'Of course.' Cosca pushed out his lower jaw and scratched thoughtfully at his neck, where a faint speckling of pink rash was appearing. 'And all plunder declared, assessed and properly noted so that it may be divided according to the Rule of Quarters. Any questions?'

'How many men will Inquisitor Lorsen torture to death today?' demanded Sufeen in ringing tones. Temple stared at him open-mouthed, and he was not alone.

Cosca went on scratching. 'I was thinking of questions relating to our tactics-'

'As many as is necessary,' interrupted the Inquisitor. 'You think I revel in this? The world is a grey place. A place of half-truths. Of half-wrongs and half-rights. Yet there are things worth fighting for, and they must be pursued with all our vigour and commitment. Half-measures achieve nothing.'

'What if there are no rebels down there?' Sufeen shook off Temple's frantic tugging at his sleeve. 'What if you are wrong?'

'Sometimes I will be,' said Lorsen simply. 'Courage lies in bearing the costs. We all have our regrets, but not all of us can afford to be crippled by them. Sometimes it takes small crimes to prevent bigger ones. Sometimes the lesser evil is the greater good. A man of principle must make hard choices and suffer the consequences. Or you could sit and cry over how unfair it all is.'

'Works for me,' said Temple with a laugh of choking falseness.

'It will not work for me.' Sufeen wore a strange expression, as if he was looking through the gathering to something in the far distance, and Temple felt an awful foreboding. Even more awful than usual. 'General Cosca, I want to go down into Averstock.'

'So do we all! Did you not hear my address?'

'Before the attack.'

'Why?' demanded Lorsen.

'To talk to the townsfolk,' said Sufeen. 'To give them a chance to surrender any rebels.' Temple winced. God, it sounded ridiculous. Noble, righteous, courageous and ridiculous. 'To avoid what happened in Squaredeal-'

Cosca was taken aback. 'I thought we were remarkably well behaved in Squaredeal. A company of kittens could have been no gentler! Would you not say so, Sworbreck?'

The writer adjusted his eyeglasses and stammered out, 'Admirable restraint.'

'This is a poor town.' Sufeen pointed into the trees with a faintly shaking finger. 'They have nothing worth taking.'

Dimbik frowned as he scraped at a stain on his sash with a fingernail. 'You can't know that until you look.'

'Just give me a chance. I'm begging you.' Sufeen clasped his hands and looked Cosca in his eye. 'I'm praying.'

'Prayer is arrogance,' intoned Jubair. 'The hope of man to change the will of God. But God's plan is set and His words already spoken.'

'Fuck Him, then!' snapped Sufeen.

Jubair mildly raised one brow. 'Oh, you will find it is God who does the fucking.'

There was a pause, the metallic notes of martial preparations drifting between the tree-trunks along with the morning birdsong.

The Old Man sighed and rubbed at the bridge of his nose. 'You sound determined.'

Sufeen echoed Lorsen's words. 'A man of principle must make hard choices and suffer the consequences.'

'And if I agree to this, what then? Will your conscience continue to prick at our arses all the way across the Near Country and back? Because that could become decidedly tiresome. Conscience can be painful but so can the cock-rot. A grown-up should suffer his afflictions privately and not allow them to become an inconvenience for friends and colleagues.'

'Conscience and the cock-rot are hardly equivalent,' snapped Lorsen.

'Indeed,' said Cosca, significantly. 'The cock-rot is rarely fatal.'

The Inquisitor's face had turned even more livid than usual. 'Am I to understand you are considering this folly?'

'You are, and I am. The town is surrounded, after all, no one is going anywhere. Perhaps this can make all our lives a little easier. What do you think, Temple?'

Temple blinked. 'Me?'

'I am looking at you and using your name.'

'Yes, but . . . me?' There was a good reason why he had stopped making hard choices. He always made the wrong ones. Thirty years of scraping through the poverty and fear between disasters to end up in this fix was proof enough of that. He looked from Sufeen, to Cosca, to Lorsen, and back. Where was the greatest profit? Where the least danger? Who was actually . . . right? It was damned difficult to pick the easy way from this tangle. 'Well . . .'

