It was dusk before the Army of Amrath finally had the field secured properly, the few Illyian survivors penned in the mud by the river, a trophy of arms set up where the fighting had been fiercest, a bonfire of corpses smoking beneath it, burning brilliantly even despite the heavy rain. The tears of Illyr, the soldiers were calling the rainfall. The tears of Illyr, washing the Field of Shame clean.

“If I had my copy of the Treachery of Illyr with me,” said Osen, “I’d chuck it onto that bonfire.”

“You should get the text carved into the hillside,” said Alleen Durith. “With a big sign underneath saying ‘Avenged.’”

Marith laughed. “We’ll have to rename the battleground. The Field of Vengeance.”

Osen said cheerfully,

“Dark its mountains,

The wide green field where horses run.

The river is green and silver.

There all the world’s ruin came.

Still fits, no?”

A few hours’ sleep. Should really celebrate with copious heavy drinking but gods they were all exhausted after the day. In the dawn the rain finally stopped, the sky clearing rosy pink. All the churned earth of the battlefield gleaming. Washed clean, indeed. Marith cut the throats of five men and five horses beneath the victory mark.

They raised up one hundred of the surviving captives on poles beside the river. Another two hundred, shackled in pairs, followed along behind the Army of Amrath to help carry the baggage train. Their first job to strip the battlefield of arms and armour, sort all that was usable into piles. A rough tally of the dead suggested the Army of Amrath had lost perhaps one man in four. Or perhaps nearer one man in three. Cavalry losses in particular were atrocious, and they were very short of horses now. Made something of an effort to shovel up the bodies, but gave up when it became obvious just leaving them would in fact be slightly better for general morale. Mael Bemann and Nasis Jaeartes were buried with honours beneath a shared cairn.

The land grew still harsher. Everything burned. The soil was so thin anyway, very little would grow here, the horses gnawed at bitter scrubs and thistles, the men ate horses and dreamed of bread. The water tasted of rot. Godstones reared up through the skin of the landscape. Looked like graves. The men left offerings of blood and water and coin. Shuddered in fear, spat for luck. These were my people’s gods, once, Marith tried to tell himself, as they rode past them. Thalia bent before them a couple of times to pray.

Three more skirmishes. They won one, drew one, lost one with a whole company of sarriss destroyed. Sneak attacks in the night, things clawing in the dark, invisible. The men screaming. Cutting their own throats. Ruined watch towers cresting the hills. Amrath’s watch towers. Raised by Amrath’s own command. “There, the tower of Hekenae, where Serelethe spent a summer, when Amrath was a boy.” “There, the fortress of Ilyryl, where Amrath drowned Lord Emrysis in a barrel of his soldiers’ blood.” Ruined. Burned. Fallen tumbled stone. Another town to run through. Another skirmish: won it, but at high cost. Another scouting party came back cut to pieces. Reported through bloody broken mouths that they had reached the sea. Things were visible in the water, champing yellow teeth. No trees growing. No birds. No life.

The ruins of a fortress. Huge jagged towers lying shattered. Burned stone. Burned dead earth.

Ethalden.

Amrath’s bones lay there. Unburied, scattered in the burned earth. The thought filled him with something between horror and joy and disbelief. What if he should find him? Look at Amrath’s face? Where could he go, from that? “Turn back,” a tiny part of him whispered. Turn back.

To see Amrath’s body. To see the ruined towers of Ethalden. To claim it all as his own.