"Why?" snarled Victus, glaring down at Rigrat's corpse. "I mean, why did this bastard do it?"

"My fault!" wailed Cosca. "I took money from Rogont to stay out of the battle!"

Sesaria and Victus exchanged a glance. "You took money... to stay out?"

"A huge amount of money! There will be shares by seniority, of course." Cosca waved his hand as though it was a trifle now. "Danger pay for every man, in Gurkish gold."

"Gold?" rumbled Sesaria, eyebrows going up as though Cosca had pronounced a magic word.

"But I would sink it all in the ocean for one minute longer in my old friend's company! To hear him speak again! To see him smile. But never more. Forever..." Cosca swept off his hat, laid it gently over Andiche's face and hung his head. "Silent."

Victus cleared his throat. "How much gold are we talking about, exactly?"

"A... huge... quantity." Cosca gave a shuddering sniff. "As much again as Orso paid us to fight on his behalf."

"Andiche dead. A heavy price to pay." But Sesaria looked as if he perceived the upside.

"Too heavy a price. Far too heavy." Cosca slowly stood. "My friends... could you bring yourselves to make arrangements for the burial? I must observe the battle. We must stumble on. For him. There is one consolation, I suppose."

"The money?" asked Victus.

Cosca slapped down a hand on each captain's shoulder. "Thanks to my bargain we will not need to fight. Andiche will be the only casualty the Thousand Swords suffer today. You could say he died for all of us. Sergeant Friendly!" And Cosca turned and pushed past into the bright sunlight. Ishri glided silently at his elbow.

"Quite the performance," she murmured. "You really should have been an actor rather than a general."

"There's not so much air between the two as you might imagine." Cosca walked to the captain general's chair and leaned on the back, feeling suddenly tired and irritable. Considering the long years he had dreamed of taking revenge for Afieri, it was a disappointing pay-off. He was in terrible need of a drink, fumbled for Morveer's flask, but it was empty. He frowned down into the valley. The Talinese were engaged in a desperate battle perhaps half a mile wide at the bank of the lower ford, waiting for help from the Thousand Swords. Help that would never come. They had the numbers, but the Osprians were still holding their ground, keeping the battle narrow, choking them up in the shallows. The great mle heaved and glittered, the ford crawling with men, bobbing with bodies.

Cosca gave a long sigh. "You Gurkish think there's a point to it all, don't you? That God has a plan, and so forth?"

"I've heard it said." Ishri's black eyes flicked from the valley to him. "And what do you think God's plan is, General Cosca?"

"I have long suspected that it might be to annoy me."

She smiled. Or at least her mouth curled up to show sharp white teeth. "Fury, paranoia and epic self-centredness in the space of a single sentence."

"All the fine qualities a great military leader requires..." He shaded his eyes, squinting off to the west, towards the ridge behind the Talinese lines. "And here they are. Perfectly on schedule." The first flags were showing there. The first glittering spears. The first of what appeared to be a considerable body of men.

The Fate of Styria Up there." Monza's gloved forefinger, and her little finger too, of course, pointed towards the ridge.

More soldiers were coming over the crest, a mile or two to the south of where the Talinese had first appeared. A lot more. It seemed Orso had kept a few surprises back. Reinforcements from his Union allies, maybe. Monza worked her sore tongue around her sour mouth and spat. From faint hopes to no hopes. A small step, but one nobody ever enjoys taking. The leading flags caught a gust of wind and unfurled for a moment. She peered at them through her eyeglass, frowned, rubbed her eye and peered again. There was no mistaking the cockleshell of Sipani.

"Sipanese," she muttered. Until a few moments ago, the world's most neutral men. "Why the hell are they fighting for Orso?"

"Who says they are?" When she turned to Rogont, he was smiling like a thief who'd whipped the fattest purse of his career. He spread his arms out wide. "Rejoice, Murcatto! The miracle you asked for!"

She blinked. "They're on our side?"

"Most certainly, and right in Foscar's rear! And the irony is that it's all your doing."

"Mine?"

"Entirely yours! You remember the conference in Sipani, arranged by that preening mope the King of the Union?"

The great procession through the crowded streets, the cheering as Rogont and Salier led the way, the jeering as Ario and Foscar followed. "What of it?"

