‘My Lord?’ The plea was drenched in fear.

‘I know,’ said Senedai through gritted teeth. He looked again into the room, straight into the eyes of Barras. The old elf smiled.

‘You can take our buildings and our lives but you can never take our Heart.’

‘You owe me your head, Barras.’

‘The deal has changed. Now I suggest you leave my Tower before it becomes your grave too.’ He raised his arms above his head and shouted words the Wesman Lord could not understand.

The Tower rocked violently, coving crashed down, timbers splintered, ceilings cracked and shifted, floors subsided. In front of Senedai’s wide eyes, the chamber in which Barras and his mages knelt began to sink. Wood groaned and squealed against nails, stone and brick shattered like thunder. Everything vibrated.

‘Leave, Senedai. Leave my College.’ The door whipped shut, thrust by an unseen hand. It thudded into the frame, crackling across its panels. Senedai turned to his terrified warriors.

‘What are you waiting for? Go! Move!’ As if to hurry them on their way, a tortured groan of timber, brace and stone tore from the sinking room. The warriors turned and ran, Senedai hard on their heels, while the walls rattled around them, the dust filled the air and, one by one, the lamps and braziers guttered and fell, the darkness spreading up the stairs behind them.

They burst back into the sunlit courtyard to join a circle of Wesmen staring up open-mouthed at the shuddering Tower. Tears ran up and down its length. Networks of cracks were scattered around it like carelessly woven spider’s webs and, here and there, holes had been gouged in the stonework, the debris littering the courtyard.

It was a sight that brought fear but ultimately cheers as the Tower of Julatsa collapsed in a tumult of tumbling stone, billowing dust and shattering glass. But, as the dust blew away and the echoes died to silence, Senedai turned and walked away back to his command post, knowing that what he had witnessed was far from the end of Julatsan magic.

The march had been swift and proud, Darrick’s cavalry at its head, Blackthorne and Gresse flanking the young General. Having despatched three thousand back to Gyernath to help rebuild and defend the damaged port, Darrick organised his force, numbering just shy of eight thousand, into centiles each under a Captain. He built eight regiments from those centiles and each marched behind a mounted commander.

The mood was determined and confident yet light for all that. Each part of the army had won important victories; the port defence had held Gyernath, Blackthorne and Gresse had stopped a force four times their size from reaching Understone and Darrick had aided in the sacking of Parve, destroyed a Wesmen supply line and had either burned or taken every craft he had found.

But now the defence and harrying was over. Now the Eastern Balaians were on the attack and the talk was of liberation, not survival. It had taken them two hours to march from the beach to the rises surrounding Blackthorne’s town and castle. They had expected to see the Wesmen barricaded in the town, their standards flying on the battered walls and from the castle battlements. They had expected to feel the fear pulsing from the helpless enemy and they had expected to march victorious.

What they saw, though, took the songs from their hearts. Blackthorne had been destroyed. A pall of ash from fires long dead still hung in the sheltered dip in which the town had stood. And beneath the dark cloud, barely one stone rested on any other. Blackened wreckage was strewn over a massive area. Here and there, timbers stood proud from the earth, scorched yet defiant, but of the walls there was nothing. Of the streets, the houses, the inns and businesses, nothing. And of the castle, Blackthorne’s ancestral home, nothing. Just scattered stone in slab and fragment. It was a sight of devastation that literally took the breath away.

Gresse rode to Blackthorne’s shoulder and dismounted to stand beside his friend who stood pale and silent, a tear from his left eye drawing a track through the dust on his cheek. This was not a time for words, it was a time to stand with your friend. To lend all the strength that you had.

And as the army crested the rise, the silence spread. Gasped expletives echoed hollowly and, here and there, Blackthorne’s men fell to their knees, the will drained from their bodies, their dreams of a return home snuffed out. Blackthorne was gone.

The Baron stared down unmoving at the ruins of his town. Gresse saw the thoughts chase themselves across his face, on which anger flourished and spread. Behind them, the army waited, those native to Blackthorne stunned, those of Gyernath respectful of their anguish.

Eventually, Blackthorne turned to address all that could hear him.

‘I’ll be brief,’ his voice echoed out over the massed ranks. ‘Down there, you see my town. Torn apart by Wesmen. And among you are those who can see only ruins where their houses once stood. I am one of them. That is why we must pursue the Wesmen and that is why they must be stopped and driven from our lands forever. Yes, I want revenge but more, I want none of the rest of you to feel the way I feel now.

‘Now let’s get moving. General, if you please.’

The mist was just as Hirad remembered it. Like dust across the sun but this time on a day plagued by showers and a cold wind. The dreary light merely added to the sense of wrong that the mass of static mana Septern’s ailing rip generated.

But the weather was not all that was different. In front of the ruins of the Septern Manse stood Styliann and the Protector army, visible as a dark mass of barely human stillness through the mist and five hundred yards of distance. And to Hirad’s left, riding so slowly he barely moved The Raven on at all, was The Unknown Warrior.

During the four days of their ride to the Manse, his mood had changed by degrees from one of hard determination to tetchy introspection, and now angry confusion. And as The Raven neared the low barn where he had met his death, his lack of focused thought led to snarled exchanges with Hirad that were merely exacerbated by the nearness of the Protector army.

‘You should just ride on by,’ said Hirad. ‘Put it behind you.’

‘And that demonstrates exactly how little you understand.’ The Unknown jabbed a finger at the Protectors. ‘They know. They understand but they cannot say anything.’

‘Would it help if they could?’ asked Hirad a little shortly.

‘Yes, damn you, it would,’ snapped The Unknown, reining to a halt. ‘Try and get your head straight. Have you really no conception of how I might be feeling?’

Hirad shrugged. ‘But you’re here,’ he said. ‘Here and breathing. Under the earth there isn’t you. It doesn’t have your soul.’

The Unknown flinched as if struck. ‘ “Soul?” Gods in the ground, your mouth will be your undoing one day,’ he growled. ‘You know nothing about my soul. By all that’s right, it should be with those of my ancestors. At peace. Not back in a body that isn’t the original and exposed to all this . . . this shit!’ He swept his arms about him expansively, taking in everything: the Protectors, the Manse, The Raven.

‘If you want to leave, go right ahead,’ said Hirad. ‘Desert the only true friends you have. I won’t stop you.’

‘For God’s sake, Hirad, listen to what he’s trying to tell you,’ said Ilkar before The Unknown could speak again. ‘Unknown, you need time alone. I suggest the barn is the right place. Hirad, we have Styliann to deal with.’

Hirad felt his anger surge but he kept it in check. Ilkar’s expression had hardened. The Unknown simply nodded at Ilkar, shot Hirad a withering look and urged his horse to a walk towards the barn and the grave he should never have had to face.