Imperial Fire

XVII

The Outlanders pressed on until dark and established a defensive position in a wooded gorge. Wayland grew weary of the praise and handshakes and took himself and Atam off up to the ridgeline. The sky had cleared and stars massed in gassy swirls. To the north, snow peaks jutted like fangs. Wayland lay back and looked up through the cross-hatched branches, watching the constellations’ almost imperceptible drift.

‘You did aim for the duke,’ Atam said.

Wayland smiled. ‘It was pure luck.’

‘Will you teach me how to bend a bow?’

‘You don’t want to be a soldier.’

‘What else can I be?’

‘When we return home, you’ll go to school.’

‘Home,’ Atam said, as if it were a destination as remote as heaven.

‘That’s right. My wife is minding it as I speak. You’ll like her.’

‘Tell me about her.’

Wayland closed his eyes to picture Syth better. ‘In form, tall, fair and slender — taller than you and with a carriage that would put most queens to shame. In manner, kind and cheerful, but she knows her own mind and isn’t slow to voice it. Talking around the fireside — I don’t mind admitting it — my Syth often has the better of me. She has a way of uttering things that seem nonsensical until you screw your head around and look at the world from her direction.’

Atam laughed. ‘Your children wouldn’t welcome a strangeling into their nest.’

‘Why not? My dog has adopted you as my own. My children will do the same.’

Atam rubbed his cheek against the dog’s head. It wagged its tail and flicked its tongue across his face.

A lookout cried a warning. A smudge of flame glowered in the south, growing brighter.

‘A signal fire,’ Wayland said. ‘We’re not out of danger yet.’

Sure enough, a smear of flame appeared to the north, and then another one, deeper into the mountains.

Wayland helped Atam to his feet and led him down to the camp.

‘You did mean it,’ the boy said. ‘About taking me home.’

Wayland squeezed his hand. ‘As God is my judge.’

They continued up the road under a blue sky stippled with lambs’-fleece clouds. Watching the landscape unfold, Wayland was struck by the thought that every day would be like this — a new patch of world revealed and then left behind, forgotten or fixed in memory forever.

Like this stretch of road. To the right a verge of wildflowers sagging under the weight of bees. Above it a rocky slope matted with rhododendrons running up to a vertical scarp capped with trees. To the left, a great green swoop of valley threaded by a river like a milky vein. The rhododendron blossoms filled the air with a rich honeysuckle scent. A cuckoo cried its drowsy note from the undercliff.

A falcon’s harsh cry drowned the cuckoo’s song. Wayland spotted the strung-bow profile of a peregrine defending its eyrie, patrolling back and forth above the cliff. It checked and half-stooped towards a wooded outcrop. Wayland’s eyes narrowed. The falcon wasn’t alarmed by the commotion on the road. The threat came from above.

He was still swivelling to cry a warning when the first arrows whistled past. A trooper thirty yards behind him clutched his ribs and folded over his horse’s neck.

A dozen more arrows flighted down, one of them nicking Wayland’s sleeve. He snatched the reins of Atam’s horse and dragged it over the downhill slope, pulled the boy to the ground and pushed him flat.

‘Stay down,’ he ordered. He seized his dog’s head in both hands. ‘Guard Atam and the horses.’

Crouched below the road’s rim, he scrambled down the highway. A horse squealed somewhere above him. A trooper threw himself off the road and looked back, wiping dirt from his mouth.

Wayland ducked his head above the verge. Half the force had sought cover on the uphill slope. The rest had flung themselves on this side and were wriggling back up to assess the threat. The baggage train stood abandoned, one mule dead, another kicking in its traces. A single driver remaining at his station with his hands clasped over his head. Wayland sprinted forward, grabbed him and dragged him to cover. He propped himself on one elbow and cupped a hand to his mouth.

‘Vallon!’

‘Down here!’

Wayland slip-slided towards the general, negotiating a muleteer drumming his feet in a death spasm. He threw himself down beside Vallon. ‘They chose the site well,’ he panted. ‘It would take a day to find a way up those cliffs and our archers won’t trouble the ambushers from below.’

