THOUGH HIS EYES were open, Ulrem was blind. Seldom had he known such darkness; not even when he dwelt among the deepest wilds. The night was cool and soothing to his feverish skin. He could feel the caked blood and the wounds the prince’s warden had dealt him. Yet he lived. Upon that point he fixated, bending all his will toward regaining his feet.

King Kalric would be looking for him, he thought, and proud Stoln with whom Ulrem had often wrestled and caroused. The war was finished, a certain deal, but the spoils remained to be taken, for the prince of their great enemy was slain. Now, all of Brukon lay open to their rapine plundering. The Alron king and his son would waste no time. Ulrem thought of Orla, slender and wrapped in clean whites, her red-gold hair bound back in heavy braids with golden circlets. Always with a book in her hand, the quiet beauty had taught Ulrem his letters in stolen moments between hunts and games, when her father was not looking.

And she had taught him some other things, too. Reading by moonlight she called it. The thought of her brought a warmth to the young savage’s flesh. Soon they would return to Kalric’s hold…and then he would cast his dice. The Headsman had earned Orla’s hand, had he not?

These were the thoughts swirling through Ulrem’s mind as he summoned the strength to climb to his knees. Only, he could hardly work his arms. The ring was dormant, cold metal upon his finger. He had given it blood, and it had given him strength: that was the unspoken pact. But now it was sated, and returned to its slumbering. He groaned and winced, turning over onto his back. The gash in his side grew warm and slick, and he knew he was bleeding again. Beside him, Vasara’s corpse was cold.

“Perhaps you had the better of it, Brukoni,” he hissed, scrabbling with his hands for the hilt of his broken sword. He could use it as a lever, he thought. If only he could get to his knees…

A sound behind him made Ulrem freeze. The muted clopping of unhurried hooves. His fingers had only just brushed the hide-wrapped hilt. It was a familiar comfort, the leathers oiled by his own hands over countless days, as perfectly formed to him as was any other part of his lean, rugged body. But now, like him, the blade lay shattered upon the ground. A sword could be reforged, though, and a man could heal.

The riders, two of them he marked, drew near.

“What’s this?” one asked in smooth Alron. The language was not so different from Ulrem’s own tongue, more melodic, though not as songlike as the Brukoni speech, and faster than the languid drawl of the Luathon to the south. Kalric’s men. They would find him.

“Yarth is over here,” said the second man. “Poor devil. Died with two arrows in his breast and a sword in his gut!”

“How many did he take?” came the response.

“Looks like three dogs went with him. What about you?”

“More crowmeat here. Two.” Ulrem heard the bulk of a man coming down suddenly from horseback. Crunching footsteps drew near, though Ulrem’s head was turned the wrong way to see the speaker. They stopped but one or two paces from him. Near enough to smell the foul odor of the man’s body. “A Brukoni knight. And…” A bark of surprised laughter. “The Headsman!”

“What?” the other man said. Ulrem heard him leap up and hurry over. “Is he alive?”

“Doesn’t look like it,” the first man said. “A shame. Looks like they killed each other.”

“Hard to believe anyone could take that wild bastard down. He must be half a giant. Look at him!”

The sky flashed with an eerie light. Silent streamers of deathly green and livid pinks dashed through the black breast of the clouds. The suddenness of it gave the first man pause. Ulrem could see him in his mind’s eye staring warily up at the sky.

“You know what those mean?”

“The Pale Hunters,” said the other.

“That’s what I’ll tell my sons! The pale riders came for the Headsman. For breaking the old law and starting this damned war.” Both men spit and laughed uneasily. There was an irony in it that put a little fire in Ulrem’s limbs. His fingers tightened on the hilt of his sword.

“Here now!” said the first speaker. “There’s that ring Kalric was on about. Did you hear what he was saying?”

“No,” the other man said. “I wasn’t with the king today. Isroth had me and Donnoc on the left flank. What did he say?”

The first speaker’s voice grew very quiet. He knelt beside Ulrem. “He said he’d give his daughter to the man who brought him that ring.” Ulrem was glad they could not see his face, for the murderous scowl he could not hold back would have betrayed him. Kalric had finally turned on him? So be it. He was not the first ambitious man to catch the scent of the power the young barbarian carried. Shadows flocked to him, and he had long ago felt fate upon his neck, tightening like a noose. Dimly, he thought of Orla, and her flashing, starlit eyes. He would never read with her again, by candle or moonlight.

There was a long quiet. Then, the second man said, “I’m sure we could split her.” Again, both laughed, bitter soldier sounds. A problem to reckon with later, when the spears were stowed and the wine was flowing.

“I’ll get it. You go check that corpse up the road.”

Hesitantly, the second man agreed, guiding his horse away. Ulrem felt the first man’s fingers probing at the meat of his hand. He held as still as a forest’s quiet before a thunderstorm. Though he was strong, stronger than either man, he knew at that moment the truth of his weakness. He had pushed himself too far in the fighting, and then in the combat with Vasara. Such was always the case when he drank of the ring’s power, and the exhaustion that followed the fire. He would get only one chance to break free.

Ulrem was not a man who thought far beyond the next step. Accustomed to the hunt, he had learned to adapt, to shift, to rush like a river toward the ocean. Where he would go once he was free was not a thing he considered as the soldier grew bold enough to tug at the ring.

