HIGH ON A JUTTING knuckle of dark stone, Brokewrist Castle slouched in its age. The vine-webbed stone walls cast brutish and wicked shadows, and the stained, sooty stones of the two towers reached like a drowning man's arms for salvation towards the vaulting stars above. In the keep, which stood high enough above the walls to be seen even from the town below, a pale light glimmered malevolently behind a window, beckoning Ulrem. He started up the old stone path with a tuneless whistle.

Halfway up the crag, he caught the dusky scent of smoke. He loped forward, breaking from the path and picking his way among a field of boulders that littered the hillside. There was no one about in the town below: all hung quiet, and not even the mongrels that roamed the streets searching for scraps raised a bark or whine. Ulrem found the quiet especially unsettling, for in his wide travels, folk grew louder the more frightened they got, and men were like to use song and mocking laughter to ward off the prowling shadows. Whatever had come to this place had broken the shield of bawdy communion.

Ulrem was caught in his reflections when something low and dark darted across his boot. Mid-stride, another man would have surely staggered. Ulrem merely froze, balanced perfectly on the balls of his feet, ready to bound in any direction. There was an aggrieved yowl, and he caught a glimpse of an upturned, crooked tail vanishing into the thick bushes that grew like beards around the bases of the man-high boulders.

He chuckled to himself and relaxed. "Not the only hunter out tonight, then."

Ulrem waited a moment to see if the cat returned, and when it didn't, he resumed his trail, tracking the source of the woodsmoke. Close, now.

In the dark ahead, a dim firelight painted the sides of two overgrown stones with a flickering, golden cast. He had some idea who might be camping on this stony shelf, so close to the slouching castle, but he wanted to see for himself.

Before he could draw more than ten paces closer, his keen ears caught a silver whistle. Instincts seized him, and he doubled at the waist as some missile shot overhead. His sword was drawn from the scabbard slung across his back before he had straightened. The blade, half again as wide at the hilt as his hand, was as long as his arm.

Slashing with it would be tricky among the stones, but it had a deadly tapering point. It was a heavy thing, forged of western steel, and honed to a razor edge. Old scratches marred its steely faces.

The pommel was shaped like a curled fist of jade, and the cross guard bore runic markings of a craftsman now cold in his grave. Braveblade, the sword was called, and it was nearly as feared as the man who wielded it, amongst those who knew its name and bloody tally.

Ulrem moved in a crouch to press his back against a boulder ahead. He waited with his mouth partly open, the better to hear his attacker. He pushed his senses ahead, questing to find what awaited him at the fire. Was the killer so near?

Directly above him, a man cried out and dropped onto his shoulders. Ulrem, not expecting a vertical attack, struck upwards with his sword. In the same instant, the man's legs locked around Ulrem's neck, forcing his head painfully to the side. Unbalanced, his chop fell short and he toppled into the scree spread round the feet of the great stones.

They scuffled for a long moment, Ulrem trying to free himself, and the man above trying to yank his head off like a cork from a bottle. Finally, Ulrem's fingers found purchase in the crook of the man's leg. Hard strength won over many battles dug brutally into the flesh there and pried the knee away.

Sucking in a huge breath, Ulrem bellowed and surged to his feet.

The attacker came at him with lightning speed, wielding a strange curved blade with a long wooden handle. Having dropped Braveblade when he'd fallen, Ulrem dove aside as the sword parted the air where only moments before he had stood. Ulrem drove his fist out to seize his opponent before the man could swipe at him again, but too slowly.

Whirling out of range, a devil in whispering robes, the man brought his curved sword back around in a killing arc. There was a wild light in those eyes—the blood thrill of triumph at the killing stroke. Ulrem held those eyes and caught the man fast by his wrist, stopping the sword's arc short and raising his free hand to seize his opponent by the throat.

With another, lesser fighter, that might have been the end of the combat. The man who assailed him ducked the grappling hand and pivoted using Ulrem's own brute strength as a fulcrum. He swung up and around, delivering a savage blow to Ulrem's unprotected flank with his knee, knocking the air out of the big fighter and nearly driving him into the dark.

His attacker raised that curved, shining sword high above his head in a two-handed grip. With a grunt, Ulrem forced the remaining air from his lungs and surged to his feet, caught the man up by the neck and waist, and hauled him bodily into the air. He threw the man down on the ground and bellowed a wheezing laugh, readying himself for the next attack.

Instead, gasping, the attacker let his sword fall from his hands and held them up to Ulrem. "You are no beast, but you fight like three men," he said through a haggard cough. "Why come you to Brokewrist by night?"

"Hunting a killer," Ulrem said, snatching up Braveblade from where it lay discarded. "And you?"

"The same, though if you have followed me here, the townsmen must think me dead."

Ulrem knew then who his attacker was, and offered a hand to the man. He touched a fist to his chest in salute. "I am Ulrem, of Oron Isles beyond the mountain gardens."

