Last Argument of Kings

in the choking smoke, and for twelve
nights by the light of flickering fires, Ferro had been in the thick
of it.
    Her boots
slapped against the polished tiles, leaving black marks down the
immaculate hallway behind her. Ash. The two districts where the
fighting was raging were covered in it, now. It had mingled with the
thin rain to make a sticky paste, like black glue. The buildings that
still stood, the charred skeletons of the ones that did not, the
people who killed and the people who died, all coated in it. The
scowling guards and the cringing servants frowned at her and the
marks she left, but she had never cared a shit for their opinions,
and was not about to start. They would have more ash than they knew
what to do with soon. The whole place would be ash, if the Gurkish
got their way.
    And it looked
very much as if they might. Each day and each night, for all the
efforts of the rag-tag defenders, for all the dead they left among
the ruins, the Emperor’s troops worked their way further into
the city.
    Towards the
Agriont.
    Yulwei was
sitting in the wide chamber when she got there, shrunken into a chair
in one corner, the bangles hanging from his limp arms. The calmness
which had always seemed to swaddle him like an old blanket was
stripped away. He looked worried, worn, eyes sunken in dark sockets.
A man looking defeat in the face. A look that Ferro was getting used
to seeing over the past few days.
    â€œFerro
Maljinn, back from the front. I always said that you would kill the
whole world if you could, and now you have your chance. How do you
like war, Ferro?â€

Tomorrow’s Hero
    The hooves of
Jezal’s grey charger clopped obediently in the black mud. It
was a magnificent beast, the very kind he had always dreamed of
riding. Several thousand marks-worth of horse flesh, he did not
doubt. A steed that could give any man who sat on it, however
worthless, the air of royalty. His shining armour was of the best
Styrian steel, chased with gold. His cloak was of the finest Suljuk
silk, trimmed with ermine. The hilt of his sword was crusted with
diamonds, twinkling as the clouds flowed overhead to let the sun peep
through. He had foregone the crown today in favour of a simple golden
circlet, its weight considerably less wearisome on the sore spots he
had developed round his temples.
    All the
trappings of majesty. Ever since he was a child, Jezal had dreamed of
being exalted, worshipped, obeyed. Now the whole business made him
want to be sick. Although that might only have been because he had
scarcely slept last night, and scarcely eaten that morning.
    Lord Marshal
Varuz rode on Jezal’s right, looking as if age had suddenly
caught up with him. He seemed shrunken in his uniform, stooped and
slump-shouldered. His movements had lost their steely precision, his
eyes their icy focus. He had developed, somehow, the very slightest
hint of not knowing what to do.
    â€œFighting
still continues in the Arches, your Majesty,â€

Nightfall
    General Poulder
squirmed in his field chair, moustaches quivering, as though he could
only just control his body so overpowering was his fury. His ruddy
complexion and snorting breath seemed to imply that he might spring
from the tent at any moment and charge the Gurkish positions alone.
General Kroy sat rigidly erect on the opposite side of the table,
clenched jaw-muscles bulging from the side of his close-cropped
skull. His murderous frown clearly demonstrated that his anger at the
invader, while no less than anyone else’s, was kept under iron
command, and if any charging was to be done it would be managed with
fastidious attention to detail.
    In their first
briefings West had found himself outnumbered twenty to one by the two
Generals’ monstrous staffs. He had reduced them, by a
relentless process of attrition, to a meagre two officers a piece.
The meetings had lost the charged atmosphere of a tavern brawl and
instead taken on the character of a small and bad-tempered family
event—perhaps the reading of a disputed will. West was the
executor, trying to find an acceptable solution for two squabbling
beneficiaries to whom nothing was acceptable. Jalenhorm and Brint,
sitting to either side of him, were his dumbstruck assistants. What
role the Dogman played in the metaphor it was hard to judge, but he
was adding to the already feverish pitch of worry in the tent by
picking at his fingernails with a dagger.
    â€œThis will
be a battle like