"I had no more intention of making peace with Ario and Foscar than they had with me. My only care was to talk old Chancellor Sotorius over to my side. I tried to convince him that if the League of Eight lost then Duke Orso's greed would not end at Sipani's borders, however neutral they might be. That once my young head was off, his ancient one would be next on the block."

More than likely true. Neutrality was no better defence against Orso than it was against the pox. His ambitions had never stopped at one river or the next. One reason why, until the moment he'd tried to kill her, he'd made Monza such a fine employer.

"But the old man clung to his cherished neutrality, tight as a captain to the wheel of his sinking ship, and I despaired of dislodging him. I am ashamed to admit I began to despair entirely, and was seriously considering fleeing Styria for happier climes." Rogont closed his eyes and tilted his face towards the sun. "And then, oh, happy day, oh, serendipity..." He opened them and looked straight at her. "You murdered Prince Ario."

Black blood pumping from his pale throat, body tumbling through the open window, fire and smoke as the building burned. Rogont grinned with all the smugness of a magician explaining the workings of his latest trick.

"Sotorius was the host. Ario was under his protection. The old man knew Orso would never forgive him for the death of his son. He knew the doom of Sipani was sounded. Unless Orso could be stopped. We came to an agreement that very night, while Cardotti's House of Leisure was still burning. In secret, Chancellor Sotorius brought Sipani into the League of Nine."

"Nine," muttered Monza, watching the Sipanese host march steadily down the gentle hillside towards the fords, and Foscar's almost undefended rear.

"My long retreat from Puranti, which you thought so ill-advised, was intended to give him time to prepare. I backed willingly into this little trap so I could play the bait in a greater one."

"You're cleverer than you look."

"Not difficult. My aunt always told me I looked a dunce."

She frowned across the valley at the motionless host on top of Menzes Hill. "What about Cosca?"

"Some men never change. He took a very great deal of money from my Gurkish backers to keep out of the battle."

It suddenly seemed she didn't understand the world nearly as well as she'd thought. "I offered him money. He wouldn't take it."

"Imagine that, and negotiation so very much your strong point. He wouldn't take the money from you. Ishri, it seems, talks more sweetly. 'War is but the pricking point of politics. Blades can kill men, but only words can move them, and good neighbours are the surest shelter in a storm.' I quote from Juvens' Principles of Art. Flim-flam and superstition mostly, but the volume on the exercise of power is quite fascinating. You should read more widely, General Murcatto. Your book-learning is narrow in scope."

"I came to reading late," she grunted.

"You may enjoy the full use of my library, once I've butchered the Talinese and conquered Styria." He smiled happily down towards the bottom of the valley, where Foscar's army were in grave danger of being surrounded. "Of course, if Orso's troops had a more seasoned leader today than the young Prince Foscar, things might have been very different. I doubt a man of General Ganmark's abilities would have fallen so completely into my trap. Or even one of Faithful Carpi's long experience." He leaned from his saddle and brought his self-satisfied smirk a little closer. "But Orso has suffered some unfortunate losses in the area of command, lately."

She snorted, turned her head and spat. "So glad to be of help."

"Oh, I couldn't have done it without you. All we need do is hold the lower ford until our brave allies of Sipani reach the river, crush Foscar's men between us, and Duke Orso's ambitions will be drowned in the shallows."

"That all?" Monza frowned towards the water. The Affoians, an untidy red-brown mass on the neglected far right of the battle, had been forced back from the bank. No more than twenty paces of churned-up mud, but enough to give the Talinese a foothold. Now it looked as if some Baolish had waded through the deeper water upstream and got around their flank.

"It is, and it appears that we are already well on our way to... ah." Rogont had seen it too. "Oh." Men were beginning to break from the fighting, struggling up the hillside towards the city.

"Looks as if your brave allies of Affoia have tired of your hospitality."

The mood of smug jubilation that had swept through Rogont's headquarters when the Sipanese appeared was fading rapidly as more and more dots crumbled from the back of the bulging Affoian lines and began to scatter in every direction. Above them the companies of archers grew ragged as bowmen looked nervously up towards the city. No doubt they weren't keen to get closer acquainted with the men they'd been shooting arrows down at for the last hour.

"If those Baolish bastards break through they'll take your people in the flank, roll your whole line up. It'll be a rout."

Rogont chewed at his lip. "The Sipanese are less than half an hour away."

