The harsh northern spring crept toward an only slightly warmer summer, and the floodwaters of melting snow receded. The crown prince and his Thorns struck east until they reached the Salt River, then turned south to Notch Crossing. Unfortunately, when they arrived repairs to the village’s bridge had barely begun. They continued south, sticking to the river, scouting for a viable ford and hoping to find one without having to ride all the way to the Landing.

  Two nights later, they came to a high riffle just ahead of a bend, where the brown waters reached the horses’ bellies. The princes and the bastard of West Crag were practiced enough horsemen to keep their feet out of the flow while urging their mounts across with nothing but reins, but the rest suffered through the icy waters pouring into their boots.

  Sketcher was so big and his stirrups so far let down that he had no choice in the matter; he came out the other side soaked to the knee.

  “Might as well have swam it,” he muttered.

  “Try that next time,” Rake told him. “I bet you’ll think otherwise then.”

  Sketcher started to tell him what to do with his wager when the war hound bounded out of the river and shook off, happily showering them all and eliciting a round of shouts and cursing.

  Despite the occasional annoyance, the enormous mastiff earned his place among the Thorns. When they stopped for a day, Hare would show him around their camp, and at intervals the war hound would suddenly leave the fire to patrol the perimeter. Even when he appeared to be asleep during the late watches, a stray sound would have him raising his head to listen.

  Izak was skeptical of the dog’s ability to tell a threatening noise from a meaningless one until the night the monster galloped away from the fire growling and tore the throat out of a panther stalking the horses.

  “He needs a name,” Gray said the next evening as they broke camp. “A fighter that useful can’t go around answering to Hey, Dog.”

  “Destrier.” Rake hooked a thumb a little distance away. “The piles he leaves behind are as big as a destrier’s droppings.”

  “Flatch,” Izak proposed. “Short for Flatulence, and equally valid.”

  Hare threw his saddle over his mount. “Not if you would stop feeding him salt pork.”

  “He likes it.”

  “Ugly would suit him,” Gray suggested.

  Dolo stopped chewing long enough to say, “So would Jowls.”

  “Slobber,” Sketcher said. “It’s his favorite thing to do.”

  Rake shook his head. “Second-favorite. Humper.”

  “Sleepy.”

  “Beggar.”

  “Mangy.”

  “Flea Carrier.”

  Hare came to the war hound’s rescue. “He looks like my father’s old hound Tankard. Bigger though, much bigger. He could be Tankard’s bastard. We should call him Tankard.”

  “Dyre Killer’s more fearsome,” Dolo said, pointing what was left of his bread at the panther carcass. “And he’s already earned it.”

  “That wasn’t a dyre,” Etian spoke up from the edge of the river where he was washing.

  “How could you tell? It could’ve just been in its panther form.”

  Izak smirked. “Because your crown prince used to live in the pit houses. He knows every dyre from here to Siu Carinal.”

  “Because it’s too small to be an adult and too muscular to be an adolescent.” Etian sheeted river water from his face and forearms, then put his glasses on. “Dyrepanthers are twice the size of their natural counterparts. And they don’t usually roam this far west.”

  “Tankard’s the best name we’ve got,” Hare said, still stuck on the subject of the dog.

  Due to repetition more than anything else, Tankard was the name that stuck.

  ***

  Five nights east of the Salt River, Blacktower stood watch over the northern border. The watchtower was no fortress, only a crumbling lookout meant to be manned by a handful of soldiers. It had taken its name from the fact that it was too small for a ghost city. At night, the sky overhead was a cloth of black velvet that stretched on forever.

  In years past, patrols had ridden regularly between the Weir and Blacktower, and between Blacktower and Cedrion’s Abandoned Wall. In recent times, however, the fighting had become concentrated on the western side of the Salt River, and only the occasional troublemakers were sent from the king’s army to man the old watchtowers as punishment. Few ever made it to the lookouts. An unknown number were killed on the journey by enemy scouts or raiders, and the remainder deserted.

