“I’m glad it pleases you, Mistress.”

“Pleases me? Oh hardly. But it will please my honoured husband, dullard that he is. This doggerel will be on the fastest ship back to the empire by tomorrow evening, no doubt with instructions to produce a thousand copies for immediate distribution.” She tossed the sheet aside. “Tell me, and I command you to speak honestly, just how did the Realm Guard come to suffer such a defeat at his hands?”

I swallowed hard. She could command truth from me, but what protection could she offer if she carried such truth back to the marriage bed? “Mistress, I may have used some colourful phrasing . . .”

“The truth, I said!” Strident tones again, full of authority. The voice of a woman who had owned slaves all her life.

“The Realm Guard fell to weight of numbers and betrayal. They fought hard but were too few.”

“I see. Did you fight with them?”

Fight? When it became obvious the tide of battle had turned I flogged my horse bloody to escape to the rear, except there was no rear, the Volarians were everywhere, killing everyone. I found a convenient pile of bodies to hide in, emerging in darkness to immediate capture by the slave hunters. They were an efficient lot, keen to assess the value of every captive and my worth had become apparent after the first beating extracted my real name. She had bought me at the camp enclosure, plucked from the shuffling, chained mob. It seemed they had instructions to bring any scholars to her. From the handsome purse she handed the overseer, it seemed I was a considerable prize.

“I am no warrior, Mistress.”

“I should hope not, I didn’t buy you for your martial prowess.” She stood, regarding me in silence for a moment. “You hide it well, but I can see it, Lord Verniers. You hate us. We may have beaten you to obedience but it’s still there, like dry tinder waiting for a spark.”

My gaze remained firmly on the floor, concentrating on the swirling knots in the planking, fresh sweat beading my palms. Her hand cupped my face, lifting my chin. I closed my eyes, fighting down a fearful whimper as she kissed me, one soft brush of her lips.

“In the morning,” she said. “He’ll want you to witness the final assault on the city, now the breaches are in place. Make sure your account is sufficiently lurid, won’t you? Volarians expect some colour to their tales of slaughter.”

“I shall, Mistress.”

“Very well.” She moved back, opening the door. “With any luck our business in this damp land will be concluded soon. I should like you to see my library in Volar. More than ten thousand volumes, some so old there are none who can translate them. Would you like that?”

“Very much, Mistress.”

She sighed a laugh before leaving the cabin without a further word.

I stared at the closed door for a long time, ignoring the food on the table despite the growling emptiness in my stomach. For some reason my hands had stopped sweating. Dry tinder waiting for a spark.

? ? ?

True to her prediction the general had me brought to the foredeck in the morning to watch the Volarians finally take the city of Alltor, under siege now for more than two months. It was an impressive sight, the twin spires of the World Father’s Cathedral rising from the closely packed mass of housing within the great walled island, linked to the mainland by a single causeway. I knew from my various researches that this city had never been taken, not by Janus during the Wars of Unification, or any other previous aspirant to Kingship. Three hundred years of successful resistance to all conquerors, now about to end thanks to the two breaches torn into the walls by the massive ship-borne ballistas barely two hundred yards offshore. They were still at work, casting their great stones at the breaches, though the rents pounded into the walls seemed fairly complete to my unmilitary eye.

“Magnificent aren’t they, Historian?” the general asked. He was dressed in full armour today, a richly adorned red enamel breastplate and thigh-length cavalry boots, a short sword strapped to his belt, every inch the Volarian commander. I noticed there was another slave seated nearby, a stick-thin old man with unusually bright eyes, a charcoal stub in his hand moving over a broad canvas to capture the general’s image. The general pointed at one of the ballistas, holding the pose and glancing over his shoulder at the old slave.

“Only ever used on land before, but I saw their potential for bringing us victory here. A successful marriage of land and sea warfare. Write that down.” I wrote it down on the sheaf of parchment I had been given.

The old man stopped sketching and gave the general a grave bow. He relaxed from his pose and went to a nearby map table. “Read your account,” he told me. “Clever of you, being so restrained in your flattery.”

