She didn’t reply. Instead, she reached down and rummaged in her satchel, then withdrew a flattish object of wood and metal. It gleamed in her hands, and Chel saw it had straps and eyeholes. It looked freshly made. Memories of Denirnas Port flooded back, the little grill-man on the rooftop overlooking the bay, the masks strung on his wall. His stern-eyed daughter.

‘Do you think,’ Kosh said, moving to the rear of the device, the mask strung around her neck, ‘that the big one will be among them?’

Rennic moved beside her, eyes on the gate. He put one hand on the device, feeling the bristling points. Chel ducked down behind them and their barricade. It seemed too late to do anything else now.

‘I fucking hope so.’

‘Good.’

Kosh pulled on her battle-mask.

***

The archers on the gatehouse were firing. The thing on the bridge was in range. Chel tried to picture it, from Rennic’s description, from the views he’d snatched on his cantering fly-past. Long and low, fat wheels torn from an alchemical engine, metal shielding likewise. A vehicle built with one purpose: to cross the broken span and hold the gap, impervious to fire and arrow alike. It would likely achieve its goal.

He peered forward at the odd device behind which Rennic and Kosh were braced, its levers and pulleys, odd torsions and wires. A leveller, Rennic had called it. He hoped they were right.

‘Last chance, alchemist,’ Rennic murmured. ‘We’ll be getting a polite knock at any moment.’

Kosh ignored him, her bone-fingers gripped tight on the device’s levers.

‘By the way, children, if this goes tits-up, we’re not going to make it through the third gate. I want you to know that. What I said to the guards was a platitude.’

Kosh looked at him, her gaze cold and fierce as a winter storm through the eyes of the roaring mask. ‘I am not a fool, mercenary. I know you were lying. Now be silent.’

He nodded, and watched the walls. Chel saw one of the archers drop, an arrow jutting. Short arrow, bright-fletched. He stared at the arrow, unblinking, then swallowed. He’d seen arrows like that once before, in a mountain gully, when they’d been ambushed by archers in tan and fur. Rennic had seen it too. He must have seen it. He was staring right at it.

Rennic looked back to the Nort.

‘You really want to hurt them?’

The archers were falling back, abandoning the battlements, the gate with them. It was almost time. Kosh only grunted.

Rennic reached out and nudged the nose of the device downwards.

‘Then aim low.’

Her jaw jutted behind the mask, but she said nothing. She was trembling, fine as a hummingbird’s wings. Rennic’s fist went up, a signal to the huddled guards: shields up.

‘Hey,’ he said, ‘it’s still not too—’

The gate exploded.

***