The Martyr

Book 2: The Covenant of Steel

by Anthony Ryan

Genres: Dark Fantasy; Fantasy action & adventure; Epic Fantasy

Synopsis

'The Martyr continues the brilliance of The Pariah with more grit and adventure that Anthony Ryan fans and newcomers will devour' Grimdark Magazine

'Anthony Ryan continues to write incredible, gritty fantasy that ticks every box every time. Perfect Fantasy' FanFiAddict

Times have changed for Alwyn Scribe. Once an outlaw, he's now a spymaster and sworn protector of Lady Evadine Courlain, whose visions of a demonic apocalypse have earned her the fanatical devotion of the faithful.

Yet Evadine's growing fame has put her at odds with both Crown and Covenant. As trouble brews in the kingdom, both seek to exploit her position for their own ends.

Sent to the Duchy of Alundia to put down a rebellion, Alwyn must rely on old instincts to fight for his new cause. Deadly feuds and ancient secrets are laid bare as war erupts, a war that will decide the fate of the Kingdom of Albermaine and, perhaps, prevent the coming of the prophesied Second Scourge.

The Martyr is the sequel to The Pariah and continues the ruthless and gripping fantasy epic from New York Times bestseller Anthony Ryan, whose books have sold more than a million copies worldwide.

Praise for the series

'A gritty, heart-pounding tale of betrayal and bloody vengeance' John Gwynne

'The Pariah is Anthony Ryan at his best. A fast-paced, brutal fantasy novel with larger-than-life characters and a plot full of intrigue and suspense' Grimdark Magazine

'This is Anthony Ryan's best book yet' Michael Fletcher

'Fantastic writing, an amazing world, a plot that won't quit, and an unforgettable character . . . Anthony Ryan is one of the best epic fantasy authors out there' Bookworm Blues

'Gritty and well-drawn, this makes a rich treat for George R. R. Martin fans' Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Release date: June 28, 2022

Publisher: Orbit

Print pages: 600

Sample

I found Erchel waiting for me in the dream. Of all the many dead souls littering my memory, it chose him. Not sweet, light-fingered Gerthe. Not Deckin, the fearsome, mad but occasionally wise Outlaw King. Not even faith-addled, tiresome Hostler who I had left murdered in my wake one snowbound night years ago. No, it was Erchel who greeted me with a leering grin, stained teeth dark in the bleached white of his face, fresh blood dripping from the rent and ragged fabric of his crotch. Despite his grin, I could tell he wasn’t pleased to see me, but then castration was sure to have a souring effect on even the kindliest soul, not that he had ever been kindly in life.

“Come to see, have you, Alwyn?” he asked, head dipping and swaying on his scrawny neck. It lengthened and twisted like a snake as he spoke, his voice that of a desperate beggar rather than a gelded sadist with a grievance. “Come to see what you made, eh?”

His hands, longer and spindlier of finger than I recalled, scratched and jabbed at the plate armour of the vambrace covering my forearm, leaving red stains on the metal.

“A knight now, eh?” he hissed in gleeful realisation, head bobbing on his elongated neck. “Risen high have you? Higher than poor Erchel ever could. High enough to spare some coin for an old friend.”

“I’m not a knight,” I told him, jerking my arm free of his touch which stung despite the armour. “And we were never friends.”

“Don’t be a tight-fist to poor old Erchel.” He crouched in a peevish sulk, long-fingered hand clutching at the bloody mess between his legs. “He’s got no tackle, remember? You let that little bitch slice it off.”

“Didn’t let her do anything,” I reminded him. “Though I can’t claim that I would’ve stopped her.”

He clenched his teeth, emitting a sound that was a grotesque melange of laugh and hiss. “She’ll get what’s coming,” he assured me, teeth chattering as something dark and wet coiled in the shadowed recess of his mouth. “You’ll see to that.”

Possessed of a sudden rage, I reached for my sword, drawing it free to find that Erchel had already moved beyond the reach of my blade. “Come, come,” he said, beckoning. “Don’t you want to see what you made?”

