XXI. Setbacks

THE NOMAD DROPPED TO HIS KNEES WITH A STARTLED CRY, AND ALL BUT SCATTERED HIS NEAT TRAY OF MEDICINE. ‘TASKIN?’ Better poised without the heart’s burden of friendship, the Fane Street physician bore the candle lamp towards the invalid on the bed. Under the golden spill of the light, the commander’s grey eyes were open.

‘You still trust that desert-bred, after this?’ Though weak, the whispered demand was imperious. ‘Tell me why.’

‘Gently’ Jussoud chided him. Quick to recover his sensible equilibrium, he set his remedies aside on a footstool. ‘I could ask what made you try the stupidity of attempting Mykkael’s arrest without backing.’ He touched the pale forehead, found no fever, then added, ‘If you rest, and maintain a slow convalescence, your sword arm could heal without damage.’

Yet if he expected the hopeful prognosis to disarm the commander’s suspicion, Taskin rejected all inclination to settle in peaceful relief.

Jussoud cut off his strained effort to speak. He brandished the dropper of remedy, then smiled as the familiar, irascible spark enlivened the commander’s wide eyes. ‘This won’t make you sleep, I assure you.’

The physician adjusted the lamp, also carefully gauging the response of the wounded man’s pupils. He added, helpful, ‘The essence has no sour taste, and will only help build your strength.’

Taskin gave way, too depleted to argue. His glower of forbearance stayed fixed on the ceiling, while he suffered the nomad to slip the remedy under his tongue. Once the dosing was finished, his husked voice seemed fractionally stronger. ‘Kaien’s do’aa. The garrison captain was proved forsworn. Devall’s interfering marshal brought evidence.’

‘You never asked why? By the stars of my ancestry, I thought so!’ Jussoud settled back on his heels. He gathered Taskin’s left hand, and laid finger to wrist to measure the pulse. ‘Now listen to me. No excitement, understand? Your condition is fragile. We are blessed to have you wakened and lucid, but you cannot withstand undue stress.’

Taskin’s wax forehead pinched into a frown. ‘You want my backing to salvage that desert-bred?’ The pale eyes flicked sideways, still furious. ‘Then speak for him.’

Jussoud bowed his head. ‘Mykkael forswore Kaien’s do’aa for the death of a child.’ In measured phrases, he explained the particulars, while the silence grew thick enough to suffocate.

Taskin stared straight ahead. His chest rose and fell. The raced pulse under Jussoud’s tacit touch fluttered light as a moth’s wing. When speech came at last, the scraped words were reduced as the rustle of breeze through a feather. ‘Mykkael would have entered the second master’s do’aa under a false claim of autonomy’

‘He had to.’ The nomad swallowed and closed his vibrant clasp over the commander’s fingers. No glance could he spare for the stilled presence of the physician from Fane Street. His eastern voice remained firm as he resumed a discussion that must turn revealingly private. ‘The master who finally finished Mykkael’s training was the only man living who knew the technique to curb the conditioning of barqui’ino reflex. His do’aa alone taught the sequence to allow a roused warrior to stop short of a killing blow.’

‘“An awkwardness no one admits,” Mykkael told me.’ Taskin’s confession emerged with demanding effort. ‘That was his fair wording, when he affirmed his past course of study under two masters.’ The commander attempted to turn his head, prevented by Jussoud’s quick restraint before the move pulled at his bandages. The ascetic face on the pillow grimaced, ripped by sorrow too late to redress. ‘I was wrong,’ Taskin finished. ‘The Captain of the Garrison never once lied to me as his senior officer.’

‘They have not made his capture,’ Jussoud assured him, an inadequate effort at solace. ‘He will have gone on to save Sessalie’s princess with all the resource he has left.’

Taskin’s expression showed wounding remorse. For in fact, the direct order given to Mykkael in his audience with King Isendon had been to do all in his power to safeguard the life of the princess.

Taskin sucked a taxed breath, the spirit that infused his faltering flesh fanned to incandescent resolve. ‘Get me to the king. I don’t care how.’

The distressed physician dimmed back the lamp, and broke silence to offer a warning. ‘If we try to move you, please understand, you’re likely to slip into a coma.’ The anxious glance he shared with Jussoud underscored the life-threatening risk, that if the wound tore and started fresh bleeding, additional dehydration and shock would foreclose any chance of recovery.

Yet Taskin rejected the prudence of cosseting. He would but argue, and waste precious strength. The sorcerer’s plot would not rest through the pause for a stricken man’s health to be guarded.

