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  Suddenly, the silence was disturbed. He looked over his shoulder as Gawn marched purposefully towards him, his smart red coat stark against the brown landscape. He might as well have a target painted on his chest, Tarja fumed. As soon as he reached Tarja’s position, he grabbed Gawn’s arm and pulled him roughly down to the ground.

  “I told you to get rid of that damned coat!” he hissed.

  “I am proud of my uniform, Captain. I am a Defender. I do not skulk through the grasslands in fear of barbarians.”

  “You do if you plan to survive out here,” Tarja told him irritably. His own jacket was tucked safely away in his saddlebag, as were the red coats of all his men. He was wearing an old shirt and comfortably broken-in leather trousers and jerkin. Hardly the attire for a ball at the Citadel, but infinitely preferable to being shot by a Hythrun arrow. Tarja absently brushed away a curious beetle come to investigate his forearm and turned back to studying the ford, cursing Jenga. Gawn was only one of many stiff-necked, brand-new officers that Jenga had sent south over the last four years. He sent them to the border for combat experience. Most of them even survived. He had his doubts about Gawn, though. He had been here almost two months and was still trying to cling to the parade-ground traditions of the Citadel.

  “What are we waiting for?” Gawn asked, in a voice that carried alarmingly on the soft breeze.

  Tarja threw him an angry look. “What’s the date? And keep your damned voice down.”

  “It’s the fourteenth day of Faberon,” Gawn replied, rather confused by the question.

  “On the Hythrun calendar,” Tarja corrected.

  Gawn frowned, still annoyed and rather horrified that the first task Tarja had set him to, on his arrival at Bordertown, was learning the heathen calendar.

  “It’s the twenty-first…no, the twenty-second day of Ramafar,” Gawn replied after a moment. “But I fail to see what it—”

  “I know you fail to see what it means,” Tarja interrupted. “That’s why you won’t last long out here. Two days from now it will be the twenty-fourth day of Ramafar, which is the Hythrun Feast of Jelanna, the Goddess of Fertility.”

  “I’m the sure the heathens appreciate the effort you put in remembering their festivals for them,” Gawn remarked stiffly.

  Tarja ignored the jibe and continued his explanation. “Our esteemed southern neighbour, the Warlord of Krakandar, whose province begins on the other side of that stream, is traditionally required to throw a very large party for his subjects.”

  “So?”

  Tarja shook his head at the younger man’s ignorance. “Lord Wolfblade thinks that it’s far cheaper to feed the ravening hordes on nice, juicy Medalonian beef, than cut into his own herds. It happens every Feast Day. That’s why you need to learn the Hythrun calendar, Gawn.”

  Gawn still looked unconvinced. “But how do you know they’ll come through here? He could cross the border in any number of places.”

  “The farms over there don’t get raided much. The families are probably heathens, or they’re too close to Bordertown. The farms to the north and further east, however, get raided on a regular basis.”

  “Heathens! If you know that, why don’t you arrest them!”

  Tarja scanned the ford as he spoke. “I don’t know that they’re heathens, Gawn, I only suspect it. The last time I checked the Defenders needed a bit more than suspicion to arrest otherwise law-abiding, hardworking people. We’re here to guard the border from the Hythrun, not persecute our own people.”

  “To place the law of a god above the law of the Sisterhood is treason,” Gawn reminded him officiously.

  Tarja didn’t bother to reply. There was a line of trees south-east of them which could easily conceal a raiding party. There was no telltale glint of metal to alert him to their presence, no betraying nicker from a horse, or even the soft lowing of stolen cattle on the breeze. But they were out there. Tarja trusted his instincts over his eyes. He knew the Hythrun Warlord was waiting, as he was, for his chance to cross the stream.

  Tarja had been on the border long enough to develop a grudging respect for Lord Wolfblade, and kept an unofficial score in his head. By his calculation he was currently one up on the Warlord. The day before Gawn’s arrival, he had foiled a raid on a farm not far from the ford a few days before the Feast of Kalianah, the Goddess of Love. Tarja thought wryly that if the Hythrun didn’t worship so many gods, his life would have been very boring indeed.

