to the south of the Windrush forest, that myth-wrapped woodland that spanned the central region of Khos. In the summer months, the boughs of the trees would sway in the warm asago that blew in from the east bearing sands from the far Alhazii desert, and in the colder seasons would clatter instead in the occasional storm of the shoné, gusting across the breadth of the Midèrēs all the way from the northern continent; a wind said to cause depression and madness for those who lived in its path.
To the east, the great swathe of the Windrush was naturally bounded by the mighty Chilos, the sacred river of Khos. Known for its cleansing properties of mind and spirit, the Chilos was also renowned for never freezing over even in the depths of winter. Its source came from the hot springs of Simmer Lake, site of the ancient floating town of Tume, and as its waters wound their slow way south towards the Bay of Squalls, they cooled only gradually.
On a widening stretch of the Chilos, the twin settlements of Juno’s Ferry sprawled along both banks like inverse reflections of each other. On the western bank could be seen the fort and encampment of the Khosian elite reserves, the ‘Hoo’, named after their battle cry, two thousand heavy infantry in all. Next to them ranged the temple complexes with their stone bathing areas and their bronze bells that rang out the hour; deep tones that rolled across the flat waters of the river. Countless camps sprawled between the temples. Thousands of devotees washed away their transgressions in the turgid flow.
In contrast, the eastern side was a ramshackle place of smoky tavernas and zel dealers and wagon shops, a staging post for travellers and merchant caravans, a place of commerce. It was here, on the eastern bank, that the Khosian army had camped for the night, bedding down on the edge of the civilian settlement. The flat-bellied ferries continued to ship men and equipment across the river in darkness.
Like many of the men, Bull stood naked and thigh-deep in the river, his feet sunk into a sandbar as he scrubbed himself clean. Men were whooping all around him from the chill of it, though the water was hardly as cold as it should have been. A few of the army’s monks washed alone in devoted silence, the silent cloud-men of the Dao who would bless them before battle in the name of the Great Fool. Bull threw a handful of water over his bare chest and watched as it shed off him with tiny sparkles of blue. Wherever it splashed against the slow-running surface, the froth burned with the same ghostly light before it faded away; the strange effect of Calhalee’s Tears, legendary figure of Simmer Lake to the north, from which these waters gained not only heat but these enchanting, eerie properties.
He’d stood in this river once before, as a boy, when his father had brought him here with his younger brother at the insistence of their mother. Then as now, Bull had felt invigorated by the cleansing waters of the sacred river, but nothing more. Perhaps its spiritual properties were all nonsense; or perhaps whatever it was that tainted his spirit was too deep to be washed away by what little faith he possessed.
To the north, on the other side of the river, the forest could be seen as a wall of trees standing black and still beneath the stars. Sharp knocks of woods were sounding from within the tree line, like giant birds pecking holes in their trunks. They were the alarm signals of the Contrarè, the free-spirited hunter-gatherers and occasional brigands of the forest. Bull imagined them standing there with their goad faces and their clothes of woven bark, watching them cautiously.
His mother had been one of the Contrarè, before she’d married his father, a skins merchant from Bar-Khos, and had moved with him to the city to start a family. Bull had known little about her people, save for the tales told to him at his bedside, and the songs she’d sung when bathing him, and the little superstitions she’d carried with her from her previous life in the forest – like the sign of protection she made at the rumble of thunder and the flash of lightning. Still, his accent bore some of his mother’s voice in it, and his skin was particularly swarthy and his eyes were narrow above high cheekbones. As a boy, people