I drew my wing closer around her. I don’t know about her, or Wrenn, but I wished I was a very, very long way from here, sitting in a bar.

OUR BRAVE BOYS ARRIVE SAFELY

The Hacilith General Fyrd began arriving at Slake Cross today. The pals from Galt and Old Town marched in with a smart step and big smiles, after 900 km by cart. The Captain of the Ninth Division, Connel, 22, said, ‘We’re raring to have a go at these flying bugs. The people have been great as we came through Awia. The Awians have a spotless record, but now the Hacilith lads are here those bugs haven’t got a chance.’

They are the best that Morenzia has, strong, keen and selfless. We wish them the best!

Smatchet, with the troops at Slake Cross fort

Hacilith Post 27.05.25

Lightning reluctantly agreed to let Cyan leave town. Since I was welcoming the governors and wardens while Lightning was holding Insects off from attacking the arriving troops, he asked me to look after her. I took her to the armoury and got her kitted up.

‘Here’s a brigandine jacket.’ I passed it to her and she let it drop dramatically almost to the floor. ‘It’s heavy!’

I helped her buckle it on. ‘It fits very well, though. Here are some greaves for your legs, made for a woman about your size.’ I showed her how to fasten them. Even if she was strong enough, I thought it too risky to give her plate armour made for another person, which wouldn’t fit properly or might have unseen deterioration. The fyrd who wear the mass-produced stuff that comes in three sizes only do so because they can’t afford better. I found her an open-faced sallet helmet with a tapered tail to protect the nape of her neck.

Then we went to the stables but Cyan didn’t want to go in. ‘I don’t know…’ she said. ‘Since the…since the Gabbleratchet…I don’t really like horses.’

It took me half an hour to convince her to enter the stables and she walked close behind me holding my hand. We passed the stalls of a hundred other mounts until I found her an exceptional piebald palfrey that in no way resembled the horses of the Gabbleratchet.

Cyan examined its hooves uncertainly. She still needed some coaxing. ‘The eternal hunt won’t come here,’ I said. ‘The Shift is so big that the chances of it reaching our world are minute. To be honest I’ve always got the impression we’re a bit of a backwater. Besides, those things weren’t horses. You know that, Cyan; you’ve been riding since you could walk.’

‘I couldn’t control that black horse. It was the only time I’ve never been able to manage one.’

‘Because it wasn’t one. The Gabbleratchet is just itself. It’s inexplicable but we left it behind.’

The stable boy brought me my sleek racehorse. Pangare butted her buff, suedy muzzle into my hands and shook her head, flopping the neat knots of her short, hogged mane from side to side.

‘What a peculiar animal,’ Cyan said. ‘I didn’t know you had a horse.’

‘Well, now you do.’ I held Pangare’s halter. ‘These Ghallain duns have unbelievable stamina. She might not be a thoroughbred but she can outlast anything your Awian stables have to offer.’

It always takes me a long time to find a mount who can both tolerate carrying a Rhydanne and is fast enough for me. I had heard of Pangare, a seventeen hands high courser winning every race on the Ghallain pampas, and she had cost the Castle a fortune.

While the boy fitted Pangare’s bridle and buckled the wide strap of the saddle under her taut belly, I corded my satchel to the cantle through rough-cut holes and clipped my crossbow to it. ‘Come on, then.’

Cyan swung up into her saddle, ducking under the beams. ‘I’m brave, aren’t I? I got back on.’

‘Yes, you are very brave.’

‘Just like that fyrd captain? I’m as brave as she is.’

‘Of course, you could be.’

We walked our horses out of the stable and rode slowly through the commotion of the growing camp. Smoke from cooking fires rose into a pall above the lines of cream tents.

We rode off the road-it was completely packed with carts, horses, and men marching quickly-now that town was in sight they wanted to reach it as soon as possible. It was a river of humanity, and lancer escorts formed other streams on either side.

Cyan leant forward, sped to a gallop and hurtled past me. I gave Pangare rein; she loped exuberantly, kicking out with her forelegs, and caught up with the girl at once. ‘Hey! What are you doing?’

‘I’m just glad to be outside,’ she said, free for the moment of her usual ennui. ‘I’ve been cooped up since Hacilith. I think without a doubt this is the worst place I’ve ever been dragged to.’

‘I’m inclined to agree. Where would you rather be?’

‘In the city, of course. All the places I’ve lived are dreadful compared to Old Town. Where would you rather be?’

‘Up there.’ I pointed to where, far behind the town, the cliff-topped hills stretched along the horizon.

‘In the mountains?’

‘Those are just the foothills,’ I said. ‘You should see the high summits-there are so many pinnacles and valleys that a hundred Rhydanne could live there for a hundred years and never meet each other.’

‘Sounds awful.’

‘Let me show you what Pangare can do. Come on!’

We galloped beside the road. In the fresh air, it was almost as fulfilling as flying. The sky was a uniform white, with blue-grey round the edges like milk in a dish. The sun, a burnished silver coin, blazed ineffectually at its zenith. An infuriating, unsettled breeze stirred the few grass stalks still upstanding between drying, churned-up clods of mud. Higher on the hillside, bunches of heather hooped and shivered, clustered around the white rocks that looked like the moors’ uncovered bones.

Cyan kept looking down the road with a twinge of wanderlust. I would have to watch her carefully or she would try to escape again.

‘How many thousands of people?’ she asked emphatically. ‘Their line goes on into the distance.’

I checked my notebook. ‘This is just the Cobalt baggage train. The Peregrine archers should be next.’

‘Peregrine?’ she said. ‘You mean-my manor? I have fyrd?’

‘Of course! When you come of age you’ll have a fyrd of more than twenty thousand men. That’s more than we can see to the horizon.’

‘Like the Carniss men the other day?’

‘Pah. Carniss only has one muster. Cobalt here, only has two: Cobalt and Grass Isle, and their governor is too old to lead them. You have four musters. The baggage train for Peregrine is twelve hundred wagons.’

‘Can we see them?’

‘If you want.’

We rode to the end of the Cobalt carts but there was still no sign of Peregrine’s sleeping falcon standard. ‘They’re probably delayed by the traffic jam,’ I said. ‘We’ll have to stop here. I don’t want to take you too far from town.’

Cyan reined in her palfrey, halted and gazed at two standard bearers with vertical gonfalon pennants covered in knot-work. It was the Morenzian dexter red hand banner, rendered completely in interlaced lines. The standard bearers, riding wearing nothing but purple or grey singlets and breeches, were so covered in tattoos that their outlines looked blurred. The ingeniously entwined bands, alaunts biting their own legs, elongated horses and spiralling sea snakes in every colour covered them so confusingly that it was difficult to tell where their tattoos ended and their clothes and knot-work jewellery began. Old tattoos had been interlinked with new ones, storiated over their whole bodies apart from their faces.

The battalion they led marched to the beat of similarly decorated drums on their saddlebows. Thickly accented voices burred among them.

Cyan said, ‘Wow. Who are they?’

‘The first of the Litanee cavalry.’