Yet no one suggested giving up and going away; not even in whispers or ambiguous hints. The enterprise of the city had long since stopped being an exciting adventure, but the clan had settled down into a siege routine that could easily last for ever if that was how long it took. Already some families were building stone walls for their tents and pens. A few had even taken their first tentative steps towards breaking up the earth and growing food instead of chasing or herding it. And nobody objected that planting was a waste of time since they wouldn't be there to harvest the result. It was automatically assumed that the camp would still be in the same place six months hence.

We might as well build ourselves a city here and have done with it, Temrai reflected, as he walked through the camp on his way to an undoubtedly pointless staff meeting. It would, after all, be the final irony if, in a few years' time, there were two mirror cities on either side of the river, their inhabitants distinguishable only by their accents and the colour of their hair. Then it would be impossible, and futile as well, to ask who was besieging who, or who had got the better of the war.

There was no point in hurrying - the meeting was due to start at noon - so Temrai took a detour down by the river to see how the water-wheel project was coming along. That, too, was a symptom of insidious permanence, but Temrai couldn't bring himself to dislike it on those grounds. He couldn't help remembering the bonemeal grinder which had been one of the first things he'd noticed when he arrived in the city. The thought that his people were now capable of making such a remarkable thing for themselves pleased him. Torsion engines, trebuchets and the arrowmakers' lathes were ambivalent at best, but a water wheel couldn't be anything else but a good thing. In his mind's eye he could already picture permanent mills built beside the clan's traditional fords and bridges back on the plains, standing ready for use when the annual migration brought them there - assuming, of course, that they could get this prototype to work. But it wasn't a difficult thing to build, compared to some of the items they'd managed to make, with nothing more than a few simple tools, plenty of timber and an unwillingness to believe that anything was impossible.

He arrived at the project site at a crucial moment: the point where the water wheel and the flywheel were mounted on either end of the main driveshaft. The design was his own; based, of course, on a standard city model, but adapted by himself to make use of the materials available. The frame was little more than four A-frames salvaged from smashed trebuchets; these supported the shaft, which had been cut from the trunk of a particularly tall and straight fir tree, planed and shaved in situ until it was as near to a perfect cylinder as made no appreciable odds. The timbers that they'd used for the spokes of the wheels were salvage, too; all that was left of the first generation of rafts, the few that had survived the fire. They were using better rafts now, rigidly held together by cross-members morticed and dowelled into place, copied from a standard city pattern. The paddles of the water wheel were heavily modified frame components from scrap torsion engines, and the nails that secured them to the wooden rim had been forged out of city-made bodkin-pattern arrowheads.

Mentakai, the carpenter in charge of the project, had rigged up simple pole cranes made out of further salvaged A-frames to lift the hub-sockets of the wheels level with the shaft. He'd had two options; to mount the hubs only and then assemble the rest of the wheels onto them, or to prefabricate the complete wheels and fit them fully assembled. He'd chosen the latter option despite considerable opposition from his fellow workers on the project, and a small crowd had gathered to see the outcome. There was even a group of apparently interested observers on the city wall, and Temrai wondered if there was anything they could learn from what he firmly believed was an improved design. When he realised the implications of that train of thought, he suppressed it at once; it'd be nice for generations of city people to call water wheels of his design Temrai-wheels in perpetuity, but it'd still be admitting failure. As far as the city was concerned, there would be no perpetuity. He thought about that, and found it strangely depressing.

'Of course it's possible,' Mentakai said to him in a low voice, as the water wheel was manhandled into position under the crane. 'My problem is that because of all this childish rivalry in the team, I'm only likely to get one shot at doing it my way. If it doesn't work, they'll say it's impossible and start pulling the wheel to bits, even if it's just a matter of a frayed rope breaking or a damaged frame giving way.' He shook his head sadly. 'Why people have to be so damned competitive all the time, I just don't know.'

'Human nature,' Temrai replied absently, his attention on the work in progress before them. 'People like things to be a contest, they can understand better if there's winners and losers. It's just the way they are.'

