A big man with a beard stained red spoke up. “Young Lion, I think I speak for us all when I say—”

Leo held up his hand. “Discuss it! Take a vote if you need to. I don’t want to hear later you weren’t given the chance.” He tapped Sparks’s shoulder with the handle of his cane. “Citizen Sparks will make sure you’re all heard.” And before anyone could disagree, he turned and limped out of the barn into the morning chill, hearing the doors creak as they were swung shut behind him.

He waited, gripping his cane tight. Waited, listening to the birds twitter in the dripping trees, the dewy hedgerows. Waited, watching the mist down in the still valley. He took a cold breath through his nose and smiled. It wasn’t hard to do. It felt better than he’d ever expected, to be back in uniform and in charge of soldiers again, even if the uniform scarcely fit him and the soldiers were a pack of scum.

When he left Angland his mother had warned him he was no general. He saw now how right she’d been. Rash and indecisive at once, and so horribly sentimental. Losing everything, and seeing his friends dead before his eyes, and months of pain ever since had cured him of all that. Perhaps he had half the limbs, but he reckoned he was twice the man he used to be. He’d a harder head, a harder heart and, most important of all, a far stronger stomach.

“Generals are forged in the fires of defeat,” he murmured to himself. Stolicus, maybe? He wondered what his mother would say now.

“Not having second thoughts, are you?” asked Jurand, stepping up beside him.

“You know me.” Leo gave a grunt as he shifted his weight on his iron leg. “I barely even have first thoughts.”

“Once, maybe. Not any more.” And Jurand grinned at him. By the dead, that smile. Leo could’ve looked at it all day.

He could hear the raised voices from the barn. The Burners and the Breakers always loved a debate. An argument. A vote. The noisier and more tedious the better. How much of that nonsense had he endured in the ruined Lords’ Round?

“Which side do you think they’ll come down on?” he asked.

Jurand looked almost puzzled. “What does it matter?”

“Just curious, I suppose. I mean, we all want to be liked.” Leo winced as he turned and waved to the dark-uniformed Anglanders gathered about the barn. Quietly, carefully, men slipped forward. They slid a beam into the brackets, barring the doors from outside. Others sloshed oil over the lower timbers of the barn. More came forwards with torches, touched them to the wood and fire bloomed. In a few moments the flames were licking high, all around, right to the eaves of the roof. Leo heard shouting inside, over the crackle and roar. The doors wobbled, clattered.

Leo’s men had dropped their torches, now they drew swords and readied flatbows. “Surround the barn!” he called. “Kill anyone who makes it out.”