The Butcher chortled loudly.

The Baker smiled and said, “There is a Blacksmith already, among the Bloody Traders. A fine captain. He makes the best weapons.”

Leshie groaned. “You’re all just walking gimmicks.”

“Says the girl who calls herself the Red Blade, for this red armour she wears.” The Baker smiled, as Leshie scowled, enjoying his victory. “You are right, brother,” he said to the Butcher. “She is a very funny little thing. Most entertaining. I can see why you like to keep her around.”

“Keep me…I’m not a bloody pet!” She reached to the handle of her blade. That only made the Baker and the Butcher laugh all the louder. Which in turn made Leshie more angry. She drew out her blade, pointing at them, one then the other. “Call me a pet again…”

“Enough,” said the Wall, in a thumping voice. “He never called you a pet, and you’re far too easy to goad. Put the blade away, Leshie.” He narrowed his eyes upon her until she wilted, snarling, and thrust the dagger back into its sheath. It was the one that Robbert Lukar had given her, left inside that chest of gifts. There were small rubies and garnets on the crossguard and a large red diamond glittering atop the pommel. A kingly gift, it was. A gift for helping to save his life.

The Wall turned to Saska. “My lady. Sunrider Tantario is awaiting your command.”

She looked over. So he was. Tantario had his entire escort in place, perfectly spaced apart, a cage of swords and feathered cloaks, horses and camels, to shield her. The Sunrider rode down the centre of the column to join them. He wore scalemail in silver and cyan blue, his feathered cloak the same. The hues of House Tantario, she supposed. His hair was short, neat, brown, with steaks of white at the temples. He looked about forty, perhaps a little older, with skin sunbaked and heavily creased at the forehead and around the eyes. Lots of squinting and frowning, Saska thought. “Serenity,” the Sunrider said, in a pleasant Aramatian timbre. “We are prepared to go, at your pleasure. Should I lead on?”

“Please,” she said.

He bowed his head, and his sunwolf turned, claws clacking as he loped forward.

A moment later, they were moving, passing through the gate and beneath the scorched walls of Aram to exit onto the fields beyond, where many thousands had died in battle. The fires had not reached out here, though that did not mean the lands weren’t stained. Of blood there was plenty, soaked into the dirt and lacquered onto the rock, mottling the lands outside the city from the walls to the ruin of the warcamp.

Del was looking at those patches, a frown of consternation on his long and horsey face. “So many,” he said, quietly, over the rattling of armour, the trotting of hooves. “My friends. So many of them died here…and in the fire. I wonder…” He looked over at her. “Do you think any of them got out?”

Saska reached across to touch his arm, as they rode along side by side. “I’m sure they did, Del. Percy and Martyn weren’t found among the dead. That means they left, and are probably with Robbert. They may yet get back to Tukor.”

“I hope I get to see them again. And Prince Robbert, him most of all. I just…I wish he had stayed. I was his squire, Saska. I finally had something…important to do.”

“You’re my brother, Del. Isn’t that important enough?” She grinned and jabbed at him, as she might have done once before, back on the farm at Willow’s Rise. “We’ve come a long way, haven’t we? From farmhands to freedom fighters. And look at you, in that armour. You look like a proper knight.”

“Look, maybe. But the rest…” He moved his gaze around, eyes slightly down, peering out from beneath his tangle of wild black hair. “Everyone here’s a warrior. A killer. I’m just going to get in the way.”

She thought back to the steading. To the night Lord Quintan had come and mustered Del for the war with Rasalan. He had wept that night in fear, and she’d told him he’d make a good archer. Her mind had not wavered on that. So she said it again. “You have your bow, Del.” It was a good bow, too, made of yew, light and strong. He wore it across his back, with a quiver of arrows for company. “If we face any fighting, you can still do your part.” It went against her instincts to say that. In truth she would prefer that he find some rock to hide under, but that would hardly do much for his confidence. “You’re a fine shot, Del. Always were.”

“You were better. I just handed you the arrows and helped spot game.”

