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gained fame by once sleeping through an ork siege. His comrades later told tales of catapult-flung boulders smashing into the walls and flaming jelly turning men into living torches. Gustav, who had been awake three nights running battling orks, had finally had a chance to sleep and he meant to use it. His comrades had been considerably startled when Gustav rose up the next morning and walked out among them. He had slept so soundly they had assumed he was dead and had been—so they claimed—on the verge of tossing his body onto the funeral pyre.
    Worn out from the day’s exertions, he slept soundly, counting on his horse and the traps he’d laid to warn him in time to confront any intruder.
    It was not the clanging of pots that woke him, or the ringing of the small silver bells. It was a dream.
    Gustav could not catch his breath. He fought to draw air into his lungs and he was losing the battle. He was dying, suffocating. It was the knowledge that he was dying that jolted him out of sleep. He woke with a gasp, his heart racing. The dream was very real, left him half-convinced that someone was inside his tent, trying to smother him. He looked around, but concentrated more on listening.
    The night was dark. Clouds covered the moon and stars. He could see very little inside his tent. The bells had not rung. The pots had not been disturbed. Yet something was there.
    His horse sensed it. The animal snorted uneasily, hooves raked the ground. Gustav lay back on his bedroll. The feeling of being smothered had not left him. He found it difficult to breathe, as if he had a weight on his chest.
    The air was tainted, smelled foul. Gustav recognized the stench immediately. He’d once happened on a battlefield three days after a battle. The corpses of the unburied dead lay bloated and rotting in the hot sun. The most hardened veterans in the Vinnengaelean army heaved up their guts at the horrible smell.
    The silver bells shivered. Their chiming was flat, discordant. He heard the sounds of stealthy footfalls drawing near. His horse shrieked suddenly, a scream of terror such as he’d never heard from the well-trained beast, and there came a crashing sound, the thudding of hooves. His horse, trained for battle, who had not flinched when facing the points of a hundred spears, had broken free of its tether and fled through the brush.
    Gustav could empathize with his horse. He himself had faced a hundred spears and he had not experienced the fear he felt come over him now. He was in the presence of evil. Diabolical evil. Ancient evil, from beyond the creation of the world. Attuned to magic of all kinds, he recognized the foul magic of the Void.
    The magus out there was no cantrip parsing hedge-wizard. He was a sorcerer wielding a power such as Gustav had never before encountered. A power he was not certain he could contend.
    The footsteps came nearer. The stench of Void grew worse, turning Gustav’s stomach. Breathing the foul air was like trying to breathe oil-covered water.
    A hand touched his tent. The bells chimed again, but Gustav could not hear them for the pounding of blood in his ears. Sweat beaded on his forehead. His mouth dried, his palms were wet. He had two choices. He could rise up, clad in his magical armor, and accost the sorcerer outside his tent or he could lie here and wait for the sorcerer to come to him.
    Gustav grimly decided to play possum. He wanted to see this Void magus who had spent so much time and patience following him. He wanted to know the reason why. Closing his eyes andkeeping them closed required an extraordinary effort of will. He tried, as best he could, to calm his jagged breathing.
    He heard a ripping sound—the intruder slashing open the back of the tent. The silver bells jangled wildly. Gustav thought that it would be only logical for him to wake now and he snorted and grunted and half-sat up, rubbing his eyes with one hand, his left hand.
    The intruder entered the tent,