The victory won by the Vals in Lager was costly. Half of our soldiers were dead, dying, or too badly wounded to fight, and it took us another two days to gather the civilians and horses that had been scattered in the surrounding foothills.

Some of our cattle had been shot with arrows and we had to finish off several oxen that had broken their hocks in ditches or rabbit holes in a state of panic. It was two terrible days, watching over the dying and bandaging the crippled, while the exhausted able-bodied patrolled the forests and hillsides in perpetual fear of another attack. We knew that there had to be many more survivors of the local militias in the country, that they could still rally to their old banners and that the convoy was vulnerable.

The threat came from within, too, with the beginnings of infection, the despondency that oozed from the suffering and the daily deaths. Alessa's surgeon was doing his best, but even his assistants were overwhelmed, and we had to unload several carts of supplies to carry the wounded. There was an oppressive shroud over the bivouac, woven with the feverish screams of amputees and the noxious scent of rotting flesh. Whole swarms of rooks came to feed on the corpses that we had neither the time nor the means to burn and, at night, my nightmares resounded with the snapping of their infernal beaks.

Ulrick had come to me after the fighting. "Iss Finne", he had simply said to me, after putting his hand on my head, as he sometimes did. The warrior was not smiling, his face was serious and still speckled with blood, but he seemed satisfied with me. I could hardly explain it, and I was even more disturbed by the looks and the marks of respect that the other vaïdogans were giving me. During the battle I had felt weak and helpless, disoriented as if in a daydream, and my shield had slipped off the wall. It was hard to understand how I had done the right thing. The other yunlings were praised for their composure and well-aimed shots, but none got as much attention as I did.

When I expressed my incomprehension to him the next day, Sven summarily explained that I had been in the front line, that I had held my spot and triumphed over a tough opponent. I felt no less drained, more defeated than victorious. When the bodies were looted, Ulrick gave me a short sword made of grey iron and a good quality aventail that had belonged to a brownian squire who had died on the mound.

"Keep the carmian dagger, too," he had said as I was looking at my new sword. "It's a good dagger, and you use it well." Except for the arrows they'd retrieved from the woods, the Vals left all the remaining booty to the other soldiers.

Captain Morvin had survived the attack of the Hillian nobles - unlike half of his detachment - but he suffered a nasty gash on his head and the concussion that went with it. After the attack, he did his best to take charge, and the vaïdoerk kindly followed his instructions for a full day, until the captain admitted on his own that he was not in a position to handle the situation. Everyone liked Danto Morvin. The old hand wasn't arrogant, and his honesty was gratefully received. Morvin was the first to point out his own shortcomings and he never hesitated to ask for help when he saw the need. At his request, the Vals took over the logistics and reorganized what they could. Everyone had to pitch in, even the yunlings. Much to Pike's disappointment as he was looking over the terraced fields full of ripe wheat, I spent my time riding back and forth on his back, carrying messages, escorting our lost sheep, or hauling equipment.

The one advantage I could give to the constant fatigue and activity was that it kept my mind so busy that I could hardly think of anything else. Only on rare occasions did I see the bloody face of the sergeant again. To tell the truth, I had no time to spare for him, and I was probably getting tougher too. Since I had been with other soldiers, since Ulrick and I had returned to the banality of human suffering, and especially since the attack, I was numbing myself by necessity. A year earlier, just after the weasel-faced boy, I would have despised myself for feeling such detachment. Reality and addiction dictated a different path today. I had to get past it, despite the disgust and shuddering horror of screams and bloated bodies, because we were all in danger, and one more dead weight could tip the scales against us. I was discovering, for the first time in my life, that I could really be needed, just as I had been needed in the wall. I was fully committed to helping others, instinctively pushing aside anything that was just about me or my emotions. It just wasn't the time.

The popularity of the Vals increased as a result of the fighting, and in the days that followed, we were able to provide constant assistance to the civilians. The other soldiers were much more cordial too, especially the cowards who had turned their backs during the battle. They knew that Morvin would have been within his rights to have them whipped or even hanged. As the Vals had not lost anyone in the wall, as we had no serious injuries to deplore, only a few superficial cuts, two or three bumps, and the great Sigburt who had had his little finger cut off, everyone praised our military prowess. In spite of the fifty or so Hillian bodies rotting nearby, the gossips still managed to attribute several hundred victims to us, and even more unbelievable rumors were already spreading through the camp. On the second night, while I was bringing back a load of dead wood, I heard one of the whores say without batting an eyelid that she had seen Ofrid pierced by ten spears, and pulled them out without bleeding a single drop.

If we had set up our pavilions closer to the woods, if the brownian commanders had been savvy enough to charge us first, we knew that in all likelihood the reputation of Lager's heroes would have suffered.