A gust of wind sent a pall of fog across the tufted grass surrounding us, rendering Erchel into a crouch-backed shadow. Soft ground squelched beneath my boots as I pursued him, drawn by curiosity as much as the desire to hack him down, a pleasure that had been denied me in the waking world. It was apparent we were in a marsh, but not one I recognised. The fog was thick all around, obscuring any landmarks save the uneven, twisted shades of rocky tors rising from the bogs; silent, unmoving monsters in the gloom. Wherever we were, it was a place I didn’t know.

I soon lost sight of Erchel in the haze and spent a brief interval wandering the marsh in aimless hunting until the faint cry of some unseen beast drew me on like a beacon. It was an unfamiliar call that mixed a grating hiss with a guttural roar, growing in volume and joined by others to form a discordant chorus. The source became clear when the wind once again dispelled the fog to reveal a large bird perched on a half-sunken corpse. I had never seen its like before, as big as an eagle but lacking any kind of majesty. Like Erchel’s dream-self, the bird’s head bobbed on an elongated neck, bright, bulbous eyes regarding me with baleful hunger above a gore-flecked beak that resembled a barbed cleaver. The beak parted as the bird let out another ugly cry, the sound mirrored by many throats.

“They’re called vultures, so I’m told,” Erchel informed me, eyes agleam as he enjoyed the sight of my horrified disgust.

Surveying the scene, I saw that the birds filled the marsh to the shrouded distance, hundreds, perhaps thousands of them, broad wings fluttering and heads bobbing continually in between gaping their beaks to join their voices to the chorus. They had much to sing about, for these beasts had been given a great bounty of carrion. Numerous as they were, there were more corpses than birds. They lay part-submerged in the murky bog water. Some were soldiers, their armour catching a dull gleam from the veiled sun. Others were churls, children and old folk among them. Here and there, I glimpsed the bright colours of noble garb. All had died by violence and the marsh was red with the blood leaking from their many wounds.

“This, Alwyn,” Erchel told me with a shrill giggle. “This is what you made…”

A shout erupted from my throat and I lunged for him, sword rising high to cut him down. But, as is often the way in dreams, nothing came of my action. Erchel vanished and the blade met air.

“You saved her, you see.”

I whirled, finding his crouched, leering form at my back. His face quivered with the same malicious enjoyment I had seen whenever he snared a living thing to torment.

“You saved the Risen Martyr,” he taunted, his voice taking on a sing-song cadence. “And made a world of corpses…”

I raised the sword level with my chest, both hands on the handle, intending to skewer this leering wretch through one of his bright, unblinking eyes. Once again, he slipped into nothingness when I thrust, only to cast more taunts at my back.

“What did you think you had accomplished?” he asked, his tone a parody of genuine curiosity. He stood in the water alongside the vulture, now busily worrying at the corpse it perched upon. “Did you really imagine keeping her in this world would make it better?”

“Shut up!” I grated, advancing towards him.

“Did you learn nothing from Ascendant Sihlda?” Erchel enquired, overlong neck raising his head to an unnatural height, eyebrow arched in judgemental enquiry. “How shamed she would be to look upon you now…”

An inchoate roar of fury escaped me as I charged towards him, sword angled for a swipe that would sever his head from that snake neck. Instead, I found myself plunging into the marsh water, the weight of my armour dragging me beneath the surface. Panic flared and I thrashed, casting the sword away to claw for the surface. When I tasted air again, I found Erchel floating above, the vulture perched on his shoulder. Above him the sky grew dark as the other birds took flight, forming a dense, circling mass.

“My friends won’t finish you right away,” Erchel promised me in grave assurance before adding with a broadening grin, “Not until I’ve had the pleasure of watching them bite your balls off. I wonder if you’ll scream as loud as I did.”