Jussoud matched his friend’s courage, his demeanour grim as hammered gold in the flame light. ‘If we do this, you realize, your daughter Lindya is going to claw us to shreds.’

Taskin shut his eyes, adamant. ‘Strap me to a plank with a sheet overtop. Damn well claim I’m dead if you have to! Keep me here, and the fact I am wearing a talisman will draw in a pre-emptive attack. This house and its occupants would suffer the brunt!’ A bald truth, followed hard by another, as bitter. ‘Nobody else can force Captain Bennent to reverse his misguided decision.’ Taskin opened his eyes again, pleading. ‘Jussoud, you must! For Sessalie’s security, we have no choice! You have to help me carry through Mykkael’s instructions to safeguard the life of the king.’

An hour’s tense labour saw the poacher’s young son strapped in bandages, and wrapped under layers of warmed blankets. If his colour looked grey, and his breathing stayed clogged, the emergency cautery had accomplished its desperate office. No more flushed blood bubbled from the boy’s mouth. He would rally from shock; or he wouldn’t.

While Benj scrounged up canvas and poles for a litter, Mirag flitted about like a gadfly, gathering untidy piles of provisions, and fretfully hovering beside Timal. Throughout, the male target of her railing tongue maintained his unruffled composure: Mykkael perched on the settle and attended the neglected wound in his thigh. A patter of curses hissed through his teeth as, head bent, he cast aside the cut reed just used to flush out the puncture. He tipped back his head, waited with fixed patience for the wave of fresh pain to subside.

‘You think we’re daft, or just dumb as squabs to swallow such outright foolishness?’ Mirag upended a basket of leeks to fish out the one turned with rot. ‘Do as you say, and Timal will perish for certain.’

The desert-bred she accosted stayed tolerant. ‘Timal should not be moved,’ he admitted, point blank. ‘But if he stays here, if you choose not to abandon the cottage, every one of you will lose much worse than your lives. This I promise.’

His conviction left no room for ambiguity. ‘This site has been fouled by a sorcerer’s long spell. When I go, the wardings I carry move with me. Would you leave your family at risk, stripped of every protection? Unless you allow me to banish the last trace imprints with fire, you will be tracked down. Such a creature will have a bound scryer.’

‘Mirag, please, we can’t argue.’ Benj looked up from lacing a patched length of canvas to a litter pole, his eyes overshadowed by lingering fear. He had lost more than his son’s carefree health to the unclean works of the enemy. The trauma of his narrow escape from the horrific force of a spell line might not, now, ever leave him.

‘The sorcerer will dispatch a minion, or worse, when his catspaw fails to return.’ Mykkael could not mourn what had already passed. As a warrior, he turned the sum of his skills to salvage the course of the future. ‘Unless drastic steps of prevention are taken, an etheric trail of disturbance will remain. A sorcerer will use that cold trail to bind you, the same way he snared Devall’s advocate.’

Clad in one of Benj’s castoff nightshirts, the desertman stretched out his hurt leg and tested the mash of warmed herbs just prepared for a drawing compress. Each move methodical, he slathered the paste over the swollen puncture. Then he rinsed his hands in a bucket, and bound up the wound in clean cloth.

‘If I survive to clear my reputation, and if Sessalie remains free of conquest, I promise to see that you receive the crown’s fair restitution for damages. You have your dogs, and the pay I left, meanwhile. That should be enough to sustain you.’ Mykkael knotted the ends of the bandage, looked up with his insolent smile, and finished, ‘You buried the coin, Mirag? It’s safely concealed somewhere outside the cottage?’

She ignored him, offended, and folded her arms, well braced for the irate glare from her husband. ‘There’s no more secure place, Benj! I dug out a hidey hole under the mastiff’s barrel.’

Yet the fact the poacher looked mollified did nothing to appease her attacking rancour towards Mykkael. ‘What about Timal?’

‘See him settled with the nearest trustworthy neighbour. Then send to the physician on Fane Street. His assistant, Cafferty is competent with wounds. Ask him to visit the boy’s bedside.’ Mykkael stood up, tested his scarred knee, then sat down again. He borrowed upon Jussoud’s example and used more binding to wind a support wrap. As he worked, he continued his effort to wear down the goodwife’s hostility. ‘Tell the physician’s man that Sergeant Vensic at the garrison will see his fee paid from my personal funds.’

‘Go to the garrison? Are you mad?’ Benj paused in the act of tying off the sewn canvas. ‘My boy was cut down for a criminal act!’

