'He'll crack the towns open like nuts in winter, no rush, and his Carls will make free with the contents.' Dow sucked his teeth, staring across at the girl. Staring like a mean dog might stare at a side of bacon. She stared right back, which was much to her credit, the Dogman thought. He doubted he'd have had the bones to do the same in her position.

'Bethod's going north and we'll be following.' Threetrees said it in a way that made it clear it weren't a matter for discussion. 'Keep an eye on him, hope to move fast and keep ahead, so that if your friend Burr comes blundering through these woods, we can warn him where Bethod's at before he stumbles on him like a blind man falling down a fucking well.'

The Prince slapped angry at the ground. 'I demand to know what is being said!'

'That Bethod is heading north with his army,' hissed West at him through gritted teeth. 'And that they intend to follow him.'

'This is intolerable!' snapped the fool, tugging at his filthy cuffs. 'That course of action puts us all in danger! Please inform them that we will be setting out southwards without delay!'

'That's settled, then.' They all turned to see who spoke, and got quite the shock. Grim, talking Union as smooth and even as the Prince himself. 'You're going south. We're going north. I need to piss.' And he got up and wandered off into the dark. Dogman stared after him, mouth open. Why did he need to learn someone else's language when he never spoke more than two words together in his own?

'Very well!' squawked the Prince, shrill and panicky. 'I should have expected no better!'

'Your Highness!' hissed West at him. 'We need them! We won't make it to Ostenhorm or anywhere else without their help!'

The girl's eyes slid sideways. 'Do you even know which way south is?' Dogman stifled a chuckle, but the Prince weren't laughing.

'We should head south!' he snarled, dirty face twitching with anger.

Threetrees snorted. 'The baggage don't get a vote, boy, even supposing this was a voting band, which it ain't.' He was finally speaking Union, but Dogman didn't reckon the Prince would be too happy to know what was being said. 'You had your chance to give the orders, and look where it's got you. Not to mention those were fools enough to do what you told 'em. You'll not be adding any of our names to their list, I can tell you that. If you want to follow us, you'd best learn to keep up. If you want to give the orders, well-'

'South is that way,' said the Dogman, jerking his thumb into the woods. 'Good luck.'

Scant Mercy To Arch Lector Sult,

head of his Majesty's Inquisition.

Your Eminence, The siege of Dagoska continues. Three days in a row the Gurkish have made assaults against our walls, each one greater in size and determination. They strive to fill in our channel with boulders, to cross it with bridges, to scale our walls and bring rams against our gates. Three times they have attacked and three times we have thrown them back. Their losses have been heavy, but losses they can well afford. The Emperor's soldiers crawl like ants across the peninsula. Still, our men are bold, our defences are strong, our resolve is unshakeable, and Union vessels still ply the bay, keeping us well supplied. Be assured, Dagoska will not fall.

On a subject of lesser importance, you will, no doubt, be pleased to learn that the issue of Magister Eider has been put to rest. I had suspended her sentence while I considered the possibility of using her connection with the Gurkish against them. Unfortunately for her, the chances of such subtle measures bearing fruit have dropped away, leaving us with no further use for her. The sight of a woman's head decorating the battlements might have been detrimental to the morale of our troops. We, after all, are the civilised faction. The one-time Magister of the Guild of Spicers has therefore been dealt with quietly, but, I can assure you, quite finally. Neither one of us need spare her, or her failed conspiracy, any further thought.

As always, your Eminence, I serve and obey.

Sand dan Glokta

Superior of Dagoska.

It was quiet down by the water. Quiet, and dark, and still. The gentle waves slapped at the supports of the wharf, the timbers of the boats creaked softly, a cool breeze washed in off the bay, the dark sea glittered in the moonlight under a sky dusted with stars.

You could never guess that a few short hours ago men were dying in their hundreds less than half a mile away. That the air was split with screams of pain and fury. That even now the ruins of two great siege towers are still smouldering beyond the land walls, corpses scattered round them like leaves fallen in autumn . . .

'Thhhhh.' Glokta felt his neck click as he turned and squinted into the darkness. Practical Frost emerged from the shadows between two dark buildings, peering suspiciously around, herding a prisoner in front of him; someone much smaller, hunched over and wrapped in a cloak with the hood up, arms secured behind them. The two figures crossed the dusty quay and came down the wharf, their footfalls clapping hollow on the wooden planks.

'Alright, Frost,' said Glokta as the albino pulled his prisoner up. 'I don't think we need that any more.' The white fist pulled back the cowl.

