He smiled, savouring the shock and incredulity on Gesalla’s face, then turned and sauntered towards the main stair, taking care to hide his own numb bemusement over what a few angry seconds could do to the course of his life. The last thing he wanted was the responsibility of a wife, even of the fourth grade, and he could only hope that Fera would refuse the offer he had committed himself to making.

General Risdel Dalacott awoke at first light and, following the routine which had rarely varied in his sixty-eight years of life, left his bed immediately.

He walked around the room several times, his step growing firmer as the stiffness and pain gradually departed from his right leg. It was almost thirty years since the aftday, during the first Sorka campaign, when a heavy Merrillian throwing spear had smashed his thigh bone just above the knee. The injury had troubled him at intervals ever since, and the periods when he was free of discomfort were becoming shorter and quite infrequent.

As soon as he was satisfied with the leg’s performance he went into the adjoining toilet chamber and threw the lever of enamelled brakka which was set in one wall. The water which sprayed down on him from the perforated ceiling was hot — a reminder that he was not in his own spartan quarters in Trompha. Putting aside irrational feelings of guilt, he took maximum enjoyment from the warmth as it penetrated and soothed his muscles.

After drying himself he paused at a wall-mounted mirror, which was made of two layers of clear glass with highly different refractive indices, and took stock of his image. Although age had had its inevitable effect on the once-powerful body, the austere discipline of his way of life had prevented fatty degeneration. His long, thoughtful face had become deeply lined, but the greyness which had entered his cropped hair scarcely showed against its fair coloration, and his overall appearance was one of durable health and fitness.

Still serviceable, he thought. But I’ll do only one more year. The army has taken too much from me already.

While he was donning his informal blues he turned his thoughts to the day ahead. It was the twelfth birthday of his grandson, Hallie, and — as part of the ritual which proved he was ready to enter military academy — the boy was due to go alone against ptertha. The occasion was an important one, and Dalacott vividly remembered the pride he had felt on watching his own son, Oderan, pass the same test. Oderan’s subsequent army career had been cut short by his death at the age of thirty-three — the result of an airship crash in Yalrofac — and it was Dalacott’s painful duty to stand in for him during the day’s celebrations. He finished dressing, left the bedroom and went downstairs to the dining room where, in spite of the earliness of the hour, he found Conna Dalacott seated at the round table. She was a tall, open-faced woman whose form was developing the solidity of early middle age.

“Good foreday, Conna,” he said, noting that she was alone. “Is young Hallie still asleep?”

“On his twelfth?” She nodded towards the walled garden, part of which was visible through the floor-to-ceiling window. “He’s out there somewhere, practising. He wouldn’t even look at his breakfast.”

“It’s a big day for him. For us all.”

“Yes.” Something in the timbre of Conna’s voice told Dalacott that she was under a strain. “A wonderful day.”

“I know it’s distressing for you,” he said gently, “but Oderan would have wanted us to make the most of it, for Hallie’s sake.”

Conna gave him a calm smile. “Do you still take nothing but porridge for breakfast? Can’t I tempt you with some whitefish? Sausage? A forcemeat cake?”

“I’ve lived too long on line soldier’s rations,” he protested, tacitly agreeing to restrict himself to small-talk. Conna had maintained the villa and conducted her life ably enough without his assistance in the ten years since Oderan’s death, and it would be presumptuous of him to offer her any advice at this juncture.

“Very well,” she said, beginning to serve him from one of the covered dishes on the table, “but there’ll be no soldier’s rations for you at the littlenight feast.”

“Agreed!” While Dalacott was eating the lightly salted porridge he exchanged pleasantries with his daughter-in-law, but the seething of his memories continued unabated and — as had been happening more often of late — thoughts of the son he had lost evoked others of the son he had never claimed. Looking back over his life he had, once again, to ponder the ways in which the major turning points were frequently unrecognisable as such, in which the inconsequential could lead to the momentous.

Had he not been caught off his guard during the course of a minor skirmish in Yalrofac all those years ago he would not have received the serious wound in his leg. The injury had led to a long convalescence in the quietness of Redant province; and it was there, while walking by the Bes-Undar river, he had chanced to find the strangest natural object he had ever seen, the one he still carried everywhere he went. The object had been in his possession for about a year when, on a rare visit to the capital, he had impulsively taken it to the science quarter on Greenmount to find out if its strange properties could be explained.

In the event, he had learned nothing about the object and a great deal about himself.

As a dedicated career soldier he had taken on a solewife almost as a duty to the state, to provide him with an heir and to minister to his needs between campaigns. His relationship with Toriane had been pleasant, even and warm; and he had regarded it as fulfilling — until the day he had ridden into the precinct of a square house on Greenmount and had seen Aytha Maraquine. His meeting with the slender young matron had been a blending of green and purple, producing a violent explosion of passion and ecstasy and, ultimately, an intensity of pain he had not believed possible.…

“The carriage is back, Grandad,” Hallie cried, tapping at the long window. “We’re ready to go to the hill.”

“I’m coming.” Dalacott waved to the fair-haired boy who was dancing with excitement on the patio. Hallie was tall and sturdy, well able to handle the full-size ptertha sticks which were clattering on his belt.

“You haven’t finished your porridge,” Conna said as he stood up, her matter-of-fact tone not quite concealing the underlying emotion.

“You know, there is absolutely no need for you to worry,” he said. “A ptertha drifting over open ground in clear daylight poses no threat to anybody. Dealing with it is child’s play, and in any case I’ll be staying close to Hallie at all times.”

“Thank you.” Conna remained seated, staring down at her untouched food, until Dalacott had left the room.

He went out to the garden which — as was standard in rural areas — had high walls surmounted by ptertha screens which could be closed together overhead at night and in foggy conditions. Hallie came running to him, recreating the image of his father at the same age, and took his hand. They walked out to the carriage, in which waited three men, local friends of the family, who were required as witnesses to the boy’s coming-of-age. Dalacott, who had renewed their acquaintanceship on the previous evening, exchanged greetings with them as he and Hallie took their places on the padded benches inside the big coach. The driver cracked his whip over his team of four bluehorns and the vehicle moved off.

“Oho! Have we a seasoned campaigner here?” said Gehate, a retired merchant, leaning forward to tap a Y-shaped ptertha stick he had noticed among the normal Kolcorronian cruciforms in Hallie’s armoury.

“It’s Ballinnian,” Hallie said proudly, stroking the polished and highly decorated wood of the weapon, which Dalacott had given him a year earlier. “It flies farther than the others. Effective at thirty yards. The Gethans use them as well. The Gethans and the Cissorians.”