The rest of the evening passed without incident, and when the kings came together in the light of the morning, there were quite clearly some alliances that had been formed.

Beric, Mark and Corys had decided that the only way forward was to pool resources and be massive pains in the arse. On the plus side, Owain, since I had - you know - saved not only his life but the lives of all of his men, was Team Arthur. However, as he was down to twenty spears and a handful of camp followers, if push came to shove, the chances were this would get bloody.

With that in mind, I'd been to see Arthur first thing with a plan. I thought we were on the right track with his new battle cloak, but I wanted to push things a bit further. "In my own time," I explained, "there were these two . . . kingdoms who hated each other. It constantly felt that they would go to war, and the outcome of that for everyone else would have been catastrophic. So, to ensure the prospect of that fight was so awful, neither would contemplate starting it, they both tooled themselves up with the most insane weapons they could think of. It was called Mutually Assured Destruction - M.A.D for short. Basically, fuck with us, and we will fuck you up in return.

Arthur looked at me for a moment. "That is the most insane policy I have ever heard. You're telling me in over a thousand years the best diplomatic solution anyone could come up with was 'Don't try it, pal'?"

I shrugged. "At the time of my . . . death, it had worked for about fifty years."

Lancelot had joined us, squatting down to perform a complicated exercise routine. "On board with this plan, I can get."

"How do you see it working?"

I could tell Arthur was still not convinced, which was disappointing. "Look, I'm not saying we do anything overly aggressive. There's a line between 'don't fuck with us' and 'fucking want some?!' The trick is to be belligerent without inviting confrontation.

A servant approached with mugs of hot water, the movement causing Arthur's cloak to roar to life—literally. Then, a red claw extended to smash the tray to the floor., followed by a fireball burning it to cinders.

The king closed his eyes for a moment. "Somehow, I don't think we'll be lacking in belligerence."

*

"It therefore seems sensible for us to, cautiously, proceed into the lands of the Fae. If the prophecy is correct, we have already taken the Step of Blood and are now seeking the Step of Faith. I can think of few more demonstrations of 'faith' than to continue on our current path without a clear direction . . ."

"My lady wizard. Do you think you can stop that for a moment?"

"Oh, sorry. Is it bothering you?"

Scared, baffled eyes continued to regard me with horror.

"Too much, Big M?"

I pulled my Qi back inside and let the swirling vortex I'd conjured above our heads collapse down. I'd loaded it up with a touch of my aura and just let it flicker out little suggestions of "be afraid, be very afraid" to the rest of the audience. The little sparks of lightning it kept emitting, along with the rolling thunder, were creating a big mood.

I think if the idea was to cement in the minds of these kings that you are a terrifying presence, then job done, my dear. I am not sure, however, you have done a lot to convince them to trust you.

"Counterpoint. Do they trust that I will fuck them up?"

I realised everyone was still holding their breath. They certainly understand the threat, my dear.

Arthur's voice shook everyone out of the silent terror. "I must say I agree with you, King Corys. It seems that the best way for us to take the Step of Faith will be to continue onwards and trust the alliance we have forged."

There were mutters of assent.

Then Owain piped up. "Do we have any sense of what manner of beasts we may be encountering? I understand you were all best by Wyverns while I had . . . my own challenges. Can we anticipate similar monsters of power?"

If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

Merlin had prepped me on how to answer this question. "We are in the borderlands of the Fae Kingdom, my lord. On the very edge of the territory, we can expect to come across all manner of renegade and exiled creatures. Scavengers, mostly, like the Wyverns, with the possibility of more powerful foes - such as you were unfortunate to confront."

"And as we go further in?" Mark's voice slimed its way into the discussion.

As he appeared constitutionally unable to address me with any sort of honorific, I just looked at him. We had quite the eye-fucking going on before Corys came to his rescue.

"My lady, do you have any thoughts about what awaits us as we leave the borderlands?"

I tried to size up the King of Dehuebarch again. I couldn't help but feel he was being the acceptable face of fuckwittery. He'd never been anything other than polite to me - a bit flirty even - but he was hanging around with two very unpleasant men. Dogs and fleas and all that.

