Felryn Felryn’s son, cleric, healer and a friend of Tol since his arrival in Juramona, was working on the wounded man. Sleeves rolled back to free his lean brown arms, Felryn probed Darpo’s side gently for the head of the arrow. Darpo’s brown eyes were open, his face moist with sweat. The scar that ran from his left eyebrow to his left ear stood out sharply white against his waxy pallor. His gaze flickered briefly to Tol, but he had no strength to acknowledge his commander.

There was no better healer in the empire than Felryn, not even in the imperial household. Time had thinned his curly hair and streaked its black with white, but the skill had not left his long, powerful fingers. He located the arrowhead and deftly removed it. Darpo gasped. Felryn spoke to him soothingly, applying a clotting powder to the wound. An assistant raised the injured man’s head so he could sip a soporific from a silver cup. Darpo’s eyes closed.

“Will he live?” asked Tol softly.

“I think so, but that is in Mishas’s hands,” Felryn said. “I dress their wounds. It is the goddess who heals them.”

Horns blared, the sound followed by the rumble of hooves. The foot soldiers parted ranks as a contingent of horsemen thundered in. Leading them was a white-bearded warrior with a black leather patch over his right eye. Lord Regobart had lost one eye in a duel when he was a young man.

“My lord!” he hailed Tol. “The day is ours!”

Tol approached the general’s horse, replying more temperately, “The battle is won, anyway.”

Behind Regobart were arrayed some of the highest warlords in the empire. Although their names were a roll call of imperial glory, Tol’s many victories made him their equal. Even so, most of them looked upon him as an upstart, a clever peasant whose martial success smacked of unnatural influences or illicit magic.