He turned his back on the mansion and in the dying red glow cast by the setting sun, imagined the mark over Parve. The Hole in the Sky. The young mage had blabbered endlessly about dragons pouring through it to consume them all and Senedai wasn’t confident enough in their non-existence to disbelieve him. That was, after all, why he was here and why Lord Tessaya had ordered him, at all costs, to destroy the manse ruin through to its foundations and chase The Raven to their deaths. Tessaya understood there was a gateway there. To another place. He had been quite specific about Senedai’s responsibilities.

Another shudder and Senedai walked toward his tent. The whole place smacked of magic and evil. It made his skin crawl. Perhaps Tessaya would arrive before he had to attack alone.

The Barons Blackthorne and Gresse, with General Darrick, rode slowly through the wreckage of Understone with a close guard of thirty cavalry, though all three men knew instantly that no guard was necessary. The army had continued its march east towards Korina, giving Understone Pass itself a wide berth but expecting and encountering no resistance as it joined the main trail. The men they were chasing had not headed west to their homeland.

Trotting through the burned gates of the freshly built and burned stockade, under the empty gaze of a pair of torched watch-towers, Darrick had seen the first splash of red and had turned to his men, saying:

‘Keep what you see here to yourselves. It will not be pretty.’

And now, pulling to a stop in the centre of the town, or what they guessed to be the centre, his words rang so hollow. Not pretty. The magnitude of his understatement would have made him laugh but laughter would have been the ultimate insult.

Darrick thought he had seen everything during his years of soldiering. Warfare was an ugly business. He had witnessed horses’ hooves crushing men’s skulls as they lay crying for help. He had seen young men clutching at their stomachs, entrails spilling between their fingers as their wide eyes sought hope in the faces of their friends. He had seen limbs struck from healthy bodies, jaws hacked away, eyes pierced by arrows and axes jutting from the heads of men who still walked, too shocked even to register they were dead.

He had seen the horrific burns from fire and cold that magic could bring at the whisper of a word and, more recently, he had seen the terrible devastation of water flooding Understone Pass, leaving torn and beaten bodies folded into cracks in the rock.

But always there had been a certain justification. War was an engagement both sides entered into in the knowledge of its likely outcome in terms of suffering.

Here in Understone, though, it was quite, quite different.

Blackthorne Town had been destroyed but its natives had long since fled to the countryside or joined the Baron’s army. The same choice had not been granted the inhabitants of Understone and their slaughter had been utterly deliberate.

Darrick shook his head. It didn’t add up. He knew Tessaya’s mind and this wasn’t his way. The Wesmen had fortified Understone considerably, if the scorched ruins were anything to go by. A stockade had all but encircled the town, studded with armoured watch-towers. Pits and trenches had been dug outside the wooden walls and strong points had been placed in tactically perfect defensive positions throughout the town itself. Tessaya had been planning for a long occupation.

But something had radically and appallingly changed his thinking. Every building had been burned to its foundations, stone had been knocked from stone and all that the Wesmen themselves had built lay in splinters and ashen piles. And everywhere, everywhere were strewn the bodies. It had been a ritual massacre, each man taken to a particular place in the town after it had been burned, and murdered, throat cut, eyes put out and stomach split, the corpse spread-eagled towards the rising sun.

There had to be more than three hundred of them. Understone garrison soldiers and those of the four-College force. Some, Darrick recognised, others he counted among respected colleagues. They had been dead for a day and the clouds of flies filled the air with an evil hum while the carrion birds and animals waited for the riders to leave them to their unexpected feast. The stench of putrefaction was rising.

‘What, by all the Gods watching us, has happened here?’ Gresse’s voice was a hoarse whisper. He slid from his horse to stand reverently on the ground. The rest of the riders followed suit.

‘It’s a warning,’ said one of the cavalry, echoing Darrick’s own reaction. ‘They want us to fear them.’

‘No,’ said Blackthorne. ‘And it is they who are scared.’

‘You’ve seen this sort of thing before?’ asked Gresse, his expression disbelieving.

Blackthorne shook his head. ‘It is documented in the Blackthorne library, or rather, was. Don’t forget, we have been in the front line against the Wesmen before.’

‘So what drove Tessaya to do this?’ asked Darrick.

‘The burning, I think, is just to stop anyone else benefiting from what he had built and I expect the pass to be very heavily defended now. The sacrifices, because that is what they are, are something else entirely.

‘When the Wesmen go into battle, their Shamen call upon their spirits to align behind them and bless them to give them strength. But when they fear an enemy is stronger than they are, they sacrifice enemies to ward off the evil they think is chasing them. These poor bastards are victims of a Shamen ritual and they are laid facing the rising sun because the Wesmen say the dawn brings sight to the eyes of the gods of their enemies and what they see will take their courage.’ He shrugged.

‘They’re scared of us?’ Gresse frowned.

‘I don’t think so, not us,’ said Darrick. ‘Something has scared Tessaya very badly to cause him to abandon his plans. He is normally a very careful man. He must believe the invasion could fail and wherever he has gone, he must believe it critical to his campaign.’

‘And wherever he goes, his lackeys will follow,’ said Gresse grimly.

‘Yes,’ said Blackthorne. ‘It looks as if we now chase the lynch pin and not merely a strut.’

Darrick pursed his lips. ‘But before that, all these men must be given the honour of a pyre.’

‘Time is of the essence,’ said Blackthorne a little sharply. ‘These men would not thank us if their murderers eluded us while we burned their bodies.’

Darrick regarded him bleakly. ‘And catch Tessaya we will. We have eight thousand men marching east. Join them and send back my cavalry. We will see these men are accorded the respect they deserve. We will catch you before nightfall.’

‘I apologise, General,’ said Blackthorne. ‘My words were not intended to—’

Darrick waved a hand. ‘I understand, Baron, and my respect for you is undimmed. But I cannot leave my men to fester where they lie in this grotesque slaughterhouse. You would feel the same.’

Blackthorne raised a smile and remounted his horse. ‘I would indeed, General. You are a good man. Please, take your time.’

‘Time is something of which we have very little. But for us, at least, it has not run out.’

The Raven, with their escorts and the Xeteskian contingent, left the Choul well before dawn. The mages had talked long into the night, Hirad hearing their low tones as he moved in and out of a strangely broken sleep. And when they had been woken by Jatha, he felt tired and irritable and saw his mood reflected in the eyes of all of his friends and Styliann.

Though the sun had not breached the plain, which was still cast in shadow, there was enough light in the sky to see by and nothing but tall grass in every direction. Indeed the semi-darkness was comforting in its way and Hirad experienced a feeling of safety that he knew to be false. Though they could hide themselves in the dark from other humans, neither Jatha’s people, nor dragons, had any trouble piercing the gloom. All that travelling at night would do would be to put The Raven at a further disadvantage. He said as much to The Unknown who simply nodded as if he had suspected exactly that.