“We could do that!” hissed Benna. “You want to go back to tossing mud? Broken down tired every night and dirt under your fingernails? I won’t!”

Monza thought of the work she would have just to clear the upper field, and how much she might make from doing it. A line had formed of men keen to join the Company of the Sun, beggars and farmers mostly. A black-skinned notary took their names down in a ledger.

Monza shoved past them.

“I am Monzcarro Murcatto, daughter of Jappo Murcatto, and this is my brother Benna, and we are fighters. Can you find work for us in your company?”

Cosca frowned at her, and the black-skinned man shook his head. “We need men with experience of war. Not women and boys.” He tried to move her away with his arm.

She would not be moved. “We’ve experience. More than these scrapings.”

“I’ve work for you,” said one of the farmers, made bold by signing his mark on the paper. “How about you suck my cock?” He laughed at that. Until Monza knocked him down in the mud and made him swallow half his teeth with the heel of her boot.

Nicomo Cosca watched this methodical display with one eyebrow slightly raised. “Sajaam, the Paper of Engagement. Does it specify men, exactly? What is the wording?”

The notary squinted at a document. “Two hundred cavalry and two hundred infantry, those to be persons well equipped and of quality. Persons is all it says.”

“And quality is such a vague term. You, girl! Murcatto! You are hired, and your brother too. Make your marks.”

She did so, and so did Benna, and as simply as that they were soldiers of the Thousand Swords. Mercenaries. The farmer clutched at Monza’s leg.

“My teeth.”

“Pick through your shit for them,” she said.

Nicomo Cosca, famed soldier of fortune, led his new hirings from the village to the sound of a merry pipe, and they camped under the stars that night, gathered round fires in the darkness, talking of making it rich in the coming campaign.

Monza and Benna huddled together with their blanket around their shoulders. Cosca came out of the murk, firelight glinting on his breastplate. “Ah! My war-children! My lucky mascots! Cold, eh?” He swept his crimson cloak off and tossed it down to them. “Take this. Might keep the frost from your bones.”

“What d’you want for it?”

“Take it with my compliments, I have another.”

“Why?” she grunted, suspicious.

“ ‘A captain looks first to the comfort of his men, then to his own,’ Stolicus said.”

“Who’s he?” asked Benna.

“Stolicus? Why, the greatest general of history!” Monza stared blankly at him. “An emperor of old. The most famous of emperors.”

“What’s an emperor?” asked Benna.

Cosca raised his brows. “Like a king, but more so. You should read this.” He slid something from a pocket and pressed it into Monza’s hand. A small book, with a red cover scuffed and scarred.