'No. And ain't you supposed to be downstairs?'

'Not 'til they come, I'm not. Don't get to see this every day, do you?'

Beck brushed him off with an elbow. 'Just get out of it! Your stink's making me sick!'

'All right, all right.' Brait shambled away, looking hurt, but Beck couldn't bring up much sympathy. It was the best he could do not to bring up the breakfast he hadn't had.

Reft was stood at the other window, bow over his shoulder. 'Thought you'd be happy. Looks like you'll get your chance to be a hero.'

'I am happy,' snapped Beck. And not shitting himself at all.

Meed had established his headquarters in the inn's common hall, which by the standards of the North was a palatial space, double height and with a gallery at first-floor level. Overnight it had been decorated like a palace too with gaudy hangings, inlaid cupboards, gilded candlesticks and all the pompous trappings one would expect in a lord governor's own residence, presumably carted half way across the North at monstrous expense. A pair of violinists had set up in the corner and were grinning smugly at each other as they sawed out jaunty chamber music. Three huge oil paintings had even been hoisted into position by Meed's industrious servants: two renderings of great battles from the Union's history and, incredibly, a portrait of Meed himself, glowering from on high in antique armour. Finree gaped at it for a moment, hardly knowing whether to laugh or cry.

Large windows faced south into the inn's weed-colonised courtyard, east across fields dotted with trees towards brooding woods, and north towards the town of Osrung. With all the shutters wide open a chilly breeze drifted through the room, ruffling hair and snatching at papers. Officers clustered about the northern windows, eager to catch a glimpse of the assault, Meed in their midst in a uniform of eye-searing crimson. He glanced sideways as Finree slipped up beside him and gave the slightest sneer of distaste, like a fastidious eater who has spied an insect in his salad. She returned it with a beaming smile.

'Might I borrow your eyeglass, your Grace?'

He worked his mouth sourly for a moment but was held prisoner by etiquette, and handed it stiffly over. 'Of course.'

The road curved off to the north, a muddy stripe through muddy fields overflowing with the sprawling camp, tents haphazardly scattered like monstrous fungi sprouted in the night. Beyond them were the earthworks Meed's men had thrown up in the darkness. Beyond them, through the haze of mist and drizzle, she could just make out the fence around Osrung, perhaps even the suggestion of scaling ladders against it.

Her imagination filled in the blanks. Ranks of marching men ordered forward to the palisade, grim-faced and determined as arrows showered down. The wounded dragged for the rear or left screaming where they lay. Rocks tumbling, ladders shoved from the fence, men butchered as they tried to climb over onto the walkways, thrust screaming back to be dashed on the ground below.

She wondered whether Hal was in the midst of that, playing the hero. For the first time she felt a stab of worry for him, a cold shiver through her shoulders. This was no game. She lowered Meed's eyeglass, chewing at her lip.

'Where the hell is the Dogman and his rabble?' the lord governor was demanding of Captain Hardrick.

'I believe they were behind us on the road, your Grace. His scouts came upon a burned-out village and the lord marshal gave him leave to investigate. They should be here within an hour or two-'

'Typical. You can rely on him for a knowing shrug but when the battle begins he is nowhere to be seen.'

'Northmen are treacherous by nature,' someone tossed out.

'Cowardly.'

'Their presence would only slow us down, your Grace.'

'That much is true,' snorted Meed. 'Order every unit into the attack. I want them overwhelmed. I want that town crushed into the dust and every Northman in it dead or running.'

Finree could not help herself. 'Surely it would be wise to leave at least one regiment behind? As I understand it, the woods to the east have not been thoroughly-'

'Do you seriously suppose you will hit upon some scheme by which you will replace me with your husband?'

There was a pause that seemed impossibly long, while Finree wondered if she might be dreaming. 'I beg your-'

'He is a pleasant enough man, of course. Brave and honest and all those things housewives like to coo about. But he is a fool and, what is worse, the son of a notorious traitor and the husband of a shrew to boot. His only significant friend is your father, and your father's days in the sun are numbered in small digits.' Meed spoke softly, but not so softly that he could not easily be overheard. One young captain's mouth fell open with surprise. It seemed Meed was not held quite so tightly by the bonds of etiquette as she had supposed.