  Gawn fidgeted impatiently, uncomfortable with the waiting, and no doubt concerned that his uniform was getting dirty. Finally he stood up, disdainfully brushing dirt and grass seeds from his red coat.

  “This is pointless!” he declared loudly.

  The black-fletched Hythrun arrow took Gawn in the left shoulder. Tarja let out a yell as Gawn screamed. Gawn clutched at the protruding arrow, blood seeping through his fingers. Tarja glanced at the young captain and quickly judged that the wound was not fatal, so he left him where he fell. Tarja’s troop of forty Defenders broke from the trees behind him with a savage war cry. From the tree line he had been watching so closely, the Hythrun raiders broke cover, driving a dozen or more red spotted cattle.

  Tarja quickly judged the distance to the border and realised it was going to be a close call. He turned back to his men, waiting impatiently as his sergeant, Basel, led his mount towards him at a gallop, hardly slowing as he approached. Tarja began to run forward as they neared him. The sergeant dropped the short lead rope as he grabbed at the pommel of the saddle. He let the horse’s momentum carry him forward and swung up into the saddle on the run. He could barely keep his seat as his feet searched for the flying stirrups and he untied the reins from the pommel.

  The Warlord’s raiding party was cutting across the open plain towards the stream, riding at a gallop, stampeding the stolen cattle before them. Tarja and his men, leaning forward in their saddles, rode diagonally at a dead run to cut them off. The Hythrun knew that the Defenders were forbidden to cross the border. The stream represented safety and the fifty or more Raiders had only one aim in mind—to reach it before the Defenders could intercept them.

  Tarja caught the tail end just as the first of the Hythrun were splashing over the ford to safety. The cattle ran blindly, too spooked to stop for anything as insignificant as a shallow stream. As soon as they were safely across, the Raiders in the lead ignored their booty, and wheeled their mounts around in a tight circle. They plunged back over the ford to hold off the Defenders while their comrades made the crossing.

  The opposing forces were suddenly too intermingled for them to risk their short bows. Steel rang against steel as Tarja plunged through the melee, looking for Damin Wolfblade. He spied the fair head of his adversary at almost the same time as the Warlord caught sight of him. The Hythrun turned his mount sharply and galloped to meet the Medalonian captain.

  Tarja ignored the battle around him as he raced to engage the Warlord, although a part of him realised that more and more of the Hythrun had reached the safety of the ford. Damin came at him with a bloodcurdling cry, wielding his longsword with consummate skill. He dropped his reins, guiding his magnificent golden stallion with his knees, as Tarja blocked the blow, jarring his arm to his shoulder. He parried another bone-numbing strike and quickly countered with a killing stroke that Damin barely deflected at the last moment. The Warlord was laughing aloud and Tarja knew his own face was set in a feral grin as he traded blows with him. They were so evenly matched, had done this so many times before, it was as much a part of the game as the cattle raids.

  “You lose this time, Red Coat!” Damin shouted, as he suddenly steered his mount from under Tarja’s blow, which would have taken his arm off at the shoulder had it connected. Tarja glanced around and realised that almost all the Hythrun were over the ford, although several were nursing bloody wounds. His own men milled about in frustration, just as weary and bloodied, as they watched the enemy escape. Wolfblade wheeled his horse around, before splashing over the stream to safety, a
nd saluted Tarja impudently with his sword from the other side.

  “That makes us even, Red Coat!” Apparently Tarja was not the only one keeping score.

  The Hythrun raiders wheeled around and galloped away from the border to gather their stolen cattle, whooping victoriously, taunting the Defenders.

  Tarja let out a yell of frustration as he watched them ride away. If only that parade ground fool had kept his head down. He cursed Gawn under his breath as the Hythrun disappeared into the trees on their side of the border.

  “Why in the name of the Founders can’t we follow them?” Basel demanded as he rode up to Tarja. His sleeve was torn and soaked with blood from a long, shallow cut, but the sergeant appeared too angry to notice he had been wounded.

  “You know the answer to that, Basel,” Tarja reminded him, his chest heaving. “We’re under strict orders not to cross the border.”

  “A stupid order given by stupid women who sit in the Citadel with no idea what happens outside their bloody sewing circle!”

