Duiker wished he’d asked more questions earlier. How far to the enemy camp’s pickets? What was the plan for getting through them undiscovered? What was the fallback should things go awry? He laid a hand on the grip of the short sword at his hip, and was alarmed at how strange it felt – it had been a long time since he’d last used a weapon. Being pulled from the front lines had been the Emperor’s reward all those years ago. That and the various alchemies that keep me tottering on well past my prime. Gods, even the scars from that last horror have faded away! ‘No-one who’s grown up amidst scrolls and books can write of the world,’ Kellanved had told him once, ‘which is why I’m appointing you Imperial Historian, soldier.’

‘Emperor, I cannot read or write.’

‘An unsullied mind. Good. Toc the Elder will be teaching you over the next six months –he’s another soldier with a brain. Six months, mind. No more than that.’

‘Emperor, it seems to me that he would be better suited than I—’

‘I’ve something else in store for him. Do as I say or I’ll have you spiked on the city wall.’

Kellanved’s sense of humour had been strange even at the best of times. Duiker recalled those learning sessions: he a soldier of thirty-odd years who’d been campaigning for over half that, seated alongside Toe’s own son, a runt of a boy who always seemed to be suffering from a cold – the sleeves of his shirt were crusty with dried snot. It had taken longer than six months, but by then it was Toe the Younger doing the teaching.

The Emperor loved lessons in humility. So long as it was never thrown back at him. What happened to Toe the Elder, I wonder? Vanishing after the assassinations – I’d always imagined it as Laseen’s doing . . . and Toe the Younger – he’d rejected a life amidst scrolls and books . . . now lost in the Genabackan campaign—

A gauntleted hand gripped the historian’s shoulder and squeezed hard. Duiker focused on Lull’s battered face, nodded. Sorry. Mind wandering still, it seems.

They had stopped. Ahead, vague through the mists, rose a spike-bristling ridge of packed earth. The glow of fires painted the fog orange beyond the earthwork perimeter.

Now what?

The two warlocks knelt in the grass five paces in front. Both had gone perfectly still.

They waited. Duiker heard muffled voices from the other side of the ridge, slowly passing from left to right, then fading as the Tithansi patrol continued on. Nil twisted around and gestured.

Crossbows cocked, the marines slipped forward. After a moment the historian followed.

A tunnel mouth had opened in the earth before the two warlocks. The soil steamed, the rocks and gravel popping with heat. It looked to have been clawed open by huge taloned hands – from below.