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just some foreign word for “monk”, so nobody knows what his real name is. Could care less; he’s just some evil shit who likes killing people. Wouldn’t be you, though, since he only started off doing it a couple of years ago, and only last month he was in Iapetta.’
    â€˜I see,’ Poldarn said. ‘Well, that’s a great comfort, I must say.’
    â€˜And then there’s number four,’ Basano continued. ‘General Muno Silsny, there’s another really unpleasant man for you.’ He frowned. ‘Not in the same league as Feron Amathy or this Monach character, and of course he’s not the Emperor, but you’d have to be a total arsehole to be anything like as nasty as he is. And he only popped up a few years back. Hell of a taleteller, Silsny; that’s how he’s got on so fast. Came out of nowhere; he started off as nothing but a poxy little captain in some outfit of second-rate horsefuckers, but then there was this battle and he got his leg broke, and he went around telling everybody he was snatched out of the jaws of death by the divine Poldarn himself, no less. For some crazy reason folks believed him, and since then he’s every place you look. Fought alongside General Cronan, rest his soul, when he beat the raiders; then he was off fighting the rebels, really making a name for himself. But he must be smart, because he changed sides at just the right time, joined up with the Amathy lot right after he’d kicked shit out of them in some battle, and now he’s commander-in-chief of the home provinces, no less. And you can’t be him, either.’
    Poldarn’s smile had glazed over, like a properly fired pot. Muno Silsny was the name of the wounded soldier he’d saved from being murdered by looters after some battle in a river; he’d practically tripped over the man, and for some reason had wasted time and effort getting him back to his camp instead of leaving him to die.
    â€˜Number five, now,’ Basano was saying. ‘Now that’s a dead cert, no way you could be the fifth evilest bastard in the Empire, because she’s a woman, and you’re not.’
    Poldarn had an uncomfortable feeling that he knew who Basano was talking about. ‘Who’s number five?’ he asked.
    Basano grinned. ‘Good question,’ he said. ‘Nobody knows shit about her. Her regular name’s supposed to be something in one of those crackjaw southern languages, Xipho Dornosomething, and what she calls herself is the Holy Mother of Death or some such shit, but everybody knows her as Copis the Whore. On account of she used to be one, so people tell me. Anyway, she’s with this Monach character, rattling round with him in the steel-plated carts. Religious nut, apparently; telling everybody she screwed the divine Poldarn and had his kid. I don’t understand religion much, but by all accounts this gives her the right to go around burning down villages.’ He sighed. ‘I liked it better when religion was about not coveting your neighbour’s ox, and whether true angels have wings. Anyhow,’ Basano said, ‘there’s five really, really nasty people for you, and you aren’t any of them, so what are you worried about?’
    The next morning, Poldarn had a headache, probably due to the smoke or the smell of rotten leaf-mould. Basano woke him to say that breakfast was ready, but Poldarn wasn’t hungry. ‘I think I ought to be getting back,’ he said. ‘They’ll be wanting to know about the charcoal.’
    But Basano shook his head. ‘Can’t spare anybody to go with you, sorry,’ he said, ‘not with number four starting to burn through, and the wind being about to change any bloody minute. You can head off on your own if you like, but I wouldn’t recommend it.’
    Poldarn thought about Battle Slough, and decided he didn’t like the idea of wandering into it