‘Keep it moving!’ Sister Rock and Sister Scar scowled back at them. Ruli and Alata turned, pushing an amazed Nona onwards.

The plateau’s arms formed an alcove where the convent vineyard was able to catch the sun while sheltering from the wind. The Vinery Stair wound a gentle gradient high above rows of grape vines offering a limited view to the south. Having lost three-quarters of its elevation the track rounded the northern arm of the alcove and suddenly the destruction at their doorstep was revealed. Farmhouses, upon which Nona had rested her eyes countless times across the years, now vomited flame towards the sky. Others were now nothing more than charred patches of ground, trailing smoke. She hurried to join Ketti near the front of the nuns, astonished at how quickly the destruction had been wrought, and within sight of both the convent and the city walls.

Abbess Wheel’s song halted abruptly at the scene and silence reigned while they rounded the last turn that brought them to the turnpike gate near the end of the track. Ahead of Nona the abbess turned the corner and stopped in her tracks. Nona found herself pressed against Wheel’s back and struggling to prevent the nuns behind from knocking them both flat. A Scithrowl war band was advancing in the opposite direction, a dozen foot soldiers in chainmail vests, padded armour on their arms and legs, stained with soot and blood. They came in three ranks of four, the first row shouldering long spears, the next with greatswords at their backs and shorter blades on both hips. Behind them four archers. A skirmish band out to kill and burn. No doubt Adoma sought to goad the emperor’s forces to leave the city and protect his peasants. Crucical would of course allow no such thing. On open ground the Scithrowl numbers would make a slaughter of his soldiers.

Where every other sister paused, Sisters Tallow and Iron, who had been flanking the abbess, kept walking. They drew steel from their scabbards, fast enough to make it sing. Two of the Scithrowl first rank, startled by the unexpected encounter, were too slow to lower their spears. The nuns wove past the thrusts of the other two spearmen. A heartbeat later they were among the foe, three Scithrowl collapsing behind them while a fourth tumbled from the outer edge of the track. The soldiers with greatswords reached for shorter blades and died before taking a swing. Two of the archers managed to run. Tallow and Iron both took up spears from the fallen. Tallow hefted her weapon, taking a moment to appreciate its balance and weight, and launched it before either archer had made it fifty yards. Iron’s spear gave chase and both struck their targets between the shoulder blades. The soldiers’ mail prevented them from being transfixed, but both fell, badly hurt.

Iron reached the two fallen archers first. One of the Scithrowl raised her hand for quarter. She received a quick death, the sweetest mercy on offer.

Abbess Wheel led her flock through the carnage, pausing only to recite St Hedgemon’s Cursed is the Heretic over the corpses. Many of the Holy Sisters paled as they passed the fallen. Ugly wounds gaping, the stink of death too ripe and real to ignore. The novices, closer to their training, seemed more composed, though Jula did retch once. Nona glanced across at Joeli, stepping over a man whose head lay at an odd angle, neck half-severed. At least her smug little smile had vanished.

Looking back, Nona saw that Apple had stopped among the dead with Kettle and Cauldron, all three of them tugging armour and clothes from corpses.

‘You were up all night reading that book, Jula?’ Nona asked, dropping back a few steps to walk beside her.

‘Ssssh!’ Jula motioned for Nona to keep her voice down, eye-pointing towards Joeli.

‘Did you find anything good?’ Nona moved closer.

‘I found out that I would have spent the time better practising with an axe.’ Jula swapped the weapon in question from her left shoulder to her right.

‘Wasn’t there anything useful in there?’

Jula made a sigh that turned into a yawn. ‘There’s a lot in there. Aquinas seemed pretty confident about it all. But without seeing the parts of the Ark he claims to be describing I’ve no way of knowing if it’s all a fever dream. And even if it makes any sense at all to someone inside the Ark sanctum it still doesn’t mean that any of it would actually work.’

‘You didn’t bring the book with you, did you?’ Nona asked.

‘Of course not. You told me to hide it. I memorized what I thought was most important … Though I should have stuffed it under my habit. It’s good and thick. Could probably stop an arrow!’

Nona glanced at Joeli once more, now closer to them and feigning indifference, then returned to her place behind Wheel.

On the Rutland Road leading into Verity they joined an almost continuous line of wagons, carts, ragged soldiers, worn travellers, whole villages afoot, driving the flocks before them. Despite the crowding a sizeable space opened up around the convent cart and its iron casket. People moved out of the way whether there was room or not, and lingered behind with troubled expressions.

A battalion from the Seventh Army under General Jalsis was stationed in and around a large commandeered farmhouse close to the road. Possibly the plan had been to oversee the safety of incoming refugees, though the place looked more like a field hospital now, treating casualties from ongoing skirmishes out across the nearby fields.

Abbess Wheel began the battle hymn again and the sisters joined in. Many of those on the road took up the song and it seemed to lift them. For a moment Nona felt a pang of sadness at the thought that Clera would have liked this part. She was always proud of her voice. Their friendship had fallen into pieces and now the world seemed to be doing the same thing. Nona only hoped that, as with Clera, some element of what had been precious would survive.

Things grew more chaotic the closer they got to Verity. The officer that General Wensis had appointed to direct their efforts was called away by a senior officer to join a small group of cavalry. They galloped off towards the north gates, trampling crops and leaping hedges. A vast wave of smoke rose from the east of the city, subsuming the smoke of all the lesser fires. Nona knew a great battle must be raging but even though the nuns had dropped their song she could hear nothing save the wind, the creak and rattle of carts, and the worried complaint of peasants. It amazed her that things had come to this so swiftly, but Sister Tallow had often said when teaching the lessons of war that a defence could hold and hold and suddenly, like a dam collapsing, be swept away with little warning.

They passed bodies by the roadside, peasants, farm labourers, travellers, some hewn down by sword or axe, some studded with arrow shafts, some blackened and burned. Not all were dead but any that weren’t at least crawling towards the city were surely dying.

Abbess Wheel raised her crozier and led the sisters into a field, the cattle absent long enough for the dung they had left behind to have crusted over. She clambered onto a stile to address the nuns and novices before her.

‘We won’t go through the city to join the defence. The North Gates will be jammed and the streets behind them choked. I aim to take us around the walls and enter closer to the palace.’

The collective intake of breath was audible. Nona had reconciled herself to standing before the Ark but she had imagined that they would at least have the city walls between themselves and the foe. Surely Crucical wouldn’t have his troops out in the open. If he could stop Adoma’s forces in the field he would have done it two hundred miles east of his front door.