“The King’s Own are well provided for, but I’m concerned about the situation of some of the levies, your—”

“Yes,” said Ladisla, talking over him precisely as if he had not spoken, “good and fit! Chomping at the bit! Must be the fire in their bellies keeps ’em warm, eh, West? Can’t wait to get at the enemy! Damn shame we have to wait here, kicking our heels behind this damn river!”

West bit his lip. Prince Ladisla’s incredible powers of self-deception were becoming more frustrating with every passing day. His Highness had fixed upon the idea of being a great and famous general, with a matchless force of fighting men under his command. Of winning a famous victory, and being celebrated as a hero back in Adua. Rather than exerting a single particle of effort to make it happen, however, he behaved as if it already had, utterly regardless of the truth. Nothing which was distasteful, or displeasing, or at odds with his cock-eyed notions could be permitted to be noticed. Meanwhile, the dandies on his staff, without a month’s military experience between them, congratulated him on his fine judgement, slapped each other on the back, and agreed with his every utterance, no matter how ludicrous.

Never to want for anything, or work for anything, or show the tiniest grain of self-discipline in a whole life must give a man a strange outlook on the world, West supposed, and here was the proof, riding along beside him, smiling away as though the care of ten thousand men was a light responsibility. The Crown Prince and the real world, as Lord Marshal Burr had observed, were entire strangers to one another.

“Cold,” Ladisla murmured. “Not much like the deserts of Gurkhul now, eh, Colonel West?”

“No, your Highness.”

“But some things are the same, eh? I’m speaking of war, West! War in general! The same everywhere! The courage! The honour! The glory! You fought with Colonel Glokta, didn’t you?”

“Yes, your Highness, I did.”

“I used to love to hear stories of that man’s exploits! One of my heroes, when I was young. Riding round the enemy, harassing his lines of communication, falling on the baggage train and whatnot.” The Prince’s riding crop rode around, harassed, and fell on imaginary baggage in the air before him. “Capital! And I suppose you saw it all?”

“Some of it, your Highness, yes.” He had seen a great deal of saddle-soreness, sunburn, looting, drunkenness, and vainglorious showing-off.

“Colonel Glokta, I swear! We could do with some of that dash here, eh, West? Some of that vim! That vigour! Shame that he’s dead.”

West looked up. “He isn’t dead, your Highness.”

“He isn’t?”

“He was captured by the Gurkish, and then returned to the Union when the war ended. He… er… he joined the Inquisition.”

“The Inquisition?” The Prince looked horrified. “Why on earth would a man give up the soldiering life for that?”

West groped for words, but then thought better of it. “I cannot imagine, your Highness.”

“Joined the Inquisition! Well, I never.” They rode in silence for a moment. Gradually, the Prince’s smile returned. “But we were talking of the honour of war, were we not?”

West grimaced. “We were, your Highness.”

“First through the breach at Ulrioch, weren’t you? First through the breach, I heard! There’s honour for you, eh? There’s glory, isn’t it? That must have been quite an experience, eh, Colonel? Quite an experience!”

Struggling through a mass of broken stones and timbers, littered with twisted corpses. Half-blind with the smoke, half-choking on the dust, shrieks and wails and the clashing of metal coming at him from all around, hardly able to breathe for fear. Men pressing in on all sides, groaning, shoving, stumbling, yelling, running with blood and sweat, black with grime and soot, half-seen faces twisted with pain and fury. Devils, in hell.

West remembered screaming “Forward!”, over and over until his throat was raw, even though he had no idea which way forward was. He remembered stabbing someone with his sword, friend or enemy, he did not know, then or now. He remembered falling and cutting his head on a rock, tearing his jacket on a broken timber. Moments, fragments, as if from a story he once heard someone else telling.

West pulled his coat tighter round his chilly shoulders, wishing it was thicker. “Quite an experience, your Highness.”

“Damn shame that bloody Bethod won’t be coming this way!” Prince Ladisla slashed petulantly at the air with his riding crop. “Little better than damn guard duty! Does Burr take me for a fool, eh, West, does he?”

West took a deep breath. “I couldn’t possibly say, your Highness.”

The Prince’s fickle mind had already moved off. “What about those pets of yours? Those Northmen. The ones with the comical names. What’s he called, that dirty fellow? Wolfman, is it?”

“Dogman.”

“Dogman, that’s it! Capital!” The Prince chuckled to himself. “And that other one, biggest damn fellow I ever saw! Excellent! What are they up to?”

“I sent them scouting north of the river, your Highness.” West rather wished he was with them. “The enemy are probably far away, but if they aren’t, we need to know about it.”

“Of course we do. Excellent idea. So that we can prepare to attack!”

A timely withdrawal and a fast messenger to Marshal Burr was more what West had in mind, but there was no point in saying so. Ladisla’s whole notion of war was of ordering a glorious charge, then retiring to bed. Strategy and retreat were not words in his vocabulary.

“Yes,” the Prince was muttering to himself, eyes fixed intently on the trees beyond the river. “Prepare an attack and sweep them back across the border…”

The border was a hundred leagues away. West seized his moment. “Your Highness, if I may, there is a great deal for me to do.”

It was no lie. The camp had been organised, or disorganised, without a thought for convenience or defence. An unruly maze of ramshackle canvas in a great clearing near the river, where the ground was too soft and had soon been turned into a morass of sticky mud by the supply carts. At first there had been no latrines, then they had been dug too shallow and much too close to the camp, not far from where the provisions were being stored.

Provisions which, incidentally, had been badly packed, inadequately prepared, and were already close to spoiling, attracting every rat in Angland. If it had not been for the cold, West did not doubt that the camp would already have been riddled with disease.

Prince Ladisla waved his hand. “Of course, a great deal to do. You can tell me more of your stories tomorrow, eh, West? About Colonel Glokta and so forth. Damn shame he’s dead!” he shouted over his shoulder as he cantered off towards his enormous purple tent, high up on the hill above the stink and confusion.

West turned his mount with some relief and urged it down the slope into the camp. He passed men tottering through the half-frozen sludge, shivering, breath steaming, hands wrapped in dirty rags. He passed men sitting in sorry groups before their patched tents, no two dressed the same, as close to meagre fires as they dared, fiddling with cooking pots, playing miserable games of damp cards, drinking and staring into the cold air.

The better-trained levies had gone with Poulder and Kroy to seek out the enemy. Ladisla had been left with the rump: those too weak to march well, too poorly equipped to fight well, too broken even to do nothing with any conviction. Men who might never have left their homes in all their lives, forced to cross the sea to a land they knew nothing of, to fight an enemy they had no quarrel with, for reasons they did not understand.

Some few of them might have felt some trace of patriotic fervour, some swell of manly pride when they left, but by now the hard marching, the bad food and the cold weather had truly worn, starved, and frozen all enthusiasm out of them. Prince Ladisla was scarcely the inspirational leader to put it back, had he even been making the slightest effort to do so.