Mykkael looked up, uncompromising. ‘No, Benj. This day, Timal fell as a hero, serving my loyal oath to the king. If Isendon’s reign withstands this assault, and Sessalie endures to find triumph, make no mistake. Your family’s strength and hard sacrifice will have played a vital part.’

Mirag dropped the onions she had been sorting. They rolled helter skelter over the tabletop as she reached out on shocked impulse, and touched Mykkael on the forearm. ‘Wait, please, one moment.’ Then she bolted upstairs, wiping the moisture that welled up in her eyes.

While Mykkael stared after her, mystified, Benj slapped his knee with relieved satisfaction.

‘Oh, I knew she’d come round, the old besom. Sure enough, the wife’s had your clothes washed for you all along. They’ll be strung out to dry in the attic’

Yet when Mirag returned with her burden, the cloth had been tidied beyond cleaning. Plain shirt and breeches were ironed and folded. The falcon-crest surcoat lay piled on top, painstakingly mended and crisp. She heaped her offering onto the settle, then smoothed down the swatch cut from Jussoud’s silk sash, its intricate embroidery pressed flat.

‘I’ve told Benj,’ she forestalled before Mykkael could thank her, ‘if he’s going to keep bringing me shirts marked with bloodstains, I’d ease the brute work, and dye his light linen with walnut.’

The boots and sword harness she thrust into the captain’s hands were freshly oiled and gleaming, with the desert-bred now the one forced to mask his fierce upsurge of gratitude.

‘I’ve been expertly humbled,’ he said as he dressed, donned and buckled his harness, then sheathed his sword at rest over his shoulder.

‘You men never stay that way more than a minute.’ Mirag kept her back turned, although he was clad. Yet this time she did not shrink from his presence as he assisted with packing the rations.

Preparations were finished with whirlwind expediency, with foodstuffs, hunting bows and selected necessities cleansed with sprinkled salt, then run through a hazing of cedar smoke. Mykkael ran testing fingers over each separate item until he was satisfied that no taint of the sorcerer’s working remained. Then he strapped the provisions on to two of the horses and helped load the wrapped boy in the litter. The girl was fetched down from her bed in the attic. Crying with confusion, she was bundled outside to join the forlorn family gathered with Mykkael in the yard.

‘Go,’ he said, urgent. ‘Don’t stop to look back, for your lives’ sake. I’ll shoulder the needful work with the fire, then ride escort and see that you reach your friends safely’

The seneschal paced up and down the plush carpet, a crow in dark robes against the gilt and white furnishings that appointed the salon maintained for state guests. His emphatic fingers stabbed at the air as he railed, while the high prince sat with his lace sleeves turned back, elbows braced on a marble tabletop.

The heir apparent of Devall still wore his briar-scratched boots, though servants had taken his soiled shirt at the door and reclothed him in damascened silk. They had added an earring with a teardrop ruby. The jewel dangled like snap-frozen flame, with no jaunty suggestion of swinging. Such leashed stillness, beside the seneschal’s ranting, showed a preternatural patience.

Crown Prince Kailen, who also observed, was not fooled. From the comfort of the room’s cushioned windowseat, he recognized the dangerous, self-contained fury of a hunting cat balked of its prey.

‘What you say points towards a deep-seated conspiracy,’ the Prince of Devall interjected.

The seneschal stopped short. He stared at the foreign prince, horrified. ‘Commander Taskin? Betray King Isendon or Sessalie? That’s not possible!’

The high prince tapped his fingertips one after another to a rippling sparkle of rings. ‘That’s the impression a clever conspirator would surely hope to convey. Or the opposite. Taskin might have been loyal, until something changed him. Don’t forget, he was alone in the mist with that slinking desertman. Nobody actually saw what occurred, though I’ve heard enough ugly rumours. Were there not wooden stakes strung over the ground from the practice of some unclean rite?’

The seneschal digested that statement, flummoxed as though he had just burned his tongue on a sherbet. ‘The Commander of the Guard was half killed by a sword cut, not sorcery.’ He tugged his robe about his bowed shoulders, as though brushed by a sudden chill. ‘Captain Bennent himself saw the wound.’

Devall’s heir apparent glanced towards Prince Kailen, then sighed with quiet forbearance. ‘I keep forgetting I need to explain what should be painfully obvious. Your people here have too little awareness of how a sorcerer works. Taskin possessed an upright, strong character. To bind his will and make him a subservient catspaw could be easily done if he was in a weakened state, or unconsciousness. Your desert-bred shaman would have had his trap well laid and waiting. Once he had Taskin alone and at his mercy, what better way to mask a conversion than to give his victim what looked like a life-threatening sword wound?’

