Lieutenant Jalaz squeezed his shoulder, grinning. ‘Wish me luck, Jute of Delanss.’ She jogged off down the ramp. Malle leaned out over the catwalk and snapped her fingers. The majority of her remaining guards rose where they’d been squatting below among the chests.

‘What is going on?’ Jute asked everyone.

Cartheron shouted down: ‘Open the gates!’

‘Open the gates? What for?’

But Cartheron ignored him, going to the wall to lean out, peering down. Jute went to his side. Below, the gates of bronze-sheathed timber swung open and Lieutenant Jalaz appeared, jog-trotting north at the head of a train of four munition chests, each carried by two men and piled with shovels and picks.

‘What is this?’ Jute demanded.

Cartheron finally turned to him. He was rubbing a hand over his balding pate. ‘A gamble.’

‘A gamble? What sort of gamble?’

‘Orosenn assures me that all the soil and dirt ’n’ such is going to be scraped up, so no point in burying a charge. But there’s rock crevices and cracks where the bedrock comes mounding up. They’re gonna look for some of those at our maximum range. Push a few munitions down there for a little extra oomph.’

Jute snapped his gaze to where Lieutenant Jalaz and her team were disappearing into the banners of ground fog. ‘There’s no time for that!’

Cartheron just brushed his fingers down his jaw. ‘It’s a good throw. Worth four chests.’

Jute could not believe such callousness. ‘Four chests! What of nine people?’

That must have stung, as the old commander’s gaze flicked to him and he grated, his voice tight: ‘Don’t lecture me, son. They’re good people doing what they do best, so leave them to it.’ He walked off, unsteady, looking bowed. Jute moved to follow, but Malle caught his arm.

‘Let him go. Do not add to his pain. Nine lives, you say? Well, what of all of us?’

‘But—’

The hardened old woman stopped him with a look. ‘There will always be buts, captain. The important thing is that choices be made. Now comes the hard part.’

‘The hard part?’

‘Yes.’ Her gaze shifted to the north. ‘Now we wait.’

The walls became crowded as the evening passed. Everyone wanted to watch; perhaps out of a kind of perverse fascination to see the end. Conversation was almost impossible: one had to press one’s mouth to anyone’s ear to be heard over groaning earth, the rumbling avalanche, and the growing thunderous grinding of tonnes upon tonnes of moiling rock and earth.