'nothing we'd call such, milady.'

corporal renth had ridden out from kharkanas in the depths of night. he had been dispatched to deliver hunn raal's command that the unit commanders were to ensure that no violence was initiated, and that all contact was to be avoided. all plans were on hold, and renth was relieved to hear it. he had never been easy with how things were going; even the thought of letting highborn blood to achieve their aims left him sick with dread and guilt.

it didn't help that his captain was at his worst when drunk, shaking loose the reins on his bloodlust and saying terrible things about the highborn and anyone else who wasn't legion. such guttural vehemence had a way of infecting those close to him. more than once, renth had contemplated seeking out a soldier among lord anomander's houseblades, and betraying the whole cause.

but urusander deserved better. renth knew that the ugliness belonged to hunn raal, and if there were no irony in a man of fallen highborn blood now spouting vicious hatred against his own kind, then irony was a dead weed in the field of souls, and who would be foolish enough to claim that?

in his drunkenness, hunn raal revealed deeper currents; there was an ambition there that saw lord urusander as nothing more than a means to an end. the captain might well espouse the redress of justice when it came to the legion and all who served or had once served in it, but something else lurked behind that pious fervour, and whatever that was, corporal renth did not trust it.

changes had come to kharkanas. the priestesses and priests had crowded the corridors and hallways deep into the night, but it seemed they had nothing but questions to exchange, a worthless currency when no answers could be found. he'd had trouble making his way out of the citadel without being noticed.

out on the streets of kharkanas, the residual mud of the river's flooding earlier that day had smeared the stones and painted the walls of the torchlit buildings he rode past, as if making a sullied pronouncement bold as blasphemy. his unease had only deepened in his passage through the city to the bridge that would take him west of the river. faith was ever on the edge of crisis, but it seemed that this fated arrival of the azathanai, and the dark, disturbing miracles that followed, had pushed everything over the edge.

hunn raal had argued that now, more than ever, was the time for lord urusander's ascension. once he stood at mother dark's side, the unruly elements would be hammered into submission and whatever schism now threatened the faith could be addressed. it had seemed a contrary position, since he was in the process of dispatching riders out to all the units with orders to desist. drunks had a way of spitting in two directions at once. the truth was, there was chaos in kurald galain and the sudden unleashing of bloodshed might shatter the entire realm, and mother dark with it. for all that, what had seemed relatively straightforward in renth's eyes was now murky and confused, and a belligerent, red-eyed commander was hardly an inspiring send-off. loyalty to urusander alone kept renth's hands on the reins, and his butt in the saddle.

but a long ride through the night gave him too much time to think. renth had no compunction about slaughtering the deniers because he did not see them as tiste at all. they had surrendered that name in their squalid worship of old gods. the tiste needed to unify their faith, with mother dark upon the throne of night. refusing allegiance to mother dark had long ago stripped the deniers of her protection, and so they deserved whatever befell them. he doubted that any hoary, mud-spattered river god of old could protect those lost fools. lord urusander understood necessity, and he would do what was needed to unify the tiste and to cleanse the realm.

it was, in fact, simple. they would hunt down the deniers and kill them. they would scour the last depths of the forests and root them out, and then feed their corpses to the river.

but the highborn were another matter. when the time came, however, renth would do as commanded. he was a soldier after all, and soldiers needed to set aside their conscience on occasion, when necessity demanded hard choices. besides, after the deed was done even remorse could be chewed dry and spat out.

the nearest of raal's allies were attempting to move unseen through the tulla hills, just beyond the old forest. these units were his destination. hunn raal had scant faith in captain silann, but at least esthala and risp were there. once renth had delivered his message he would swing back, crossing the dorssan ryl once more, and then head northward to find the other units.

mid-morning found him riding at a slow canter along the road that wound through the hills. his eyes were grainy from lack of sleep, but he would push on regardless. he had met no one since leaving the old forest.