Free Malice (Faithful & the Fallen 1) by John Gwynne

ever-increasing heat of the sun.
    In time they struck the banks of the Nox. The warband crossed the river by an ancient stone bridge, built by the giants generations before. From here they followed the river south, carving a
line through the ever-rockier land, until one morning, well before highsun, Veradis tasted salt on the air and heard the call of gulls in the distance.
    The column of riders rippled to a stop as their captain, Orcus, held his hand up. Nathair gestured to summon Veradis and Rauca to join him.
    The Prince and his eagle-guard were huddled over a scrolled map. Veradis leaned closer, frowning. He had always struggled with understanding maps, and certainly did not love them as his brother
Ektor did, who would spend days in the library at Ripa, poring over the many parchments they had stored there. Some even outlined the boundaries of the giant realms that had ruled the Banished
Lands before the Exiles had been washed up onto these shores.
    ‘We are here,’ Orcus said, finger jabbing at a spot on the map near a coastline.
    ‘Aye,’ Nathair said. ‘And that would appear to be the mark that the Vin Thalun prisoner spoke of.’ The Prince pointed at a tall cedar, its trunk split and charred by
lightning. ‘If he spoke true, this meeting is supposed to take place about a league east of that tree.’
    ‘We shall see.’ Orcus rolled the map up with a snap and slid it back into a leather case.
    ‘Let the men know we are near,’ Nathair said to Veradis and Rauca.
    The two warriors rode back along the length of the warband, spreading the word. With a wave of his arm, Nathair led them onwards, turning east with the stream.
    They soon found themselves in a barren land of low hills, sharp crags and sun-baked, twisting valleys. Nathair halted them a while after midday, the sun a white, merciless thing glaring down at
them.
    ‘We walk from here,’ Nathair called, and with a rattle of harness and iron the four score men dismounted. A dozen stayed behind with the horses, the rest picking a path into a string
of low hills.
    Veradis wiped sweat from his eyes and took a sip from his water skin. He was more used than most to this heat. His home, Ripa, was much further east along the coast, and almost as far south as
they were now, so the climate was similar. The only thing missing was the constant breeze off the bay that seemed always present in Ripa, and here, without it, the heat felt so much worse,
suffocating, burning his nose and throat with each breath.
    They were climbing a hill, spread out in a long line behind Nathair and Orcus, the hobnails in the leather soles of Veradis’ sandals scratching on the rock-littered ground. The two leaders
stopped, heads close together. Orcus signalled for the small warband to spread out into a loose arc before carrying on up the hill.
    Veradis used his spear as a staff, shrugged the shield slung across his back into a more comfortable position and laboured up the hill behind Nathair. Before the Prince reached the top of the
slope he ducked down onto his belly and crawled the rest of the way. The warband followed, and soon they were ringed about a long ridge, Veradis one side of Nathair, Rauca the other. Cautiously,
Veradis peered over the ridge.
    The ground dropped steeply away for forty or fifty paces before it levelled out, a stream cutting a gully through a flat-bottomed bowl of stony ground. A small stand of scraggy laurels clustered
along the stream’s edge.
    Before the trees, in the shade of a huge boulder, was a man. An old man, judging by his silvery hair, pulled back and tied neatly with a leather cord at his nape. He was squatting beside a fire,
prodding sparks from it with a stick, something spitted across the flames. He was humming. Behind him, to the left of the laurels, was a brightly coloured tent.
    Veradis glanced at Nathair’s frowning face, then back to the old man.
    He seemed alone, though it was impossible to be certain. There could be men