The first pulse of the hedron sucked the air out of the world and ruptured Riot’s eardrums. A trickle of blood wormed out of his ears, soaking into his collar.

  The white heat of the hedron felt as though he had thrust his hand into the heart of a forge. Then he had no hand at all. The burning pain was everywhere, opening his body and savaging it like a rabid dog clawing at a carcass.

  The hedron grew brighter, gorging on arcane power. Riot knew it would explode, but the moment lingered and he clawed at salvation like a man with a sabre in his gut, gripping the hilt, knowing that as long as the sword stayed there, he might go on living just a moment longer.

  But the blade was yanked out, and arcane power shredded the world, and he was cast adrift, less than a thought in the gray void.

  The surging power snapped its jaws at him, hackles raised, and he shrank back, desperately willing it away from him, away from the men, Ruddle, Cox, and any others that still lived. He willed it out toward his enemies, and strangely, it responded. High-pitched screams punctured the howling of the storm, and dark shadows appeared, the dead echoes of those burned from existence, arms raised in vain to shield themselves. He took a ragged breath, choking and retching on the acrid stink of burning bodies.

  Tattered edges of his consciousness unraveled like a pulled thread into a grey void.

  He woke. Hours later, perhaps days. But he was walking, so had he even been asleep? His eyes were open, but he could only see blurred shapes, and even the weak daylight brought pain. Muffled voices spoke, calling to him from some deep cave. Or he was in the cave. That made more sense. He was lost in some darkened cave.

  The walking sleep took him again.

  He woke. A gentle but consistent tug pulled his bound hands onward, and he heard the clip-clop of a horse on the road before him. He was still blinded, and the drool on his chin was cold. His broken shoes were gone, and the strips of blanket that replaced them were shredded. His bloodied feet scraped on the cold road, each jagged stone drawing a ragged sob from his sore throat. Muffled sounds of men talking, and the soft clip clop of horses hooves were torture to his damaged ears. Water was held to his grateful, cracked lips.

  The walking sleep descended once more, and he shambled into its embrace.

  He woke. He’d soiled himself; he didn’t remember doing that.

  See the last man, covered in his own shit.

  He laughed, the sound escaping in a wheeze.

  He slept. He walked.

  He woke in a chamber choked with lamp oil.

  The Prior taught that the wicked walk a hard, pain-filled road down to the Father. This must be the afterlife, he reasoned, for he had walked, and the memory of his suffering drew a low moan.

  A voice spoke to him in the slow, rolling tone of a country wife. Another voice with the sharp tongue of a noble woman, questioned him.

  Were these two women here to sit in judgement of his life?

  What did he have to balance the scales but the honest life of a fighting man? Except when he killed Alric Rook, but that had been honest too, hadn’t it? An honest day working the sword.

  Hauled up by rough hands, trying to speak but only dribbling like a fool, reeking of his own shit and piss, and tossed into a cell, cold, damp, mercifully quiet.

  See him now, the last man, he slept.

  ***

  The stone wall of his cell was a litany of carvings, curses and scored lines. He added another scratch next to the first three he had made. The fourth day of his imprisonment. The fourth day he could remember anyway, it had likely been longer.

  The bolt was thrown back and Riot walked the hollow corridors of stone, before being pushed out into the prison yard. He pulled the ragged blanket around his shoulders and tried to breathe some warmth into his cupped hands. Gods but it promised to be a bitter end to winter if it was still this cold. A killing winter, to be sure. He stayed close to the blurred outline of the prisoner in front, his eyes stinging from the weak light. The blanket strips that he had tied around his bare feet were rotting away and he shuffled forward as the line moved.

  His turn. He held out his cracked bowl and kept his head down. His right hand, covered in a dirty rag, was completely numb, and he didn’t have the courage to look under to see the wound the burning hedron had left.

  Thin gruel splashed into the bowl.

  “Careful, that’s a rare awful stew, Sarge,” came the voice of an old man, full of pain.

  “Ruddle?” Riot's voice barely sounded like his own.

  “Aye it’s me, Sarge. You’d best move along, I’ll come find you.”

  Riot reached out a hand unseeing and the old man grasped it briefly. He thought he’d burned them all in the gray fire. The relief was like shrugging off a yoke around his neck. “What about the others?”

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  “Move on, you bastards!” the guard snapped.

  “I’ll find you, Sarge.”

  With one hand touching the wall to guide him, Riot moved on and hunkered down in a corner out of the wind. The gruel was rancid. He swallowed it down without chewing, shutting off his senses so he wouldn’t gag.

  A scrape of movement on the other side of the wall made him freeze, bowl halfway to his lips.

  “Rud?” Riot hissed.

  “No, friend,” a deep voice said through a crack in the stones. A thick northern accent. A big man by the sound of it. “You’re the one who set off a hedron?” the voice asked.

  Riot remained quiet. The wall separated the regular prisoners from the Leybound. Each of them had the rutted scars on their arms and hands and faces that had seen no small amount of pain.

  The northerner continued. “I know it wasn’t you that stole it, what I want to know is how you got it, and where is Gerrard Price?”

  Price. The leybound prisoner they’d found in the basement of the farmhouse. The one who had signed their death warrant with the High Faelen.

  “Come now, friend,” the northerner said, making it clear that the word ‘friend’ was only a temporary arrangement that could change at any time. “Don’t think this wall will stop me from coming to ask you face-to-face.”

  All Riot had was the chipped wooden bowl, and he thumbed the sharper edge. A poor weapon, but he’d used worse. “I’ve no secrets. Price is likely as dead as the rest of them, but don’t weep for him, before he died, he tried to go over to the Long-ears.”

