Cosca could not but agree. 'Walls are only useful if one expects help, and no help is coming to the League of Eight now. He must fight. He will fight. He is desperate.' If there was one thing he understood, it was desperation.

'I must confess I have some . . . concerns.' Foscar nervously cleared his throat. 'I understood that you always hated my father with a passion.'

'Passion. Hah.' Cosca dismissed it with a wave. 'As a young man I let my passion lead me by the nose, but I have learned numerous harsh lessons in favour of a cool head. I and your father have had our disagreements but I am, above all else, a mercenary. To let my personal feelings reduce the weight of my purse would be an act of criminal unprofessionalism.'

'Hear, hear.' Victus wore an unsightly leer. Even more so than usual.

'Why, my own three closest captains,' and Cosca took them in with a theatrical sweep of his hat, 'betrayed me utterly and put Murcatto in my chair. They fucked me to their balls, as they say in Sipani. To their balls, your Highness. If I had a taste for vengeance, it would be on these three heaps of human shit.' Then Cosca chuckled, and they chuckled, and the vaguely uncomfortable atmosphere was swiftly dispelled. 'But we can all be useful to each other, and so I have forgiven them everything, and your father too. Vengeance brings no man a brighter tomorrow, and when placed on the scales of life, does not outweigh a single . . . scale. You need not worry on that score, Prince Foscar, I am all business. Bought and paid for, and entirely your man.'

'You are generosity itself, General Cosca.'

'I am avarice itself, which is not quite the same, but will do in a pinch. Now, perhaps, for dinner. Would any of you gentlemen care for a drink? We came by a crate of a very fine vintage in a manor house upstream only yesterday, and-'

'It might be best if we were to discuss our strategy before the levity begins.' Colonel Rigrat's shrill voice was as a file applied directly to Cosca's sensitive back teeth. He was a sharp-faced, sharp-voiced, sharply self-satisfied man in his late thirties and a well-pressed uniform, previously General Ganmark's second in command and now Foscar's. Presumably the military brains behind the Talinese operation, such as they were. 'Now, while everyone still has their wits close to hand.'

'Believe me, young man,' though he was neither young, nor yet a man as far as Cosca was concerned, 'my wits and I are not easily parted. You have a plan in mind?'

'I do!' Rigrat produced his baton with a flourish. Friendly loomed out from under the nearest olive tree, hands moving to his weapons. Cosca sent him melting back into the shadows with the faintest smile and shake of his head. No one else even noticed.

Cosca had been a soldier all his life, of a kind, and had yet to understand what the purpose of a baton truly was. You could not kill a man with one, or even look like you might. You could not hammer in a tent peg, cook a good side of meat or even pawn it for anything worthwhile. Perhaps they were intended for scratching those hard-to-reach places in the small of the back? Or stimulating the anus? Or perhaps simply for marking a man out as a fool? For that purpose, he reflected as Rigrat pointed self-importantly towards the river with his baton, they served admirably.

'There are two fords across the Sulva! Upper . . . and lower! The lower is much the wider and more reliable crossing.' The colonel indicated the point where the dirty stripe of the Imperial road met the river, glimmering water flaring out in the gently sloping bottom of the valley. 'But the upper, perhaps a mile upstream, should also be usable at this time of year.'

'Two fords, you say?' It was a fact well known there were two damn fords. Cosca himself had crossed in glory by one when he came into Ospria to be toasted by Grand Duchess Sefeline and her subjects, and fled by another just after the bitch had tried to poison him. Cosca slid his battered flask from his jacket pocket. The one that Morveer had flung at him back in Sipani. He unscrewed the cap.

Rigrat gave him a sharp glance. 'I thought we agreed that we would drink once we had discussed strategy.'

'You agreed. I just stood here.' Cosca closed his eyes, took a deep breath, tilted up the flask and took a long swallow, then another, felt the coolness fill his mouth, wash at his dry throat. A drink, a drink, a drink. He gave a happy sigh. 'Nothing like a drink of an evening.'

'May I continue?' hissed Rigrat, riddled with impatience.

'Of course, my boy, take your time.'

'The day after tomorrow, at dawn, you will lead the Thousand Swords across the lower ford-'

'Lead? From the front, do you mean?'

'Where else would a commander lead from?'

Cosca exchanged a baffled glance with Andiche. 'Anywhere else. Have you ever been at the front of a battle? The chances of being killed there really are very high.'

'Extremely high,' said Victus.

Rigrat ground his teeth. 'Lead from what position pleases you, but the Thousand Swords will cross the lower ford, supported by our allies from Etrisani and Cesale. Duke Rogont will have no choice but to engage you with all his power, hoping to crush your forces while you are still crossing the river. Once he is committed, our Talinese regulars will break from hiding and cross the upper ford. We will take the enemy in the flank, and-' He snapped his baton into his waiting palm with a smart crack.