‘I know. And the Georgians are threatening our rear.’

‘If we ride into the valley, we’ll get round the ambush.’

‘Carts can’t negotiate the slope. Lose the baggage and we lose everything.’

Wayland squirmed up for another look. The scarp contoured north for another mile, its cliffs broken by fissures and wooded ledges that could have harboured an army of marksmen.

‘We’re just going to have to take our chances,’ Vallon said. He raised his voice. ‘Centurions, pick forty men to get the carts and mules out of danger. The rest of you, work your way up the road, keeping out of sight.’ He sank down while his captains made their choice.

‘Ready!’ Josselin cried.

‘Go!’ said Vallon, leading the way. The troopers sprinted after him and Wayland felt he had no choice but to follow. Vallon organised the men, delegating some to cut the dead animals from their traces and replace them, ordering the others to form a defensive screen with their shields. Wayland lent his strength to one heaving group. Arrows sprayed down.

Safe from counter-attack, the ambushers began to show themselves. Some of them were armed with heavy bows which they drew by sitting down and bracing their left foot against the stave. Wayland saw one seated archer hauling back a three-foot-long arrow two-handed, with both feet straining against a bow as thick as a wrist. The man seemed to be aiming straight at him. He ducked and a trooper toiling beside him collapsed, the arrow punching through both shield and armour.

The troopers got the train moving. Wayland jogged beside the wagons, trying to ignore the lethal hail. A trooper ahead of him buckled with a barb in his calf. Wayland bore his weight and helped him peg-leg along. ‘Not far now.’

He wasn’t lying. The cliffs curved away from the highway and the assault tailed off. Wayland handed the wounded trooper over to Hero and found Atam and the dog unscathed. Men called out, searching for missing comrades. Four of them would never answer an earthly summons again, and the same number of baggage men had perished.

Vallon, reunited with his horse, pounded over, his face running with sweat. ‘See that,’ he cried.

Up the valley light winked from the top of a watchtower pitched on a high ridge. ‘The brigands haven’t done with us. Unless we find another path, they’ll kill us by a hundred cuts.’ Vallon dragged his hand across his brow. ‘Our attackers have won an easy victory and will follow up. Wayland, hide with half a dozen men and grab some of them.’

Vallon was so incensed that he’d forgotten Wayland wasn’t subject to his command.

Wayland pushed out his cheek with his tongue and nodded. He turned and singled out a Bulgarian freebooter who’d impressed him with his calm during the assault. He pointed at another man. ‘And you.’

‘And me,’ said Lucas.

‘You,’ Wayland said, selecting Gan the archery instructor. Three times more he pointed. ‘Seven should be enough,’ he told Vallon.

‘Make it eight,’ said Lucas.

Vallon swiped the air. ‘Take the fool. If he dies, it’s no great loss.’ The general quirted his mount and rode off.

Wayland watched him go with an ambivalent smile before organising his squad. For the ambush site, he chose a birch spinney along an innocuous stretch of road just past a tight bend. He divided his force on each side of the road and nestled into a dell with his dog. Lucas found his way beside him. The expedition laboured out of sight, dust settling in its wake.

‘Can I ask you something?’ Lucas said.

‘I suppose so.’

‘How many men have you killed?’

‘I’ve never counted.’

‘You must have some idea.’

‘That’s between me and my confessor.’

Lucas rolled a halm of grass between thumb and forefinger. ‘I’ve made a resolution. If I kill five men in battle, I’ll consider I’ve earned the right to wear the armour I took on the causeway.’

‘It didn’t do its original owner any good.’

Lucas was straining out an answer when Wayland cut him off. The dog had cocked its ears.

‘They’re coming.’

‘What if they arrive in a horde?’

‘Let fly an arrow and then run as if Old Horny were trying to pin your tail. Take your lead from me.’

Lucas tensioned his bow. Wayland made him relax it. They waited. A striped hyena trotted into the road, looked down it and galloped into the undergrowth as the first highlanders came loping around the bend.

