'Taking their time, eh?'

Pike was standing right next to him, his daughter just behind. West winced and looked away. He still found it somehow painful to look at that burned face for long, especially coming on him sudden and unannounced. 'What are you two doing here?'

The convict shrugged his shoulders. 'There's plenty for a smith to do before a battle. Even more after it. Not much while the fighting's happening, though.' He grinned, slabs of burned flesh folding up like leather on one side of his face. 'Thought I'd take a look at Union arms in action. Besides, what safer place could there be than the Prince's headquarters?'

'Don't mind us,' muttered Cathil, a thin smile on her face, 'we'll make sure to keep out of your way.'

West frowned. If that was a reference to his being constantly in their way he was in no mood to enjoy it. There was still no sign of the cavalry.

'Where the hell are they?' snapped Smund.

The Prince took a break from chewing down his fingernails. 'Give 'em time, Lord Smund, give 'em time.'

'Why doesn't this mist dry up?' murmured West. There was enough sunlight breaking through the clouds now, but the mist only seemed to be thickening, creeping up the valley towards the archers. 'Damn mist, it'll work against us.'

'That's them!' yelled one of the Prince's staff, shrill with excitement, finger stretched out rigid towards the crest of the hill.

West raised his eyeglass, breathless, scanned quickly across the green line. He saw the spearpoints, stiff, and regular, rising slowly over the brow. He felt a surge of relief. Rarely had he been happier to be proved wrong.

'It's them!' yelled Smund, grinning broadly. 'They're back! What did I tell you? They're . . .' Helmets appeared beneath the spearpoints, and then mailed shoulders. West felt the relief seeping away, horror creeping up his throat. An organised body of armoured men, their round shields painted with faces, and animals, and trees, and a hundred other patterns, no two alike. More men appeared over the crest of the hill to either side of them. More mailed figures.

Bethod's Carls.

They halted just beyond the highest point of the hill. A scattering of men came forward from the even ranks, knelt in the short grass.

Ladisla lowered his eyeglass. 'Are those . . . ?'

'Flatbows,' muttered West.

The first volley drifted up, gently almost, a shifting grey cloud of bolts, like a flock of well trained birds. They were silent for a moment, then the angry rattling of the bow strings reached West's ears. The bolts began to drop towards the Union lines. They fell among the King's Own, clattered down onto their heavy shields, their heavy armour. There were some cries, a few gaps appeared in their lines.

The mood in the headquarters had turned, in the space of a minute, from brash confidence, to mute surprise, to stupefied dismay. 'They have flatbows?' someone spluttered. West stared at the archers on the hill through his eyeglass, slowly cranking back their bowstrings, pulling bolts from their quivers, fitting them into position. The range had been well judged. Not only did they have flatbows, but they knew how to use them. West hurried over to Prince Ladisla, who was gaping at a wounded man being carried, head lolling, from between the ranks of the King's Own.

'Your Highness, we must advance and close the distance so that our archers can return fire, or withdraw to higher ground!' Ladisla only stared at him, giving no sign that he had heard, let alone understood. A second volley arced down into the infantry in front of them. This time it fell among the levies, a unit without shields or armour. Holes opened up all across the ragged formation, holes filled by the rising mist, and the whole battalion seemed to groan and waver. Some wounded man began to make a thin, animal screeching, and would not stop. 'Your Highness, do we advance, or withdraw?'

'I . . . we . . .' Ladisla gaped over at Lord Smund, but for once the young nobleman was at a loss for words. He looked even more stupefied than the Prince, if that was possible. Ladisla's lower lip trembled. 'How . . . I . . . Colonel West, what is your opinion?'

The temptation to remind the Crown Prince that his was the burden of command, and his alone, was almost overpowering, but West bit his tongue. Without some sense of purpose, this rag-tag army might swiftly dissolve. Better to do the wrong thing, than nothing at all. He turned to the nearest bugler. 'Sound the retreat!' he roared.