The mule-train was harnessed up and set in motion, and for once the mules did as they were told. After an alarming creak and twitch on the ropes, the wheel lifted off the ground and slowly rose into the air, until an engineer standing up to his knees in the riverbank mud shouted to the mule-drovers and the train stopped. First snag: the hub socket was nine inches too high, which meant the team had to be backed up a tiny amount. That sort of precision is, however, hard to obtain with mules walking backwards; after a great deal of effort, cajoling and bad language the drovers managed to get the recalcitrant brutes to go back, but instead of dropping the hub nine inches, they lowered it by two feet. That was obviously no good; so the mules were driven forwards again, resulting this time in an overshoot of eighteen inches.

'You see?' Mentakai complained dramatically. 'Much more of this and they'll be saying it can't be done. It's not an easy job, for gods' sakes, you can't expect it to go right first time. You've got to stick at it until it comes out right, or else forget about the whole idea and go back to two men turning a handle all day long.'

Temrai made a noise like someone being sympathetic and carried on watching the show. The drovers backed up again (someone had figured out that the best way to get the mules to back up slowly was to cover their heads with a cloth; this meant finding cloths of the right size and shape and, harder still, persuading their owner to part with them.

Eventually, though, the man stuck in the mud yelled out, 'That's it!' with the same degree of exhilaration and relief that you'd expect from a man who's just watched his son being born. Immediately, teams of men standing between the A-frames pulled hard on ropes tied to the spokes of the wheel and guided the socket onto the shaft as if it was the easiest thing in the world. All that needed to be done after that was for the smiths to drive in the cotter pin that would keep the wheel fixed in place; no problems there - hardly surprising, since pinning was a standard part of making torsion engines, and they all knew a lot about that by now. They were just about to drive the mules round to be harnessed up to the flywheel crane when a problem they hadn't allowed for became disturbingly obvious.

They'd put the wrong wheel on first. As soon as the paddles of the wheel touched the water, the wheel began to turn, and the shaft with it. That, of course, made life even more difficult for the crews standing by to raise and guide the flywheel. Piloting a giant wheel into place wasn't exactly easy when the shaft was motionless. Trying to fit it to a beam which rotated ninety-odd times every minute was asking a bit much. There was a basic clutch system to disengage the flywheel, but nothing comparable at the other end. Mentakai swore under his breath.

'Just my luck,' he said. 'Now you watch; they'll have a couple more goes to confirm their verdict, just in order to show willing, and then they'll dismantle the machine. They haven't even tried to follow it through.'

Temrai frowned. 'What if taking it to bits really is the best way?' Temrai asked aloud. 'No way of knowing, I suppose, without having tried it first.'

'Not you as well,' Mentakai muttered. 'It's just a simple mistake, caused by rushing into things and not thinking them through first. Doesn't prove a thing about whether my way's the right one.'

There were ideas in all this that could be applied to other human activities, Temrai realised, sacking cities included. 'I suppose we'd better do it right,' he said. 'Tell them to take the water wheel off again and fit the flywheel, and then we can put the water wheel back.'

Getting the water wheel off proved far harder than getting it on; for one thing, it was going round and round in a strenuous and dangerous manner. Eventually they managed - well past noon by now, Temrai realised, but so what? They can have the meeting without me, it's not as if we have anything to say to each other - and the flywheel went on comparatively easily, thanks to all the practice they were getting. The second fitting of the water wheel was a mess; several ropes broke and one of the frames in the crane sprang a joint, the crews were all thoroughly soaked from splashing about up to their waists in the river, tempers were beginning to fray and the onlookers were making amusing comments from the sidelines. In the end there was a feeling of exhausted relief rather than jubilation when the water wheel began to turn and the flywheel reciprocated its movement. Still, it had been a success - more than that, an achievement, which surely made it all worthwhile- Someone shouted, 'Look out!' but by the time the crews had realised what was happening it was too late. Three hundredweight stones, launched from the trebuchets on the bridgehouse tower, whistled through the air and landed; one in the river, throwing up a curtain of spray that seemed to touch the sky; one directly on top of the water wheel, crushing and cracking it, smashing the A-frames, snapping the driveshaft in two and smearing Mentakai's body over what was left of his project; and one on the edge of the crowd of spectators, killing a man and a woman and shearing both legs off a young boy.

