Nona grabbed the trunk, now so narrow that she could encircle it in a double-handed grip. Sister Apple had said that they had left mercy behind them when Wheel led them from the convent. Whoever lurked above her doubtless had an array of knives and needles coated in the very worst venoms, and climbing vertically to attack a well-prepared enemy was never a healthy strategy.

She locked her legs around the trunk, drew back an arm, summoned her blades and swung. The entire top section of the tree fell. The watcher made a brief wail, quickly lost in the tearing of branches and ended by a dull thud. Nona was left at the pine’s new vertex with a clear view across the hordes arrayed to the east.

Nona hadn’t imagined that Scithrowl held so many people, let alone that their queen could march them over the Grampains and across hundreds of miles to the emperor’s doorstep. True fear gripped her for the first time that day. Skill couldn’t prevail against such numbers. A Red Sister might cut down fifty of the foe only to find five hundred more throwing themselves at her. Gazing at the ocean of humanity stretching out to the east, Nona at last understood the enormity of the threat. This tide would wash across Verity and not stop until it reached the Sea of Marn. Her friends, every novice, every nun, would die. They stood no chance. None.

The line of attack lay to the east. Rows of war machines hurled their missiles, siege towers rumbled forward, and ground forces surged towards the walls, carrying long ladders and grapple chains, borne by gerants huge enough to throw them over the ramparts.

The great majority of Adoma’s force held back though, marshalled in ordered ranks before acres given over to their accommodation and enclosed within rough stockade walls. A second city had sprung up, this one of tents, an endless patchwork of canvas and hide, speckled with flags of many colours. Nona saw the signs of industry, smoke from iron chimneys where weapons and armour were being repaired, horses reshod, swords sharpened. Siege machines not yet committed to the battle hulked like giant beasts recumbent amid the ant swarm of foot soldiers. Elsewhere horses in greater numbers than she had ever seen before milled in their pens, herds of them even though the main strength of the Scithrowl came to battle on their own legs.

The wind carried their stench to her, more ripe even than Verity’s, the sewage of men and animals in their tens of thousands, perhaps a hundred thousand and more, the stink of a thousand cook-fires and a thousand latrines.

Here and there grand pavilions stood among the massed troops, the brilliant colours of their fabric an assault on the senses. Above them pennants cracked in the wind.

Most of the pavilions were too far away for a good view but one stood just a mile off and barely beyond the range of Verity’s bolt-lobbers, close enough for Nona to note its exceptional quality and remarkable size. A line of six large catapults stood fifty yards ahead of it, their missiles earthenware jars of highly flammable liquid. With low and throaty twangs they lobbed their burning cargo over Verity’s walls into the city beyond where the destruction could only be guessed at and smoke spewed skywards.

Nona looked back towards Wheel and her band, now lost in the distance. The small gate through which Abbess Glass had once led her from the city stood free of attack thus far and as close to the battlefront as you could get without finding yourself part of it. Around fifty of the city guard held the ground before the gate and defenders clustered on the wall high above. It was the last eastward entry point where the city could be entered without enduring an arrow storm and it would reduce by a considerable margin the distance that had to be traversed inside the walls to reach the palace. Nona took one more glance around at the unreal panorama, a landscape she knew well made alien by war, and began her rapid descent.

‘That’s the last way in for them. Otherwise they’re just going to get swarmed and cut down at the foot of the walls.’ Nona pointed at the spot.

Kettle nodded. ‘What’s that gate called?’

Nona shrugged. ‘I don’t know …’

‘It’s called “the Small Gate”,’ Bhenta said.

‘There you go.’ Nona scanned the fields for any sign of approaching enemy then looked at Kettle. ‘Can you make Apple understand?’

Kettle nodded again, her brow furrowed in concentration. Her shadow-bond with Apple was an exceptionally strong one and this close to her it allowed for basic information to be communicated. ‘Done.’

‘We should join them.’ Bhenta met Nona’s gaze with those alarming blue eyes of hers. Apple had once taught them to brew a particularly unpleasant poison that was exactly that colour, a ‘fake blue’ Nona called it.

‘Or …’ Nona raised an open hand towards the east.

‘It’s too dangerous,’ Kettle said.

‘This is a day for dangerous. We’re going to face the Scithrowl one way or the other. Do we want it to be when they’ve breached the city wall? Us waiting at the emperor’s gates and a rank of pikemen advancing while the arrows rain in …? Or do we want it to be as Sisters of Discretion, behind their lines, hitting at what they would rather keep safe? You don’t put up a pavilion like that for a minor general or some princeling. I saw you do it less than a month ago!’ Nona had watched through her thread-bond with Kettle as the Grey Sister killed the commander of five hundred Scithrowl within the luxury of his tent, slitting his throat while he slept beneath the furs of a hoola. ‘They’re not afraid of us! They’re arrogant and stupid. We could do some real damage here. It might be Adoma herself! Even if we die we will have sold our lives for something of worth, more than we could achieve cutting down foot soldiers as they climb the walls.’

‘It’s still too—’

‘You didn’t see them, Kettle. Words can’t paint it. Numbers that big don’t have meaning. They’re an ocean, a wave. They will roll over the walls and grind us down and nothing we have will stop them. We need to cut off the head. Come at their leaders where they’re most vulnerable. This is what Apple trained us for!’

Kettle shook her head and turned to go. Nona grabbed her arm. ‘Go up the tree, then tell me.’

Kettle rolled her eyes. ‘Sister Cauldron, don’t let her do anything stupid while I’m up there.’ And with that she was gone, fairly sprinting up the pine despite the weight of her chainmail.

‘You should learn to follow orders, sister.’ Bhenta watched Nona through narrow eyes. ‘Sister Kettle has seen more war than any of us.’

Kettle dropped back to the ground before it seemed that there had been time to reach the top. She joined them, white-faced.

‘Let’s do it.’

20

Holy Class

Nona couldn’t understand any of what was said at the four layers of the Scithrowl perimeter but Kettle proved sufficiently convincing to get through. Kettle even managed to earn a slap on the back and a few laughs at the last checkpoint. Bhenta remained largely taciturn during these encounters but interjected a few comments unasked since silence provokes questions. Bhenta adopted the heavily accented empire tongue that predominated in the shadow of the Grampains on the Scithrowl side … though Nona supposed that both sides of the range were now the Scithrowl side.

For her part Nona spoke the international language of pain – groaning and holding her side with bloody hands. She had been hurt enough times to know how to play it. Whatever she was asked she planned to stick to moaning. Her written Scithrowl was rudimental, her spoken Scithrowl worse.