Break my Accord? Why in the name of the Sun Eater would I do that, you prissy Etalan twat? Loray gave me freedom. Let me out of these chains, and I’ll show you. I promise, by the end, you won’t know whether you’re screaming from pain or pleasure.

* Agrippa, first Exarch of Loray

☀

10th Day of New Summer’s Moon, 297 AC

Trist’s boots echoed with every step down the rough stone stairs. The shadows clung to him, trailing cold fingers across his cheek and the back of his neck, and he tightened his fingers around the leather-wrapped hilt of his longsword.

He passed the last curve of the stair, dug deep into the roots of the mountains, and once again saw the cavern laid out before him. It was just as he remembered: those odd formations of stone extending from both the ceiling and from the floor, like the melted teeth of some titanic beast. The writings on the cavern walls, and on the floor as well, glowed a dull red, flickering as the power of Saint Abatur failed. There, at the center of the great cavern, the glowing pool remained, surface still as polished glass, firefly lights floating beneath the surface.

“Adrammelech,” Trist breathed. He raised his sword into an Ox Guard, above his right shoulder, blade extended parallel to the cavern floor so that the tip pointed at the horrible pool.

“You let me die,” Luc said, driving a dagger up into Trist’s armpit from behind, where there were no steel plates, only a shirt of rings over his padded gambeson. The point of Luc’s dagger pierced easily, past Trist’s ribcage. “Oathbreaker!”

Trist screamed from the pain, and jolted awake, shaking. His heart pounded as hard as it had after his run down the mountainside in the Hauteurs Massif, and his skin was slick with sweat.

“Trist?” Clarisant laid a cool hand on his bare chest, half sitting up from where she’d been nestled against him.

“A dream,” he said, after a moment, taking deep breaths to slow his heart. They were on a wool bedroll he’d taken down from behind his saddle, and around them the blades of summer grass rose nearly knee high. The sun had just kissed the horizon, and painted the sky in vivid shades of red, orange, and purple. Their clothes were tangled, mostly cast aside, but the air was still warm enough that it didn’t matter. He hadn’t intended to fall asleep. “Just a dream,” Trist repeated.

“Nightmare?” his wife asked, falling back again onto the bedroll.

“The cavern under the mountains,” Trist said. “Luc - the second man who went with me from the village. He died down there. I dreamed that he stabbed me from behind.” Like Acrasia has shown me will happen, he kept to himself.

Clarisant turned on her side, face close to his. “This troubles many men, you know. Who have been to war. My mother warned me.”

Trist frowned, trying to imagine the gruff Baron Urien tossing from nightmares. “My father, on the other hand, insisted that I should never tell you what happened in battle.”

“Tell me what you need to say aloud,” Clarisant suggested. “Who do you think ends up holding all of those other soldiers when they wake in the dark, from their own nightmares? Their wives, Trist. I’d rather you talk to me then drink yourself into a stupor.”

“I don’t know that I even could,” Trist murmured, letting his eyes close for just a second. “I don’t think wine has the same effect on me as it did before. I should ask the other Exarchs.” He sighed. “The sun is nearly down. We should get ready to go.”

“Mmm. Come here, first,” Clarisant said, and turned onto her other side, away from him. She reached for his hand, and pulled it across her hip, putting his palm against the soft curve of her belly. “Right here.”

Trist rolled up against her, trying to decide if he could feel the swell of a growing life, or if it was too early.

“When you wake up from your nightmares,” Claire murmured, “Remember this. Your family is right here. Whatever else happens, come back to us.”

By the time the last sliver of the sun had dipped below the land in the west, they’d dressed, had a few mouthfuls of nuts and berries packed by Henry, and set Caz back to rights. They wrapped the destrier’s shoes in spare clothing, to muffle the sound of his hooves. Clarisant helped Trist back into his armor, and while she was slower at it then Yaél, Trist agreed with her that it was good she learn how to do it. He named each piece as they went, and she repeated the words to herself.

Finally, once the moon had risen, he lifted her up into Cazador’s saddle, then put a sabaton in the stirrup and pulled himself up, settling against her.

“How do you intend to do this?” Claire asked.

“With the Boon of the Faerie King,” Trist said, taking a deep breath. “Though I have never used it like this, before.” The orange thread hummed within him, and he took a moment to scan their surroundings. Even by moonlight, he could see the blades of grass, the branches of the oak where he’d tied Caz hours before. That capability had become familiar: but now, he needed something more. He focused on the burning orange coil, drawing it out from his chest, where it rooted with his other threads, and pulled. In front of him, Claire gasped.

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“Trist,” she said. “I can hardly see anything. Where did the moon go?”

He opened his eyes, but kept his hold on the skein of orange fire that stretched from him out to the moon-shadows on all sides. They stretched taught, gathering about him, and the horse, and Claire as well, like a thick bank of fog.

“This is the plan,” Trist explained, softly, and nudged Caz forward, turning the destrier’s head toward the city. “Auberon is the King of Shadows, so we will use shadows to conceal ourselves from the eyes of our enemies. But you need to stay quiet, Claire - so quiet.”