'You'll hit them with a stick?'

Rigrat was not amused. Cosca had to wonder whether he ever had been. 'With steel, sir, with steel! We will rout them utterly and put them to flight, and thus put an end to the troublesome League of Eight!'

There was a long pause. Cosca frowned at Andiche, and Andiche frowned back. Sesaria and Victus shook their heads at one another. Rigrat tapped his baton impatiently against his leg. Prince Foscar cleared his throat once more, nervously pushed his chin forwards. 'Your opinion, General Cosca?'

'Hmm.' Cosca gloomily shook his head, eyeing the sparkling river with the weightiest of frowns. 'Hmm. Hmm. Hmmmm.'

'Hmmm.' Victus tapped his pursed lips with one finger.

'Humph.' Andiche puffed out his cheeks.

'Hrrrrrm.' Sesaria's unconvinced voice throbbed at a deeper pitch.

Cosca removed his hat, scratched his head and placed it back with a flick at the feather. 'Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm-'

'Are we to take it that you disapprove?'asked Foscar.

'I somehow let slip my misgivings? Then I cannot in good conscience suppress them. I am not convinced that the Thousand Swords are well suited to the task you have assigned.'

'Not convinced,' said Andiche.

'Not well suited,' said Victus.

Sesaria was a silent mountain of reluctance.

'Have you not been well paid for your services?' demanded Rigrat.

Cosca chuckled. 'Of course, and the Thousand Swords will fight, you may depend on that!'

'They will fight, every man!' asserted Andiche.

'Like devils!' added Victus.

'But it is how they are to be made to fight best that concerns me as their captain general. They have lost two leaders in a brief space.' He hung his head as if he regretted the fact, and had in no way benefited hugely himself.

'Murcatto, then Faithful.' Sesaria sighed as if he had not been one of the prime agents in the changes of command.

'They have been relegated to support duties.'

'Scouting,' lamented Andiche.

'Clearing the flanks,' growled Victus.

'Their morale is at a terribly low ebb. They have been paid, but money is never the best motivation for a man to risk his life.' Especially a mercenary, it needed hardly to be said. 'To throw them into a pitched melee against a stubborn and desperate enemy, toe to toe . . . I'm not saying they might break, but . . . well . . .' Cosca winced, scratching slowly at his neck. 'They might break.'

'I hope this is not an example of your notorious reluctance to fight,' sneered Rigrat.

'Reluctance . . . to fight? Ask anyone, I am a tiger!' Victus snorted snot down his chin but Cosca ignored him. 'This is a question of picking the right tool for the task. One does not employ a rapier to cut down a stubborn tree. One employs an axe. Unless one is a complete arse.' The young colonel opened his mouth to retort but Cosca spoke smoothly over him. 'The plan is sound, in outline. As one military man to another I congratulate you upon it unreservedly.' Rigrat paused, unbalanced, not sure if he was being taken for a fool or not, though he most obviously was.

'But it would be wiser counsel for your regular Talinese troops tried and tested recently in Visserine, then Puranti, committed to their cause, used to victory and with the very firmest of morale to cross the lower ford and engage the Osprians, supported by your allies of Etrisani and Cesale, and so forth.' He waved his flask towards the river, a far more useful implement to his mind than a baton, since a baton makes no man drunk. 'The Thousand Swords would be far better deployed concealed upon the high ground. Waiting to seize the moment! To drive across the upper ford, with dash and vigour, and take the enemy in the rear!'

'Best place to take an enemy,' muttered Andiche. Victus sniggered.

Cosca finished with a flourish of his flask. 'Thus, your earthy courage and our fiery passion are used where they are best suited. Songs will be sung, glory will be seized, history will be made, Orso will be king . . .' He gave Foscar a gentle bow. 'And yourself, your Highness, in due course.'

Foscar frowned towards the fords. 'Yes. Yes, I see. The thing is, though-'

'Then we are agreed!' Cosca flung an arm around his shoulders and guided him back towards the tent. 'Was it Stolicus who said great men march often in the same direction? I believe it was! Let us march now towards dinner, my friends!' He pointed one finger back towards the darkening mountains, where Ospria glimmered in the sunset. 'I swear, I am so hungry I could eat a city!' Warm laughter accompanied him back into the tent.

Politics Shivers sat there frowning, and drank. Duke Rogont's great dining hall was the grandest room he'd ever got drunk in by quite a stretch. When Vossula told him Styria was packed with wonders it was this type of thing, rather than the rotting docks of Talins, that Shivers had in mind. It must've had four times the floor of Bethod's great hall in Carleon and a ceiling three times as high or more. The walls were pale marble with stripes of blue-black stone through it, all fretted with veins of glitter, all carved with leaves and vines, all grown up and crept over with ivy so the real plants and the sculpted tangled together in the dancing shadows. Warm evening breezes washed in through open windows wide as castle gates, made the orange flames of a thousand hanging lamps flicker and sway, striking a precious gleam from everything.

