Awoke and the sun was shining. Clouds and sunshine chasing each other across the sky. Slept in, slept late. So … peaceful. There’s a story about Fylinn Dragonlord sleeping late the morning of a battle, because he was so at peace with himself. The utter calm stillness of knowing that today he’s going to die. And so nothing else in the world matters anymore.

Landra doesn’t know, Tobias thought, watching her eating breakfast. She was watching the city around them, the beggar children fighting in the street opposite, the crossing sweeper shovelling filth. She ate and watched with a look on her face that said she still felt alive.

Raeta’s eyes met his own. Raeta knew.

They got themselves equipped. Mail, swords, knives, helmets. Their vision closed down by the helmets. Everything less real. Can’t see so well. Can’t hear so well. Like being drunk, or fevered. Looking through a window at the world straight ahead. It’s easier to kill people, Tobias had sometimes speculated, wearing a helmet, because it doesn’t feel quite as much like it’s you inside it killing a real person.

Tobias rarely wore a helmet.

Remembered Marith shuddering saying he hated wearing helmets.

Raeta looked kind of foxy in hers. Shameful to admit it, but she did. More than kind of. Landra looked … Landra had realized, finally, Tobias thought, that killing Marith meant killing him.

Raeta might look foxy but she obviously hated the armour. Itched and wriggled her shoulders, twisted her head around.

“You look like a bloody hatha addict,” said Tobias. “Or like you’ve got fleas in there. Stop it.”

“How can you wear this stuff?”

“With practice.”

Landra carefully packed up all her things, left them in a bundle on the bed. Landra got her things together. A horse-bone spindle. A scrap of yellow cloth. A broken twig. A gold ring stamped with a bird flying, her father’s crest.

“Eltheia,” Landra whispered. “Please. Please.” Raeta shot her a glare like ice.

They walked through the city, towards Malth Tyrenae. Thick grey clouds coming over, the sky growing dark. About to pour with rain.

Tobias looked straight ahead of him. Trying not to walk too fast or too slow. No different to walking up to the gates of the Imperial Palace. No different to any other job he’d done. Just walk.

A few hours left to live.

Nobody noticed them, and like always that was strange, that no one could see and knew.

Malth Tyrenae was there ahead of them. They came within the shadow of its towers. So high, its towers, that they blocked out the light of the sun. The gates were open. A long path up and they would be in.

Tobias could feel him. Marith. A light in his mind up there ahead of them. A pressure. Waiting for them, up there.

A few heartbeats left to live.

They stopped and looked up at the fortress. Its towers were lost in the clouds. Every window was brilliant with light.

“I’m afraid,” said Landra.

My death and his death, Tobias thought.

“You can still leave,” he said to Landra. “Go back to the inn.”

Saw her eyes blink beneath her helmet. She shifted her hand on the hilt of her sword. “No.”

She said she wasn’t looking for vengeance, Tobias thought.

A trumpet sounded, high and clear. Again. Again.

A voice shouted. Too far away to make out the words.

More voices began to shout.

The trumpet sounded. Trumpets and drums. A horseman came racing out through the gates towards them, past them, a man in armour, a red banner raised, shouting “We march! We march!” More horsemen. “We march in an hour! King’s orders. Go! Go!” The fortress before them boiling over with shouts, crash of metal, blare of trumpets, horses galloping out. The city shouting and stirring, soldiers and camp followers pulling themselves together, running in panic, preparing themselves.

“King’s orders! King’s orders!”

“The king says we march!”

The skies opened. Rain pouring down.

Behold the Army of Amrath, preparing to march for Illyr.

You really thought they’d even get close?

Really?