He nodded. “A little inland, but yes.”

“Then we will be passing by anyway. We can decide over the next few days whether we stop to help.”

Saska returned to the shade of the grove, calling Sir Ralston and the sellsword captains together for a council out of earshot from the others. Leshie, of course, joined as well. “What’s going on?” she asked.

Saska told them what Tantario had said.

The Wall shook his head at once. “No. If trouble comes to us, so be it. We will not go looking for it.”

“You’re not in charge, Coldheart,” said the Butcher. “The purpose of a council is to give counsel, so the pretty princess can decide.” He smiled, scars twisting, chin glistening from all the sticky fruit he’d been eating. “I say we go. We need regular battle to stay sharp and the pretty princess still needs honing. Cutting the head off a madman will serve her well.”

“There is only one madman whose head she needs to cut off and it isn’t this one,” the Wall said. “Our mission is simple and needs no complications.”

“Simple?” Leshie laughed. “You think killing a demigod is simple?”

“Killing anyone is simple. I did not say it would be easy.”

Leshie clearly didn’t grasp the distinction. “What’s the difference?”

“A simple act is one that is easily understood,” said the Surgeon, quite calmly. “That does not mean it is easy to implement. Sir Ralston is quite correct. Nothing that deviates us from our mission should be considered.”

“Our mission is to win the war, isn’t it?” Leshie said to that. “That means killing bad guys and slaying monsters.”

“One bad guy. One monster.” The Wall gave a firm shake of the head. “We should take the Matian Way, as previously discussed. It will save us a lot of time. I thought that was already agreed?”

“There are rumours of a sand dragon out that way,” Saska said. She hadn’t told them about that yet. “Sunrider Tantario said we should stay on the Capital Road.”

“Of course he did,” the Baker chuckled, readjusting his golden spectacles. “This man Tantario is a proud Aramatian, and cares deeply for his people. Banassy is an important town. He will lead us to it, with this gentle coaxing, so we help to remove this madman and set the people free. We are fifteen skilled and armoured Bladeborn, who together have killed a thousand men. There could be no fiercer group in all of the south. Tantario seeks to use us.”

“He is canny, this Sunrider,” agreed the Surgeon. “This may be his ploy.”

“A clever ploy,” said the Butcher. “And a righteous one. We should go. The pretty princess needs the practice.”

“She needs protection, not practice,” the Wall said, firmly. “This town does not matter. Nothing matters but our mission.”

The Butcher gave a laugh. “No wonder you have no wife, Coldheart. That poor woman would always be second best.”

“Enough japing,” Sir Ralston thundered. “This discussion is done.”

The sellsword captains all looked up at him. Then they turned to Saska. “Is it done?” the Baker asked her. “As fearsome as the giant is, and as passionately as he speaks, we are here to serve you, not him. We have offered honest counsel. What is your decision?”

I have no decision, she thought. “I have to think about it,” she said.

The Wall did not like that answer. “We will reach the turning that takes us onto the Matian Way this afternoon,” he said, staring down at her with that great bumpy boulder of a head, cut with scars and burned by the sun. His eyes were two grey pits in that thing, his brow brutish, heavy and hairless. “I hope you will have decided to take the turning by then. Any other choice would be folly.” He maintained the stare for a moment longer, then turned and stamped away.

The others lingered. “You’ve heard my thoughts,” the Butcher said. “I’ve got a sweet spot for Banassy, I will admit. There is a pit there, a brutal place, where I used to do some fighting when I was young. Got my first kill there, and had my first woman too, after. I was only eleven. But forget that. Whether we go there or up the Matian Way, my point stands. You need to do more fighting, pretty princess. You’ve not drawn your blade since Aram.”

That wasn’t strictly true. “I’ve been training every day since then.” She had continued her training on the road, taking instruction not only from Rolly and the Butcher, but the Baker and the Surgeon as well. Sometimes the other sellswords joined in too to help prepare her, fighting her two-on-one, or even three-on-one, helping her understand how best to fight several foes at once. They always fought after setting camp, when the night had fallen and the air had cooled to make it more bearable. Under moonlight they’d duelled, and starlight, and beneath heavy rains as well. One night the skies had turned blood red from horizon to horizon, and Sunrider Tantario had said that there had been terrible bloodshed somewhere. Perhaps in this town? Saska thought. Has he been setting me up all along?

She didn’t think so. But even if he had, she wasn’t going to blame him for that. For all this talk of her destiny, there was still a good chance they were wrong. A prophecy isn’t real until it comes true, Ranulf used to say. He had told her that prophecies and foretellings were as common as white caps on waves, and most never amounted to anything. Maybe that’ll happen with me? Maybe Tantario doesn’t believe a word of it, and wants to make use of us while he can?

