'War without fire is as worthless as sausages without mustard'

Henry V The Thousand Swords fought for Ospria against Muris. They fought for Muris against Sipani. They fought for Sipani against Muris, then for Ospria again. Between contracts, they sacked Oprile on a whim. A month later, judging they had perhaps not been thorough enough, they sacked it again, and left it in smouldering ruins. They fought for everyone against no one, and no one against everyone, and all the while they hardly did any fighting at all.

But robbery and plunder, arson and pillage, rape and extortion, yes. Nicomo Cosca liked to surround himself with the curious that he might seem strange and romantic. A nineteen-year-old swordswoman inseparable from her younger brother seemed to qualify, so he kept them close. At first he found them interesting. Then he found them useful. Then he found them indispensable.

He and Monza would spar together in the cold mornings the flicker and scrape of steel, the hiss and smoke of snatched breath. He was stronger, and she quicker, and so they were well matched. They would taunt each other, and spit at each other, and laugh. Men from the company would gather to watch them, laugh to see their captain bested by a girl half his age, often as not. Everyone laughed, except Benna. He was no swordsman.

He had a trick for numbers, though, and he took charge of the company's books, and then the buying of the stocks, and then the management and resale of the booty and the distribution of the proceeds. He made money for everyone, and had an easy manner, and soon was well loved.

Monza was a quick study. She learned what Stolicus wrote, and Verturio, and Bialoveld, and Farans. She learned all that Nicomo Cosca had to teach. She learned tactics and strategy, manoeuvre and logistics, how to read the ground and how to read an enemy. She learned by watching, then she learned by doing. She learned all the arts and all the sciences that were of use to the soldier.

'You have a devil in you,' Cosca told her, when he was drunk, which was not rarely. She saved his life at Muris, then he saved hers. Everyone laughed, except Benna, again. He was no lifesaver.

Old Sazine died of an arrow, and the captains of the companies that made up the Thousand Swords voted Nicomo Cosca to the captain general's chair. Monza and Benna went with him. She carried Cosca's orders. Then she told him what his orders should be. Then she gave orders while he was passed out drunk and pretended they were his. Then she stopped pretending they were his, and no one minded because her orders were better than his would have been, even had he been sober.

As the months passed and turned to years, he was sober less and less. The only orders he gave were in the tavern. The only sparring he did was with a bottle. When the Thousand Swords had picked one part of the country clean and it came time to move on, Monza would search for him through the taverns, and the smoke-houses, and the brothels, and drag him back.

She hated to do it, and Benna hated to watch her do it, but Cosca had given them a home and they owed him, so she did it still. As they wended their way to camp in the dusk, him stumbling under the weight of drink, and her stumbling under the weight of him, he would whisper in her ear.

'Monza, Monza. What would I do without you?'

Vengeance, Then General Ganmark's highly polished cavalry boots click-clicked against the highly polished floor. The chamberlain's shoes squeak-squeaked along behind. The echoes of both snap-snapped from the glittering walls and around the great, hollow space, their hurry setting lazy dust motes swirling through bars of light. Shenkt's own soft work boots, scuffed and supple from long use, made no sound whatsoever.

'Upon entering the presence of his Excellency,' the chamberlain's words frothed busily out, 'you advance towards him, without undue speed, looking neither right nor left, your eyes tilted down towards the ground and at no point meeting those of his Excellency. You stop at the white line upon the carpet. Not before the line and under no circumstances beyond it but precisely at the line. You then kneel-'

'I do not kneel,' said Shenkt.

The chamberlain's head rotated towards him like an affronted owl's. 'Only the heads of state of foreign powers are excepted! Everyone must-'

'I do not kneel.'

The chamberlain gasped with outrage, but Ganmark snapped over him. 'For pity's sake! Duke Orso's son and heir has been murdered! His Excellency does not give a damn whether a man kneels if he can bring him vengeance. Kneel or not, as it suits you.' Two white-liveried guardsmen lifted their crossed halberds to let them pass, and Ganmark shoved the double doors wide open.

