It seemed to Anskar DeVantte as though he were riding with a massive army rather than a mere hundred knights, given the number of pages, servants, farriers, and priests that accompanied them. Each knight had two horses: a heavy, battle-trained destrier that could carry a fully armored knight into battle and fight with its hooves and teeth, and a lighter courser to ride the rest of the time.

Unfortunately, it had started to rain again. Only an hour before, the sky had been blue and cloudless.

“That’s Kaile for you,” Lanuc of Gessa said, passing Anskar on his way to the front. “Frost in the morning, a heat wave in the middle of the day, showers in the afternoon, and lightning storms at night.”

Anskar grimaced. It was hard to know how to dress for the day. This morning—their fifth day out from Sansor—he had been frozen to the bone, but by noon he was drenched with sweat.

As they continued around the great bay, the sea was in a foul mood. Frothing breakers crashed against the pebbled shoreline and sluiced over the groynes. The air was heavy with brine and the cabbagy stench of seaweed. North across the bay, black clouds were stacked tall as mountains. Gulls shrieked overhead, and the few fishing boats still out on the water clawed their way back to shore against the tide.

Knights muttered to one another about a big storm brewing. Some touched their fingertips and thumbs to their chests in a silent prayer for the Five’s protection.

Josac, one of the priests of the Warrior, loudly disagreed. A stout-looking man with thickly muscled forearms and a long plaited mustache, he had a face ruddy from exposure and raked with old scars. When Josac removed his winged helm to scratch his bald head, Anskar saw the thick ridges of a number branded into his scalp: 24.

“The wind’ll change, you’ll see,” Josac told them, and someone snorted in derision. “I’m not just trying to stop you boys and girls from soiling yourselves in panic,” he said in a good-natured voice. Indeed, he had proven to be an amiable companion thus far on the journey, which had surprised Anskar. In his experience, priests of the Warrior were usually serious and prone to violence—especially Beof back at Branil’s Burg, the man who had tried to kill him during the third trial.

“You just need to watch the scudding of the clouds,” Josac said. “I tell you, the winds will change and the storm will blow back out to sea.”

Anskar touched his heels to his horse’s flanks and steered it in between the other riders until he came alongside Josac’s bay palfrey. “How can you tell?” he asked.

“I was a sailor before I became a priest,” Josac said, casting a lingering look out to sea.

“Why did you give it up?”

“Pirates.” A faraway look came into Josac’s eyes. He winced, remembering something, then shook his head and turned his gaze back to the trail.

At first, Anskar feared he had offended the priest, but then Josac said, “Half the crew were butchered and thrown overboard for the sharp-tooths. The rest of us, those young enough to still be useful, were sold into slavery. I ended up being forced to fight in the arenas at Ivrian in the Plains of Khisig-Ugtall. I was good at it—so good I drew the attention of a visiting bishop of the Warrior who had come to Ivrian seeking new blood for the Church. He was impressed by me, so he gave me a way out.”

“No regrets?” Anskar asked.

“About becoming a priest?” Again, Josac looked out to sea. “None at all. Why would I have regrets? How about you? Do you regret signing up for the Order?”

“I was a baby when the Order at Branil’s Burg took me in.”

“On Niyas? You must be—what—sixteen? Seventeen?”

“Nearly eighteen.” Anskar’s birthday—or at least what he had been led to believe by Brother Tion was his birthday—was on the Festival of the Healer, in three weeks’ time.

“So, you were a war baby?” Josac said. “I hear that was a pretty dark war, too. By the Five, the Necromancer Queen must have been an evil bitch. I only wish I’d been there to fight her myself.”

Anskar didn’t want to think about the fact he was Queen Talia’s son. And he certainly couldn’t tell just anyone in the Order—there was no point making things more difficult for himself than they needed to be. For all he knew, his mother’s shade could still be inside him, but he had once more woven intricate wards of dawn-tide sorcery around his mind, preventing her from speaking or appearing to him. He was done with the Necromancer Queen.

“Were you ordained back then?” he asked Josac.

“No, I was fighting in the arenas, though I remember the Traguh-raj preparing for war. Queen Talia made overtures to the people of the Plains of Khisig-Ugtall, but the mainland nations got there first and offered an alliance. Even so, there was very little military support for the Plains from the mainland, and always the risk that a bitter Queen Talia might turn her ire on the Traguh-raj.”

“But she didn’t?” Anskar asked.

