It was just a fact. Everyone in the Arches knew it. Mother Mostly won’t be fucking bullied. Not by Styrians. Not by king’s men. Not by anyone.

So she shouldered through the crowd, skirts gathered up and tucked into her belt the way she did when there was work to do. She jostled her way to the front, which one way or another she’d been doing all her life, using her elbows and her fixed jaw and her great loud voice. “Out o’ my way!” Forced a path through the big men, the armed men, the armoured men, still loitering. They might be hard on the outside, but they were soft where it counted. Mother Mostly hadn’t been born with much softness in her, and a life in the laundries had pared away what there was and left her as yielding as a length of wire.

She shoved onto the empty bridge, giving the towering gatehouse, and its notched battlements, and its slitted windows the kind of baleful frown she gave to folk owed her money.

“I’m a woman of the Union!” she roared. “Fifty years, and I’ve worked every one of ’em! I won’t be bullied, you hear?”

Cheers and jeers behind her, whoops and hoots, like folk watching freaks dance at a sideshow.

“Bring out that Styrian cunt!” she screamed at the battlements, shaking her knife. “The king’s mother!”

“She ain’t there!” someone called from behind. “Scurried back to Styria months ago!”

Mother Mostly glowered up at the gatehouse, still a blur, more or less, but she knew there must be men up there, and she wasn’t about to be bullied by the bastards.

She took another step forward. “Then bring out her cunt of a son, the king!”

Rithinghorm pressed his mouth to the arrow-loop and bellowed at the very top of his voice. “Halt! In the name of His Majesty!”

He leaned back to survey the results. Those words had always worked magic before, conjuring obedience from thin air. But now, suddenly, the spell had no effect. “I order you to bloody halt!” He doubted the crowd could even hear him over their own clamour. He could hardly hear himself over his own thudding heart.

Earlier that week, Lord Marshal Rucksted had addressed their regiment. Told them they were the last line of defence. Told them failure was unthinkable, retreat impossible. Rithinghorm had always admired Rucksted. Excellent beard. Lot of dash. The very style of officer he wanted to be. But the man had looked positively dishevelled. Beard in disarray. Now Rithinghorm knew why.

People continued to flood from the buildings on the other side of the moat and into an ever-thicker press at the end of the bridge. Breakers! Traitors! Here, at the very gates of the Agriont! And so many. He could scarcely credit it. They were starting to move out onto the bridge itself. One in particular, leading the way, some dirty bloody peasant woman with her skirt tucked into her belt so her pale, sinewy legs showed, waving a knife, screeching words he could scarcely hear. Something about someone’s son.