The Cuckoo

Book 3: Under the Northern Sky

by Leo Carew

Genres: Military Fantasy; Fantasy action & adventure

Synopsis

Leo Carew's much-lauded UNDER THE NORTHERN SKY trilogy draws to its spellbinding conclusion...

Albion continues to be divided by revolt and bloodshed, as alliances collapse and are made anew.

Driven obsessively for glory, the upstart Bellamus and his exiled queen Aramilla are marshalling resistance and building a powerful army.

Returning to the Hindrunn, Keturah is forced to fend for herself, battling enemies on all sides just when she is most in need of a place of safety.

And all the while, the young Black Lord must deal not only with the aftermath of a great betrayal, but the cold shadow of the Kryptea, threatening to destroy everything he has fought for...

WHAT REVIEWERS ARE SAYING ABOUT THE BREATHTAKING WORK OF LEO CAREW:

'The next George RR Martin' - Mail on Sunday

'Imagine Game of Thrones rewritten by John le Carré ... A marvellously accomplished debut' - Guardian

'Full of dark conspiracies, larger-than-life characters, and tense battles' - Paul Hoffman, author of The Left Hand of God

(P)2021 Headline Publishing Group Ltd

Release date: December 6, 2022

Publisher: Orbit

Print pages: 512

Sample

Over the grass plains surrounding Lundenceaster rose the old sun of a tired summer. Orange light capped the charred fortifications and warmed the backs of two hundred and eleven men, kneeling in prayer before a pile of rubble, which had lately been the city’s eastern wall. When they had last knelt, two days before, there had been three hundred of them. But they were used to losing peers. They had prepared for it from their earliest years.

We kneel before thee, Mighty One, mortal flesh in fear and silence, thy servants in deed and spirit. Grant we feel near thee when we lay in earth, receive peace in pain, be freed in death, and cede nought to fear.

The ancient prayers would usually have been the captain’s responsibility, but he was missing. Last night, he had charged alone into the darkness and he had not returned.

Instead, the prayers were led by a man kneeling alone before the guardsmen. He was uncomfortably lean: his knuckles and fingers swollen, the tendons at his wrists and elbows tenting the skin, and his cheekbones jutting out beneath steady green eyes. His name was Roper: often now Roper the Daring to his face; sometimes Roper the Restless, or simply Old Mad Dog, behind his back. And at that moment, the guardsmen were paying homage to the ruins that had once been their enemy’s greatest settlement.

Lundenceaster was beyond repair. The earth beneath it had charred. The fire that had stormed the previous night had been frightening: a billowing yellow mountain, hot enough to crack stone. From sunset to midnight, a trickle of rats loped clear of the doomed city, and when the gates finally collapsed into embers, a smog the colour of death tumbled from the gatehouse and poisoned the grass beyond.

The city had stood more than a thousand years. Many of its buildings were the remnants of a vast empire that had stretched over these lands in the days before Sutherners spoke Saxon. It had been home, they said, to five hundred thousand people: more by far than existed in the entire Black Kingdom. It would never rise again, and Roper was responsible.

He had marched two hundred miles south, dragging sixty thousand legionaries behind, with the monstrous ambition of subduing a nation. He had travelled a country of warrior-giants, and bargained, flattered and competed until they had agreed to join his quest. He had preserved the army from disease, and driven them on when hunger and thirst threatened to overwhelm them. He had been first of the Anakim over the formidable breach, and into the city behind. And it had been he who had fought through the defences and opened up a path for his men to sack the city.

Mighty One, grant us love in what life to us remains. Grant awareness that this soon will end. Grant swift passage from this world to the other. Keep us thy agents, until we walk with thee.

Roper had become used to being alone. So used to it, that when the prayers finished and the others stood and stretched, he stayed kneeling, head bowed in final prayer.

“Your will is not mocked, Mighty One. May your angels be after Vigtyr the Quick. Hasten our path to his footprints. Hold him until we’re on his heels. Then show him your wrath through our hands.”

He carried on for some while, and when finally his prayers were finished and he stood, a hand landed immediately on his shoulder. “My lord.”

Roper turned, finding a black-haired man in early middle-age, a cloak of rippling bronze feathers over his shoulders. “Tekoa. Any sign?”

Tekoa looked pale, his eyes only half focused on Roper. “Nothing. He’s vanished.”

“What? No sightings? Is there no sign of a trail?”

“Some sightings, none convincing. No trail. I’ve got the Skiritai searching out past the perimeter. Perhaps with the light…” He shrugged.