“She never got the chance. The Order did itself proud during the war with Niyas, and every mainland merchant, noble, and politician knows it and should be grateful.”

Josac touched his heels to his horse’s flanks and rode ahead.

Before dusk they came within sight of a fishing village. The boats moored at the jetties were buffeted by crashing waves, and villagers scurried around shuttering their timber homes, whose thatched roofs looked as fragile as tents against the power of the storm. Goats bleated from a lean-to within a corral, and cattle pastured in a field lay down beneath swaying trees.

Lanuc made the decision to head for the village and find whatever shelter they could in barns, homes, perhaps even the only stone building Anskar could see. It looked like a church, with its high tower, but nothing about the design spoke of the Five. He wondered then about the other faiths that still clung to the mainland, and what manner of god or goddess these fishing folk prayed to.

Lanuc called Anskar to ride ahead with him, and together they cantered down a gentle slope to the village, where a woman in an oilskin hat and cloak stood waiting.

“It’s no good,” she called above the wind, gesturing at the force of more than two hundred following behind Lanuc and Anskar. “We ain’t got shelter enough for so many, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

They drew rein in front of the woman. She was gray-haired, her face weather-worn and wrinkled.

“Who is the headman?” Lanuc asked.

“That’d be me,” the woman said. “Molly’s my name, and I say we can’t accommodate so many. You got tents?”

Lanuc nodded.

“They’ll do you right enough, on the lee side of yon hill you just came down. That’ll keep the wind off you. But don’t be fooled by all this bluster. The storm’ll turn; you’ll see.”

“How can you be so sure?” Anskar asked.

“I have the ear of Shulni,” Molly said. At Anskar’s blank look, she explained: “Goddess of the bay. Like I said, the lee side of yon hill will give you shelter. When the storm passes, I’ll have fish sent up to you, and a few barrels of beer. Maybe even get the bakers to make extra bread, come morning. It’ll cost you, though.”

“How much?” Lanuc pulled out the coin purse the Grand Master had given him.

“Couple of silvers…” Molly said.

Lanuc leaned over his saddle pommel and placed two coins on her outstretched hand.

“For the fish, that is. The beer’ll be three more, and another couple for the bread. I’ll add it up for you, if you like.”

“No need,” Lanuc said with a sigh. “Why don’t I just make it a gold instead?”

Molly didn’t argue with that and handed back the silvers in exchange for a gold coin.

“But that’s too much,” Anskar objected to Lanuc as Molly shuffled back toward the village.

“Not my money, so why would I care?”

“And Shulni?”

Lanuc turned his horse, and they started back toward the others. “Your first encounter with a rival deity to Menselas?”

“Almost,” Anskar said. “Niklaus du Plessis was a follower of Sylva Kalisia.”

“Her Chosen Sword,” Lanuc said. “How could I forget?”

“He told me that he was tormented by her,” Anskar said. “She visited him in his dreams, yet she never fully gave him what he wanted.”

“That’s women for you,” Lanuc said. “You’re better off without them.”

“But you were married…”

“The exception rather than the rule.”

Though the knights and their retainers made haste in putting up their tents in the shelter of the hill, the wind did indeed turn. A bank of clouds like an inverted mountain range moved ponderously back out to sea, and the lightning that had come so close flickered sporadically in the far distance.

Anskar spotted Josac tightening the guy ropes of his tent. “You were right about the storm.”

The priest glanced at him. “Like I said, I was a sailor once.”

Another man craned his neck to glare at Anskar over Josac’s shoulder. He wore a sodden fur-trimmed cloak and leather pants, and his boots were reinforced with iron bands. His hair was long, his beard thick and full.

Anskar looked away, wondering what he had done wrong. Was it something he’d said to Josac?

He risked another glance. The man had turned away. There was something about him that seemed familiar.

“You’re wondering who he is, aren’t you?” Josac said. “And why he was staring at you?”

“I thought I recognized him,” Anskar said, “but I was mistaken.”

“In part perhaps you were, but you were right that you recognized if not him, then some of his features. Be vigilant, Anskar, because he is a vengeful man. We all are, in a way. Vengeance is one of the excesses of too exclusive a devotion to the Warrior.”

“Vengeful? Why?” Anskar asked, though he wasn’t half as confused as he sounded. His mind was already starting to play catch-up, and his memories were coming together to corroborate what he had started to intuit and what Josac confirmed almost apologetically.