The initial shock seemed to last for ever. Then someone screamed, men ran forward and put their shoulders to the stone under which the boy was pinned, the rest of the crowd wavered, not knowing whether to help the rescuers or run for cover in case there were any more stones on the way. Temrai shoved his way through the engineering crew, who were rooted to the spot staring at the mess where the water wheel had been, and started shouting orders, sending for healers, a stretcher, engineers to bring up five trebuchets for a return volley; the activity helped soak up the shambles in his mind, where images of the burning camp and the rafts burning on the water were blurring into a picture of the bonemeal mill, just the other side of the wall from here if he remembered it right, similarly shattered and destroyed, and in its hoppers the bones of hundreds and thousands of men and women, city and clan, being fed mechanically through onto the still-turning millstones.

They managed to lift the rock enough to drag out the boy; he was still alive and opening his mouth to scream, although nothing was coming out. Someone mentioned that the man and the woman who were still under there had been the boy's parents; Temrai took note of that and put it safely away in his mind for future reference. The first of the five trebuchets was dragged into position and the mules were detached from the hitching points on the frame and linked up to the counterweight; and then they decided to be obstinate and not budge, so there was cursing and the cracking of whips to add to the overall effect; and then someone realised they hadn't brought up a stone to shoot from it, and someone suggested using one of the two that were here already, and someone else thought that suggestion was in pretty poor taste; and Temrai looked up at the bridgehouse tower and told the engineers to belay his order to return fire, since there were no signs that the enemy engines were reloading and they had enough on their hands as it was without picking a fight.

'For me?' Colonel Loredan asked, puzzled.

The guardsman nodded. 'Bloke left it about an hour ago,' he said. 'Wouldn't give his name. There's a letter with it.'

'Oh. Oh, well. Thank you, dismissed.' The guardsman saluted and left, closing the door behind him.

Back in his miserable cell in the second-city gatehouse; same bleak stone walls, same stone shelf for a bed. Loredan looked at the bundle of cloth in his hand, shrugged and tossed it onto the bed-shelf. Something metal rattled against the stone. He'd open it later, after he'd got out of these hateful boots.

Why should anybody leave me a present? he wondered, as he dragged the left boot off his hot, sweaty foot. Although he was already late for a meeting he allowed himself the luxury of sitting and wiggling his newly liberated toes before putting on his sandals. And why couldn't it be something useful, like a nice pair of felt slippers?

Next he pulled off his coat, sopping wet from the afternoon's sudden downpour, and reached for his second best; an old friend, shabby and frayed but nicely moulded to his body by years of close association. Not the most appropriate attire for an audience with the Prefect, but he didn't exactly care too much if he got fired. His shirt and trousers were wet too, but he couldn't be bothered to change them. The heat of the fire in the reception room of the Prefect's palace would dry them off soon enough.

A quick drag of a comb through his hair; that would have to do. Now then; he'd open his present, and then he'd have to go.

It didn't take a genius to work out what was inside the cloth wrappings; a narrow, heavy bundle roughly two and a half feet long containing something metal. Someone had sent him a sword. He could do with one, sure enough. It was embarrassing for the Deputy Lord Lieutenant, the officer commanding the defences of Perimadeia, to be the only man on the wall with an empty scabbard swinging from his belt. He slit the string with his knife and peeled away the cloth; then sat quite still for a moment, staring.

A genuine Guelan. More than that; a genuine Guelan broadsword - there were only about five of them still in existence - rather than the more common but still murderously valuable law-swords that the great smith had made his reputation with. Yet a Guelan it undoubtedly was, he knew that before he drew the short, heavy blade from the scabbard and found the distinctive and uncopiable marks on the ricasso. No one had ever made military swords like the great Liras Guelan. Other makers' imitations were dull abortions, fit only for chopping wood or opening barrels. Nobody before or since had hit on that precise harmony of weight and balance that made it the next best thing to perfect, for single- or double-handed use, cutting or thrusting.

