Poulder swallowed, sweat glistening all over his ruddy face. “You are, my Lord Marshal.”

“Good. I am trusting General Kroy to seize control of the hills between us and Carleon. Until you prove yourself worthy of a separate command you will stay with me. I want your division ready to move north before first light, and the swiftest units to the fore. Our Northern allies are relying on us, and I do not mean to let them down. At first light, General, and with the greatest speed.”

“The greatest speed, of course. You can rely on me… sir.”

“I hope so, in spite of my reservations. Every man must do his part, General Poulder. Every man.”

Poulder blinked and worked his mouth, half turned to leave, remembered belatedly to salute, then strode from the tent. West watched the flap moving ever so gently in the wind outside, then he sighed, crumpled the letter up in his hand and tossed it away into the corner. It was nothing but a blank sheet of paper, after all.

Pike raised one pink, mostly hairless brow. “Sweetly done, sir, if I may say. Even in the camps, I never saw better lying.”

“Thank you, Sergeant. Now that I begin, I find I warm to the work. My father always warned me against untruths, but between you and me the man was a shit, a coward, and a failure. If he was here now I’d spit in his face.”

West rose and walked to the largest-scale of the maps, stood before it, his hands clasped behind his back. In just the way that Marshal Burr would have done, he realised. He examined the dirty finger-smudge in the mountains where Crummock-i-Phail had indicated the position of his fortress. He traced the route to the Union army’s own current position, far to the south, and frowned. It was hard to believe that a Union cartographer could ever have come close to surveying that terrain in person, and the flamboyant shapes of the hills and rivers had an undoubted flavour of make-believe about them.

“How long do you think it will take to get there, sir?” asked Pike.

“Impossible to say.” Even if they got started immediately, which was unlikely. Even if Poulder did as he was told, which was doubly so. Even if the map was halfway accurate, which he knew it was not. He shook his head grimly. “Impossible to say.”

The First Day

The eastern sky was just catching fire. Long strips of pink cloud and long strips of black cloud were stretched out across the pale blue, the hazy grey shapes of mountains notched and jagged as a butcher’s knife underneath. The western sky was a mass of dark iron still—cold and comfortless.

“Nice day for it,” said Crummock.

“Aye.” But Logen wasn’t sure there was any such a thing.

“Well, if Bethod don’t show, and we get nothing killed at all, at least you lot will have done wonders for my wall, eh?”

It was amazing how well and how fast a man could patch a wall when it was the pile of stones that might save his own life. A few short days and they had the whole stretch of it built up and mortared, most of the ivy cut away. From inside the fort, where the ground was that much higher, it didn’t look too fearsome. From outside it was three times the height of a tall man up to the walkway. They’d new made the parapet neck-high at the top, with plenty of good slots for shooting and throwing rocks from. Then they’d dug out a decent ditch in front, and lined it with sharp stakes.

They were still digging, over on the left where the wall met the cliff and it was easiest to climb over. That was Dow’s stretch, and Logen could hear him shouting at his boys over the sound of shovels. “Get digging, you lazy fucks! I’ll not be killed for your lack of work! Put your back into it, you bastards!” and so on, all day long. One way of getting work out of a man, Logen reckoned.

They’d dug the ditch out especially deep right in front of the old gate. A nice reminder to everyone that there were no plans to leave. But it was still the weakest spot, and there was no missing it. That was where Logen would be, if Bethod came. Right in the middle, on Shivers’ stretch of wall. He was standing above the archway now, not far from Logen and Crummock, his long hair flapping about in the breeze, pointing out some cracks that still needed mortaring.

“Wall’s looking good!” Logen shouted at him.

Shivers looked round, worked his mouth, then spat over his shoulder. “Aye,” he growled, and turned away.

Crummock leaned close. “If it comes to a battle you’ll have to watch your back with that one, Bloody-Nine.”

“I reckon so.” The middle of a fight was a good place to settle a score with a man on your own side. No one ever checked too carefully if the corpses got it in the back or the front once the fighting was done. Everyone too busy crying at their cuts, or digging, or running away. Logen gave the big hillman a long stare. “I’ll have a lot of men to watch if it comes to a battle. We ain’t so very friendly that you won’t be one of ’em.”

“Likewise,” said Crummock, grinning all the way across his big, bearded face. “We both got a reputation for being none too picky who gets killed, once the killing starts. But that’s no bad thing. Too much trust makes men sloppy.”

“Too much trust?” It had been a while since Logen had too much of anything except enemies. He jerked his thumb towards the tower. “I’m going up, check if they’ve seen anything.”

“I hope they have!” said Crummock, rubbing his fat palms together. “I hope that bastard comes today!”

Logen hopped down from the wall and walked out across the fort, if you could call it that, past Carls and hillmen, sat in groups eating, or talking, or cleaning weapons. A few who’d been on guard through the night wrapped up in blankets, asleep. He passed the pen where the sheep were huddled together, a good deal fewer than there had been. He passed the makeshift forge set up near the stone shed, a couple of soot-smeared men working a bellows, another pouring metal into moulds for arrow heads. They’d need a damn lot of arrow-heads if Bethod came calling. He came to the narrow steps cut into the rock-face and took them two at a time, up above the fort to the top of the tower.

There was a big pile of rocks for throwing up there, on that shelf on the mountainside, and six big barrels wedged full of shafts. The pick of the archers stood at the new-mortared parapets, the men with the best eyes and the best ears, keeping watch for Bethod. Logen saw the Dogman in amongst the rest, with Grim on one side of him and Tul on the other.

“Chief!” It still made Logen smile to say it. A long time, they’d done things the other way around, but it worked a lot better like this, to his mind. At least no one was scared all the time. Not of their own chief, anyway. “See anything?”

The Dogman grinned round, and offered him out a flask. “A lot, as it goes.”

“Uh,” said Grim. The sun was getting up above the mountains now, slitting the clouds with bright lines, eating into the shadows across the hard land, burning away the dawn haze. The great fells loomed up bold and careless on either side, smeared with yellow green grass and fern on the slopes, strips of bare rock breaking through the brown summits. Below, the bare valley was quiet and still. Spotted with thorn bushes and clumps of stunted trees, creased with the paths of dried-out streams. Just as empty as it had been the day before, and the day before that, and ever since they’d got there.

It reminded Logen of his youth, climbing up in the High Places, alone. Days at a time, testing himself against the mountains. Before his was a name that anyone had heard of. Before he married, or had children, and before his wife and his children went back to the mud. The happy valleys of the past. He sucked in a long, cold breath of the high air, and he blew it out. “It’s quite a spot for a view, alright, but I meant have we seen anything of our old friend.”