There weren’t always so many, he thought but didn’t say. But I was one of the few, even though I never begged.

They took some rags from a pair of drunken vagrants found passed out in a dockside alley, draping the stinking garments over their own clothes and veiling their faces with scrapings of dirt and threadbare cloth. The plump innkeeper’s kitchen had supplied two knives of good steel, freshly sharpened and well hidden beneath their rags.

The Tower Lord stood next to a table piled high with clean clothing, greeting each stooped unfortunate with a smile and a kind word, waving their thanks away. His lady looked to the children, handing out sweets or guiding them and their mothers, if they had one, to a secondary line headed by a pair of grey-robed brothers from the Fifth Order.

Grow, he implored the itch as they joined the line, shuffling ever closer to the Tower Lord. But there was no answer from the itch, not now and not last night when he held a pillow over the plump woman’s sleeping face.

“See to the guards,” the woman whispered. “The generous fellow is mine. Oh, how I despise hypocrisy.”

Grow!

The Tower Lord’s face was vaguely familiar, though Frentis couldn’t conjure his name. Had they met during the war? A Sword of the Realm somehow spared the slaughter to return home to Lordship and charitable pursuits? He greeted every unfortunate differently, free of stock phrases or forced conviviality, some even by name. “Arkel! How’s the leg? . . . Dimela, still off the grog I trust?”

Grow!

He reached under his rags, gripping the sandalwood handle of the knife.

“Ah, new faces.” The Tower Lord smiled as they reached the head of the line. “Welcome, friends. And what can I call you?”

GROW!

“Hentes Mustor,” the woman said, loud enough for all the crowd to hear.

The Tower Lord frowned. “I don’t . . .”

Her first blow was deliberately non-fatal, designed to produce as much shock amongst the onlooking poor folk as possible, this was as much theatre as murder. The Tower Lord gasped in pained astonishment as the knife blade sank into his shoulder, the woman ripping it free, crying, “In the name of the Trueblade!” before bringing it down again, this time straight at his heart. The Tower Lord, surely once a soldier, managed to raise his arm in time to block the knife, the blade sinking deep into his forearm.

The two guards were quick to recover from the shock, charging forward with pole-axes lowered, the one in front pitching to the ground as Frentis’s knife throw found the gap in his armour between chest and neck. Frentis darted forward, snatching up the fallen pole-axe and delivering an overhead swing at the second guard. His parry was swift, however, and his riposte the precise jab of a veteran, nearly skewering Frentis through the thigh. He managed to side-step the thrust and replied with a whirling sweep to the guard’s legs, sending him sprawling.

There was a shout behind him and he turned to see the woman advancing on the Tower Lord, now on his back, bleeding freely from both wounds, legs working to push himself away.

“Die, heretic!” the woman screamed, raising the knife. “Such is the fate of the Father’s ene—”

A pair of skinny arms wrapped themselves around her, pulling her back. It was one of the ragged beggars, the grog-addicted woman the Tower Lord knew by name, Dimela.

The woman jerked her head back into Dimela’s face, breaking teeth in a plume of red. The beggar-woman howled but held on. More arms reached out to grab the Tower Lord’s assailant, an old man clutching at her legs, a cripple swinging his crutch at her midriff, more and more closing in until she was lost from view in a press of rags and unwashed flesh.

Please! Frentis begged. Please die!

But the binding surged, fiercer and stronger than ever. HELP HER!

He delivered a hard kick to the helmeted head of the fallen guard then charged into the throng of flailing poor folk, the pole-axe laying about with deadly effect, four of them felled in as many seconds as he tried to hack his way through, all the time hoping the binding would suddenly fade as the beggars tore the woman’s life from her.

He was halfway through the crowd when it happened, a blast of heat and a surge of flame burning a hole in the centre of the throng, people reeling back in shock and pain, screams and panic amidst the sudden smoke.

Frentis fought his way through the dazed remnants of the crowd, finding her on her knees, bloodied as he knew she would be, both from use of the stolen gift and the attentions of the mob. Her face was a red mask of malice and fury. Behind her Dimela’s body lay in a twisted tangle of scorched rags and flesh. Frentis dragged the woman to her feet and they ran.

