I looked across the valley with its coppices of hazel and ash, past the sprawl of a turf-roofed village amidst a striped patchwork of open fields and over the rough common grazing to the stark crag where the local Baron had his reddish stone castle. Formalin villages cluster close to the protections of their patron and have done since the Chaos when lordless and landless men ransacked the ruins of the Old Empire. Lescari peasants grub a living from the land as best they can and hope the battles pass them by. I noted the battlements were being raised, straw and clay that had protected the half-built fortifications from frosts stripped away; that could be useful intelligence for Messire. What threat did Marlier see waiting now the Equinox had opened the fighting season? I knew the Duke of Triolle had fouled his own nest comprehensively after heavy losses in the previous year’s fighting with Parnilesse. Did he have ambitions here?

Arriving at the river in the mid-afternoon, I found a silent line of grim-faced peasants waiting by the bridge, salvaged possessions in bundles and handcarts, little children all unknowing smiles, older ones wide-eyed and glancing at parents for reassurance seldom forthcoming. I’d been passing pitiful groups like this all through Lescar, trudging along, heads down, locals stopping their work to watch as the strangers passed, hoes and plow-staves in hand, ready to keep anyone moving who might be thinking about trying to stop. My own purse had lightened by a good measure on the road, common coin gone to those who would take it or else spent on as much bread as I could reasonably carry, so I had something I could casually offer those still clinging to the shreds of their dignity.

I rode to the head of the queue, not about to risk hanging about and getting drawn into the quarrels erupting here and there along the line.

“Rein it in.” A burly man-at-arms leveled his pike to bar my way and the rest of his troop stopped lounging on the parapet of the bridge.

“Good day to you.” I dismounted and nodded a precisely calculated half-salute. “Is there a fee for crossing the bridge?”

He eyed me a little uncertainly. “That depends on who you are.”

I bet it did; on whether one was a desperate peasant willing to give up a share of any hoarded coin worth having, or a fleeing mercenary who could end up costing a lax border guard a flogging if he slipped past and was caught looting or worse. Caladhrian lords know full well the bloody chaos of Lescar would soon spill over to choke their lands if it were not for the depth and swirling current of the Rel, and they take guarding the few bridges suitably seriously.

“I am a Formalin prince’s sworn man.” I pulled my amulet from the neck of my shirt and held it out.

“What’s your business in Caladhria?” the man asked, open-mouthed.

“My Patron’s,” I replied crisply but politely.

He didn’t know what to say to that but he didn’t lower his pike either.

“Here.” I held out my hand and he closed his stained fingers on a couple of good Formalin Marks, not the flimsy leaded coin of Lescar. “Give some woman on her own with children a free passage, why don’t you?”

He cracked a gap-toothed smile at that. “I reckon I could.”

He planted his pike on its butt and my horse’s hooves rang on the planks of the broad bridge. Formalin-built Old Empire foundations were still solidly defying the murky flow of the mighty Rel, as you would expect, and the intermittently renewed woodwork above was dark from a fresh coat of pitch. More men with pikes lined the sides, ready for any threat of trouble. I stopped by one who looked barely old enough to use a blade for shaving, let alone for defending his Lord’s domains.

I noted the colors and badge on his overlarge livery. “Are you Lord Adrin’s men?”

He nodded cautious agreement. “That’s right.”

“I’m heading for a place called Cote. Which road do I take?”

He frowned at me. “Which Cote would that be, then, mester?”

I frowned in turn, perplexed. “How do you mean?”

“Well, for Upper Cote, Spring Cote, Cote in the Clay and Small Cote you go upstream, Cotinwood and Hill Cote are downstream, and you’d want the west high road for Nether Cote and Cote Fane.” This being Caladhria, the lad was genuinely trying to be helpful, not just tweaking my nose.

“Where’s Lord Adrin’s main residence?”

“He’m visiting Duryea, his wife’s people, been there since the Equinox.”

“And where does he live when he’s not visiting?”

“All over.”

The lad’s painstaking Formalin, doubtless learned from some local scholar, was oddly accented and I wasn’t at all sure he was understanding me fully. The Caladhrian I know best is the coastal dialect and this far up country could well confuse things further.

“Thank you,” I said, belatedly recalling why Caladhrian was a byword for lackwit back home. This lad couldn’t poke a dead dog with a sharp stick.

Once off the bridge, I spurred the horse clear of the peasants milling about. A knot of lime-washed, timber-framed houses with wood-shingled roofs clustered around the meeting of the roads; it could have been any small hamlet between the ocean coast and western Ensaimin, the most distant province, where the Empire’s grip had never really taken hold and slipped loose first. I looked vainly for way-stones that might give me some heading and finally drew my lucky rune-stick from my pocket. I rolled it between my palms, the Drum came out upright and I headed North on that result.

A sturdily built hut of logs and wooden shingles stood under a shallow crag in a forest clearing, a knot of figures gathered on the smooth turf before it. Their prisoner was an old man, withered with age, hair and beard frosted with white. Bound on his back to a freshly felled log, twigs and splinters pierced him not by deliberate design but through simple carelessness. Manacles were tight around wrists blackened with old blood, drawn by repeated writhing against the cruel restraints. His captors stood in a loose half circle, black-clad in leather and metal, faces flat with disinterest, men with unvarying blond hair and stocky builds. Their leader stood at the head of the hapless victim, calm as his irons reheated in the small wood fire. The smoke rose and coiled away into the clear blue sky, the first leaves of the new season green and fresh on the trees. Blood dripped slowly from ruined hands, fingers broken, jagged edges of bone jutting through skin, nails ripped out with calculated brutality. The victim’s ribs heaved in sudden spasm, skin stark white through the smears of blood as his chest fluttered like a half-killed bird and abruptly stilled. Gory pits where eyes should have been wept tears of anguished blood.

“That’s a grim prospect, I grant you, Viltred.” The speaker swallowed hard as he stared at this stark picture. It hovered within a gleaming diamond hanging from the upper point of a crescent of hammered copper set before him on the table, a tongue of flame licking upwards from a candle at the bottom of the arc.

“When did you first see this fate in your augury spell?” He cleared his throat and looked around the homely clutter of the small cabin as if to reassure himself the vision of anguish and malice was no more than foul illusion.

“Four days past,” the old wizard grunted, face dour as he looked at the image of his agonized death, scant paces from his own threshold. “So what do you make of it, Shivvalan? What has this to do with you turning up after the mighty wizards of Hadrumal have ignored me for close on a generation, believing me to be either liar or fool? When I was Azazir’s apprentice and we made our voyage, no one believed us when we said we had found islands in the far Ocean.” He gestured toward the gem with one gnarled hand. “Islands where a race of fair-haired men lived, as like to these as hounds bred from the same pack. Now you come to tell me that the wise and noble wizards of Hadrumal have discovered these islands for themselves and deign to believe me at last. Is it coincidence that I now see these curs hunting me? What trouble is Planir stirring up for us all now?” He huddled back into the worn and faded cushions that lined his heavy oak chair.