“You need to scour the west, he’ll probably try and join the Sutherners. How much ground are the rangers covering? He’ll use the forests as cover; you’ve focused there?”

Tekoa looked flatly at Roper, who nodded. “Of course you have.” There was a pause before Roper turned away slightly. “Vigtyr,” he murmured, shaking his head. “What would you do, Tekoa? When we catch him?”

“I?” At the question, Tekoa’s familiar scowl lifted. He twisted slightly so that he could prop himself against a boulder at the base of Lundenceaster’s breach, and stared at the rising sun, his eyes glassy. He was nearly as lean as Roper, and much paler. “Sticky-fire is too good for that monster.” He was silent a moment longer. “Do you know, my lord, I wouldn’t kill him.”

“Oh?”

“I would take him north, back to the Hindrunn, and chain him in the street. I would let the subjects heap indignities upon him. Beat him and spit on him, so that he has not a single moment where he does not fear what is to come; not a shred of rest. Let him be degraded into the most pitiful, most diminished human being that has ever existed, so withered and broken over decades of abuse that our children know his name and his deeds, but cannot imagine how something so pathetic ever caused such pain. I would take him to the moment when he begs for death, and then drag his existence on for years. That, I think, for a man like Vigtyr, who craves recognition and status above anyone else, would be the worst we could inflict on him. He gave death to Pryce. We must reserve something worse for him.”

“A good reply,” said Roper. “So let’s get him.”

“You should eat, my lord,” said Tekoa, not looking at him. “For the first time in months, we have a food surplus. At least for the time being. Let’s make the most of it.”

“Later.”

“Now. You look like a broom.”

Roper kicked a stone across the grass, watching it bounce and clatter into the rubble of the breach. “I suppose. Won’t be able to finish the war otherwise.” From the corner of his eye, he saw Tekoa wilt, ever so slightly. It was why Roper now preferred to be alone. “Come, then.”

The two limped back to camp. Roper’s joints were stiff like they had rusted solid, his foot agonising, and his shot calf so sore that Tekoa had to check his stride to stay level with Roper’s hobbling.

Dawn had spilt over the plain, glittering off mountains of captured Suthern weapons and armour; warming the heaped corpses; and casting long shadows from the legionaries stumbling back to sleep.

“Any sign of Gray?” Roper asked. The captain had last been seen running into the night, bellowing Vigtyr’s name.

“Are you expecting any sign of him?”

“Of course. Why? What do you mean?”

“I mean, what makes you think he’s coming back?”

Roper did not reply until Tekoa went on. “I don’t see him returning, not unless he finds Vigtyr.”

“Gray would not surrender to possession,” said Roper after a moment.

Tekoa scoffed. “Did you not hear him last night? He has surrendered. He’s abandoned restraint for grief, the question is whether he recovers.”

A Skiritai officer fell into step with them, reporting they were sweeping the forest like a brush, heading west. “If he’s there, my lord, we’ll find him.”

“Thank you, Galir,” said Roper. “Make speed. He’s injured, and will have tried to procure a horse. If he’s found one, he has quite a start on you.”

The Skiritai bowed and departed.

Presently, Roper and Tekoa came to their hearth. Beside it was set a fine side of bacon, recovered from Lundenceaster’s royal hall. Roper eyed it heavily. “Give this to the Sacred Guard. They’ve earned it. What else is there?”

“Beans,” said Tekoa, flatly.

“Beans it is.”

Tekoa arranged for a guardsman to collect the bacon, staring wistfully as it retreated. Roper affected not to notice, setting a pot above the fire and adding beans, dried mushrooms and water. The smell was like a meal in itself and the pair of them ate together in silence. Roper tried to finish the bowl, but was full to the point of nausea after a few mouthfuls. He set it aside, waiting for his appetite to return, and found he could not bear to be still.

“So,” he said. “We must go west immediately. The Skiritai have already scouted the land in their pursuit of Vigtyr, so we can move fast. We need to finish subduing this country before any resistance can form.”

Tekoa looked up from his bowl, face arranged in complete bewilderment. “Lord Roper… Are you not exhausted?”

“Exhausted?”

Tekoa stared at him a moment longer. “Perhaps you’re not. But I can inform you that your men will not march another step. Have you not seen them? Most have not slept in two days. Before that, they were starving. They have fought, and searched, and salvaged without rest. They have already given you more than I ever thought they could. They would do anything for you: especially after the breach. But be careful what you ask of them. Even if you could coax them onwards today, we’d be in no state to overcome resistance if we encountered it. The only thing to do now is rest.”

