The ranger led the way, ranging up to a mile ahead of the others. Scouting out the lay of the land and picking the best possible route. Avoiding cultivated fields worked by slaves and rebuilt ruins inhabited by Shadowsoldiers. They were able to follow roads in some places, making good time for a few hours at a time, but for most of their journey they struggled through tall, sickly yellow grass and small patches of stunted, fungus riddled woodland, slow going but providing plenty of cover in case they encountered the enemy. Ignoring the hideous sun and the growing sense of doom and futility, they made good time on the first day, covering nearly thirty miles, over half the distance to the city.

     They found an old barn to spend the night in, much to their relief. None of them, not even Resalintas himself, could have spent the night out in the open, exposed to the full force of the Shadow. Even so, though, it was a lot worse than the previous night, due to their being thirty miles further in, and the two priests were forced to call upon the power of Samnos to send the rest of the men to sleep.

     They set off early the next morning on the final leg of their journey. As they went, the sense of oppressive evil got steadily worse until even Resalintas was beginning to show signs of being affected and most of the men were close to breaking point. Even Pars, who had made this journey twice before, was getting close to his limit. The Shadow had gotten stronger since his last visit.

     "There are humans in the Shadowarmies," said Drake, trembling and wiping sweat from his forehead. "How do they stand it?"

     "The Shadow affects people in direct proportion to the amount of goodness in them," replied Resalintas. "Truly evil people are unaffected and can travel at will throughout the Shadow, except near its very centre, around the city of Arnor, where it is so strong that no living creature at all can enter, no matter how evil. That city is inhabited only by the undead."

     "What about the slaves?" asked Gallit.

     "Those poor wretches have had spells put on them to make them immune to the Shadow and remove their free will. They are virtually living zombies, with no minds of their own, existing only to obey their masters. These spells can be broken, but only with great difficulty and they are still left with broken minds, incapable of taking any meaningful place in society."

     "That's terrible!" exclaimed Drake, horrified.

     "It is one of the Shadowwizards' greatest crimes," agreed Resalintas.

     "Is that what's in store for us if we're captured?" demanded Bushel, shaking in terror. "Is that what you're leading us into? What do you care what happens to us? We're expendable, aren't we? Just pawns to be sacrificed, whenever..."

     "BUSHEL!" roared Gallit at the top of his voice, silencing the man as though he'd struck him. "You snivelling coward! Call yourself a bloody soldier? A bloody peasant's wife has more bloody spine than you! You’re a disgrace to the army! A pathetic excuse for a man! Pull yourself together before I pound some moral fibre into your skull with my bare fists!" The unfortunate soldier wilted under the verbal assault, and Resalintas decided that the time had come to give the men some protection from the Shadow. He had refrained from doing so up until now in case it weakened them, priests of Samnos placing great importance upon self reliance, but it was now obvious that they could go no further without it.

     Taking a brown leather bag from one of his pockets, therefore, he took a pinch of brick red powder from it. His own blood, dried and powdered. He sprinkled it over Bushel's head while chanting in praise of the God of War. The effect was dramatic. The soldier immediately felt most of the fear leave him and was once again in control of himself. He turned to face the priest, a mixture of gratitude, awe and shame on his face. "Thank you, Sir. I'm sorry, I just couldn't help myself..."

      Resalintas turned away, paying him no further attention, and repeated the ceremony with each of the other men. Only Drake was left out. As a fellow priest of Samnos, he was expected to be able to exercise much greater self control than the others, and to call upon reserves of courage far beyond the reach of ordinary men. The younger priest only hoped he'd be able to live up to his expectations. The terror he'd been feeling all day was far beyond anything he had thought possible, and he dreaded to think what it would be like that night. My Lord, give me the strength to endure this unholy place, he prayed silently.

     With the aid of Resalintas’s holy powers of protection, which had to be renewed every few hours, the men had no further problems and were able to continue on once more. Although the fear and the sense of oppressive evil remained, they were now able to control it and suffered no further breakdowns in morale and discipline. Even the grikon seemed to cheer up, heartened by the ranger's improved state of mind perhaps, even though Resalintas had not specifically included it in the protection spells, and it chirped and chattered happily to itself every time Pars returned from scouting ahead to report.