A fresh spasm of fear lurched in my breast and I briefly wondered if he would let me choose which eye he would pluck out.

“But an overly complimentary account would arouse suspicion amongst those at home keen to read of my exploits,” he went on. “They might think I had exaggerated my achievements somewhat. Clever of you to know this.”

“Thank you, Master.”

“Not a compliment, merely an observation. Look here.” He beckoned me closer, gesturing at the map on the table. I knew Volarian cartographers to be renowned for their accuracy but this was an extraordinarily detailed plan of Alltor, each street rendered with a clarity and precision that shamed the best efforts of the Emperor’s Guild of Surveyors. It made me wonder just how long the Volarians had been planning their invasion, and how much help had they enjoyed in doing so.

“The breaches are here and here.” His finger picked out two charcoal marks on the map, crude slashes through the finely drawn walls. “I will be assaulting both simultaneously. No doubt the Cumbraelins will have prepared all manner of unpleasantness on their side, but their attention will be fixed entirely on the breaches and therefore will not be expecting another assault on the walls.” He tapped a point on the western-facing wall marked with a small cross. “A full battalion of Kuritai will scale the wall and take the nearest breach from the rear. Access to the city will be secured and I expect it will be in our hands by nightfall.”

I wrote it all down, careful to resist the temptation to slip into Alpiran. Writing in my own language might arouse his suspicion.

He moved away from the map table, speaking with a theatrical air. “I find these god lovers to have been a valiant enemy, the finest archers I’ve ever faced in the field, truth be told. And this witch of theirs does seem to inspire them to great efforts. You’ve heard of her, no doubt?”

News had been scant in the slave pens, confined to snatched whispers of overheard gossip from the Free Swords. Mostly it comprised grim tales of yet more defeat and massacre as the Volarian armies ravaged their way through the Realm, but as we were whipped ever southward into Cumbrael the tale of the dread witch of Alltor had come to the fore, the only gleam of hope in a doomed land. “Scant rumour only, Master. She could be merely a figure of legend.”

“No, she’s real enough. Got the truth of it from the company of Free Swords that fled after the last assault on the walls. She was there, they said, a girl no more than twenty, in the thick of the fight. Killing many men, they said. Had them all strangled, of course. Worthless cowards.” He paused for a moment, lost in thought. “Write this down: cowardice is the worst betrayal of the gift of freedom. For a man who runs from battle is a slave to his fear.”

“Very profound, honoured husband.” The general’s wife had elected to join us. She was dressed simply this morning, the glamour of her silk gown exchanged for a plain muslin dress and red woollen shawl. She brushed past me, closer than was seemly, and went to the rail, watching one of the ballista crews working the great windlass that drew the twin arms back for another throw. “Be sure to find room for it in your account of the impending bloodshed, won’t you, Verniers?”

“I shall, Mistress.” I watched the general’s hand twitch on the hilt of his short sword. She baits him at every turn. Yet he holds his anger, this man who has killed thousands. What is her true role here? I wondered.

Fornella’s gaze was drawn away from the sight of the ballista by the approach of a small boat, oars dipping in the placid surface of the river at low tide. A man stood at the prow, barely recognisable at this distance but I noticed her stiffen at the sight of him. “Our Ally sends his creature, honoured husband,” she said.

The general followed her gaze and something passed across his face, a twitch of anger but also fear. I felt a sudden urge to be away from this scene; whoever approached, I knew I did not want to make his acquaintance if he could arouse fear in the hearts of such as these. But there was no escape, of course. I was a slave and had not been dismissed. So I could only stand and watch as the boat came ever closer, the Volarian slave-sailors catching the ropes as they were tossed to the deck, tying them up with the kind of efficiency that only came from years of fearful servitude.

The man who hauled himself onto the deck was of middle years and stocky build, bearded and balding, his features largely devoid of any emotion. “Welcome,” the general said, his tone carefully neutral. No name or greeting, I realised. Who is this man?