A place of majesty and magic, built by gods for the use of giants.

Shame the folk gathered there fell a long way short of either. Women in gaudy finery, brushed, jewelled and painted to look younger, or thinner, or richer than they were. Men in bright-coloured jackets who wore lace at their collars and little gilded daggers at their belts. They looked at him first with mild disdain on their powdered faces, like he was made of rotting meat. Then, once he'd turned the left side of his face forwards, with a sick horror that gave him three parts grim satisfaction and one part sick horror of his own.

Always at every feast there's some stupid, ugly, mean bastard got a big score to settle with no one in particular, drinks way too much and makes the night a worry for everyone. Seemed tonight it was him, and he was taking to the part with a will. He hawked up phlegm and spat it noisily across the gleaming floor.

A man at the next table in a yellow coat with long tails to it looked round, the smallest sneer on his puffed-up lips. Shivers leaned towards him, grinding the point of his knife into the polished table-top. 'Something to say to me, piss-coat?' The man paled and turned back to his friends without a word. 'Bunch o' bastard cowards,' Shivers growled into his quickly emptying wine-cup, good and loud enough to be heard three tables away. 'Not a single bone in the whole fucking crowd!'

He thought about what the Dogman might've made of this crew of tittering dandies. Or Rudd Threetrees. Or Black Dow. He gave a grim snort to think of it, but his laughter choked off short. If there was a joke, it was on him. Here he was, in the midst of 'em, after all, leaning on their charity without a friend to his name. Or so it seemed.

He scowled towards the high table, up on a raised dais at the head of the room. Rogont sat in the midst of his most favoured guests, grinning around as though he was a star shining from the night sky. Monza sat beside him. Hard to tell from where Shivers was, specially with everything smeared up with anger and too much wine, but he thought he saw her laughing. Enjoying herself, no doubt, without her one-eyed errand boy to drag her down.

He was a fine-looking bastard, the Prince of Prudence. Had both his eyes, anyway. Shivers would've liked to break his smooth, smug face open. With a hammer, like Monza had broken Gobba's head. Or just with his fists. Crush it in his hands. Pound it to red splinters. He gripped his knife trembling tight, spinning out a whole mad story of how he'd go about it. Picking over all the bloody details, shifting them about until they made him look as big a man as possible, Rogont wailing for mercy and pissing himself, twisting it into crazy shapes where Monza wanted him more'n ever at the end of it. And all the while he watched the two of 'em through one twitching, narrowed eye.

He goaded himself with the notion they were laughing at him, but he knew that was foolishness. He didn't matter enough to laugh at, and that made him stew hotter than ever. He was still clinging to his pride, after all, like a drowning man to a twig way too small to keep him afloat. He was a maimed embarrassment, after he'd saved her life how many times? Risked his life how many times? And after all the bloody steps he'd climbed to get to the top of this bastard mountain too. Might've hoped for something better'n scorn at the end of it.

He jerked his knife from the split wood. The knife Monza had given him the first day they met. Back when he had both his eyes and a lot less blood on his hands. Back when he had it in mind to leave killing behind him, and be a good man. He could hardly remember what that had felt like.

Monza sat there frowning, and drank.

She hadn't much taste for food lately, had less for ceremony, and none at all for tonguing arses, so Rogont's banquet of the doomed came close to a nightmare. Benna had been the one for feasting, form and flattery. He would have loved this pointing, laughing, slapping backs with the worst of them. If he'd found a moment clear of soaking up the flattery of people who despised him, he would have leaned over, and touched her arm with a soothing hand, and whispered in her ear to grin and take it. Baring her teeth in a rictus snarl was about as close as she could come.

She had a bastard of a headache, pulsing away down the side where the coins were screwed, and the genteel rattle of cutlery might as well have been nails hammered into her face. Her guts seemed to have been cramping up ever since she left Faithful drowned on the millwheel. It was the best she could do not to turn to Rogont and spew, and spew, and spew all over his gold-embroidered white coat.

He leaned towards her with polite concern. 'Why so glum, General Murcatto?'

'Glum?' She swallowed the rising acid enough to speak. 'Orso's army are on their way.'

Rogont turned his wine glass slowly round and round by the stem. 'So I hear. Ably assisted by your old mentor Nicomo Cosca. The scouts of the Thousand Swords have already reached Menzes Hill, overlooking the fords.'

'No more delays, then.'

'It would appear not. My designs on glory will soon be ground into the dust. As such designs often are.'

'You sure the night before your own destruction is the best time to celebrate?'

'The day after might be too late.'

'Huh.' True enough. 'Perhaps you'll get a miracle.'