In the pale moonlight, Carlot dan Eider's face looked gaunt and wasted, full of sharp edges, with a set of black grazes across her hollow cheek. Her head had been shaved, after the fashion of confessed traitors, and without that weight of hair her skull seemed strangely small, almost child-like, her neck absurdly long and fragile. Especially with a ring of angry bruises round it, the dark after-images left by the links of Vitari's chain. There was hardly any remnant of the sleek and masterful woman who had taken him by the hand in the Lord Governor's audience chamber, it seemed an age ago. A few weeks in the darkness, sleeping on the rotten floor of a sweltering cell, not knowing if you'll live another hour that can ruin the looks. I should know.

She lifted her chin at him, nostrils wide, eyes gleaming in black shadows. That mixture of fear and defiance that comes on some people when they know they are about to die. 'Superior Glokta, I hardly dared hope I would see you again.' Her words might have been jaunty, but there was no disguising the edge of fear in her voice. 'What now? A rock tied round the legs and into the bay? Isn't that all a touch dramatic?'

'It would be, but that isn't what I have in mind.' He looked up at Frost and gave the barest of nods. Eider flinched, squeezing her eyes shut and biting on her lip, hunching her shoulders as she felt the hulking Practical loom up behind her. Waiting for the crushing blow on the back of the skull? The stabbing point between the shoulder blades? The choking wire across the throat? The terrible anticipation. Which shall it be? Frost raised his hand. There was a flash of metal in the darkness. Then a gentle clicking as the key slid smoothly into Eider's manacles and unlocked them.

She slowly prised open her eyes, slowly brought her hands round in front of her, blinked down as though she had never seen them before. 'What's this?'

'This is exactly what it appears to be.' He nodded his head down the wharf. 'This is a ship leaving for Westport on the next tide. You have contacts in Westport?'

The tendons in her thin neck fluttered as she swallowed. 'I have contacts everywhere.'

'Good. Then this is me setting you free.'

There was a long silence. 'Free?' She lifted one hand to her head and rubbed absently at her stubbly scalp, staring at Glokta for a drawn-out moment. Not sure whether to believe it, and who can blame her? I'm not sure that I believe it. 'His Eminence must have mellowed beyond recognition.'

Glokta snorted. 'Not likely. Sult knows nothing about this. If he did, I rather think we both might be swimming with rocks round our ankles.'

Her eyes narrowed. The merchant Queen judges the bargain. 'Then what's the price?'

'The price is you're dead. You're forgotten. Put Dagoska from your mind, it's finished. Find some other people to save. The price is you leave the Union and never come back. Not. Ever.'

'That's it?'

'That's it.'

'Why?'

Ah, my favourite question. Why do I do this? He shrugged. 'What does it matter? A woman lost in the desert-'

'Should take such water as she is offered, no matter who it comes from. Don't worry. I won't be saying no.' She reached out suddenly and Glokta half-jerked away, but her fingertips only touched him gently on his cheek. They rested there for a moment, while his skin tingled, and his eye twitched, and his neck ached. 'Perhaps,' she whispered, 'if things had been different . . .'

'If I weren't a cripple and you weren't a traitor? Things are as they are.'

She let her hand drop, half smiling. 'Of course they are. I would say I'll see you again-'

'I'd rather you didn't.'

She nodded slowly. 'Then goodbye.' She pulled the hood over her head, throwing her face back into shadow, then brushed past Glokta and walked quickly towards the end of the wharf. He stood, weight on his cane, and watched her go, scratching his cheek slowly where her fingers had rested. So. To get women to touch you, you need only spare their lives. I should try it more often.

He turned away, limped a few painful steps onto the dusty quay, peering up into the dark buildings. I wonder if Practical Vitari is in there somewhere, watching? I wonder if this little episode will find its way into her next report to the Arch Lector? He felt a sweaty shiver up his aching back. I won't be putting it in mine, that's sure, but what does it really matter? He could smell it, as the wind shifted, the smell that seemed to find its way into every corner of the city now. The sharp smell of burning. Of smoke. Of ash. Of death. Without a miracle, none of us will leave this place alive. He looked back. Carlot dan Eider was already crossing the gangway. Well. Perhaps just one of us will.

'Things are going well,' sang Cosca in his rich Styrian accent, grinning out over the parapet at the carnage beyond the walls. 'A good day's work, yesterday, considering.'

A good day's work. Below them, on the other side of the ditch, the bare earth was scarred and burned, bristling with spent flatbow bolts like stubble on a brown chin. Everywhere, siege equipment lay wrecked and ruined. Broken ladders, fallen barrows spilling rocks, burned and shattered wicker screens, trampled into the hard dirt. The shell of one of the great siege towers was still half standing, a framework of blackened timbers sticking twisted from a heap of ash, scorched and tattered leather flapping in the salt wind.