There was a special skill to using them, so the legend went (and for the first time, as he held the sword in his hands, he realised it was no fairy tale); if you tried to use it like an ordinary sword, the weight of the blade and the proportions - long handle and short blade - would defeat you. The harder you tried, the more effort you put into it, the more sluggishly the weapon would handle. But if you used the weight rather than fighting to overcome it, then the sword would seem to guide itself, adding its own force to the blow in apparent defiance of all the laws of physics. A Guelan broadsword, they said, should be allowed to fight for you; it knew exactly what it was doing, and all the wielder had to or should do was hang onto the blunt end and watch the fun.

Bardas Loredan had his doubts about people who waxed lyrical over lethal weapons; even so, he felt he could make allowances in this one rather exceptional case. All his working life, it went without saying, he'd wanted one (though it wouldn't have done for work, being outside the prescribed dimensions for legal use), and now here one was, its weight firm but not oppressive against the muscles of his upper arm, like a pedigree falcon deigning to sit for a time on his wrist.

This must have cost a fortune. He remembered the letter. Not wanting to put his marvellous new possession down, even for a moment, he fumbled awkwardly to break the seal and open the folded paper.

Bardas- I assume you got my message and the letter that followed it, so obviously you don't want to see me. I can't say I'm surprised. I'll understand if you don't want to accept this from me (though you'd be a damn fool not to; you wouldn't believe the trouble I had tracking one down, and when I found it the owner didn't want to sell). Take it, though; it can't be blamed for the sins of the giver, and you'll find a use for it, I'm sure. I've told it to keep you safe; that's why it had to be a Guelan - aren't they supposed to have minds of their own? Try not to break this one.

With my love, Gorgas Loredan.

Bardas Loredan looked at the letter, then at the sword, then back at the letter, then back at the sword. Weapons, he knew, are ambivalent, capable of doing good or evil, or both, or both together, incapable of knowing or caring about the use to which they're put. The same, Loredan reflected, is true of the lawyer, the man who fights and kills for a cause not his own in the name of justice. The weapon in his hand and the skill that hand imparts to the weapon decide right and wrong, good and evil; but the stronger and quicker on the day prevail over the slower and weaker, and if a moment before the fight the defendant had taken over the plaintiff's brief and vice versa, it's hard to believe that the outcome would be different. Maybe that's what I've become, Loredan thought, or maybe that's what I've been all along; a weapon in someone else's hand, created to kill and do damage, either for good or for evil depending on whose hand I happen to be in. And the Guelan - aren't they supposed to have minds of their own? - perhaps it means something, arriving precisely now, when I'm the advocate instructed on behalf of the city of Perimadeia, entrusted with its defence and the righteousness of its cause.

It must have cost him a fortune . . . Yes, and over the years he's cost me; maybe somehow he's been using me, along with all the others, though I can't imagine what for. It's been his actions that have governed everything I've ever done, since that day beside the river when he left me for dead and took away the life I should have had. If he thinks he can buy me with this- But a Guelan broadsword; it wasn't answerable for the sins of the giver, just as the lawyer isn't responsible for the acts of his client. Above all, they'd told him when he took his oath at the enrollment ceremony, an advocate fights for justice, and justice is his only client. And a sword cuts skin and flesh for the man who swings it; and a man is a sword in the hand of his own circumstances, the things that have happened in the past that have made him what he is and their consequences in the present that he must address and deal with. Taking this from his brother wasn't all that different from taking the sword of the man he'd just killed on the floor of the courthouse. He'd earned it, in that sense; and once it was his, its past no longer mattered.

Gods, I'd make myself believe anything just to be able to keep this thing. It's worth more than I ever earned in ten years in the racket. And what the devil does he mean 'all my love'?

Loredan suddenly remembered the meeting he was late for. It was by a conscious act, no mere instinct of haste, that he unbuckled his belt, threaded it through the double loops of the scabbard-frog and drew it tight again; and in that instant he rejected the comfort that lay implicit in the excuse, I was only ever following instructions; they made me do it; it wasn't me. Bardas Loredan, a Guelan broadsword; weapons of such quality and antecedents with minds of their own . . .

Well, well, he said to himself as he slammed out of the small, cold room and ran down the cloister towards the chapter house, if in the end I had to sell my soul, better keep it in the family than flog it off cheap to the charcoal people. But that thought didn't resolve the matter; a final decision would have to be deferred until he had more time to consider it, and if possible more data.