Cosca puffed out his cheeks. 'The man of conscience and the man of doubts. God help us indeed. You have one hour.'

'I must protest!' barked Lorsen.

'If you must, you must, but I won't be able to hear you with all this noise.'

'What noise?'

Cosca stuck his fingers in his ears. 'Blah-lee-lah-lee-lah-lee-lah-lee-lah . . . !'

He was still doing it as Temple hurried away through the towering trees after Sufeen, their boots crunching on fallen sticks, rotten cones, browned pine needles, the sound of the men fading to leave only the rustling of the branches high above, the twitter and warble of birds.

'Have you gone mad?' hissed Temple, struggling to keep up.

'I have gone sane.'

'What will you do?'

'Talk to them.'

'To who?'

'Whoever will listen.'

'You won't put the world right with talk!'

'What will you use, then? Fire and sword? Papers of Engagement?'

They passed the last group of puzzled sentries, Bermi giving a questioning look from among them and Temple offering only a helpless shrug in return, then they were out into the open, sunlight suddenly bright on their faces. The few dozen houses of Averstock clung to a curve in the river below. 'Houses' was being generous to most of them. They were little better than shacks, with dirt between. They were no better than shacks, with shit between, and Sufeen was already striding purposefully downhill in their direction.

'What the hell is he up to?' hissed Bermi from the shadowy safety of the trees.

'I think he's following his conscience,' said Temple.

The Styrian looked unconvinced. 'Conscience is a shitty navigator.'

'I've often told him so.' Yet Sufeen showed no sign of slowing in his pursuit of it. 'Oh God,' muttered Temple, wincing up at the blue heavens. 'Oh God, oh God.' And he bounded after, grass thrashing about his calves, patched with little white flowers the name of which he did not know.

'Self-sacrifice is not a noble thing!' he called as he caught up. 'I have seen it, and it's an ugly, pointless thing, and nobody thanks you for it!'

'Perhaps God will.'

'If there is a God, He has bigger things to worry about than the likes of us!'

Sufeen pressed on, looking neither left or right. 'Go back, Temple. This is not the easy way.'

'That I fucking realise!' He caught a fistful of Sufeen's sleeve. 'Let's both go back!'

Sufeen shook him off and carried on. 'No.'

'Then I'm coming!'

'Good.'

'Fuck!' Temple hurried to catch up again, the town getting steadily closer and looking less and less like a thing he wished to risk his life for. 'What's your plan? There is a plan, yes?'

'There is . . . part of one.'

'That's not very reassuring.'

'Reassuring you was not my aim.'

'Then you have fucking succeeded, my friend.' They passed under the arch of rough-trimmed timbers that served for a gate, a sign creaking beneath it that read Averstock. They skirted around the boggiest parts of the boggy main street, between the slumping little buildings, most of warped pine, all on one storey and some barely that.

'God, this is a poor place,' muttered Sufeen.

'It puts me in mind of home,' whispered Temple. Which was far from a good thing. The sun-baked lower city of Dagoska, the seething slums of Styria, the hard-scrabble villages of the Near Country. Every nation was rich in its own way, but poor in the same.

A woman skinned a fly-blown carcass that might have been rabbit or cat and Temple got the feeling she was not bothered which. A pair of half-naked children mindlessly banged wooden swords together in the street. A long-haired ancient whittled a stick on the stoop of one of the few stone-built houses, a sword that was definitely not a toy leaning against the wall behind him. They all watched Temple and Sufeen with sulky suspicion. Some shutters clattered closed and Temple's heart started to pound. Then a dog barked and he nearly shat, sweat standing cold on his brow as a stinking breeze swept past. He wondered if this was the stupidest thing he had ever done in a life littered with idiocy. High on the list, he decided, and still with ample time to bully its way to the top.

Averstock's glittering heart was a shed with a tankard painted on a board above the entrance and a luckless clientele. A pair who looked like a farmer and his son, both red-haired and bony, the boy with a satchel over his shoulder, sat at one table eating bread and cheese far from the freshest. A tragic fellow decked in fraying ribbons was bent over a cup. Temple took him for a travelling bard, and hoped he specialised in sad songs because the sight of him was enough to bring on tears. A woman was cooking over a fire in the blackened hearth, and spared Temple one sour look as he entered.