‘I do find this odd,’ Prince Kailen ventured. ‘Two carriages bearing the commander’s daughter and servants passed through the Highgate an hour ago.’ Since the afternoon’s hue and cry after Mykkael, he had bathed and changed, then spent a watchful interlude easing his parched throat at a wine shop. ‘To judge by the baggage I saw strapped to the roof, the household seemed bound for retreat to the family duchy’

‘Why send them on such a hard journey at night?’ The seneschal made way with bad grace for the servant just arrived to refresh the candles. ‘I’ve seen no sign at all that violence might arise inside the walls of the citadel.’

‘But you won’t see the crude gesture of blood in the streets!’ the High Prince of Devall said with high feeling. ‘Since your crown prince was denied legal power as regent, one strike at King Isendon would give our enemy his foothold to break the succession. While your chancellors scrabble to sort out the confusion, an invading sorcerer would simply step into the breach.’ Rings sparked gold fire to a snap of fine fingers. ‘Like that, he would topple the kingdom.’

‘A bizarre flight of fancy,’ the seneschal scoffed. ‘Particularly since Taskin has been at death’s door ever since this morning’s attack. The court ladies who helped tend the wounded insist that he’s never stirred from his bed.’

‘This afternoon, maybe,’ Prince Kailen broke in. ‘But what, pray, do you make of that?’

His gesture encompassed the view through the window, which overlooked the main thoroughfare, where the paved avenue branched off to meet the arch of the palace entrance. There, a small, guarded portal led into the royal grounds from the streetside. Beyond lay the sequestered preserve of the late queen’s hothouse and gardens. From there, if a man knew the warren of buildings and byways, and could speak the right words to the guard, a roundabout route could give access to King Isendon’s private chambers.

‘You should take a look,’ Devall’s High Prince challenged. ‘What harm, if my fears are proved wrong?’

The seneschal unbent and stalked over the carpet. Making no effort to hide condescension, he peered past the crown prince’s shoulder and saw the tightly knit threesome bearing the litter as they passed under the gate lamp. The jet fall of Jussoud’s tribal braid caught his eye, as words were exchanged with the posted sentry. Then the sheet which covered the litter was turned back. The pressured guardsman gave way at first sight. When he slipped the bar, granting the party admittance, even the seneschal’s stuffy façade cracked into consternation.

‘What’s happening?’ demanded the heir apparent from his imperious seat at the table.

Prince Kailen turned his head, no longer amused. ‘A setback, your Highness. Two foreign healers, and a Lowergate man masked in a palace guard surcoat appear to be taking Lord Taskin by the back way to King Isendon’s apartment.’

‘Mysh kael’s creatures, all of them.’ The high prince fixed his scalding regard on the seneschal. ‘Do you need further proof? Or will you and your chancellors continue to dither, while a wolf pack of low-born, outland conspirators attempt an assault on your king?’

Mykkael dragged the dead bodies indoors, then followed with their assortment of horsecloths and trappings. He made his work thorough: affixed bundles of cedar to each door, each shuttered window, and at the four corners of the condemned cottage. He had just kindled the torch to fire the thatch when the first of the loose hounds straggled in. The dogs knew him. They harkened to his voice, bounding in through the darkness to fawn in a muddle at his feet. He paused long enough to fasten their chains, then resumed his grim rounds with the torch.

War had well taught him the business of reiving. The greedy pattern of fires he seeded rippled over the cottage, then consumed roof and plank with a roar. By the time the conflagration slacked off, naught would be left of the home of a friend, but a scorched patch of carbon, with not one stump of timber left standing, and only the chimney stones left as a shell.

Mykkael spared no second thought for regret, that Benj and Mirag might never forgive him. The couple had left with their daughter unharmed, and a wounded son still gamely breathing. Were they lucky, they might live for the rest of their days, weeping tears for those sorrows that decently ended with death. If they cursed his name, Mykkael had no balm for the blame their torn hearts might lay on him. He watched the crackle of cleansing fires, and prayed for Mehigrannia’s mercy, that the poacher’s family should never experience the evil that could enslave a human spirit beyond mortal life.

At the finish, assured by the quiescent chill of his sword hilt that no such untoward power ranged at large, Mykkael led the remaining three horses out of the covert thicket. He unshackled the hounds, then called them to heel, and mounted bareback and rode on his way.

