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She reer, too tired to think, too numb to feel fear

Above the fire, sparks and stars sithout distinction

Dusk the following day, the two travellers reached Kraig’s Landing, to find its three raiment Soldiers were everywhere, and at the dock was tethered an ornate, luxuriously appointed barge above which drifted in the dull wind the king’s banner, and directly beneath it on the spar the crest of the Ceda

‘There’s a cadre here,’ Buruk said as they strode down the trail towards the cah to reach the hostel and dock

She nodded ‘And the soldiers are here as escort There can’t have been engageed ‘At sea, un, I think’

Seren reached out and halted Buruk ‘There, those three’

The ures in question had e their distance but fixing their attention on theathered for a moment, about halfway between the two travellers and the canize her, Acquitor?’

She nodded Nekal Bara, Trate’s resident sorceress, whose poas a near rival to the Ceda’s own ‘The man on her left, in the black furs, that’s Arahathan, commander of the cadre in the Cold Clay Battalion I don’t know the third one’

‘Enedictal,’ Buruk said ‘Arahathan’s counterpart in the Snakebelt Battalion We see before us the three es of the north They intend a ritual’

She set off towards the Buruk, Seren unslung her pack and dropped it to the ground She had caught the attention of the threelift of the eyebrows

‘Acquitor Seren Pedac The Errant s to launch an attack,’ Seren said ‘You mustn’t’

‘We do not take orders fro to strike the villages, aren’t you?’

‘Only the ones closest to the borders,’ Nekal Bara said, ‘and those are far enough away to per – beyond those mountains, yes? If the Errant wills it, that’s where the Edur arathered’