part of some larger mechanism. He hefted its considerable weight in his hand. There was something imbalanced about it, despite the centrally placed bend. He set it down and drew out a circular sheet of copper, thinner than the wax layer on a scrier's tablet. Blackened by contact with the clays, yet only now the edges showing signs of verdigris. Countless holes had been punched through the sheet, in no particular pattern, yet each hole was perfectly uniform, perfectly round, with no lip to indicate from which side it had been punched.
'Venitt,' he said, 'have we a map recording the precise locations of these objects when they were originally found?'
'Indeed, Master, with but a few exceptions. You examined it a week past.'
'I did? Very well. Set it out once more on the table in the library, this afternoon.'
Both men turned as the gate watcher appeared from the narrow side passage along the left side of the house. The woman halted ten paces from Rautos and bowed. 'Master, a message from Invigilator Karos Invictad.'
'Very good,' Rautos replied distractedly. 'I will attend to it in a moment. Does the messenger await a response?'
'Yes, Master. He is in the courtyard.'
'See that refreshments are provided.'
The watcher bowed then departed.
'Venitt, I believe you must prepare to undertake a journey on my behalf.'
'Master?'
'The Invigilator at last perceives the magnitude of the threat.'
Venitt Sathad said nothing.
'You must travel to Drene City,' Rautos said, his eyes once more on the mysterious construct dominating the lower terrace. 'The Consign requires a most specific report of the preparations there. Alas, the Factor's own missives are proving unsatisfactory. I require confidence in those matters, if I am to apply fullest concentration to the threat closer to hand.'
Again, Venitt did not speak.
Rautos looked out onto the river. Fisher boats gathered in the bay opposite, two merchant traders drawing in towards the main docks. One of them, bearing the flag of the Esterrict family, looked damaged, possibly by fire. Rautos brushed the dirt from his hands and turned about, making his way back into the building, his servant falling into step behind him.
'I wonder, what lies beneath those stones?'
'Master?'
'Never mind, Venitt. I was but thinking out loud.'
The Awl'dan camp had been attacked at dawn by two troops of Atri-Preda Bivatt's Bluerose cavalry. Two hundred skilled lancers riding into a maelstrom of panic, as figures struggled out from the hide huts, as the Drene-bred wardogs, arriving moments before the horse-soldiers, closed on the pack of Awl herder and dray dogs, and in moments the three breeds of beast were locked in a vicious battle.
The Awl warriors were unprepared, and few had time to even so much as find their weapons before the lancers burst into their midst. In moments, the slaughter extended out to encompass elders and children. Most of the women fought alongside their male kin – wife and husband, sister and brother, dying together in a last blending of blood.
The engagement between the Letherii and the Awl took all of two hundred heartbeats. The war among the dogs was far more protracted, for the herder dogs – while smaller and more compact than their attackers – were quick and no less vicious, while the drays, bred to pull carts in summer and sleds in winter, were comparable with the Drene breed. Trained to kill wolves, the drays proved more than a match for the wardogs, and if not for the lancers then making sport of killing the mottle-skinned beasts, the battle would have turned. As it was, the Awl pack finally broke away, the survivors fleeing onto the plain, eastward, a few Drene wardogs giving chase before being recalled by their handlers.
Whilst lancers dismounted to make certain there were no survivors among the Awl, others rode out to collect the herds of myrid and rodara in the next valley.
Atri-Preda Bivatt sat astride her stallion, struggling to control the beast with the smell of blood so heavy in the morning air. Beside her, sitting awkward and in discomfort on the unfamiliar saddle, Brohl Handar, the newly appointed Tiste Edur Overseer of Drene City, watched the Letherii systematically loot the encampment, stripping corpses naked and drawing their knives. The Awl bound their jewellery – mostly gold – deep in the braids of their hair, forcing the Letherii to slice away those sections of the scalp to claim their booty. Of course, there was more than just expedience in this mutilation, for it had been extended to the collecting of swaths of skin that had