No. Stay in the tent. Stay dry, Lythian might have said. But he said nothing. He was always glad for the man’s company, his counsel and calm presence. Amron knew I’d need him. He knew I could not do this alone.

They stepped outside together. It was growing darker, and some fires were coming alive across the square, covered in their tarps and shelters. Distantly, he could see flashes of lighting out there at sea, the far-off rumble of thunder. All agreed now that there was nothing natural about these rains, and strong though they could be during springtime here, they were never so strong and unceasing as this, never so hard and cold and black. Walter Selleck seemed to believe that such extreme weather would likely be engulfing other parts of the world as well. Heavy snows to the north, debilitating heat to the south, wild waves and tempestuous typhoons out to sea. It was part of Agarath’s primordial world, the scruffy scribe had said. Nothing was mild, everything was extreme, and it was only going to get worse.

The drainage in the main square was good, though all the same, puddles had formed in places. Lythian and Sir Ralf splashed through them, marching through the River Gate and back out toward the prisoner camp. Sir Guy had already begun to get the prisoners in order, gathering them up into groups. There was plenty of shouting from the guards as they corralled them toward the plank bridge that spanned the moat they had dug around the pen.

The camp commander saw Lythian arriving and bustled over. “The men are arranged and ready to go, my lord. The women as well.” He gestured. The women were few in number, less than a dozen of them from the empire, and had been kept in a shelter of their own, watched over by the commander’s most trustworthy guards. There had been some concern that the other prisoners might try to assault them, but their efforts to keep them apart had ensured that had not happened.

“Very good, Sir Guy. A place is being cleared in a market square near the harbour. We’ll lead them there in batches, a hundred at a time. Order your men accordingly.”

Lythian returned to the city with Sir Ralf at his flank, then wended down through the alleys and roads that took them to the square in question. Here and there men had made their own nests among the tumbled stone, sleeping under archways and in whatever dry nooks and crannies they could find. Some were sleeping now, ready to take the night watch. Others sat sharpening blades or mending holes in their cloaks, trying to keep themselves busy and dry between one charge and another.

They’re staring at me, Lythian thought. All of them…all of them are staring.

When they reached the square, they found Sir Adam’s men hard at work raising tents and shelters. It was a large space, well littered with tumbled stone and rubble along one side, where the buildings there had collapsed. At the heart was a broken fountain, overflowing with rainwater and bits of drowned debris. It had once shown a figure of Amron the Bold, Lythian remembered. Now nothing but a lower torso and legs remained, the top half obliterated. That was not a propitious sign, with Amron Daecar marching into the jaws of battle.

Lythian did not want to think about that. No more than he did Elyon’s long absence. Too long. He’s been gone for far too long…

Some soldiers were trundling off, looking less than happy. They wore cloaks of dull grey and moody blue, Taynar colours, with pins and badges denoting their houses; Kindrick and Barrow and Rosetree. One or two glared over at him as they left. Sir Adam strode over in his long, strong step, splashing through the rains.

Lythian gestured to the departing men. “Did you not find them anywhere to stay, Sir Adam?”

“I will. For now I have told them to move elsewhere. I will see to them later, my lord.” The knight pointed to a half-collapsed temple along the eastern side of the square, its domed roof caved in, walls blackened and smashed and scorched. “Some were taking cover in there. I thought it would make a good base of operations for Sir Guy and his men. It is rather draughty, shall we say, but there’s enough cover inside to keep out of the rain.”

Lythian recognised the temple as one raised in Varin’s honour by Amron the Bold when he built the city. The particular styling gave that away. As did the broken statues he could see outside, enough of them remaining to depict Varin in his might. “Very good, Sir Adam. Is there anywhere we might keep the women?” There were some taverns and shops built along another side of the square, badly damaged. “Might one of those serve?”

“They are mostly collapsed inside, my lord. I could see about moving some rubble, however, if you would prefer to keep the women separate.”

“If possible, yes.” Large as the square was, it could not compete in size with the camp outside the walls, which could be expanded at their need. He had another look around as the large tarps were raised, rippling in the wind as the rain pattered down on them. “Make those as secure as possible. We don’t want them tearing free when the winds pick up.”

“Use the rubble,” Sir Ralf advised. “If you pack heavy blocks around the beams and supports, the shelters should remain standing.”

Sir Adam nodded. “I’ll see it done.”

