A lot had changed since Monza last rode up to Fontezarmo, laughing with her brother. Hard to believe it was only a year ago. The darkest, maddest, most bloody year in a life made of them. A year that had taken her from dead woman to duchess, and might well still shove her back the other way.
It was dusk instead of dawn, the sun sinking behind them in the west as they climbed the twisting track. To either side of it, wherever the ground was anything close to flat, men had pitched tents. They sat in front of them in lazy groups by the flickering light of campfires—eating, drinking, mending boots or polishing armour, staring slack-faced at Monza as she clattered past.
She'd had no honour guard a year ago. Now a dozen of Rogont's picked men followed eagerly as puppies wherever she went. It was a surprise they didn't all try to tramp into the latrine after her. The last thing the king-in-waiting wanted was for her to get pushed off a mountain again. Not before she'd had the chance to help crown him, anyway. It was Orso she'd been helping to his crown twelve months ago, and Rogont her bitter enemy. For a woman who liked to stick, she'd slid around some in four seasons.
Back then she'd had Benna beside her. Now it was Shivers. That meant no talk at all, let alone laughter. His face was just a hard black outline, blind eye gleaming with the last of the fading light. She knew he couldn't see a thing through it, but still she felt like it was always fixed right on her. Even though he scarcely spoke, still he was always saying, It should've been you.
There were fires burning at the summit. Specks of light on the slopes, a yellow glow behind the black shapes of walls and towers, smudges of smoke hanging in the deep evening sky. The road switched back once more, then petered away altogether at a barricade made from three upended carts. Victus sat there on a field chair, warming his hands at a campfire, his collection of stolen chains gleaming round his neck. He grinned as she reined up her horse, and flourished out an absurd salute.
"The Grand Duchess of Talins, here in our slovenly camp! Your Excellency, we're all shame! If we'd had more time to prepare for your royal visit, we'd have done something about all the dirt." And he spread his arms wide at the sea of churned-up mud, bare rock, broken bits of crate and wagon scattered around the mountainside.
"Victus. The embodiment of the mercenary spirit." She clambered down from her saddle, trying not to let the pain show. "Greedy as a duck, brave as a pigeon, loyal as a cuckoo."
"I always modelled myself on the nobler birds. Afraid you'll have to leave the horses, we'll be going by trench from here. Duke Orso's a most ungracious host—he's taken to shooting catapults at any of his guests who show themselves." He sprang up, slapping dust from the canvas he'd been sitting on, then holding one ring-encrusted hand out towards it. "Perhaps I could have some of the lads carry you up?"
"I'll walk."
He gave her a mocking leer. "And a fine figure you'll appear, I've no doubt, though I would've thought you could've stretched to silk, given your high station."
"Clothes don't make the person, Victus." She gave his jewellery a mocking leer of her own. "A piece of shit is still a piece of shit, however much gold you stick on it."
"Oh, how we've missed you, Murcatto. Follow on, then."
"Wait here," she snapped at Rogont's guards. Having them behind her all the time made her look weak. Made her look like she needed them.
Their sergeant winced. "His Excellency was most—"
"Piss on his Excellency. Wait here."
She creaked down some steps made of old boxes and into the hillside, Shivers at her shoulder. The trenches weren't much different from the ones they'd dug around Muris, years ago—walls of hard-packed earth held back by odds and ends of timber, with that same smell of sickness, mould, damp earth and boredom. The trenches they'd lived in for the best part of six months, like rats in a sewer. Where her feet had started to rot, and Benna got the running shits so bad he lost a quarter of his weight and all his sense of humour. She even saw a few familiar faces as they threaded their way through ditch, tunnel and dugout—veterans who'd been fighting with the Thousand Swords for years. She nodded to them just as she used to when she was in charge, and they nodded back.
"You sure Orso's inside?" she called to Victus.
"Oh, we're sure. Cosca spoke to him, first day."
Monza didn't draw much comfort from that idea. When Cosca started talking to an enemy he usually ended up richer and on the other side. "What did those two bastards have to say to each other?"
"Ask Cosca."
"I will."
"We've got the place surrounded, don't worry about that. Trenches on three sides." Victus slapped the earth beside them. "If you can trust a mercenary to do one thing, it's dig himself a damn good hole to hide in. Then there's pickets down in the woods at the bottom of the cliff." The woods where Monza had slid to a halt in the rubbish, broken to pulp, groaning like the dead in hell. "And a wide selection of Styria's finest soldiery further out. Osprians, Sipanese, Affoians, in numbers. All set on seeing our old employer dead. There ain't a rat getting out without our say-so. But then if Orso wanted to run, he could've run weeks ago. He didn't. You know him better than anyone, don't you? You reckon he'll try and run now?"
"No," she had to admit. He'd sooner die, which suited her fine. "How about us getting in?"
"Whoever designed the bastard place knew what they were doing. Ground around the inner ward's way too steep to try anything."
"I could've told you that. North side of the outer ward's your best chance at an assault, then try the inner wall from there."
"Our very thoughts, but there's a gulf between thinking and doing, specially when high walls are part of the case. No luck yet." Victus clambered up on a box and beckoned to her. Between two wicker screens, beyond a row of sharpened stakes pointing up the broken slope, she could see the nearest corner of the fortress. One of the towers was on fire, its tall roof fallen in leaving only a cone of naked beams wreathed in flames, notches of battlements picked out in red and yellow, black smoke belching into the dark blue sky. "We set that tower to burning," he pointed proudly towards it, "with a catapult."
"Beautiful. We can all go home."
"Something, ain't it?" He led them through a long dugout smelling of damp and sour sweat, men snoring on pallets down both sides. " ‘Wars are won not by one great action,' " intoning the words like a bad actor, " ‘but many small chances.' Weren't you always telling us that? Who was it? Stalicus?"
"Stolicus, you dunce."
"Some dead bastard. Anyway, Cosca's got a plan, but I'll let him tell you himself. You know how the old man loves to put on a show." Victus stopped at a hollow in the rock where four trenches came together, sheltered by a roof of gently flapping canvas and lit by a single rustling torch. "The captain general said he'd be along. Feel free to make use of the facilities while you wait." Facilities which amounted to dirt. "Unless there's anything else, your Excellency?"
"Just one more thing." He flinched in surprise as her spit spattered softly across his eye. "That's from Benna, you treacherous little fuck."
Victus wiped his face, eyes creeping shiftily to Shivers, then back to her. "I didn't do nothing you wouldn't have done. Nothing your brother wouldn't have done, that's certain. Nothing you didn't both do to Cosca, and you owed him more than I owed you—"
"That's why you're wiping your face instead of trying to hold your guts in."
"You ever think you might have brought this on yourself? Big ambitions mean big risks. All I've done is float with the current—"
Shivers took a sudden step forwards. "Off you float, then, 'fore you get your throat cut." Monza realised he had a knife out in one big fist. The one she'd given him the first day they met.