  In anyone else’s hearing, such a comment would have earnt him a whipping, but Tarja knew how he felt. He shared the man’s frustration. All the border troops did.

  “Be careful Gawn doesn’t hear you voice such sentiments, my friend,” he warned.

  Basel scratched at his greying beard and glanced back towards the red-coated figure stumbling through the waist-high grass towards them. Gawn clutched his arrow-pierced shoulder, and called out for assistance.

  “One could almost wish the Hythrun were better marksmen,” the sergeant remarked wistfully.

  “I suspect they’ll get many more opportunities to use him for target practice. In the meantime, you’d better get Halorin to take that arrow out of his shoulder. The last thing I need is Gawn whining about a festering wound. Then we’d best see how much damage Wolfblade did to the farmsteaders.”

  The trail left by the Hythrun was not hard to follow. Tarja led his men along the raider’s path for several hours before they reached the small farm that had been the target of the raid. The Warlord never raided the same farm twice in succession—he preferred to leave his victims time to recover before he struck again.

  Tarja urged his horse to a canter as the smell of burning thatch reached him. Damin Wolfblade was not a particularly vicious man. He was certainly an improvement on his predecessor, who had been known to crucify his victims. If the farmsteaders offered no resistance, he rarely did more than destroy a few fences and take his pick of the cattle.

  As they rode into the small yard surrounding the farmhouse, Tarja was shocked by the devastation. The house was gutted. In the smouldering ruin only the stone fireplace still stood. Where the barn had been was nothing but a forlorn, blackened framework that threatened to topple at any moment. Tarja dismounted slowly, shaking his head.

  “We didn’t have no choice, Cap’n.”

  Tarja turned at the sound. Leara Steader, the owner of the farm, walked towards him from the gutted house. Her homespun dress was torn and filthy, her face soot-streaked, her eyes dull with grief. Her arms hugged her thin, shivering body, despite the heat of the late afternoon sun.

  “You know better than to fight them, Leara,” he said, handing his reins to Basel. “What happened? Where is Haren?”

  She stared at him blankly before answering. “Haren’s dead.”

  Tarja took Leara’s arm and led her to the well. “What happened?” he asked again, as he carefully sat her down. The normally tough farmsteader looked fragile enough to break.

  “Haren fought them,” Leara told him in a monotone. “Said we couldn’t let them take the cattle this time. Said we wouldn’t be able to pay our taxes if they took the cattle.” She took the ladle of water he offered her and sipped it mechanically, as if it was an effort to swallow, before she continued. “He met them at the gate. Told them to go away, to leave us alone. Told them he’d fight them. He cut one of them with his sickle. They laughed at him. Then they killed him.”

  Tarja urged another sip of water on her, wishing he had something stronger to offer the woman. He called Ritac over, leaving Leara by the well staring numbly into the distance.

  “See if you can find Haren’s body. We’ll burn it before we leave.” Ritac nodded without a word and went off to carry out his orders. Tarja returned to Leara and squatted down in front of her. “Why, Leara? You know we never tax those who’ve been raided. Why not let them take the cattle?”

  “Last patrol that came through told us it weren’t the law. Told us we’d have to pay, no matter what. Said things would change, now that there was new officers here.”

  “Who said that?” Tarja asked curiously. The practice of not taxing victims of Hythrun raids was one that predated Tarja’s posting to the border and he had never thought to question it. Strictly speaking, the victims were not exempt from levies due to hardship. It was just that the Defenders chose not to enforce that particular law. These people suffered enough from the Hythrun, without making it harder for them by taking what little they had left for the Sisterhood.

  Leara looked up and pointed at Gawn, who still sat on his horse in the middle of the yard, holding his wounded arm gingerly. “It were him.”

  “Ritac!” Leara jumped at Tarja’s sudden shout.

  The corporal hurried over to them. “Sir?”

  “Go with Mistress Steader and see if anything can be salvaged before we leave.” Ritac’s eyes widened at the anger in Tarja’s voice. He helped the woman to her feet and led her towards the house. Tarja crossed the yard in five angry steps. He grabbed Gawn by his red coat and jerked him out of the saddle.