“His name is Gann Harril. He is also a priest of the Warrior and the brother of Beof.”

Beof Harril had been the Warrior’s priest at Branil’s Burg charged with testing the durability of each postulant knight’s newly crafted sword against his massive bejeweled mace. When it was Anskar’s turn to be tested, Beof had come at him hard with strong, killing blows, but Anskar had parried with such force that his sword, Amalantril, had cleaved straight through the haft of Beof’s mace. The Warrior’s priest had been humiliated. Later, Beof had come at Anskar again, this time alone in the dark and with murderous intent. Anskar had defended himself with the dark-tide, severely injuring the priest.

“But how—?” he started.

“How does he know that it was you who wounded his brother? News traveled with your group from Niyas, but even without that, whispers fly. Tongues wag. The Grand Master has eyes and ears in every Order house and stronghold. You know how it is. I knew before Gann did.”

“And you told him?”

“Of course. We are confreres. But don’t worry, I don’t share his views on what happened between you and Beof, and I’ve already spoken to him about curbing his desire for revenge. Gann has been told many times he is out of balance with the other four aspects. He is not an easy man to confront with his failings, however. Many have tried, and all have regretted it.”

“But not you?”

Josac smiled at some private recollection. “He owes me; that’s all I’m prepared to say. But no, I harbor no ill will towards you for Beof. The Bishop of the Warrior, though, will punish Beof severely.” Josac shuddered. “I assume it was self-defense?”

Anskar nodded.

“Beof is a fearsome warrior, but also a bully. He learned the behavior from his older brother, Gann.”

“Gann bullied Beof?” It seemed hard to believe.

“Used to beat him senseless when they were kids. Then, when they grew up, they came close to killing each other on several occasions, which was what got them noticed by the Bishop of the Warrior. They learned harsh discipline during their training to be priests, and they found it was better to turn their strength and anger against their rivals instead of each other. They became allies of a sort. Cross Gann, and you have Beof to reckon with. Cross Beof…”

“I get the picture,” Anskar said. “So what should I do?”

“Keep your eyes peeled, and keep limber.” Josac waggled his fingers in a parody of casting sorcery.

“I’ve sworn to never again use sorcery, other than for shielding and making weapons and armor.”

“Commendable, but not necessarily wise. One thing they teach us in the Warrior’s seminary is never to forgo an advantage. All’s fair in war, they say, and to my mind this is no different.”

Anskar shook his head, then realized he was biting his bottom lip so hard he tasted blood.

“Should I tell Lanuc?”

“Snitching? A warrior fights his own battles, boy. This is your fight, the consequence of your actions. Use your sorcery, I tell you. Either that or grow some balls.”

The promised fish came up from the village before night fell, and fires were set. There was a lot of spitting and smoke due to the wood they collected being wet, but most of the knights had brought dry kindling. Soon, orange glows were dotted about the camp, and the air was filled with the smell of roasting fish.

The beer came too, in an ox-pulled wagon driven by a sullen-looking old man. Hooded lanterns hung from poles at the front of the cart, and in between them came the reddish glow of a pipe the man was smoking as he drove. He unloaded four, not two, barrels. Presumably the headwoman felt guilty about taking Lanuc’s gold coin.

Within minutes of the barrels being tapped, servants scurried around filling tin mugs for their knights, and pretty soon the storm was forgotten amid a hubbub of voices, raucous laughter, and eventually the singing of lewd songs.

After his second beer, Anskar started to relax and decided he could see himself getting used to the campaign life: riding with comrades-in-arms, setting up camp each night, sharing the warmth of a fire, drinking, eating, laughing at bad jokes. Perhaps after another beer, he might laugh as loudly as the rest of the men and women, only he’d decided not to allow himself to get drunk. Not after what Josac had told him about Gann. If he’d gotten himself embroiled in some kind of blood feud, he was going to need his wits about him.

Another chorus of laughter followed Lanuc’s latest joke, which Anskar had missed. He had been thinking about what Josac had said. Should he use sorcery?

His fingers stroked the hilt of Amalantril. He’d already seen where the use of forbidden sorcery could lead, and he never wanted to go there again. So what should he do? Confront Gann? Challenge him?

Anskar knew he was good with a sword, but was he good enough to take on a priest of the Warrior and survive?

“Good evening, Anskar.”