They advanced in a loose pack, running in cleated sandals that made hardly a sound.

‘Don’t shoot until I do,’ Wayland said.

He waited until the nearest highlander was forty yards away before rising and dropping him in his tracks.

Lucas’s bow discharged with a wonky twang. ‘I missed!’

Two more highlanders went down. One of the front runners, bearded to the waist and waving a strange-looking fluted sword, urged his men on. Wayland released his fourth arrow at the same moment Lucas shot his second and the shaman sat down in the road with a most tragic expression.

‘Whose shot?’ Lucas cried. ‘Yours or mine?’

‘Neither. It came from the other side.’

The highlanders hadn’t expected opposition on this scale and turned tail with woeful cries.

‘After them!’ Wayland shouted.

Two troopers caught one of the highlanders before he’d gone fifty yards, hurling him down in a swirl of dust. Wayland’s target jinked off the road, scrambling up rocks and shoving through shrubs.

Wayland followed, branches whipping his face. The slope was steep and tangled. His breath came in painful gasps. Lucas overtook him and closed on the quarry. Ahead of him the dog brought the runaway to bay. It wasn’t a man-killer, but the fugitive didn’t know that. He backed against a tree and swiped a knife from side to side.

Lucas kicked it out of his hand, seized a hank of his hair and dragged his head down.

‘Alive,’ Wayland shouted with the last of his breath. He staggered up, grasped the prisoner and hoisted his head up to reveal the face of a boy, reared in a harsh school to be sure, but not much older than Atam.

Wayland lashed out at Lucas. ‘Do you think killing a kid entitles you to wear fancy armour?’

Lucas made an idle swipe at a shrub. ‘I got carried away.’

Wayland grabbed Lucas by his tunic. ‘Learn to bridle your temper, or I’ll never have truck with you again.’ He released him. ‘Now take him down.’

Wayland watched the young Frank escort his captive back to the road as if he were a geriatric relative. Wayland smarted. Never before had someone outpaced him in the chase. He stroked the dog. ‘I’m getting too old for this,’ he said.

With their prisoners at heel, the snatch squad caught up with the main force at a bridge over a rushing burn. The Georgians had given up their pursuit, but that suggested they were more intimidated by the mountain tribesmen than by the Outlanders.

Vallon sat his horse. ‘You know what to do,’ he said to Otia.

Soldiers dragged one of the prisoners before the centurion. The man was middle-aged, a shepherd or hunter with faded blue eyes in a sun-darkened face. Under Otia’s interrogation, he grew increasingly agitated, pointing at the peaks and throwing up his hands.

Otia turned to Vallon. ‘He says the Daryal Gorge is the only road through the mountains.’

‘There must be another way. Tell him that if he doesn’t reveal it, we’ll execute him.’

Otia resumed his interrogation. The prisoner spoke fervently at first, but then faltered and halted, resigned to his fate. He took a cross from his tunic and kissed it.

‘He says there’s no other path,’ Otia said.

‘Kill him.’

Otia handed over the prisoner to an Armenian trooper who’d lost a friend in the ambush. He forced the highlander into a kneeling position and hacked off his head, taking four strokes and making such a bloody mess that the Outlander veterans winced and averted their gaze.

The youth Wayland had captured trembled in his grasp and piss stained his crotch.

Vallon crooked a finger.

‘The boy will give you the same answer,’ Wayland said in French. ‘This road is the only road.’

‘I’ll be the judge of that.’

Tears squeezed out of the prisoner’s eyes when Otia questioned him. The centurion turned to Vallon. ‘He swears there isn’t another path through the mountains.’

Vallon pointed at a trooper. ‘Kill him.’

The other Outlanders, who not much earlier would have slaughtered every highlander they met — from white-haired matriarchs to suckling babes — spectated in a queasy silence.

Wayland stepped out under the executioner’s sword.

‘Stand back,’ Vallon ordered.