"Excellent. They'll turn up just in time to count our corpses. Then theirs."

He glanced nervously back towards the city. "Perhaps we should retire to our walls-"

"You haven't the time to disengage from that mess. Even as skilled a withdrawer as you are."

The duke's face had lost its colour. "What do we do?"

It suddenly seemed she understood the world perfectly. Monza drew her sword with a faint ringing of steel. A cavalry sword she'd borrowed from Rogont's armoury-simple, heavy and murderously well-sharpened. His eyes rolled down to it. "Ah. That."

"Yes. That."

"I suppose there comes a time when a man must truly cast prudence to one side." Rogont set his jaw, muscles working on the side of his head. "Cavalry. With me..." His voice died to a throaty croak.

A loud voice to a general, Farans wrote, is worth a regiment.

Monza stood in her stirrups and screamed at the top of her lungs. "Form the horse!"

The duke's staff began to screech, point, wave their swords. Mounted men drew in all around, forming up in long ranks. Harnesses rattled, armour clanked, lances clattered against each other, horses snorted and pawed at the ground. Men found their places, tugged their restless mounts around, cursed and bellowed, strapped on helmets and slapped down visors.

The Baolish were breaking through in earnest, boiling out of the widening gaps in Rogont's shattered right wing like the rising tide through a wall of sand. Monza could hear their shrill war cries as they streamed up the slope, see their tattered banners waving, the glitter of metal on the move. The lines of archers above them dissolved all at once, men tossing away their bows and running for the city, mixed up with fleeing Affoians and a few Osprians who were starting to think better of the whole business. It had always amazed her how quickly an army could come apart once the panic started to spread. Like pulling out the keystone of a bridge, the whole thing, so firm and ordered one minute, could be nothing but ruins the next. They were on the brink of that moment of collapse now, she could feel it.

Monza felt a horse pull up beside her and Shivers met her eye, axe in one hand, reins and a heavy shield in the other. He hadn't bothered with armour. Just wore the shirt with the gold thread on the cuffs. The one she'd picked out for him. The one that Benna might have worn. It didn't seem to suit him much now. Looked like a crystal collar on a killing dog.

"Thought maybe you'd headed back North."

"Without all that money you owe me?" His one eye shifted down into the valley. "Never yet turned my back on a fight."

"Good. Glad to have you." It was true enough, at that moment. Whatever else, he had a handy habit of saving her life. She'd already looked away by the time she felt him look at her. And by that time, it was time to go.

Rogont raised his sword, and the noon sun caught the mirror-bright blade and struck flashing fire from it. Just like in the stories.

"Forward!"

Tongues clicked, heels kicked, reins snapped. Together, as if they were one animal, the great line of horsemen started to move. First at a walk, horses stirring, snorting, jerking sideways. The ranks twisted and flexed as eager men and mounts broke ahead. Officers bellowed, bringing them back into formation. Faster they moved, and faster, armour and harness clattering, and Monza's heart beat faster with them. That tingling mix of fear and joy that comes when the thinking's done and there's nothing left but to do. The Baolish had seen them, were struggling to form some kind of line. Monza could see their snarling faces in the moments when the world held still, wild-haired men in tarnished chain mail and ragged fur.

The lances of the horsemen around her began to swing down, points gleaming, and they broke into a trot. The breath hissed cold in Monza's nose, sharp in her dry throat, burned hot in her chest. Not thinking about the pain or the husk she needed for it. Not thinking about what she'd done or what she'd failed to do. Not thinking about her dead brother or the men who'd killed him. Just gripping with all her strength to her horse and to her sword. Just staying fixed on the scattering of Baolish on the slope in front of her, already wavering. They were tired out and ragged from fighting in the valley, running up the hill. And a few hundred tons of horseflesh bearing down on a man could tax his nerve at the best of times.

Their half-formed line began to crumble.

"Charge!" roared Rogont. Monza screamed with him, heard Shivers bellowing beside her, shouts and wails from every man in the line. She dug her heels in hard and her horse swerved, righted itself, sprang down the hill at a bone-cracking gallop. Hooves thudded at the ground, mud and grass flicked and flew, Monza's teeth rattled in her head. The valley bounced and shuddered around her, the sparkling river rushed up towards her. Her eyes were full of wind, she blinked back wet, the world turned to a blurry, sparkling smear then suddenly, mercilessly sharp again. She saw the Baolish scattering, flinging down weapons as they ran. Then the cavalry were among them.

