Cynnigig clambered upright, wincing with the effort. Movement in the valley below. Karsa swung around. The ground was shaking, the roar of thunder on all sides now. The tree behind him shook as if struck by a sudden gale. In his mind, the Teblor heard Phyrlis cry out.

The horses came in their hundreds. Grey as iron, larger even than those Karsa’s tribe had bred. Streaming, tossing manes of black. Stallions, flinging their heads back and bucking to clear a space around them. Broad-backed mares, foals racing at their flanks. Hundreds into thousands.

The air filled with dust, lifting on the wind and corkscrewing skyward as if to challenge the Whirlwind itself.

More of the wild horses topped the hill above them, and the thunder suddenly fell away as every beast halted, forming a vast iron ring facing inward. Silence, the dust cloud rolling, tumbling away on the wind.

Karsa faced the tree once more. ‘It seems you need not worry that they near extinction, Phyrlis. I have never seen so many foals and yearlings in a herd. Nor have I ever before seen a herd of this size. There must ten, fifteen thousand head-and we cannot even see all of them.’

Phyrlis seemed incapable of replying. The tree’s branches still shook, the branches rattling in the hot air.

‘You speak true, Karsa Orlong,’ Cynnigig rasped, his gaze eerily intent on the Thelomen Toblakai. ‘The herds have come together-and some have come far indeed in answer to the summons. But not that of Phyrlis. No, not in answer to her call. But in answer to yours, Karsa Orlong. And to this, we have no answer. But now, you must choose.’ Nodding, he turned to study the horses.

‘Karsa Orlong, you spoke earlier of a wooden weapon. What kind of wood?’

‘Ironwood, the only choice remaining to me. In my homeland, we use bloodwood.’

‘And blood-oil?’

‘Yes.’

‘Rubbed into the wood. Blood-oil, staining your hands. They can smell it, Karsa Orlong-’

‘But I have none.’

‘Not on you. In you. It courses in your veins, Karsa Orlong. Bloodwood has not existed in the Jhag Odhan for tens of thousands of years. Yet these horses remember. Now, you must choose.’

‘Bloodwood and blood-oil,’ Cynnigig said. ‘This is an insufficient explanation, Phyrlis.’

‘Yes, it is. But it is all I have.’

Karsa left them to their argument and, leaving his sword thrust upright in the ground, walked down to the waiting horses. Stallions tossed their heads at his approach and the Teblor smiled-careful not to show his teeth, knowing that they saw him as predator, and themselves as his prey. Though they could easily kill me. Among such numbers I would have no chance. He saw one stallion that was clearly dominant among all others, given the wide space around it and its stamping, challenging demeanour, and walked past it, murmuring, ‘Not you, proud one. The herd needs you more than I do.’ He spied another stallion, this one just entering adulthood, and made his way towards it. Slowly, approaching at an angle so that the horse could see him.

A mane and tail of white, not black. Long-limbed, muscles rippling beneath its sleek hide. Grey eyes.

Karsa halted a single pace away. He slowly reached out his right hand, until his fingertips settled on the beast’s trembling bridge. He began applying pressure. The stallion resisted, backing up a step. He pushed the head further down, testing the flexibility of the neck. Still further, the neck bowing, until the horse’s chin almost rested in the space between its breast bones.

Then he withdrew the pressure, maintaining contact as the stallion slowly straightened its neck.

‘I name you Havok,’ he whispered.

He moved his hand down until his fingertips rested, palm upward, beneath its chin, then slowly walked backward, leading the stallion out from the herd.

The dominant stallion screamed then, and the herd exploded into motion once more. Outward, dispersing into smaller groups, thundering through the high grasses. Wheeling around the twin hills, west and south, out once more into the heartland of the Jhag Odhan.

Havok’s trembling had vanished. The beast walked at Karsa’s pace as he backed up the hillside.

As he neared the summit, Cynnigig spoke behind him. ‘Not even a Jaghut could so calm a Jhag horse, Karsa Orlong, as you have done. Thelomen Toblakai, yes, you Teblor are that indeed, yet you are also unique among your kind. Thelomen Toblakai horse warriors. I had not thought such a thing possible. Karsa Orlong, why have the Teblor not conquered all of Genabackis?’

Karsa glanced back at the Jaghut. ‘One day, Cynnigig, we shall.’

‘And are you the one who will lead them?’

‘I am.’

‘We have witnessed, then, the birth of infamy.’

Karsa moved alongside Havok, his hand running the length of its taut neck. Witness? Yes, you are witness. Even so, what I, Karsa Orlong, shall shape, you cannot imagine.

No-one can.

Cynnigig sat in the shade of the tree that contained Phyrlis, humming sofly. It was approaching dusk. The Thelomen Toblakai was gone, with his chosen horse. He had vaulted onto its back and ridden off without need for saddle or even reins. The herds had vanished, leaving the vista as empty as it had been before.

The bent-backed Jaghut removed a wrapped piece of the aras deer cooked the night before and began cutting it into small slices. ‘A gift for you, dear sister.’

‘I see,’ she replied. ‘Slain by the stone sword?’

‘Aye.’

‘A bounty, then, to feed my spirit.’

Cynnigig nodded. He paused to gesture carelessly with the knife. ‘You’ve done well, disguising the remains.’

‘The foundations survive, of course. The House’s walls. The anchor-stones in the yard’s corners-all beneath my cloak of soil.’

‘Foolish, unmindful T’lan Imass, to drive a spear into the grounds of an Azath House.’

‘What did they know of houses, Cynnigig? Creatures of caves and hide tents. Besides, it was already dying and had been for years. Fatally wounded. Oh, Icarium was on his knees by the time he finally delivered the mortal blow, raving with madness. And had not his Toblakai companion taken that opportunity to strike him unconscious… ’

‘He would have freed his father.’ Cynnigig nodded around a mouthful of meat. He rose and walked to the tree. ‘Here, sister,’ he said, offering her a slice.

‘It’s burnt.’

‘I doubt you could have managed better.’

‘True. Go on, push it down-I won’t bite.’

‘You can’t bite, my dear. I do appreciate the irony, by the way-Icarium’s father had no desire to be saved. And so the House died, weakening the fabric…’

‘Sufficiently for the warren to be torn apart. More, please-you’re eating more of it than I am.’

‘Greedy bitch. So, Karsa Orlong… surprised us.’

‘I doubt we are the first victims of misapprehension regarding that young warrior, brother.’

‘Granted. Nor, I suspect, will we be the last to suffer such shock.’

‘Did you sense the six T’lan Imass spirits, Cynnigig? Hovering there, beyond the hidden walls of the yard?’

‘Oh yes. Servants of the Crippled God, now, the poor things. They would tell him something, I think-’

‘Tell who? The Crippled God?’

‘No. Karsa Orlong. They possess knowledge, with which they seek to guide the Thelomen Toblakai-but they dared not approach. The presence of the House, I suspect, had them fearful.’

‘No, it is dead-all that survived of its lifespirit moved into the spear. Not the House, brother, but Karsa Orlong himself-that was who they feared.’

‘Ah.’ Cynnigig smiled as he slipped another sliver of meat into Phyrlis’s wooden mouth, where it slid from view, falling down into the hollow cavity within. There to rot, to gift the tree with its nutrients. ‘Then those Imass are not so foolish after all.’