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“I have left him,” she said.

“You have left him?” He had to try hard to keep the note of incredulity from his voice. Girls like Rena did not leave rich Terrarchs like Sardec. That was a given in the world they had both lived in. “Why?”

“He did not want me to come with him on campaign.”

“So he was trying to get rid of you?” It was not the most tactful thing he could have said, but somehow the words came out anyway. He was a little ashamed of their gloating tone.

“He said he might not come back,” she said. “He said it would be dangerous.”

Her tone was so pitiful that Rik found himself forced, almost against his will, to say something comforting. “He was not wrong there. The Sardeans are cruel and there are new plagues in the East. The dead are on the march as well, or so folk say.”

“But it’s just as dangerous here, with the walking dead, and the famine and the way the Kharadreans hate us because of the Queen.” She seemed just then to realise exactly who she was talking to. “I don’t believe you killed her. I never did. No matter what people said.”

“I am touched by your faith in me.”

“They would blame somebody like you,” she said. “You’re not one of them. You’re a human.”

There was no arguing with the truth of that statement either but this did not seem like the time or place to be discussing it. He glanced around to see if they had been overheard. No one appeared to be paying the slightest attention, which was just as well. He had no desire to be lynched by an angry mob.

“Do you have a place to stay?” he asked.

“I was going to look for room with some girls I know. They can usually be found in the Nag’s Head.”

“You have enough money?

“Yes.”

“I don’t know about any girls but Weasel and the Barbarian are in there. They should be able to point you in the right direction.”

“What about you? Where are you going?”

“I need to get back, to the Palace.”

“I heard they were keeping you a prisoner there.”

“Not quite. But it might be better if you kept quiet about that, right here, right now.”

She looked abashed, as if she suddenly realised that there might be danger in what she was saying. Her hand went to her mouth. “I am sorry, Rik,” she said.

He pulled her hand down, and said, “Don’t be. Just be a little more discreet, and don’t tell anybody you’ve seen me. I might not be the safest person to know.”

“You were never that anyway.”

“Bear that in mind,” he said. “And take care.”

He let go of her arm and strode off into the night, doing his best not to look back. He wondered what would happen to her now. He felt a certain sympathy. She was just another lost soul far from home. He hoped that things would work out for her, but he knew they most likely would not.

Chapter Eight

Standing on the city walls, watching the seemingly endless ranks of the regiments form up and march out, Rik saw the bat-winged, scythe-wielding angel banners of the Seventh hang over the companies of his old comrades, and the great interlocking dragon pennons of the Ninth Heavy Cavalry fluttering above the howdahs of that regiment’s wyrms. Carts carried the components of the great siege guns. Horse teams pulled the wheeled light cannons behind them along the muddy roads.

Lord General Azaar watched the regiments stream by from a small rise overlooking the city, the same place where Rik had fought a dragon when Halim had been besieged. His general staff were with him, reviewing the troops as they passed.

Fife and drum hammered out a tune to which the units marched with impressive discipline. Along the walls the citizens of Halim lined up to watch their conquerors go. How many spies were among them, counting troops, Rik wondered?

He reckoned Azaar had ten thousand men at best, perhaps a score of siege guns, a hundred cannons. There were sorcerers too, and later there would be dragons dug out from the barrows in which they slept away the winter. Were the spies as impressed as he was, or did they think that ten thousand was a pitiful amount to muster against the Eastern hordes?

The men down there were hungry and not at all in the best of health. It had been a long hard winter and disease and constant skirmishing with rebels and the undead had taken its toll. Perhaps things might have been different if he had managed to save Kathea. Perhaps the natives would not have hated them so much and fought with such fury. That was useless thinking though. Things had not fallen out the way he had hoped. They never really did.

The camp followers were already streaming out of the city, women and children and youths, pedlars and gamblers and whores, all the flotsam and jetsam that drifted in the wake of an army on the march. There were probably as many of them as there were soldiers, and they were going to suffer more on the march. For most of them it was preferable to remaining in a city where they were hated though.

Rik felt a sense of terrible foreboding. Every step towards their eventual destination was a step further away from Talorea. Every league marched was a league that lengthened their supply line and made them more vulnerable. The East was vast, and its empty plains and ancient wastelands could swallow an army far larger than Azaar’s. This was a march from which no one might come back.

The voices in his head, quiet since Asea’s potion stupefied them, whispered words of fear, told him to run away, to seek a place of safety, to put distance between himself and this doomed expedition. Instead he drew the collar of his coat tight around his neck and headed for the postern gate through which he would join up with Asea and the army.

Sardec rode along at the head of the Foragers. His destrier was gentle as such things went, easy to control even for a cripple with one hand. He kept his gaze straight ahead and his expression stern, all too aware that he was under review by his General and the citizens of Halim. The impression they made counted in many different ways.

He fought down the urge to whistle along with the fifes and flex his fingers to the beat of the drum. He watched the backs of the infantrymen in the long columns winding ahead, making sure the regulation fifty paces was between them. If a sudden order to stop came, there would be no accidental mingling of formations.

Try as he might, despite all his efforts, he wondered where Rena was, and whether he had done the right thing. The crisis of their relationship had come on so fast, a whirlwind of words that had uprooted something that had seemed so certain for so long. He had become used to having her around, and he felt her absence the way he sometimes felt the ghost of his missing hand. It was an amputation just as much as the one that had given him his hook. A part of his life was missing, and he wanted desperately to get it back.

It was ludicrous. They were marching to war and death, and he had other things to dwell on than the absence of one human. That thought was as ineffective as a prayer spoken in a nightmare to keep the dream-monsters at bay. He could only keep riding and increase the distance between himself and his woman even as he felt her tug at the direction of his thoughts like the pole star on the needle of a compass.

“I tell you they were cheating,” said Weasel. “That’s why they drew knives and accused me.”

“I see,” said the Barbarian, not seeing, which was quite normal when it came to understanding Weasel’s explanations of why things always went wrong when he was around. His feet were as heavy as lead and his heart was not in marching this morning at all. His back felt as if something might have given way last night during his final session with Shera and Annette. He wished those damned drummers would keep quiet. His head was splitting, and his stomach was as rebellious as a province full of the Clockmaker’s dupes. “Could you go and tell Sardec to get the drummers to keep the noise down? My head is splitting.”