'I frustrated an attempt by the Closed Council to prevent me taking my brother's place as lord governor, did you know that? The Closed Council. Do you really suppose some soldier's daughter might succeed where they failed? Address me only once again without the proper respect and I will crush you and your husband like the pretty, ambitious, irrelevant lice you are.' He calmly plucked his eyeglass from her limp hand and looked through it towards Osrung, precisely as if he had never spoken and she did not exist.

Finree should have whipped out some acid rejoinder, but the only thing in her mind was an overpowering urge to smash the front of Meed's eyeglass with her fist and drive the other end into his skull. The room seemed uncomfortably bright. The violins ripped at her ears. Her face burned as if she had been slapped. All she could do was blink, and meekly retreat. It was as if she floated to the other side of the room without moving her feet. A couple of the officers watched her get there, muttering among themselves, evidently party to her one-sided humiliation and no doubt relishing it too.

'Are you all right?' asked Aliz. 'You look pale.'

'I am perfectly well.' Or, in fact, seething with fury. Insulting her was one thing, no doubt she deserved it. Insulting her husband and her father were other things entirely. That she would make the old bastard pay for, she swore it.

Aliz leaned close. 'What do we do now?'

'Now? We sit here like good little girls and applaud while idiots stack up the coffins.'

'Oh.'

'Don't worry. Later on they might let you weep over a wound or two and, if the mood takes you, you can flutter your eyelashes at the awful futility of it all.'

Aliz swallowed, and looked away. 'Oh.'

'That's right. Oh.'

So this was battle. Beck and Reft had never had too much to say to each other, but since the Union first started fighting their way over the fence they hadn't said a word. Just stood silent at the windows. Beck wished he'd got friends beside him. Or wished he'd tried harder to make friends of the lads he'd found beside him. But it was too late now.

His bow was in his hand, an arrow nocked and the string ready to draw. He'd had it ready the best part of an hour, but there was no one he could shoot at. Nothing he could do but watch, and sweat, and lick his lips, and watch. He'd started off wishing he could see more, but now the rain had slacked off, and the sun was getting up, and Beck found he was seeing far more than he wanted to.

The Union were over the fence in three or four places, into the town in numbers. There was fighting all over, everything broken up into separate little scraps facing every which way. No lines, just a mass of confusion and mad noise. Shouts and howls mashed together, din of clashing metal and breaking wood.

Beck was no expert. He didn't know how anyone could be at this. But he could feel the balance shifting over there on the south side of the river. More and more Northmen were scurrying back across the bridge, some limping or holding wounds, some shouting and pointing off south, threading their way through the shield wall at the north end of the span and into the square under Beck's window. Safety. He hoped. Felt a long bloody way from safe, though. Felt about as far from safe as Beck had in his whole life.

'I want to see!' Brait was dragging at Beck's shirt, trying to get a peek through the window. 'What's going on?'

Beck didn't know what to say. Didn't know if he could find his voice, even. Right under them some wounded man was screaming. Gurgling, retching screams. Beck wished he'd stop. He felt dizzy with it.

The fence was mostly lost. He could see one tall Union man on the walkway, pointing towards the bridge with a sword, clapping men on their backs as they flooded off the ladders to either side of him. There were still a few dozen Carls at the gate, clustered around a tattered standard, painted shields facing out in a half-circle but they were surrounded and well outnumbered, shafts hissing down into 'em from the walkways.

Some of the bigger buildings were still in Northern hands. Beck could see men at the windows, shooting arrows out, ducking back in. Doors nailed shut and barricaded, but Union men swarming around 'em like bees around a hive. They'd managed to set fires for a couple of the most stubborn holdouts, in spite of the damp. Now brown smoke billowed out and was carried off east by the wind, lit by the dull orange of flames flickering.