Letting out a squawk, the huge bird on his shoulder flared its wings then leapt for me, long claws extending to clamp onto my head, pushing me down into the marsh once more. It kept hold as I sank, talons shredding the steel vambrace like paper, beak tearing into the skin beneath, tugging at the flesh, tugging, tugging…

“Alwyn!”

My hand lashed out to snare the beak tearing into the meat of my forearm, instead closing on the smoothness of a human wrist. A startled yelp banished the dream, the swirl of red water fading to reveal Ayin’s frowning face. I stared into her bemused eyes for a second, feeling the caress of winter’s chill, senses flooded by the familiar sounds and scents of a camp at sunrise.

“Dreaming again?” Ayin asked with a pointed glance at my hand still enclosing her wrist.

“Sorry,” I mumbled, releasing my grip. I shifted on the collection of furs and sundry fabric that formed my bed, sitting up to run a hand through tousled hair. My head was filled with the throbbing ache that had greeted me ever since waking to full consciousness two weeks before, the legacy of Sir Althus Levalle, slain and unlamented Knight Commander of the Crown Company. Whatever the many criticisms I could voice regarding his character, the strength of his arm could never be doubted.

“I don’t dream any more,” Ayin told me. “Not since the captain blessed me.”

“That’s… good,” I replied, looking about for the small green bottle that was rarely far from my reach these days.

“You should get her to bless you too,” Ayin went on. “Then you won’t dream either. What did you dream about?”

A man you cut the balls from not so long ago. I caged the snapped response before it could reach my lips. Irritating though she could be, Ayin didn’t deserve such a harsh reminder of her former nature. Although, given what I had seen her do to that Ascendant in Farinsahl following Evadine’s abduction, I was no longer sure she had been fully cured of her prior tendencies.

“Did you ever hear tell of a vulture?” I asked instead.

“No.” She blinked blank eyes and shrugged. “What is it?”

“A big, ugly bird that eats corpses, apparently.”

I let out a thin sigh of relief as I found the green bottle nestling beneath the rolled blanket that served as my pillow. Supplicant Delric called the bottle’s contents his “deceiving elixir” on account of its ability to banish pains without applying any curative effect. Deceiver or not, I was continually grateful for the speed with which the bitter, oily concoction would dispel the throb in my head. Delric’s face had been the first I saw upon waking from my prolonged, beating-induced slumber, finding his features arranged in a disconcerting aspect of surprise. He had spent some time carefully prodding my head with his deft fingers, grunting now and then as they traced over the various ridges and bumps, one being of particular interest.

“Did that bastard crack my skull?” I had enquired as his fingers lingered.

“Yes,” he told me with brisk honesty. “Seems to be healing, though.” With that he had handed me the green bottle with instructions that I return to him every day for more head prodding. Also, I was to seek him out immediately should my nose or ears start bleeding.

“Lessons,” Ayin said, shifting her satchel from her shoulder to her lap. “I’ve got some new ink, parchment too.”

I grimaced and swallowed another drop from the bottle before replacing the stopper. Delric had warned that overuse would make me a slave of this stuff if I wasn’t careful, although it was a daily struggle to resist the urge to gulp down as much as my tongue could bear.

“From where?” I asked, returning the bottle to its place beneath my pillow.

“Those folk from Ambriside brought more supplies this morning. Another bunch’ve recruits too. I did a count.” She reached into her satchel to retrieve a scrap of parchment inscribed with some laboured tally marks. “That makes one thousand, one hundred and eighty-two.”

Not yet an army, I thought. But in a month or two, it could be. The notion raised uncomfortable questions regarding the inevitable reaction of Duke Elbyn and, more importantly, King Tomas to the prospect of a great many ardent followers of the Risen Martyr gathering in the Shavine Woods. In truth, I found myself surprised each day when our scouts failed to report any incursion by Crown or ducal soldiery.