The counter was a warped slab with a fresh split down its length and a large stain worked into the grain that looked unpleasantly like blood. Behind it the Tavern-Keep was carefully wiping cups with a rag.

'It's not too late,' whispered Temple. 'We could just choke down a cup of whatever piss they sell here, walk straight on through and no harm done.'

'Until the rest of the Company get here.'

'I meant no harm to us . . .' But Sufeen was already approaching the counter leaving Temple to curse silently in the doorway for a moment before following with the greatest reluctance.

'What can I get you?' asked the Keep.

'There are some four hundred mercenaries surrounding your town, with every intention of attacking,' said Sufeen, and Temple's hopes of avoiding catastrophe were dealt a shattering blow.

There was a pregnant pause. Heavily pregnant.

'This hasn't been my best week,' grunted the Keep. 'I'm in no mood for jokes.'

'If we were set on laughter I think we could come up with better,' muttered Temple.

Sufeen spoke over him. 'They are the Company of the Gracious Hand, led by the infamous mercenary Nicomo Cosca, and they have been employed by his Majesty's Inquisition to root out rebels in the Near Country. Unless they receive your fullest cooperation, your bad week will get a great deal worse.'

They had the Keep's attention now. They had the attention of every person in the tavern and were not likely to lose it. Whether that was a good thing remained very much to be seen, but Temple was not optimistic. He could not remember the last time he had been.

'And if there is rebels in town?' The farmer leaned against the counter beside them, pointedly rolling up his sleeve. There was a tattoo on his sinewy forearm. Freedom, liberty, justice. Here, then, was the scourge of the mighty Union, Lorsen's insidious enemy, the terrifying rebel in the flesh. Temple looked into his eyes. If this was the face of evil, it was a haggard one.

Sufeen chose his words carefully. 'Then they have less than an hour to surrender, and spare the people of this town bloodshed.'

The bony man gave a smile missing several of the teeth and all of the joy. 'I can take you to Sheel. He can choose what to believe.' Clearly he did not believe any of it. Or perhaps even entirely comprehend.

'Take us to Sheel, then,' said Sufeen. 'Good.'

'Is it?' muttered Temple. The feeling of impending disaster was almost choking him now. Or perhaps that was the rebel's breath. He certainly had the breath of evil, if nothing else.

'You'll have to give up your weapons,' he said.

'With the greatest respect,' said Temple, 'I'm not convinced-'

'Hand 'em over.' Temple was surprised to see the woman at the fire had produced a loaded flatbow and was pointing it unwavering at him.

'I am convinced,' he croaked, pulling his knife from his belt between finger and thumb. 'It's only a very small one.'

'Ain't the size,' said the bony man as he plucked it from Temple's hand, 'so much as where you stick it.' Sufeen unbuckled his sword-belt and he took that, too. 'Let's go. And it'd be an idea not to make no sudden moves.'

Temple raised his palms. 'I try always to avoid them.'

'You made one when you followed me down here, as I recall,' said Sufeen.

'And how I regret it now.'

'Shut up.' The bony rebel herded them towards the door, the woman following at a cautious distance, bow levelled. Temple caught the blue of a tattoo on the inside of her wrist. The boy lurched along at the back, one of his legs in a brace and his satchel clutched tight to his chest. It might have been a laughable procession without the threat of death. Temple had always found the threat of death to be a sure antidote to comedy.

Sheel turned out to be the old man who had watched them walk into town a few moments before. What happy times those seemed now. He stiffly stood, waving away a fly, then, almost as an afterthought, even more stiffly bent for his sword before stepping from his porch.

'What's to do, Danard?' he asked in a voice croaky with phlegm.

'Caught these two in the inn,' said the bony man.

'Caught?' asked Temple. 'We walked in and asked for you.'

'Shut up,' said Danard.

'You shut up,' said Sufeen.

Sheel did something between vomiting and clearing his throat, then effortfully swallowed the results. 'Let's all see if we can split thedifference between talking too much and not at all. I'm Sheel. I speak for the rebels hereabouts.'

'All four of them?' asked Temple.