‘Can Younger take this?’ he grunted.

Younger!’ called Rurgen.

‘What?’ from outside.

‘Letter!’

The younger man ducked his head through the tent flap, stretching for it. He winced, had to come a step closer, and Gorst saw that the right side of his face was covered by a large bandage, soaked through with a long brown mark of dried blood.

Gorst stared at him. ‘What happened?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Huh,’ grunted Rurgen. ‘Tell him.’

Younger frowned at his colleague. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘Felnigg happened,’ said Rurgen. ‘Since you ask.’

Gorst was out of his seat, pains forgotten. ‘Colonel Felnigg? Kroy’s chief of staff?’

‘I got in his way. That’s all. That’s the end of it.’

‘Whipped him,’ said Rurgen.

‘Whipped … you?’ whispered Gorst. He stood staring for a moment. Then he snatched up his long steel, cleaned, sharpened and sheathed just beside him on the table.

Younger blocked his way, hands up. ‘Don’t do anything stupid.’ Gorst brushed him aside and was out through the tent flap, into the chilly night, striding across the trampled grass. ‘Don’t do anything stupid!’

Gorst kept walking.

Felnigg’s tent was pitched on the hillside not far from the decaying barn Marshal Kroy had taken for his headquarters. Lamplight leaked from the flap and into the night, illuminating a slit of muddy grass, a tuft of dishevelled sedge and the face of a guard, epically bored.

‘Can I help you, sir?’

Help me, you bastard? Rather than giving him the opportunity to consider his position, the long walk up from the valley had only stoked Gorst’s fury. He grabbed the guard’s breastplate by one armhole and flung him tumbling down the hillside, ripping the tent flap wide. ‘Felnigg—!’

He came up short. The tent was crammed with officers. Senior members of Kroy’s staff, some of them clutching cards, others drinks, most with uniforms unbuttoned to some degree, clustered around an inlaid table that looked as if it had been salvaged from a palace. One was smoking a chagga pipe. Another was sloshing wine from a green bottle. A third hunched over a heavy book, making interminable entries by candlelight in an utterly unreadable script.

‘—that bloody captain wanted to charge fifteen for each cabin!’ Kroy’s chief quartermaster was braying as he clumsily sorted his hand. ‘Fifteen! I told him to be damned.’

‘What happened?’

‘We settled on twelve, the bloody sea-leech …’ He trailed off as, one by one, the officers turned to look at Gorst, the bookkeeper peering over thick spectacles that made his eyes appear grotesquely magnified.

Gorst was not good with crowds. Even worse than with individuals, which was saying something. But witnesses will only add to Felnigg’s humiliation. I will make him beg. I will make all of you bastards beg. Yet Gorst had stopped dead, his cheeks prickling with heat.

Felnigg sprang up, looking slightly drunk. They all looked drunk. Gorst was not good with drunk. Even worse than with sober, which was saying something. ‘Colonel Gorst!’ He lurched forwards, beaming. Gorst raised his open hand to slap the man across the face, but there was a strange delay in which Felnigg managed to grasp it with his own and give it a hearty shake. ‘I’m delighted to see you! Delighted!’