Hunched and blinking, Chel looked to where the men had been fighting around the engine. Already the wind was blowing the smoke clear, although a thick, black column from the wagon’s blasted remains was replenished as fast as it could dissipate. Around the smouldering crater lay only burning wreckage, the earth blackened and torn, gouged and pock-marked by shrapnel and explosion. It took him a moment to pick the figures from the steaming scene, to establish them as figures at all: few were whole, fewer still were moving. He flinched away when he started to identify isolated limbs. Somewhere, improbably intact, a riderless horse trotted, aimless and confused, moving in widening circles from where her rider had vanished from existence.

On the rampart, the atmosphere was shocked and terrified. One of the torn spears of metal had ripped over the crenellations and embedded itself in the wall behind the frozen assemblage of worthies. It was still quivering. Moans and whimpers drifted over the wind from the first gate. Chel could already see other impacts along the battlements, see the archers and spearmen laid low along the structure, crying for assistance, or in some cases, very still.

‘Shepherd’s mercy,’ breathed Tarfel. Chel realized his hands were shaking uncontrollably.

Matil was to one side, alone for a moment, stone-faced, still resplendent in her armour. As silk clad nobility scuttled from the rampart, she turned and barked commands, jolting transfixed guards into action.

Mira, her kind eyes now wider and more distant than before, lingered behind Chel and the prince, bound by duty but desperate to be elsewhere. When a guard captain appeared on the rampart a moment later to report to the Keeper, she continued to translate their words, devoid of alternative purpose.

‘Survivors from the field?’ Matil asked the new captain.

‘Uncertain, Exalted. Many wounded. We have not yet tried to collect them.’

‘And Lord Ghiz?’

‘Uncertain, Exalted. He was close to the engine when it … When …’

Matil bared her teeth, not a smile, a downward expression of something animal but controlled.

‘And the north-eastern bridge? It stands?’

‘Critically damaged, Exalted. It was never a sturdy—’

‘Can we repair it, and continue to evacuate the city?’

‘Uncertain, Exalted.’

Matil took a long breath, knuckles white on her clenched fists. ‘Captain Temel, you now have acting command of the house guards, and with it, defence of the city. I suggest you start seeking a greater degree of certainty if you wish to keep this rank.’

‘Absolutely, Exalted.’

She rubbed at one eye with her knuckles, then rubbed at her jaw. ‘Very well. Rally the cavalry reserves, find out who we have left after Ghiz’s folly, and start moving people away from this end of the city. Send men to the workshops. We need engineers to ascertain the damage to the bridge. We cannot afford to be cut off from the plains for more than a few days. And at the workshops, if you see—’