Rebble cocked his head. ‘For a coward, you’ve uncommon loyalty, Wareth. Makes you hard to figure. I’m not complaining, sir. Maybe the opposite, in fact. It’s something that gets noticed.’

‘Enough of that, Rebble. You’d be better off listening to your armour, and sword. There’s a battle coming, but it won’t be me in the front ranks. Remember that. Galar knows enough to keep me as far from the fighting as he can. But you, and Listar – and all the other officers and squad leaders – you’re heading into something else. My loyalty won’t put me at your side when that time comes.’

There was a momentary glint of something ugly in Rebble’s eyes, and then he smiled. ‘No one’s planning on your statue, sir. Not even a painted portrait, or a fucking bust or something. You’re Wareth, and we all remember that.’

Wareth nodded. ‘It’s well that you do.’

‘In any case,’ Rebble continued, ‘I looked for Listar but could not find him. But I’ll make another round, look in on his tent and whatnot. He should turn up.’

Wareth watched Rebble walk away. Soldiers were mustering for the breakfast bell. There was little conversation, and not everyone had emerged from tents wearing their armour, although a belted sword adorned every soldier in sight. Had it been as simple as that? Weapons to make these men and women into soldiers?

Setting out, Wareth rolled his shoulders against the permanent ache in his lower back. The heavy chain surcoat wasn’t helping matters, and the round-cornered plates of his shoulder-guards sat like tiles upon a slanted roof, pulling at the muscles of his neck.

He was used to the eyes tracking him as he walked through the camp. Contempt needed no words. The scabbard holding his sword was the same one Castegan had given him, and he found a perverse satisfaction in wearing that brand. He could see little of worth in Rance’s words the night before. The cats needed someone better. His actions upon that day of liberation had, in all likelihood, been a last spasm of decency, undermined in the next breath by unpalatable truths.

The memory of the shovel crushing Ganz’s skull was an echo that never quite left him, and in that manner, it persisted in the way of all things venal. He never saw it coming. No, Ganz was filling up with lust, charging the violence of his strength against women who could not match it. He’d shown the same against me. A thousand small slights to make my confession a weighty tome of reasons, justifications.

But the truth was, I saw my chance and took it.