'The situation, honestly, is grim. Adua is in uproar. Perhaps one third of the population has already fled. The Gurkish blockade means that few supplies are making it to the markets. Curfews are in place but some citizens are still seizing the opportunity to rob, steal and riot while the authorities are occupied elsewhere.'

Marovia shook his head, grey beard swaying gently. 'And we can only expect the situation to deteriorate as the Gurkish come closer to the city.'

'Which they are,' said Varuz, 'at the rate of several miles a day. We are doing all we can to frustrate them, but with our resources so limited . . . they may well be outside the gates within the week.'

There were a few shocked gasps, breathed oaths, nervous sideways glances. 'So soon?' Jezal's voice cracked slightly as he said it.

'I am afraid so, your Majesty.'

'What is the Gurkish strength?' asked Marovia.

'Estimates vary wildly. At present however . . .' and Varuz sucked worriedly at his teeth, 'it appears they field at least fifty thousand.'

There were further sharp intakes of breath, not least from Jezal's own throat. 'So many?' muttered Halleck.

'And thousands more landing every day near Keln,' put in Admiral Reutzer, doing nothing to lift the mood. 'With the best part of our navy on its way to retrieve the army after its northern adventure, we are powerless to stop them.'

Jezal licked his lips. The walls of the wide room seemed to close in further with every moment. 'What of our troops?'

Varuz and Reutzer exchanged a brief glance. 'We have two regiments of the King's Own, one of foot and one of horse, some six thousand men in all. The Grey Watch, tasked with the defence of the Agriont itself, numbers four thousand. The Knights Herald and of the Body form an elite of some five hundred. In addition, there are non-combat soldiers cooks, grooms, smiths, and so forth who could be armed in an emergency-'

'I believe this qualifies,' observed Bayaz.

'-perhaps some few thousand more. The city watch might be of some use, but they are hardly professional soldiers.'

'What of the nobles?' asked Marovia. 'Where is their aid?'

'Some few have sent men,' said Varuz grimly, 'others only their regrets. Most . . . not even that.'

'Hedging their bets.' Hoff shook his head. 'Brock has let it be known there will be Gurkish gold for those who help him, and Gurkish mercy for those who stand with us.'

'It has ever been so,' lamented Torlichorm. 'The nobles are interested only in their own welfare!'

'Then we must open the armouries,' said Bayaz, 'and we must not be shy with their contents. We must arm every citizen who can hold a weapon. We must arm the labourers' guilds, and the craftsmens' guilds, and the veterans' associations. Even the beggars in the gutters must be ready to fight.'

All well and good, Jezal supposed, but he hardly cared to trust his life to a legion of beggars. 'When will Lord Marshal West return with the army?'

'If he received his orders yesterday, it will be a month at the very least before he is disembarked and ready to come to our aid.'

'Which means we must withstand several weeks of siege,' muttered Hoff, shaking his head. He leaned close to Jezal's ear and spoke softly, quite as if they were schoolgirls trading secrets. 'Your Majesty, it might be prudent for you and your Closed Council to leave the city. To relocate your government further north, outside the path of the Gurkish advance, where the campaign can be conducted in greater safety. To Holsthorm, perhaps, or-'

'Absolutely not,' said Bayaz sternly.

Jezal could scarcely deny that the notion held its attractions. The island of Shabulyan at that moment seemed an ideal place to relocate his government to but Bayaz was right. Harod the Great would hardly have entertained the idea of retreat, and neither, unfortunately, could Jezal.

'We will fight the Gurkish here,' he said.

'Merely a suggestion,' muttered Hoff, 'merely prudence.'

Bayaz spoke over him. 'How do the defences of the city stand?'

'We have, in essence, three concentric lines of defence. The Agriont itself is, of course, our last bastion.'

'It will not come to that, though, eh?' chuckled Hoff, with far from total conviction.

Varuz decided not to answer. 'Arnault's Wall is beyond it, enclosing the oldest and most crucial parts of the city the Agriont, the Middleway, the main docks and the Four Corners among them. Casamir's Wall is our outermost line of defence weaker, lower, and a great deal longer than Arnault's. Smaller walls run between these two, like the spokes of a wheel, dividing the outer ring of the city into five boroughs, each of which can be sealed off, should it be captured by the enemy. There are some built-up areas beyond Casamir's Wall, but those must be immediately abandoned.'

Bayaz planted his elbows on the edge of the table, his meaty fists clasped together. 'Given the number and quality of our troops, we would be best served by evacuating the outer quarters of the city and concentrating our efforts around the much shorter and stronger length of Arnault's wall. We can continue to fight a rearguard action in the outer boroughs, where our superior knowledge of the streets and buildings stands in our favour-'

'No,' said Jezal.

Bayaz fixed him with a brooding stare. 'Your Majesty?'

But Jezal refused to be overawed. It had been becoming clear for some time that if he allowed the Magus to rule him on every issue then he would never escape from under his boot. He might have seen Bayaz make a man explode with a thought, but he was hardly likely to do it to the King of the Union before his own Closed Council. Not with the Gurkish breathing down all their necks.