‘I didn’t join this expedition to watch youngsters being slaughtered.’

‘Don’t waste your sympathy. If our situations were reversed, I warrant that this stripling would be gouging out our eyes and boiling our brains above a fire.’ Vallon half-stood in his stirrups. ‘Kill him.’

Wayland turned away the executioner’s sword. Again he spoke in French. ‘Killing him won’t achieve a thing. You’re asking the wrong question.’

Vallon struck his saddle. ‘I won’t have you interfering with my command.’

‘You were happy for me to interfere when I took that shot at the duke. You were happy for me to interfere when I captured the prisoners — even though I don’t serve in your ranks. This youth can’t show us a safe passage because it doesn’t exist. What he can do is warn us of the other perils waiting on this road.’

‘Trust Wayland,’ Hero said.

Vallon’s jaw jutted. His head hunted about. He spoke through gritted teeth. ‘Make one thing clear. If the boy doesn’t give us useful intelligence, I’ll carry out the death sentence myself.’

Wayland waved Otia over and they began questioning the boy. The sun was low over the mountains when Wayland reported to Vallon.

He pointed north. ‘The highlanders will spring their next trap from up there. A score of them are waiting to roll rocks down on us.’

A few miles up the valley, the eastern side fell in three gigantic steps, the lowest falling almost plumb to the road, above it two bands of cliffs separating scree slopes angled at the limits of stability. The road cut into the mountain and there was no way to avoid the ambush.

‘I’ll send a squad of mountain men to take the position,’ Vallon said.

‘I’ll lead them,’ Wayland said.

‘I thought…’ said Vallon, and left it at that. He managed a short bow. ‘Arrange the attack as you see fit.’

Mellow evening sunshine bathed the mountains as the convoy approached the ambush site. They had climbed above the treeline and long shadows threw the valley into wild relief. Vallon halted his force well short of the site and Wayland used what remained of daylight to plot a route. A direct ascent was impossible. Even if they climbed the cliff by a more devious line, the scree slope above the crag was so bald that the ambushers would spot the squad long before they could engage. To command the enemy position without being seen would involve a lengthy detour that would bring them above the second step before traversing left to take up position behind the ambushers. Then they would have to descend the cliff before falling on the enemy. Judging by the great apron of scree beneath it, the strata were rotten. Not a descent to be undertaken by night.

He’d chosen his squad — all men who’d grown up in mountains. That included Gorka and Lucas. The youth might be a windmill to emotion, but any man who could outstrip Wayland in an uphill dash was fit for the task.

He was eating supper with Atam when a hideous braying raised the hairs on his neck. The dog lifted its head and bayed at the moon.

Wayland heard Vallon laugh. ‘We know how to answer that.’

Troopers rose and bellowed into the hollows of their shields, the amplified cries and countercries merging and echoing between the valley walls. When the noise stopped, two distant wolf packs continued howling in melancholy counterpoint.

Wayland retired to his tent and woke around midnight. Stars burned in the windless sky. His ten-man squad stood ready. He shouldered his war bow, eyed the crag where the enemy waited and sighted on the moon.

‘Careful with your feet. On a night as still as this, the enemy will hear a stumble half a mile off.’

They set off, plugging up the tortuous route. Most of the night had passed before they reached the second band of cliffs. Wayland looked for a route up, his brow sheened with sweat.

‘This way,’ he said, leading up a gulley lined with rock that came away in his hands.

Behind him a trooper dislodged a hundredweight of rotten stone that went clattering down the mountain.

Wayland hissed. ‘The enemy may put that down to chance. Make a second clumsy move and they’ll know we’re up here.’

Dawn still stood below the peaks when the squad reached the cliff top above the ambush site. All around the sky was awash with stars. A shower of meteorites glided overhead in a shallow arc. The troopers dozed or talked quietly among themselves.

‘I’ve got a question for you,’ Wayland said to Lucas.

‘Ask away.’

‘If Vallon had ordered you to kill that boy, would you have?’

‘I was wondering that myself. I don’t know. If I had, it would have poisoned my dreams.’