  “What the Founders—” Gawn cried as he hit the ground with a thud, jarring his already wounded shoulder.

  “You stupid, miserable, son-of-a-bitch,” Tarja growled, reaching down to pull Gawn to his feet. The captain cried out as his shoulder wound began bleeding afresh. “Verkin sent you out to familiarise yourself with the border farms.” He slammed his fist into Gawn’s abdomen. The younger man stumbled backward with a cry, doubling over with the pain.

  “How many more, Gawn?” Tarja punctuated his words with another blow, this one to Gawn’s jaw. The punch lifted the captain off his feet and he landed heavily on his back. Sobbing with pain and outrage, he scuttled backwards along the ground to escape Tarja’s wrath, crying out with every movement of his wounded shoulder. “How many more farmsteaders will die because you decided things were going to change, now that you’ve arrived on the border?” Tarja bent down and hauled Gawn to his feet. “What gives you the right—”

  “The right?” Gawn sputtered, stumbling backwards out of Tarja’s reach. “It’s the law! What gives you the right to flaunt it? You’re the one who lets these people off paying their taxes! You’re the one who lets heathens go unpunished! You’re the one—”

  Tarja did not wait to find out what else he was guilty of. He smashed his clenched fist into the young captain’s face with all the force he could muster. With an intensely satisfying, bone-crunching thump, Gawn dropped unconscious at his feet. Shaking his hand to ease the sting, Tarja turned back to his men, who had all suddenly found something else to do. Ritac hurried to him and glanced at the unconscious captain, before looking at Tarja.

  “Did you find Haren?”

  Ritac shook his head. “Mistress Leara says they threw him into the house before they set it on fire. He’s had his Burning at least.”

  Tarja frowned. It was a measure of the Warlord’s anger that they had burned Haren’s corpse. Hythrun considered the Medalonian practice of cremation a barbaric and sacrilegious custom. Wolfblade must have been in a rage, if he ordered a body burned.

  “Let’s get out of here then,” Tarja announced, flexing his still-aching fist as he walked back towards the house.

  “Er…what about Captain Gawn, sir?” Ritac called after him. “He appears to be unwell.”

  He glanced over his shoulder at the corporal. “That arrow wound must be worse than it looks,” Tarja replied calmly. “Tie
him to his saddle.”

  Ritac didn’t even blink. “Aye. Nasty things, those Hythrun arrows.”

  It was another four days before Tarja and his men arrived back in Bordertown. They had taken a detour to deliver Leara to her sister’s farmstead, before heading home.

  Gawn regained consciousness and had barely spoken a word to anyone, although he was obviously in pain. He now had a broken nose and two rather impressive black eyes to accompany his arrow wound.

  Bordertown was the southernmost town in Medalon, located near the point where the borders of Fardohnya, Hythria and Medalon met. Their detour meant entering the town by the North Road, past the busy docks on the outskirts of the town.

  Harsh shouts, muttered curses and the sharp smell of fish permeated the docks as they rode by. Sailors and traders, riverboat captains and red-coated Defenders swarmed over the wharves that were lapped by the broad silver expanse of the Glass River.

  To Tarja, the docks were about the worst thing he had ever smelled in his life and every time he rode past them, he wondered at those who found so much romance on the river.

  They rode towards the centre of the town past wagons and polished carriages clattering and clanking along the cobbled street lined by taverns and shops. The buildings were almost all double-storeyed, with red tiled roofs and balconies that overlooked the street below, festooned with washing hung out to dry. Rickety temporary stalls with tattered awning covers were set up in the gaps between the shops which sold a variety of food, copper pots and even exotic Fardohnyan silk scarves. There were beggars too—old, scabby men and pitifully thin young boys, missing an arm, a leg, or an eye. Occasionally, he caught sight of a Fardohnyan merchant with his entourage of slaves and his gloriously exotic court’esa dressed in little more than transparent silk and a fortune in gems.

  Tarja forgot how much he disliked Bordertown every time he left it, and was surprised that after four years, he had still not grown accustomed to it. He preferred the open plains—even the dangerous game he played with the Hythrun Warlord.