'I do not intend to give up the greater part of my capital to the Union's oldest enemy without giving battle. We will defend Casamir's Wall, and fight for every stride of ground.'

Varuz glanced across at Hoff, and the Chamberlain raised his eyebrows by the tiniest fraction. 'Er . . . of course, your Majesty. Every stride.' There was an uncomfortable silence, the displeasure of the First of the Magi hanging over the group as heavily as the storm clouds hung over the city.

'Does my Inquisition have anything to contribute?' croaked Jezal, doing his best to mount a diversion.

Sult's eyes darted coldly up to his. 'Of course, your Majesty. The Gurkish love of intrigue is well known. We have no doubt that there are already spies within the walls of Adua. Perhaps within the Agriont itself. All citizens of Kantic origin are now being interned. My Inquisitors are working day and night in the House of Questions. Several spies have already confessed.'

Marovia snorted. 'So we are expected to suppose that the Gurkish love of intrigue does not extend to the hiring of white-skinned agents?'

'We are at war!' hissed Sult, giving the High Justice a deadly glare. 'The very sovereignty of our nation is at risk! This is no time for your blather about freedom, Marovia!'

'On the contrary, this is precisely the time!'

The two old men bickered on, straining everyone's frayed nerves to breaking point. Bayaz, meanwhile, had sunk back into his chair and folded his arms, watching Jezal with an expression of calm consideration which was, if anything, even more fearsome than his frown. Jezal felt the worry weighing ever heavier upon him. However you looked at things, he was teetering on the verge of having the briefest and most disastrous reign in Union history.

'I am sorry that I had to send for your Majesty,' piped Gorst, in his girlish little voice.

'Of course, of course.' The clicking of Jezal's polished boot-heels echoed angrily around them.

'There is only so much that I can do.'

'Of course.'

Jezal shoved open the double doors with both hands. Terez sat bolt upright in the midst of the gilded chamber beyond, glaring at him down her nose in that manner with which he had become so infuriatingly familiar. As though he were an insect in her salad. Several Styrian ladies looked up, and then back to their tasks. Chests and boxes cluttered the room, clothes were being neatly packed within. Every impression was given that the Queen of the Union was planning to leave the capital, and without so much as informing her husband.

Jezal ground his already aching teeth. He was tormented by a disloyal Closed Council, a disloyal Open Council, and a disloyal populace. The poisonous disloyalty of his wife was almost too much to bear. 'What the hell is this?'

'I and my ladies can hardly assist you in your war with the Emperor.' Terez turned her flawless head smoothly away from him. 'We are returning to Talins.'

'Impossible!' hissed Jezal. 'A Gurkish army of many thousands is bearing down upon the city! My people are fleeing Adua in droves and those that remain are a whisker from sliding into outright panic! Your leaving now would send entirely the wrong message! I cannot allow it!'

'Her Majesty is in no way involved!' snapped the Countess Shalere, gliding across the polished floor towards him.

As though Jezal had not enough to worry about with the Queen herself, he was now obliged to bandy words with her companions. 'You forget yourself,' he snarled at her.

'It is you who forgets!' She took a step towards him, her face twisted. 'You forget that you are a bastard son, and a scarred one at-'

The back of Jezal's hand cracked sharply into her sneering mouth and sent her reeling back with an ungainly gurgle. She tripped over her dress and collapsed on the floor, one shoe flying from her flailing foot and off into the corner of the room.

'I am a King, and in my own palace. I refuse to be spoken to in this manner by a glorified lady's maid.' The voice came out, flat, cold, and frighteningly commanding. It scarcely sounded like his own, but who else's could it be? He was the only man in the room. 'I see that I have been far too generous with you, and that you have mistaken my generosity for weakness.' The eleven ladies stared at him, and at their fallen comrade, crumpled on the ground with one hand to her bloody mouth. 'If any of your witches should desire to depart these troubled shores, I will arrange passage for them, and even pull an oar myself with a light heart. But you, your Majesty, will be going nowhere.'

Terez had leaped up from her seat and was glowering at him, body rigid. 'You heartless brute-' she began to hiss.

'We may both wholeheartedly wish it were otherwise!' he roared over her, 'but we are married! The time to raise objections to my parentage, or my person, or to any other facet of our situation, was before you became Queen of the Union! Despise me all you wish, Terez, but you . . . go . . . nowhere.' And Jezal swept the dumbstruck ladies with a baleful glare, turned on his polished heel and stalked from the airy salon.

Damn it but his hand hurt.

The Circle.

Dawn was coming, a grey rumour, the faintest touch of brightness around the solemn outline of the walls of Carleon. The stars had all faded into a stony sky, but the moon still hung there, just above the tree-tops, seeming almost close enough to try an arrow at.