  The northerner paused. “He wouldn’t.”

  “Don’t know what to tell you, ‘friend’, but come over here and ask me again, and I’ll cut your strings.”

  The bell clanged, and Riot got to his feet with a groan from his protesting muscles and shuffled back inside to his cell.

  ***

  The jailor had a club foot and walked with a limp. Step-drag, step-drag. So when Riot heard the regular step of boots outside, he was on his feet, the sharpened knife he’d made out of the wooden bowl clutched in his good hand.

  The bolt drew back slowly and the door showed a crack before Riot wrenched it open and caught the figure by the scruff of his scrawny neck, throwing him against the wall.

  “Sarge, it's me,” Ruddle hissed, raising his hand.

  Riot released him. “Sorry Rud. Damn I can hardly believe you're alive. I'm sorry about the arm.”

  Ruddle spared his empty sleeve a forlorn glance. “Not your fault, Sarge, if it weren’t for you we’d all be dead.”

  “Who else made it?”

  “There were eight of ours dead in the farmhouse, ‘bout twenty of theirs.” Ruddle counted the eight names off on his fingers, among them Swan, Emerson and Cox.

  Just thinking about it made the bile rise in his throat. “Those eight, how did they go?”

  “All dead by blade or dart,” Ruddle said. “Long ears were fair lumps of charcoal. I was right close to you, but barely felt hotter than the breath of a baker's oven.”

  “What about the leybound prisoner, Price?”

  Ruddle glanced at the half-open door, his voice dropping to a whisper. “They couldn’t find his body. I think the Long-ears took him. The wikkan weren’t happy. The short, fat one was fair fearful till she pulled that hedron away from your hand, then she seemed to pluck up a bit. They said you stole the hedron, Sarge. They’re going to hang yer.”

  “I didn’t steal a thing, it was that leybound bastard.”

  “I told the wikkan that, but she didn’t want to listen, told me I’d be up on the gallows with you. Told me to keep my mouth fair shut about the whole business. The colonel was raging and Mercer looked like he’d started shitting golden eggs. I got sent here on account of my arm.” Ruddle looked over his shoulder at the door, his voice dropping to a whisper. “I gots a plan to get you out of here, sarge. My sister's husband’s a fisherman. Knows the coast like the back of his hand. Prolly done a bit of smuggling. He’s game to take you west.”

  Riot listened closely to the sounds of the jail. Some screaming and hollering from the inmates, but no heavy step-drag of the jailor footsteps.

  “What about the guards?”

  “Only one jailer in the tower, the limpy bastard, and he’s as partial to a few guilders as any man. Don’t have much to give you to ease your way, sorry to say, but all the lads kicked in. Should have you out of here tonight. If I don’t see you. Good luck to you, Sarge.”

  Riot clasped the older man’s remaining hand. “You’re a good man Rud. And again, I’m sorry about the arm.”

  Ruddle saluted, standing as smartly to attention as his crooked back would allow. “It’s been an honor to march with the last man.”

  Hours later Riot lay awake waiting for dawn. As the darkness began to flee before the new day, he heard the step-drag of footsteps come closer. The bolt slid back and the door opened but Riot didn’t move.

  He could call himself an escaped prisoner, but no matter how he dressed it up, walking through that door made him a deserter. Deserters got men killed. The hole left by each of the cowards was a festering wound that sapped the will to fight from those left behind. After a time, heads bowed until the spear of the man next to you lowered just enough that you got stabbed in the face.

  The fat jailor with a face like a beaten anvil beckoned from the corridor. “I ain’t got all day.”

  There was another way. Gerrard Price was alive. Riot could find him and drag him kicking and screaming back to the army and make him confess to stealing the hedron. The thought set a fire in his gut and he struggled to his feet. “Alright I’m bloody coming.”

  A spiral staircase took them down through the tower. The air grew damp, the stone walls slick with moss and the sound of water against rock floated up to them. At the bottom the jailor opened a small wooden door onto a deserted corner of the quayside. Once Riot was through, the door pulled closed behind him, the lock making a heavy clunk as it snapped closed.

  A fisherman in a battered boat with fading yellow paint whistled and Riot hurried over. This was a good start, more than he could have hoped for, next he needed new gear, shoes, and a weapon. Then he could start to look for Price.

  “I really didn’t pick you for a deserter, Nathaniel,” said a voice behind him.

  Ritta Kerne, the plump wikkan, who had arrived at the regiment camp with Riley stepped out of the shadow of the sea wall. Two younger wikkan girls stood either side of her, and Riot's hand strayed instinctively to his sword that wasn’t there. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the fishermen huddle back into the cramped pilot house.

  “Ruddle wouldn’t have set me up,” Riot said.

  “No, he genuinely thought he was helping you, though he will certainly come to regret that if you get on that boat.”

  None of the wikkan needed to draw a weapon, the threat in Kerne's words was implicit enough.

  “What happens to Ruddle if I leave?” Riot asked.

  “He’ll hang for aiding in your escape. If you stay, he’ll continue to serve the regiments.”

  Kerne spoke and moved like a farmer's wife, and it was a fine act, but her eyes betrayed her nature. Riot had seen eyes like that many times over the years, on battlefields and in dank alleys when he fought to stay alive as a youth on the hard streets of Fallow. As a rule, he only killed when he had to, but Ritta Kerne killed whenever it was more convenient.

  “What about me?” Riot said, his voice hoarse.

  “You’ll be court-martialed, but I don’t expect it to go in your favor. Colonel Williams has lost the support of Arcanist Riley, and I understand Captain Mercer is most anxious to see you again.”