The bugles called the withdrawal: blaring, discordant. Hard to believe they were the same instruments that had so brazenly called the charge just a few short minutes before. The battalions began to edge slowly backwards. Another volley fell among the levies, and another. Their formations were beginning to come apart, men hurrying backwards to escape the murderous fire, stumbling over each other, ranks dissolving into mobs, the air full of shrieks and confusion. West could scarcely tell where the next set of flatbow bolts fell, the mist had risen so high. The Union battalions had become nothing more than wobbling spears and the odd insubstantial helmet above a grey cloud. Even here, high up among the baggage, the mist was curling round West's ankles.

Up on the hill the Carls began to move. They thrust their weapons in the air and clashed them against their painted shields. They gave a great shout, but not the deep roar that West might have expected. Instead, a weird and chilling howl floated over the valley, a keening wail that cut through the rattling and scraping of metal and into the ears of those watching, down below. A mindless, a furious, a primitive sound. A sound made by monsters, not by men.

Prince Ladisla and his staff gawped at one another, and stuttered, and stared, as the Carls began to tramp down the hill, rank upon rank of them, towards the thickening mist in the valley's bottom where the Union troops were still blindly trying to pull back. West shouldered his way through the frozen officers to the bugler.

'Battle lines!'

The lad turned from staring at the advancing Northmen to staring at West, his bugle hanging from his nerveless fingers.

'Lines!' roared a voice from behind. 'Form lines!' It was Pike, bellowing loud enough to match any drill sergeant. The bugler snapped his instrument to his lips and blew lines for all he was worth. Answering calls echoed through the mist, risen up all around them, now. Muffled bugles, muffled shouts.

'Halt and form up!'

'Form lines now, lads!'

'Prepare!'

'Steady!'

A chorus of rattles and clanks came through the murk. Men moving in armour, spears being set, swords drawn, calls from man to man and from unit to unit. Above all, growing steadily louder, the unearthly howling of the Northmen as they began their charge, surging down from the high ground and into the valley. West felt a chill in his own blood, even with a hundred strides of earth and a few thousand armed men between him and the enemy. He could well imagine the fear those in the front lines were feeling now, as the shapes of the Carls began to rise out of the mist before them, screaming their war cries with their weapons held high.

There was no sound that signified the moment of contact. The clattering grew louder and louder, the shouts and the howls were joined by high-pitched cries, low-pitched growls, shrieks of pain or rage mixed into the terrifying din with ever greater frequency. Nobody in the headquarters spoke. Every man, West among them, was peering into the murk, straining with every sense to get some hint of what might be happening just before them in the valley.

'There!' someone shouted. A faint figure was moving through the gloom ahead. All eyes were fixed on it as it took shape before them. A young, breathless, mud-splattered and highly confused lieutenant. 'Where the hell is the headquarters?' he shouted as he stumbled up the slope towards them.

'This is it.'

The man gave West a flamboyant salute. 'Your Highness-'

'I am Ladisla,' snapped the real Prince. The man turned, bewildered, began to salute once more. 'Speak your message, man!'

'Of course, sir, your Highness, Major Bodzin has sent me to tell you that his battalion is heavily engaged, and . . .' he was still gasping for breath, 'he needs reinforcement.'

Ladisla stared at the young man as though he had been speaking in a foreign language. He looked at West. 'Who is Major Bodzin?'

'Commander of the first battalion of the Stariksa levies, your Highness, on our left wing.'

'Left wing, I see . . . er . . .'

A semi-circle of brightly dressed staff officers had congealed around the breathless lieutenant. 'Tell the Major to hold!' shouted one of them.

'Yes!' said Ladisla, 'tell your Major to hold, and to, er, to drive back the enemy. Yes indeed!' He was warming to his role now. 'To drive them back, and to fight to the last man! Tell Major Clodzin that help is on the way. Most definitely . . . on the way!' And the Prince strode off manfully.

The young Lieutenant turned, peered into the murk. 'Which way is my unit?' he muttered.

More figures were already beginning to take form. Running figures, scrambling through the mud, panting for breath. Levies, West saw straight away, broken from the backs of crumbling units as soon as they had made contact with the enemy. As though there had ever been any chance that they would stand for long.

