There were fires burning at the summit. Specks of light on the slopes, a yellow glow behind the black shapes of walls and towers, smudges of smoke hanging in the deep evening sky. The road switched back once more, then petered away altogether at a barricade made from three upended carts. Victus sat there on a field chair, warming his hands at a campfire, his collection of stolen chains gleaming round his neck. He grinned as she reined up her horse, and flourished out an absurd salute.

“The Grand Duchess of Talins, here in our slovenly camp! Your Excellency, we’re all shame! If we’d had more time to prepare for your royal visit, we’d have done something about all the dirt.” And he spread his arms wide at the sea of churned-up mud, bare rock, broken bits of crate and wagon scattered around the mountainside.

“Victus. The embodiment of the mercenary spirit.” She clambered down from her saddle, trying not to let the pain show. “Greedy as a duck, brave as a pigeon, loyal as a cuckoo.”

“I always modelled myself on the nobler birds. Afraid you’ll have to leave the horses, we’ll be going by trench from here. Duke Orso’s a most ungracious host—he’s taken to shooting catapults at any of his guests who show themselves.” He sprang up, slapping dust from the canvas he’d been sitting on, then holding one ring-encrusted hand out towards it. “Perhaps I could have some of the lads carry you up?”

“I’ll walk.”

He gave her a mocking leer. “And a fine figure you’ll appear, I’ve no doubt, though I would’ve thought you could’ve stretched to silk, given your high station.”

“Clothes don’t make the person, Victus.” She gave his jewellery a mocking leer of her own. “A piece of shit is still a piece of shit, however much gold you stick on it.”

“Oh, how we’ve missed you, Murcatto. Follow on, then.”

“Wait here,” she snapped at Rogont’s guards. Having them behind her all the time made her look weak. Made her look like she needed them.

Their sergeant winced. “His Excellency was most—”

“Piss on his Excellency. Wait here.”

She creaked down some steps made of old boxes and into the hillside, Shivers at her shoulder. The trenches weren’t much different from the ones they’d dug around Muris, years ago—walls of hard-packed earth held back by odds and ends of timber, with that same smell of sickness, mould, damp earth and boredom. The trenches they’d lived in for the best part of six months, like rats in a sewer. Where her feet had started to rot, and Benna got the running shits so bad he lost a quarter of his weight and all his sense of humour. She even saw a few familiar faces as they threaded their way through ditch, tunnel and dugout—veterans who’d been fighting with the Thousand Swords for years. She nodded to them just as she used to when she was in charge, and they nodded back.