he would do next. Ash took a step down from the dune, was hardly surprised to feel his legs buckle beneath him. He was quick enough to get his other foot out in front in time, and to turn his fall into something that approximated a downward rush. In his plummet he held his blade out for balance.
When he collapsed in front of the fire he was relieved to see the backs of the sailors fleeing into the night. He was shivering hard, and another gust flattened the flames across the wood, causing the embers to glow brightly. When the wind subsided, the flames crackled with renewed effort. The heat warmed Ash’s soul.
‘You,’ he croaked to the older woman. ‘Have you water?’
The woman ignored him. As he sat up she fussed over her girls, setting them around the fire beneath a stretch of canvas. There were five of them in all, and she talked to them curtly, businesslike, as though she was an old aunt to them. Satisfied, she wrapped a shawl over her head and shoulders and came across to join him. He saw a flask in her hand, which she offered freely.
Her eyes took in the colour of his skin.
‘Only rhulika,’ she said, settling down next to him and readjusting her dress. ‘Good for starting fires and warming the belly. Drink, old farlander. It’s the least I can offer you.’
He would have preferred freshwater just then but he drank it down anyway, his teeth chattering against the wooden spout. He swallowed the whole lot in one go, and the alcohol flared in his stomach, sent tendrils of heat threading through his spent limbs.
The flask dropped from Ash’s limp fingers. The rush of alcohol crashed against the weight of his exhaustion.
Close to his face, the woman’s pale features were reeling in and out of focus, her mouth moving quickly, saying something.
With a groan, Ash toppled forwards and fell through the world.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Paintings of Memory
The echoes of his own footfalls bounded ahead of Bahn as he rushed through the endless corridors of the Ministry of War, his hobnailed boots offering little purchase on the polished floors of marble. Bahn slid clumsily as he rounded a corner, regained his footing, and pounded towards the doors of the general’s office, too breathless to shout aside the guards standing there at attention.
The two guards took one look at his fevered face and his hands waving them out of his way, surmised that he had little intention of stopping – or indeed, was even capable of doing so in time – and smartly sidestepped out of his way.
Bahn flung himself through the heavy oak doors in a panting burst of drama. ‘They’ve landed!’ he declared to the room beyond.
General Creed, standing in the early morning light by the opposite expanse of windows, and facing an easel over which his hand hovered with a brush, inclined his head slightly, but said nothing.
‘General,’ Bahn tried again. ‘They—’ but the brush flicked across the page: once, twice, three times, and Bahn faltered.
Creed inspected the result of the strokes closely, then nodded, and set down the brush.
He turned and took the measure of Bahn in one burning glance. ‘Where?’ rumbled his heavy voice, and he grabbed up a rag and began to clean his hands with it.
Now that he was required to speak, Bahn found the words sticking in his throat. ‘Here,’ he managed to say. ‘At Pearl Bay.’
‘When?’
‘Last night. The first birds from the bay forts have started to come in.’
‘Numbers?’
Bahn shook his head. ‘Conflicting so far. The fleet is still unloading. But by the size of it, at least forty thousand fighting men.’
‘Acolytes?’
‘Yes. And General, the Matriarch herself is leading them. Some of our rangers spotted her standard flying from the flagship. They also report seeing the standard of Archgeneral Sparus on the beach.’
General Creed tossed the blackened rag onto his desk and sat down in his leather chair. He inclined back and settled his boots on the varnished surface of the desk, with his long legs crossed and his hands clasped loosely, his thumbs toying with each other, his face a flinty cliff.
He takes it well, thought Bahn, whose stomach was still quailing inside.
He’d always supposed that composure was an excellent quality in a leader. Instead, right then, it made him feel like a scared youth.
‘Perhaps the death of her son has made her reckless,’ Creed mused, though Bahn offered no response, for the general was only thinking out aloud.