'We taught those Gurkish fuckers a lesson they won't soon forget, eh, Superior?'

'What lesson?' muttered Severard. What lesson indeed? The dead learn nothing. The corpses were dotted about before the Gurkish front line, two hundred strides or so from the land walls. They were scattered across the no-man's-land between, surrounded by a flotsam of broken weapons and armour. They had dropped so heavily just before the ditch that you could almost have walked from the sea on one side of the peninsula to the sea on the other without once stepping on the earth. In a few places they were crowded together into huddled groups. Where the wounded crawled to take cover behind the dead, then bled to death themselves.

Glokta had never seen slaughter like it. Not even after the siege of Ulrioch, when the breach had been choked with Union dead, when Gurkish prisoners had been murdered by the score, when the temple had been burned with hundreds of citizens inside. Corpses sagged and lolled and sprawled, some charred with fire, some bent in attitudes of final prayer, some spread out heedless, heads smashed by rocks flung from above. Some had clothes ripped and rooted through. Where they tore at their own shirts to check their wounds, hoping they were not fatal. All of them disappointed.

Flies buzzed in legions around the bodies. Birds of a hundred species hopped and flapped and pecked at the unexpected feast. Even here, high up in the blasting wind, it was starting to reek. The stuff of nightmares. Of my nightmares for the next few months, I shouldn't wonder. If I last that long.

Glokta felt his eye twitching, and he blew out a deep breath, stretched his neck from side to side. Well. We must fight on. It is a little late now for second thoughts. He peered gingerly over the parapet to take a look down at the ditch, his free hand grasping tight at the pitted stone to keep his balance.

Not good. 'They have nearly filled the channel down below us, and over near the gates.'

'True,' said Cosca cheerfully. 'They drag up their boxes of rocks and try to tip them in. We can only kill them so fast.'

'That channel is our best defence.'

'True again. It was a good idea. But nothing lasts forever.'

'Without it there is nothing to stop the Gurkish mounting ladders, rolling up rams, mining under our walls even. It might be necessary to organise a sortie of some kind, dig it back out.'

Cosca rolled his dark eyes sideways. 'Lowered from the wall by ropes, slaving in the darkness, not two hundred strides from the Gurkish positions? Was that what you had in mind?'

'Something like that.'

'Then I wish you luck with it.'

Glokta snorted. 'I would go, of course.' He tapped his leg with his cane. 'But I'm afraid my days of heroics are far behind me.'

'Lucky for you.'

'Hardly. We should build a barricade behind the gates. That is our weakest point. A half circle, I would guess, some hundred strides across, would make an effective killing ground. If they manage to break through we might still contain them there, long enough to push them back.' Might . . .

'Ah, pushing them back.' Cosca scratched at the rash on his neck. 'I'm sure the volunteers will be falling over each other for that duty when the time comes. Still, I'll see it done.'

'You have to admire them.' General Vissbruck strode up to the parapet, his hands clasped tightly behind his impeccably pressed uniform. I'm surprised he finds the time for presentation, with things as they are. Still, we all cling to what we can. He shook his head as he peered down at the corpses. 'Some courage, to come at us like this, over and over, against defences so strong and so well manned. I've rarely seen men so willing to give their lives.'

'They have that most strange and dangerous of qualities,' said Cosca. 'They think they're in the right.'

Vissbruck stared sternly out from under his brows. 'It is we who are in the right.'

'If you like.' The mercenary grinned sideways at Glokta. 'But I think the rest of us long ago gave up on the idea that there's any such thing. The plucky Gurkish come on with their barrows . . . and it's my job to shoot them full of arrows!' He barked out a sharp laugh.

'I don't think that's amusing,' snapped Vissbruck. 'A fallen opponent should be treated with respect.'

'Why?'

'Because it could be any one of us rotting in the sun, and probably soon will be.'

Cosca only laughed the louder, and clapped Vissbruck on the arm. 'Now you're getting it! If I've learned one thing from twenty years of warfare, it's that you have to look at the funny side!'

Glokta watched the Styrian chuckling at the battlefield. Trying to decide when would be the best time to change sides? Trying to work out how good a fight to give the Gurkish before they pay better than I do? There's more than rhymes in that scabby head, but for the moment we cannot do without him. He glanced at General Vissbruck, who had moved further down the walkway to sulk on his own. Our plump friend has neither the brains nor the bravery to hold this city for longer than a week.

He felt a hand on his shoulder, and turned back to Cosca. 'What?' he snapped.

'Uh,' muttered the mercenary, pointing up into the blue sky. Glokta followed his finger. There was a black spot up there, not far above them, but moving upwards. What is that? A bird? It had peaked now, and was coming down. Realisation dawned suddenly. A stone. A stone from a catapult.