The hall beyond was dauntingly cavernous, opulent, grand. Fit for the throne room of the most powerful man in Styria. But Shenkt had stood in greater rooms, before greater men, and had no awe left in him. A thin red carpet stretched away down the mosaic floor, a white line at its lonely end. A high dais rose beyond it, a dozen men in full armour standing guard in front. Upon the dais was a golden chair. Within the chair was Grand Duke Orso of Talins. He was dressed all in black, but his frown was blacker yet.

A strange and sinister selection of people, three score or more, of all races, sizes and shapes, knelt before Orso and his retinue in a wide arc. They carried no weapons now, but Shenkt guessed they usually carried many. He knew some few of them by sight. Killers. Assassins. Hunters of men. Persons in his profession, if the whitewasher could be said to be in the same profession as the master painter.

He advanced towards the dais, without undue speed, looking neither right nor left. He passed through the half-circle of assorted murderers and stopped precisely at the line. He watched General Ganmark stride past the guards and up the steps to the throne, lean to whisper in Orso's ear while the chamberlain took up a disapproving pose at his other elbow.

The grand duke stared at Shenkt for a long moment and Shenkt stared back, the hall cloaked all the while in that oppressive silence that only great spaces can produce. 'So this is he. Why is he not kneeling?'

'He does not kneel, apparently,' said Ganmark.

'Everyone else kneels. What makes you special?'

'Nothing,' said Shenkt.

'But you do not kneel.'

'I used to. Long ago. No more.'

Orso's eyes narrowed. 'And what if a man tried to make you?'

'Some have tried.'

'And?'

'And I do not kneel.'

'Stand, then. My son is dead.'

'You have my sorrow.'

'You do not sound sorrowful.'

'He was not my son.'

The chamberlain nearly choked on his tongue, but Orso's sunken eyes did not deviate. 'You like to speak the truth, I see. Blunt counsel is a valuable thing to powerful men. You come to me with the highest recommendations.'

Shenkt said nothing.

'That business in Keln. I understand that was your work. All of that, your work alone. It is said that the things that were left could hardly be called corpses.'

Shenkt said nothing.

'You do not confirm it.'

Shenkt stared into Duke Orso's face, and said nothing.

'You do not deny it, though.'

More nothing.

'I like a tight-lipped man. A man who says little to his friends will say less than nothing to his enemies.'

Silence.

'My son is murdered. Thrown from the window of a brothel like rubbish. Many of his friends and associates, my citizens, were also killed. My son-in-law, his Majesty the King of the Union, no less, only just escaped the burning building with his life. Sotorius, the half-corpse Chancellor of Sipani who was their host, wrings his hands and tells me he can do nothing. I am betrayed. I am bereaved. I am . . . embarrassed. Me!' he screamed suddenly, making the chamber ring, and every person in it flinch.

Every person except Shenkt. 'Vengeance, then.'

'Vengeance!' Orso smashed the arm of his chair with his fist. 'Swift and terrible.'

'Swift I cannot promise. Terrible yes.'

'Then let it be slow, and grinding, and merciless.'

'It may be necessary to cause some harm to your subjects and their property.'

'Whatever it takes. Bring me their heads. Every man, woman or child involved in this, to the slightest degree. Whatever is necessary. Bring me their heads.'

'Their heads, then.'

'What will be your advance?'

'Nothing.'

'Not even-'

'If I complete the job, you will pay me one hundred thousand scales for the head of the ringleader, and twenty thousand for each assistant to a maximum of one quarter of a million. That is my price.'

'A very high one!' squeaked the chamberlain. 'What will you do with so much money?'

'I will count it and laugh, while considering how a rich man need not answer the questions of idiots. You will find no employer, anywhere, unsatisfied with my work.' Shenkt moved his eyes slowly to the half-circle of scum at his back. 'You can pay less to lesser men, if you please.'

'I will,' said Orso. 'If one of them should find the killers first.'

'I would accept no other arrangement, your Excellency.'

'Good,' growled the duke. 'Go, then. All of you, go! Bring . . . me . . . revenge!'

'You are dismissed!' screeched the chamberlain. There was a rustling, rattling, clattering as the assassins rose to leave the great chamber. Shenkt turned and walked back down the carpet towards the great doors, without undue speed, looking neither right nor left.

One of the killers blocked his path, a dark-skinned man of average height but wide as a door, lean slabs of muscle showing through the gap in his brightly coloured shirt. His thick lip curled. 'You are Shenkt? I expected more.'