'Cowardly dogs!' cursed Smund at their receding backs. 'Get back here!' He might as well have given orders to the mist. Everyone was running: deserters, adjutants, messengers seeking for help, for direction, for reinforcement. The first wounded too. Some were limping under their own power, or using broken spears for crutches, some were half-carried by comrades. Pike started forward to help a pale fellow with a flatbow bolt sticking from his shoulder. Another casualty was dragged past on a stretcher, muttering to himself. His left arm was off just below the elbow, oozing blood through a tightly bound stretch of dirty cloth.

Ladisla looked greasy pale. 'I have a headache. I must sit down. What has become of my field chair?'

West chewed at his lip. He had no inkling of what to do. Burr had sent him with Ladisla for his experience, but he was every bit as clueless as the Prince. Every plan relied on being able actually to see the enemy, or at any rate one's own positions. He stood there, frozen, as useless and frustrated as a blind man in a fist fight.

'What is happening, damn it!' The Prince's voice cut across the din, shrill and petulant. 'Where did this damn mist come from? I demand to know what is happening! Colonel West! Where is the Colonel? What is going on out there?'

If only he had been able to provide an answer. Men stumbled and darted and charged through the muddy headquarters, apparently at random. Faces loomed up from the mist and were gone, faces full of fear, confusion, determination. Runners with garbled messages or garbled orders, soldiers with bloody wounds or no weapons. Disembodied voices floated on the cold air, speaking over one another, anxious, hurried, panicked, agonised.

'. . . Our regiment has made contact with the enemy, and are falling back, or were falling back, I think . . .'

'My knee! Damn it, my knee!'

'. . . His Highness the Prince? I have an urgent message from . . .'

'Send, er . . . someone! Whoever is available . . . who is available?'

'. . . King's Own are heavily engaged! They request permission to withdraw . . .'

'What happened to the cavalry? Where are the cavalry?'

'. . . devils not men! The Captain's dead and . . .'

'We are falling back!'

'. . . fighting hard on the right wing and in need of support! In desperate need of support . . .'

'Help me! Somebody, please!'

'. . . And then counterattack! We are attacking all across the line . . .'

'Quiet!' West could hear something in the grey gloom. The jingling of a harness. The mist was so dense now that he could see no more than thirty strides, but the sound of trotting hooves drawing closer was unmistakable. His hand closed round the hilt of his sword.

'The cavalry, they've returned!' Lord Smund started eagerly forwards.

'Wait!' hissed West, to no effect. His eyes strained into the grey. He saw the outlines of horsemen, coming steadily through the gloom. The shapes of their armour, of their saddles, of their helmets were those of the King's Own, and yet there was something in the way they rode slouching, loose. West drew his sword. 'Protect the Prince,' he muttered taking a step towards Ladisla.

'You there!' shouted Lord Smund at the foremost horseman. 'Prepare your men for another-' The rider's sword chopped into his skull with a hollow clicking sound. A spray of blood went up, black in the white mist, and the horsemen broke into a charge, screaming at the tops of their voices. Terrifying, eerie, inhuman sounds. Smund's limp body was flung out of the way by the leading horse, trampled under the flailing hooves of the one beside it. Northmen, now, unmistakably, growing more horrifyingly distinct as they loomed up out of the murk. The foremost of them had a thick beard, long hair streaming out from beneath an ill-fitting Union helmet, yellow teeth bared, eyes of horse and rider both wide with fury. His heavy sword flashed down and hacked one of the Prince's guards between the shoulder blades as he dropped his spear and turned to run.

'Protect the Prince!' screamed West. Then it was chaos. Horses thundered past all around, riders yelled, hacked about them with swords and axes, men ran in all directions, slipped, fell, were cut down where they stood, were trampled where they lay. The heavy air was full of the wind of passing horsemen, flying mud, screams and panic and fear.

West dived out of the way of flailing hooves, sprawled on his face in the muck, slashed uselessly at a passing horse, rolled and spun and gasped at the mist. He had no idea which way he was facing, everything sounded the same, looked the same. 'Protect the Prince!' he shouted again, pointlessly, voice hoarse, drowned out in the din, spinning round and round.