It grew larger as it fell, tumbling over and over, seeming to move with ridiculous slowness, as if sinking through water, its total silence adding to the sense of unreality. Glokta watched it, open-mouthed. They all did. An air of terrible expectancy settled on the walls. It was impossible to tell exactly where the stone was going to fall. Men began to scatter this way and that along the walkway, clattering, scuffling, gasping and squealing, tossing away weapons.

'Fuck,' whispered Severard, throwing himself face down on the stones.

Glokta stayed where he was, his eyes locked on that one dark spot in the bright sky. Is it coming for me? Several tons of rock, about to splatter my remains across the city? What a ludicrously random way to die. He felt his mouth twitch up in a faint smile.

There was a deafening crash as a section of parapet was ripped apart nearby, sending out a cloud of dust and flinging chunks of stone into the air. Splinters whizzed around them. A soldier not ten strides away was neatly decapitated by a flying block. His headless body swayed for a moment on its feet before its knees buckled and it toppled backwards off the wall.

The missile crashed down somewhere in the Lower City, smashing through the shacks, bouncing and rolling, flinging shattered timbers up like matchsticks, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake. Glokta blinked and swallowed. His ears were still ringing, but he could hear someone shouting. A strange voice. A Styrian accent. Cosca.

'That the best you can do, you fuckers? I'm still here!'

'The Gurkish are bombarding us!' Vissbruck was squealing pointlessly, squatting down behind the parapet with his hands clasped over his head, a layer of light dust across the shoulders of his uniform. 'Solid shot from their catapults!'

'You don't say,' muttered Glokta. There was another mighty crash as a second rock struck the walls further down and burst apart in a shower of fragments, hurling stones the size of skulls into the water below. The very walkway beneath Glokta's feet seemed to tremble with the force of it.

'They're coming again!' Cosca was roaring at the very top of his voice. 'Man the walls! To the walls!'

Men began to hurry past: natives, mercenaries, Union soldiers, all side by side, cranking their flatbows, handing out bolts, shouting and calling to one another in a confusion of different languages. Cosca moved among them slapping backs, shaking his fist, snarling and laughing with not the slightest sign of fear. A most inspiring leader, for a half-mad drunkard.

'Fuck this!' hissed Severard in Glokta's ear. 'I'm no damn soldier!'

'Neither am I, any more, but I can still enjoy a show.' He limped up to the parapet and peered out. This time he saw the catapult's great arm fly up in the distant haze. The distance was poorly judged this time, and it sailed high overhead. Glokta winced at a twinge in his neck as he followed it with his eyes. It crashed down not far short of the Upper City's walls with a deep boom, throwing chunks of stone far into the slums.

A great horn sounded behind the Gurkish lines: a throbbing, rumbling blast. Drums followed behind, thumping together like monstrous footsteps. 'Here they come!' roared Cosca. 'Ready with your bows!' Glokta heard the order echoing across the walls, and a moment later the battlements on the towers bristled with loaded flatbows, the bright points of the bolts glinting in the harsh sun.

The great wicker shields that marked the Gurkish lines began slowly, steadily, to move forwards, edging across the blighted no-man's-land towards them. And behind, no doubt, Gurkish soldiers crawl like ants. Glokta's hand clutched the stone of the parapet painfully tight as he watched them come on, his heart beating almost as loud as the Gurkish drums. Fear, or excitement? Is there a difference? When was the last time I felt such a bittersweet thrill? Speaking before the Open Council? Leading a charge of the King's cavalry? Fighting in the Contest before the roaring crowds?

The screens were coming steadily closer, still in an even row across the peninsula. Now a hundred strides, now ninety, now eighty. He looked sideways at Cosca, still grinning like a madman. When will he give the order? Sixty, fifty . . .

'Now!' roared the Styrian. 'Fire!' There was a mighty rattling along the walls as the flatbows were loosed in one great volley, peppering the screens, the ground around them, the corpses, and any Gurkish unlucky enough to be have left some part of their body visible. Men knelt behind the parapet and began to reload, fumbling with bolts, cranking handles, sweating and straining. The drum beats had grown faster, more urgent, the screens passed heedless over the scattered bodies. Not much fun for the men behind, staring down at the corpses beneath their feet, wondering how long before they join them.

'Oil!' shouted Cosca.

A bottle with a burning wick was flung spinning from a tower on the left. It smashed against one of the wicker screens and lines of fire shot hungrily out across the surface, turning it brown, then black. It began to wobble, to bend, then gradually started to tip over. A soldier ran out howling from behind it, his arm wreathed in bright flames.