? ? ?

“One hundred and seventy-two years,” she said, voice soft, reflective, but the anger still shining in her eyes. “That’s how long it’s been since I last failed, beloved.”

Frentis had known many sewers in his time, they made for fine hideaways or speedy thoroughfares beneath the streets of Varinshold and later he had helped Vaelin seize Linesh via its shit-choked underground channels. This one was the cleanest so far, wider too with well-pointed brickwork and a ledge or two to rest on. The stench, however, was everything he remembered.

Making for open country would have been suicide with the South Guard sure to be ranging in strength, so he followed his street-born instincts and dragged her to the sewers. They followed the flow to the outlets in the harbour, waiting for night when the evening tide would allow them to swim away.

“One hundred and seventy-two years.” She turned her gaze on him, beseeching a response and freeing his mouth of the binding.

She wants comfort, he thought. Commiseration for her failed murder. Not for the first time, he wondered at the depth of her madness.

“There’s a difference,” he said.

She was baffled, shaking her head and gesturing for him to continue.

For the first time in weeks he smiled. “Between a hungry beggar and a sated slave.”

CHAPTER FIVE

Vaelin

“Our patrol put their numbers at about four thousand. Crossing from the ice here.” Captain Adal’s finger picked out a point on the map unfurled on the table before them. “They were following a south-westerly course.”

“Last time they made straight for North Tower,” Dahrena said. “Killing everything in their path.”

“Four thousand,” Vaelin said. “A large force but hardly a horde.”

“Just a vanguard, no doubt,” Adal replied. “Seems they learned a lesson from their last attempt.”

“As I understood it, the Horde was destroyed in their last attempt.”

“There were some survivors,” Dahrena said. “A few hundred. Just women and children. Father let them go, though there were many who argued for their death. We always wondered if there were more, waiting beyond the ice to plague us again.”

Adal straightened, turning to Vaelin and speaking formally. “My lord, I request permission to sound the muster.”

“Muster?”

“Every man of fighting age in the Reaches will be called to arms. Within five days we will have six thousand men under arms plus the North Guard.”

“We’ll also send word to the Eorhil and the Seordah,” Dahrena added. “If they respond as they did before, the full army will number more than twenty thousand. But it will take weeks to marshal them. Enough time for the Horde to cross in strength whilst their vanguard wreaks havoc on the settlements to the north.”

Vaelin reclined in his chair, regarding the lines Adal had drawn on the map. They had ridden hard to be back at the tower before nightfall where Adal selected one of the more detailed maps of the Reaches from the collection in the Lord’s chamber. From outside came the tumult of men readying for war as North Guard and Captain Orven’s men sharpened their steel and saddled their horses. He had hoped the days of maps and battle plans were behind him, that here in the Reaches there would be no more need to orchestrate slaughter, but as ever, war contrived to find him. He took some solace from the fact that the blood-song was strangely muted, not entirely devoid of warning, but free of the strident urgency he recalled from when he had planned the attack at the Lehlun Oasis, the plan that cost Dentos his life.

“How strong was the Horde when it came before?” he asked.

“We can only guess, my lord,” Adal said. “They moved in a great mass and formed no ranks or regiments. Brother Hollun’s official history puts the figure at over one hundred thousand, including children and old folk. The Horde was not so much an army as a nation.”

“The northern settlements have been warned?”

Dahrena nodded. “Gallopers were sent as soon as the news reached us. They will be readying their own defences, but their numbers are small and without help they won’t last long.”

“Very well.” Vaelin rose. “Captain, sound your muster. Choose good men to take charge of the levies and secure the tower and the town against siege. We will lead the North Guard and the King’s men north to provide what aid we can to the settlers.”

“Over half my guardsmen are posted throughout the Reaches,” Adal pointed out, his gaze flicking to Dahrena. “That gives us barely fifteen hundred men.”

“All the better.” Vaelin lifted his canvas-wrapped bundle from the table and went to the stairwell. “We’ll ride so much faster. Lady Dahrena, I realise you may wish to remain here, but I must request that you accompany us.”