‘I know you’re not cold,’ said Damen. ‘You weren’t cold when you ordered me tied to the post. You weren’t cold when you pushed me down on your bed.’
‘We need to leave.’ Laurent spoke without looking at him. ‘We don’t know who those riders were, or how they got past our scouts.’
‘Laurent—’
‘A fair fight?’ said Laurent, turning back to him. ‘No fight’s ever fair. Someone’s always stronger.’
And then the bells from the fort began to ring, the sound of a warning, their sentries belatedly reacting to the presence of unknown riders. Laurent reached down to snag up his jacket, shrugging into it, laces hanging loose. Damen brought over their horses, unhooking his reins from the stone column. Laurent swung up wordlessly into his saddle and put his heels into h
is horse, both of them riding hard back to Marlas.
CHAPTER EIGHT
IT MIGHT HAVE been nothing, simply an incursion. It was Damen’s decision to follow the riders, which meant dragging men up to ride out in the dim light of pre-dawn. They streamed out of Marlas and rode west, out through the long fields. But they found nothing, until they came to the first village.
They smelled it first. The thick, acrid smell of smoke, blown in from the south. The outer farms were deserted and blackened with fire, which still smouldered in places. There were large patches of scorched earth that spooked the horses with their startling heat when they passed.
It was worse when they rode into the clustered village itself. An experienced commander, Damen knew what happened when soldiers rode through populated lands. Given warning, the old and the young, the women and the men would make for the surrounding countryside, taking shelter in the hills with their best cow, or provisions. If not given warning, they were at the mercy of the troop’s leader, the most benevolent of whom would make his men pay for the provisions they took, and the daughters and sons they enjoyed. At first.
But that was different to the vibration of hooves at night, to rousing in confusion with no chance to escape, only time to bar the doors. Barricading themselves inside would have been instinctive but not useful. When the soldiers set fire to the houses, they would have had to come out.
Damen swung down off his horse, his heels crunching on the blackened earth, and looked at what was left of the village. Laurent was reining in behind him, a pale, slender shape beside Makedon and the Akielon men riding with him in the thin dawn light.
There was grim familiarity on both Veretian and Akielon faces. Breteau had looked like this. And Tarasis. This was not the only unprotected village ruined as a salvo in this fight.
‘Send a party to follow the riders. We stop here to bury the dead.’
As he spoke, Damen saw a soldier let a dog loose from the chain it strained at. Frowning, he watched it streak across the village, stopping at one of the far outbuildings, scrabbling at the door.
His frown deepened. The outbuilding was set away from the cluster of homes. It stood intact. Curiosity drew him closer, boots turning grey with ash. The dog was whining, a high, tinny sound. He put his hand on the door of the outbuilding and found it unyielding. It was latched, from the inside.
Behind him, a girl’s unsteady voice said, ‘There’s nothing there. Don’t go inside.’
He turned. It was a child of about nine, of indeterminate gender, only maybe a girl. White-faced, she had pushed herself out of the pile of firewood stacked against the building wall.
‘If there’s nothing there, why not go inside?’ Laurent’s voice. Laurent’s calm, invariably infuriating logic, as he arrived, also on foot. With him were three Veretian soldiers.
She said, ‘It’s just an outbuilding.’
‘Look.’ Laurent dropped to one knee in front of the girl, and showed her the starburst on his ring. ‘We are friends.’
She said, ‘My friends are dead.’
Damen said, ‘Break it in.’
Laurent held back the girl. It took two impacts of a soldier’s shoulder before the door splintered. Damen transferred his hand from sword hilt to knife hilt, and led the way into the confined space.
The dog rushed in beside him. Inside, there was a man lying on the straw-strewn dirt floor, with the broken end of a spear protruding from his stomach, and a woman, standing between him and the door, armed with nothing but the other end of the spear.
The room smelt of blood. It had soaked into the straw, where, ashen, the man’s face was transforming with shock.
‘My Liege,’ he said, and with a spear in his stomach, he was trying to push himself up on one arm to rise for his Prince.
He wasn’t looking at Damen. He was looking past him, at Laurent, who was standing in the doorway.
Laurent said without looking around, ‘Call for Paschal.’ He stepped into the crude space, moving past the woman, simply putting his hand on the spear shaft she held and drawing it out of the way. Then he dropped to his knees on the dirt floor, where the man had collapsed back onto the straw. He was gazing up at Laurent with recognition.
‘I couldn’t hold them off,’ the man said.