‘Good. That means you have a conscience.’

‘Are you saying that Vallon doesn’t?’

‘Far from it. His conscience is more troubled than most because of the decisions he’s forced to make.’ Wayland lay down and wrapped himself in his cloak. ‘Wake me between dawn and dark.’

The stars were dimming when Wayland prepared to make the descent. He leaned out from the cliff top as far as he dared. It was higher and steeper than he’d expected.

‘Search for a way down,’ he told the troopers.

Light outlined the eastern ranges when the pathfinders returned. ‘Only a cat could find safe footing on that debris,’ said one. Another panted in agreement. ‘I got halfway down and reached a sheer drop.’

‘We’ll have to use ropes,’ Gorka said.

Lucas trotted up. ‘I think I’ve found a way. It’s a bit of a scramble.’

‘Show us.’

Lucas led him to a fissure and lowered himself down it, bracing hands and feet against the sides. Wayland followed, cramping himself against the narrow walls. Even moving carefully, he couldn’t avoid dislodging rocks.

‘Careful,’ said Lucas from below. ‘You nearly brained me.’

Dawn was in full flush when they reached a ledge hanging out more than twenty feet above the base of the cliff.

Wayland peered over. ‘Too steep to descend unaided.’

The men began to uncoil the ropes. There was enough light now for Wayland to make out the shapes of the ambushers crouched beside cairns of rocks. Not much imagination was required to envisage the devastation the boulders would wreak on a slow-moving column hundreds of feet below.

‘Look out!’ one of the troopers cried.

A rock he’d dislodged whirred past Wayland’s head, struck the ledge a sharp crack and flew into space. It hit the scree slope and bounded away towards the ambushers.

‘That’s torn it,’ Gorka said.

The ambushers turned and stared up at the cliffs.

‘We’re in shadow,’ a trooper said. ‘They might not spot us.’

Even as he spoke, a group of highlanders began struggling up the slope. Gorka threw his rope over the drop.

‘Not enough time,’ Wayland said. ‘They’ll reach us before everyone gets down.’

Lucas stepped to the tip of the drop. ‘We don’t need ropes. Just jump.’

‘Are you fucking mad?’ Gorka said.

‘The scree’s so steep and loose it will cushion our fall. I used to jump off cliffs like this in the Pyrenees. Look.’ With that, Lucas launched off. He hit the slope and skidded twenty yards before flailing to a halt. He grinned. ‘The trick is to land at the same angle as the slope.’

Gorka wiped a finger under his nose. ‘Fuck.’

By now the highlanders had gained more than a hundred feet, advancing at an indefatigable trudge.

‘I’ll go next,’ Wayland said.

He shut his eyes in brief prayer and jumped. A long rush of weightlessness before he struck the scree and careered down. Lucas managed to arrest his descent. Wayland looked back at the remaining troopers. ‘It’s not as bad as it looks.’

Seven of them summoned up the courage to jump, all landing without injury. The last held back and spoke in a wheedling tone. ‘I can’t. I twisted an ankle on the way up.’

‘Then find your own way down,’ Wayland said.

The highlanders were already a third of the way up the slope. ‘Do we meet them or wait for them?’ Gorka said.

‘We can tear straight through them,’ Lucas said.

‘He’s right,’ Wayland said. ‘Spread out in a line. Ready? Go!’

The squad set off down the slope, running with staccato steps and leaning back for balance and traction. The scree began to move beneath them, forcing them to take longer and longer strides, the surface sliding faster and faster until it threatened to overtake their whirling legs.

‘Ride it,’ Lucas cried, bending his knees and spreading his arms.

Wayland balanced on the wave of rocky surf and accelerated at an alarming rate, his hair blowing straight back and tears whipping from his eyes. The squad glissaded past the band of highlanders as if they were stumps. The hiss of scree behind the human toboggans harshened into an ominous rattle. They’d set off a landslide, a lobe of debris that grew coarser the further they descended. Stones as big as a fist bounded past Wayland. The ambush site rushed up and he saw that he had no more than fifty feet of runout before he went over the precipice.

