Before They Are Hanged

spattered
with it. Even Prince Ladisla’s pristine whites had acquired a
few smears.
    A couple of
hundred strides ahead, on lower ground, was the centre of the Union
battle line. Four battalions of the King’s Own infantry formed
the backbone, each one a neat block of bright red cloth and dull
steel, looking at this distance as though they had been positioned
with a giant ruler. In front of them were a few thin ranks of
flatbowmen in their leather jerkins and steel caps; behind were the
cavalry, dismounted for the time being, the riders looking strangely
ungainly in full armour. Spread out to either side were the haphazard
shapes of the levy battalions, with their assortment of mismatched
equipment, their officers bellowing and waving their arms, trying to
get the gaps to close up, the skewed ranks to straighten, like
sheepdogs barking at a flock of wayward sheep.
    Ten thousand
men, perhaps, all told. Every one of them, West knew, was looking up
at that thin screen of Northmen, no doubt with the same nervous
mixture of fear and excitement, curiosity and anger that he was
feeling at his first sight of the enemy.
    They hardly
seemed too fearsome through his eye-glass. Shaggy-headed men, dressed
in ragged hides and furs, gripping primitive looking weapons. Just
what the least imaginative members of the Prince’s staff might
have been expecting. They scarcely looked like any part of the army
that Threetrees had described, and West did not like that. There was
no way of knowing what was on the far side of that hill, no reason
for those men to be there but to distract them, or draw them on. Not
everyone shared his doubts, however.
    â€œThey mock
us!â€

One for Dinner
    To
Arch Lector Sult,
    Head
of his Majesty’s Inquisition.
    Your
Eminence,
    I have
happy news. The conspiracy is unmasked, and torn up by the roots.
Korsten dan Vurms, the son of the Lord Governor, and Carlot dan
Eider, the Magister of the Guild of Spicers, were the principals.
They will be questioned, and then punished in such a manner that our
people will understand the price of treason. It would appear that
Davoust fell victim to a Gurkish agent, long hidden within the city.
The assassin is still at large, but with the plotters in our power it
cannot be long before we catch him.
    I have
had Lord Governor Vurms placed under close arrest. The treason of the
son renders the father unreliable, and he has been a hindrance in the
administration of the city in any case. I will send him back to you
by the next ship, so that you and your colleagues on the Closed
Council may decide his fate. Along with him will come one Inquisitor
Harker, responsible for the deaths of two prisoners who might
otherwise have rendered us valuable information. I have questioned
him, and am fully satisfied he had no part in any plot, but he is
nonetheless guilty of incompetence tantamount to treason. I leave his
punishment in your hands.
    The
Gurkish assault came at first light. Picked troops rushed forwards
with ready-made bridges and tall ladders, straight across open
ground, and were met with a murderous volley from five hundred
flatbows ranged along our walls. It was a brave effort, but a rash
one, and was repulsed with much slaughter on their side. Only two
bold parties made it to our man-made channel, where bridge, ladder,
and men were quickly swept away by a fierce current that flows from
the sea into the bay at certain times of day, a happy and unforeseen
chance of nature.
    Gurkish
corpses now litter the empty ground between our channel and their
lines, and I have ordered our men to fire upon anyone who attempts to
offer succour to the wounded. The groans of the dying and the sight
of Gurkish bodies rotting in the sun cannot but cause a useful
weakening of their morale.
    Though
the first taste of victory has come to us, in truth, this attack was
little more than a first feeling out of our defences. The Gurkish
commander but dips his toe in the water, to test the temperature. His
next attack, I do not doubt, will be on a different scale altogether.
Three mighty catapults, assembled within four hundred strides of our
walls, and more than capable of hurling huge stones clean into the
Lower City, yet stand silent. Perhaps they hope to take Dagoska
intact, but if our resistance holds, this hesitation cannot long
continue.
    They
certainly do not want for men. More Gurkish soldiers pour onto the
peninsula every day. The standards of eight legions are now