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track nestled in the encroaching heather. The horses’ hoofs thudded on hard, moss-green gravel instead of soggy peat, and they picked up speed. The track ran straight as an arrow into the east; in summer it would be well-nigh invisible beneath the bracken.
    Corfe slowed to a walk and his daughter wrestled her own mount to a similar pace beside him. Despite her youth her horse, Hydrax, was a solid bay fully as large as her father’s black gelding. A martingale curbed some of his wilder head-tossing, but he was still prancing mischievously under her.
    ‘That bugger will have you off one of these days,’ Corfe said.
    ‘I know. But he loves me. It’s high spirits is all. Father, what’s all the mystery? Where are we going? And what is this old road we’re on?’
    ‘You’ve not much notion of history - or geography - despite those tutors we gathered from the four corners of the world. I take it you know where we are?’
    ‘Of course,’ Mirren said scornfully. ‘This is Barossa.’
    ‘Yes.
The Place of Bones,
in Old Normannic. It was not always named so. This is the old Western Road, which once ran from Torunn clear to what was Aekir.’
    ‘Aurungabar,’ his daughter corrected him.
    ‘Yes, by way of Ormann Dyke …’
    ‘Khedi Anwar.’
    ‘The very same. This was the spine of Torunna once upon a time, this old track. The Kingsway runs to the north-west, some twelve leagues, but it’s barely fifteen years old. Before Torunna even existed, before this region was known as Barossa, it was the easternmost province of the old empire. The Fimbrians built this road we trot upon, as they built most things that have endured in the world. It’s forgotten now, such are men’s memories, but once it was the highway of armies, the route of fleeing peoples.’
    ‘You - you came along this way from Aurungabar when you were just a common soldier,’ Mirren ventured, with a timidity quite unlike her.
    ‘Yes,’ Corfe said. ‘Yes, I did. Almost eighteen years ago.’ He remembered the mud, the cold rain, and the hordes of broken people, the bodies lying by the hundred at the side of the road.
    ‘The world is different now, thank God. Up along the Kingsway they’ve cleared the woods and burnt off the heather and planted farms in the very face of the hills. There are towns there where before it was wilderness. And here, where the towns used to be before the war came, the land has been given back to nature, and the wolves roam unmolested. History turns things on their heads. Perhaps it is no bad thing. And there, up ahead - can you see the ruins?’
    A long ridgeline rose ahead of them, a dark spatter of trees marking its crest. And at its northern end could be seen broken walls of low stone, like blackened teeth jutting up from the earth. But closer to, there rose up from the flatter land a tumulus, too symmetrical to be of nature. Atop it a stone cairn stood stark against the sky. The birdsong which had been brash and cheery about them all morning had suddenly stilled. ‘What is this place?’ Mirren asked in a whisper.
    Corfe did not answer, but rode on to the very foot of the tall mound. Here he dismounted, and gave Mirren his hand as she followed suit. The marmoset reappeared and swarmed up to her shoulder, its tail curling about her neck like a scarf.
    There were stone flags set in the grass, and the pair climbed up them until they stood before the cairn on the summit. It was some five feet high, and a granite slab had been set upon its top. There were words chiselled into the dark stone.
     
    Here lie we, Tormina’s dead.
    Whose lives once bought a nation liberty.
    Mirren’s mouth opened. ‘Is this—?’
    ‘The ruins you see were once a hamlet named Armagedir,’ Corfe said quietly. ‘And the mound?’
    ‘A grave barrow. We gathered all those whom we could find, and interred them here. I have many friends in this place, Mirren.’
    She took his hand. ‘Does anyone else come here any more?’
    ‘Formio and Aras