The thought of that nearly brought Roper to his feet. Rest? The idea was unbearable. His chest felt as though it had a poisoned arrow lodged in its centre, and his heart churned so much that he could not sit with it. But Tekoa was staring at him, and he forced a tone of calm.

“Last night I dispatched eleven heralds to the major cities that have yet to surrender. They’ll soon know Lundenceaster is destroyed and their king is dead. We… can wait here for their reply. Then be ready to march.”

Tekoa nodded slowly, but was still watching him in consternation. Roper looked down at his bowl, took up a spoonful of food, but before it had made it to his lips, put it down again. He got suddenly to his feet. “You’re right,” he said, turning west. “The men need rest.”

“Then where are you going?”

“To see Gogmagoc.”

He left Tekoa alone, staring after his retreating back.

It was not far to the Unhieru camp. Between them and the Anakim lay five hundred yards of empty ground, pocked with the scars of old hearths which had been abandoned when the Unhieru arrived. It was the giants’ smell that was most disturbing: a sweet reek of urine, which made Roper’s hair stand on end, and was nearly overwhelming by the time he reached the edge of the camp.

The Unhieru at the camp periphery were small: barely taller than an Anakim. They were the lower caste of males: brown-eyed, shorter and rangier than their golden-eyed counterparts, and without their great shaggy manes. They were a wretched crew; even lacking fire, and many of them bearing scars and disfigurements. They stirred restlessly as Roper passed, eyeing his limp, his stooped posture, and being ignored in turn.

As he walked further inside the camp, the Unhieru grew steadily larger and healthier. Here groups of forty or fifty sprawled together around great smouldering bonfires, snoring loudly. They were more relaxed than those on the outskirts, and uninterested in Roper, who hobbled as fast as he was able for ten minutes before he encountered the first females. They were squatter and broader than the males, and largely engaged in raucous conversation. Sitting nearby were the first of the maned males, whom Roper eyed warily. When they were enraged, these people flushed red and lost control so completely that they felt no pain, and could not recall their actions afterwards. And he had felt for himself the profound horror they could elicit in those nearby, and which he had tried to harness to find Vigtyr.

As Roper had suspected, he found Gogmagoc at the centre of things. The giant king was sleeping in a heap of ashen flesh, entwined with two of his wives. High on his back was a puncture wound which went right through him, and bubbled sluggishly with bright red blood. Roper eyed it, wondering that it did not cause the giant greater distress. He walked around to stand in front of Gogmagoc’s broad face, skin pocked like the low moon, and undeniably beautiful.

He cleared his throat. “Lord Gogmagoc.”

Gogmagoc opened eyes of deep honey, resting them on Roper but otherwise giving no sign of wakefulness. His deep breathing rumbled on at the same pace, and his mouth stayed slack and drooling, the saliva stained with blood.

“We need to talk,” said Roper, in Saxon.

“Talk,” mumbled the king. One of his wives shifted beneath him, but kept her eyes closed.

“I have had word,” Roper invented, “from my scouts in the west, that they have seen the Eoten-Draefend.” Gogmagoc closed his mouth and heaved upright, the vertebrae fastened in his mane rattling. He did not greatly care for the weapons and armour that the Anakim had supplied in return for their alliance. The land they would receive into the bargain was of more interest, but above all, Gogmagoc had only been convinced to join Roper to gain revenge on Garrett Eoten-Draefend: a hybrid warrior famous throughout Albion, mostly for the act of killing Gogmagoc’s eldest son. Roper himself wanted Garrett dead nearly as much as Gogmagoc. The hybrid wielded a long-bladed spear, which had been fashioned from an ancient blade belonging to Roper’s house; Bright-Shock: the sword that had been in Roper’s father’s scabbard when he died. Roper still coveted that weapon.

“Eoten-Draefend?” rumbled Gogmagoc. His expression was hard to read at any time, but it seemed to bear a trace of suspicion. “You told me he was in the city, River-King.”

“I said that was most likely,” said Roper, “though we did not know. But we hear now he is in the west, with the last remnants of Suthern resistance.”

Gogmagoc regarded him for a long while, a little bloody saliva on his chin. The Unhieru were intelligent, Roper could tell. The reason for the squalor in which they lived, and their lack of architecture and metalwork, was not incapacity, but apathy. Gogmagoc was no fool, and clearly he suspected that he was being manipulated. “I do not believe you.”

