When the Ashen returns to his tent he gives thanks to the gods. He knows he is strong and pure of heart compared to ordinary men and he knows if any deserve the favor of gods it is he.

It is evening. He searches amid the tents and there amid the camp followers he finds a woman mending the armor of the spurned company. “Show me how I am to praise the gods,” he begs her and she looks at him with a look that bids disquiet, for the Ashen does not understand what drifts through her soul.

“You would insult to thank them as you are now. First you must wash.”

Then as he washes, filling two buckets with the residue of death and soil, the woman brings a mat from her tent and lays stones atop it and she brings a fire to each holy stone. The stones alight for a moment and the fire then vanishes and there is only candlelight. When he is clean the Ashen puts on the robes she lends him and he gives offering to the gods that had been loved of House Oeval and then to the gods of the lands they war upon, and these are the gods of their enemies. He gives offering to the god that the unsworn prince had taught to him and his company. Then he gives offering of food to the mage known as the vyer. “I have shown many of the enemy towards death and I have so carried out the will of the commander and the adjunct, through whose blood House Oeval yet lives. Regard me therefore with favor, though I lack knowledge of your true name.” And to the unknown god who favors him he lays the beauteous helm he has won and presses his face deep into the fumes of the mat.

The woman who they call Ainun takes as exchange his old clothes as that is her way. And he enters her tent and the world outside disappears from mind, the stench overpowering. There is the scent of medicine and smoke but the strongest is of the scent of stale sweat and of metallic blood and of rank corruption. And into this the Ashen watches her order the clothes he had worn to war and which he has paid and she holds each piece to her face and breathes them in lovingly. “What would you have of me then?” says he for she had bid him inside. She eyes him with a look that bids disquiet, for it reminds him ever of he that made him and the spurned men what they are.

“They say that women with the gift are made equal or more to the force of men. I would you take me there and tell them I would be as foul as you. I will not be so ridiculous as to be alone and thus you will take me.”

“Ask us something else.”

But she smiles and regards him in silence, knowing she will have her way. It has been that she is one of the few who would treat with the spurned men and the only one who will do their washing and so is she worth more than any one of them, yet he cannot refuse her after her sacred work.

For when they first had found her she had been one of many thralls to a manorial lord. And the lord and his sons had been hung in gibbets and his castle put to torch. The winds had blown cold and lonely on the heath as the thralls that were freed came one by one to the shrine. Beneath a sky steel grey with cloud the emancipees had given oaths and thrown bones and tossed handfuls of grass onto the shrine. All had come to the shrine in fear for the gods were to judge whether they were traitorous or true to their word and the slain lay in the misted grass. But when the woman called Ainun came she showed no fear and came longingly for she knew that she was good in the eyes of the gods and wished only for this to be shown to the eyes of men as well.

Thus when morning comes and the smoke ebbs from atop the pavilion the Ashen brings her.

On the hill they are met by a scattering of men. Some are wounded and some lie on stretchers and some are merely frail and all are poor of dress. The Ashen knows that they are here to receive the gift. The men of the spurned company had gone to the altar and died or lived without knowledge or intention of their own. But that was not the case with the rest of the host. The captains had refused to do the same for their own men and those who gather now volunteer themselves thinking it is their own will and knowledge that decides though the Ashen sees they know but aught. And the force that goes through them will surprise them as he has always seen men surprised.

Below them he sees the camps taken down and he sees the prisoners of war in cages nearby and he feels glad. When the adjunct comes forth from the pavilion the men closest to the entrance are brought in. And at the sounds coming from within some of those outside leave. And when the adjunct returns the Ashen calls for his notice and presents the follower Ainun.

The adjunct says, “It will be for him to judge.” Then he leads them within. And once more there are the dead to the side and the beam of warm yellow light through the smokehole while in the center there is the figure who is the mage. And Ainun looks around eagerly as all of them do until they find the small frail being and gaze in horror at this body from which their right derives. The tendons cut and the limbs splaying without will and holes where the skin was flayed. The figure deformed and the visage hideous. Behind them guards block the way out. The first man to approach the commander falls and his body becomes broken as piece by piece of it convulses, as though its entire vital power were gathering at a point and causing life to burst its confine. So it is with the next three each whom the Ashen and adjunct threaten with fists for they must walk forward of their own accord to receive. They fall with sharp cries choked and strength persisting beyond their will and death, storms raging through their flaccid bodies.

