When The Warden staggered into the streets of Midnere, he seemed the emissary of the Void Lord himself. The few people who were out, most of them barflies flitting from one drinking hole to the next, put hands to their mouths, recoiled in fear.

  “Someone, help me!” he growled. The wound in his stomach had left a bloody trail longer than the serpents of Sumyr. His ruin of an arm hung limply beside him, blackened, twisted, a chunk carved out of it. An arm for an arm, Jubal, he thought bitterly. But I can still wield my mace in my other hand. You… you will never fire a bow again, even if the bone resets.

  The thought brought him meagre satisfaction, but it was enough to sustain him, to allow him to push just one step farther. He was dragging one foot now. Not so much because it was damaged, but through sheer exhaustion, bloodloss, and the confusion that comes when the body suffers such great trauma.

  “Someone!” he cried.

  Windows shut with a clatter. Faces appeared at the slats, watching him with mouselike fear. He collapsed down to one knee. His mind still willed on his flesh, but the flesh was weak and had finally succumbed.

  “W-Warden?”

  He looked up. Grygory stood there, horror written plainly on his face. He came back for me, The Warden thought. Joy surged in his heart, a terrible emotion, one he wanted to be free from as soon as possible.

  “Help me, Grygory!” The Warden said. He doubled over and vomited blood.

  “By the gods!” Grygory hissed. He ran forward, pulled one of the Warden’s arms over his shoulder, lifted him. Grygory was strong, could heft even the Warden’s significant weight—for the Warden refused to take off his armour, refused also to let go of his mace, which he clutched in his good hand. The Daimonbone dagger he had tucked into his belt. That dagger had been consecrated in blood and fire. It had only one purpose now, only one target. He would use it for nothing else but plunging it into Telos’s heart.

  “My horse can carry us both,” Grygory was saying. “At Ob-koron, we can—”

  A scream broke from the Warden’s lips, a growl like that of an animal of the combat arena poked one too many times. Grygory flinched, nearly dropped his charge.

  “No,” the Warden hissed through gritted teeth. “Not back to Ob-koron.” The Warden gripped Grygory. His vision swam, but he could still make out the look of terror on the guard’s face. “Did you send the dragonling? Did you send to Mordred?”

  “Y-yes. Yes, I did.”

  The Warden nodded. At least something had been done right this day.

  “A wagon… obtain a wagon… we must go to Gorgosa…”

  “W-warden. With all due respect, you are not in the right condition…”

  Strength surged through the Warden, the unmatched strength of diabolic rage. He gripped the man who held him upright and threw him to the ground one-handed. Grygory yelped in pain as he hit the ground awkwardly.

  “Why must the gods plague me with such cowards?” the Warden spat.

  He froze. The whole world seemed to be holding its breath in silence. A dark wind blew through the nearby trees. What did I just say? He had come dangerously close to admitting something, to admitting a secret belief. There are no gods. Only will. Only men who are prepared to do whatever it takes.

  Blackness took his vision and he swooned. He hit the ground and lay there, gasping like a fish. Colours swam in the dark. He registered at some dim level below consciousness that hands moved over him, unbuckling his armour, freeing his limbs. He felt pressure, awful pressure on his belly where the gash lay inflicted by the thief. Fingers probed his mangled arm. He tried to tell them to stop, to cease this violation, but words never formed.

  He dreamed. Horrid dreams. Dreams that swarmed with tall, pale forms. Gunmetal ships rocketing through the blackness. Stars, alien stars. Constellations of awful progeny. And a darkness, a darkness at the edge of all things so vast it was incomprehensible. Better to forget. Better to forget.

  He woke on a rough wooden bed. Dawnlight crept through the window. He gasped for air and felt his throat to be full of shrapnel. He coughed, spluttered. A glass of water sat on a bedside table. A candle—long extinguished—stood next to it. He took the water and drank sparingly. Pain lanced through his belly and he fell back on the bed, growling. Eventually, the pain subsided. He sat up again.

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  “What’s all this grunting and groaning?”

  An elderly woman bustled into the room. She wore a purple smock. Her face was the damnation of age itself, a map of trenches and dried riverbeds. The Warden did not like to look at the elderly, for they reminded him of his own advanced age, of how the clock ran ever against him.