Roper shrugged. “Believe me or not. I just thought you should know.”

“You thought—” Gogmagoc spluttered to a halt, and began coughing violently. Blood foamed from the hole in his chest and spilt from the wound like a lava flow. At the noise, his wives and a few of the males about the fire stirred, sitting up to stare at their king. After some time, Gogmagoc made a retching sound and ejected a fat, wine-dark clot from his mouth, which slid to the floor like an eel. He shot a glance at the other males, some of them nearly as huge as him, before catching his breath. Roper did not move, waiting for him to resume.

“You thought, River-King, that I would go west and destroy the Suthern men for you.”

“I think it would suit you to go west,” Roper replied. “You could find Garrett. The Sutherners are in disarray, and you’d make light work of them. You could torch and harvest to your heart’s content. Metal, food, sheep, slaves: take what you like.”

Whenever Roper had negotiated with Gogmagoc, he had done it surrounded by Unhieru. He hated it. He felt pathetically feeble in the face of people who respected strength alone.

Gogmagoc sat forward, drawing a few bubbling breaths. “And if we go west—” he made a brief throwing gesture in Roper’s direction—“where do you go?”

“North. We must pacify the country we came through. The cities we bypassed should surrender now their king and capital have fallen. But my men have worked very hard for a long time, and first they must rest.”

“So we are to destroy the rest of the country,” surmised Gogmagoc, “and finish this war for you, while you stay. That is why you say the Eoten-Draefend is in the west.”

“I told you because that’s what I heard,” Roper insisted. “But if you think I am lying, what of it? We subdued most of Suthdal while we were waiting for you. My people have paid for the new lands we will share in far more blood than yours: you have your own side of the bargain to uphold. Mopping up the fragments cowering in the west is no great task for you. And when we rule Suthdal from one coast to another, Garrett has nowhere to hide, and he is yours.”

“I will decide,” said Gogmagoc, making a gesture as though flicking Roper away.

“Decide, then,” said Roper, who thought the king would probably refuse out of stubbornness. He glanced at the frothing wound in his chest, a thought occurring to him. “Your wound.”

“Yes,” said Gogmagoc, in a growl designed to dissuade Roper from further observation.

“It is dangerous,” said Roper, flatly. “We can treat it for you.”

Gogmagoc gazed at Roper, then glanced once more at the males sitting around the fire behind him. “How?”

“Clean it,” said Roper. “Seal it. Stop the air from escaping, stop the blood, stop a fever from setting in. Make it easier for you to breathe.”

Gogmagoc looked away from Roper, shaking his great mane and making the bones rattle. “Treat, then,” he said, without looking at Roper.

So it was that when Roper walked back into the Anakim encampment, it was with the giant king ambling beside him. Gogmagoc had been hiding how vulnerable he was. Before they reached Roper’s hearth, he had to stop twice to cough up mouthfuls of clot. Roper doubted the wound would even have time to kill him. One of the other males would surely do the job faster.

Tekoa was sleeping so soundly by the time they arrived that he was not even woken by Gogmagoc’s hacking coughs. Roper told the giant to sit, and summoned the battle surgeons.

While they worked, Roper called over every warrior he saw passing by, inviting them to join their hearth and informing them in genial Anakim that they should stay with him for a moment. By the time the two sides of the wound were sealed with a poultice of yarrow and sphagnum, and bound in linen strips, Gogmagoc was surrounded by thirty or so legionaries, watching the king’s treatment curiously.

Roper asked whether Gogmagoc had come to his decision.

Gogmagoc looked at the assembled band, then met Roper’s eye briefly before looking away. “We will go west today,” he replied.

Roper beamed. His men would get the recuperation they so badly needed, while not a moment would be lost hounding the last scraps of Suthern resistance. When they had rested, the legionaries could go north and gather one surrender after another from Suthdal’s great towns and cities. After what had happened to Lundenceaster, they should not be difficult to obtain. He wished Gogmagoc good luck. “I hope you find the Eoten-Draefend, Lord King.”

“I will,” the king replied, rising to his feet.

“And destroy everything you see in the west.”

“I will.”

For three days, the Black Legions camped outside the ruins of Lundenceaster. They ate until full, slept until the sun was high, and when the first petty scuffles broke out, Roper knew it was time to march. Some of the city was still smoking: they had not lost so much time.

Yet still, there was no sign of Gray, and Roper was worried.

