The smoke revealed itself not to be isolated strands, but a thick, dark cloud, one that Heast and the First Queen’s Guard prepared to ride into. It began to form around them while the carts were taken off the road, the horses unhitched and the crates unpacked.
‘Leave the fire lances,’ Heast ordered. The night’s light was obscured by the smoke, but not enough so that he could not see the fires ahead in his spyglass. ‘Bows only.’
Lehana, who stood on the back of the first cart, nodded with grim satisfaction when she heard him, but the soldiers who had moved towards her, who had come to collect the weapons she handed out, did not share her agreement. Heast understood that: they had looked at the tracks, had heard the conversation he and Fenna had had, and they had looked for themselves. They knew that the numbers ahead were not in their favour. Still it would be foolish to take the fire lances, Heast knew. In the worst of the heat, the black powder would be a threat. It would be waiting to catch the flames around them, waiting to explode on their hips, or in the long tube.
At his horse, the Captain of Refuge pulled out a faded black cloth from his pack. Before him, Anemone wrapped a white cloth around her nose and mouth, but Heast kept his in his hand while he grabbed the pommel of his saddle.
‘Leerans,’ he said, after he had pulled himself awkwardly up. ‘Leerans aren’t all like us,’ he continued to the soldiers around him, to the soldiers who had begun to wrap dark red cloths around their faces after they had mounted. ‘Some are. Leera had a small army. They were well trained, but Leera was not a nation with expansionist plans, and their military reflected that. They did not have the soldiers you will see here. Se’Saera made the force you see here when she emerged. When she began her war, she drew all the people of Leera to her and told them to break apart their towns. She told them to tear down their homes. She told them to destroy their history. She told them that they were her Faithful and that they did not need their old lives. The first of Se’Saera’s soldiers filed their teeth into sharp ends and ate the flesh of the people they killed.’
At the carts, the former Captain of the Queen’s Guard paused. She held the last of the bows in her hand.
‘The Faithful have given up everything to fight for Se’Saera,’ Heast said. ‘For them, there is no home to go back to. There is no land to defend. There is just the word of their god. That is how they will fight when you meet them.
‘If we meet them on open ground before Celp, we will meet them in a wedge. The point of our wedge will be Saelo, Beilase, Zvae and Oya.’ He nodded to the four soldiers who, one by one, returned his nod. ‘It may be that we won’t need to do that. It may be that we will fight in Celp. We will have Anemone scouting as we ride, so we’ll know before we hit the town. But what we can be assured of is that we will be fighting in a burned landscape. Your horses won’t like it. You won’t like it. Use the bows to clear what you can from a distance. The quicker we can find Refuge and finish this, the better.’ Heast pointed to the imprints on the ground, the three groups Fenna had identified. ‘I know that what is there is not a small force, but it doesn’t matter. We leave no one behind.’
Lehana approached Heast, a bow and arrows in one hand, and a small, curling bone-and-brass horn in her other. She handed the latter to him. ‘Fight the way you were trained to fight,’ she said, after she turned from him. ‘Remember who you are. Remember where you are from. That is how we will survive. How we will win.’
‘One last thing,’ Heast said. ‘You might come across a warrior that we call an ancestor. It’ll be bigger than you, it’ll look deformed, and it may even have extra limbs. Se’Saera pulled these soldiers from the Plateau. They were the ancient spirits that were imprisoned there, but she has tied them to the bodies of her Faithful. They are bad news. If you see one, you let Anemone deal with it.’ He paused. ‘Any questions?’
There were not.
Heast wrapped the faded black cloth over his nose and mouth. As he did, Anemone began to unwind the strips of cloth that covered her scarred palms. She had slipped a knife into the edge of the saddle. If things went badly, or if the battle went on for long, her hands would lose their strength, would become slippery with blood, and she would be forced to wrap the reins around her arms and hope that the horse she rode did not bolt or try to throw her.
Heast turned to the thickening smoke and nudged his horse forwards, into it. Was it a Leeran trap, this fire? He doubted it. The tracks were too obvious, too rushed, and the fire too wild, too unconstrained.
The fire had been allowed to grow. Heast was certain of that. The red tint of the skyline revealed how established it was. What he didn’t know was who had set it. If the fire was restricted to Celp, Heast could imagine the Leerans around the ruins, awaiting for Refuge to emerge; but the fire was not localized. In his spyglass he had seen it in trees, the tops burning wickedly. Did that mean Refuge had started the fire? If so, it would be an act of desperation, a suicide tactic, for it had destroyed any secure retreat that they could have made.
What would he find in the smoke? Would it be small parties, or a large force? Would he reach Celp and find a ragged, angry battle, with soldiers half suffocated, or already dead? Would—
The Captain of Refuge stopped his thoughts. He would not get ahead of himself. He would see what caused the fire and he would deal with it, just as he would deal with the Leerans.