He drew his father’s sword. Felt the weight of it. Should’ve made him feel strong, the way it always had before. But instead it made him feel homesick. Sick for the smelly little room he’d always drawn it in, the brave dreams that had hissed out of the sheath along with it. He could hardly believe he’d wished for this. He edged to the stairs, head turned away, looking out of the corner of one narrowed eye as if not seeing clearly might somehow keep him safe.

The room at the bottom was full of mad movement, shadows and darker shadows and splashes of light through broken shutters, furniture scattered, blades glinting. A regular splintering of wood, someone trying to break their way in. Voices, mangled up and saying nothing, Union words or no words at all. Screams and whimpers.

Two of Flood’s Northern lads were lying on the floor. One was leaking blood everywhere. The other was saying, ‘No, no, no,’ over and over. Colving had this wild, mad look on his chubby face, jabbing at a Union man who’d squeezed in through the door. Reft came out of the shadows and hit him in the back of the helmet with his hatchet, knocked him sprawling on top of Colving, hacked away at his back-plate as he tried to get up, finally found the gap between plate and helmet and put him down with his head hanging off.

‘Keep ’em out!’ Reft screamed, jumping back to the door and heaving it shut with his shoulder.

A Union man burst through the shutters not far from the bottom of the steps. Beck could’ve stabbed him in the back. Probably without even being seen. But he couldn’t help thinking about what would happen if it went wrong. What would happen after he did it. So he didn’t do anything. Brait squealed, spun around to poke at the Union man with his spear, but before he could do it the soldier’s sword thudded into Brait’s shoulder and split him open to his chest. He gave this breathy shriek, waving his spear about while the Union man struggled to rip his sword out of him, blood squirting out black over the pair of ’em.

‘Help!’ roared Stodder at no one, pressed against the wall with a cleaver dangling from one hand. ‘Help!’

Beck didn’t turn and run. He just backed softly up the stairs the way he came, and he hurried to the open cupboard, ripped its single shelf out then ducked into the cobwebby shadows inside. He worked his fingertips into a gap between two planks of the door and he dragged it shut, bent over with his back against the rafters. Pressed into the darkness, in a child’s bad hiding place. Alone with his father’s sword, and his own whimpering breath, and the sounds of his crew being slaughtered downstairs.

Lord Governor Meed gazed imperiously out of the northern window of the common hall with hands clasped behind his back, nodding knowingly at scraps of information as if he understood them, his officers crowding about him and gabbling away like eager goslings around their mother. An apt metaphor, as the man had all the military expertise of a mother goose. Finree lurked at the back of the room, an ugly secret, desperately wanting to know what was going on but desperately not wanting to give anyone the satisfaction of asking, chewing at her nails, silently stewing and turning over various unlikely scenarios for her revenge.