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When it is follower’s turn she approaches as fearlessly as she had that day she had been freed. The commander seizes her throat with a hand varicose and mottled and so does the strength of life leave the woman. And the commander winces as he had done and takes away his arm and the woman falls bearing the surprise of dying in her eyes. And as of the others her heart bursts and her lungs break like bows from the draw and her limbs crack as the bone is crushed under the hidden strength that she would not know. And the last man is a wounded man who had come by stretcher. He is made to crawl across the wide expanse of the pavilion and lift himself gradually on shaking arms until the commander can reach him with his other hand kept at the altar.

The Ashen does not take the woman’s corpse to the side of the tent but brings it outside and his steps falter, unsure where to go. He knows that his company already bears him hate and their hate and their cause will only grow when they learn of this. He beats his head. She had always done well for his steel and his armor and what had given him the confidence to bear the terror of combat. And he knew it was the same with each of the spurned. It was in the protection of that same old familiar armor she had unfailingly tended and the aegis of its stench that he had stood before the commander and withstood the horror of mages whose power is beyond ken. Now he is sick to death of mages and gods. The world of men he can bear and even in war he knows the full accounts of violence and pain and the due that he has given to many and will one day be given to him.

Then he hears a voice calling to him and he sees one of the prisoners of war. “The commander understands little…” the man says mysteriously and the Ashen hurries toward him and throws the body of the woman to the side and attempts to reach through the bars, for he sees that the prisoners have not been tortured enough. “Stop! stop, man! I say, there is a way to keep them through the gift. Do you hear me?” The Ashen pauses for a moment, then he rushes forward and seizes the man’s wrist in his strong hands and pulls him against the thick rough iron. “She can live!” the man cries. “Do you understand you brute? Do you think we saw half our own die as yours when we got the gift?” The Ashen regards the mans wrist and hands that have as yet been unruined and he tears the pinky finger and leaves it twisted like a bended branch. And he regards the arm again thinking what next he will inflict as the man gives cry pressed against the bars. He sees soldiers in the distance turning their heads and he lets go of the man, for he knows it is the order of the commander that the prisoners be allowed to sleep comfortably.

The lust to hurt recedes in him and he says to the man, “Interesting. Do you assert then the ritual is mistaken?” “Aye, man! Why would you not listen.” And the man gnashes his teeth and he retreats to the far side of the cage, bounding like a pup beneath the low roof. The fear does not gladden the Ashen. He says, “Do you say they died for naught?”

The man holds his wounded hand in the other. He squeezes his eyes shut in fury and hate but in the end he answers. “You think that your mage being the greater in deed and more powerful would see your complaint to expiation but that is not how it is. Greater and older as the vyer is, is he become darker and farther removed from human soil, and so it is that your commander does not understand him nor knows how to speak to him as now he bungles with great pomp and ceremonious death at his side. But the mage of our own court still knows the action of his name as it fissures the world in its effects and he has shown us the ritual as well as the amend. And, for I see you are a man who acts before he comprehends, I say explicitly that it is an offer. I will help you to bring her to full for the recompense of a favor. Even now the chances are diminished for I must be sound of body and mind to conduct the rite. That is why it is foolish to act before giving audience but I shall not begrudge you.”

And as the Ashen considers these words the man says, “I speak the truth. Each moment you take lessens it for the mending was to be done in the immediacy of the rite. Life still clings to your woman like a droplet drawn about the floor of a basin and the strength is still echoing through the chambers of her being though through each moment it is distorted. The life in her needs to be put to balance and once this is done it will no longer wreak fell destruction. If this may yet be done then she will be seen through as you have. The favor I ask is simple.”

The Ashen listens to the man’s oath that he swears by the gods and by the burrowed one his mage. And the Ashen gives his oath in turn that if he so forswear it he would know again that suffering at the altar and be destroyed. He says the basho that signs the address to the nameless gods affirming his good faith. Then the Ashen looks at the man and he sees the fear in the man’s eyes and knows that the man sees the like fear in his own.

The Ashen brings the body and the man takes the head and twisted face. It is quiet amid the two men though below them the camp is full of talking and life. The air between them fraught with fear and care for the two men know the gods and more watch them for their oath they have called.

They bow quietly to their performing.