'I've never been a great believer in divine intervention.'

'No? What are they here for, then?' Monza jerked her head towards a knot of Gurkish just below the high table, dressed in the white robes and skullcaps of the priesthood.

The duke peered down at them. 'Oh, their help goes well beyond the spiritual. They are emissaries of the Prophet Khalul. Duke Orso has his allies in the Union, the backing of their banks. I must find friends of my own. And even the Emperor of Gurkhul kneels before the Prophet.'

'Everyone kneels to someone, eh? I guess Emperor and Prophet can console each other after their priests bring news of your head on a spike.'

'They'll soon get over it. Styria is a sideshow to them. I daresay they're already preparing the next battlefield.'

'I hear the war never ends.' She drained her glass and slung it rattling back across the wood. Maybe they pressed the best wine in the world in Ospria, but it tasted of vomit to her. Everything did. Her life was made of sick. Sick and frequent, painful, watery shits. Raw-gummed, saw-tongued, rough-toothed, sore-arsed. A horse-faced servant in a powdered wig flowed around her shoulder and let fall a long stream of wine into the empty glass, as though flourishing the bottle as far above her as possible would make it taste better. He retreated with consummate ease. Retreat was the speciality down in Ospria, after all. She reached for the glass again. The most recent smoke had stopped her hand shaking, but nothing more.

So she prayed for mindless, shameful, stupefying drunkenness to swarm over and blot out the misery.

She let her eyes crawl over Ospria's richest and most useless citizens. If you really looked for it, the banquet had an edge of shrill hysteria. Drinking too much. Talking too fast. Laughing too loud. Nothing like a dash of imminent annihilation to lower the inhibitions. The one consolation of Rogont's coming rout was that a good number of these fools would lose everything along with him.

'You sure I should be up here?' she grunted.

'Someone has to be.' Rogont glanced sideways at the girlish Countess Cotarda of Affoia without great enthusiasm. 'The noble League of Eight, it seems, has become a League of Two.' He leaned close. 'And to be entirely honest I'm wondering if it's not too late for me to get out of it. The sad fact is I'm running short of notable guests.'

'So I'm an exhibit to stiffen your wilting prestige, am I?'

'Exactly so. A perfectly charming one, though. And those stories about my wilting are all scurrilous rumours, I assure you.' Monza couldn't find the strength even to be irritated, let alone amused, and settled for a weary snort. 'You should eat something.' He gestured at her untouched plate with his fork. 'You look thin.'

'I'm sick.' That and her right hand hurt so badly she could scarcely hold the knife. 'I'm always sick.'

'Really? Something you ate?' Rogont forked meat into his mouth with all the relish of a man likely to live out the week. 'Or something you did?'

'Maybe it's just the company.'

'I wouldn't be at all surprised. My Aunt Sefeline was always revolted by me. She was a woman much prone to nausea. You remind me of her in a way. Sharp mind, great talents, will of iron, but a weaker stomach than might have been expected.'

'Sorry to disappoint you.' The dead knew she disappointed herself enough.

'Me? Oh, quite the reverse, I assure you. We are none of us made from flint, eh?'

If only. Monza gagged down more wine and scowled at the glass. A year ago, she'd had nothing but contempt for Rogont. She remembered laughing with Benna and Faithful over what a coward he was, what a treacherous ally. Now Benna was dead, she'd murdered Faithful and she'd run to Rogont for shelter like a wayward child to her rich uncle. An uncle who couldn't even protect himself, in this case. But he was far better company than the alternative. Her eyes were dragged reluctantly towards the bottom of the long table on the right, where Shivers sat alone.

The hard fact was he sickened her. It was an effort just to stand beside him, let alone touch him. It was far more than the simple ugliness of his maimed face. She'd seen enough that was ugly, and done enough too, to have no trouble at least pretending to be comfortable around it. It was the silences, when before she couldn't shut him up. They were full of debts she couldn't pay. She'd see that skewed, dead ruin of an eye and remember him whispering at her, It should've been you. And she'd know it should have been. When he did talk he said nothing about doing the right thing any more, nothing about being a better man. Maybe it should have pleased her to have won that argument. She'd tried hard enough. But all she could think was that she'd taken a halfway decent man and somehow made a halfway evil one. She wasn't only rotten herself, she rotted everything she touched.

Shivers sickened her, and the fact she was disgusted when she knew she should have been grateful only sickened her even more.

'I'm wasting time,' she hissed, more at her glass than anyone else.

Rogont sighed. 'We all are. Just passing the ugly moments until our ignominious deaths in the least horrible manner we can find.'

'I should be gone.' She tried to make a fist of her gloved hand, but the pain only made her weaker now. 'Find a way . . . find a way to kill Orso.' But she was so tired she could hardly find the strength to say it.

'Revenge? Truly?'

'Revenge.'