Beyond the gate, a desperately small army converged. A few hundred men and women gathered around campfires, playing cards or scraping whetstones across steel. Most were infantry, garbed in the familiar tabards and plate of Branghall’s guards. A few-score wayfarers stood vigil on unarmoured horses at the muster’s perimeter, spears aloft and their eyes on the eastern horizon. Wagons stood motionless. Draught horses champed restlessly in the chill morning air.

“Morning, missy. Come to join up, have you?”

Calenne spun around, swallowing a heart that had leapt into her throat. Captain Kurkas regarded her from the shadow of the gate with a mocking smile and customary dishevelment.

“Is that how you address your betters?” The sought-for hauteur sputtered to nothing. It was too early.

Kurkas shrugged. “My father was a soldier. My mother a crowmarketeer – in good and deep with the vranakin and their parliament, so I understand. Neither of ’em made their living doing anything you’d want to see first-hand. Makes everyone my better, but I can’t spend a life bowing and scraping. Bad for the back. You sure you don’t want to join up?”

“You can’t be that desperate.”

“Can’t I?” Another column of soldiers marched through the gate. He waited until they’d passed before pressing on. “Yanda took the best of what we had two days back. Most of ’em are probably dead by now. This is whatever Lord Akadra could scrounge up west of Eskavord. Don’t be fooled by the uniforms. There’re more toll-keepers here than soldiers.”

He spat on the roadway. Calenne cast her eye anew over the muster fields. Kurkas’ dour appraisal changed little of what she saw. “They seem soldierly enough.”

“Guess we’ll find out, won’t we? Offer’s still open. Don’t tell me you weren’t schooled in swordplay?”

“I had duellist’s lessons, and I was never that good. It’s hardly preparation for battle.”

Kurkas thrust his hand into a pocket and scuffed his boots against the cobbles. “No. I reckon not.”

“Then why do you keep asking?”

He sighed. “Last time I was in these parts, a woman who looked a lot like you roused half the populace. The fire she put in their bellies nearly burned us all to a crisp. Cost me an arm, but right now I’d give the other for that fire to catch again.”

Truth gleamed beneath the put-upon attitude, even beneath the dry humour of his tone. Kurkas expected to lose. He expected to die.

“No help’s coming?”

“Not enough. Your lot don’t trust us, and they’re right not to. Lord Akadra reckons they’ll only follow your brother. Me, I’m a firm believer in the motivational power of a pretty face.”