“Sergeant Travick, Highness,” he said, going to one knee before her the day she joined them on the march. “Late of the Sixteenth Regiment of Foot.”

“Ah, the Black Bears as I recall,” Lyrna said, gesturing for Benten to bring her the item he had procured from Brother Hollun’s travelling armoury.

Travick blinked at her in surprise. “Yes, Highness. Your memory does you credit.”

“Thank you. However, I must advise you that your etiquette, by contrast, is sadly lacking.”

The veteran lowered his head, frowning in embarrassment. “Forgive me, Highness. Not used to such things.”

“Hardly an excuse,” Lyrna said, holding out her hand as Benten handed her the sword, an Asraelin blade, as befit the occasion. “For a Sword of the Realm to refer to himself as a sergeant. I profess myself shocked.”

His head snapped up in alarm, eyes widening at the sight of the sword. “Lord Marshal Al Travick,” she said, reversing the weapon to lay it across her forearm, handle first, “do you accept this sword offered by your queen?”

Behind Travick the Realm Guard were stirring in their ranks, less neat and well shaved as she remembered, but all uniformly hardened and possessed of the air of dangerous men. Dangerous I can use, she decided. Let them fight each other if they must, as long as they fight harder against the Volarians.

“I-I do, Highness,” Travick stammered.

“Then take it, my lord, and do get up.” His meaty, scarred hand closed on the sword-handle and he rose, holding it up with an expression of blank astonishment.

“It is my wish that the Realm Guard be reordered, Lord Marshal,” she went on, recapturing his attention and making him snap back into a soldierly posture, spine straight and eyes averted.

“Whatever my Queen commands.”

“A respect for the past is a good thing, but we cannot allow it to obstruct our purpose. Many proud regiments now retain mere fragments of their former complement or were wiped out completely. If I calculate correctly, there are little over six thousand Realm Guard under your command, many of them holding to regimental ties that no longer have meaning. Of those regiments still remaining only three can truly be called such, and even they are greatly reduced in number. You will bring these up to full complement and divide the remaining men into three new regiments, their names and banners to be determined by the men, subject to my approval. Also you will add Lord Nortah’s company to the Realm Guard roster as the Sixtieth Regiment of Foot.”

She turned her gaze on the ranks of the Realm Guard. The regimental loyalty of the Realm’s soldiery was legendary and she saw open dismay on many faces. “When this war is won,” she told them, raising her voice, “I give you my word the Realm Guard will be rebuilt and any wishing to rejoin their former regiments will be granted leave to do so. For now, we have a war to win and sentiment will not aid us in that endeavour.”

Lord Travick barked a command, his sergeant’s voice a thunderclap, sending every soldier to one knee, heads bowed. “The Realm Guard is yours, Highness,” he said. “To forge as you will, and,” he added, his voice loud and carrying to every soldier in his command, “if I hear any man say differently, I’ll flog him down to the bone.”

• • •

The walls of Warnsclave had been neglected for many years, the long period of peace heralded by her father’s ascension making them an expensive irrelevance to successive town factors. Vaelin opined they had been strong enough to repel one Volarian assault, but ultimately proved too weak to withstand another. They were rent in several places, great gashes torn into the stone from ground to parapet, offering an all-too-clear view of what lay beyond as Arrow brought Lyrna closer.

“Nothing remains, Highness,” Lord Adal had reported that morning, having returned from reconnaissance. “Not a house, and not a soul.”

Her faint hope the North Guard had exaggerated dwindled with every tread of Arrow’s hooves, the ash and rubble visible through the breaches told of utter destruction. She found Vaelin waiting at the ruined gate, expression grim. “The harbour, Highness,” he said.

The harbour waters were cloudy with silt and scummed by oil leaking from the scuttled boats of the town’s fishing fleet, but she could see them clearly enough, a great cluster of pale ovals, tinged green by the algae in the water so they resembled a mound of grapes after the harvest.

Lyrna swept her gaze around the remnants of what she recalled as a lively if somewhat smelly town, grimy in fact, the people speaking in a coarse accent, more ready to meet her gaze than in Varinshold, and less ready to bow. But they had been happy to see her, she remembered, cheering as she rode through, offering babies to kiss and tossing flower petals in her path. She had come to open an alms-house, paid for by the Crown and staffed by the Fifth Order. She had found no trace of it in the journey to the harbour, just street after street of piled brick and scorched timber.

