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‘Ben,’ Elo reached him, grabbed him by the pauldron and began to drag him to the gate. ‘Let’s go!’

‘I’ll distract her!’ Benjen said. He dug in his heels and tore himself loose. ‘Get the others out!’

‘Gods damn it Benjen!’ Elo grabbed him by the wrist. Arren was supposed to have fired the barrels as soon as Hseth had risen, which meant he was holding off till they all escaped. Till Elo escaped. ‘She will not care if you die. The king will not care! He has forgotten how!’

Benjen tore his arm from Elo’s grip, turning to cut down a Talician who had come too close.

‘It does not matter!’ he shouted back. ‘All that matters is that after all this, after every mistake, every god, every death – all that matters is that there is something left of us. Some song, some tale, some hope. My heart, my blood, my life for hope!’

They both flinched as an arrow flew past. Elo looked back at the god, whose flame-flesh was glowing with power. She grew larger still, towering over them, her light too blinding to look at directly.

Benjen smiled at him. ‘Tell them to sing a song for me,’ he said. ‘Commander.’ Then he ran, not for the gate, for the god.

Elo wouldn’t leave him. He made chase.

But then, the gate doors burst open, charged by a run of horses, panicked and driven from the west bank.

Four, five, ten, twenty. Elo couldn’t count.

They were not war horses: ponies, rangy mares, thickset geldings, screaming as they raced through the flames.

With them they drew in the cold air from the forest which, as it pushed back the fire, allowed the Middrenites a moment to escape.

Hseth’s attention was caught: horse, human, sword and noise.

Benjen was still harassing her, the horses shrieking and stumbling.

She hissed, reaching down to swat them away.

Benjen dodged one strike of her fist, but the horse racing by him was not so lucky.

Its mane and tail caught light, and it charged through their wrecked blockade, crushing Talicians as it fled.

But Benjen’s plan was working, the distraction for Hseth had dimmed the fires of the gate, and their coterie was escaping through it, helped by knights wearing protective cloaks.

Then Elo recognised one of the horses in the plaza. Whinnying, terrified.

Legs.

‘No!’

He could not take this. He could not handle one more death. Not Legs. He had promised Kissen. He ran for the gelding as Benjen howled out threats to Hseth, but then Elo felt hands on his armour, his arms, dragging him back, back towards the gate.

‘Commander! You have to come now!’

‘No! I have to go back! I have to get Legs! I won’t leave them!’

He must have sounded incoherent as he was dragged underneath the arch of the gate, struggling and fighting.

The fire god burned white-hot, her flesh dripping, her eyes burning brands. No more the red-haired woman of Talicia now, only of war and death.

I am god. Elo heard her voice scorch a path through his head. I am rage. I am power.

She spun up into the air, and crashed down upon those that remained, Benjen and the horses, the fallen and the dead, a show of blazing victory, utter destruction.

And her flame plummeted into the ground, beneath the god-made solidity of the bridge, into the struts, the homes, the arches, the pits, the waterfalls and the barrels of blackfire. There, her sparks ignited them.

Elo was barely through the gate when the barrels exploded. First, a shattering of splinters, a burst of rubble and fire, spraying outwards, smashing the cliff face, splintering the trees.

A moment of held breath, only the sound of the waterfall, relentless, endless, the crackling of Hseth as she looked at her own hands, as confused as a little girl at the explosions her power had wrought.

And the sounds of the horses screaming.

‘Legs,’ Elo whispered. ‘Gods, Kissen. I’m so sorry.’

Legs dying in flame and terror. Legs dying at war. Another promise broken.

Then, the bridge groaned. The sound of cracking beams whipped through the air. The foundations of the bridge were shattering, weakened by fire, buckling under the force of the waterfall.

Then the great statue of Sali that held up the west of the city cracked, her arms and torso splitting. The west gate broke away from the bank, dust turned the waterfall spray grey. The bridge was full of Talicians, and they began to shriek.

A few ran for the gate, leaping to the bank where they were pinned and captured One or two horses managed to follow the way back, but none of them was the familiar brown steed with the white stripe on his nose.

None of them was Benjen.

The snapping bridge was peeling away from the rocky cliffs. Homes above and below the city, the tall inns, the markets, the docks, crumbled into the falls, borne down by the weight of the water. Down, down into the river’s depths.

And with them, the weight of more than a thousand soldiers fell, tumbling, howling, little red drops in the flood.

Hseth did not move as the city fell. She gazed at it as if it had nothing to do with her, shattering to pieces at her feet. There were still Talicians on the opposite bank, seeing their victory turned to flame and dust.

Then, their god laughed. Delighted at what seemed to be her own trick, her cackle echoed over the roaring of the water, the cracking of the stone, the breaking of history.

And then, as the sun broke over the Bennites, she tipped her head upwards and twisted into nothing, to find another sacrifice, or another shrine that had not been swallowed by the water below.