A horse ahead of the pack was impaled on a spear, shaft bending, shattering. It took spearman and rider with it, tumbling over and over down the slope, straps and harness flailing in the air.

She saw a lance take a running man in the back, rip him open from his arse to his shoulders and send the corpse reeling. The fleeing Baolish were spitted, hacked, trampled, broken.

One was flung spinning from the chest of a horse in front, chopped across the back with a sword, clattered shrieking against Monza's leg and was broken apart under the hooves of Rogont's charger.

Another dropped his spear, turning away, his face a pale blur of fear. She swung her sword down, felt the jarring impact up her arm as the heavy blade stoved his helmet deep in with a hollow clonk.

Wind rushed in her ears, hooves pounded. She was screaming still, laughing, screaming. Cut another man down as he tried to run, near taking his arm off at the shoulder and sending blood up in a black gout. Missed another with a full-blooded sweep and only just kept her saddle as she was twisted round after her sword. Righted herself just in time, clinging to the reins with her aching hand.

They were through the Baolish now, had left their torn and bloody corpses in their wake. Shattered lances were flung aside, swords were drawn. The slope levelled off as they plunged on, closer to the river, the ground spotted with Affoian bodies. The battle was a tight-packed slaughter ahead, brought out in greater detail now, more and more Talinese crossing the ford, adding their weight to the mindless press on the banks. Polearms waved and glittered, blades flashed, men struggled and strained. Over the wind and her own breath Monza could hear it, like a distant storm, metal and voices mangled together. Officers rode behind the lines, screaming vainly, trying to bring some trace of order to the madness.

A fresh Talinese regiment had started to push through the gap the Baolish had made on the far right-heavy infantry, well armoured. They'd wheeled and were pressing at the end of the Osprian line, the men in blue straining to hold them off but sorely outnumbered now, more men coming up from the river every moment and forcing the gap wider.

Rogont, shining armour streaked with blood, turned in his saddle and pointed his sword towards them, screamed something no one could hear. It hardly mattered. There was no stopping now.

The Talinese were forming a wedge around a white battle flag, black cross twisting in the wind, an officer at the front stabbing madly at the air as he tried to get them ready to meet the charge. Monza wondered briefly whether she'd ever met him. Men knelt, a mass of glittering armour at the point of the wedge, bristling with polearms, waving and rattling further back, half still caught up with the Osprians, tangled together every which way, a thicket of blades.

Monza saw a cloud of bolts rise from the press in the ford. She winced as they flickered towards her, held her breath for no reason that made any sense. Held breath won't stop an arrow. Rattle and whisper as they showered down, clicking into turf, pinging from heavy armour, thudding into horseflesh.

A horse took a bolt in the neck, twisted, went over on its flank. Another careered into it and its rider came free of the saddle, thrashing at the air, his lance tumbling down the hillside, digging up clods of black soil. Monza wrenched her horse around the wreckage. Something rattled off her breastplate and spun up into her face. She gasped, rolling in her saddle, pain down her cheek. Arrow. The flights had scratched her. She opened her eyes to see an armoured man clutching at a bolt in his shoulder, jolting, jolting, then tumbling sideways, dragged clanking after his madly galloping horse, foot still caught in one stirrup. The rest of them plunged on, horses flowing round the fallen or over them, leaving them trampled.

She'd bitten her tongue somewhere. She spat blood, digging her spurs in again and forcing her mount on, lips curled right back, wind rushing cold at her mouth.

"We should've stuck to farming," she whispered. The Talinese came pounding up to meet her.

Shivers never had understood where the eager fools came from in every battle, but there were always enough of the bastards to make a show. These ones drove their horses straight for the white flag, at the point of the wedge where the spears were well set. The front horse checked before it got there, skidded and reared, rider just clinging on. The horse behind crashed into it and sent beast and man both onto the gleaming points, blood and splinters flying. Another bucked behind, pitching its rider forwards over its head and tumbling into the muck where the front rank gratefully stabbed at him.

Calmer-headed horsemen broke to the sides, flowing round the wedge like a stream round a rock and into its softer flanks where the spears weren't set. Squealing soldiers clambered over each other as the riders bore down, fighting to be anywhere but the front, spears wobbling at all angles.

