The contempt is mutual, alas. Dialogue has degraded. No-one wins in such a situation. And poor Prince Jelarkan . . . positioned directly between two parties exchanging mutual loathing.

The Shield Anvil had spent the morning on Capustan’s walls, surveying the measured settling of the Domin’s besieging army. He judged that Septarch Kulpath had been given command of fully ten legions of Beklites, the red- and gold-clad, peak-helmed regular infantry that was the heart of the Domin’s forces – half of the famed Hundred Thousand, then. Kulpath’s Urdomen – elite heavy infantry – numbered at least eight thousand. When the breach occurred, it would be the Urdomen who pushed through into the city. In addition to these arrayed forces were various augmented divisions: Betaklites, medium infantry; at least three Betrullid Wings, light cavalry; as well as a division of Desandi – sappers and engineers – and Scalandi skirmishers. Perhaps eighty thousand soldiers in all.

Beyond the impressively organized camps of the Septarch’s army, the landscape was a seething mass of humanity, reaching down to the banks of the river to the south, and to the cobbled beaches of the coast to the east – the Tenescowri, the peasant army, with their wild-haired Women of the Dead Seed and their shrieking feral offspring; the scavenging parties – hunters of the weak and old among their own kind, and, soon, among the hapless citizens of Capustan. A starving horde, and seeing them crumbled the professional detachment with which Itkovian had viewed Kulpath’s legions. He had left the walls, shaken for the first time in his life.

There were a hundred thousand Tenescowri, with more arriving on overloaded barges with every bell, and Itkovian was staggered by the waves of their palpable hunger.

The prince’s Capanthall soldiers manning the battlements were pale as corpses, silent and virtually motionless. Upon arriving on the walls, the Shield Anvil had been dismayed by their fear; by the time he made his descent, he shared it, a cold knife lodged in his chest. The companies of Gidrath in the outside redoubts were the fortunate ones – their deaths were imminent, and would come beneath the blades of professional soldiers. Capustan’s fate, and the fate of those defending it, was likely to be far more horrifying.

The soft slither of coin armour announced the approach of the two Barghast warriors. Itkovian studied the woman in the lead. Hetan’s face was smeared in ash, as was her brother Cafal’s. The mourning visage would remain for as long as they chose, and the Shield Anvil suspected he would not live to see its removal. Even sheathed in grey, there is a brutal beauty to this woman.

‘Where is the hill bear and his scrawny pup?’ Hetan demanded.

‘Fener’s Mortal Sword and the Destriant have just emerged from the building behind you, Hetan.’

She bared her teeth. ‘Good, let us go meet these bickering priests, then.’