She smiled to think of those days, hunting wildfowl and deer in the woods at the foot of the mountains. Will life ever be so simple again? Somehow she doubted it. “You’ve trained since then.”

“Not with the bow,” he told her. “I wanted to be an archer when I joined the army, but they just put me with the reserves and gave me a rusted sword. The meat, they called us, the senior men. Fodder for steel. I was lucky that I got put under Prince Robbert’s charge. Sir Bernie…he took us under his wing, but even then, I barely trained with the bow.”

“Then let’s change that,” Saska said. She twisted her neck, looking back, to where the mounted archers were trotting along at the rear of the column, a full score of them with fine white longbows captained by a veteran called Kaa Sokari. Saska had met the man only that morning, though had been reliably informed that he was a master-bowman. “See that man there,” she said. “His name’s Kaa, and he can shoot the wings of a fly from horseback while galloping at full speed, I’m told. If I ask him, he’ll be able to train you.”

The boy shook his head at once. “I don’t want to be any trouble.”

“It won’t be trouble. When we stop to water the horses, I’ll speak with him. How about that?”

He chewed on it a moment. “Only… only if you’re sure.” He seemed equally enthused and afeared by the thought. “Won’t it be embarrassing, though? All these bowmen…they can fire from their horses, as you say. I’d struggle to hit water if I fell off a boat. They’ll only laugh at me.”

Saska smiled. “They won’t. Every great archer has to start somewhere, and so long as you’re willing to learn, that’s worthy of respect. And anyway, you told me how you shot Robbert with that arrow. That’s how you became his squire in the first place. And you saved his life as well. That was a good shot, wasn’t it? Robbert would have died if you hadn’t hit that Emerald Guard.”

“I didn’t hit, not really. I only grazed his armour.”

“The graze was enough.” She hadn’t been there to witness it, but Leshie had told her what had happened. How she and Del had come rushing down the alley to find Robbert Lukar beneath a knight in an emerald cloak, driving a dagger down into his eye. Leshie had shouted out and Del had fired his bow and that had been enough to break the knight’s hold. After that, Robbert had struck him in the jaw, heaved to his feet, and battered the man’s head to mulch. “It was like soup,” Leshie had told her later. “Red bloody soup with bits of brain and skull bobbing about in his helm. Never seen anything like it. It was brutal, Sask.”

And well earned, Saska thought. It turned out the knight was a man called Sir Wenfry Gershan, a grandson to the Master of the Moorlands, and he’d been ordered by Cedrik Kastor to kill Robbert during the fighting, to help him steal the throne. Well, no chance of that now. Saska looked down at Joy, loping gracefully along beside her horse, and imagined her muzzle all red, her eyes like silver flame, tearing and ripping at Cedrik’s flesh. A smile warped her lips, as she pictured it all again. It was a memory she would treasure forever, to keep her warm when the nights grew cold.

“You saved his life,” Saska said. “That’s the important part. And you didn’t panic either. Most boys your age would have fumbled the arrow in the string, or missed the man entirely. That you didn’t speaks volumes, Del. You didn’t wilt in the heat of battle.”

That won her a smile of sorts, though as ever with Del it was bashful. “I guess,” he said, in that mumbly voice of his. “And it was close, the arrow. To hitting Sir Wenfry. Properly, I mean.”

“Do you wish it had?” Saska asked him. “Taking a life…” She paused, realising she hadn’t broached this topic with him yet. “Have you killed anyone yet, Del? During the fighting in Kolash, or…”

“No.” His eyes went down. “I wanted to, that night. I told Prince Robbert I would, but…”

“It’s not a bad thing,” she said. “That you haven’t killed, I mean. Taking a life…that’s not something everyone can do, Del. The guilt, and regret…it can become a burden.”

A moment passed in silence. There was nothing but the rustle of the men around them, the clatter of hooves, the murmur of voices. Then Del asked, “How many have you killed now?” He looked over. “Have you…killed lots of people, Saska?”

She cycled through them all, one after another after another. Lords and knights and sellswords and killers, all worthy of the blade. Only Sir Jesse, perhaps, gave her cause for regret. The rest had earned their ends, and more. “I don’t keep a tally, Del,” she said, lying to spare him. “I don’t think it does a person any good to dwell.”

