Tom Lloyd - The ragged man

'Is that supposed to be funny?' snapped the man standing between them. His left arm was resting lightly on Doranei's shoulder.

'What? Hah! No – not a joke,' Veil said, a brief grin flashing across his face.

The third man in their group was a mage from Narkang called Tasseran Holtai, who was generally acknowledged to be the finest scryer in the kingdom. Unfortunately, his years of service had come at a price: he had been completely blind for almost a decade.

'Aye, we only joke with men we like,' Doranei growled while Veil looked skyward in exasperation.

'You impudent peasant!' Holtai spat, swinging his walking stick at Doranei's shins.

The King's Man hopped nimbly away from the blow and stifled a laugh as Veil was jabbed in the ribs with the stick in Doranei's place.

'I don't care what favour the king has for you, I'll have you flogged for your insolence!' he snarled.

'I'm afraid there's already a queue for that pleasure,' Veil said cheerfully, 'so let's get this done first.'

Mage Holtai turned in Veil's direction, far from mollified, but aware the king was waiting. He was a sprightly man of more than seventy winters, his white moustache neatly trimmed and his clothing immaculate, as ever – today he wore a long purple robe edged in gold. His skills had brought him not only considerable personal wealth, but also great political power in Narkang; he was a poor enemy to make, even for the Brotherhood.

'Shift yourself then, you wretch,' the mage hissed, grabbing wildly for Doranei's shoulder again.

The King's Man raised his eyebrows and rolled his eyes at Veil, who grinned back. He stepped closer and guided Holtai's hand to his shoulder, but they had gone only a few steps before the old man grabbed him by the collar and wrenched him backwards with more strength than Doranei would have expected from a frail-looking old man.

'Not so fast you damn fool!' the mage snarled.

Doranei bit back his instinctive response and slowed his pace until they were shuffling through the flattened grass towards a raised mound of indeterminate purpose. It was five feet high, and it was encircled by a staked ditch twenty yards out, and a full company of soldiers – fifty men – looking extremely bored.

On the mound itself stood two unmistakable figures: Endine and Cetarn, King Emin's most trusted mages. Tomal Endine, a wiry, rat-like man, sat cross-legged before one of a dozen wooden posts. One hand was pressed against it and trails of white light danced around him. His colleague and friend Shile Cetarn lounged nearby, resting part of his considerable weight on an enormous wooden mallet. As they neared, Doranei was amused to see Endine moving away from the post, then falling backwards in shock as Cetarn wasted no time in taking an almighty swing with the mallet to pound it into the ground.

Doranei grinned, he could just imagine the mage's furious squawks of outrage – and Cetarn shared his sense of humour; before he could take a second swing the white-eye-sized mage had dropped the mallet and doubled over, his roaring bellows of laughter reaching the plodding trio a hundred yards off.

'Doranei, my favourite drunkard!' Cetarn yelled once the trio were within shouting distance. 'Come to swing a hammer for me?'

'Reckon you need the exercise more than me,' Doranei shouted back. 'We're here to test out your work.'

At that Endine began to cough, until Cetarn slapped him hard on the back, laughing again. 'Not that; the boy's a drunk, not mad!'

Doranei and Veil exchanged confused looks, but Cetarn didn't bother to explain himself as he hauled Endine back onto his feet again. 'It's not finished,' Cetarn continued, his round head flushed pinker than normal, 'but it's good enough for your need, and I can always nudge things along.'

'I can manage perfectly well without your help, Shile,' the blind mage said primly. 'I mastered my art long before you were born, young man.'

'Indeed you did, sir,' Cetarn agreed, 'but you will be scrying up to a hundred miles while the adepts of the Hidden Tower attempt to stymie your efforts. The help is yours, whether you like it or not.'

Mage Holtai's face soured as though he'd just swallowed a bug. 'If I need your assistance I will request it,' he said firmly. 'Until that becomes the case your power will only make my efforts all the more noticeable.'

He started to walk a little faster, and tugged impatiently at Doranei's shoulder for him to keep up. As they reached the mound Doranei saw an iron chain half-buried in the earth, running north from one of the posts along the ground. Whatever magic they had planned, Doranei knew he didn't want to be anywhere near the results.

He helped Mage Holtai up onto the mound and looked around from his elevated position. A hundred and fifty yards off, almost half a mile from Moorview Castle itself, was a complicated forward defence post that a thousand men were still working on. Three square towers surrounded by twelve-foot-deep ditches were to be the heart of their defences – though by no means the only line of defence. Two longer ditches were being dug on each flank, forming two sides of a triangle, with the removed earth being used for ramparts behind. Fire-blackened stakes were being hammered into both ramparts and ditches.

The moor was covered with smaller ditches and treacherous holes, as much a way to keep the waiting army busy as to hinder the Menin's advance to battle wherever possible. The battle-hardened Menin heavy infantry needed to close and bring the fight to the Narkang forces. The king intended to make that a costly process.

Doranei looked down at the soldiers all around them. The core of the Narkang army was the Kingsguard, but that was only five legions; five thousand men. There were a similar number of mercenaries from the north and western isles, but the bulk of their troops had been hastily raised and were being drilled right now: advance and retreat, form line, form square, right turn, set spears… To Doranei's experienced eye, it was all painfully slow.

Unlike the Farlan they had no system of martial obligation among the nobility, and many of the ennobled veterans from King Emin's wars of conquest had died since then. They might have gathered fifty thousand troops, but they amounted to little more than conscripts and volunteers, from all walks of life. More were arriving daily. What they didn't have was the command structure required. Just getting the new men armed and sorted into legions was proving taxing enough, for all the king's advance preparations.

'What're all these, symbols of the Gods?' Veil asked Cetarn, pointing at the wooden posts as the blind mage made himself comfortable on a rug at the centre of the mound. He peered at the nearest. 'Yes, the whole Upper Circle, it looks.'

'One aspect of our preparations,' Cetarn declared, 'harnessing the energies of the Land – but if you think I'm going to waste my valuable time giving you two dullards an explanation you could never fully fathom, you're more fools than I thought!'

'Shile,' Holtai said, arranging his robe around him, 'if you don't mind?'

'Of course, Master Holtai, my apologies.' Cetarn grinned at the King's Men, grabbed his mallet and retreated off the mound with Endine. When Doranei started to follow, the big mage motioned for them to stay where they were, a little behind Mage Holtai, looking down at the old man's thinning pate while he settled himself again and began to mumble arcane words.

Mage Holtai sat rigid and upright, facing west, with his eyes closed, chanting in an unintelligible monotone for ten minutes or more. Twice the mage's tone altered abruptly, moving up the scale as he craned his scrawny neck high, before dropping back down the register again.

The two other mages were watching intently as the old man gave a sudden exhalation and ended his chant. Doranei and Veil both advanced and knelt at his side, ready to listen.