The weather was worsening by the moment, sheets of black rain falling. In the west a soft blur of light remained, but elsewhere all was dark. Torches were being lit and hung about the boundary, and each of the roads and alleys leading off the square were being checked for weaknesses, where a prisoner might be able to escape. With so much tumbled stone and broken walls, every small gap and breach needed to be checked and blocked and guarded.

It took the best part of an hour to see it all done. Then the call was given, and Sir Guy Blenhard began leading the prisoners into the city. Lythian went with him, escorting each batch of a hundred, wary of the watching eyes, the muttered questions and complaints. Lord Kindrick stood beneath the porch-awning of his pavilion, staring out with dark eyes. When the third batch was escorted through, Lythian saw him shake his head and go back inside.

A city of friends, and all I see are enemies. Lythian wrapped his fingers around the Sword of Varinar, to give him strength, but somehow it just raised his doubts. He began peering back at those who peered at him. In the darkness, he could hear the whetstones scraping, and the whispers of discontent.

It took another hour to bring all the prisoners through. By then the sky was more water than air, and Lythian could not make out one man from another. The rain washed down across the cobbles, creating rivers in the alleys, a cold winter rain that made a man shudder in his furs, soaking down through wool and leather and flesh, right into a man’s bones.

When the thunder began to crash around them, Lythian felt a terrible feeling of dread. He looked to the skies, wondering. But the dread was not up there, it was here.

In the shadows all around him.

27

The smile on the face of Borrus Kanabar was as broad as any Emeric Manfrey had ever seen.

“You hear that, Manfrey,” the big man said, as they trotted down the Rustriver Road. “You hear those horns? Now that’s the sound I’ve longed to hear. Welcome bloody home, they say. The Warden of the East has returned!” He broke into sudden laughter, slapping Emeric hard on the back and almost knocking him off his horse. “Gods, how I’ve missed it! A sound to stir the heart, wouldn’t you say?”

“Very stirring, yes,” the exiled lord agreed.

The horns had been blaring for a full minute now, a great blasting clamour, both stirring and triumphant, ringing out from the fortress of Rustbridge. On the far banks of the rushing, red-tinged waters of the river, the city proper lay enshrouded in a cold wet fog, yet right ahead the great fort on the eastern shore loomed grand and imposing, its double walls curving in a sweeping half-moon, fortified with massive bastions that gave it the aspect of a giant star.

Men were appearing on the ramparts, rushing up at the roar of the warhorns. Fifty of them, a hundred, two hundred and three were joining the watchers and bowmen there, gathering in a great thick throng, swarming like crows on a corpse. On the fortress walls and towers, an array of banners were snapping and cracking in the wind. Red and silver for House Pentar. The green and grey and river-blue of Kanabar. The Marshland lords with their browns and greens and muddy marsh tones. The rich emerald and umber of Tukor. Between them hung smaller flags of lesser houses, lord and knightly, flapping in a hundred hues, each cast with their family sigils. Emeric saw gallant knights and posing heroes, swords and spears and bows, mountains and rocks and towering trees, bears, wolves, giants, birds, a sunburst and a strike of lightning, creatures that ran and creatures that crawled and some that slithered too.

“Strong host,” remarked Sir Torvyn Blackshaw. “Lord Ghent was not lying.”

“Stronger now,” declared his cousin Mooton. He made a triumphant hooting sound. “Looks like we got here in time, lads. Are you ready for a war!” The Blackshaw men gave out a roar; Norwyn, Regnar, Radcliffe and Sir Bulmar. All of them were eager for blood and battle, and from what they’d heard they would have their fill.

Ahead, the twin portcullis gates were lifting, rattling and groaning as the great godsteel chains and bars rose up. Between them, the drawbridge was being lowered across the moat, and a mounted host was preparing to cross. “Seems like they got our letter, Borrus,” said Sir Torvyn. “They are sending a welcoming party for you.”

“For us, Torv,” Borrus replied. He looked around at the rest of them. “For all of us,” he declared. “This welcome is for all of you too.”

Noble words, Emeric thought, if inaccurate. The host had travelled a long way together, and over that time steel-strong bonds had been built between them, but all the same there was no mistaking who this welcome host was here to honour.

The Beast of Blackshaw rode up beside him on his enormous destrier, a snorting black monstrosity as temperamental as he was. He had a knowing smile on his face. “Nervous, Manfrey?” he asked.