He looked up to see Gisela of Gessa standing beside him, white cloak hugged tightly about her. Her fair hair was braided into rounds that covered her ears, and her gray eyes sparkled with reflected firelight.

Anskar shot to his feet. “What are you doing here?”

“I thought my father and I should spend more time together,” she said, nodding toward Lanuc, “so I put my name forward to join the healers on this campaign.”

Lanuc saw her, and he stood and opened his arms. Gisela went to his embrace. “Sit, daughter,” he said, “and entertain us.” He looked around the group. “She sings very well.”

Gisela stepped back from him, suddenly flustered. “I don’t know if that would be appropriate. I haven’t sung since I was very young, save for choir prayers to the Healer.”

“Sing for us now,” Lanuc said.

Gisela seemed about to refuse, but the others around the fire chanted, “Sing, sing, sing!” She cast a desperate look at Anskar, who couldn’t keep himself from smiling.

And so Gisela sang, captivating her audience with a voice both melodic and haunting. It was a gentle ballad about a lord’s pet hound that gave its life to save the lord’s baby from dead-eyes. The hound fought the creatures off until the lord and his men arrived and then collapsed, blood pouring from scores of wounds, and with its master cradling its limp body, it died.

Tears glistened in Lanuc’s eyes as he watched his daughter. “Your mother used to sing that song to you at night,” he said.

Gisela dipped her head in acknowledgment. Seeing her shudder beneath her robe, Anskar assumed that she was crying too.

A woman knight clapped Gisela on the shoulder and passed her a beer. To Anskar’s surprise, Gisela not only accepted it but downed it in one long pull, and again the onlookers cheered. After that she resumed her singing, only this time choosing popular melodies that others could join in with. As people sang and the beer flowed and the storm fled out to sea, leaving the sky star-spangled and still, Lanuc came around the fire to sit beside Anskar.

“I tried to persuade her not to come,” he said, “but she nags worse than her mother. She misses me, I think. Ordinarily, family members don’t work together, in case their natural preferences interfere with the running of the Order’s affairs and prove an impediment to justice. But this campaign to aid a supposed ally is not regular Order business. If it were, we would have a far larger army, and I would not be leading it.”

“Supposed ally?” Anskar said.

Lanuc gave him a searching look. “If you commanded the mainland’s most powerful Order and a friend appealed to you for help because his kingdom was being overrun by savage sorcerers, would you send merely a token force of a hundred trained knights?”

“Then what is this really about?”

“I suspect the Soreshi of the Ymaltian Mountains are not the sole threat to King Aelfyr’s lands. They may merely be pawns in a far darker game. After what happened with you at the Abbey of the Hooded One, we can’t afford to be complacent. Something has driven the Soreshi to these acts of aggression against the Kingdom of the Thousand Lakes.”

“The Tainted Cabal?”

“Perhaps. The Grand Master’s spies in the area have relayed rumors that the Tainted Cabal have begun to operate in the region.”

“But how are we supposed to fight the Tainted Cabal, especially with such a small force?”

“The Grand Master’s no fool, Anskar. Whenever there’s a problem that requires more finesse than the usual blunt fist of the Order, he sends me and a team of unusual people. Remember when I told you that some within the Order have special talents?”

Anskar glanced around at those listening to Gisela’s singing. “So, what is your daughter’s special power?”

“Gisela is a virgin sworn to celibacy, which makes her one of the elite among the Healers.”

Now Anskar understood some of her initial coldness toward him, and why, after hearing his sordid thoughts, she had told him to find another confessor.

“You must be proud of her,” he told Lanuc. “I only wish that I could make some kind of grand sacrifice to the Five that would make my service feel more worthy.”

“You want to be a celibate?” Lanuc said, clapping Anskar on the shoulder. “I’m told there are some men who willingly make themselves eunuchs for the sake of the Church. I have a sharp knife, if you’d like to borrow it…”

Anskar shook his head. “I was trying to be serious.”

“Ah, then you have discovered one of my special traits,” Lanuc said. “I am seldom serious.”

Anskar let his eyes rove around the group seated at the fire. “Do they all have special powers?”

Lanuc laughed. “It’s not only about power and ability. Often it’s about aptitude or, more often still, attitude. Our company is made up of those who prefer to act than to sit still, who abhor routine and are always looking for the next challenge.”

Anskar nodded. “I understand that. But you still haven’t told me what makes you special.”

“What’s my unusual power? What makes me suited to lead missions such as this? I often wonder that myself.”