     “You still looking for a nice spot to set up home in when you retire?” asked Private Grey, looking sideways at Private Cheston, his longtime brother in arms. He gestured around at the bleak landscape. “Reckon you could do worse. No nosy neighbours, pleasant climate. No fear of sunburn...”

     “All it needs is a nice little lake to dangle a fishing pole in,” agreed the other man. “Reckon that Daisy Fox would like it here? I always thought she and me might hook up together when I take me pension.”

     “She’s got too much sense to marry an ugly bastard like you,” replied Grey. “The only female desperate enough to settle for you is Humpback Hilda. You might want to make sure you’re standing on her blind side when you pop the question, though. Just to maximise your chances.”

     “I heard she married Regal Pete...”

     “She did not! Pete with Humpy Hilda?”

     “You see, the thing you got to remember about ugly women is, they try hard. A man can appreciate that.”

     “Well, you’d know.”

     The other men gathered close around them, taking comfort from the normality of the banter, and even Drake found himself cheered by it. Gallit made no attempt to shut them up, as he might normally have done, understanding the reassuring, normalising effect it was having. In fact he’d been counting on it, it was one of the reasons he’d chosen them, and even he felt the back and forth jibe and counterthrust having its effect on him. Calming his fears, restoring his moral fibre.

     “I don’t just go with ugly women! What about Brenda, back in Nobridge?”

     “Brenda? I don’t remember any Brenda.”

     “The girl who took all your money at the shove ha’penny table. She was quite pretty.”

     “That was a girl? She had a beard!”

     “Nothing wrong with a little facial hair...”

     Gallit glanced across at Resalintas. The priest was as stony faced as ever, but when he turned his head to regard the two bickering privates it was almost possible to imagine a slight expression of gratitude on his granite face...

     As the day wore on, they passed ruined buildings more and more often, indicating that they were entering what had once been a more densely populated area, and they realised that the city must be just ahead. They passed signposts and milestones as well, and so learned the city's name for the first time, Westington. Some of the buildings they were passing had been crudely patched up and repaired and showed signs of recent occupancy, so they began to move more furtively, taking advantage of every scrap of cover. They could run into the enemy at any time now.

     They made camp for the night in an old house some distance from any of the main roads to and from the city, to reduce the chances of their accidental discovery. With the aid of Resalintas’s powdered blood and incantations of protection, they passed the night peacefully and rose the next morning bright and refreshed, all except poor Drake who, like the old priest, had to struggle through as best he could, beset by nightmares and terrors worse than ever. This self reliance business has got a lot to answer for, he thought as he packed away his sweat soaked sleeping blankets and struggled to keep a clear head. He hadn't had a good night's sleep since entering the Shadow, and now had dark rings around his eyes and trembling hands. How much more of this could mortal flesh take? Resalintas, on the other hand, still looked as calm and collected as the day they'd left Fort Battleaxe. How does he do it? thought Drake enviously. He must have a soul made of solid steel!

     Before the day was very old, the nine men entered the city itself. It had no city wall, since the Agglemonian Empire, to which it had belonged, had been so mighty and invincible that it had been inconceivable that anyone could ever invade it. Instead, the buildings and sideroads they passed simply became more and more numerous until they all joined together to form a continuous urban area with every scrap of farmland and countryside squeezed out. Several of the buildings they passed had been repaired and refurbished, indicating they were still being lived in, so they left the main road and used the smaller backroads which, judging by their dense cover of tangled, diseased undergrowth, were never used by the Shadowsoldiers. They hoped to make their way unseen all the way to the city centre where, hopefully, they would see something that would give them a clue to the enemy's intentions.