Emeric feigned ignorance. “And why should I be nervous, Mooton?”

The huge knight gave a grin and pointed forward. “You see those banners in green and brown. And the sigil. Now maybe it’s just me, but that crossed hammer and sword seems awfully familiar, no?”

“I am aware of them,” Emeric said, flatly. They had known since they crossed south at the border, and spoke with Lord Ghent of the Undercloak, that a Tukoran army had marched down here under the command of Prince Raynald Lukar. Naturally, that had led to suggestions from his companions that it might be a good opportunity for the exiled lord to have his exile ended, his castle returned to him, along with all its attendant lands and incomes, and the title of ‘lord’ established before his name. Borrus had joked that they had all been calling him ‘lord’ as a courtesy. If he should receive a pardon, however, it would become a requirement.

But Emeric was not interested in hearing it. One day, perhaps, but now? No. He had other more important concerns and was not certain a prince could enforce such a decree. “The world is teetering on the edge of doom, Mooton,” he merely said. “What good will my lands and titles be then?”

“Teetering, yes, but it hasn’t fallen yet, Manfrey. And it won’t, now that we’re back to turn the tide.” Mooton smashed a fist against his chest, the uncouth battle gesture of all large, boisterous men. “Vargo Ven and his horde best beware. The Beast of Blackshaw is back, and thirsty for a taste.”

Their hooves pounded hard at the packed dirty road, kicking up clods of wet earth as they went. For once it was not raining, broken clouds rippling through the skies like grey tattered banners, and through them the sun was shining, gleaming off their armour.

Borrus had come prepared. When they stopped at Eastwatch a fortnight ago, he had discarded the armour he’d taken from Lord Merrymarsh’s chests and garbed himself in a fresh new suit of plate. “My spare set,” he’d called it. His favourite plate had been taken to the Steelforge, he’d said, when he voyaged south with the Varin Knights Lythian Lindar and Tomos Pentar, but he had another special-made suit of armour awaiting him in the fort. It was a fine suit, Emeric had to admit, each segment fitted and smoothly linked, enamelled in shades of blue and green with the great blade-antlered elk of House Kanabar emblazoned on the breastplate in a thousand tiny godsteel studs, his helm crested with the same. His cloak was rich lambswool, trailing proudly at his back, finely chequered in the colours of his house with the elk worked in golden threat. And at his hip, Red Wrath, his ancestral blade, which had, Borrus decreed daily, a great need to sup on dragon blood. And one dragon in particular.

Emeric decided to recede a little down the column, leaving Borrus and the Blackshaws to savour this moment alone. Behind, Captain Turner was riding with his men, followed by Sansullio and his Sunshine Swords and the Silent Suncoat too in his torn yellow cloak, frayed and stained in old mud and blood. The sellswords wore cloaks to cover their glittery armour, and cowls to shield their skin. Everywhere they went, they drew looks and scowls and suspicious glances, and here it would be no different.

It will not be safe for them, no matter what Borrus says, Emeric thought. The Barrel Knight had claimed they would be safe under his protection, and true, they had been so far, but travelling the road was different to settling in a city, especially one that bristled under the imminent threat of attack and housed a hundred thousand men all armed with swords and spears. It just takes one sword, one spear, he knew.

There was a great deal of chattering going on among the sailors. They were pointing out this banner and that flag, marvelling at the scale of the fort, chuckling at the bridge itself, which looked terribly skinny compared to the fortress and city it linked. Mostly, though, they were interested in the approaching host, riding out with their banner-bearers and knights, a royal welcome for the Lord of Rivers.

“That’s Lord Rammas there,” he heard Jack say. “I saw him once, when he came to Marshbank. Sturdiest looking lord I ever laid eyes on. All muscle and grunts, that one.”

Emeric knew Lord Elton Rammas, the Lord of the Marshes and acting Warden of the East, they’d heard. That would change now, of course. “I fought him in the melee at a tourney once,” he told them. “Lord Rammas is about my age. Though that was over fifteen years ago, when we were barely more than boys. Still, he was thick with muscle even back then. A brutal warrior. They build them differently around here.”

“Our Jack can attest to that,” piped in Gill Turner, his flaxen beard blowing in the breeze, tan cloak snapping at his back. Jack was indeed a strapping man himself. “You reckon he’ll remember you, lord?”

“I would doubt it. I was thin as a reed back then and did not have this beard.”