And what the Butcher said…that had merit too. Training with her companions was one thing. Fighting a foe that wanted to kill her was another. She had fought a dragon and failed, fought Cedrik Kastor and failed in that as well. Both times she required saving, first by Agarosh and then by Prince Robbert and without them she’d be dead. If she was to be this saviour her grandmother said she was, she had to stop relying on others. The more she put herself in danger, real danger, the more she would improve. And if I die along the way, so be it. It’ll only prove the prophecy false.

“You’re right,” she said, at last, looking up at the Butcher. “Next time there’s battle, I’ll draw my blade and join in. I won’t just stand aside.”

“Good.” The big scarred sellsword gave her one of those good-natured grins of his. “We would not want you to rust, pretty princess.”

“Nor die,” said the Surgeon. “You must choose your opponents wisely, Serenity, if and when there is any fighting. Your Wall can be overbearing, but he is not wrong. Your death may doom us, and this we cannot allow.” He looked over to the log he had been sitting on earlier. The Tigress still stood in the same place as before, looking over at them, staring like a cat does, still and silent, never seeming to blink. She made the men nervous, Saska had seen. Even the other sellswords looked at her with suspicion. “I will make sure the Tigress is near you,” the Surgeon went on. “When we find ourselves in a fight, she will watch over you, and make sure you are safe.”

The Baker gave a scoff. “It’s not wise to turn your back on a tiger.”

The Surgeon frowned at him. “You doubt her?”

“I’ve always doubted her. She is wild, unnatural. And those hisses…”

“Are a language,” the Surgeon said. “An old language used by the people of the Unseen Isles.”

The Baker snorted. “All those hisses sound the same. How can that be a language?”

The Surgeon fingered one of his many blades. “Is there no sound in the world because a deaf man cannot hear them? Nothing to see because a man is blind? That you do not have the capacity to differentiate between the hisses does not mean the differences are not there. The language is complex, and beautiful. You only need the ears to hear it.”

The Baker’s eyes were as flat as a tabletop. He stared at his fellow Bloody Trader captain, unimpressed, then moved his eyes to Saska. “I will stay near, when next we fight. Or my brother will. Forget this Tigress creature. She is crazed and wild and will pounce upon any foe she sees, leaving you vulnerable. And there is more,” the Baker said, more darkly. “I have seen her sniffing at you, my lady. When your back is turned, and she thinks no one is watching. She sniffs at you and licks her lips. It is that powerful blood of yours. She wants herself a taste.”

That made Saska shudder. She looked at the Surgeon. “You told me she could be trusted. You said it was only the blood of the wicked she sought.”

“It is,” the Surgeon said, body stiffening defensively. “She must enjoy the scent, that is all. It does not mean she will act upon it. The Tigress can control her impulses.”

The Butcher gripped the handle of his blade. “She will, or I will kill her. I will show her how I got my name.”

The Surgeon’s lips twisted into a cold smile. “You would stand no chance against her.”

The Butcher scowled. “Let us put it to the test, then. A duel. First blood.” He drew six inches of misting steel.

“A contest?” Leshie piped in, big-eyed, enthused by the prospect. “Maybe we could all be involved? Like a tournament, to see who’s the best. We could call it the Song of the Sellswords or something.”

The Baker gave that a bark of laughter. “Would the Whaleheart be allowed to join in?”

“No,” Leshie said, at once. “No, that would just ruin it. And he’d be all doom and gloom about it too. You know how he is. He’s grumpy about everything.”

“It is because his manhood is small,” the Baker said, nodding as though he knew. “The giant is not in proportion. It makes him angry.”

“Why?” Leshie asked. “He doesn’t use it anyway.”

There was more laughter at that, though Saska didn’t care for it. Rolly was her protector and her guardian and she would not have him mocked like this. “No contest. No tournament. No fighting,” she said. The Surgeon had spoken of the fragile ego of the sellsword, the thin skin that caused him to need to prove himself at every turn, and he’d been right, by the Butcher’s reaction. Saska was not going to indulge it. “This council is adjourned.”

The captains bowed and shrugged and moved off, the Butcher still grumbling complaints to his brother as they returned to Merinius and their own men. The Surgeon walked back to the Tigress, who had been watching them all along in that way men found disquieting. She might even have been listening, so far as Saska knew. I may have to warn the Butcher and the Baker to be careful. It would not serve to find the Tigress supping on the brothers’ blood one night.

Gutter and Gore were there as well, sitting on the same log as their captain had been on, crouching forward and looking at the ground, pointing and muttering at one another, occasionally smiling or laughing. “They’re racing bugs,” Leshie told her. “They’re as brainless as they are beautiful, those two.”