“Lessons,” Ayin said again, poking my shoulder with insistent emphasis. Successive days spent tutoring her in letters and numeracy revealed her to be a student of perhaps overly keen attentiveness. Many churls looked upon reading and writing as some form of arcane art, known only to clerics or the better educated nobles. At first, Ayin had been little different, regarding the characters I had her copy out with a frown of suspicious bafflement. However, this had swiftly given way to delighted comprehension once she grasped the basic idea that these abstract scratchings represented component sounds which could be fused into words. Her hand remained clumsy and her letters uneven, but her reading was already remarkable in its fluency, lacking the prolonged laboured vowels and stumbles that had been such a feature of my early lessons.

“We haven’t finished the first revelation of Martyr Stevanos,” she reminded me, extracting a scroll from her satchel. In teaching her, I had adopted Ascendant Sihlda’s practice of reciting principal Covenant scripture and having her write it down, correcting her spelling and grammar in the process. “We just got to the bit where he resisted the lustful temptations of that Malecite whore Denisha.”

Ayin unfurled the scroll with features brightened by anticipation, making me ponder the bizarre bundle of contradictions she represented. In many ways she remained a guileless child, as innocent and trusting as any infant obliged to navigate the swirl of confusion that is this world. But she was also a multiple murderer who exhibited scant guilt for her crimes. Her devotion to Evadine, our Anointed Captain and Risen Martyr, was as fierce as ever and she displayed a zeal for the more lurid elements of Covenant lore I found troubling, especially in the aftermath of my dream.

“I think we’ll try something different today,” I said, reaching for my boots.

We emerged from the notch between two ancient stone blocks where I made my shelter, finding the sun bright and sky clear above the matrix of bare branches. Although I had no memory of it, I had directed our fleeing company to this spot during my delirious interval following Evadine’s rescue beneath the walls of Castle Ambris. However, it was clear that, while its many pre-Scourge ruins made a perfect hideout for a band of outlaws, it had already been outgrown by the burgeoning throng of Evadine’s followers. Trees had been felled to create makeshift huts for the company soldiers and our new recruits, most of whom were suffering the attentions of Sergeant Swain and the other Supplicant Blades this morning.

“Stand straight, I said!” Swain barked at one lanky churl as he vainly attempted to shuffle into place in the first rank of a ragged cohort. “Don’t you know what straight is, you dung-brained piss-streak?”

From the fellow’s gaping, wide-eyed response, I did in fact doubt that the concept of straightness had ever been taught to him.

“Martyrs preserve us,” Swain muttered, snatching the lanky fellow’s pike from his grip. “This,” he said, holding the weapon vertically, “is straight. So is this.” Levelling the pike, he shoved the shaft hard into the gaping churl’s chest, sending him sprawling into the row behind along with those standing to either side. “Fail to stand straight in a battle line and you’ll suffer worse than a chilled arse,” Swain told him. “Get up!”

I could see other troops receiving similarly harsh treatment, spread out among the sparse clearings in this stretch of the deep forest. The recruits were a mixed bag, callow youths with no knowledge of arms mingled with veterans or those who had at least once marched with the ducal levies. They were almost all churls rather than townsfolk, imbued with a deep if poorly expressed desire to follow the Risen Martyr. A few clerics had also appeared in recent days, young novices for the most part who hadn’t yet been confirmed as Supplicants. Much as the increasing number of churls stirred worries over the reaction of the king, the arrival of deserters from the orthodox faith would surely inflame rather than diminish the Covenant hierarchy’s disapproval of one they still refused to acknowledge as a Risen Martyr.

I guided Ayin away from the shouts and curses of soldiers in training, leading her from the ruins to a shallow stream. Frost dusted its banks and the moss-covered stones jutting from its current. I gathered my cloak and perched on a boulder near a bend in the stream’s course, waiting in silence until Ayin prodded my arm again.

“What are we…?”

“Wait,” I told her, eyes on the middle of the stream where a large rock rose from the water. The bird appeared soon after, fluttering down to perch on the stone and poke its small beak into the moss in search of mites.

“What do you see?” I asked Ayin.

“A bird on a stone,” she said, squinting in bafflement.