He had found the resting unbearable. He had tried to run the camp perimeter each morning, but experiencing unexpected pain, had removed his boot to see his little toe tumbling onto the grass. There was a puncture mark on the boot from a wound he had not noticed on the assault on the city. Running too painful, he had settled for climbing Lundenceaster’s breach again and again until exhausted. His wounds knitted, and by the third day, he was equal to running the two miles back to his hearth. There, he found a solitary figure he had not expected.

Roper panted for a moment, his tunic stuck to the sweat on his back, and stared at the man. “Master Jokul,” he said, sitting heavily and leaning back on his hands. “I’d offer you tea, but I see you’ve already helped yourself. Where’s everyone else? Tekoa, the legates, the Chief Historian?”

“I thought we should speak alone,” said Jokul in his crisp voice.

“This sounds ominous,” Roper observed.

Jokul nodded very slightly. “It does not have to be.”

The Master of the Kryptea was slight, cold and fastidious, with eyes pale as windowpanes. He and Roper had clashed from their very first encounter, each hating everything the other represented. To Roper, Jokul was master of an office purpose-built to check his ambitions, and which had previously accomplished this by assassinating Roper’s ancestors. To Jokul, Roper was just the latest in a line of potential tyrants, and one too green and too bold to truly understand his actions.

“Then you have me to yourself,” said Roper. “What’ve you got to say?”

“You plan to march soon, Lord Roper?” asked Jokul.

“Tomorrow,” said Roper. “We have rested enough.”

“And where do you plan to go?”

“North,” said Roper. “The Unhieru are scattering the resistance that remains in the west. We shall go back through the lands we have already flattened and collect surrenders from any city still standing. Suthdal is to be pacified.”

Jokul nodded briefly. “That is what I suspected. Well then, my lord, here is what I have come to say: cease at once. Under no circumstances are you to do as you have just said.”

Roper looked up at the sky for a heartbeat, eyeing the moon still visible behind the Master. “And why is that?”

“Because it is a fantasy,” Jokul replied, words emerging in a torrent, much angrier than the conversation seemed to warrant. “I have watched you drive this army into ever greater depths of despair, to the point where the men who were trapped in Lundenceaster’s breach were, by all accounts, ready to die just to make an end of it. Somehow, you pushed them through even that, as lethal as it proved. Impressive, I shall admit. I commend your ability to wring every drop from the men you command. But even to you, it should be obvious that you have spectacularly overreached yourself. This task is impossible.”

He glared at Roper, who felt only confusion. “Why come to me now?” he asked. “The battle is all but won. Why would we withdraw when our enemy is on its knees?”

“Because the battle is the easy part,” Jokul shot back. “You cannot possibly believe we can rule over a nation of millions, for decades, with a few tens of thousands. If you remain for the time required to pacify these lands, there is only one possible result.” He leaned forward and spat one word at Roper: “Mutiny! And if not mutiny, then rebellion from the nation you are trying to suppress. And if not that, then our men will fall victim—properly, this time—victim to that dreadful plague that stalks this land and selectively kills Anakim and hybrids. Your quest has reached an end, of sorts. You have destroyed Lundenceaster. A famous achievement, though one that cost us five times as many men as it was worth. But it does allow you to turn back without losing considerable face. You have your revenge for the death of your father and the invasions of last year. Suthdal’s king is dead, her capital is dust. The Sutherners are thoroughly cowed, and will take decades to recover, time during which we too can rebuild. But occupying this land is not feasible. So, home is my command to you. End this now, and spare yourself the moment when the legions revolt. You appear confused,” added Jokul, impatiently.

Roper had been glaring at Jokul, and now shook his head. “Why are you telling me this? You’ve never extended this courtesy to any of my ancestors. If you mean to stop me, you’ll do away with me as you did them. If you’re going to assassinate a man, you should do it without putting him on his guard.”

“I’m giving you the chance to turn back before it comes to that, Lord Roper.”

“But I cannot think why, Master.”

Jokul made a great effort to control his temper. “All other things being equal, it would be better if you survived. If there is a mutiny, the result will be our second civil war in two years. A few legions may stay loyal: those commanded by legates close to you. Whichever side wins, we shall be terribly weakened.” Jokul paused for a moment and then twitched irritably. “Well then. Is it impossible for you to believe I have some regard for you, Lord Roper? Unlike other tyrants, you genuinely seem to believe you’re doing the best for your people. That is why I give you this warning. Turn back—now. Leave this task.”

