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“Take your coht, o left Myself and Master Rensial will take the centre”

It took only a short ti by rows of vacant houses, the town’s only living occupants a few dogs busily feasting on the carcasses of slaughtered horses and goats left to rot in the streets They found the wharf free of vessels save a single scuttled fishing boat, itsfrole

“No bugger hori the wharf “Did find a pile of bodies in a warehouse though All slaves, mostly older folk”

“Culled the less valuable stock before they left” Frentis cast a glance around the town, fighting a sense that the e back in accusation They would have lived if you had not co of value, especially weapons We need anything with a sharp edge, even the smallest butcher’s knife Lekran, your people will htfall”

• • •

He had their Chief Quarterh heto carry them to the carts There were about fifty in all,years, stripped naked as their clothes were deereater value than their lives, old whip-strokes visible onflesh They were carted outside the walls where Tekrav had organised the construction of a huge pyre fro townsfolk Once the bodies had all been laid upon the oil-soaked wood Frentis turned to address the gathered fighters

“Aardless of belief, to say words over the dead Many, if notonly a slave’s life, destined for a slave’s death To be cast away like a laht or word But noe are here to , ords and with steel Hard days lie ahead of us, days when our cause will seem hopeless and your heart tempted by despair When those days come I ask that you remember what you saw here today, for if we fail, this will be our fate and no voice will be raised to bear witness that ere ever alive”

He went to the walls to watch the pyre burn, the flanal fire, Redbrother,” Lekran observed

“They kneere co,” he replied “And they knoe’re here now With any luck, they’ll send their forces against us”

“And if they don’t?”

“Then we’ll see what they’ll make of a one, it’s tiht our enemies to battle”

• • •

She has always found it odd that the spectacles never held any attraction for her If anything, she finds thenant, thousands of voices aroused to bloodlust by the sight of combat that few, if any, would have the stoht, and the kill, has only ever come from direct participation