a nearby dune and huddled down in his cloak where he could keep an eye on them, but remain alone. With his sword lying by his side, he studied the lights of the distant camp of the Matriarch, the lie of the moonlit land around it. He looked for movement amongst the many fires that were merely glimmers from here. He wished he had his eyeglass with him; even a pair of eyes younger than his own.
Ash coughed once more, spat phlegm, wiped his mouth dry. Clouds were drifting in from the north, ponderous and heavy. More rain on its way, maybe. They would obscure the waxing moons and make a darkness of the land beneath them.
A good night for it, he thought to himself.
‘See something of interest up there?’
He smelled her musky perfume even before she sat down on the sand, and fixed her dress over her legs as the coarse seagrass flattened beneath them. Ash looked at Mistress Cheer as she settled a flask of rhulika in his hands.
He nodded a grateful thanks to her, taking a long drink to warm himself.
‘Easy. It’s the last of it.’
He returned the flask with a brief smile. ‘Thank you. It has been some time since I last had a proper drink.’
Behind them, the squeals and laughter of the women rang out from their small, firelit hollow in the dunes. A breeze played through the fringes of Mistress Cheer’s hair. She fixed her shawl tighter about her head.
‘Tell me again what it was your previous employer did?’
Ash tapped the flask in her hand with a fingernail.
‘Alcohol?’
‘He shipped a small fortune of it here. Would hardly let me touch the stuff, though.’
It was a poor lie, Ash thought. He couldn’t tell if she believed him. Cheer looked away, her eyes dancing with the lights of the campfires. Singing and laughter drifted with the breeze; people elsewhere in the dunes celebrating in high spirits.
Over it all they could hear the rhythmic wash of the sea.
‘We’re a long way from home,’ she said to him sombrely.
Ash gave a slow nod of his head.
She turned to look at him again. ‘Some more than others, I suppose. Do you ever miss it – Honshu, I mean?’
‘Yes. Sometimes.’
‘Of course you do,’ she said in what sounded like self-admonishment. ‘Of course you do.’
He saw that the cloud mass was nearing the moons now. It would be getting dark soon, dark enough to prowl.
‘You know, you have the saddest eyes I think I’ve ever seen. And I’ve seen my fair share of them, in my time.’
Ash’s forehead wrinkled in a frown. He felt an urge to rise and walk away from the woman and her prying talk. But then she shifted over to press against his side for warmth. He found that he liked the feel of it enough to stay where he was.
She studied his expression, waiting for him to say something. He had no words for her, though.
‘Well, I feel my bed calling. Time the girls got some rest too.’ She rose and brushed the sand from her dress. ‘Aren’t you tired?’ she asked, and he heard the heat in her words, the unspoken offer.
His eyes lingered on the curves of her body beneath her dress. He wished very much that he could accept it.
‘I think I will stay up a while, and watch over the camp.’
She covered her disappointment by looking down at the sand.
‘It’s the scar, isn’t it?’
‘Not at all,’ he replied. ‘Really. I am just tired.’
She nodded, not believing him.
‘Goodnight, then,’ she said as she turned away, and trudged down the slope of the dune.
He waited a full hour to be certain the girls and Mistress Cheer were soundly asleep. Some fires continued to burn amongst the dunes, small groups of people talking as sparks rose upwards with the smoke. On the beach, the work parties laboured on through the night with the supplies still being brought to shore.
It was a risk, to leave the women without protection. But a risk he would have to take.
Removing his heavy cloak and picking up his sword, Ash stole out into the night.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Surrender and Be Free
‘I have to go,’ Bahn told his wife as he tied down the last of the equipment to his saddle.
Marlee nodded stiffly. Behind her, in the evening shadows, a man on crutches hobbled past in the otherwise empty street, a flap of skin hanging where his foot had once been. The man was in a hurry, as though pursued by the sounds