'The enemy,' growled Varuz. Jezal tried to imagine what Logen Ninefingers would have said faced with the sight below him now.

'Shit.'

In the patchwork of damp fields, over the roads and through the hedgerows, between the farms and villages and the few coppices of old trees beyond the city walls, Gurkish troops swarmed in their thousands. The wide paved road towards Keln, curving away southwards through the flat farmland, was a single crawling, glittering, heaving river of marching men. Gurkish soldiers, in column, flooding up and flowing smoothly out to encircle the city in a giant ring of men, wood, and steel. Tall standards stood out above the boiling throng, golden symbols flashing in the watery autumn sunlight. The standards of the Emperor's legions. Jezal counted ten at his first glance.

'A considerable body of men,' said Bayaz, with awesome understatement.

Glokta grinned. 'The Gurkish hate to travel alone.'

The fence that Marshal Varuz had referred to earlier was already rising, a dark line winding through the muddy fields a few hundred strides from the walls, a shallow ditch in front of it. More than adequate to prevent supplies or reinforcements reaching the city from outside. Further away several camps were taking shape: vast bodies of white tents erected in neatly ordered squares, several with tall columns of dark smoke already floating up into the white sky from cook-fires and forges. There was a deeply worrying feeling of permanence about the whole arrangement. Adua might still have been in Union hands, but even the most patriotic liar could not have denied that the city's hinterland already belonged firmly to the Emperor of Gurkhul.

'You have to admire their organisation,' said Varuz grimly.

'Yes… their organisation…' Jezal's voice was suddenly creaky as old floorboards. Putting a brave face on this seemed more like insanity than courage.

A dozen horsemen had detached themselves from the Gurkish lines and now rode forward at a steady trot. Two long flags streamed above their heads, red and yellow silk, worked with Kantic characters in golden thread. There was a white flag too, so small as to be barely noticeable.

'Parleys,' growled the First of the Magi, slowly shaking his head.

'What are they but an excuse for old fools who love to hear their own voices to prattle about fair treatment before they start on the butchery?'

'I suppose on the subject of old fools who love to hear their own voices, you are the absolute expert.' That was what Jezal thought but he kept it to himself, watching the Gurkish party approach in brooding silence. A tall man came at their head, gold shining on his sharply pointed helmet and his polished armour, riding with that upright arrogance that shouts, even from a distance, of high command.

Marshal Varuz frowned. 'General Malzagurt.'

'You know him?'