Armoured as if for battle-chain hauberks, the blackened rings glistening, visors drawn down on their helms. The lead rider held a long-handled single-bladed axe in his right hand; those behind him wielded lances, the heads wide and barbed as if the troop had been hunting boar.
Yan Tovis nudged her horse round and guided it a few steps closer. ‘1 am Atri-Preda Yan Tovis,’ she said.
A tilt of the helmed head from the lead man. ‘Yedan Derryg,’ he said in a low voice, ‘Master at Arms, Boaral Keep.’
She hesitated, then said, ‘The Watch.’
‘Twilight,’ he replied. ‘Even in this gloom, I can see it is you.’
‘I find that difficult to believe-you fled-’
‘Fled, my Queen?’
‘The House of our mother, yes.’
‘Your father and I did not get along, Twilight. You were but a toddler when last 1 saw you. But that does not matter. I see now in your face what I saw then. No mistaking it.’
Sighing, she dismounted.
After a moment, the others did the same. Yedan gestured with a tilt of his head and he and Yan Tovis walked off a short distance. Stood beneath the tallest tree this close to the ridge-a dead pine-as a light rain began to fall.
‘I have just come from the Keep,’ she said. ‘Your Dresh attempted to escape arrest and is dead. Or will be soon. I
have had a word with the witches. There will be Tiste Edur, from Rennis, but by the time they arrive the investigation will be over and I will have to apologize for wasting their time.’
Yedan said nothing. The grilled visor thoroughly hid his features, although the black snarl of his beard was visible-it seemed he was slowly chewing something.
‘Watch,’ she resumed, ‘you called me “Queen” in front of your soldiers.’
‘They are Shake.’
‘I see. Then, you are here… at the shore-’
‘Because I am the Watch, yes.’
‘That title is without meaning,’ she said, rather more harshly than she had intended. ‘It’s an honorific, some old remnant-’
‘I believed the same,’ he cut in-like an older brother, damn him-‘until three nights ago.’
‘Why are you here, then? Who are you looking for?’
‘I wish I could answer you better than I can. I am not sure why I am here, only that I am summoned.’
‘By whom?’
He seemed to chew some more, then he said, ‘By the shore.’
‘I see.’
‘As for who-or what-I am looking for, I cannot say at all. Strangers have arrived. We heard them this night, yet no matter where we rode, no matter how quickly we arrived, we found no-one. Nor any sign-no tracks, nothing. Yet… they are here.’
‘Perhaps ghosts then.’
‘Perhaps.’
Twilight slowly turned. ‘From the sea?’
‘Again, no tracks on the strand. Sister, since we have arrived, the air has not stirred. Not so much as a sigh. Day and night, the shore is still.’ He tilted his head upward. ‘Now, this rain-the first time.’
A murmur from the soldiers drew their attention. They were facing the ridge, six motionless spectres, metal and leather gleaming.
Beyond the ridge, the fitful rise and ebb of a glow.
‘This,’ Yedan said, and he set off.
Yan Tovis followed.
They scrambled through loose stones, stripped branches and naked roots, pulling themselves onto the rise. The six soldiers in their wake now on the slope, Yan Tovis moved to her half-brother’s side, pushing through the soft brush until they both emerged onto the shoreline.
Where they halted, staring out to sea.
Ships.
A row of ships, all well offshore. Reaching to the north, to the south.
All burning.
‘Errant’s blessing,’ Yan Tovis whispered.
Hundreds of ships. Burning.
Flames playing over still water, columns of smoke rising, lit from beneath like enormous ash-dusted coals in the bed of the black sky.
‘Those,’ Yedan said, ‘are not Letherii ships. Nor Edur.’
‘No,’ Twilight whispered, ‘they are not.’
Strangers have arrived.
‘What means this?’ There was raw fear in the question, and Yan Tovis turned to look at the soldier who had spoken. Faint on his features, the orange glow of the distant flames.
She looked back at the ships. ‘Dromons,’ she said. Her heart was pounding hard in her chest, a kind of febrile excitement-strangely dark with malice and… savage delight.
‘What name is that?’ Yedan asked.