'Your Highness, Your Highness,' called the dishevelled youth. The knight was young, his cheeks hardly touched with downy beard. Tears rolled unnoticed down his dirty face. It was not merely the unendurable anguish of defeat that made him weep. Only an hour or so ago he had seen the loveliest face he had ever known – snarling at him over the hilt of a Highgrass dog rider's saber. The tradition of chivalry dinned into him over a lifetime of training had almost stayed his hand, but loyalty to his princess and the ages-old urge to save his own life had acted with a will of their own. He had heard his own voice cry out in terror as his bright, straight blade hacked the woman's face into a ruin of blood, brains and gleaming bone.

He had passed the test he, like so many other warriors young and unblooded, dreaded above all: he had faced mortal danger and had not flinched. But he wondered if he had not failed another test in the same moment.

'We've brought you failure and disgrace,' the youth almost sobbed. 'How can we restore to you what our worthlessness has lost?'

Moriana Etuul brushed a strand of red-gold hair from her eyes and sadly shook her head. She gazed past the young knight at the man lying exhausted and in dubious safety beside the broad race of Chanobit Creek. The day had dawned as if especially tailored by this man. The sky had been filled with low clouds lying in a cool white blanket on the land to keep the bird riders grounded and out of the fray. Without their most deadly weapon, the Sky City soldiers would prove easy prey. Believing this, Darl Rhadaman, Count-Duke of Harmis, had taken the forefront with his sword held high, the eerily diffuse milky early light glinting from his sword's keen edge and the mirror-bright steel of his breastplate. Then, his face had been alive and almost boyish with the certainty that he fought for right and would triumph in its cause. Now his sword was nicked and blunted, his armor so hacked that the deep metallic cuts already scabbed red with rust in the damp air. Dull eyes stared out of a face as listless as a slab of meat on the butcher's block.