They had left the Valley of the Akhe that morning. Deniel had not had the opportunity to say goodbye to his family – in any case, doing so would have run the risk of attracting suspicion from the guerillas he now knew were lurking around Akenhof itself. Deniel had also carefully neglected to mention that fact to the Lord Marshall and Lord Commander, reasoning that it wouldn’t do to implicate himself any further.

The Easterners had taken him from the wine-scented cellar, fed him, and put him on a supply cart heading east with a small escort. The Lord Marshall had headed further west, down the river – the Akhe valley had other garrisons he needed to visit. The convoy would, in meantime, return East with collected supplies, reports, dispatches…and a thoroughly miserable alderman’s son still reflecting on his collapsing dreams of a simple future.

Deniel found the road lonesome, leaving him alone with his thoughts and regrets. His travelling companions were no help, either – the escort riders had apparently been carved out of stone rather than birthed, their eyes flinty, their responses to any query a monotonous “I have been instructed not to speak with you.” Their granite faces betrayed no emotion at all, but some of them had surely spoken to the Akhe valley garrison and Deniel was sure their blank faces masked a burning hostility.

The fields and farms of his old valley home had slowly given way to hills studded thickly with pine, the fresh resinous smell permeating the air, achingly familiar in a way that suddenly gave no comfort. Those in turn were replaced by greener, leafier trees, more open forests, more verdant landscapes, studded throughout by more farms and hamlets. Occasionally, a manor house or castle would dominate the skyline. In either case, his escort never so much as acknowledged signs of habitation, nor answered the curious gazes of passers-by except to find lodging with local garrisons of black-clad Easterners. In these cases, Deniel would be left to his own devices to sit and brood before the supply convoy broke camp once more, riding on under the disinterested or resentful eyes of the locals.

The roads that carried him away from his old life and to a new uncertainty slowly improved further as they went, going from rutted dirt to carefully maintained packed earth. The occasional travelers were suddenly supplemented by traders, glaring suspiciously from their wagons of goods. Merchants, village peasants and townsmen all mingled in one vast stream tramping down the gravel pathways, flowing around the caravan like water parting around a boulder. Deniel, still in a miserable stupor, stared blankly at the mass of humanity passing him.

Why am I here? And where are they taking me? The thoughts swirled about inside his head while unfamiliar landscapes and people blurred past his unseeing eyes. Did I do the right thing? What will happen to my family? When Deniel had accepted the sunburst badge, he had assumed that the grizzled old Lord was offering to take him into his own service – as ludicrous as that idea was. Perhaps instead he was to be given over to one of the other newcomers busy carving up the old kingdom of Waccewald like a roast.

Instead, he was here on this cart, surrounded by a company of silent men in black, on an unfamiliar road to an unknown place. You are being offered a way out of your predicament, whispered his memory, as well as a place in the new order and the possibility of rank and influence given time. But what this meant Deniel had no idea. He supposed that he would learn in time. Until then, his doubts were left to gnaw at his every waking moment.

He was stirred out of his stupor as a brabble of noise ran through the supply convoy, voices louder than the normal murmur overheard over the steady clop-clop of hooves. Riders cantered along the line of carts, pairs of outriders switching off and keeping a roving patrol along their slower charges.

“Good to be heading back home, eh?” One of the passing pair of escorts nudged his partner in the ribs. Their captain riding in front of the column glowered back at them over his shoulder, but stayed silent. For his part, the second man nodded, grinning in his turn. “Back where we belong and where we don’t have to worry every other peasant is sharpening their scythe?” They saw Deniel watching and narrowed their eyes, but even his presence couldn’t quite suppress their mood. “How does it feel, Waccie? To be on civilized soil?”

“What do you mean?” Deniel’s voice sounded strange in his ears from lack of use. The two riders guffawed.

“We’re in Stanmark now, boy.” The man’s voice was jaunty, and as friendly as any Deniel had heard since he left home. “Almost to Stanburgh, just another –“

“That’s enough.” The captain’s voice was quiet and even, but both men stiffened as if it were a lash. “We’ve been instructed not to speak with the passenger; both of you are running your tongues. Reign them in, and keep alert watch until we’re somewhere truly safe.”

The men ducked their heads in obedient silence. Deniel withdrew back into himself, reflecting on the nuggets of information he’d been given. I’m far East. His old life seemed ever more distant and dwindling, the last vestiges of familiarity slipping out of his hands. I’ve never even seen Waccewald itself; now I’ll be seeing Stanburgh before I set foot in the royal city of home.

The roads improved steadily, the rutted mud gradually turning into pounded gravel, punctuated by areas of stonework. They traced the outlines of hillocks and the contours of cultivated land, acre after acre of fields planted in crop or lying fallow separated by dense hedgerows that split the land into a checkerboard of color. Here and there, woodland interspersed with the cultivation, speckled with smoke from charcoaling kilns burning away in the shadows. But it wasn’t until the third week that they arrived at their destination. Deniel sat upright in the cart, staring up at the sight revealed as they passed out of the woodlot.