Roper had been shaking his head throughout this speech, a furious ringing rising in his ears in protestation at this command. He was still so shocked that he could offer only the briefest counter-offensive. “But I don’t believe this. After all we have committed, all we have suffered, we are a hair’s breadth from subduing Suthdal, and putting a permanent end to a war that has ravaged our kingdom for centuries. We have come so close, and you want me to abandon this now?”

“But we are not close,” snapped Jokul. “Nowhere near. You see how defeated the legions are by kjardautha—homesickness—already. They barely have the will to fight. Imagine how they will be after decades in the south. They will not tolerate it. Here is where your ability to cajole people into action has reached unchallengeable fact. You ran roughshod over the other factions in the kingdom when you started this war, in secret, giving them no opportunity to object. You allowed my order to be blackmailed and intimidated by your own officers, to prevent us exercising our ancient duty. At every step, I thought the legates themselves would push you back, but you overrode them too, and they let you. Now, I tell you, I will not be moved. Now, the time has come to turn back. Do it yourself, or the Kryptea will depose you, and it will happen nonetheless.”

“Ah!” Roper could not help this furious exclamation, for he finally understood. The Master’s concluding rant had exposed his motivations.

Jokul was scared of him.

He might have believed what he said about their task being impossible; about the Sutherners being destined for rebellion, and the legions for mutiny. But in reality, he was trying to restore the Kryptea’s status in the Black Kingdom. He feared a lone ruler who was powerful enough to ignore him. He considered Roper too driven, too persuasive, too influential, and wanted him stopped now. And as for the idea that Jokul had offered him a choice out of respect: it almost made Roper laugh. Jokul did not want to depose him because he was still too popular with the legions. He feared that if the Kryptea tried to remove him, it would destroy itself in the process. Even if the institution survived, Jokul himself would almost certainly face a lynch-mob.

Months before, Roper’s officers had publicly overruled Jokul and undermined his power. The Master had bided his time, hoping Roper’s popularity would diminish sufficiently that he could be removed without consequence. It had not happened, and now he had sought this meeting with Roper alone, in an effort to intimidate him into behaving once more.

Roper bowed his head in dismay. “You are trading the status of the Kryptea for the security of the kingdom, Master. This has the ring of madness to it.”

“A risk that anyone sane, who is prepared to engage with a madman, must take,” snapped Jokul. “Heavy investment in a task does not makes it prudent, Lord Roper. And whatever you think of us, the Kryptea is here to stop people like you from making mistakes to which future generations are bound. When the legions march tomorrow, it will be back to the Black Kingdom.”

Roper was thinking as fast as he was able. “At least grant me a night to consider your request. Then I might be able to find a compromise which satisfies us both.”

Jokul got to his feet, his tea sitting untouched by the fire. “There will be no deals, Lord Roper. You will address the legions tonight, at Pryce Rubenson’s embalming. Thousands will be in attendance. Inform them then that we are going home.” He raised an eyebrow. “You can be sure it will be a popular announcement.”

In spite of everything, Roper knew that was true. He gazed up at Jokul, suddenly plunged into complete hopelessness. He tried one final objection. “And what about the Unhieru?”

“What about them?” asked Jokul, flicking a dismissive hand. “They have already profited from our alliance, and have no investment in your cause. They shall go home the moment they learn that you have.”

Roper smiled bitterly. “This is what it comes to, then. You help me to secure my throne, and then rule from the shadows, dictating what I can and cannot do. Is that it?”

“You don’t have to do as I say, Lord Roper,” replied the Master. “As you observe, it is your throne. I’m just telling you what will happen if you continue.” He made to turn away and then caught himself. “Oh, and get a new horse. Your destrier is an extravagance.”

“Zephyr?”

“I assume you know he killed one of his handlers yesterday.”

“An accident,” said Roper.

“Which will happen again. He’s dangerous. Good morning, Lord Roper.” Jokul nodded curtly, and turned away, hurrying across the camp with his cloak clutched about his chest.

Roper watched him go. It did not seem feasible that here was where their great task ended: outside the ruins of Lundenceaster, at the whim of this sinewy bureaucrat. That they should finally be defeated not by starvation, armies, or plague, but Jokul, was crueller than Roper could bear.

He got stiffly to his feet and limped towards the field hospital, trying to let what he had just been told sink in. He did not wish to discuss it with anyone. Perhaps Keturah, if she were here. She would be able to snap him from his self-pity and invent some particularly cutting insults for the Master. But his wife was in the north, a