There wasn’t much more to say after that. They cleared the table, Xiun put out his bedroll in the front room, and they bade each other good night.

  Sleep didn’t come. Ehrban had always shared a bedroom: first with Ytharn when they were small, then with Xiun after Uncle Zhuain had taken them in, and then there was the novice dormitory in the abbey of Saint Celund. Later, his nights were split between Pia in their apartment near the University and his sparse cell in the abbey. Even there he’d always been aware of the living, breathing spirits of his brothers and sisters never more than a knock away. During the campaign against Barsland, even these spurious notions of privacy disappeared.

  But now, after four years by himself, the sense of another living human being so close by was stifling.

  The night air outside was cool against Ehrban’s face. He walked around the hut, away from the valley where the village lights were a heartening glow, to the back, where the mountains blackened the horizon to the North.

  The sky was vast and very dark. Against it Ehrban felt small. He relished the feeling. To be nothing, and no one… Not a holy knight sworn to Ruoi and tasked with protecting the lives of the innocent. Not a captain in the army of Saint Celund with the command of two hundred men and women under him. Not a hero of Ungberg or the damned of Dnisenfeld. Not one of the only four surviving paladins of Saint Celund.

  Not someone on whom the lives and happiness of his three fellow knights depended.

  Kilhelm, lost. Inself and Falara dead. Yuan, dead.

  The old, worn words came unbidden to Ehrban’s mind: May Ruoi have danced them beyond the veil. May they have cast off injury and suffering and be reborn anew in the next life.

  How many times had he spoken these words over fallen comrades? They used to give him comfort; now they tasted like ash in his mouth.

  Xiun was right. Ehrban had turned his back on his friends. While he had been hiding away here, trying his best to pretend that the outside world did not exist, each of his fellow knights had had to find their own way. Changed people in a changed world that no longer had place or use for them.

  Ehrban saw in his mind’s eye Yuan, his distorted face as he gripped his axe at Dnisenfeld. The inhuman cry from his throat as he raised it. In that moment — that moment…

  Yuan dead by his own hand. It might as well have been Ehrban who’d killed him.

  Just like Ytharn.

  Ehrban tilted back his head and stared at the impassionate stars. These same mountains, part of a thousand mile range, extended through foothills and valleys all the way to Ungberg in the far west. Just as the same stars had shone over Ungberg. Although, casting his mind back now, what he remembered were not the stars.

  Ungberg.

  For four years, he had not allowed himself to think of Ungberg. For four years, it felt, he had thought of little else. The hulking darkness of that ancient fort squatting in his mind. Leaving no space for anything else. Pressing the air from his chest; the light from his soul.

  Ungberg, after which nothing could ever be the same again.

  He imagined holding a sword again. The familiar heft in his hand, the familiar weight like an extension of himself, giving balance to his body, purpose to his strength. The consecrated ethem that sang along his blade in resonance with his soul--

  A terrifying fear gripped him, so suddenly he doubled over, clutching his chest.

  For a moment, he’d been sure there was something there in the dark with him. Watching him with bright, malevolent eyes. In his hand and in his memory, the shagreen grip of his imagined sword glued to his gauntleted palm with blood, and worse.

  And wouldn’t you kill to experience that again, paladin? the little voice that had been his constant companion for four years whispered. The power and the strength and the certainty that nothing can remain standing in the face of your flame?

  It was nothing, Ehrban told himself as he turned to go back towards his hut and the lamp he’d left lit in the bedroom, towards Xiun sleeping in the front room. The dark presence was only in his mind. Whatever harm he’d imagined out there in the night was not real. It was only a badger, a brook owl, a dusk-monkey in the bamboo. One of the Goddess’s creatures, alive and breathing with Her Eternal Breath.

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  Nothing more than that, he told himself. Not in this place.

  *

  Back in bed, Ehrban dropped into a deep sleep that brought dreams but no rest.

  Some time after midnight he startled awake, near panic. He pressed his palm over the brand of the Flaming Wheel emblazoned on his chest as he waited for his heart to slow, the sweat coating his brow and pooling under his arms to dry.

  Ytharn… It was a dream he’d had many times in the past four years. Sometimes it was the clear star-strewn night sky of the desert mountains. Sometimes the musty, muffled dark of the catacombs underneath Ungberg. But always his sister was there, always just ahead of him. Beckoning, laughing over her shoulder, calling to him to keep up.

  In this dream, it had seemed like a mountain pass, filled with luminous silver fog from the secluded highland lakes. It was the kind of fog that played tricks on the ear, swallowing nearby sounds and making faraway noises seem as though they were right next to you.

  Ytharn’s armour glimmered like a torch ahead of Ehrban, her hair flashing bright like a banner despite the damp. The bells on her surcoat and the discs sewn to her cloak were eerily silent. Unlike in his usual dreams, she had not looked at him or beckoned. It had been all Ehrban could do to keep up for fear of losing sight of her.