‘How do we stop?’ he shouted.

‘Like this,’ Lucas yelled, slaloming to the right.

Wayland skidded to the left and just made it off the hurtling shale, tearing the skin of one palm in the process. Somehow the other troopers also found safe ground. Six of the ambushers scattered before the landslide engulfed them. The other four left it too late and the mass of scree crashed into them and swept them over the cliff like woodlice carried down a drain.

The hellish rattling died to a dribble. A single stone trickled and fell. Troopers groaned and laughed. ‘That was better than sex,’ Gorka said.

Wayland sucked shards from his lacerated palm and saw Lucas giving futile chase to the fleeing ambushers.

‘Get back here,’ he shouted.

Lucas gave up, flailing back at a pace that suggested he had enough energy to do it all again. He dumped himself down beside Wayland.

‘What do you think? Four men dead and an ambush foiled. Does that count towards my armour?’

‘No. It wasn’t proper combat.’

Lucas appealed to Gorka. ‘What say you, boss?’

With a beckoning gesture that boded ill, Gorka enticed Lucas into range and grasped him in a head lock. ‘You came close to wiping all of us out,’ he said. He hurled Lucas away and chuckled. ‘Mad idiot.’

Wayland smiled. He stood and touched Lucas in passing. ‘You did well.’

He went to the edge of the cliff, pulled out an Outlanders pennant and waved it to signal that the way was clear. The column strained into motion. From his vantage, Wayland could see what they couldn’t — the road strangled by a yawning chasm, precipices shooting up to white peaks on every side.

Nobody molested them on the journey though the pass. Beyond it the road descended in wild zigzags and Wayland spotted Ossetian settlements on the other side of the valley, some of the houses no more than heaps of stones, recognisable as habitation only by wisps of smoke escaping from their roofs.

The road began climbing again and the twin summits of Mount Kazbeg appeared above the lesser peaks like a bishop’s mitre. A quilt of grey clouds settled, obliterating the summits. This was the gloomiest and most savage section of the route, immense iron-grey walls squeezing in on both sides, the river smoking a thousand feet below and wicked gleams of ice directly above. Banks of snow lay heaped in the shadows, some of them blocking the track. At one place the convoy had to dig through a landslide before the carts could pass.

Afternoon found them stretched out single file on a section of road hacked out of the cliffs. A headwind smelling like cold iron funnelled through the pass. Vallon rode up alongside Wayland.

‘Snow’s coming. A double march should see us clear.’

Wayland eyed the precipices louring under the cloud mantle. ‘Wait until dark.’

‘If we delay, the snow could block the road.’

‘The highlanders haven’t finished with us.’

Vallon looked up the cloud-draped cliffs. ‘Even if they’re waiting, they won’t be able to see us.’

‘They’ve probably posted spotters. Let’s wait until night.’

‘A storm could delay us for days.’ Vallon swung his arm at the column. ‘Keep moving. Don’t stop until we’re through.’

Twilight and overcast created a ghastly netherworld. Wayland advanced with his nerves strung tight. The column lit torches to show the road and had gone perhaps another mile when a horn blew from somewhere close by. Wayland looked up into the dark clouds. He heard a groaning sound and then the grating of stone. Moments later an infernal crack shattered the silence.

He wrenched his horse towards the cliff. ‘Take cover!’

A boulder boomed down the precipice and exploded on the road in a shower of sparks, sending splinters flying in all directions. An acrid stink drifted downwind. The second missile crashed to earth, shattering into pieces with enough force to breach a city wall.

‘Back!’ someone shouted. ‘Forward!’ cried another.

It didn’t matter which way they turned. The enemy had judged their attack perfectly, catching the Outlanders at the point between no advance and no retreat. They’d had days to prepare and they levered over boulders as big as huts that burst on impact, shooting out fragments with enough force to reduce a body to mush. One rock scored a direct hit on a horse and rider, squashing them like bugs. A sliver of stone no bigger than a nail paring slit Wayland’s cheek. He clung on to his terrified horse.