“They chained them together,” Vaelin said. “Pushed the first in and the rest followed. Perhaps four hundred, the only survivors from when they took the town, I assume.”

“Didn’t want to be burdened with slaves on the march north,” Lord Adal commented. His voice had the clipped tones of well-controlled emotion, but Lyrna saw how the muscles of his jaw bunched as he stared down at the water.

“March north, my lord?” she asked him.

Lady Dahrena stepped forward with a bow, her face showing the kind of paleness that only came from the deepest chill. “I believe I may have useful intelligence, Highness.”

“It’s gone?” Lyrna asked her a short while later. She had ordered Murel to fetch the lady a hot beverage and she sat in her tent now, small hands clutching a bowl of warm milk. Vaelin stood by regarding Dahrena with evident concern, already having voiced his disquiet at her using her gift.

“Alltor cost you much,” he said. “Flying free again so soon was unwise.”

“I am a soldier in this army,” the lady replied with a shrug. “Like any other, and my gift is my weapon.”

Lyrna forced herself to stillness as the air seemed to thicken between them, knowing much was being left unsaid, but still they knew each other’s mind as if the words had been shouted. Whilst I know so little of what lies behind his eyes.

“Burnt to ash from end to end,” Dahrena confirmed. “The Urlish is dead, Highness.”

Lyrna remembered the day Lord Al Telnar had come begging her father to lift the strictures on harvesting timber from the Urlish, how he had been sent scurrying from the council chamber, face red with humiliation. “The Urlish is the birthplace of this Realm,” Janus had told a cringing Al Telnar as he signed another decree reallocating yet more land formerly owned by the Minister of Royal Works. “The cradle of my rule, not to be grubbed over by the likes of you.”

Al Telnar and the Urlish, she reflected. Now both nothing but ash. Strange he should sacrifice himself for me after so many years of Father’s torments. “And this army moving across the Renfaelin border towards Varinshold?” she asked Dahrena. “Could you gauge their number?”

“Somewhere over five thousand, Highness. Mostly on horseback.”

“Darnel calls his knights,” Lyrna mused. “He’ll certainly need them before long.”

“I don’t think so, Highness,” Dahrena said. “There’s a soul among them, burning bright but red. I’ve seen it before, when I flew over the Urlish. I’m certain it was fighting the Volarians there.”

Lyrna nodded, recalling a night spent in a Renfaelin holdfast, only months ago but it seemed like years now. There are many, Banders had said, who find the prospect of being ruled by that man a stain on their honour.

“And the filth who slaughtered the people in the harbour?” she asked. “Any trace of them in your flight, my lady?”

She sensed a certain resignation in Dahrena’s response, a grim acceptance of the consequences of the intelligence she provided. “Four thousand or so, Highness. Twenty miles north-west. Most on foot.”

Lyrna turned to Vaelin. “My lord, please ask Sanesh Poltar for the fastest horse the Eorhil can provide and an escort for a royal messenger. They will seek out this Renfaelin army and divine their identity and intentions.”

He gave a shallow bow. “Yes, Highness.”

“I will see to the recovery of the bodies from the harbour and ensure they are given to the fire with all due ceremony, whilst you will take every rider we have and hunt down their murderers. And I expect to hear no more word of prisoners.”

CHAPTER SIX

Vaelin

We will make an ending, you and I.

“My lord?”

Vaelin snapped back to the present at Adal’s words, finding the North Guard commander mounted alongside, his eyes narrowed in shrewd appraisal. “My men found some stragglers two miles north,” Adal said. “Close to exhaustion and not having eaten for days. Seems likely the rest won’t be in much better shape.”

Vaelin nodded, turning away from the man’s scrutiny, looking to the west where the Eorhil were galloping off to perform the encircling manoeuvre he had ordered that morning. He experienced a moment’s disorientation as the plainsmen crested a rise and disappeared from view, an increasingly familiar sensation mingling frustration with disappointment. There was no song to accompany the ride of the Eorhil, as there had been no song to guide him when Lyrna was found healed in body if not, apparently, in spirit. Nor had there been any song to accompany Orven’s hanging of the Volarian prisoners at her command, nor any music now as he turned back to Adal and ordered him to take his men to cover the east.