The lanes by that hour were nearly deserted. He was able to cover ground swiftly. If lategoing wayfarers were wont to stare, nightfall mantled his features. Under wan stars and the setting new moon, a hound pack accompanied by a garrison surcoat made him seem just another diligent searcher, empty-handed and homeward-bound. He overtook Benj’s family beyond the first crossroad, to the garrulous joy of the pack, and more tears from Mirag as she noticed the smell of smoke that clung to his hair and clothing.

‘Come, now,’ urged Mykkael. He dismounted, passed the ends of the hackamores to the girl, who was leading the two laden horses. Then, while the mastiff bitch nosed at his boots, he commandeered Mirag’s end of the litter, and insistently pressed for more speed. ‘You’ve got to move on, Benj. Believe me, you can’t risk a moment’s delay’

When the girl tired of walking, Mykkael boosted her on to a horse, and cajoled Mirag to take charge of the lead ropes. He saw the bedraggled family of four safe to the house of the charcoalman’s wife before moonset.

Mirag and the children were hastened inside, folded into warm blankets and sympathy. Benj lingered in the dank chill of the yard, his black-and-tan hounds piled in heaps at his feet, and his flaying tongue suddenly tied. He had always been clumsy at leave-taking.

Mykkael was obliged to speak for them both. ‘Keep a lit fire with cedar greens, always! Do you hear, Benj? Except for your errand to Fane Street, for the boy’s sake, promise me you’ll keep close.’

The grizzled poacher sucked in a shivering breath, for the first time in his criminal life uneasy in shadows and darkness. ‘You need not convince me,’ he said in cracked fear. ‘It’s Mirag who won’t bear things quietly’

‘Then handle her.’ Mykkael grinned. ‘She’s no worse, really, than your ornery mastiff. Feed her with kindness, she’ll be placated.’ His dark face turned serious. ‘I have one last favour to ask in the name of Sessalie’s princess. Benj, can you loan me the use of your lead hound?’

Benj looked at him, dumbstruck. ‘You want Dalshie? For what? To track that forsaken boy and his horses, that almost cost Timal his life?’ When the desert-bred failed to soften, he cursed. ‘Perish your ancestry, foreigner, not Dalshie! She’s the breath and the life in my veins!’

‘I need her,’ Mykkael said, his voice flint-struck iron. ‘Crown requisition, or as a brave favour done by the hand of a friend. Or is the life of her Grace not worth your best dog? If Princess Anja is claimed by the sorcerer whose catspaw just glancingly touched you, I can’t begin to describe the horrors that might befall her by morning. This I can promise, at bitter, first hand. Your fair land of Sessalie will be crushed by conquest. The good people you know will suffer an evil beyond your most terrible nightmares.’

‘Go! Mykkael, go now! I can’t bear to watch.’ Shoulders bowed, old Benj turned his back. His eyes stayed averted, bitter and streaming. Nor did he give way to heartbreak and plead. He stood like a rock as the captain called Dalshie, and the dog, ever true to her gallant, long lineage, left her pack to answer his perilous summons.

‘She’s already exhausted,’ Benj insisted, unmoving, his arms folded over his chest. Savaged beyond comfort, he received the softly spoken answer.

‘I know, Benj. I’ll not spend her carelessly’

Mykkael chose the fittest pair of dark geldings, and the laden one bearing his choice of provisions. He knotted their lead lines, then mounted and whistled for Dalshie. As she leaped at his leg, he caught her by the scruff and hauled her up into his lap. Then he dug in his heels with no shred of mercy, and drove headlong from the yard.

The princess’s flight had turned straight upcountry from Farmer Gurley’s unkempt back meadow. Mykkael made his way avoiding the road. Where his knowledge of the landmarks fell short, he was guided by the poacher’s description of the game trails that led to the alpine meadows where cattle were grazed in the summer. Few patrols searched the deep woods, after dark. Of those he encountered, none expected a fugitive to be outbound from town at this hour. Guardsmen from the Highgate disdained to question a rider wearing garrison colours, particularly one ploughing through brush and briar apt to tear the fine cloth of their surcoats. The one who called a query across a field accepted his shout concerning remounts for some officer whose horse had gone lame. The hound was excused as an animal sick with exhaustion.

The patrols from the keep had been dispatched by Jedrey whose sheltered mind held poor grasp of strategy in rough country. The easier ground had been assigned to his favourites. Those given the harder sweeps in the hills rode in predictable patterns, which let Mykkael slip through with an ease he should have found shameful. He had night to lend cover, and mounts with dark coats. Forest shadow and moonset helped mask him.