But he'd been courteous, so I was happy to answer him. "Our chief concern will be stumbling across any of the Fae themselves. I doubt our expedition will be viewed as anything less than a hostile endeavour. We may find ourselves in conflict with them before we can explain our quest. This would be less than ideal. Beyond that, I would anticipate we will likely encounter goblins and orcs, especially around the edges of the territory. We may be able to earn ourselves some credit with the Fae if we exterminate any and all of these we come across."

"It would seem to me," Beric's expression was neutral, "we may be wise to stumble across some goblins and orcs, then, as a show of our good faith."

As he said that word, a little choral music sprung into life.

"Well, that sounds like we may have stumbled across our second Step, my lords,"

"Let's fuck up some Goblins," Lancelot added helpfully.

*

So, Goblins are precisely what you would expect.

If you are expecting something small, green and smelling of shit and blood. Oh, and there are fucking millions of them.

We'd decided to keep the integrity of the camp for the time being, with each of the kings organising a little scouting just to get the lay of the land. I'd accompanied Owain's troops whilst Lancelot had stuck with Arthur's. It seemed a touch like overkill for the two of us to stick together, and - privately - we were worried about any further reduction in the numbers of the men of Gwent. It was great to have his support, but that only mattered if he had the spears to back up the words.

We were being led by his poacher-in-chief, Burford, who - during the course of the careful hours we explored - I was coming to like. The search was so methodical I couldn't help but question how they'd fallen victim to the Shriket.

"The king thought we could take it," was the only response I could get from him on that topic. If he had any words of criticism to add there, he kept them to himself. Having gotten used to the non-stop torrent of moaning from my own side, I quite liked his taciturnity.

"Something - lots of somethings - up ahead." Burford suddenly appeared next to me. I hadn't heard him approach at all.

I followed the direction he was pointing and pushed out with my Qi, trying to sense what might be hidden in the woods. That's when the smell first hit me.

"Fuck me, there are a lot of them!"

We had pulled back to the main camp, and I tried to think of a sensible approach to deal with what I'd seen. If any of the other scouting parties had encountered a smaller group, then it seemed sensible to focus there. Annihilating an isolated warband or a largely empty village would be a much easier show of 'faith' towards the Fae than tangling with what seemed to be an entire clan on the move.

But then . . .

Indeed, my dear. A show of faith needs to have significant weight behind it. If we are looking to earn respect from the Fae, then we are likely to need to do something that will cost us.

"Dude, that was a lot of green-skinned short arses with axes and spears!"

And we are asking for a lot of faith.

*

And that's how, the following evening, I found myself standing amongst a shield wall, pushing out every suggestion of calm and confidence I could spare the Qi for.

We'd spent a long time trying to devise a better plan than 'charge in line—hold position—slaughter,' but, as Owain finally noted, "the classics are always the best."

The biggest worry was that the sheer numbers we'd spotted would flank us long before we killed enough to make a difference. That was when Beric and Mark 'volunteered' to act as flying sentries on the flanks with their heavy horse to keep any attempts to surround us unsuccessful.

"We all know that they're totally going to let us die, right?" I asked Arthur. "This is almost exactly the ideal double-cross scenario. They don't even have to do too much, either. Just be a little slow on the charge, and we'll be yesterday's toast."

"You need to have faith, Morgan." There was that choral music again. "Beric and Mark would have us dead in a heartbeat, but now is not the moment of betrayal. They need to pass this step first. They'll hold the flank."

Privately, I thought that was wishful bollocks. But I didn't want to create even more stress than we were currently experiencing. If Arthur wanted to trust to luck, that was fine. I just ensured I loaded up each of those kings with the heaviest of suggestions could manage: "You do not betray King Arthur."

A soft whistle signalled for us to step out from cover.

"Well, here goes fucking nothing."

And we crossed from the treeline to appear next to what I'm going to describe as five thousand goblin warriors conservatively.

It was on.