  A small herd of horses nosed the sodden ground around Blacktower’s base. Likely more than the lonely lookout had ever hosted at one time. No man stood at the top of the battlements where he could be outlined by the full moon, but every now and then as Etian and his Thorns rode up, the crown prince caught movement. The occasional puff of smoke escaped from an archer loop on the second level.

  “Who goes there?” a gruff voice demanded when they got within shouting distance. The words came from the yawning darkness behind the open mouth of a hanging iron-banded oak door.

  “Can’t you see his lenses?” came the answer from above, called down from the watchtower’s lookout. “They make a beautiful target, shining in the moonlight like that.”

  “Well, if it isn’t Josean.” The first speaker prowled out the door, a nocked arrow pointed down at the stone steps. Arnic had a lazy eye, but that wouldn’t have stopped him from putting a shaft through the center of either of Etian’s lenses if he’d wanted to. “And would you look at that—he’s returned to us.”

  Etian smiled his first smile in a long time. He’d come to know his Thorns over the past few months, but he’d spent nearly a year fighting and freezing alongside the pack of mangy mongrels awaiting him in the watchtower.

  His Thorns weren’t laughing. Izak had unhooked his shield from his saddle, and Sketcher had strung his own bow. No swordsman liked an archer until he knew they were on his side.

  From the tower roof, Marit whistled. “Looks like he brought us an army of soft little girls. Hey Josie, which one of them’s for me?”

  “Come down and find out.” Rake vaulted sportingly from his saddle, his longsword sliding free of its sheath. “This here is Steel Kiss. She’s been aching to drink some archer blood.”

  Hoots from inside the tower.

  At a word from Etian, the hotblooded Thorn put away his blade, and the rest of them dismounted. The crown prince had taken the same ribbing and disrespect when he led the king’s levied armies north to Siu Ferel. The hardened soldiers on the front had made it clear that they weren’t happy taking orders from a snot-nosed princeling half their age—or as Churl had once put it, a widdle babe who probably still needed his nurse to shake for him whenever he took a piss. But Etian had earned their respect; his Thorns would have to do the same.

  While they picketed their horses with the archers’ mounts, Hare took Tankard on a stroll around the herd to show the war hound what he was guarding.

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  Despite Etian vouching for the men inside, Izak refused to let him into the tower first. The Commander of the Crown Prince’s Thorns led the way inside, followed by Sketcher. The iron-banded door stood stuck on a high stone in the floor, so they were forced to sidle through. The chamber there was barely big enough for all of them to cram inside, most of the space given to the slanting stone stair. Dim firelight flickered from the landing up above, and the scent of roasting meat drifted down to them.

  “Handsome Jeik,” Etian guessed.

  Arnic shrugged. “He said he’s not going into pointy-ear territory to die without a warm meal in his belly.”

  “Can’t fault him for that.”

  They followed the archer up to the next level. It wasn’t a proper room any more than the first chamber had been, but it widened out enough that a man would have to cross the length of it before continuing up the rickety wooden stairs to the roof on the opposite side.

  Near the center of the room, Handsome Jeik stooped over a small cookfire poking at a rabbit and two quail spatchcocked on sticks. The fire threw nasty shadows across his craggy, scar-crossed visage, and made the few spots of beard that still grew look like thickets hemmed in by harrowed farmland.

  “I know you said no fires, Josie,” the ugly soldier started when he saw Etian, “but hear me out.”

  Etian snorted. “You don’t listen to me, so why should I listen to you? The ban on fires was for after we’re in Helat territory.”

  As his Thorns filled the second level, the soldiers joined them from the rest of the tower, archers, pike men, and ax men, and Etian made the introductions. Handsome Jeik’s cousin, the potbellied Churl. Barrick, the best woodsman Etian had ever met. Tamer, whose name was in reality Timmer but who claimed to have tamed the fighting on the northern front for a whole night and half a day with a comic song he’d kept inventing new verses for. Cabalius, Slackstring, and Bones. The white-skinned, white-haired, Lathan Red-Eyes. Hack, who had ridden north from Siu Carinal to gather the men here while Etian was grafting his Thorns.