‘Atam!’

Someone screamed and went on screaming, the sound horrible enough to tear gristle.

Wayland gripped his dog’s nape. ‘Find Atam.’

It didn’t hesitate, running uphill through the deluge of boulders. Wayland abandoned his horse and followed.

‘Atam! Where are you?’

The boy drifted out of the mayhem, his face freckled with blood.

‘Oh my God,’ Wayland said, skidding to his knees.

A fearful impact had torn Atam’s left arm off below the shoulder. He clutched the stump. ‘I’ve lost my arm,’ he said in the tone of a child who’d mislaid something important and feared punishment.

Wayland dragged him under an overhang. The boy’s eyes were sinking into his face. The dog whimpered. ‘Good boy,’ Atam whispered.

Wayland choked back his horror and examined the wound. The force of the impact had effectively cauterised the blood vessels. ‘Hero,’ he shouted. ‘Hero, I need you.’

‘He’s down there,’ said a trooper hunched over a few yards away.

‘Stay with the boy,’ Wayland said. He sprang up. ‘Hero!’

Wayland found the physician treating a soldier with a smashed jaw. ‘Atam’s dreadfully hurt. Hurry!’

Hero’s glance was measured. ‘I’ll come as soon as I’ve finished treating this patient.’

Wayland wrenched him away. ‘He’s not going to die soon, but Atam won’t live unless you attend to him straight away.’

The trooper tending Atam looked up as they approached and sniffed away a tear. ‘Poor little bastard.’

Hero crouched and touched Atam’s cheek. ‘The shock alone would have killed him. I don’t think he felt any pain.’

‘He can’t be dead,’ Wayland shouted. ‘Only two days ago I swore to bring him home to my family.’

Hero took Wayland’s hands. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. Horrid cries carried through the dark. ‘I must attend to the living.’

The dog had couched its head on Atam’s lap. Wayland brushed back his hair and clutched the back of his skull. ‘Did he speak? Did he say anything?’

The trooper laughed away tears. ‘He called for his mother. I expect I’ll do the same when my turn comes.’

Wayland slumped beside Atam and cried tears from a well that seemed bottomless. Hollowed out by grief, he looked up when someone shook his shoulder.

‘We’d best be getting on,’ Wulfstan said,

The bombardment had stopped and the storm had arrived, whirling wet flakes sticking to Wayland’s face. The column drifted past, cartwheels muffled on the cold blanket.

‘I’m not leaving Atam here,’ Wayland said.

A teamster drove by, urging on his mules with shouts and lashes. Wulfstan stepped out. ‘Hold up while we load a casualty.’

The driver registered Atam, one side of his body already plastered by snow. He flicked his whip. ‘I’m overladen as it is. Let the dead look after the dead.’

Wayland sprang up, leaped onto the cart and held a knife to the driver’s throat. ‘You’ll go down among them if you don’t take the boy.’

They laid Atam on the cart and walked behind the crude hearse, leaning their weight against it to force it through the deepening snow. They were at this labour until dawn, when snow and slope relented and they stood looking down on foothills emerging under a clearing sky.

At the first camp below the Daryal Gate the officers tallied up the losses. Of the hundred troopers who’d boarded Pelican and Stork, twenty were dead, another eight injured. Wayland waited until the expedition had reached gentler ground before burying Atam. The trooper who’d watched the orphan’s life drain away joined Hero, Aiken and Wulfstan in the mourning party. Vallon didn’t attend.

‘I hadn’t realised how much he meant to you,’ Hero said to Wayland.

‘Nor did I until he was gone. I don’t know why except that he had no one else in the world.’

‘Come away now. We’ll talk later.’

‘Give me a while alone.’

He kneeled beside the grave and prayed that Atam would find a kinder existence in the afterworld. The dog whined and pawed at the turned earth. Wayland rose as the sun broke through the clouds, revealing the peaks stepping away in splendour.