'Over on the left!' someone shrieked. 'Form a line!' There were no lines. There was no left. West stumbled over a body, a hand clutched at his leg and he slashed at it with his sword.

'Ah.' He was on his face. His head hurt terribly. Where was he? Fencing practice, perhaps. Had Luthar knocked him down again? That boy was getting too good for him. He stretched for the grip of his sword, lying trampled in the mud. A hand slithered through grass, far away, fingers stretching. He could hear his own breathing, painfully loud, echoing in his thumping head. Everything was blurred, shifting, mist before his eyes, mist in his eyes. Too late. He could not reach his sword. His head was throbbing. There was mud in his mouth. He rolled over onto his back, slowly, breathing hard, up onto his elbows. He saw a man coming. A Northman, by his shaggy outline. Of course. There was a battle. West watched him walk slowly forward. There was a dark line in his hand. A weapon. Sword, axe, mace, spear, what was the difference? The man took one more unhurried step, planted his boot on West's jacket, and shoved his limp body down into the mud.

Neither of them said anything. No last words. No pithy phrases. No expressions of anger, or remorse, or of victory, or defeat. The Northman raised his weapon.

His body jolted. He lurched forward a step. He blinked and swayed. He half-turned, slowly, stupidly. His head jolted again.

'Got something in . . .' he said, lips fumbling with the words. He felt at the back of his head with his free hand. 'Where's my . . .' He swivelled round, falling sideways, one leg in the air, and crashed onto his side in the muck. Somebody stood behind him. They came close, leaned over. A woman's face. She seemed familiar, somehow.

'You alive?'

Like that, West's mind clicked back into place. He took a great coughing breath, rolled over and grabbed hold of his sword. There were Northmen, Northmen behind their lines! He scrambled to his feet, clawed the blood out of his eyes. They had been tricked! His head was pounding, spinning. Bethod's cavalry, disguised, the Prince's headquarters, overrun! He jerked around, wild-eyed, boot heels slipping in the mud, looking for enemies in the mist, but there was no one. Only him and Cathil. The sound of hooves had faded, the horsemen had passed, at least for now.

He looked down at his steel. The blade was snapped off a few inches from the hilt. Worthless. He let it fall, prised the Northman's dead fingers from his sword and grabbed hold of the hilt, his head thumping all the time. A heavy weapon with a thick, notched blade, but it would serve.

He stared down at the corpse, lying on its side. The man who had been about to kill him. The back of his skull was a caved in mess of red splinters. Cathil had a smith's hammer in her hand. The head was sticky dark with blood and strands of matted hair.

'You killed him.' She had saved his life. They both knew it, so there hardly seemed any point in saying it.

'What do we do now?'

Head for the front lines. That was what the dashing young officer always did in the stories West had read as a boy. March for the sounds of battle. Rally a new unit from stragglers and lead them into the fray, turn the tide of the fighting at the critical moment. Home in time for dinner and medals.

Looking down at the wreckage and the broken corpses the horsemen had left behind, West almost laughed at the idea. It was suddenly too late for heroics, and he knew it. It had been too late for a long time.

The fates of the men down in the valley had been set long ago. When Ladisla chose to cross the river. When Burr set upon his plan. When the Closed Council decided to send the Crown Prince to win a reputation in the North. When the great noblemen of the Union sent beggars instead of soldiers to fight for their King. A hundred different chances, from days, and weeks, and months before, all coming together here, on this worthless stretch of mud. Chances which neither Burr, nor Ladisla, nor West himself could have predicted or done anything to prevent.

He could make no difference now, no one could. The day was lost.

'Protect the Prince,' he muttered.

'What?'

West began to cast around on the ground, rooting through the scattered junk, rolling over bodies with his dirty hands. A messenger stared up at him, the side of his face split open, bloody pulp hanging out. West retched, covered his mouth, crawled on his hands and knees to the next corpse. One of the Prince's staff, still with a look of faint surprise on his features. There was a ragged sword cut through the heavy gold braid of his uniform, reaching all the way down to his belly.

