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cloak was of the finest Suljuk
silk, trimmed with ermine. The hilt of his sword was crusted with
diamonds, twinkling as the clouds flowed overhead to let the sun peep
through. He had foregone the crown today in favour of a simple golden
circlet, its weight considerably less wearisome on the sore spots he
had developed round his temples.
    All the
trappings of majesty. Ever since he was a child, Jezal had dreamed of
being exalted, worshipped, obeyed. Now the whole business made him
want to be sick. Although that might only have been because he had
scarcely slept last night, and scarcely eaten that morning.
    Lord Marshal
Varuz rode on Jezal’s right, looking as if age had suddenly
caught up with him. He seemed shrunken in his uniform, stooped and
slump-shouldered. His movements had lost their steely precision, his
eyes their icy focus. He had developed, somehow, the very slightest
hint of not knowing what to do.
    â€œFighting
still continues in the Arches, your Majesty,â€

Nightfall
    General Poulder
squirmed in his field chair, moustaches quivering, as though he could
only just control his body so overpowering was his fury. His ruddy
complexion and snorting breath seemed to imply that he might spring
from the tent at any moment and charge the Gurkish positions alone.
General Kroy sat rigidly erect on the opposite side of the table,
clenched jaw-muscles bulging from the side of his close-cropped
skull. His murderous frown clearly demonstrated that his anger at the
invader, while no less than anyone else’s, was kept under iron
command, and if any charging was to be done it would be managed with
fastidious attention to detail.
    In their first
briefings West had found himself outnumbered twenty to one by the two
Generals’ monstrous staffs. He had reduced them, by a
relentless process of attrition, to a meagre two officers a piece.
The meetings had lost the charged atmosphere of a tavern brawl and
instead taken on the character of a small and bad-tempered family
event—perhaps the reading of a disputed will. West was the
executor, trying to find an acceptable solution for two squabbling
beneficiaries to whom nothing was acceptable. Jalenhorm and Brint,
sitting to either side of him, were his dumbstruck assistants. What
role the Dogman played in the metaphor it was hard to judge, but he
was adding to the already feverish pitch of worry in the tent by
picking at his fingernails with a dagger.
    â€œThis will
be a battle like no other!â€

Questions
    A trace of
autumn fog had slunk off the restless sea as the sun went down over
crippled Adua, turning the chill night ghostly. A hundred strides
distant the houses were indistinct. Two hundred and they were
spectral, the few lights in the windows floating wraiths, hazy
through the gloom. Good weather for bad work, and we have much of
that ahead of us.
    No distant
explosions had rattled the still darkness so far. The Gurkish
catapults had fallen silent. At least for the moment, and why not?
The city almost belongs to them, and why burn your own city? Here, on the eastern side of Adua, far from the fighting, all seemed
timelessly calm. Almost as if the Gurkish had never come. So
when a vague clattering filtered through the gloom, as of the boots
of a body of well-armed men, Glokta could not help a pang of
nervousness, and pressed himself into the deeper shadows against the
hedge by the road. Faint, bobbing lights filtered through the murk.
Then the outline of a man, one hand resting casually on the pommel of
a sword, walking with a loose, strutting slouch that bespoke extreme
over-confidence. Something tall appeared to stick from his head,
waving with his movements.
    Glokta peered
into the murk. “Cosca?â€

The Day of Judgement
    Lord Marshal
West stood in the shadow of an abandoned barn, up on a rise above the
fertile plains of Midderland, his eye-glass clutched tightly in one
gloved hand. There was still a trace of morning mist clinging to the
flat