She had waited long enough. Thousands of Gurkish, and ready for war. The smile tugged at one corner of Ferro's mouth, then grew, and grew, until her cheeks were aching.

PART II

'Last Argument of Kings'

Inscribed on his cannons by Louis XIV

The Number of the Dead

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It was quiet in the village. The few houses, built from old stone with roofs of mossy slate, seemed deserted. The only life in the fields beyond, mostly fresh-harvested and ploughed over, were a handful of miserable crows. Next to Ferro the bell in the tower creaked softly. Some loose shutters on a window swung and tapped. A few curled-up leaves fell on a gust of wind and fluttered gently to the empty square. On the horizon three columns of dark smoke rose up just as gently into the heavy sky.

The Gurkish were coming, and they always had loved to burn.

'Maljinn!' Major Vallimir was below, framed by the trapdoor, and Ferro scowled down. He reminded her of Jezal dan Luthar when she had first met him. A plump, pale face stuffed with that infuriating mixture of panic and arrogance. It was plain enough that he had never set an ambush for a goat before, let alone for Gurkish scouts. But still he pretended he knew best. 'Do you see anything?' he hissed at her, for the fifth time in an hour.

'I see them coming,' Ferro growled back.

'How many?'

'Still a dozen.'

'How far off?'

'Perhaps quarter of an hour's ride, now, and your asking will not make them come quicker.'

'When they are in the square, I will give the signal with two claps.'

'Make sure you do not miss one hand with the other, pink.'

'I told you not to call me that!' A brief pause. 'We must take one of them alive, to question.'

Ferro wrinkled her nose. Her taste did not lean towards taking Gurkish alive. 'We will see.'

She turned back to the horizon, and soon enough she heard the sound of Vallimir whispering orders to some of his men. The rest were scattered around the other buildings, hiding. An odd crowd of left-over soldiers. A few were veterans, but most of them were even younger and more twitchy than Vallimir himself. Ferro wished, and not for the first time, that they had Ninefingers with them. Like him or not, no one could have denied that the man knew his business. With him, Ferro had known what she would get. Solid experience or, on occasion, murderous fury. Either one would have been useful.

But Ninefingers was not there.

So Ferro stood in the wide window of the bell tower, alone, frowning out across the rolling fields of Midderland, and watched the riders come closer. A dozen Gurkish scouts, trotting in a loose group down a track. Wriggling specks on a pale streak between patchworks of dark earth.

They slowed as they passed the first wood-built barn, spreading out. A great Gurkish host would number soldiers from all across the Empire, fighters from a score of different conquered provinces. These twelve scouts were Kadiris, by their long faces and narrow eyes, their saddlebags of patterned cloth, lightly armed with bows and spears. Killing them would not be much vengeance, but it would be some. It would fill the space for now. A space that had been empty far too long.