He nodded, thinking, then gave her a brotherly smile. “They all deserved it, I bet. Like Sir Wenfry did.” His eyes darkened. “I’d have killed him, happily. He was trying to murder Prince Robbert. I’d have given my life to protect him.”

“That’s very brave, Del.”

“I’m not lying,” he said, thinking she might be humouring him. “I’m not the same boy you knew in Willow’s Rise. Man,” he corrected. “I’m a man now.”

“I know, Del.”

His chin lifted. “I’ll protect you as well, if it comes to it. You’re my sister, and…and I love you, but you’re much more than that now. All of us here. It’s our duty to protect you. Even me.” And he nodded, firming, straightening his back. “I’ll train,” he said, committing. “With that archer. I don’t care if it’s embarrassing. I have to do my part.”

I should have left him behind, a part of her thought. Rolly had suggested she do just that. That Del would only be a burden to her, causing her to worry and fret when she needed to focus on herself. He had said the same about Joy, once before, though at least Joy could defend herself. Del was not the same. Even if he learns to master the bow, he will never be a warrior.

But she could not say any of that to him. He is here, now, and there’s no going back. So all she did was smile, reach across to him, and say, “I am so glad you’re with me, Del.”

The day was yet young. Though already it was growing hot, the horizon rippling with a blanket of burning air, bubbling and fizzing off the plains. Their course took them south, at first, along a wide paved road that led down to the coast, past the abandoned Tukoran warcamp. Much remained amid the wreckage, all left behind in their haste. She saw pavilions blowing in the hot dry wind, tents overturned, old firepits dug into the ground. Wagons sat about, empty. There was evidence of horse lines, boundary stakes and poles, the stink of latrines, and death. Some of Hasham’s men and those of the Strong Eagle were still poking about, looking for anything of worth, piling whatever they found onto carts to roll back into the city. They had been joined by scavengers, jackals and vultures and big black southern crows, fighting over the last of the dead who had not yet been gathered and burned.

Saska saw an eagle too, circling above them. Hunting mice, she thought. No doubt there were hundreds of them here.

The trebuchets had been left behind as well. They stood forsaken, great wooden monstrosities attended by wains piled high with rocks. The bombardment had been little more than a ruse, in the end, a distraction to hide their true intent. To open the gates from within, storm inside unchallenged, and win the city. But within that plan, were plots. Plots within plots, Saska thought. Cedrik…he was going to betray Elio Krator, once they had won the city, take residence in the palace and wait out the war from there. They had that from one of the prisoners, a Tukoran knight in Kastor’s favour. Another, an Aramatian, had said that Elio Krator was planning to do the same. A two-headed snake, devouring itself.

But neither had anticipated the deceptions of Cliffario Denlatis. Playing both sides, selecting who would win. He was the kingmaker more than anyone, Saska knew. Even Vincent Rose never rose so high.

It took some hours before they reached the sea, crossing down through a great nub of barren land that extended east from Aram. Here they met the Capital Road, a two-thousand-long coastal road that stretched all the way from Solas in the southwest of Lumara to Eagle’s Perch in the northeast of Aramatia. The air was a little cooler here, owing to the breeze coming off the sea, and the road was well maintained, allowing for a swifter course. Much as Saska had wanted to go north through the plains in the hope of finding Ranulf, she knew this was the better way.

For now, anyway, she thought. If we hear fresh tidings, we can still change our course. Ranulf may yet come back.

The morning rolled into afternoon, the sun beating down upon them. The coast here was rocky, rugged, the waves crashing in on the surf. In places the road got so close that they could feel the spray on their faces, when the wind was right, blowing a fine briny mist across their path to give them some relief.

But mostly that wasn’t the case. Though a coastal road, it often diverted inland when blocked by high stark crags and bulky headlands, wending around them, often for many long hot miles, away from the salty breeze. At these times the air grew stifling, unpleasant. Their pace began to slow, conversation halting. The energy in the company sagged.