Glaward nodded sadly. “Solid, careful, caring, not much imagination.” He could’ve been describing himself.

“All the qualities that make a terrible general,” murmured Jurand.

“I understand you served with the notorious royalist Lord Marshal Forest?” Sworbreck sneered the name as if Forest was some monster no adult believed in. “At the Battle of Osrung, when he was a sergeant major? During the wars in Styria, when he rose by the king’s favour through the commissioned ranks?”

Bell blinked about at the benches, but there was no sentimental applause now. “I did, but—”

“You knew him well?”

“Everyone in the army knew him.”

“And respected him?”

“Of course, he was—” Bell saw the trap too late. His face turned even redder than it had at his promotion. “No one had a reason to disrespect him. No one had a bad word for the man!”

“Admiration!” shrieked Sworbreck. “For one of the most implacable and perfidious enemies of the Great Change! For a man who sheds Union blood on Union soil to put the snake Orso back above us!” And he pointed to the king with that always-trembling finger.

Risinau had put Orso on a smaller and smaller chair. Now Judge had gone a step further and locked him in a cage while the court was in session. All it had done was give him a kind of louche dignity. His knowing smile seemed to ask what kind of a coward someone would have to be to fear a coward like him.

Sworbreck thumped at the rough-sawn rail of the dock again. “An army of honest patriots could never be beaten fairly by Lord Marshal Forest’s royalist hirelings!” He rubbed at his hand, having clearly picked up a splinter from the shitty carpentry. “You came to an accommodation with them, didn’t you? You betrayed the Great Change!”

Gasps of disgust from every side. Leo expected the truth was simpler. Bell had been promoted far beyond his ability and thrown against a dedicated enemy on ground of their choosing. His army was ill-provisioned, ill-equipped and stuffed with Purity Officers who bastardised every military decision with politics. The surprise was that disaster hadn’t struck sooner.

“There was no bloody accommodation with the enemy!” shouted Bell. “They caught us strung out on the roads, in the rain. My men were exhausted. The Purity Officers insisted we march double time!”

“Always someone else to blame! The Purity Officers now, Burners of unimpeachable pedigree, keen to get to grips with the hated enemy!”

“But the People’s Army have been in the field for weeks. They’ve barely been paid. Now they’re hardly being fed—”

“And whose responsibility is it that the army should be prepared, might I ask, if not the general in charge? Ours, I suppose?” The benches bristled. Even Leo grunted denials. You couldn’t give seeds of accusation the chance to take root. Before you knew it, suspicion would be sprouting everywhere. Disgust rained down on Bell from the public gallery.

“Poor bastard,” muttered Glaward, with the sympathy of one big, lacklustre man for another.