A handful of Hillians had been taken prisoner during the scuffle, and the surviving archers of Morvin guarded them day and night to keep them safe from retaliation. One of them was one of the instigators of the ambush, Jarami Moress, heir to Lager's lord, whose father had been hanged by the militia of seneschal Vittori during the initial attack on the canton. He was a handsome young man, tall, well-built and charismatic, but not particularly smart. He had been knocked off his feet by Ofrid during the cataphract charge, his family armor had saved him from serious injury, but had failed to save his self-respect.

Since his capture, the young nobleman had walled himself up in silence and behaved with the excessive dignity of a sovereign in exile. To our questions, he answered only with a furious stare.

His men were more cooperative, however, because they understood that their fate depended on the goodwill of the Vals, and that goodwill was, at the moment, the only thing protecting them from the vengeful wrath of our lancers. We learned from them that their scouts had spotted the convoy the day before the attack, but that Moress had insisted on charging heroically at dawn. It was a particularly stupid decision, Vals and the surviving Hillians agreed, but I personally thought there was merit in it. The incompetence of lord Moress may have saved us all from being slaughtered during the night, and the shame of that established fact was clearly visible on the faces of our prisoners. They said that the canton was horribly disorganized and that the men who had attacked us came from ten different villages. I wasn't the only one who believed them to be sincere when they said they didn't know what the road to the pass had in store for us, even though their likely honesty didn't help us much. On principle, the vaïdoerk organized the convoy so that it was prepared for the worst.

When we set out again, four exhausting days after the ambush, the column was escorted by twenty mounted cataphracts, with another five horsemen ahead of the convoy on the road. At the first halt, Ofrid instructed our lancers to set up proper patrols, while a handful of highlander volunteers, all equipped with horns, sifted through the surrounding woods. I was assigned a place among the lead riders. The improvised scouts were led by Ulrick, and Jask and Ringer rode with us. The old warrior had demanded that I trade Pike for one of Calop's steeds that Vittori had sent to the front. Not only was the gelding too heavy to serve as a front-runner, but, with the animals we had lost, his presence had become indispensable within the caravan itself. My replacement mount was a frail, submissive mare whom the grooms called Redhead, because of her stunningly shiny chestnut coat. She was young and worried, frightened by all the walking she was required to do, but the presence of a rider, however small, seemed to reassure her considerably.

Launched at full speed, she flew like a shooting arrow, and despite her nervousness, she was obedient and had a graceful, agile foot.

Shortly after we left, the weather became erratic and unpleasant, as if perched somewhere on the ledges of the Thorns, a capricious god had not appreciated our offering of sacrificial blood. It began with a light drizzle, so light it seemed like mist, that fell in the morning and evening and soaked my clothes without me realizing it. The sky clouded over the mountains to the north, and when we glimpsed their peaks between clouds, it was to find them whiter each time. We had an afternoon to worry that early snows might delay us further, then the showers suddenly returned, blurring the tracks that Jask was trying to pick up and veiling the peaks with crackling curtains.

Fortunately, according to the few civilians who knew the way to the Pass, the worst of the terrain was behind us. The road was no wider, no less muddy, but the loops were looser, the slopes less steep, and there was more space between the convoy and the wooded hillsides above us. As we got closer to our goal, the valleys merged and, while they deepened, they also widened as we progressed. Seven days after Lager, Vittori's horsemen found us.

It was in the middle of a downpour, we couldn't see much, and Ulrick kept complaining because the humidity was hurting his knee. He was riding Berda and had put on his heavy cataphract equipment, which he also complained about, but which he kept on all occasions. In the event of an unexpected confrontation, there would only be the combined strength of Ulrick and Berda to carve a path to freedom, and so the Val bore his burden, despite the inconvenience.

Our fifth companion was Walfrick, the yunling of a tall, hollow-eyed, sharp-featured Val named Rygar Vieneshaild. The thirteen-year-old was my only serious rival in knife training; he was a small, dark-haired, quiet, taciturn young man whom I had trouble getting to know for real. He had volunteered to accompany us and spent most of his time silently observing us with his big black eyes. Walfrick was not discourteous, but he saved his words as if they were rare gems.

The cracked woods dripped above us, and the Pass, as wide as the horizon, continually spewed gusts of icy rain. It was Walfrick who first spotted the silhouettes of the three riders, and Jask raised his hawk eyes from the muddy road. They were less than thirty spans away, around a bend in the road, and Ulrick roared a challenging cry at them, laid down his long spear and charged at them. Berda's hooves danced impatiently in the mud, while my frozen hands clutched the soaked leather of my bridle, not yet sure whether to run, fight or wait. Between my thighs, Redhead was shaking nervously. In front of us, the riders slowed down, then stopped completely and one of the men quickly left his saddle. He landed in the mud with a clatter, and came to us with wet sucking noises.