A Northman came charging from a burning building, swinging an axe around his head in both hands. Beck couldn't hear him shouting, could see he was, though. In the songs he'd have taken a load down with him and joined the dead proud. Couple of Union men scattered away before some others herded him back against the wall with spears. One stuck him in the arm and he dropped his axe, held his other hand up, shouting more. Giving up, maybe, or insults, didn't make much difference. They stuck him in the chest and he slumped down. Stuck him on the ground, spear shafts going up and down like a couple of men digging in the fields.

Beck's wide-open, watery eyes kept on darting across the buildings, murder in plain view all along the riverbank not a hundred strides from where he stood. They dragged someone struggling out from a hovel and bent him over. There was the twinkle of a knife, then they shoved him into the water and he floated away on his face while they wandered back inside the house. Cut his throat, Beck reckoned. Cut his throat, just like that.

'They've got the gate.' Reft's voice sounded strangled. Like he'd never spoken before. Beck saw he was right, though. They'd cut down the last defenders, and were dragging the bars clear, and pulling the gates open, and daylight showed through the square archway.

'By the dead,' whispered Beck, but it came out just a breath. Hundreds of the bastards started flowing into Osrung, pouring out into the smoke and the scattered buildings, flooding down the lane towards the bridge. The triple row of Northmen at its north end looked a pitiful barrier all of a sudden. A sand wall to hold back the ocean. Beck could see them stirring. Wilting, almost. Could feel their deep desire to join the men who were scattering back across the bridge and through their ranks, trying to escape the slaughter on the far bank.

Beck felt it too, that tickling need to run. To do something, and run was all he could think of. His eyes flickered over the burning buildings on the south side of the river, flames reaching higher now, smoke spreading over the town.

Beck wondered what it was like inside those houses. No way out. Thousands of Union bastards beating at the doors, at the walls, shooting arrows in. Low rooms filling up with smoke. Wounded men with small hopes of mercy. Counting their last shafts. Counting their dead friends. No way out. Time was Beck's blood would've run hot at thoughts like that. It was on the chilly side now, though. Those weren't no fortresses built for defending on the other side of the river, they were little wooden shacks.

Just like the one he was in.

The Infernal Contraptions

Your August Majesty,

Morning on the second day of battle, and the Northmen occupy strong positions on the north side of the river. They hold the Old Bridge, they hold Osrung, and they hold the Heroes. They hold the crossings and invite us to take them. The ground is theirs, but they have handed the initiative to Lord Marshal Kroy and, now that all our forces have reached the battlefield, he will not be slow to seize it.

On the eastern wing, Lord Governor Meed has already begun an attack in overwhelming force upon the town of Osrung. I find myself upon the western, observing General Mitterick's assault upon the Old Bridge.

The general delivered a rousing speech this morning as the first light touched the sky. When he asked for volunteers to lead the attack every man put up his hand without hesitation. Your Majesty would be most proud of the bravery, the honour, and the dedication of your soldiers. Truly, every man of them is a hero.

I remain your Majesty's most faithful and unworthy servant, Bremer dan Gorst, Royal Observer of the Northern War Gorst blotted the letter, folded it and passed it to Younger, who sealed it with a blob of red wax and slid it into a courier's satchel with the golden sun of the Union worked into the leather in elaborate gilt.

'It will be on its way south within the hour,' said the servant, turning to go.

'Excellent,' said Gorst.

But is it? Does it truly matter whether it goes sooner, or later, or if Younger tosses it into the latrine pits along with the rest of the camp's ordure? Does it matter whether the king ever reads my pompous platitudes about General Mitterick's pompous platitudes as the first light touched up the sky? When did I last get a letter back? A month ago? Two? Is just a note too much to ask? Thanks for the patriotic garbage, hope you're keeping well in ignominious exile?

