It would have been madness to run in full armour, so Gorst wore only the essentials. Breast and back-plates with fauld to the hip and greaves at the shin. On the right arm, vambrace and fencing glove only to allow free movement of the sword. On the left, full-jointed steel of the thickest gauge, encasing the parrying arm from fingertips to weighty shoulder-plate. A padded jacket beneath, and thick leather trousers reinforced with metal strips, his wobbling window on the world the narrow slot in the visor of his sallet.

A piebald dog yapped wheezily at his heels for a while, its belly grotesquely bloated, but abandoned him to root through a great heap of refuse beside the track. Is our rubbish the only lasting mark we will leave upon this country? Our rubbish and our graves? He pounded through the camp of Jalenhorm’s division, a sprawling maze of canvas all in blissful, sleeping silence. Fog clung to the flattened grass, wreathed the closest tents, turned distant ones to phantoms. A row of horses watched him glumly over their nosebags. A lone sentry stood with pale hands stretched out to a brazier, a bloom of crimson colour in the gloom, orange sparks drifting about him. He stared open-mouthed at Gorst as he laboured past, and away.

His servants were waiting for him in the clearing outside his tent. Rurgen brought a bucket and he drank deep, cold water running down his burning neck. Younger brought the case, straining under the weight, and Gorst slid his practice blades from inside. Great, blunt lengths of battered metal, their pommels big as half-bricks to lend some semblance of balance, three times the weight of his battle steels which were already of a particularly heavy design.

In wonderful silence they came for him, Rurgen with shield and stick, Younger jabbing away with the pole, Gorst struggling to parry with his unwieldy iron. They gave him no time and no chances, no mercy and no respect. He wanted none. He had been given chances before Sipani, and allowed himself to grow soft. To grow blunt. When the moment came he was found wanting. Never again. If another moment came, it would find him forged from steel, sharpened to a merciless, murderous razor’s edge. And so, every morning for the last four years, every morning since Sipani, every morning without fail, in rain or heat or snow – this.

The clonk and scrape of wood on metal. The occasional thud and grunt as sticks bounced off armour or found their marks between. The rhythm of his ripping breath, his pounding heart, his savage effort. The sweat soaking his jacket, tickling his scalp, flying in drops from his visor. The burning in every muscle, worse and worse, better and better, as if he could burn away his disgrace and live again.

He stood there, mouth gaping, eyes closed, while they unbuckled his armour. When they lifted the breastplate off it felt as if he was floating away. Off into the sky never to come down. What is that up there, above the army? Why, none other than famous scapegoat Bremer dan Gorst, freed from the clutching earth at last!