“What manner of bird?”

“A redbreast.” Her squint faded a little as her perennial liking for animals asserted itself. “It’s pretty.”

“Yes.” I nodded to her satchel. “Write it down.”

“Write what down?”

“What you see. The bird, the stone, the stream. Write it all down.” This was another of Sihlda’s lessons, albeit one I had been obliged to rely on my memory to accomplish, since there were so few scenes of any variety in the Pit Mines worthy of description.

Ayin duly reached into her satchel for her quill, ink, parchment and the flat wooden board she used as a desk. The sight of the crudely carved thing summoned a pang for my marvellous, foldable writing desk which I had lost in the chaos of Olversahl’s sacking at the hands of the Ascarlians.

Doubt lingered on Ayin’s face as she removed the stopper from the ink pot, asking, “What for?”

“Merely recreating the words of others will not truly teach you how to write,” I told her. “Real skill comes with understanding.”

Squinting again, she settled herself beside me, carefully placing the ink pot so it wouldn’t topple before dipping her quill and beginning to write. As was our custom, I corrected her mistakes as she worked, sometimes guiding her hand to form the characters. Her lettering remained a clumsy, jagged scrawl but in recent days had begun to acquire a basic legibility. Today she was more hesitant than usual, the quill faltering on the parchment much as mine had when Sihlda first set me to this lesson. Rote learning was always easier, but, if she was ever to become a true scribe, Ayin would need to craft her own words.

“The redbreast sits on the rock,” she read after a few moments’ toil, a prideful smile on her lips. While she still seemed a child to my eyes, when she smiled I was reminded she was in fact now a young woman, and a comely one at that. I found it dispiriting and distracting in equal measure.

“Good,” I said. “Keep going. Describe the bird, describe the rock. And not just what you see. What sound does the stream make? What does the air smell of?”

I watched her quill scratch away for a time but my mind soon began to wander back to the dream. I wanted to think that the sight of previously unseen birds feasting on corpses was just the product of a mind subjected to recent trauma. Who knew what effects a cracked skull might have on the brain within? However, the birds had seemed more real, more detailed in their form than seemed possible for mere figments of a distressed imagination. Also, Erchel’s words possessed a grating note of truth that set them apart from the nonsensical utterances of those we encounter in our nightly sojourns. You saved the Risen Martyr, and made a world of corpses…

I shivered, drawing my cloak tight and becoming aware of the tune Ayin hummed as she worked. Her voice was a pleasant, naturally melodious thing, her humming occasionally giving way to short verses. Usually, these were nonsense ditties formed with scant allusion to anything save rhyme, but today her song possessed a modicum of sense.

“So goodbye to you all, my sisters, my brothers,” she sang, the tune novel but pleasingly sombre. “Goodbye to you all, my brethren of steel . .”

“What’s that?” I asked, causing her to glance up from the parchment.

“Just a tune,” she said, shrugging. “I sing when I work.”

“Did you make it up?”

“I make up all my songs. Always have since I was young. Ma liked it when I sang for her.” Her expression clouded a little. “She’d be less angry when I sang so I did it a lot.”

I gestured to the parchment. “Write it down, the one you were just singing.”

She gave a doubtful frown. “I don’t know how to letter all the words.”

“I’ll show you.”

Her hand was even more hesitant than usual at first, but soon grew in confidence and clarity as she warmed to her task, singing the verses as she wrote them. “For here do we come to the eve of our battle, and here do I know that my fate will be sealed…”

“That’s all of it?” I asked a while later when she had filled the entire sheet with verse.

“All I’ve thought up, anyway.”

“What do you call it? A good song needs a title.”

“‘The Battle Song’, ’cause I started singing bits of it after the Traitors’ Field.”

“That’s a little obvious.” I took the quill and parchment from her and added a title to the top of the verse, putting flourishes to the letters for good measure.

“‘The Warrior’s Fate’,” Ayin read, pursing her lips in muted disdain.

