Melehan's hands were shaking.
He stared at them in the flickering light of the campfire. They did not even feel like his any more. They had been doing this, without pause, for days now. Ever since ...
No more of that. He stood, smoothing down his robes and tucking his hands under his armpits, pressing them tight to stop the movement.
None of those around the fire marked his hurried departure from their company. The warriors milling around the camp opened a wide gap to let him through as he walked away, as if none were willing to be too close to him.
As if shame were somehow contagious.
It didn't help, but he knew it was just not him who was being shunned in this manner. It was the same for any of the wizards that had survived the ritual at Isca.
Or what used to be Isca.
As he walked, Melehan was once again struck by how hard he was taking that summary rejection by the others in the army. He had never been an especially gregarious soul, but during the invasion, he had come to enjoy the camaraderie of the warriors around their campfires. He had been surprised at how much he welcomed their company and their easy acceptance of him as one of their own.
Now, more than ever, he needed that normality, and it was being withheld from him.
Ever since the conflagration at Isca, the rest of the army treated the wizards with something akin to horror. Nobody who had witnessed the aftermath nor heard the shrieks and pleas of those within were comfortable sharing a meal with the architects of that infernal blaze.
And that included those who had cast it.
They'd all intellectually understood the plan. Of course they had. Had they not practised their role in the casting day after day on the march through the countryside? The ritual needed each of them to complete, and hold, the High King's spell in precisely the right way. It was an intricate casting - far ahead of what any of them could summon on their own - and needed extensive focus.
But there was a big difference between the theory and seeing all their rehearsals in full production.
What had been an interesting Qi exercise for the last few weeks had become appallingly real for each and every one of them.
The shaking of Melehan's hands became so intense he held them out in front of him - would they ever return to normal? - before clasping them tightly to his breast to try to bring them under control.
He could still hear them. The people inside the walls. The moment when they had recognised that no help was on the way, that there was no escape, had been the worst of his life.
The shouts and screams had become wails, and he knew it had broken him. As soon as he heard that animalistic noise, his Qi had lurched wildly out of his control. His cycling had abruptly halted, snapping him out of his connection with the other cultivators. As that happened, the eyes of the cultivator beside him widened, recognising her need to channel the excess energy that Melehan was no longer holding. It had proved too much for her - did he even know her name? - and she had exploded, like an overripe pear falling to the ground.
The pop and hiss of overloading cultivators - someone had told him five or six had perished around him at that moment - was just another awful part of the soundscape that now haunted him.
Melehan was unsure how he felt about the deaths of those wizards. He was pretty out of available guilt at this stage.
The true irony, of course, was that Pæga's war band had barely made it back in time to join up with the rest of the army at all. After their ignominious retreat in the face of that powerful enemy cultivator, they had returned to the border to regroup. It was only Melehan passing on the scorn of the other embedded cultivators for the sole section of the invasion to be repelled that had spurred the commander to turn around and attempt to catch up - taking a longer way around to avoid any chance of crossing paths with that wizard.
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And, of course, by the time Pæga was swapping stories with his fellow war chiefs, what had occurred had been massively embellished.
Was it not amazing, Melehan thought, that we had been able to defeat a dragon, vanquish ten enemy cultivators and execute a brilliant tactical retreat with the loss of only one warrior?
Certainly, since being back, Pæga had been swaggering around the camp with all the unearned bravado of the untested school bully. One of Melehan's few remaining pleasures was to look forward to the moment that the bluff was called.
It was irritating, therefore, that the loss of Ealhhere's war band, near the vicinity of where Pæga had reported significant enemy action, had added credence to the tall tale being spread. As none of Pæga's forces were eager to recount they had fled in the face of a solitary cultivator, soon everyone was convinced a puissant British fightback was underway.
And that cast the events of Isca in an even more worrying light.
That demonstration of overwhelming power could work both ways, after all. If, as intended, it quelled the Britons into immediate surrender, then it may be that the horror he had helped deliver saved further bloodshed.
However, Pæga's exaggerated experience and the loss of all of Ealhhere's men was giving the leaders of the invasion pause. The word 'Merlin' was being muttered around every campfire Melehan had stopped at over the march inland.
There was a significant fear that, rather than supplying a stunning knockout blow, was there not the chance that the Saxon wizards had prodded the biggest, angriest bear in the woods?
Melehan flashed back to that gathering months back. "Do not fear Merlin," the High King had said. "His days have long since passed." It had been thrilling to hear such a thing said at the time, but now, having committed a great crime against the people of the Britains, the whole army feared they had been unwise to discredit him so blithely.
"Are you okay?" Ula, one of the cultivators he had known from before the invasion, was at his side.
"I don't know," he smiled thinly to her, "How would I tell?"
"You're still shaking, I see?" Melehan tucked his hands back under his armpits. "I'd probably swap maladies with you, to be honest. It's the dreams for me. No matter how much I drink, I can't seem to get a dreamless night."
Melehan looked at his friend, concern in his eyes. "They're still that bad?"
Ula nodded. "I think we did a terrible thing."
They walked onward in an uncomfortable silence. Soon, they reached the edge of the encampment and put their backs against the trees that loomed above.
The invasion had stalled.
They were within a day's march of the sea where, in theory, half their numbers would embark on the waiting crafts to speed down the coast towards Tintagel, and the other half would continue with the trail of destruction inland.
But there was no clear decision on which war bands would do which. The loss of Ealhhere had upset the balance amongst the Saxon commanders, and uneasy alliances were now becoming open warfare.
"How long are we going to be stuck here, do you think?"
Ula shrugged, "Who knows? From what I hear, there's going to need to be a few heads banging together, removing and stuck on pikes to get us moving."
They both stared at the hundreds of campfires blinking away. Ula seemed less able to cope with the silence than Malehan. "Had you heard the latest rumours? The soldiers think someone's picking them off."
"They're still talking to you? No one's so much as met my eyes since Isca."
"I have tits."
Melehan waited, unsure if there was more to be said. Apparently, there wasn't.
"It'll just be desertions, no?"
"That's what I said. But they're convinced there's a war band out there, waylaying people in the dark."
Melehan didn't care.
He was shocked to realise it - these were people's lives, after all - but he simply did not have it in him. What did it matter to him if warriors were killed now or in a week's time? The only thing that was certain about this march was that the flow of blood and the stink of death would follow them until the end.
Ula was still talking. " - do something about it."
"Sorry? I missed that."
She rolled her eyes at him, and he could see the dark circles that marred her otherwise pretty face. No, Ula had certainly not been sleeping of late. "I was saying it might be wise for some of us cultivators to try to do something about it. They're looking at us as if we're feral beasts. We'd generate some goodwill if we could ferret out anyone preying on the men."
There was a soft whisper of quickly moving feet, and then both of them were dragged backwards into the woods. Their heads were quickly hooded, their hands expertly bound, and knives pressed at their throats.
"For future reference, the time to put in place a plan to deal with dark forces grabbing people in the dark is, ideally, just before, you know, the dark forces grab you in the dark. All become a bit moot afterwards."
The two captured cultivators were lifted off the ground and carried further into the woods. "I know the Prince wanted one wizard; do you think he'll be happy with two?"
"One of them's got tits. I imagine he'll be a cockahoop."