Monza went left and Shivers followed, his eye fixed on her. Up ahead a couple of horses jumped the milling front rank and into the midst, riders lashing about with swords and maces. Others crashed into the scrambling men, crushing them, trampling them, sending them spinning, screaming, begging, driving through 'em towards the river. Monza chopped some stumbling fool down as she passed and was into the press, hacking away with her sword. A spearman jabbed at her and caught her in the backplate, near tore her from the saddle.

Black Dow's words came to mind-there's no better time to kill a man than in a battle, and that goes double when he's on your own side. Shivers gave his horse the spurs and urged it up beside Monza, standing tall in his stirrups, bringing his axe up high above her head. His lips curled back. He swung it down with a roar and right into the spearman's face, burst it wide open and sent his corpse tumbling. He heaved the axe all the way over to the other side and it crashed into a shield and left a great dent in it, knocked the man who held it under the threshing hooves of the horse beside. Might've been one of Rogont's people, but it was no time to be thinking on who was who.

Kill everyone not on a horse. Kill anyone on a horse who got in his way.

Kill everyone.

He screamed his war cry, the one he'd used outside the walls of Adua, when they scared the Gurkish off with screams alone. The high wail, out of the icy North, though his voice was cracked and creaking now. He laid about him, hardly looking what he was chopping at, axe blade clanking, banging, thudding, voices crying, blubbering, screeching.

A broken voice roared in Northern. "Die! Die! Back to the mud, fuckers!" His ears were full of mindless roar and rattle. A shifting sea of jabbing weapons, squealing shields, shining metal, bone shattered, blood spattered, furious, terrified faces washing all round him, squirming and wriggling, and he hacked and chopped and split them like a mad butcher going at a carcass.

His muscles were throbbing hot, his skin was on fire to the tips of his fingers, damp with sweat in the burning sun. Forwards, always forwards, part of the pack, towards the water, leaving a bloody path of broken bodies, dead men and dead horses behind them. The battle opened up and he was through, men scattering in front of him. He spurred his horse between two of them, jolting down the bank and into the shallow river. He hacked one between the shoulders as they fled then chopped deep into the other's neck on the backswing, sent him spinning into the water.

There were riders all round him now, splashing into the ford, hooves sending up showers of bright spray. He caught a glimpse of Monza, still ahead, horse struggling through deeper water, sword blade twinkling as it went up and cut down. The charge was spent. Lathered horses floundered in the shallows. Riders leaned down, chopping, barking, soldiers stabbed back at them with spears, cut at their legs and their mounts with swords. A horseman floundered desperately in the water, crest of his helmet skewed while men battered at him with maces, knocking him this way and that, leaving great dents in his heavy armour.

Shivers grunted as something grabbed him round the stomach, was bent back, shirt ripping. He flailed with his elbow but couldn't get a good swing. A hand clutched at his head, fingers dug at the scarred side of his face, nails scraping at his dead eye. He roared, kicked, squirmed, tried to swing his left arm but someone had hold of that too. He let go his shield, was dragged back, off his horse and down, twisting into the shallows, rolling sideways and up onto his knees.

A young lad in a studded leather jacket was right next to him in the river, wet hair hanging round his face. He was staring down at something in his hand, something flat and glinting. Looked like an eye. The enamel that'd been in Shivers' face until a moment before. The boy looked up, and they stared at each other. Shivers felt something beside him, ducked, wind on his wet hair as his own shield swung past his head. He spun, axe following him in a great wide circle and thudding deep into someone's ribs, blood showering out. It bent him sideways and snatched him howling off his feet, flung him splashing down a stride or two away.

When he turned, the lad was coming at him with a knife. Shivers twisted sideways, managed to catch his forearm and hold it. They staggered, tangled together, went over, cold water clutching. The knife nicked Shivers' shoulder but he was far bigger, far stronger, rolled out on top. They wrestled and clawed, snorting in each other's faces. He let the axe shaft drop through his fist until he was gripping it right under the blade, the lad caught his wrist with his free hand, water washing around his head, but he didn't have the strength to stop it. Shivers gritted his teeth, twisted the axe until the heavy blade slid up across his neck.

"No," whispered the boy.