“Less of the dull, if you would. Now is not the time to be using a man’s mocking epithet. His blood has barely run cold.”

“His blood ran out, so I hear. All of it. That’s how he died.”

“Yes, well…I know Dalton was not the most popular man, but he was a First Blade of Vandar, for a time, and ought to be honoured as such. We do not mock our departed, Sir Hadros. We venerate them, and praise them, and send them to the Eternal Halls with grace.”

“And Varin’s Table,” the hedge knight put in. He slowed, then stopped, beside another fallen dragon, this one savagely butchered and beheaded with a hundred spears and arrows pricking it like a porcupine. “Captain, I wonder…”

Lythian stopped and turned to face him. “Yes?”

“Well…we’ve had our run-ins in the past, haven’t we, you and I?”

“We have.” Lythian had met the man on several occasions, and even fought with him once before when on campaign during the last war. He had not known he was here, at King’s Point, let alone alive, until after the battle was over. In truth he had assumed the man to have died years ago, but apparently he was still plodding along, hoping for an opportunity to win glory and renown. It was what brought him here, Lythian knew. Though perhaps he didn’t anticipate anything quite so cataclysmic as this. “Go on, Sir Hadros. What’s the ask?”

“That.” The stocky knight waved a finger at Lythian’s cloak. “I want one of my own. The gods know I always have.”

“Gods and men both. I remember a time many years ago when you petitioned to join the order.”

“And I was close too, you might recall. Would have made a good Varin Knight if it wasn’t for that trouble I got into as a boy.”

Lythian thought a moment. “The desecration of the statues?”

Sir Hadron blew out through his lips. “I was young and impressionable. Just a stupid boy getting caught up with the wrong crowd, is all. We got it in our heads that King Ayrin was weak, so…well, we defaced a statue or two in the town square…”

“Ayrin’s Cross, was it?”

“The worst possible place,” the knight grunted. “They’re all so high and mighty over there and gods do they love King Ayrin the Wise. We lads were more fond of the warrior kings, you know how boys can be. Was just a stupid thing, a bit of water and dye and now I’m branded for life. The sort of thing my father would have brushed under the rug if he was a lord, but no, I was born to a middling household knight and never had such leverage.” He let out another heavy breath. “Anyhow, I suppose I was just wondering if you…”

“Might anoint you myself? Permit you into the holy sanctum of Varin’s Order?”

“Aye, just that. I’d ask for a castle when all this is done, but let’s be honest, I probably won’t live that long. Better to plan for the afterlife, wouldn’t you say? A seat at Varin’s Table…now that’s something to fight for.”

In other circumstances, Lythian might have smiled at the man’s forthrightness. It was hard to do so here, however, surrounded by such devastation and death. “That isn’t my decision to make, Sir Hadros.”

“Then whose is it? Dalton Taynar’s dead, so is Vesryn Daecar. Leaves us First Blade-less, doesn’t it? Now mayhaps Lord Amron might have retaken the mantle, but no, he’s king now, so he can’t be doing that. Leaves you, my lord. You’re seniormost in the order…and a bloody handsome man too, I should probably add.” Devastation and death or not, the man gave a winsome grin. “I’d serve you to my dying breath, believe that, Captain Lythian. And I know others would too, if given the same chance.”

Lythian didn’t doubt it. The lure of Varin’s Table was a powerful one to be sure. But all the same, such an honour was not to be given out so freely. “Any man who joins the order must earn it, Sir Hadros.”

“Or just have the right family name,” the man came back, and not without a note of bitterness. “Too many Knights of Varin have bought their way into the order. You know that as well as I do, my lord.”

“A fair point,” Lythian admitted. Traditionally it had been much more difficult for men of lowlier birth to win their spurs. One only had to look at the likes of Gerald Strand to see that not all Knights of Varin were worth their place in the ranks. “Let me think about it, Sir Hadros, and speak with the king. I have a council meeting to attend shortly. I will try to corner him about this after, though I’m not making any promises.”

The man seemed appeased by that, dipping his lumpen, bristled chin in a bow. “I’d be much obliged, my lord. Now let’s go see this Fireborn, shall we? Wouldn’t want to keep him waiting.”

They reached the encampment a minute later, stepping through the broken barrels and shattered carts, the oddments of armour and charred corpses, the heaps of black tar that had once been mighty pavilions, reduced now to nothing but mulch. From the detritus, scraps had been gathered and made into fencing to pen the prisoners in. There was no canvas roof, no cover at all, not even for the wounded, of which there were many. Lythian took one look at the growing population. “We’re going to have to expand,” he said. “They’ll be sleeping on top of one another soon enough.”

“Won’t be a problem,” said Hadros the Homeless. “Not like we’re lacking for space.”

Lythian ran his eyes over the masses. There were several hundred of them now, born of every nation and island group south of the Red Sea, from Agarath to Aramatia, the Golden Isles to the Twin Suns. Most were common soldiers, little more than fodder for their blades, yet for every thirty of those there was a dragonknight dressed in his black scalemail armour or a paladin in magnificent robes. Fewer still were the Starriders and Sunriders, of which there were only a handful. And now a dragonrider, Lythian thought. Our first.

