackened thing, a chaos of torn tents and scorched timber, burned wagons and crippled carts. Within its rotting corpse, Lythian had ordered that accommodation be made for the southern prisoners they had taken. Many had been caught once the battle was over, throwing down their arms and surrendering. Others had run at the sight of the Dread, only to return in ones and twos and small downtrodden troops, to give themselves up and hope to be granted passage home to their own lands. Whether they would be awarded such clemency was yet to be seen. That is a decision for our new king to make.

“Did any others come while I was sleeping?” Lythian asked, as they walked.

“Few more trickled in, aye. Couple of Lumarans. A cat-less Starrider. Three more Agarathi, this Fireborn included. Your dragonknight’s with them now.” Sir Hadros squinted over toward the prisoner camp, uncertain. “You sure he’s the right man for the job, my lord? This dragonknight. They’re his people, after all. He might try to let them go.”

“Only if I order him to, Sir Hadros. I understand your concerns, but Sir Pagaloth is sworn to me by oath, and a man of honour besides. He is aligned in our course, I assure you.”

In the east the sun was climbing above the horizon, bringing light to the devastation of the coastlands, the earth churned and blackened, scarred with steaming pits. The wide handsome estuary where the Steelrun River emptied into the Red Sea was unrecognisable, choked in ash and mud and death. What thickets of trees had existed here were burned down to stumps and cinders, green turned black, life to death, all from Drulgar’s passing and the destruction he wrought in his wake. From the city walls down to the shore, thousands lay dead, picked at by carrion crows and crabs, their flesh already starting to rot. Though they were doing what they could to gather their own dead for burial and cremation, the same could not be said for the enemy.

If they are truly our enemy at all, Lythian thought. We should be fighting together in this. Drulgar…Eldur…they are a threat to us all.

Sir Hadros wrinkled his nose. “High time we put a torch to all these corpses. This stink’s only going to get worse.”

“We don’t have the manpower or the material,” Lythian said. “We’ll have to bear the smell for now.”

“Sour to us, sweet to others. All that death attracts dangers, my lord.” He waved a hand to the sea. “Some of the watchmen said they saw dragons during the night, swooping down to feast on the corpses down yonder near the shore. And we heard a great deal of howling too. Might just be regular wolves come from the woods, but there are sunwolves out there too now, and other older things as well. Fellwolves, grimbears, darkcats, direwolves, all sorts. I saw a stormhag myself, a few weeks ago, when crossing through the Heartlands. Tried to lure me into its lair, it did. Evil bloody witch.”

“You did well to avoid a grisly fate, Sir Hadros.” Lythian could not be sure if he was lying, but gave him the benefit of the doubt.

“Aye, and don’t I know it. I’d sooner die in the jaws of the Dread than be boiled alive in some stormhag’s pot. Not a nice way to go.”

“One of the less pleasant, I agree.”

They continued on past a dead dragon, its tongue lolling out of its mouth like a dog, a spear embedded in its left eye halfway up the shaft. The oaken hedge knight gestured to it with a chunky finger. “That spear’s not even tipped in godsteel,” he said. “There’s proof if ever it’s needed that any man can slay a dragon.”

Lythian liked the thought. There had grown a pervading belief that only Bladeborn knights and men-at-arms could best a dragon in battle, but it wasn’t so. “I should have every disbeliever brought out here to show them the evidence, Sir Hadros. It might serve to inspire them.”

“We have our new king for that. If ever we needed inspiring…well, that chanting last night was enough to rouse the spirits, don’t you think? Even out here we were singing out his name. King Daecar! Amron the Great! Taken him long enough to admit it, so the men are saying.”

“And what do you say?”

“Not much. I only arrived here a few days before the battle, my lord. Not really clued in on all that’s been going on. Though this about King Amron sharing the rule with Dalton Taynar…not sure who he was trying to convince with that. Even the Taynar men I’ve been talking to said they never saw Dull Dalton as their king.”