“I will,” she whispered. “But I like hearing you say my name like that. That’s what my brothers and sisters always called me.”

“Claire it is, then. Now, hush,” he murmured close to her ear.

Whoever commanded the Kimmerian mercenaries - and not just the mercenaries, Trist saw once they were close enough, because there were banners from Champs d'Or, as well - knew their business. He steered their way past sentries and picket lines, turning Caz to avoid cook-fires and drowsy horses. Trist neither trusted the shadows to hold once they entered a circle of firelight, nor enemy mounts not to smell Caz.

It was slow going, because moving any faster than a walk would certainly have made too much noise to escape unnoticed, even with the big warhorse’s hooves wrapped in cloth. Trist did his best to steer them around gatherings of soldiers, picking a convoluted path through the encamped, sieging army. Halfway through, when he could see the lights from the top of the city walls, it occurred to him that he should have been counting men, or trying to make note of any useful information at all, but merely holding onto the shadows was taking all of his concentration.

The sparking threads of fire strained, and holding them reminded Trist of tug of war with the other boys on the village green during festival days. Percy was always right behind him, with the growth of those extra two years. A pang in his chest accompanied the thought of his brother, but to Trist’s surprise it was more dull than it had been before. Just like the thick rope when he was younger, it was getting harder and harder to keep the threads in his grasp now, as if the shadows themselves were pulling back. It was taking too long: he wasn’t practiced enough at this, yet.

“Trist,” Claire hissed. “I can see the tents.”

“Almost,” Trist muttered, eyes half closed, trusting Cazador to find the way now. He grasped at the rope of the boon with all his strength, but it was slipping faster and faster until he lost his grasp on it entirely.

The shadows vanished, and the flickering light of a torch fell on them. Trist opened his eyes to see that they were nearly at the front of the enemy camp. A line of sentries with torches stretched around the city of Rocher de la Garde in a semicircle, then a short, half-built palisade, and finally a wide open field, perhaps three hundred yards in span, the distance of a longbow shot from a trained archer.

“You! Who goes there?” a voice called out in Narvonnian. Trist didn’t wait to take in more than a glance of the man-at-arms wearing a tabard with the green and gold of the Barony du Champs d'Or. He kicked his heels into Cazador, and the big destrier stretched his legs as if he’d been waiting all night for this moment. Linen shirts and wool stockings flew off his hooves, disappearing into the darkness as dirt sprayed out behind them.

“Stop them!” the sentry shouted, and all around cries of men rose as Trist, Claire and Caz barrelled ahead, straight at the wooden palisade that marked the border of the enemy camp. Kimmerians ran out of their tents, shouting in their harsh language, and when one got too close, Cazador lashed out with a kick that punched right through his skull. After that, the Kimmerians kept their distance.

“The wall, Trist!” Claire yelled, but Cazador didn’t slow.

“Hold tight,” was all Trist said to her, and then the powerful muscles of the warhorse gathered under them, coiled and released. For a moment that stretched in time, they hung above the palisade, and Trist thanked whatever Angelus were watching over them that the enemy hadn’t had time to make it higher. If they’d tried this a week into the siege, they would never have made the jump.

Then, Caz hit the ground and was off again, racing through the night across the open field between the enemy camp and the walls of Rocher de la Garde. From behind, Trist heard a knight call out: “Draw!”

“Keep your head down,” he shouted to Claire, and did his best to curl himself around her, with no choice but to use his own body as a shield. Trist drew his longsword, and waited for the order that he knew was coming.

“Loose!” the enemy knight commanded, and Claire screamed again. Trist grasped at the thread of the Horned Lord’s Boon, trying to push fire into Cazador’s body, and the destrier picked up speed, racing faster than a horse burdened with two riders should have been able to run. From behind them, the whistling of arrows falling through the air drove a spike of fear through Trist’s belly.

Your family is right here, Claire had said, holding his hand to her belly, where their child grew.

With a wordless cry, Trist turned in the saddle, twisting back and sweeping the blade of his longsword behind them at an angle. The arrows, almost upon them, seemed to hang in the air, slow enough that they reminded him of tossed rings, back in the practice yard when he was a child, in the moment before he took them with his lance.

Trist sliced through three arrow-shafts in a single cut. The halves of the three arrows fell down to either side of Cazador, instead of hitting his armor or, worse, Claire. Around them, dozens of arrows sunk into the earth with meaty thuds, in quick succession, like hail on a roof.

One arrow sunk into Cazador’s flank.

The destrier screamed, and stumbled, but he didn’t fall, and the power of the Horned Hunter’s Boon propelled them onward across the open field. “Raise the gate!” Trist shouted to the city guards; another flight of arrows would be coming. “Lady Clarisant is here!”

A rattling came from behind the gate, as men-at-arms put their backs into the crank, and Trist didn’t even try to slow the wounded horse as they raced toward it. Instead, with the whistle of falling arrows in their ears, he and Claire hugged themselves low against the warhorse’s neck, and all three of them dashed under the gate with barely a hand’s breadth between them and the metal above.

Arrows hit the walls of Rocher de la Garde like rain, but the gate fell behind them and they were safe behind the walls of the city.