He picked absently at the scabs on the back of his right hand, wanting to see if he could make them hurt. He winced as he made them hurt more than he had intended to. Ever a fine line. He was covered with grazes, cuts and bruises he could not even recall the causes of, but the worst pain came from the loss of his Calvez-made short steel, drowned somewhere in the shallows. One of the few relics remaining of a time when he was the king's exalted First Guard rather than an author of contemptible fantasies. I am like a jilted lover too cowardly to move on, clinging tremble-lipped to the last feeble mementoes of the cad who abandoned her. Except sadder, and uglier, and with a higher voice. And I kill people for a hobby.

He stepped from under the dripping awning outside his tent. The rain had slackened to a few flitting specks, and there was even some blue sky torn from the pall of cloud that smothered the valley. He surely should have felt some flicker of optimism at the simple pleasure of the sun on his face. But there was only the unbearable weight of his disgrace. The fool's tasks lined up in crushingly tedious procession. Run. Practice. Shit a turd. Write a letter. Eat. Watch. Write a turd. Shit a letter. Eat. Bed. Pretend to sleep but actually lie awake all night trying to wank. Up. Run. Letter ...

Mitterick had already presided over one failed attempt on the bridge: a bold, rash effort by the Tenth Foot which had crossed unresisted to a lot of victorious whooping. The Northmen had met them with a hail of arrows as they attempted to find their order on the far side, then sprang from hidden trenches in the barley and charged with a blood-freezing wail. Whoever was in command of them knew his business. The Union soldiers fought hard but were surrounded on three sides and quickly cut down, forced back into the river to flounder helplessly in the water, or crushed into a hellish confusion on the bridge itself, mingled with those still striving mindlessly to cross from behind.

A great line of Mitterick's flatbowmen had then appeared from behind a hedgerow on the south bank and raked the Northmen with a savage volley, forcing them into a disorganised retreat back to their trenches, leaving the dead scattered in the trampled crops on their side of the bridge. The Tenth had been too mauled to take advantage of the opening, though, and now archers on both sides were busy with a desultory exchange of ammunition across the water while Mitterick and his officers marshalled their next wave. And, one imagines, their next batch of coffins too.

Gorst watched the whirling clouds of gnats that haunted the bank, and the corpses that floated past beneath them. The bravery. Turning with the current. The honour. Face up and face down. The dedication of the soldiers. One sodden Union hero wallowed to a halt in some rushes, bobbing for a moment on his side. A Northman drifted up, bumped gently into him and carried him from the bank and through a patch of frothy yellow scum in an awkward embrace. Ah, young love. Perhaps someone will hug me after my death. I certainly haven't had many before. Gorst had to stop himself snorting with spectacularly inappropriate laughter.

'Why, Colonel Gorst!' The First of the Magi strolled up with staff in one hand and teacup in the other. He took in the river and its floating cargo, heaved a long breath through his nose and exhaled satisfaction. 'Well, you couldn't say they aren't giving it a good try, anyway. Successes are all very well, but there's something grand about a glorious failure, isn't there?'

I can't see what, and I should know.

'Lord Bayaz.' The Magus' curly-headed servant snapped open a folding chair, brushed an imaginary speck of dust from its canvas seat and bowed low.

Bayaz tossed his staff on the wet grass without ceremony and sat, eyes closed, tipping his smiling face towards the strengthening sun. 'Wonderful thing, a war. Done in the right way, of course, for the right reasons. Separates the fruit from the chaff. Cleans things up.' He snapped his fingers with an almost impossibly loud crack. 'Without them societies are apt to become soft. Flabby. Like a man who eats only cake.' He reached up and punched Gorst playfully on the arm, then shook out his limp fingers in fake pain. 'Ouch! I bet you don't eat only cake, do you?'

'No.'

Like virtually everyone Gorst ever spoke to, Bayaz was hardly listening. 'Things don't change just by the asking. You have to give them a damn good shake. Whoever said war never changes anything, well ... they just haven't fought enough wars, have they? Glad to see this rain's clearing up, though. It's been playing hell with my experiment.'

