‘I am all right now, my friend,’ said Gaise, uncocking the pistols and laying them on the floor. ‘I had a … nightmare.’ He shivered and rubbed a hand across his face. It came away wet with sweat. ‘What brings you here, Mulgrave? It is not dawn yet.’
‘Sad news, sir. Word has just reached us that Lord Buckman has died in his sleep.’
Gaise sighed. He did not know the man well, but he felt a sense of deep loss. ‘He was too old for campaigning,’ he said. ‘Yet without him we would have been ripped apart. Damn, but I liked the old man.’
‘He was a fine gentleman, and a brave one. He’ll be hard to replace.’ Mulgrave reached out, placing his hand on Gaise’s brow. ‘You are very pale, sir, and you are still sweating. Perhaps I should fetch the surgeon.’
‘It is not necessary. The dream was very real. I shall be fine now.’ ‘Would it help to talk of it, sir?’
Gaise shook his head. ‘No.’ Rising he pulled on his heavy grey topcoat. ‘Let’s see if we can find some breakfast.’
Winter Kay, Lord Winterbourne, was a warrior in the truest sense. The Lord of the Redeemers, and a Knight of the Sacrifice, he lived only for war. For such a man ultimate victory would be anathema. Victory would mean an end to war, a passing of glory and a life thereafter of tedious mediocrity. War was life lived to the fullest. It brought out the best in men.
As a younger man he had not fully understood this awesome fact. Deep down, however, he had sensed it. All his life he had lusted after combat. Before he was twenty he had fought three duels, two with sword, one with pistol. He had ridden with the Knights of the Sacrifice in the eastern wars, taking part in the sack of Alterin, and the Battle of Skeyne. He had been second in command at the massacre of Shelsans, when two thousand devotees of the New Tree cult had been put to the sword, or taken alive and burned.
It was here that the Source had blessed Winter Kay and delivered into his hands the Orb of Kranos.
In the years that followed he had taken the Orb on all his travels, gathering to him other knights pledged to fight for the honour of the Source. He had hoped his younger brother, Gayan, would have been among their number. But he had been slain by a Highlander at the cathedral city of Eldacre. It was a source of constant sorrow to Winter Kay.
In time he had formed the Redeemers; the finest of the knights. And he had learned how to feed the magic of the Orb, so that it in turn could empower his Redeemers. Mortal wounds healed overnight, strength and speed were enhanced. It was too early yet to tell, but Winter Kay also believed that even the ageing process was slowed. At forty-nine he could still ride, fight and react with the same speed and strength as when he was in his twenties. And, more than this, the power of the Orb allowed its followers to free themselves from the shackles of the flesh, their spirits soaring out into the skies, travelling wherever they wished. Winter Kay himself gained even more, for he was never far from the skull. At night visions came to him in his sleep, bright and vivid. He saw a great city, and palaces of marble. Then there were the blessed times that the ghost of Kranos himself would speak to him, filling his mind with promises of a golden tomorrow, a time of immortality and excess.
Only one small cloud marred Winter Kay’s horizon.
Gaise Macon.
Was he the man with the golden eye the priest had prophesied?
‘I will go gladly, Winter Kay. Which is more than can be said for you, when the one with the golden eye comes for you.’
Winter Kay sat in his tent staring down at the walnut case, and the two silver-inlaid pistols nestling there. Gaise Macon would not be a danger after this afternoon. Jerad Person was a coward, but he was also a fair shot. At twenty paces he would put a ball into the young man’s chest and that would be an end to it.