  The new Thorns made a striking contrast against the seasoned soldiers. They looked like a bunch of sleek young panthers turned out in a cage with a pack of hoary wolves worn lean by years of hardship and mean by years of fighting. Marit, the youngest soldier among them, had five years on Izak, Etian’s oldest Thorn.

  “Where’s Jarit?” Etian asked, looking around the fire.

  “Helat scout got Jarit before Jarit got him,” Churl said darkly.

  “I paid the sun-worm back in kind.” Marit pulled a string out of his worn, roughspun shirt. Hanging from the rawhide were a pair of rotting, shriveled ears. “I’m going to give them to our ma when I get back home. Hopefully they won’t stink so bad by then.”

  Gray stepped in to see better. “Are those really Helat ears?”

  “They ain’t fox ears, boy.”

  A murmur ran through the Thorns. None of them had ever seen a betrayer. Before he had led the king’s army north, Etian had only seen their ancestral enemy in illuminated storybooks. The pointed top of their ears wasn’t as noticeable behind a swinging battle ax as it was strung on a rawhide.

  When everyone had had a good look, Marit tucked the gruesome necklace back into his shirt. Handsome Jeik announced that the meat was done enough and started cutting pieces. From his provisions, Etian took two loaves of bread and a wedge of hard cheese and added those to the meal.

  “Strong gods love you, Josie.” Handsome Jeik hooked a handful of a greasy rabbit haunch around Etian’s shoulder and giving the prince a shake. “I can’t remember the last time I had a decent chunk of bread.”

  “Don’t get used to it. We’ve got provision enough to feed us for a fortnight—if we skimp on the rations. After that, it’s back to whatever game is running around Helat territory.”

  “Might be we’ll come across a fat little village before then,” Cabalius said hopefully.

  “You keep thinking that, Cabbie.” Slackstring pulled out his dirk to pick gristle from what remained of his brown teeth. “In fact, hold your breath ’til we get there.”

  The Thorns couldn’t relax with armed men clustered around their master. It didn’t matter that Etian trusted these men in particular with his life. With a quiet word from Izak, the Thorns spread themselves through the landing room, each of them within blade range of a soldier.

  They ate, and after a while, Tamer began to sing a song about a bull and three maids that the Etian and the soldiers had heard at least a hundred times. Rake caught on to the true meaning of the song immediately and began making obscene gestures to illustrate the more flowery portions. That loosened the tension somewhat, though the vigilance of the younger troops remained heightened.

  Izak posted Sketcher and Gray on either side of Etian, then climbed the wood steps to Blacktower’s roof to take the first watch.

  Arnic made to take Izak’s empty spot, but Gray stopped him.

  “It’s all right,” Etian said. “If he wanted murder me, he could have done it a thousand times during the battle of Siu Ferel.”

  “Give me the arrows and that knife,” Gray told the archer.

  Reluctantly, Arnic unarmed himself to the Thorn, then sat beside Etian. The song about the maids and the bull had become a sad, warbling lament of a fearsome knight whose fair lady had been carried off by the Helat savages.

  “Did you stop through Dovetail?” Arnic asked, his voice low so as not to carry over the singing.

  Etian nodded. They had passed through the little village on the way up from Siu Patanal. He, Hare, and Dolo had ridden ahead while the rest of his Thorns were digging the baggage train out of another wagon-swallowing mudhole.

  “She was still there. She has five children now, Arnic. One’s a babe.”

  The archer cursed under his breath. “Well, I can’t expect a good woman like that wait forever, can I? Nine years, that’s a long while.” He scratched his bearded jaw. “Was there… Did she have someone else or…?”

  “It looked like she had a man, though I didn’t see him.”

  “Aw, Leza.” Arnic sighed. “Hope the cad’s at least taking care of her.”

  “She looked well, and the children were healthy.”

  “Likely the older two don’t even remember me.”

  Etian glared into the dying fire. “We’re going to end this night-forsaken war. Then you can go home and remind them.”