The experiment consisted of three giant tubes of dull, grey-black metal, seated upon huge wooden cradles, each closed at one end with the other pointed across the river in the vague direction of the Heroes. They had been set up with immense care and effort on a hump of ground a hundred strides from Gorst's tent. The ceaseless din of men, horses and tackle would have kept him awake all night had he not been half-awake anyway, as he always was. Lost in the smoke of Cardotti's House of Leisure, searching desperately for the king. Seeing a masked face in the gloom, at the stairway. Before the Closed Council as they stripped him of his position, the bottom dropping out of the world all over again. Twisted up with Finree, holding her. Holding smoke. Coughing smoke, as he stumbled through the twisted corridors of Cardotti's House of- 'Pitiful, isn't it?' asked Bayaz.

For a moment, Gorst wondered if the Magus had read his thoughts. And yes, it certainly fucking is. 'Pardon?'

Bayaz spread his arms to encompass the scene of crawling activity. 'All the doings of men, still at the mercy of the fickle skies. And war most of all.' He sipped from his cup again, grimaced and flung the dregs out across the grass. 'Once we can kill people at any time of day, in any season, in any weather, why, then we'll be civilised, eh?' And he chuckled away to himself.

The two old Adepti from the University of Adua scraped up like a pair of priests given a personal audience with God. The one called Denka was ghoul-pale and trembling. The one called Saurizin had a sheen of sweat across his wrinkled forehead which sprang back as fast as he could wipe it off.

'Lord Bayaz.' He tried to bow and grin at once and couldn't manage either with any conviction. 'I believe the weather has improved to the point where the devices can be tested.'

'At last,' snapped the Magus. 'Then what are you waiting for, the Midwinter Festival?'

The two old men fled, Saurizin snarling fiercely at his colleague. They had an ill-tempered discussion with the dozen aproned engineers about the nearest tube, including a deal of arm-waving, pointing at the skies and reference to some brass instruments. Finally one produced a long torch, flames licking at the tarred end. The Adepti and their minions hurried away, squatting behind boxes and barrels, covering their ears. The torch-bearer advanced with all the enthusiasm of a condemned man to the scaffold, touched the brand at arm's length to the top of the tube. A few sparks flew, a lick of smoke curled up, a faint pop and fizzle were heard.

Gorst frowned. 'What is-'

There was a colossal explosion and he shrank to the ground, hands clasped over his head. He had heard nothing like it since the Siege of Adua, when the Gurkish put fire to a mine and blew a hundred strides of the walls to gravel. Guardsmen peeped terrified from behind their shields. Exhausted labourers scrambled gaping from their fires. Others struggled to control terrified horses, two of which had torn a rail free and were galloping away with it clattering behind them.

Gorst slowly, suspiciously, stood. Smoke was issuing gently from the end of one of the pipes, engineers swarming around it. Denka and Saurizin were arguing furiously with each other. What had been the effect of the device beyond the noise, Gorst had not the slightest idea.

'Well.' Bayaz stuck a finger in one ear and waggled it around. 'They're certainly loud enough.'

A faint rumble echoed over the valley. Something like thunder, though it seemed to Craw the weather was just clearing up.

'You hear that?' asked Splitfoot.

Craw could only shrug up at the sky. Plenty of cloud still, even if there were a few blue patches showing. 'More rain, maybe.'

Dow had other things on his mind. 'How are we doing at the Old Bridge?'

'They came just after first light but Scale held 'em,' said Splitfoot. 'Drove 'em back across.'

'They'll be coming again, 'fore too long.'

'Doubtless. Reckon he'll hold?'

'If he don't we got a problem.'

'Half his men are across the valley with Calder.'

Dow snorted. 'Just the man I'd want at my back if I was fighting for my life.'

Splitfoot and a couple of the others chuckled.

There was a right way of doing things, far as Craw was concerned, and it didn't include letting men laugh at your friends behind their backs, however laughable they may be. 'That lad might surprise you,' he said.

Splitfoot smirked wider. 'Forgot you and him were tight.'

'Practically raised the boy,' said Craw, squaring up and giving him the eye.

'Explains a lot.'

'Of what?'