CHAPTER TWENTY.

'I'd feel happier if I had the faintest idea what's going on,' Ceuscai muttered. The dim moonlight made the cloud of his chilled breath glow, as if his words had somehow frozen in the cold of the night. 'The first one was bad enough. And I didn't like this one at all.'

Beside him, crouched under the cover of a wagon, Temrai watched the torches burning on the bridgehouse tower, and shivered a little. 'Probably some family thing,' he replied, 'about which we neither need to know nor particularly care. My only worry is that it's some kind of trap.'

'Bound to be,' said the man on Temrai's left. 'Honestly, it smells like last year's cheese. Enemy General's brother comes and tells you he's going to open the gates and lower the drawbridge at midnight - Gods, Temrai, what else do you believe in? The old woman with the basket of winds? The tooth fairy?'

Temrai scowled, though nobody could see him. 'If it looks at all dodgy we won't go,' he said. 'But if this trap of yours involves opening the gates and lowering the drawbridge, then it's my kind of trap.'

'They could have all sorts waiting for us; boiling oil, pitfalls, engines, a whole company of archers loosing off point-blank-'

At the very least, Temrai said to himself. If the first hundred men through the gate get more than ten yards in, I'll be highly astonished. But that's all budgeted for under Acceptable Losses. We could lose a thousand in the first ninety seconds and still be doing better than anticipated . . .

'Hello,' Ceuscai whispered. 'Look.'

'I'll be damned,' said somebody else further down the line. 'The gate's opening.'

There was indeed a slight change in the texture of the shadows under the bridgehouse tower. Temrai caught his breath. In a small fraction of a second, he would have to give the order to move forwards if he wasn't to miss the opportunity. Once the order was given, there was a strong possibility that his forces might actually enter the city and begin to do the job. Once they were in, just suppose it all started to go according to plan; a detachment to storm the tower and seize the engines, stopping them from bombarding the causeway; two more to force the towers on either side, cutting communications on the wall and preventing the defenders from shooting down into his people as they came through the gate; a strong force to establish a bridgehead just inside the gate; then, assuming the city's main relief force hadn't arrived yet (three minutes into the operation, four if there was any resistance on the wall), a push outwards following the foot of the walls, with the aim of encircling the relief force when it appeared and cutting it off from retreat into the maze of streets and squares. If the plan worked, the city would be carved like an animal's carcass fresh from the spit, divided into manageable portions that the various detachments could easily digest.

Temrai had envisaged the attack as being something like netting rabbits at night on the plains. First, get between the grazing rabbits and their burrows before they see or hear you, and set up the nets. Then show the lights and make the noise, sending the quarry darting back towards safety, right into the instrument of their destruction. Then, methodically and at one's leisure, pull them struggling from the nets and stretch their necks. It had all seemed straightforward enough, put like that.

Once the order was given, he'd no longer be in control. Always assuming he'd ever been in control to begin with.

'Here we go,' he said, edging forward with his elbows until his head was clear of the wagon. 'Best of luck, everyone. See you in Perimadeia.'

Gorgas Loredan stepped over the body of one of the guards and put his weight on the capstan handle. The drawbridge was massive; made deliberately so, in order that one man on his own wouldn't be able to lower it. He felt the strain wrenching the muscles of his chest and back; fairly soon the weight would take over, and he'd need to let go and jump clear to avoid being knocked flying by the spinning handles of the windlass. At that point, it'd be beyond his capacity to undo what he was now doing; a few inches more, and Perimadeia would inevitably fall.

He stopped and took off the quiver that hung across his back; the baldric was galling his shoulders, and was one more thing for the windlass poles to catch in once the point of no return had been reached.

Arguably, that point had come and gone many years ago.

He'd shot down all the guards he could see; there had been four, which agreed with the observations he'd made over the last few nights of careful watching. If the plainsmen played their part, and were ready and waiting on the other side, there ought to be men inside the city within the next six minutes; their irruption would be his opportunity to slip away, head for the harbour and the ship he had standing by. If things worked out, he'd be well out to sea by the time the city knew it was dying.