  “Where is Grygory?” The Warden said. “Where—”

  “Now, now,” the old woman tutted, sitting on the bed and pushing the Warden back into his pillow. He had not suffered such an indignity since he was a boy. He gritted his teeth. “You cannot be overexerting yourself. You have had quite the ordeal.”

  “What day is it?” The Warden whispered.

  “The Seventh Day of the Sixth Moon.”

  The Warden closed his eyes. He had been out cold for perhaps eight or nine hours. He had not lost a day. There was still time to catch Telos before he made it to Gorgosa. In all likelihood, Jubal would be with him. Now that Jubal’s hideout had been destroyed, there was nowhere left for him to hide, not in this country, so he would flee with Telos. The Warden was certain of it.

  “It was a strange night,” the old woman continued. “Fires have been seen all across Yestermere. And some people say sky-ships have been flying overhead! I say their eyes are worth pigshit if they can’t tell the difference between a dragon and a god-vehicle!”

  The Warden sat upright once more. He began to climb out of bed.

  “I wouldn’t go anywhere, not with that belly,” the old woman said. She placed a hand on the bandages around the Warden’s midriff to spot him. She had wrapped gauze and ointment about his arm. Though the burns still stung, it was a lesser sting, the clean sting of a wound in the first tentative steps of healing.

  The Warden placed a hand on the old woman’s shoulder.

  “I thank you, lady, for all that you have done for me. Truly. You took me in and tended my wounds. You took a great risk in doing so.”

  “I am old. There is very little to risk these days.” A wicked look came into her eyes. “But really I took you in because of that charming friend of yours. Oh he was quite delightfully persuasive.”

  The Warden’s stomach turned in revulsion at the thought of Grygory wooing this death’s head, but he said nothing.

  “I owe you a debt. And so I tell you now: run, and do not look back.”

  Her brow furrowed in confusion.

  “Run,” he said. “The fires are coming and Midnere will be burned to the ground.”

  The Warden removed her hand and stood, leaving the shocked woman sat on the edge of the bed. He crossed the room and found his armour and weapons in a pile. He half expected one or two items to have been pilfered, but all were present. Piece by piece, he donned them. The woman had not had time to clean them, and so blood—both his own and that of others—still clung to the metal. As the final piece was belted into place, he let out a sigh. He only felt safe with his armour on, when his flesh was covered, when no one could see him for what he was.

  “You won’t be able to hide that secret for much longer,” the old woman said.

  He gritted his teeth. The fingers of his good hand tightened about the handle of the mace. She had seen him—seen his flesh bare. She knew… But she had also saved his life.

  “Forget what you saw. Take your things and go. There is no stopping the fires now.”

  “I doubt Nereth will let her forest burn,” the old woman said.

  The Warden snorted. He went to the door. He hated how each step caused his belly to scream with pain, a dizzy weakness to pass through his limbs, as though there were some dark magic at work, sapping his strength.

  “There is no Nereth. No Beltanus. No Talon. No Lileth. No Eresh. These are phantoms men have made in their own image.”

  He turned the door handle, made to go.

  “And Koronzon?” she said, playfully, stopping him one last time.

  The Warden actually smiled.

  “Perhaps there is a Koronzon.”

  Before she could riposte, he passed out of the room and through a quaint living room and kitchen, then out the front door, where he found Grygory waiting. The guard looked like he had slept very little, with blood red rings around his eyes. The Warden placed a mailed hand on his shoulder.

  “Thank you.”

  Grygory nodded. Neither were men to speak their emotions, neither wanted any more intimacy than was necessary, but both understood the compact between them now. Of all his men, Gyrgory alone had proved himself.

  “When this is done,” The Warden said. “I shall be sure to write to King Gilgamon. You shall be rewarded. This, I promise.”

  Grygory bowed his head. Then he pointed to where two huge shire horses stood, their manes like white silk, their huge hooves pawing the ground with eagerness. The wagon to which the horses were yoked had space for two to sit up front and a large storage space at the back.

  “I have found us transport.”

  The Warden smiled.

  “Then we head to Gorgosa, as fast as our whips can make these stallions run.”

  In the distance, black smoke filled the air like clouds.

  The fires were spreading.