The grim hulking stonework of fortification was nothing new to Deniel’s eyes; the watchtower had dominated the Akhe valley since he had been born. Once, accompanying his father, he had seen the red-veined mass of Rotenstein. But this behemoth of gray brick and hewn stone, the pillar of towering buttresses and gaping crenellations, the man-made mountain jutting like a fist through the earth still took his breath away. There was an awe-inspiring quality to the sight, in addition to a heady arrogance reeking from every lofty tower. Here I am, it seemed to proclaim. Here, I stay.

Deniel’s eyes followed the outline once more, taking in the flawless blend of magnificent style and iron defense, the elegant slenderness of the towers punctuating the sprawl of the curtain wall. The overall impression Stanburgh gave was that of a crouched tiger, feline grace and unbridled ferocity in one perfect whole. Around the curtain wall lay a city, streets and buildings tangling with one another in the shadow of the fortress. Tile and thatch caught the sun, stone and plank and beam picking out patterns through the whole. In the streets, the river of humanity that had joined their road diffused, carts and horses and individuals branching off into the maze of streets and joining the mass of humanity already within. Around the whole, a river threw coils and twists, cutting the city in twain – wider and slower running than the Akhe. And above the whole, a miasma rose, smoke and steam and stench spiraling skyward in a cloud that seemed almost solid. The smell of it made Deniel blanch, an olfactory blow that shivered down his spine to his stomach. He swayed in his seat, forcing down a sudden wave of nausea. A gloved hand steadied him, handing him a waterskin. Deniel clutched it to his chest gratefully, sipping at the liquid as gradually his senses because attuned to the assault.

“What could possibly smell that bad?” he asked weakly, handing back the skin to the captain of the escort. He in turn gazed back stolidly, taking the offered skin and returning it to his saddlebag before replying: the first words Deniel had heard addressed to him for days.

“Life.”

Stanburgh was if anything more chaotic seen from within then it had been from without. The streets were cobbled with paving stones, worn smooth by the traffic of years and covered with a thin slurry spread by the carts and people milling about. Stonework and masonry closed in from either side of the street, the houses looming ever higher. Upper stories of plastered wood jutted out over the street itself, their tiled roofs almost touching and blotting out the light into a dim and smoky dusk. Through this dimness figures swirled, the merchants and travelers from outside the walls now joined by the dwellers of the city itself – ordinary city-dwellers, their clothing colorful spots of light, mixing with traders and peddlers hawking their wares from shops or carts. Townswomen, their dresses swirling and billowing as they walked. Here, a blacksmith’s soot-smudged scowl as he bartered for coal. There the tantalizing smell of baking bread wafting from an open door, cutting briefly through the background odors. And through it all, the darker side of life swirled, the small and the scorned; thieves and cutpurses slunk through the crowds like minnows in a stream of humanity, fingers busy and knives flashing. In the mouths of alleyways, unfriendly eyes and unsavory faces peered resentfully out of their world of shadow. Here and there, a drunk staggered in tow of the crowd’s surge. Elsewhere beggars congregated, on corners and in alcoves, in the lee of statues and lurking by sewer entrances. Here and there a brighter than usual flash of color might herald a loose woman, going about her own business as the entire mass of humanity continued to swirl and eddy throughout the manmade canals in their road through life, work and toil, want and need, hearth and home.

Deniel couldn’t take his eyes off the scene – so many sights, so many smells and sounds, so many people were unthinkable to him. The Akhe valley had always defined his experience, with its assortment of manors and their associated villages and hamlets. The surrounding masses of humanity dwarfed them, dwarfed the entire fief a hundredfold. He watched, entranced, as the riders passed further into the city streets like salmon swimming against the tide. The crowds parted before them, citizen and criminal alike, shifting aside in the narrow streets rather than be pressed by the weight of man and horse. Deniel looked down at the faces – some looked back, curiosity etched on their features. Others glanced down and away, refusing to meet his gaze as they pushed further towards the rear and out of sight, slinking back into the shadows.

As Deniel glanced back up, their party finally broke out of the maze-like tangle of streets and onto the empty stretch between city and curtain wall. Or at least what ought to have been an empty stretch. The crowds seemed to have followed them even here. Hovels and shacks were built up against the curtain wall of the castle, crowding the majesty of the structure, clinging to it like mud caking a stone. Here and there fires flickered, throwing their uncertain light onto rickety walls and adding their smoke to the lingering, clinging scent only thousands in close proximity to each other could generate. Deniel’s eyes were drawn to the walls, their majesty and stony pride evident even through the clutter of hovels and huts. This close, it was possible to distinguish the individual buildings and wings – the winding curtain wall, the old central keep, new recent administrative buildings and attached barracks. Stone and mortar, brick and glass, wood and steel, new and old – all one. The gates before them likewise showed more recent improvements, old stonework melding with new masonry, crenellations and hoardings piled high onto old foundations of roughhewn rock. The open wings of the gate yawned like a gaping maw, inviting the procession in. Deniel closed his eyes as they passed into that mouth and willed it to devour what was left of his past.