Suddenly he felt the handle pulling away from him, its downward surge greater than his own strength. He let go and stepped back hurriedly, and the windlass began to turn of its own accord. The sound it made, a sort of chattering whir, seemed horribly loud in the still night - They'll be able to hear that in the second city, he thought, you'd have to be dead not to hear it and guess what was going on. He let the moment linger in his mind; the last chance gone, the instant when the suicide feels the stool slip out from under him, or knows he can't regain his balance on the parapet. In a way it was a comfort; oh, well, too late to do anything about it now, so what's the point of worrying? The windlass spun like the wheel of a ship out of control; quite literally out of his hands now.

Job done; successful; no spear in my ribs or arrow in my back. Time I wasn't here.

Just for once, I got it right.

A scoop of shadow grew dense in front of him and became a man; a guardsman, on his way to relieve one of the watch. He was running, staring, not even interested in Gorgas Loredan. Let him go by; no point in picking a fight at this stage of the proceedings.

The guardsman noticed him, hesitated, stopped running just long enough to yell to him. 'Somebody's opened the gate! Get help, quick!' Then he disappeared into the shadows, just as the drawbridge reached the end of its chains, bounced and found its level. There were torches approaching in the distance, where the shadows of eaves overhanging an alley darkened the night. On the wall, someone called out. Suddenly there were men under the arch of the gate, running in, spreading out. An arrow hit the guardsman and he dropped dead to the ground.

Time I wasn't here.

More arrows flying now; Gorgas could hear them hiss as they flew past. Behind him somewhere a window smashed. A brief burst of shouted speech, quickly drowned out by the hollow drumming of feet on the planks of the drawbridge. More shouts overhead, sword blades clashing four, five times. This is the first trickle of water appearing on the wrong side of the dam. Running out of time to get away. Time to move. Time I wasn't here.

'What's happening?' someone shouted. Gorgas saw whoever it was; a guardsman with a lantern who ran towards the shapes of men gathered around the gate. 'What's happening?' he demanded of the first person he met, who drew a short sword and stuck it in him. More arrows hissing; they must be loosing blind, no light to see by. Just for once, I got it right. Out of my hands now.

There are ever so many orthodox reasons for bringing about the annihilation of a great city; revenge for some intolerable wrong; straightforward advantage, for example where a powerful and ambitious commercial interest decides that it would rather not repay the capital of the huge loan that threatens to strangle it; an overwhelming abhorrence for everything the city stands for; or simply because the grey of its walls clashes with the green of the grass and the blue of the sea. Some cities have been betrayed for the price of twenty acres of rocky pasture, or for love, or because they were there. Wise men in Alexius' Order often debated the proposal that cities are by their very nature an abomination, a wart or growth that the body of the earth sooner or later heals of its own accord. Cities have been burnt to the ground by madmen, children playing with flint and tinder, and the hem of a curtain being blown into the open door of a bread oven by a gust of wind. Some cities have been destroyed and rebuilt so many times that workmen digging a ditch for a latrine will slice through a dozen crusts of masonry and ash, like the layers of a cake.

Gorgas Loredan had his own reasons, revenge and hatred and level-headed commercial acumen among them. More to the point, he was doing as he'd been told. All fair enough, for someone analysing the pathology of his actions. But Gorgas knew; he knew he was doing it for the best and most wholesome of reasons, for the same reason as everything he'd ever done since he'd left the Mesoge. For family.

Guardsmen were coming up, bringing torches and lanterns. One stopped and fell forwards. Others pulled up, stopped dead, swore under their breath and turned back. One of them will run to the second-city gatehouse to summon the Deputy Lord Lieutenant. He'll grab his sword and his helmet and come running, shouting orders that nobody'll be awake to catch. He'll come running, straight into the oncoming enemy.

Gorgas Loredan drew a deep breath and started to run, not towards the harbour but up the hill. If he ran fast he might get there first, be in time to intercept his brother; it's all over, I've got a ship waiting. A moment for the message to sink in; another moment, and, How did you know? Why've you got a ship waiting? Well, he'd deal with that when the moment came.