'What the hell are you doing?' Pike's gruff voice. 'There's no time for this!' The convict had got an axe from somewhere. A heavy northern axe, with blood on the edge. Not a good idea, most likely, for a criminal to have a weapon like that, but West had other worries.

'We must find Prince Ladisla!'

'Shit on him!' hissed Cathil, 'let's go!'

West shook off her hand, stumbled to a heap of broken boxes, wiping more blood out of his eye. Somewhere here. Somewhere near here, Ladisla had been standing- 'No, I beg of you, no!' squealed a voice. The heir to the throne of the Union was lying on his back in a hollow in the dirt, half-obscured by the twisted corpse of one of his guards. His eyes were squeezed shut, arms crossed in front of his face, white uniform spotted with red blood, caked with black mud. 'There will be a ransom!' he whimpered, 'a ransom! More than you can imagine.' One eye peered out from between his fingers. He grabbed at West's hand. 'Colonel West! Is it you? You're alive!'

There was no time for pleasantries. 'Your Highness, we have to go!'

'Go?' mumbled Ladisla, his face streaked with tear tracks. 'But surely . . . you can't mean . . . have we won?'

West nearly bit his own tongue off. It was bizarre that the task should fall to him, but he had to save the Prince. The vain and useless idiot might not deserve saving but that changed nothing. It was for his own sake that West had to do it, not for Ladisla's. It was his duty, as a subject to save his future King, as a soldier to save his general, as one man to save another. It was all he could do, now. 'You are the heir to the throne and cannot be spared.' West reached down and grabbed the Prince by the elbow.

Ladisla fumbled with his belt. 'I lost my sword somewhere-'

'We have no time!' West hauled him up, fully prepared to carry him if he had to. He struck off through the mist, the two convicts close behind him.

'Are you sure this is the right way?' growled Pike.

'I'm sure.' He was anything but. The mist was thicker than ever. The pounding in his head and the blood trickling into his eye made it hard to concentrate. The sounds of fighting seemed to come from all around: clashing and grating metal, groans and wails and yells of fury, all echoing in the mist and seeming one moment far away, the next terrifyingly near. Shapes loomed and moved and swam, vague and threatening outlines, shadows drifting, just out of sight. A rider seemed to rise out of the mist and West gasped and raised his sword. The clouds swirled. It was only a supply cart, laden down with barrels, mule standing still before it, driver sprawled out beside, with a broken spear sticking from his back.

'This way,' hissed West, scuttling towards it, trying to keep close to the mud. Carts were good. Carts meant the baggage train, the supplies, the food and the surgeons. Carts meant they were heading up out of the valley, away from the front lines at least, if there still were any such things. West thought about it for a moment. Carts were bad. Carts meant plunder. The Northmen would swarm to them like flies to honey, eager for booty. He pointed off into the mist, away from the empty wagons, the broken barrels, the upended boxes, and the others followed him, silent but for their squelching footfalls, their rasping breath.

They slogged on, over open ground, dirty clumps of wet grass, gently rising. The others passed him, one by one, and he waved them on. Their only chance was to keep moving, but every step was harder than the one before. Blood from the cut on his scalp was tickling away under his hair, down the side of his face. The pain in his head was growing worse, not better. He felt weak, sick, horribly dizzy. He clung to the grip of the heavy sword as though it was keeping him up, bent over double, struggling to stay on his feet.

'You alright?' asked Cathil.

'Keep moving!' he managed to grunt at her. He could hear hooves, or thought that he could. Fear kept him going, and fear alone. He could see the others, ahead of him, labouring forwards. Prince Ladisla well in front, Pike next, Cathil just ahead, looking back over her shoulder. There was a group of trees, he could see them through the thinning mist. He fixed on their ghostly shapes and made for them, his breath rasping in his throat as he floundered up the slope.

He heard Cathil's voice. 'No.' He turned, horror creeping up his throat. He saw the outline of a rider, not far behind them.