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garden as he left them for the last time. Joron, the elder, was waving above his head a wooden sword he had made him just that day. The toddler, Karel, was waving excitedly too, following his brother’s lead, but he was too young to understand what was happening. He stopped waving when he spotted one of the new puppies. He toddled over to it, and Snowy the white hound wandered across the garden to guard her pup. Bartellus’ last sight of his smallest son was with his chubby arms round the patient hound’s neck, his father forgotten.
    Tears coursed down his face.
    His wife Marta had not been outside to see him off. She lay in bed, exhausted by the last stages of a hard pregnancy. He had kissed her goodbye, and promised to be home for winter. He had no real fears for her; her two previous labours had been difficult, but their sons were born healthy, and she had regained her strength within days. He was sorry he would not be there to see his daughter born. He was sure it would be a daughter this time.
    He could not remember kissing Marta goodbye. He was certain he had done so, for he always did. But he had been distracted by thecoming campaign, and he had kissed her without thinking, a casual buss on the cheek. The last kiss.
    Then he had ridden away with his old friend Astinor Redfall, who had come to summon him. He did not know, on that shining morning, that he was being taken to his brief trial and awful punishment. He did not know then, or for more than a year afterwards, that within the hour his family all lay dead, his longed-for daughter spilling from a great gash in Marta’s belly.

CHAPTER THREE
    WHEN BARTELLUS OPENED his eyes again, the woman was sitting at the table with him, a glass of water to hand, her gaze unfocused. She had seen his tears but he found he did not care. He wondered how much time had passed.
    ‘Have we met before?’ he asked.
    ‘Just once. A long time ago.’
    ‘Why did you rescue us?’ he asked.
    ‘Perhaps you were swept here by the flood waters.’
    ‘The flood waters which considerately left us together, the child safely beside me, in your antechamber?’
    She sighed. ‘It is a sad reflection on your life that you ask why someone should save another from drowning.’
    He knew she was familiar to him. He racked his mind but nothing came to him. So much of his history had been washed away in blood and pain. Memory was a sly and fickle friend to him now. There were times when he could not bear the visions of his wife smiling up at him, his boys waving goodbye in the sunlight, but
that
memory pursued him relentlessly and remained crystal clear. Yet his days of glory, times he wanted to savour for they would never change whatever happened in the future, these shimmered and shifted, shifting sands in his tired brain.
    ‘Are there others here like Indaro?’ he asked Archange.
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Because she is fit and strong and claims to be a warrior. Why is she not in the army? Is that what this place is, a sanctuary for cowards who do not want to fight for their City?’
    ‘People escape to the sewers for many reasons – they are not all cowards,’ she replied pointedly. ‘But there are easier ways for women to avoid military service. They can become pregnant. No woman carrying a precious child is allowed to serve, as you know, general.’
    He could not allow that to pass twice. ‘I am not a general.’
    She shook her head in a gesture of impatience. ‘Then you should not speak so casually of
your
soldiers. No one would take you for a scribe or an innkeeper. Besides,’ she added, smiling, ‘you
look
like a general.’ The years fell from her face.
    For the first time in many days he realized he probably stank. Yet he felt comfortable, sitting in a chair with a full belly and, he had to admit, a pleasant companion. The air was warm and his clothes had dried for the first time in days. He sat back and looked around. The room was of cold stone, and the tables and chairs simple, but they