  A sad, lopsided smile twisted the archer’s face.

  “Might be better for all of ’em if I don’t.” He slapped Etian on the shoulder. “You’re a good warrior, Josean, but you’re still young for all that. You don’t know yet that you can’t take back what’s lost. Best to move on and find something new.”

  ***

  Without a ghost city impeding the view from the watchtower’s lookout, Izak could see well into enemy territory. Trees and more trees, all potentially crawling with Helat. He wondered how far away Etian’s soldiers had killed that scout.

  The white-haired, white-skinned archer had the watch for the soldiers, but when Izak asked him for details, the man only shrugged and made some gestures.

  “Mute?” Izak guessed.

  The white archer shook his head. Even the man’s eyelashes were a creamy shade. He wasn’t elderly—given his crow’s feet around his red eyes and the hair receding from around his widow’s peak, Izak guessed the archer was in his middle years—he was just eerily colored.

  “Aha. The strong, silent type.”

  Another headshake, this one with a smirk. The archer opened his mouth, and Izak fought not to recoil. The man’s tongue was gone.

  “I thought you weren’t a mute.”

  The archer made a series of grunts and moans that must have been words if only they’d had a tongue to define them. Then the same sound repeatedly. He was chuckling.

  Once Izak got over the surprise, he joined in. “For a man with no tongue, you certainly seem to enjoy splitting hairs.”

  Izak wouldn’t have guessed a man with no tongue could belly laugh, but the white archer managed.

  “How many times were you attacked on the way to Blacktower?” Izak asked when the hilarity had died down.

  The archer held up one finger.

  “The attack that killed your man? Was the scout alone or was his party close behind?”

  The dual options made it a little harder to answer, but Izak finally understood that the archer was trying to tell him the scout had been alone.

  Izak leaned on Loss and looked out over the night-black trees again. Hazerial had made it very clear that there should be no survivors left to spread the tale as they cut their way to the imperial city. Etian’s plan for the Night of Judgment relied on getting inside the palace before news of their arrival did.

  Perhaps Izak should have felt differently about killing Helat, but he had the same tightness in his chest and stomach that he’d felt every time he was about to use the royal blood magic to torture or execute a Child of Night before the court. He wasn’t stupid enough to pretend the villages they came across would be full of armed men. There would be women, children, and elderly, and not one of them could be left alive.

  During one of their last strategy meetings, Izak had suggested taking noncombatants as bloodslaves, but Etian had dismissed that out of hand. There would be no extraneous men in their troop to bring captives back to the Kingdom of Night, and dragging prisoners along with them would create even more potential complications. It only took one shout to send an entire village running for weapons or fleeing on horseback.

  In any case, Izak wasn’t too sure that servitude as a bloodslave was preferable to death. The soul and the will were torn away in the sacramental, and only the husk remained.

  He thought of the gore-soaked bedchamber in Shamasa’s barracks, pacing restlessly, unable to leave, trapped by his brother’s order. Standing in the bailey, chained by the grafting and unable to do anything while Seleketra suffered under Hazerial’s twisted games.

  Much more of that, and I’ll be a husk, too. Maybe I already am. The look on his friend’s face as they stood guard outside Kelena’s wedding chamber flashed through his mind. And Alaan’s on his way. A worse thought followed: It was a mercy Lathe died before she could become one, too.

  No one called grafting a Thorn “slavery.” Much was made of the fact that a Thorn still had his own will—most of the time—and little was made of the fact that he didn’t when the man who held his thornknife and his soul said otherwise.

  Boots shook the rickety wood stair, and a moment later, Rake jogged onto the tower roof, his breath puffing clouds into the chill night.

  “Sketcher sent me to relieve you.” Shivering, the wiry Thorn pulled his cloak tighter against the wind. “Etian wants to discuss morrow night’s moves with his Commander of Thorns and chief soldiers.”

  As he passed Rake, Izak jerked a thumb at the white archer. “Don’t let this one talk your ear off.”

  The sound of the tongueless man’s laughter followed him down the stairs.