He pressed upwards at a relentless fast clip. When his first mount flagged under him, he dismounted, slipped the headstall and vaulted on to the spare one. Then he set off again, the hound trotting on foot. The packhorse laboured, winded, behind him.

The rising ground showed the first spurs of grey rock, mantled with copses of fir trees. Mykkael clung to the verges, where the blanket of shed needles would keep the horses’ shod hooves from striking chance sparks. He felt as though eyes watched his back at each step; as they might, if an enemy lurked in Dedorth’s observatory and commandeered use of the seeing glass.

As Mykkael gained altitude, the game trails narrowed, until the faint tracks that snaked through the thickets would not allow passage for horses. The captain picked his way up the gulches carved by spring snowmelt. His mount clattered over the deposits of loose rock. The scratches its iron shoes chalked on the stone left a beacon for a sharp tracker. Yet no time could be spared for stealth. One catspaw destroyed would just prompt an adept sorcerer to create another to stand in his place. The crown’s archers would know where their shot struck down Timal. Inside a matter of hours, or less, more searchers were bound to ascend.

Mykkael had no weapon beyond flight and speed in his race to find Princess Anja before them.

He reined his horse down another steep bank, spurred into the froth of a freshet, and there, the riptide of witch thought overwhelmed him…

He was Jussoud, bearing the poles of a litter down a path in the palace garden. Awareness chilled him, that his grass sandals were making more noise than he wished. Behind him, the Fane Street physician glanced side to side, rabbit-scared, the nervous shine off his spectacles glancing against the black shapes of the topiary. Vensic’s tiger-soft tread moved at his left flank, each step taken with stalking wariness.

‘We should hurry,’ the young sergeant whispered. ‘Something’s not canny. The crickets are too quiet.’

Which fact was not new, to Jussoud’s steppe-trained ear. He kept his tread steady. Although every instinct urged him to run, he held out, unwilling to risk unwise haste that might jostle Taskin’s hurt shoulder.

The next moment, brisk footsteps approached down the path. The way ahead came alive with the jingle of spurs, and the chance shine of weapons by starlight. Four palace guardsmen accompanied the robed form of a council chancellor.

‘Set Taskin down!’ Jussoud cried, words scored by the metallic scrape as Vensic cleared his sword from his scabbard.

Then the talisman worn at his chest came alive, tingling with active warning…

‘No!’ Mykkael cried, ‘Vensic, no! Don’t attack!’

For the garrison man had no shred of protection. If he stayed with the companions minding the litter, he had a chance to be saved. The copper discs worn by the others would cast a limited field of protection. Drawn as passive talismans, their pattern would shield, but could not counter-ward an assaulting spell engaged in an active attack.

‘Vensic, hold!’ Mykkael whispered, anguished by his helplessness. He had seen too much horror: the boldest and best of his field troop most hideously destroyed, one after the next, by the binding lines spun by Rathtet.

If this latest officer engaged his brave sword, if in armed defence he made contact, he would perish, the consumed prey of a sorcerer’s long spell.

Yet shouted words could not bridge the separation; a witch thought lent no saving power to warn.

Mykkael broke out of unruly, tranced vision, reeling back into himself with a wrench that left him gasping and sick. For a moment he could do nothing but cling to the sweat-dampened crest of his mount. While grief and distress ran him through like live fire, he recontained his shocked nerves, thrust back upright, and pressed the horse onwards.

Distraction could not matter; death and sorrow could not claim even tears of acknowledgement. Jussoud, who was brother, and Vensic, who was protégé, and Taskin, who held his respect, and not least, the meek physician who displayed such terrified courage—all must suffer their fates without salvage. One man and a dog bore Isendon’s charge to safeguard a royal daughter. Now, nothing less than the peace of a kingdom rode on the unwritten outcome.

Mykkael forged ahead, though he ached for the price of necessity. Since the disastrous defeat of Prince Al-Syn-Efandi, he had fought to bury his wounded heart in sealed solitude. Sessalie’s peace had leached through that resolve. His circle of newly forged friendships had made inroads, and were now, yet again, all he had resembling a family.

‘Benj, Benj,’ he whispered, torn ragged, while the gelding splashed and scrambled up the ravine. ‘I always understood how you felt about Dalshie.’

How much harder to bear, when the next sacrifice claimed was likely to be a perceptive and talented young sergeant.