I heard Ringer sigh in relief when he identified the blue Wadd plow on the newcomer's coat of arms. "You're late, val-warrior!" barked the guy walking toward us with a confident gait. "Where the fuck is our rear guard?" His tone was unpleasant and superior.

Ulrick spat into a puddle and slowly put his weapon back on the mare's neck. "I return the question to you, scout," growled the Val in a voice so venomous that the man's confidence suddenly faded. "Where the fuck is our vanguard?" The rider stopped there, dumbfounded in the rain, while Berda continued to dance on the road in front of him, chewing her bit with the fury of a demonic steed.

Against the massive figure of the cataphract and its mount, the man suddenly looked very small. Nevertheless, he pulled back his hood, as if showing us his face would make things right. He was a craggy faced forty-year-old with the tough, mean look of a professional soldier, and his riveted mails proved his rank. He wasn't used to being stood up to, and it showed in his rough face as he gauged Ulrick. I suddenly recognized him as a member of legate Carson's suite.

"We're camping up north less than a day away," the rider finally spat, grudgingly. "We were forced to retreat without your support," he added accusingly. Ulrick laughed dryly, left Berda's back in one swift leap and advanced heavily until he was only a few steps away from his interlocutor. The wind was howling. "I'm not going to dwell on what we were forced to do without yours," he replied. His voice, though low, carried to us, dangerous and vibrant at the same time, like the roar of a great beast. I was suddenly afraid of what he was going to do. From the expressions of my companions, I was not the only one, and Jask's fingers were drumming nervously on the shaft of his spear. Ulrick dominated the man by half a head. The rider was doing his best not to lose face, but I saw him gulp as the Val stepped forward again and laid a heavy hand on his shoulder. "To sum up, you rushed the job, and the convoy was ambushed in Lager," he growled. "My vaïdoerk is intact, and that's why you still have a tongue. As for the rest of the soldiers, the remaining half of them are reluctant to see Hillian steel again."

There was a silence that even the crackling rain and the shrieking wind could not entirely fill. I saw the other two riders stirring uncomfortably in their saddles. Ulrick looked up at them.

"Go back to your masters," he continued in a loud voice, "and tell them that at this level of incompetence they are lucky to have a rear guard at all." He turned his attention back to the rider. A gust of wind chopped the warning he was addressing to him into a threatening and incomprehensible grumbling, but I could make out "speak again", "bastard" and "eat your teeth".

Without waiting for an answer from anyone, the Val turned his back on the riders and the paling soldier, and climbed back into his saddle, his face grim.

"We're going back to the convoy," he announced in a flat voice, before launching Berda into a trot along the road. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Ringer smiling. Redhead followed, her once lustrous coat streaked with days of muddy splashes. Next to me, Ringer continued to giggle and he was chewing at the same time, which seemed like a delicate activity. "Did you see that moron?" he said, coughing. "By the whores of Gann, did you see him?" Ulrick didn't break his stern expression, even after we had joined the column, despite Ringer's chuckles and Jask's predatory grimace.

When the rearguard finally rallied the troops of Vittori, nearly three weeks after our departure from Garnear, the Sowing moon was already half gone. The cold was beginning to threaten us as much as the rain. It was a faded procession, haunted by the spectres of exhaustion and anxiety, that finally joined the waddan army.

Despite the obsolescence of his bivouac, which had been hastily assembled on the road two days from the Pass, Vittori welcomed us with far more pomp than would usually be expected of a mercenary corps as ragged as ours. I suspected that the tense exchange between Ulrick and the scout had something to do with it. There were horns and an escort, but the rain washed out most of the other stylistic effects put in place by the young seneschal. Our convoy responded to these displays of attention with murderous sneers, a measure of incomprehension, and some sickening whiffs of shit and gangrene.

Vittori was seventeen years old, with a firm, pleasant face and short, curly brown hair. His slender body looked as if it had been built for war. He was already recognized as an exceptional leader of men, which I could easily understand. Wearing a chain mail of the best Grey-March iron, reinforced with exquisitely chiseled steel plates, the young man embodied perfectly those values that the brownian nobility had inherited from the ancient Sarp: a thinker, a talker and a warrior. After publicly congratulating us on our prowess in Lager, he insisted on meeting Ofrid and Morvin in private. Our hettman told us what happened next. To Ofrid and Morvin's surprise, Vittori apologized.

The management of the scouts and messengers depended on legate Carson, he explained, and since he was doing well ahead, the seneschal didn't think it would be any different in the rear.

Carson had been reprimanded for his failings, as harshly as Vittori could afford, and the legate had not been present at the welcoming ceremony. Without further ado, the seneschal moved on to the most important matter, which suddenly explained why he was being so delicate with the vaïdoerk. Corin Gon, heir to Hill, was waiting for us at Ac-Pass.

A thousand men were waiting with him.