Behind him as he ran, more shouting on the walls; not city voices, not bewildered requests for information but signals and confirmations, anxiously waited for. An arrow hit the flagstones beside him and skipped, its movement like that of an eager dog at his heels. Irrelevant; no arrow was going to hit Gorgas Loredan tonight, because Gorgas Loredan has important things to do, he can't be spared to make up the quota of first casualties. As he ran, his temples throbbed; what a time to have a headache, he said to himself, and tried to ignore it.

Someone grabbed Loredan by the shoulder and he woke up.

'Come on!' hissed the voice from behind the lantern. 'They're here. Some bastard opened the gate.'

Loredan blinked. His head was still full of sleep, and it hurt. 'What the hell are you talking about?' he mumbled. 'Who...?'

'The savages,' the voice replied. 'Come on, will you?' They're swarming all over the wall.'

Loredan stumbled off his bed and groped for his boots. 'How did they get in?' he asked. 'Did you say-?'

'Someone opened the gate. A traitor. There's half a company of guards holding them at the pottery market, and that's it.'

His feet didn't want to go in the boots; his left heel was stuck about halfway down, and he couldn't remember what you were supposed to do when that happened. He pulled the boot off and started again.

'Has anyone called out the reserve?' he asked. 'And what about the district garrisons? Surely-'

'I don't know, do I? I've just come from the gate - I was about to go on duty.' Whoever it was handed him his helmet.

'No, mailshirt first,' Loredan snapped.

'Where is it?'

'There, in the corner.' Someone had opened the gate; someone from the city had deliberately opened the gate.

There must be some mistake . . .

Fumbling for the straps of his mailshirt, he tried to think clearly about what had to be done. Alert the reserve and the district garrisons; each unit had an area of deployment assigned to it for this sort of emergency, he'd seen to it that everybody would know where to go and what to do. He'd need messengers- 'Leave that,' he said, 'and go and find the Couriers' Office. There should be at least ten runners there, standing by. I want them in the courtyard here in the next two minutes. Go on, run. And leave the lantern-'

The last part came too late; whoever it was had run off, taking the light with him. Loredan swore and located his helmet and sword by feel. The sword was, of course, the Guelan broadsword-'

Sure, I believe in coincidences. But this isn't one.

What else would he need? Wax tablets and a stylus; but he didn't have any here. Maps and plans, and they were all in the departmental chief clerk's office, being copied. The chiefs of staff, then; had anybody told them what was happening? He couldn't assume that, but they'd have to wait until he'd found more runners; raising the reserve and the garrison were the first priority. And still more runners, to bring him an accurate report of what was actually happening. Damn it, when he'd set up the Couriers' Office he'd assumed for some reason that ten would be enough. That's your trouble, Bardas, you never think.

What next? He racked his brains as he stumbled into the courtyard. When the runners showed up, he gave them their destinations and watched them dashing away into the darkness. Fortunately, the sound of voices and running attracted a few passers-by, clerks from the Department of Supply for the most part. He co-opted them as messengers and sent them running for the chiefs of staff, too fazed to question the messages they were carrying.

If they're on the wall already, what's to stop them forcing a way through all the way round? It depended on how many of them there were, and whether they were coming up on two fronts or only one. If they met no resistance at ground level, they could get across to the next staircase along and take on any defenders from both directions. I should have made specific plans for something like this; but then, who'd ever imagine someone would actually open the gates?

The various chiefs of staff staggered and bumped their way into the courtyard; the Chief Engineer first, accompanied by his first officer, both with their helmets and mailcoats on over long, old-fashioned nightgowns; the Chief of Archers, properly equipped and armed, with his four deputies; the four captains of infantry - guards, garrison, reserves and auxiliaries - in and out of armour, with and without staff; the Chief Clerk from Works and the Quartermaster. Supply was vacant at the moment, because the previous Chief Clerk had been promoted to customs, and it was a political appointment . . . Second from last the Prefect. Last of all the Lord Lieutenant, his magnificent parade armour still tacky with storage grease, so that dust and fallen leaves stuck to his shins and ankles.

Quickly, Loredan explained, gave his orders. Nobody argued, most of them seemed to know what to do. He put the Prefect in charge of the wall, left the Lord Lieutenant to organise the defence of the second city, and at last was free to go. As he reached the long, broad downhill sweep of the Grand Avenue, he broke into a run. As it happened, he left the gatehouse at more or less the same time as Gorgas reached it. In the darkness and confusion, neither recognised the other.

