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have something in mind.” Her brows drew together in a puzzled frown. “What could you possibly do, to stop the Hrum from drafting my boys?”
    “Any number of things,” said Kavi airily. “Passing them off as imperial heirs in disguise is the first to leap to mind, but—”
    “No, you’re thinking of something real.” She had always been able to read him. “What is it?”
    “Sorry.” Kavi patted her hands again. “I’d tell you, but you’d think me mad. And we can’t be having that.”
    Her frown deepened. “I won’t have you put yourself in danger. Not even for Sim and Pesh.”
    Kavi snorted. “I’m not that mad! Or maybe I am, but it’s a cautious, peasant madness, with aworking brain behind it. I’d tell you not to worry, but I know that worry is your natural state.”
    This time his teasing didn’t even make her smile.
    “Promise me you won’t go running yourself into danger.” She turned her hands to clasp his, her dark, direct gaze intent on his face. “Promise.”
    “I promise you,” said Kavi with the ease of an almost honest man, “my plan for the next year is simply to go on making my rounds through the countryside.”
    It was true, as far as it went, for he’d realized weeks ago that any resistance would have to come from the countryside. Farsalan towns were too big and soft a target. Except for Mazad, of course. Mazad was the key to everything.
    But even Mazad couldn’t hold out for a year unless it had help from the countryside, so the countryside was the key to saving Mazad. And Kavi, known in every village north and south of the Trade Road, was just the man to turn that key—turn it till it set Time’s Wheel itself to turning, and dumped the Hrum down into the Flame of Destruction.
    Peasants would succeed where the deghanshad failed—with just a little help from a wandering peddler, to get them all pulling in the same direction. Yes, Kavi’s folk could do it. They had to. They were the only ones left.

U NTIL NOW, NO ONE has known of the origin of the young man who appeared after the Hrum army first entered Farsala. But newly discovered sources have made many things clear. The youth, who in the time to come called himself Sorahb, was in fact a young deghan. Perhaps he was a third or fourth son, or a poor cousin in some great lord’s train. Even the documents to which I, and I alone, have gained access do not record his name.
    But this unnamed youth took part in the Battle of the Sendar Wall. He was felled by the Hrum, and injured, but not slain. So the line of battle passed over him, leaving him alive on the field where so many had died. By the time he recovered himself enough to stand, the Hrum had gone, and only the bodies of the slain surrounded him.
    Clouds covered Azura’s sun, and Azura’s tears fell as rain, washing the noble deghans’ bodies as the youth walked among them, seeking kin and friends, and finding them far too often.
    After a time he stopped and stood, with the rain pelting his face. He knew he was but one man—and so young many would not have called him man at all. He had seen for himself the might of the Hrum, their weapons, their power.
    But he didn’t care. Raising clenched fists to Azura’s sky, the youth swore a mighty oath. He would free Farsala. He would hold the land for one full year. He would humble the Hrum’s mighty army, return those taken prisoner, and restore the honor of the slain. The deghans had fallen, but Farsala would stand!
    As he swore, lightning split the sky asunder; the thunder crashed so powerfully that the earth trembled and the dead seemed to stir, as if in answer to some distant summons. And if, in that moment, the spirit of a long dead champion was reborn into the body of an unknown deghan youth, only Azura himself could say for certain.

C HAPTER F OUR

J IAAN
    R IDING RAKESH OVER THE LAST of the low hills to the north of Mazad, Jiaan could tell from a league’s distance that word of the Hrum’s coming had already