The sound of scores of women wailing drifted up to Valanus. He glanced down the hillside to see the crowds milling around the execution site. Two hundred Gath prisoners, their arms nailed to twelve-foot beams, were being hoisted high. They will die quickly, thought Valanus. As their bodies drag down on their arms their throats will constrict, denying air to the lungs. It would have been far more lingering had the general ordered their feet nailed. But Jasaray had been in a good mood since the fall of Goriasa.
He wouldn’t be in such a fine mood when he learned that the traitor, Ostaran, had stolen twelve ships, and escaped across the water with almost two hundred of his followers.
‘Do not think you will be safe, Osta,’ whispered Valanus, his eyes scanning the horizon. ‘We will follow soon.’
In that moment a cold wind blew across the cliffs. Valanus shivered. ‘You could catch a chill here, soldier,’ said a voice. Valanus spun and saw an old Keltoi woman, wrapped in a threadbare shawl.
‘You move silently for one so old,’ he said, embarrassed that she had frightened him.
‘You were lost in thought, Man of Stone. Why do you stare across the water?’
‘It is where the army of Stone is to journey,’ he told her. ‘We are to fight there.’
‘Connavar is there,’ she said, simply. ‘Far to the north, but he is there.’
‘You know him?’
‘We have spoken. And what is it you seek across the water, Valanus?’ she asked. He glanced at her sharply, wondering for a moment how she knew his name. Then he relaxed, for did not everyone now know the name of Goriasa’s commander?
‘I seek fame,’ he told her.
‘And you shall have it,’ she promised. Her laughter was cold, the sound chilling. ‘Oh yes, Valanus. You shall have fame.’