“It’s poetic,” I said, a tint of annoyance to my voice, which she seemed to find amusing.

“If you say so.”

Frowning at her impish smile, I pondered the wisdom of a rebuke, but quickly forgot it as the sound of a voice calling my name drifted through the trees. A young man soon appeared, face flushed as he hurried towards us, tripping over a root and nearly falling flat on his face. Like many of the former Supplicant noviciates to flock to Evadine’s banner, Eamond Astier was a child of town rather than country. These keen but often sheltered youngsters tended to traverse their new forest home with a clumsiness born as much from fear as unfamiliarity.

“Master Scribe,” he said, the greeting emerging in a breathless gasp from reddened features. I swallowed a weary sigh when he gave an accompanying bow. Despite my lack of rank, many of the newcomers tended to honour me this way and I had given up telling them to stop. “The Anointed Lady requests your presence.”

There was an urgency to his voice, also a small tremor that betrayed some measure of fear. Eamond was only a year or two shy of my own age, yet his smooth, beardless face appeared very young as he straightened. His eyes had the rapid blink of the uninitiated confronting the prospect of battle.

“Trouble?” I asked, handing the parchment back to Ayin.

“Scouts reported in from the east,” he said, eyes flicking to Ayin before returning to me. I was impressed that he still managed to find himself distracted by a pretty face despite his fear. However, my amusement vanished as he went on, “They’ve come, Master Alwyn. The king’s soldiers.”

“And you’re sure they’re all kingsmen?”

From the way Fletchman nodded in servile confirmation I deduced this was the first time he had been directly addressed by the Anointed Lady. He was clearly a stout fellow of some experience, a poacher judging by his rough but hardy garb and the ash bow he carried, yet he squirmed under the gaze of the Risen Martyr Evadine Courlain like a bashful child.

“How many?” Swain asked.

“I counted a hundred, Supplicant Sergeant,” Fletchman replied. “Could be just a vanguard, o’course. We thought it best to bring word rather than linger. They’re camped at Shriver’s Orchard, ’bout eight miles east of here.”

“Camped?” I asked, frowning in surprise.

“That they are, Master Scribe,” the poacher told me, his tone less respectful but markedly more comfortable. Outlaws tend to recognise their own. “Thought it strange, myself. No ranging for tracks nor scouting for trails. And they haven’t brought any hunters or hounds. Just a hundred mounted men under three banners.”

“Three banners,” Evadine repeated. Her voice was soft but I detected a note of dismay in her next words. “Please describe them.”

“The tallest is the king’s banner, my lady. Two big gold cats. The second was a rose, black on a white flag. The third was just a pennant striped in red and blue.”

I saw Evadine and Wilhum exchange a glance at the description of the second banner, it being one they knew very well. I knew it too, having seen it in the aftermath of the Battle of the Traitors’ Field, the day the legend of the Anointed Lady truly began. Also the day her childhood friend and turncoat noble Wilhum Dornmahl had been delivered into her hands by a knight bearing a shield adorned with a black rose on a white background.

“A blue and red pennant is the flag of truce,” Evadine told Fletchman. She smiled and reached out to clasp his hand, the fellow immediately sinking to one knee at her touch. “Please don’t, good sir,” she told him. “Only princes require such formality. Rise with my thanks for your fine deed this day. Go now and rest.”

“A truce, then,” Wilhum said after the scout had retreated, head still bowed despite Evadine’s instruction. “Clever of King Tomas to send him of all his knights.”

“Clever,” Evadine agreed before a flicker of annoyance passed over her brow. “Or cruel.”

“A hundred kingsmen is a decent force,” Swain said. “But one we can deal with, if need be.”

“If that’s all there is,” I pointed out. I settled a careful gaze on Evadine before adding, “If it’s a trap, it’s well baited.”

“You imagine I am about to ride blindly into this camp, Master Scribe?” Evadine asked, arching an eyebrow.

