‘Sorry,’ Gruntle replied with a shrug, ‘I can’t order him to do anything, I’m afraid. I’m here for my legion and the Grey Swords. We’d like to cross ... before the rest of your herd—’

‘No. Can’t do that. No. You have to wait. Wait. The bhederin don’t like to be split up. They get nervous. Unhappy. We need them calm on the crossing. You see that, don’t you? No, you have to wait.’

‘Well, how long do you think that will take?’

The Rhivi shrugged. ‘It will be done when it is done.’

The second three hundred bhederin rumbled their way up the causeway. The herders moved to meet them.

Gruntle heard a meaty thud, then the Rhivi were all shouting, racing back. The Daru turned in time to see High Marshal Sty, the front of his long shirt pulled up around a hefty pile of dung, run full tilt past, onto the ramp, then thump down the length of the barge.

A single Rhivi herder, who had clearly been left to guard the dung, lay sprawled beside the looted heap, unconscious, the red imprint of a large, bony fist on his jaw.

Gruntle grinned over at the old herder, who was jumping about, spitting with fury.

Itkovian moved up alongside him. ‘Sir, did you see that?’

‘No, alas, just the tail end.’

‘That punch came out of nowhere – I did not even see him step close. The poor Rhivi dropped like a sack of ... of—’

‘Dung?’

After a long moment – so long that Gruntle thought it would never come – Itkovian smiled.

Rain clouds had rolled in from the sea, the rain driven on fierce winds, each drop striking iron helms, shields and leather rain-cloaks with enough force to shatter into mist. The abandoned farmland on all sides vanished behind a grey wall, the trader road churned to clinging mud beneath hooves, wagon wheels and boots.

Water sluicing down through his visor – which he had lowered in an only partially successful attempt to keep the rain from his eyes – Whiskeyjack struggled to make sense of the scene. A messenger had called him back from the vanguard, shouting barely heard words concerning a broken axle, the train halted in disarray, injured animals. At the moment, all he could make out was a mass of mud-covered soldiers scrambling, slipping, knotting ropes and shouting inaudibly to each other, and at least three wagons buried to their axles on what had once been the road but had since turned into a river of mud. Oxen were being pulled clear on the far side, the beasts bellowing.