The smaller man bowed at the waist. "I am Kinro-zhi, of the eastern lands of the Ohoni." Ulrem studied this ferocious fighter. Though small and spare of frame, he was remarkably strong, and as agile as a cat. His dark hair was tied back behind his head in a simple knot. Vivid green eyes were set in a round face of deeply tanned skin. Kinro wore loose, sleeveless robes that were cinched tight at the waist, and a mantle that tucked like a tunic beneath the belt. Ulrem had never seen garments like these, but they seemed to fit the man’s quiet intensity somehow.

Kinro was at least ten years his junior: a lad of twenty summers, perhaps. Yet he fought like a blademaster of the Kyrgosi on the glittering southeastern coasts. And his eyes held a stillness that gave Ulrem pause. Perhaps this Kinro-zhi was older than he seemed. Certainly, he had glimpsed the hard truth of the world. Ulrem had marched with such men in battle during his years in the Golden Company, veteran mercenaries for whom war was a season, who followed the sword down the endless road. The path, they called it. A few of them had even been his friends. Gone, now.

There was only one end to the path, he thought grimly.

"Come, sit by my fire," Kinro said. "Though it be small, and I have only a vole to eat tonight. Let us speak, Ulrem."

This was agreeable. Ulrem sheathed his sword and followed Kinro to where a small fire sat crackling in the dark. Kinro had a varmint spitted on a stick that sat propped against a rock, dressed but uncooked. A waxed traveler's bag was set to the side, along with a slender lacquered scabbard, and an unslung horn half-bow and quiver. A thin blanket was unrolled where Kinro had swept aside the largest rocks.

"I saw a cat," Ulrem said, taking a seat by the sputtering flame. "Yours?"

"Spying on me, is he?" Kinro said. He fed some more sticks to his fire and looked up at the castle.

"Better to kill it, should it cross your path again."

Ulrem raised an eyebrow but did not speak again of the beast. "The men below think you dead, as you suspected.”

Kinro nodded and set the little morsel to roast over the flame.

"Did you lose heart?"

"Lose heart?" Kinro snapped, looking up sharply from the food. The fight had come back into him, then, and violence threatened like distant thunder. "No, you cur. Nor do I stalk camps in the dark."

Ulrem's hand curled into a fist. "I am not some lowlander to wave away an insult, little man. Among my people, we say, a man who wags his tongue twice loses it.”

The hillside was silent for a long moment, save the cracking of the burning sticks.

"Now I see," Kinro said, sitting back and showing his palms. Curious tattoos traced lettered circles around them, and along his fingers. He peered closely at Ulrem. "I wondered, by your name, if you were the one they call the Lionborn. Ulrem the Slayer, in other lands.”

“So they do.”

“Yes, I have heard those stories. Do you know, Ulrem, that I can see the ghosts in your eyes?” Kinro glanced around at the stones, though they were alone. “I can see them sitting here, around the fire. Watching you."

Ulrem touched the ring on his finger. It stirred at the edge of his mind, like a current rising beneath dark waters. "Do not speak of them," he said.

Kinro inclined his head, but bowed to the empty spaces around the fire. "As you will. I shall answer your question then, Lionborn, and perhaps you will answer some of mine. I came to this place following the wind seven days ago. That is my calling: my blade follows the wind, seeking oneness. The men in the village below hired me to slay whatever dwells in that heap of stones above. But only a fool takes a job and sets to it with no plan; a hunter learns the land, reads the signs and spoor, and studies the trail.

"No, I have not lost heart, Ulrem," the small man went on, drawing the sounds out in his odd accent.

"I have explored the castle by day, and laid in watch by night, listening and waiting, seeking the nature of what murderous beast hides there."

Ulrem took this in thoughtfully. His fist had relaxed and the affable man had returned. "And what did you find?"

"Nothing, save that cat, and some crows!" Kinro laughed. "A puzzle for greater minds than I.”

"Yet a light burns in the castle above: we can see it yon, even as we speak." Both men looked up at the strange witchlight, unwavering, as pale as the moon through clouds.

"There is no path to that room that I could find," Kinro said. "Not in two days of searching or three nights of thinking. I believe it is sealed off by the collapsed tower. Whatever beast there slumbers, it must be able to pass through the stones somehow, or else fly to those highest windows. Tell me, Ulrem the Lion, would you hunt this thing with me?"

Ulrem’s grin was cruel and eager. He held his hand out to grip the other's arm. "I will join you, Kinro-zhi, and together we shall slay it, be it foul demon or blooded beast."

Satisfied, Kinro pulled the cooked varmint from the fire and shared it with Ulrem.

He looked intensely at his new confederate and asked, “What wind did you follow to this place?” Ulrem spoke around his single mouthful. “I was looking for a fight. Heard there was trouble here from some travelers on the road. So I came asking.”

Kinro frowned. “A fight?”

The fighter grunted, but his gray eyes glittered. “Though I found one sooner than I thought to, and a fine fight at that,” he admitted. “I mark you my junior, Kinro. Where did you hone those fighting skills?”

“You honor me with your praise,” the smaller man said, turning his jade eyes back to the fire. He began to speak of his strange past at Mount Zankada and the House of Eight Plums, and Ulrem leaned closer to listen.