“I imagine the king, or his advisers, knew to send the one knight you would be sure to spare. But, if they came without hounds, it’s a good sign. It might mean they actually want to talk.”

“We left a great many dead kingsmen at Castle Ambris,” Wilhum said. “Along with their knight commander, slain while enforcing the laws of both Crown and Covenant. That’s a weight not easily balanced.”

“For a rebel lord or a common outlaw, perhaps,” I returned, eyes still on Evadine. “But not a Risen Martyr.”

Evadine folded her arms and lowered her head. She was clad in the simple cotton trews and shirt she wore when shorn of her armour, with a bearskin cloak draped about her shoulders to ward against the cold. Her face was pale, as always, but by now I knew it well enough to discern an additional pitch of fatigue; the slightly drawn mouth and pink tinge to her eyes indicated a sleepless night, or at least a troubled sleep. It made me wonder if she too suffered a nightmare and, if so, had she also seen vultures?

Finally, I saw the hardening of her mouth that told of a decision, another sign I had learned to read and mark well. Her decisions could mean life or death for all of us. “Pick a hundred soldiers,” she told Swain. “The best we have. At midday, we march to meet my father.”

Upon seeing our party emerge from the treeline, Sir Altheric Courlain strode clear of the picket line surrounding the encamped kingsmen. The place was well chosen for defence. Shriver’s Orchard was a long-disused farmstead comprising a cluster of tumbled buildings atop a low rise in the heart of a small clearing. The advantage of raised ground was augmented by a series of partly fallen stone walls, creating a useful barrier sure to impede an attacker’s charge. It also afforded a certain surety against unwanted visitors. Outlaws tended to shun the place due to tales of Shriver’s Shade, the lingering, malicious spirit of the long-dead orchard keeper who had murdered his family decades before. The story went that, having strangled them all due to an unspecified form of mania, he hung their bodies from the branches of his apple trees in the belief that they would grow back into life. When they failed to do so he expired under the weight of his guilt. As an unredeemed soul denied passage through the Divine Portals, he was condemned to wander his stead in eternal torment. Many had claimed to have seen him over the years, although I never had. The trees remained, unpruned, twisted versions of their prior selves, but if any bodies had ever adorned their branches, they were gone now.

Sir Altheric wore a fine leather jerkin in place of his armour and his only weapon was the longsword at his belt. He also carried the blue and red striped pennant as he strode forth, coming to a halt some twenty paces from the picket line to plant the flag in the earth. A man of impressive size and evident strength, it was an easy matter for him to sink the flagstaff deep enough to stay upright when he released his grip. That done, he stepped back and, in a pointed gesture, unbuckled his sword belt and tossed the weapon on the ground.

“You shouldn’t go alone,” Wilhum advised Evadine as she also removed her sword and handed it to him. “The spot he’s chosen is too close to their line for my liking.”

“I have every confidence in my father’s attachment to honour,” she told him. “Should any kingsmen sally forth to capture me, he’ll kill them himself. However, I agree it would be best if another were present to hear what he has to say.” She raised a hand as Wilhum began to remove his sword belt. “I mean no offence, Wil, but you know he has detested you ever since our broken betrothal, and you were never best disposed towards him either. I believe I shall require a more objective witness.”

She turned to me with raised brows, gesturing at the waiting knight and pennant. “If you would do me the honour, Master Alwyn.”

As we ascended the slope, Sergeant Swain barked orders at our hundred-strong escort, all Covenant Company veterans who had fought at both the Traitors’ Field and Olversahl. He arranged them in a tight formation at the edge of the trees, ready to be sent forward at a rapid march should need arise. Sir Altheric adopted a pose that mirrored his daughter’s: arms crossed and features set in appraisal, albeit considerably more stern of character. As might be expected, much of his attention was focused on Evadine, but he also deigned to afford me a long glance as we came to a halt a half-dozen paces from the pennant. I had only seen him fully armoured before and found his face very much an older, masculine version of Evadine’s: high cheekbones and pale skin, his dark hair longer and beard t