Smiler picked out a man to charge at, peeking over the top of his shield with desperate eyes. He let go a roar of hate, of joy, of triumph, the flagstones flying under his feet, the brothers surging to freedom all around him.

Their shields crashed together. They struggled and strained, and Smiler got a glimpse of the man’s bared teeth and his wide eyes then suddenly the pressure was gone and he was stumbling forwards, and he saw Roys had swung his halberd and staved the man’s helmet in.

It was a slaughter, really. The royalists were already breaking, and they scurried away towards the great statues at the far end of the square, and men charged after them, whooping and screaming, leaving Smiler to stare down at the dead soldier with the dented helmet.

Came to him then how easily he could’ve been in that line, if things had worked out just a little different. If he’d stayed in the army when they came back from Styria, instead of walking away in disgust. There was only a coin-toss between him and these corpses.

“You’re a hero!” And a woman with a strong chin and her hair bound in a red scarf craned up to plant a great soft kiss on his jaw. “You’re all bloody heroes!”

The soldier blinked down at her, his helmet skewed, surprised, she thought, but not disappointed. So long since Adnes last kissed a man she didn’t know how to tell. But it wasn’t a romantic thing so much as joy at having hope again. Or maybe it was a romantic thing, ’cause he grabbed her around the back of the head and kissed her on the mouth, and she clung on to him, which was uncomfortable on account of the hardness of his breastplate, and there was a great warmth right through her and she was sucking greedily at his tongue which tasted of onions, and a fine taste it was, too.

She never would’ve dreamed she might kiss a stranger like that, but it was a new day and the king’s men were beaten and all the old rules were gone, and the sun showed through again and made the soldiers’ armour glitter, made the little puddles on the flagstones sparkle. Was this freedom?

They were dragged apart by the flood of cheering people then shoved back together, carried across the Square of Marshals and up the grand steps of the Lords’ Round, through the inlaid doors. Adnes stared up to the dome, high, high above, and around her, in the vast and heavy silence, hundreds of people who never thought in their lives to pass through those doors did the same.

She looked at the gilding, and the different-coloured marbles, and the rare woods, and the suns stitched into the cushions on the benches, and the stained-glass windows that showed scenes she didn’t understand. A bald man holding out a crown. A bearded man with a sword standing over two others. A young man lit by a ray of sun as he stood up alone from a crowd. The spotless grandeur of the place. Nothing could be further from the farm she’d left when the People’s Army came through, where they’d slept on straw on the floor of a shack, and worn their hands to the meat, and been treated by the local lordling like they were less than dirt.