He spotted Sir Pagaloth across the pen, in conversation with the man in question. A quick glance was all it took. “You know him, then, as he says?” asked Sir Hadros.

“I do. I had the honour of spending time with him in Agarath.”

“Aye, heard all about your travels down there.”

Not all of them, Lythian thought. Regaling the hedge knight of his time in the south was not high on his list of priorities, however. “See that the pen is extended,” he commanded. “Fill the ditch, pull the stakes, and remake it all some ten metres back. And perhaps you’re right about the stench, Sir Hadros. It might be time to begin piling up the enemy dead for burning, if we can spare the men.”

“Plenty of men sitting idle here, my lord. Might as well put the prisoners to work. They are their dead, after all.”

Lythian considered it. His mind had been leaning that way as well, in truth. “Fine. But no cruelty. No lashings and beatings. I do not want to see them mistreated.”

“Not in my nature, my lord. But if I might make one suggestion?”

“Go on.”

He waved a hand to the east, out where the lands were burned and churned. “We pile a few choice corpses out yonder, set up a few hidden shelters in the ditches, and fill them with bowmen, spearmen, lengths of chain. Even a ballista or two if we can roll them out there.”

Lythian understood. Bait. “You mean to catch a few more dragons, Sir Hadros?”

“Catch a few. Kill a few. They come sniffing around the dead again and we add them to these others.” He gestured to the nearest dead dragon; there were at least a dozen of them, rotting outside the walls, and many more within, scattered about the rubble.

Lythian nodded his assent. “See it done. This works, and perhaps you’ll win that cloak of yours.”

“Was hoping you’d say that.” The man grinned, bowed, and stamped away, the weatherworn cloak of a wandering warrior trailing proudly at his back.

Lythian’s own cloak was similarly worn, though all the same, that strong Varin blue shone through all the little tears and scorch marks, the patches of soot and grime. At his neck he wore his captain’s pin, fastening the cloak in place, and beneath it his armour; scratched, dented, and in need of a good polish. The last of those he could do himself, though the others…mending and tending to godsteel armour was the holy realm of the Forgeborn, blacksmiths and armourers derived from the blood of Ilith of whom scant few remained with any great skill. Several of the very best operated at the Steelforge, Forgemasters Merilore, Watling and Wainwood, and the apprentices beneath their charge. If he wanted his armour fixed and restored, they would be the men for the job.

If they’re still alive, he thought. It was possible that Drulgar’s assault upon the capital had extended to the Steelforge as well, striking at the very heart of Varin’s Order. Amron had been hoping to send the bodies of Vesryn and Dalton there for burial, to be entombed in the crypts beside the rest of the former First Blades. Now those tombs might be under a thousand tons of rubble, the Steelforge itself reduced to rock and ruin, their reserves of swords and spears and shields, weapons and armour buried. Elyon had left only hours ago to investigate, soaring away into the skies shortly after his father was proclaimed king. By now he might have discovered the truth of Varinar’s fate. His return, and his report, could not come soon enough.

But for now Lythian had to put it from his mind, to focus on matters he could control. He turned and walked along the edge of the enclosure, circling around to its eastern side where Sir Pagaloth and the Skymaster stood. He nodded to the former, and gave the latter a bow.

“Skymaster Nakaan,” he said, with grace. “It is good to see you again, despite the unfortunate circumstances.”

The ageing Fireborn returned the gesture, inclining his head into a courteous bow. “And you, Captain Lythian. Sir Pagaloth has just been telling me of your adventures together, since you left the Nest.”

“Adventures is not a word I would use, Sa’har. Toils and trials would be rather more appropriate.”

Sir Pagaloth had something of a resting frown-face, perpetually serious and sombre. “I did not use the word ‘adventure’. Skymaster Nakaan is taking liberties, as he knows.”

“Yes. So I am.” Sa’har Nakaan showed his palms, and even raised a little smile, though one shadowed in grief and loss, the smile of a man who had lost it all. He has haunted eyes, as Sir Hadros said, and has aged a decade since I saw him last. The Skymaster had never been a meaty man, but now he was positively gaunt, with sunken cheeks and whitening hair and skin so parchment-thin Lythian could see the bones moving beneath his face. “I’m happy that you made it home, however,” he went on. “I have worried about you…both of you…during my more…conscious moments. To see you both again, safe and unhurt…it is a shaft of light, on a dark and dreary day.”

Lythian had always enjoyed the man’s way with words. “As with you, Sa’har. But tell me, are you injured? You look…well.”

“I look old, Lythian. And a little prematurely so. I had not realised, not until recently, just how much Ezukar’s death had sapped my spirit. To be abandoned by him was hard, though ever there remained a thin hope in me that we would be reunited, one day. Once I sensed his death, however…” The pain was etched upon his face, in the lines about his eyes and mouth, the grim pallor of his skin.

“A terrible loss, Sa’har. You have my deepest condolences.”

“Thank you, Lythian. It is a wound that I will always walk with, a darkening deep inside me that will never be restored to the light. The Fire Father had hoped that bonding me to another would relieve me of my troubles, but no. Bagrahar was not Ezukar, and never could be. To another I am sure he would have been a fine companion, but not me. I am better off without him. That is the honest truth.”