“It won’t come off,” he griped, tugging harder. He muttered something incomprehensible under his breath. “Curse his fat finger. How did he even get it on there?” Ulrem felt fingers dig into his shoulder.

“Ho!” the second man bellowed. “Come see this!”

“Not now, you daft whelp! The ring!” The man hauled at him, flipping Ulrem over onto his back. The writhing, serpentine lights that fired through the clouds let him see the face of his would-be killer. The man’s head was shaven, as was the Alron custom, but he had heavy mustaches that sagged below his mouth, weighted down by small bands of silver at either side. Tattoos dotted around his scalp just above his ears, and a scar traced a jagged line across his forehead. He wore the black cloak of a king’s guard, and a coat of mail beneath. His pinched face was fixated on Ulrem’s ring, and there was the faint green gleam of a knife in his hand.

“I’ll cut it off, then.”

But the other speaker’s enthusiasm was not so easily stopped. “It’s the prince of Brukon! The Headsman got him, too! We’ll be showered in treasure tonight!”

At this, the knifeman looked up sharply.

Ulrem surged into action, lashing the shattered blade of his sword at the speaker’s face. Fortune smiled on him, for the man reeled back in shock, baring his throat. Hot blood splashed down Ulrem’s arms as he opened the man’s neck from ear to ear. The Alron soldier fell back, clutching at his throat and making a sick gagging sound. He was already dead. The other man cried out and wheeled his horse.

Still mounted, in the soft light of the fires wreathing heavens, the rider saw a revenant rising from death. The look upon Ulrem’s face was that of black murder, and his gray eyes shone like a steel promise. Though terrified, the soldier was no coward. He snarled a wordless cry and heeled his horse, leveling his spear for Ulrem’s chest.

The outlander rolled aside, biting off a gasp as he tore his side anew. Cuts on his arms burned with fury at the renewed abuse, and his arms shook so badly he could hardly use them. Still, he came up beside the prince’s body and tore Vasara’s heavy sword from the dead man’s back. The ring was glowing now, rising and fading with a throbbing pulse that seemed to dance with the sky-fires.

The rider galloped a few lengths further, and drew hard rein again, circling his horse. His eyes were wide with fear, darting between Ulrem and the sky. Then without a word, he turned and bolted down the slope, back toward Kalric’s camp. In moments, the dull thud of hooves faded.

The point of Vasara’s sword dropped to the soft earth. Ulrem took first one step, and then another, lurching slowly toward the remaining horse. It was a dappled stallion, and it shied back from him as he drew near, rolling its eyes. His body yearned to sink back to the earth, to lie among the dead. He was crowmeat, some part of him said.

But another reared its head in defiance. Stand! Ride!

He held out a hand to the horse and let it sniff him. It caught the scent of blood and tried to turn its back, but weak as he was, Ulrem was fast yet. Under the writhing greens and blues, and the searing yellows that wove back and forth through banked clouds, he leaped forward, catching the horse by the mane. He tried to haul himself up onto its back, and that was when his strength failed. Sensing its chance, the beast thrashed free and darted away, screaming and kicking up clods of mud.

Ulrem sank to his knees. Kalric would not be long coming. Even under the witch-lights, his avarice would win out.

He heard them coming from a ways off. A dozen riders by the sound of it, whooping and shouting, driving off dark spirits and ill fortune with brave war cries. A dozen come to capture but one man, he thought with a grim smile. Let them try. He hefted Vasara’s sword, watching the lights dance off the scuffed and bloody bronze. Fine workmanship. The Alron could not have forged a better blade.

And that was the truth of it, he knew. The Brukoni, the Alron—the only difference was the hair on their head. One side was as bitter and petty as the other, each coveting the holds and hills of their cousins. He had fought in dozens of skirmishes, and that was always the truth of it. He saw it with the clarity of a man waking up as if from a long sleep, with the crystal sobriety that always followed battle.

Ulrem was working his way back to his feet when the screaming began. At first, it was animal fear, but then the voices of men cried out, too, and beneath the horror a ghastly wail that seemed to stretch and stretch, swallowing all other sounds. A dull roar of thunder like waves heard from a distant beach beat beneath that wailing sound. Ulrem levered himself to his feet, and saw something that he would struggle to describe for the rest of his life.

A wave of colored lights swept down out of the sky, like a god’s finger reaching out to light upon the earth. It wrapped around and through Kalric’s horsemen, who charged ahead madly, trying to escape. Their cloaks flew about them like beating raven’s wings, and yet they could not outpace the strand of witch-lights. Within that eery tendril, Ulrem saw something more: not merely light, but forms and shapes moving within it, so fast as to blur the eye. He saw riders of strange and nameless colors bearing armors from countless lands. They crashed among the Alron knights, though there was no thunder of battle. They fought with the same dreadful mute silence as the witch-lights themselves, these spectral reivers, and yet men and beast fell dead all the same.

The last of the Alron riders was nearly upon Ulrem when the specters overtook him. The foremost of the light-limned warriors fell upon the man. Where a face should have been, Ulrem saw only the grim, skeletal visage of death: a flaming skull that hung above broad, armored shoulders. Within the dark sockets of its eyes flickered starlights.

The last of Kalric’s riders died at Ulrem’s feet, his final words a senseless, bloody moan. Prince Stoln’s broad, honest face stared blankly up at him.

Killed by his father’s greed.