West had not closed his eyes all night, and had passed into that strange realm of twitchy, dreamlike wakefulness that comes beyond exhaustion. Some time in the silent darkness, after all the orders had been given, he had sat by the light of a single lamp to write a letter to his sister. To vomit up excuses. To demand forgiveness. He had sat, he could not have said for how long, with the pen over the paper, but the words had simply not come. He had wanted to say all that he felt, but when it came to it, he felt nothing. The warm taverns of Adua, cards in the sunny courtyard. Ardee's one-sided smile. It all seemed a thousand years ago.

The Northmen were already busy, clipping at the grass in the shadow of the walls, the clicking of their shears a strange echo of the gardeners in the Agriont, shaving a circle a dozen strides across down to the roots. The ground, he supposed, on which the duel would take place. The ground where, in no more than an hour or two, the fate of the North would be decided. Very much like a fencing circle, except that it might soon be sprayed with blood.

'A barbaric custom,' muttered Jalenhorm, his thoughts evidently taking a similar course.

'Really?' growled Pike. 'I was just now thinking what a civilised one it is.'

'Civilised? Two men butchering each other before a crowd?'

'Better than a whole crowd butchering each other. A problem solved with only one man killed? That's a war ended well, to my mind.'

Jalenhorm shivered and blew into his cupped hands. 'Still. A lot to hang on two men fighting one another. What if Ninefingers loses?'

'Then I suppose that Bethod will go free,' said West, unhappily.

'But he invaded the Union! He caused the deaths of thousands! He deserves to be punished!'

'People rarely get what they deserve.' West thought of Prince Ladisla's bones rotting out in the wasteland. Some terrible crimes go unpunished, and a few, for no reason beyond the fickle movements of chance, are richly rewarded. He stopped in his tracks.

A man was sitting on his own on the long slope, his back to the city. A man hunched over in a battered coat, so still and quiet in the half-light that West had almost missed him. 'I'll catch you up,' he said as he left the path. The grass, coated with a pale fur of frost, crunched gently under his boots with each step.

'Pull up a chair.' Breath smoked gently round Ninefingers' darkened face.

West squatted down on the cold earth beside him. 'Are you ready?'

'Ten times before I've done this. Can't say I've ever yet been ready. Don't know that there is a way to get ready for a thing like this. The best I've worked out is just to sit, and let the time crawl past, and try not to piss yourself.'

'I imagine a wet crotch could be an embarrassment in the circle.'

'Aye. Better than a split head, though, I reckon.'

Undeniably true. West had heard tales of these Northern duels before, of course. Growing up in Angland, children whispered lurid stories of them to each other. But he had little idea how they were really conducted. 'How does this business work?'

'They mark out a circle. Round the edge men stand with shields, half from one side, half from the other, and they make sure no one leaves before it's settled. Two men go into the circle. The one that dies there is the loser. Unless someone has it in mind to be merciful. Can't see that happening today, though, somehow.'

Also undeniable. 'What do you fight with?'

'Each one of us brings something. Could be anything. Then there's a spin of a shield, and the winner picks the weapon he wants.'

'So you might end up fighting with what your enemy brought?'

'It can happen. I killed Shama Heartless with his own sword, and got stuck through with the spear I brought to fight Harding Grim.' He rubbed at his stomach, as though the memory ached there. 'Still, don't hurt any worse, getting stuck with your own spear instead of someone else's.'

West laid a hand thoughtfully on his own gut. 'No.' They sat in silence for a while longer.

'There's a favour I'd like to ask you.'

'Name it.'

'Would you and your friends hold shields for me?'

'Us?' West blinked towards the Carls in the shadow of the wall. Their great round shields looked hard enough to lift, let alone to use well. 'Are you sure? I've never held one in my life.'

'Maybe, but you know whose side you're on. There ain't many folk among these that I can trust. Most of 'em are still trying to work out who they hate more, me or Bethod. It only takes one to give me a shove when I need a push, or let me fall when I need catching. Then we're all done. Me especially.'

West puffed out his cheeks. 'We'll do what we can.'

'Good. Good.'

The cold silence dragged out. Over the black hills, the black trees, the moon sank and grew dimmer.

'Tell me, Furious. Do you reckon a man has to pay for the things he's done?'

West looked up sharply, the irrational and sickly thought flashing through his mind that Ninefingers was talking of Ardee, or of Ladisla, or both. Certainly, the Northman's eyes seemed to glint with accusation in the half-light then West felt the surge of fear subside. Ninefingers was talking of himself, of course, as everyone always does, given the chance. It was guilt in his eyes, not accusation. Each man has his own mistakes to follow him.

'Maybe.' West cleared his dry throat. 'Sometimes. I don't know. I suppose we've all done things we regret.'

'Aye,' said Ninefingers. 'I reckon.'

They sat together in silence, and watched the light leak across the sky.

'Let's go, chief!' hissed Dow. 'Let's fucking go!'

'I'll say when!' Dogman spat back, holding the dewy branches out of the way and peering towards the walls, a hundred strides off, maybe, across a damp meadow. 'Too much light, now. We'll wait for that bloody moon to drop a touch further, then we'll make a run at it.'