     Even out in the suburbs of the once great city, the Agglemonian architecture was unmistakable. The men were all Beltharans, born and raised in the ruling Kingdom of the new empire before being sent to Ilandia as part of the occupation force, and they all recognised the similarity between the two empires, one long dead, the other still living and prosperous. Since Belthar had been founded by refugees from Agglemon in the dark days of the great purges, its culture and architecture were bound to be similar, but everything here was bigger and bolder, as if the inhabitants had been aware of their superiority and had wanted to make a statement of it in everything they did or made. Even these relatively small and unimportant suburban dwellings radiated pride and self importance in their every brick and roof tile, and even though most of them were now little more than outlines of broken walls and piles of overgrown rubble, the sense of imperial splendour still clung to them and always would.

     The first thing to strike their eyes was the size of the buildings. Even the smallest house was the size of a middle class residence in a modern city, and the remains of carved wooden signs and painted advertisements told that these had once been the homes of the working classes, people who, in an Ilandian or even a Beltharan city, would have occupied two or three cramped rooms in a three or four storey building. Also, although the bulk of the buildings were made of bricks of baked clay, these being hard wearing, cheap, and easy to make, the walls that faced out onto the street were made of carved stone, usually grey granite or pink arrastone, some to such an extent that they looked like miniature castles, with turrets and abutments and with highlights around the doors and windows made of polished chalcedony or even marble and onyx on the more expensive houses. They were carved into intricate patterns and designs to give each house an individual look and feel, different from all the others in the street, and when one considered how long it took to carve just one stone brick, the magnitude of the extravagance became apparent. Everywhere else on the continent, only Palaces and the homes of the rich and influential were made of carved stone, but here, in old Agglemon, even the poorest people had been able to afford stone facades.

     Then there were the streets themselves. Although they were almost completely broken up and buried by a carpet of grass and shrubbery, here and there were small patches that had somehow escaped destruction, and the Ilandians were amazed at what they saw. The streets had been paved by rectangular slabs of stone, each about three feet by two, in which the tracks worn by generations of carts and carriages could still be seen, as well as drainage holes leading down to sewers and storm drains in tunnels below. In the modern world, only the largest roads were paved like this, and only the streets running through the richest parts of the biggest cities had such intricate drainage and sewage systems. Most streets were either cobbled or just left as mud tracks. Here, however, every street had been paved and drained, even these minor sidestreets that had been used only by what had passed for the working classes in old Agglemon. It was a statement of wealth that left the intruders speechless.

     Then there were the streetsigns, each an individual work of art. Hitching posts decorated with carvings of horses and carriages, water troughs made of wood long since rotted away but with the highly ornamental metal straps and bracings remaining, and other things, equally trivial but all the more striking for that. The Agglemonians' willingness to expensively decorate and ornament things that other people wouldn't dream of wasting a minute on spoke volumes about their attitude to themselves and their lifestyles. Here were a people so rich and prosperous that even the poorest could have glass windows and indoor plumbing. The streets hadn't been paved with gold, but if they had been, the Ilandians couldn't have been any more impressed than they already were.

     In contrast, however, those buildings that had been repaired and refurbished were ugly and hideous, the city's new inhabitants having none of the Agglemonians' taste and style. The new walls and ceilings had been built from the rubble lying all around, but had been put together crudely, the only thought having been for functionality, not appearance. The new structures were probably as strong and sturdy as the originals had been, but were certainly not works of art, and what decoration there was was designed to intimidate, not please. Human skulls stood on poles outside a large building they saw a few streets away that looked as though it was now inhabited by shologs, and patterns had been painted on the walls of another building they saw in what looked like blood. A broken window was covered by stretched human skin, also painted and decorated with blood, and a door was outlined with arm and leg bones. "There goes the neighbourhood," muttered Rivan, and the men broke into nervous laughter until Resalintas silenced them with a stern glance. They were now close enough to the enemy to worry about being overheard.

     At around nine in the morning they saw their first Shadowsoldiers. Pars came dashing back from up ahead, where he'd been scouting the way, the grikon flying beside him, and waved the hand signals that warned of enemies approaching. They ran into the burnt out shell of what had once been, by the look of it, the home of a merchant or shopkeeper, and hid behind the piles of rubble that were all that remained of its upper stories, peering out over the top to get their first glimpse of the enemy.