Metrias Corodin was a maker of scientific instruments, and a good one too. By day he worked in a small but adequate shop on the second level of the western balcony of the instrument-makers' courtyard, torturing his eyes as he marked out the tiny calibrations on the scales and barrels of the instruments and scorching his fingers over the soldering lamp. In the evenings, he was the sergeant of his watch district; it was a social function as much as anything else, an honour bestowed on him by his neighbours in recognition of a useful and industrious life. He enjoyed the duty; a few hours a week of drill, a little paperwork, a good excuse to hold meetings that people could linger after to talk shop and share news and a jug or two of cider. The drill wasn't particularly irksome; as a young man he'd been something of an athlete, and he wasn't so much out of condition that half an hour's square-bashing or a morning at the butts was a problem for him, even if the straps had had to be let out a few times since the shirt was new.

Now he was standing in front of a line of bleary-eyed nervous men drawn up across the entrance to the coopers' square. His small company was wedged in between the coopers and the nailmakers, two substantial detachments, each with several sergeants. By a quirk of seniority and guild etiquette, however, he found himself in overall command of the defence of the lower city.

Until the real soldiers get here, he reassured himself, which must be soon, surely. Somewhere ahead, an indeterminate distance away, there were unnerving noises, shouts and yells and sporadic clashes of metal on metal. Something was coming this way, and he had a nasty feeling it was the war.

He tried to remember his basic theory; Ninas Elius' Art of Urban Defence, required reading for watch officials for the last hundred and twenty years. Defensive actions in a confined space against an oncoming enemy - he could remember swotting up on the section for his lance-corporal's examination twenty years ago - are to be conducted in two phases, comprising the disruptive use of archery and the obstructive effect of an infantry line. He'd learnt it, yes, but never stopped to think what it might mean. Shoot the buggers first and then hit them, he guessed. It seemed to be the sensible thing to do.

As he peered into the darkness ahead he cursed his poor eyesight, and the years of crouching over his bench that had bowed his legs and cramped his back. His helmet felt loose on his head, despite his wife's last-minute packing with a woollen scarf, and with the sideflaps tied down he was sure he could only hear about half as well as usual.

The disruptive effect of archery . . . Well, time to get ready to do something about that. Nervously, his voice higher and squeakier than it should have been, he gave the order to string bows, and set about bending his own; the end of the bottom limb trapped against the outside of the right foot, then the left leg steps over the bow until the underside of the knee is brought to bear on the inside of the bow, just below the handle; grip the upper limb firmly in the left hand and flex it inwards (and every time he did it, he felt sure the bow would snap, though it hadn't done so yet), while the right hand brings the loop of the bowstring over the nock, thus completing the manoeuvre. Standard bow drill, he'd done it many thousands of times; but tonight he had to try three times before he got it right.

The noise was nearer, close enough that he could make a good estimate of where they were; just inside the plumbers' quarter, where the tank-makers had their shops. He tried to imagine the scene, but couldn't; bloodthirsty savages swarming past shops he'd known since he was a boy, the idea was so incongruous as to be laughable. He gave the order to nock arrows.

A fairly new bow, this. Last spring, when the tournament season started, he'd finally been forced to admit that his old bow, twenty-five years old and still as sound as the day it was made, was getting too heavy for him to draw, and so he'd treated himself to a brand new one, a hickory and lemonwood ninety-five pounder instead of the hundred and twenty pound draw of the old self yew. Ninety-five was still too stiff, if the truth be told, but a man has his pride. The string felt dry against his fingers - shame on him for neglecting to wax it, he'd have nobody to blame but himself if it broke on him now. As for the arrow, he'd instinctively chosen the worst of the set, slightly bowed and a bit shabby in the fletchings; it always flew left and a little high; he knew the degree of variance well enough. This would almost certainly be the last time he drew it; other things more important in a battle than retrieving spent arrows, after all. The thought of aiming it deliberately at someone was quite bizarre; hadn't he spent the last fifteen years as range officer telling the archers never under any circumstances to point a bow at anyone?