From Antissa’s back gate the going was slow. The rocky track that wriggled from ledge to ledge of the farming quarters was tough on the supply-carts. Woken by our jolts and our rattles, farmers stood blinking in doorways and stared after us. On the battlements above all the braziers were cold. So was I, as I thought about the knowing eyes that watched up there, sworn to silence. Behind small lights in the gatehouse windows, more hazy shapes watched us pass by.

We had to hurry. The special watch arranged by the Captain would be changed soon and in the darkness we’d be taken for intruders, even Rath. Alarms would sound all down those walls, waking the city and Iron Shield. The mission would end before it had even begun.

Not far beyond the front gate the cart I rode in trapped a front wheel with a crunch. Orders were passed up the line to halt the column. Joining the other boy, Kobi, I climbed down from my seat and added my weight – for what it was worth – to the efforts of the driver and four soldiers who pushed and then finally freed it from its rut. Another crunch, a whispered curse. A short, sharp order from someone in the dark, maybe the Marszal. But no damage to the wheel. Nor any movements from the wall. Even the farmers, it seemed, had gone back to bed.

We moved on. The wriggly track widened, then steepened. The rising rocks on either side blocked out the blank, black mass of fortress wall, and I hoped that we too had gone invisible from it. No matter whose eyes were watching.

Our view opened to the plains that spread through predawn like blue silk. My body shuddered at the huge, empty stillness and I blamed it on the air. The coldness hurt, now some two or three hundred feet below the level of the city, and it got worse as we got lower. My swathes were much too thin – they wouldn’t be enough if it was like this every night!

Hooves and wheels met pale, flat gypsum at the foot of the hill. Almost eerily, in low moonlight, the column reformed and then rounded to the south under the cliffs. Veering southeast, it picked up speed, the men and women of the cavalry spurring their horses to a smart and steady trot that the stockier cart-horses could keep pace with. Fast enough, at least, to put a breeze through my hair and chill the sweat on my neck.

Now we just needed some distance.

We must have gone about five miles before the the plains began to roll with slopes and dips. I looked back. Kobi was just a silhouette again, perched on the cargo, but I could tell that he was also looking back. Antissa, my people’s refuge and my home for the last two months, had shrunk to a black bump on dark blue barely speckled with some glimmers from the upper estates. I wondered if I could see the braziers twinkling back to life along the walls, but then our cart was moving down. An earthy slope rose like a wave at our backs. Antissa vanished.

Up ahead was grey expanse and, just off left through bleary cloud, a weak glow of sunrise.

----------------------------------------

The sun was still climbing when the column stopped in a wide basin in the grey and orders were given to make camp.

What—already?

The servants pitched a wide canvas shelter over the three clustered carts, but when I tried to help I only got under their feet. There were seven bivouacs, ranging in size; all forming simple, low-peaked quadrants of hardy canvas. The soldiers pitched their own at speed and with a military finesse, as well as that assigned to the officers, and the command tent itself. That was the biggest one of course. And ours, the servants’, the smallest. As I knocked its pegs into the caked earth with a mallet, I seriously wondered how six of us were going to fit in there together. This Kobi was about fourteen, I guessed – from his voice, not from his face; it was still too dark to see his face. But the others were grown men, maybe one a woman: the heavy cloaks, head-wraps and scarves made it hard to tell. Then again, dawn had been cold. Night would be colder, I had no doubt. Maybe I’d be grateful to be cramped in with five other bodies.

The sun broke the horizon.

The martial horses were corralled at the heart of the basin. This was for safety, I knew, although the gaps in the perimeter still made me nervous. Those horses were our advantage. Methan horses: the fastest of the Mooncircle Army. We couldn’t risk them. I’d already pitted my own legs against the legs of the Rath . . . I tried to take courage, now in daylight, to look at those small, lean, athletic bodies and rippling flanks. Runners for sure. So unlike the Commander’s stallion, which was tall, heavy in the legs. Or the Marszal’s charger, the roan, largest of all; both tall and broad.

‘Ekhin Flint,’ someone called. Yellow and orange rays glanced off the swathed head of the soldier standing at the command tent, beckoning to me. When I got there I saw it was Savhar. I met her brown eyes, which held a moment, before she nodded at the flaps. ‘In there.’

I ducked inside the tent. Expecting to find the Commander poring over plans, walking his compass-prongs over a parchment desert, I was a bit startled to step straight into his pond-water stare. I picked at the strap of my sling-bag and greeted: ‘High Commander.’

The air in the bivouac was pleasantly warm, the floor layered with furs and sheepskins, and a sweet incense was burning to rid the canvas of musk. The small table and chair in which he sat were basic things, although the soldiers had somehow made a hash of putting them together. Sword, crossbow and crop hung from the tent-poles; his black cloak from a hook. A very military space.

Plamen made a little jerk of his head, as if extracted from a thought, but I knew better. The man was very much alert. Always was. ‘You are surprised we break so soon.’

‘A little,’ I said, in case it had been a question.

‘Then climb the leeward slope and shade your eyes. You’ll see Antissa,’ he said matter-of-factly, then inhaled. ‘This company may be the smallest that the Viceroy could dispatch, but at this distance its dust-cloud will still be sighted in daylight.’

He spoke to me as one who knew nothing, but it was a tone I could bear.

‘So . . . we’ll move tonight, then?’ I asked.

He raised an eyebrow and steepled his fingers. ‘It has been proposed to me already that we travel in darkness and encamp by the day. The Rath are wakeful by night so it is not difficult to see the wisdom of being so ourselves.’

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I nodded agreement.

‘But that is impractical, as any Vedan will tell you.’

I switched to shaking my head.

