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Varuz cleared his throat. “Your Majesty—”

“No! Have my horse saddled. Gather the Knights of the Body. I refuse to—”

High Justice Marovia had moved to block the door to the stairs, and now looked calmly, sadly into Jezal’s face. “If you were to open the gates now, you would be putting everyone in the Agriont at risk. Many thousands of citizens, all looking to you for protection. Here we can keep them safe, at least for now. We must keep them safe.” His eyes slid sideways to the streets. Different-coloured eyes, Jezal noticed, one blue, one green. “We must weigh the greater good.”

“The greater good.” Jezal looked the other way, into the Agriont. Brave defenders were ranged around the walls, he knew, ready to fight to the death for king and country, however undeserving. He pictured civilians too, scurrying for safety through the narrow lanes. Men, women, children, the old and the young, driven from their ruined homes. People to whom he had promised safety. His eyes flickered across the high white buildings around the green park, the wide Square of Marshals, the long Kingsway with its tall statues. They were filled, he knew, with the helpless and the needy. Those unlucky enough to have no one better to rely on than the gutless fraud, Jezal dan Luthar.

It stuck in his throat, but he knew the old bureaucrat was right. There was nothing he could do. He had been shockingly lucky to survive his last magnificent charge, and it was far too late for another. Outside the Agriont, Gurkish soldiers were beginning to boil into the square before the gate. A few of them knelt, bows in hand, and sent a flight of arrows arcing across onto the bridge. Tiny figures tumbled and fell, splashed into the moat. Tiny screams wafted gently up to the top of the Tower of Chains.

An answering volley rattled from the walls, peppered the Gurkish with flatbow bolts. Men dropped, others faltered and fell back, leaving a few bodies scattered across the cobbles. They scurried for cover in the buildings around the edge of the square, men darting through the shadows from house to house. A Union soldier jumped from the bridge and splashed along in the moat for a few strokes before disappearing. He did not resurface. Behind him a last handful of the stranded defenders were still crawling, desperately holding up their arms. The notion of the greater good was likely to be scant consolation for them as they choked their last breaths. Jezal squeezed his eyes shut and looked away.

“There! To the east!”

Varuz and a few members of his staff had clustered around the far parapet, gazing out past the House of the Maker and towards the distant fields outside the city. Jezal strode over to them, shielded his eyes against the rising sun. Beyond the great wall of the Agriont, beyond the shining river and the wide curve of the city, he thought he caught some trace of movement. A wide crescent of movement, crawling slowly towards Adua.

One of the officers lowered an eye-glass. “Cavalry! Union Cavalry!”

“Are you sure?”

“The Army!”

“Late to the party,” muttered Varuz, “but no less welcome for that.”

“Hurrah for Marshal West!”

“We are delivered!”

Jezal was in no mood to whoop for joy. Hope was a fine thing, of course, and had long been in short supply, but celebrations were decidedly premature. He crossed back to the other side of the tower and frowned down.

More Gurkish were surging into the square outside the citadel, and more still, and they were coming well prepared. They wheeled great sloping wooden screens forward, each one big enough for a score of men or more to hide behind. The foremost of them already bristled with flatbow bolts, but they continued to creep towards the bridge. Arrows flitted up and down. The wounded fell, did their best to crawl for the rear. One of the buildings at the side of the square had already caught fire, flames licking hungrily round the eaves of its roof.

“The army!” someone whooped from the opposite battlement. “Marshal West!”

“Indeed.” Marovia frowned down at the carnage below, the sounds of battle growing steadily more frantic. “Let us hope he has not come too late.”

The noise of fighting crept up through the cool air. Clashing and clicking, echoing calls. Logen glanced left and right at the men around him, jogging forward over the open fields, quick breath hissing, gear rattling, all blunt frowns and sharp weapons.

Hardly a heartening thing, to be part of all this again.

The sad fact was that Logen had felt more warmth and more trust with Ferro and Jezal, Bayaz and Quai than he did with his own kind now. They’d been a difficult set of bastards, each in their own way. It wasn’t that he’d really understood them, or even liked them much. But Logen had liked himself when he was with them. Out there in the deserted west of the World, he’d been a man you could rely on, like his father had been. A man with no bloody history breathing on his shoulder, no name blacker than hell, no need to watch his back every moment. A man with hopes for something better.

The thought of seeing those folk again, the chance at being that man again, put the spur to him, made Logen want to run at the grey wall of Adua all the faster. It seemed, in that moment anyway, as if he might be able to leave the Bloody-Nine outside it.

But the rest of the Northmen didn’t share his eagerness. It was closer to a stroll than a charge. They ambled up to a stand of trees, a couple of birds went flapping into the white sky, and they stopped altogether. No one said anything. One lad even sat down, with his back to a tree, and started supping water from a flask.

Logen stared at him. “By the dead, I don’t reckon I ever saw such a piss-weak charge as this. Did you leave your bones back in the North?”

There was a bit of mumbling, a few shifty looks. Red Hat glanced sideways, his tongue wedged into his bottom lip. “Maybe we did. Don’t get me wrong, chief, or your Royal Highness, or whatever it is now.” He bowed his head to show he meant no disrespect by it. “I’ve fought before and hard enough, had my life balanced on a sword’s edge, and all o’ that. Just, well… why fight now, is what I’m saying. What we’re all thinking, I reckon. Ain’t none of our business, is it? Ain’t our fight, this.”

Dogman shook his head. “The Union are going to take us for a right crowd o’ cowards.”

“Who cares what they think?” someone said.

Red Hat stepped up close. “Look, chief, I don’t care much of a shit whether some fool I don’t know thinks I’m a coward. I’ve spilled enough blood for that. We all have.”

“Huh,” grunted Logen. “So your vote’s to stay here, then, is it?”

Red Hat shrugged. “Well, I guess—” He squawked as Logen’s forehead crunched into his face, smashing his nose like a nut on an anvil. He dropped hard on his back in the mud, spluttering blood down his chin.

Logen turned round, and he let his face hang on one side, the way he used to. The Bloody-Nine’s face—cold and dead, caring for nothing. It was easy to do it. Felt as natural on him as a favourite pair of boots. His hand found the cold grip of the Maker’s sword, and all around him men eased back, shuffled away, muttered and whispered.

“Any other one o’ you cunts want a vote?”

The lad dropped his flask in the grass and jumped up from where he’d been sitting. Logen gave a few of them his eye, one by one, whoever looked hardest, and one by one they looked at the ground, at the trees, at anything but him. Until he looked at Shivers. That longhaired bastard stared straight back at him. Logen narrowed his eyes. “How about you?”

Shivers shook his head, hair swaying across his face. “Oh no. Not now.”

“When you’re ready, then. When any one o’ you are ready. Until then, I’ll have some work out o’ you. Weapons,” he growled.

Swords and axes, spears and shields were all made ready quick-time. Men fussed about, finding their places, competing all of a sudden to be the first to charge. Red Hat was just getting up, wincing with one hand to his bloody face. Logen looked down at him. “If you’re feeling hard done by, think on this. In the old days you’d be trying to hold your guts in about now.”