  His sister, dead at Dnisenfeld four years ago, walking away from him. Wearing the red armour of the commander of Saint Celund, last worn by Dame Innisgard when she, too, had fallen at Dnisenfeld…

  Was it a sign from the Goddess? After all these years?

  Or a taunt coming from the demon-torn hole in his soul?

  Ehrban wiped the back of his hand over his mouth. Perhaps he’d never be certain of anything ever again. Never again have the strength of his convictions. Of his faith. Perhaps that was part of the price he had to pay for Ungberg.

  Of one thing he was certain. Picking up a sword again would not bring back the dead.

  No. He was already packed; his mind made up. It would be better this way. He had nothing to offer anyone. He had given his soul at Ungberg for the sake of his comrades and the innocent of the Empire. He would’ve gladly given his life at Dnisenfeld. He’d given his honour and his dignity and everything that had been stripped of him these past four years. He had nothing left to give.

  If he could not find peace in death, perhaps he would find oblivion, and that would be enough.

  *

  “Running away again, are you?” Xiun’s voice in the dark of the kitchen was clear and alert. By the sound of it, he hadn’t slept. “I noticed all your food bins are empty, and you’ve prepared for travel. What reckless, foolhardy notion are you possessed of this time, Ehrban?”

  Pride absurdly stung, Ehrban said: “I’m not known to be foolhardy. Or reckless.”

  “You also weren’t known to run away like a coward in the night.”

  “A coward,” Ehrban said coldly.

  A match flared as Xiun lit the lamp on the table. As he regarded Ehrban by the light of it, his expression was grim. “Oh yes. Pinadarya told me. I never in my life would’ve thought you of all people could be that spineless, Ehrban.”

  “You’ve talked to Pia?” Ehrban blurted out before he could stop himself.

  “We write each other. Unlike you, I answer letters.”

  “How is she? Is she well?”

  Xiun’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t see how that’s any of your business. If you wanted to know — if you still cared — you wouldn’t have left.”

  “That’s not — I left because I care! How can you not see that?! Knowing what we do, Xiun — leaving was the only choice I had!”

  “Ha. Isn’t that what you said when you single-handedly stormed into a twenty-strong square of Carnifex pikemen at Jooheim?”

  “I won that fight!”

  “True, but you could barely stand afterwards.” Xiun crossed his arms over his chest. “Granted, perhaps it’s also true that you didn’t have much of a choice, unless you count being killed or captured and sacrificed to Carnifex sorcery… So tell me, brother: what is it that you feel you have no other choice but to sneak away in the middle of the night, packed for travel?”

  “You can tell the Temple you didn’t find me.” Ehrban hitched his pack higher. “That I was gone when you arrived. If you had come half a day later, that would’ve been true.”

  “Only if you didn’t plan to go down south towards town, and last I checked, there’s no other road here at the arse-end of civilisation, and nothing but wilderness, mountain cats, bears and death-drops in any other direction.” Xiun regarded Ehrban. “You know, a strong rope and a sturdy beam would’ve been more certain. It did well enough for Yuan.”

  Ehrban winced. “My soul, so close to an inhabited place… The townspeople…”

  “Ah. But if that’s true, Ehrban, if it’s really true — you would’ve turned this village into another Dnisenfeld.”

  “I would’ve gone far, deep into the mountains,” Ehrban bit out. “A cave, or a ravine… No one would’ve found me.”

  “The demons at Ungberg lay undisturbed for a thousand years. Until we found them.” Xiun gave him a long look. “You truly would have that on your conscience? Your beloved townspeople, all these farmers and herders and their children — torn apart by your hands?”

  “Then…” Ehrban dropped his pack and sank into a chair at the table, suddenly exhausted. “What would you have me do?”

  “Come with us.” Xiun crouched next to him, his grip on Ehrban’s shoulder an unexpectedly welcome warmth. “If the stories are true, and if something befalls you along the way, if you were to die for whatever reason — at least I know where to put the blade to make sure you stay down.”

  Ehrban searched his friend’s face. He didn’t know that he’d hoped Xiun would scoff at his fears until he didn’t. The bleak expression in his friend’s dark eyes did not comfort him, but the conviction he found there did. He clasped Xiun’s hand where it rested on his shoulder.

  He’d left behind everyone and everything four years ago to be alone, to protect everyone he loved from himself. If he was to live — if he had no choice — he was ashamed at the relief he felt knowing he won’t be alone this time.

  He startled himself by laughing, even as he realised his eyes were wet. “Who’s foolhardy now, brother? If you promise that… It means you can’t die ahead of me.”

  “Well,” Xiun grinned back. “You help keep me alive, then. And you better start by learning to wield a sword again.”