'Pray to whatever god you believe in that you never see more.'

'I do not pray.'

Shenkt leaned close, and whispered in his ear. 'I advise you to start.'

Although a large room by most standards, General Ganmark's study felt cluttered. An oversized bust of Juvens frowned balefully from above the fireplace, his stony bald spot reflected in a magnificent mirror of coloured Visserine glass. Two monumental vases loomed either side of the desk almost to shoulder height. The walls were crowded with canvases in gilded frames, two of them positively vast. Fine paintings. Far too fine to be squeezed.

'A most impressive collection,' said Shenkt.

'That one is by Coliere. It would have burned in the mansion in which I found it. And these two are Nasurins, that by Orhus.' Ganmark pointed them out with precise jabs of his forefinger. 'His early period, but still. Those vases were made as tribute to the first Emperor of Gurkhul, many hundreds of years ago, and somehow found their way to a rich man's house outside Caprile.'

'And from there to here.'

'I try to rescue what I can,' said Ganmark. 'Perhaps when the Years of Blood end, Styria will still have some few treasures worth keeping.'

'Or you will.'

'Better I have them than the flames. The campaign season begins, and I will be away to Visserine in the morning, to take the city under siege. Skirmishes, sacks and burnings. March and counter-march. Famine and pestilence, naturally. Maim and murder, of course. All with the awful randomness of a stroke from the heavens. Collective punishment. Of everyone, for nothing. War, Shenkt, war. And to think I once dreamed of being an honourable man. Of doing good.'

'We all dream of that.'

The general raised one eyebrow. 'Even you?'

'Even me.' Shenkt slid out his knife. A Gurkish butcher's sickle, small but sharp as fury.

'I wish you joy of it, then. The best I can do is strive to keep the waste to the merely . . . epic.'

'These are wasteful times.' Shenkt took the little lump of wood from his pocket, dog's head already roughly carved into the front.

'Aren't they all? Wine? It is from Cantain's own cellar.'

'No.'

Shenkt worked carefully with his knife while the general filled his own glass, woodchips scattering across the floor between his boots, the hindquarters of the dog slowly taking shape. Hardly a work of art like those around him, but it would serve. There was something calming in the regular movements of the curved blade, in the gentle fluttering down of the shavings.

Ganmark leaned against the mantel, drew out the poker and gave the fire a few unnecessary jabs. 'You have heard of Monzcarro Murcatto?'

'The captain general of the Thousand Swords. A most successful soldier. I heard she was dead.'

'Can you keep a secret, Shenkt?'

'I keep many hundreds.'

'Of course you do. Of course.' He took a long breath. 'Duke Orso ordered her death. Hers and her brother's. Her victories had made her popular in Talins. Too popular. His Excellency feared she might usurp his throne, as mercenaries can do. You are not surprised?'

'I have seen every kind of death, and every kind of motive.'

'Of course you have.' Ganmark frowned at the fire. 'This was not a good death.'

'None of them are.'

'Still. This was not a good one. Two months ago Duke Orso's bodyguard vanished. No great surprise, he was a foolish man, took little care over his safety, was prone to vice and bad company and had made many enemies. I thought nothing of it.'

'And?'

'A month later, the duke's banker was poisoned in Westport, along with half his staff. This was a different matter. He took a very great deal of care over his safety. To poison him was a task of the greatest difficulty, carried out with a formidable professionalism and an exceptional lack of mercy. But he dabbled widely in the politics of Styria, and the politics of Styria is a fatal game with few merciful players.'

'True.'

'Valint and Balk themselves suspected a long enmity with Gurkish rivals might be the motive.'

'Valint and Balk.'

'You are familiar with the institution?'

Shenkt paused. 'I believe they employed me once. Go on.'

'But now Prince Ario, murdered.' The general pushed one fingertip under his ear. 'Stabbed in the very spot in which he stabbed Benna Murcatto, then thrown down from a high window?'

'You think Monzcarro Murcatto is still alive?'

'A week after his son's death, Duke Orso received a letter. From one Carlot dan Eider, Prince Ario's mistress. We had long suspected she was here to spy for the Union, but Orso tolerated the affair.'