‘Desert nights are freezing, such conditions ill-suited to travel when supplies are as limited as our own. Man and horse will flag too quickly and that will hamper our progress. More treacherous yet will be the winds. In darkness we risk separation, which in turn renders us too easily scattered by the enemy when encountered. Odds are stacked highly enough against this company without welcoming further challenges, would you not agree, ekhin Flint?’

‘Yes sir,’ I said, though knew full well he neither expected nor wanted a reply.

‘So.’ He stood and rounded the table. ‘We will break camp tomorrow in the hours before dawn, thereafter move by day.’

I cleared my throat so that my voice would come out strongly. ‘The Rath stay away from high ground, I think.’

‘Indeed. Too little shelter for their skins.’ His grey pools narrowed on me. ‘Our first destination will be Calvallagh.’

‘What’s at Calvallagh?’ I’d heard the name.

‘A temple,’ he replied. ‘And if the clerics there are anything like those of Laudassa and Methar, they will be pleased to see us. That is of no consequence, however. Calvallagh is sufficiently elevated to be defensible. And strategic. You are aware of the northwest arc?’

The question knocked my eyes away.

‘Don’t be coy. I know Mondric gave you my report.’

I said, ‘Yes sir,’ again.

‘Calvallagh,’ he went on, ‘lies less than a league from the eastern edge of that arc. As good a position as any from which to begin to track Ratheine movements. Perhaps they will even lead us straight to our quarry from there. In the meantime I shall ease the way ahead of us. Two small parties have just been dispatched to scout for Rath between here and the temple’s plain.’

‘Will they attack?’ I asked on reflex.

It bought a frown. ‘Confrontation is not the object of this mission,’ he said firmly. ‘I believe you know this. But I will need information regarding my terrain if I’m to chart a favourable course.’ He stopped short. ‘Are you following, boy?’

‘Yes sir.’

‘Then what’s your qualm?’

It must have been clear my thoughts had drifted; there was annoyance in his tone. But the worry had been sitting in my mind since we’d left. ‘My people.’

‘What about them?’

‘Are they still safe?’ I asked, hoping hard that he would give me an open answer for once. Or at least an answer that spared some of that coldness. Just this one time.

‘Without your presence in the city to draw such constant attention, I should think they are significantly safer.’ I deflated. ‘They still have refuge.’

‘But what about their supplies? I’m the one who does the dispatch.’

He blinked slowly, nodding. ‘And the latest you dispatched, that being yesterday’s, was your last. Even were you not sent on this mission, it would have been. I saw to it.’

I frowned.

He glared. ‘Attention, boy. How many times must I repeat its dangers? You are too close to the Viceroy to be entrusted with that task, most especially after your actions during the attack on the pipeworks. The less your involvement in the borderlanders’ refuge, the less you know, the better for all. On my counsel, the Viceroy has arranged an alternative messenger.’

‘What?’ I blurted. ‘Who?’

He stared back stone-eyed as the bustle of camp drifted in through the flaps. He wouldn’t say. Of course he wouldn’t. Or maybe, I thought, he didn’t actually know . . .

‘Do not concern yourself with matters that are outside of your control,’ he said to close the subject. ‘Concentrate on your own task, here and now.’

I passed my right hand over the shape of the torque under my swathe-sleeve and sighed, ‘I don’t know how yet.’

‘Then I suggest you work it out,’ he replied, impatient. ‘Nevertheless, even now, be mindful of the attention that you draw to yourself. You’re among soldiers. Their business is war, not engineering-craft, and by no means sorcery.’

‘It isn’t sorcery!’ I snapped.

‘I don’t care what it is,’ he said without missing a beat. ‘Child, you’re no longer in Symphin’s workroom. As part of this unit you stand, sit, walk, eat and drink on my command. You have clear orders on this mission.’ A pause. ‘Needless to say, you will also assist the other servants in their duties as befits your proper station.’

I bowed my head. ‘Do they all think I’m Elmine?’

‘Work on the assumption that they do.’

A different sound was in his voice that I hadn’t heard until now; like a rip in the canvas that only now let the wind in. Relaxing my fists, which I hadn’t realised were clenched, I looked up again and met his eyes with a flash of challenge. ‘I want to look at a map.’

At the steel in my own voice, I felt my heart make a flutter, but Plamen’s face didn’t change. He gazed back for some seconds, then stepped aside from the table.

Parchment was spread there after all, and – coming closer – I saw it showed the northern half of Vorth. That was everything between the Empty River, which marked the beginning of the borderlands, and the narrowing of the country between the Rivan Gulf and the Lack. The Mooncircle symbol depicted Antissa near the centre while our own current position was marked just below that in fine graphite. I saw his point: we were still practically on the doorstep, and it felt strange to think of the city as a threat. I scanned to the right of the sheet where the triangles of mountains reared to the east. Calvallagh, the temple, was marked by a symbol of three pillars between a capital and base.

‘With the supply-carts it’s half a day,’ Plamen said as he paced the furs behind me. ‘You do not yet know the cruelty of the Vedish desert, but by this time tomorrow you will. And when we reach the temple in the full heat of day, you will be weary. So you will sleep there, and dream, and find the river we seek.’

I wished I could tell him that it wasn’t going to be that simple, but he’d made it clear: he was not Rusper Symphin. All regard for my opinion had been left back in the Deep.

Dismissed, I stepped out into the brightness and full heat that splashed my face like searing steam. In the time I’d been in the bivouac, the sun had climbed high enough to fill the basin with daylight. My skin was burning in seconds, sheeted with sweat inside a minute. But I couldn’t go back in the tent. I clawed for my hood. How could anyone—?

‘You’ll get used to it!’ blasted someone who then whacked me in the back as he came behind me. It was one of the two telmadhi of the cavalry. He laughed and sauntered away.

There was no shade; no escaping or hiding. Hood up, face down, I pushed out into the heat.