Filling the first bowl with water from the stream, he returned to the fire, built a second blaze and fed it steadily with dry wood. When the coals were ready, he placed the bowl on the fire and added a handful of nettles, chopped
chives and several onions. On the first fire he skewered and cooked the rabbit. The meat was greasy and tender, and he ate half of it immediately, tearing the remainder and adding it to his simmering bowl.
At this high altitude the water boiled away swiftly and three times Tarantio was forced to fetch more water from the stream to add to his stew. Bark bowls would not burn – unless the flames of the fire rose above the water line.
Back at the mercenaries’ camp he had left several fine copper cooking pots and various utensils gathered over the years. But when Karis’s lancers had struck there had been no time to think of possessions.
Tarantio lay back, staring up at the sky. It was difficult now to focus on a time when there had been no wars. Almost a third of his life had been spent marching from one battle site to another, while Dace and others fought to hold a town, or take it – charging an enemy line, or resisting a charge.
Up here in the mountains such petty squabbles seemed far away. But then so did the charms of beautiful women like the Lady Miriac. Dace was right. He had fallen in love with her and he thought of her often, remembering the satin softness of her skin and the sweetness of her breath. It mattered nothing that she was a courtesan, a whore for the nobility. He felt he had seen something beyond that, something deeper and more enduring.
‘Such a romantic, you are, brother. At the first glint of gold she would hurl herself on her back and open her legs. Your gold or someone else’s. It would mean nothing to her.’
‘You said she was falling in love with me,’ he reminded Dace.
‘In love with the virgin, I said. That’s what touched her. After a while she would have tired of you.’
‘We’ll never know, will we?’
At dusk Tarantio ate the stew. It was bitter and good, but the memory of his last meal with added salt back among the mercenaries eroded the pleasure. Dace had fallen silent, for which Tarantio was grateful. He could still sense his presence, but the lack of conversation was welcome.
The following morning he continued on his way, across narrow valleys full of alder and birch and pine. The weather had cleared and the sun shone now in a clear sky, the snow on the distant peaks glowing like white flame.
As he walked, his mind was far from battles and war, recalling gentle days with Gatien, researching ancient texts, trying to make sense of the tortured history of this fertile continent. If ever these wars end, I will become a scholar, Tarantio decided.
Even as the thought came to him he could hear Dace’s mocking laughter.
Chapter Two
Three hundred miles to the north-east, at the centre of a new desert of barren rocks, a slender, blond-haired man climbed to the top of what had once been Capritas Hill. His green cloak was torn and threadbare, the soles of his shoes worn thin as paper. Duvodas the Harp Carrier stood at the summit and fought to hold down a rising tide of desolation and despair. His gentle face and soft grey-green eyes reflected the sorrow he felt. There was no magic left in the land. Black and grey mountains bare of earth reared up from the plains like rotting teeth, and Duvodas felt as if he was sitting in the jaws of death. Where once had been sculpted beauty, amid forests and streams and verdant valleys, now nothing remained. The flesh of the land had been stripped to the bone, clawed away by a hand larger than eternity. The four cities of the Eldarin had vanished, and even the whispering wind flowing over the dry rocks could find no memory of their existence. Not a trace. Not a broken cup, not a tombstone, not a child’s toy.