West looked down at those grim, tired, pinched faces as he rode past, and they stared back, beaten already. All they wanted was to go home, and West could hardly blame them. So did he. “Colonel West!”

There was a big man grinning over at him, a man with a thick beard, wearing the uniform of an officer in the King’s Own. West realised with a start that it was Jalenhorm. He slid down from his saddle and grabbed hold of the big man’s hand in both of his. It was good to see him. A firm, honest, trustworthy presence. A reminder of a past life, when West did not move among the great men of the world, and things were an awful lot simpler. “How are you, Jalenhorm?”

“Alright, thank you, sir. Just taking a turn round the camp, waiting.” The big man cupped his hands and blew into them, rubbed them together. “Trying to stay warm.”

“That’s what war is, in my experience. A great deal of waiting, in unpleasant conditions. A great deal of waiting, with occasional moments of the most extreme terror.”

Jalenhorm gave a dry grin. “Something to look forward to then. How’re things on the Prince’s staff?”

West shook his head. “A competition to see who can be most arrogant, ignorant, and wasteful. How about you? How’s the camp life?”

“We’re not so badly off. It’s some of these levies I feel sorry for. They’re not fit to fight. I heard a couple of the older ones died last night from the cold.”

“It happens. Let’s just hope they bury them deep, and a good way from the rest of us.” West could see that the big man thought him heartless, but there it was. Few of the casualties in Gurkhul had died in battle. Accidents, illness, little wounds gone bad. You came to expect it. As badly equipped as some of the levies were? They would be burying men every day. “Nothing you need?”

“There is one thing. My horse dropped a shoe in this mud, and I tried to find someone to fit a new one.” Jalenhorm spread his hands. “I could be wrong, but I don’t think there’s a smith in the whole camp.”

West stared at him. “Not one?”

“I couldn’t find any. There are forges, anvils, hammers and all the rest but… no one to work them. I spoke to one of the quartermasters. He said General Poulder refused to release any of his smiths, and so did General Kroy, so, well,” and Jalenhorm shrugged his shoulders, “we don’t have any.”

“No one thought to check?”

“Who?”

West felt the familiar headache tugging at the back of his eyes. Arrows need heads, blades need sharpening, armour and saddles and the carts that haul the supplies break, and need to be repaired. An army with no smiths is little better than an army with no weapons. And here they were, out in the frozen country, miles from the nearest settlement. Unless…

“We passed a penal colony on the way.”

Jalenhorm squinted as he tried to remember. “Yes, a foundry, I think. I saw smoke above the trees…”

“They would have some skilled metal-workers.”

The big man’s eyebrows went up. “Some criminal metalworkers.”

“I’ll take whatever we can get. Today your horse is short a shoe, tomorrow we might have nothing to fight with! Get a dozen men together, and a wagon. We’ll leave at once.”

The prison loomed up out of the trees through the cold rain, a fence of great, mossy logs tipped with bent and rusted spikes. A grim-looking place with a grim purpose. West swung from his saddle while Jalenhorm and his men reined up behind him, then squelched across the rutted track to the gate and hammered on the weathered wood with the pommel of his sword.

It took a while, but eventually a small hatch snapped open. A pair of grey eyes frowned at him through the slot. Grey eyes above a black mask. A Practical of the Inquisition.

“My name is Colonel West.”

The eyes regarded him coldly. “So?”

“I am in the service of Crown Prince Ladisla, and I need to speak to the commandant of this camp.”

“Why?”

West frowned, doing his very best to look impressive with his hair plastered to his scalp and the rain dripping off his chin. “There is a war on and I do not have time to bandy words with you! I need to speak to the commandant most urgently!”

The eyes narrowed. They looked at West for a while, and then at the dozen bedraggled soldiers behind him. “Alright,” said the Practical. “You can come in, but only you. The rest will have to wait.”

The main street was a stretch of churned-up mud between leaning shacks, water trickling from the eaves, spattering into the dirt. There were two men and a woman in the road, wet through, struggling to move a cart laden with stones, up to the axles in mush. All three had heavy chains on their ankles. Ragged, bony, hollow faces, as empty of hope as they were empty of food.

“Get that fucking cart shifted,” the Practical growled at them, and they stooped back to their unenviable task.

West struggled through the muck towards a stone building at the far end of the camp, trying to hop from one dry patch to another, without success. Another dour Practical was standing on the threshold, water running from a stained oilskin over his shoulders, hard eyes following West with a mixture of suspicion and indifference. He and his guide stepped past without a word and into the dim hall beyond, full of the noise of drumming rain. The Practical knocked at an ill-fitting door.

“Come in.”

A small, spare room with grey walls, cold and smelling slightly of damp. A mean fire flickered in the grate, a sagging shelf was stacked with books. A portrait of the King of the Union stared regally down from one wall. A lean man in a black coat sat writing at a cheap desk. He looked at West for a while, then carefully put down his pen and rubbed at the bridge of his nose with an inky thumb and forefinger.

“We have a visitor,” grunted the Practical.

“So I see. I am Inquisitor Lorsen, commandant of our little camp.”

West gave the bony hand the most perfunctory of squeezes. “Colonel West. I am here with Prince Ladisla’s army. We are camped a dozen miles to the north.”

“Of course. How might I be of assistance to his Highness?”

“We are desperately in need of skilled metal-workers. You run a foundry here, correct?”

“A mine, a foundry, and a smithy for the manufacture of farming tools, but I fail to see what—”

“Excellent. I will take a dozen or so men back with me, the most skilled men you have available.”

The commandant frowned. “Out of the question. The prisoners here are guilty of the most serious crimes. They cannot be released without a signed order from the Arch Lector himself.”

“Then we have a problem, Inquisitor Lorsen. I have ten thousand men with weapons that need sharpening, armour that needs mending, horses that need shoeing. We might be called into action at any moment. I cannot wait for orders from the Arch Lector or anyone else. I must leave with smiths, and there it is.”

“But you must understand that I cannot allow—”

“You fail to realise the gravity of the situation!” barked West, his temper already fraying. “By all means send a letter to the Arch Lector! I will send a man back to my camp for a company of soldiers! We can see who gets help first!”

The commandant thought about that for a while. “Very well,” he said eventually, “follow me.”

Two dirty children stared at West from the porch of one of the shacks as he stepped out of the commandant’s building, back into the incessant drizzle.

“You have children here?”

“We have whole families, if they are judged a danger to the state.” Lorsen glanced sideways at him. “A shame, but holding the Union together has always required harsh measures. I gather from your silence that you disapprove.”

West watched one of the shabby children limping through the muck, doomed, perhaps, to spend their whole life in this place. “I think it’s a crime.”

The commandant shrugged. “Don’t deceive yourself. Everyone is guilty of something, and even the innocent can be a threat. Perhaps it takes small crimes to prevent bigger ones, Colonel West, but it’s up to bigger men than us to decide. I only make sure they work hard, don’t prey upon each other, and don’t escape.”