‘Bar the gates!’ bellowed Jakob.

He wondered how often he’d roared that order. The besieged castles, the surrounded towns, the desperate defences. But that led to wondering how many had turned out well.

In a leader, no one wants to see doubts.

His teeth were always gritted but he gritted them harder. He gathered himself for the hero’s effort of lifting his right leg over the saddle, lunged at it too hard, got it caught, and had to drag it the rest of the way with both hands. He slid down with all the control of a felled tree going over and with about as much bend at the joints, stumbled as his boot hit the dirt and his throbbing knee threatened to buckle.

God, riding hurt these days. Almost as much as walking.

He straightened with a snarl. He hobbled on through the flitting rain. His flesh, so battered and broken, so often torn and stitched back together, was prone to fail. It was only a stubborn refusal to fall that kept him limping on. His refusal to fall, and his oaths.

‘Arm yourselves!’ he barked as two guards heaved the gates shut on screeching hinges. At least his voice still worked. ‘Or get indoors!’ A boy with a grooming brush stood frozen, and Jakob took his collar and steered him scampering towards the inn. ‘See to the wounded!’ It was an old habit, to take command. ‘Tether these horses!’ To crush chaos into order with any tool available. ‘Anyone with a bow to the walls!’ He’d always had something in him that men would obey, and that was lucky.

It was only keeping them going that kept him going.

The wagon had gouged a ragged scar through the mud as it tipped over, then crashed through the front of the inn on its side. But the locks had held, thank God and Saint Stephen. They were very good locks. Jakob had made absolutely sure of that. One horse was still kicking weakly near the wreckage, hooves scraping the ground. Too dazed to realise it had run out of road. Or too stubborn to accept it.

States of mind Jakob understood all too well.

It had been his task, long ago when he was a squire, to give the wounded horses mercy. Templar’s mercy, that was: one blow, between the eyes. You learn to spot the lost causes and cut them loose. Like anchors from a foundering ship. Reckon up the strength you have left and save what can be saved.

‘Where’s the baron?’ Jakob caught Baptiste by one embroidered lapel. ‘What about the new boy? The corpse-tickler?’

She shook her head bitterly. ‘I should’ve quit after Barcelona.’

Jakob frowned towards the gate as the guards wedged the mossy bar into the rusted brackets. Frowned at the creeper-coated walls, the crumbling battlements. Frowned at the one leaning tower, the ivy-coated stables, the inn itself. He considered the few strengths of their position, the many weaknesses. ‘We should all have quit after Barcelona. Did you see who was chasing us? Your eyes are better than mine.’

‘I saw them,’ she said, jaw working.

‘How many men?’

‘Enough.’ She must’ve lost her hat on the road along with her sense of humour, mass of curly hair glittering with raindrops. ‘But I’m not sure they were men …’

The captain of the guards was trying to untangle himself from his surcoat. The gold thread that made the circle of the Saved had come unravelled, caught on his armour. ‘Who’d dare attack us?’ he was muttering, fingers trembling as he fussed at the knots. ‘Who’d dare attack us?’ He was a young man, too young for this, with one of those wispy moustaches young men grow, thinking it makes them look older when really it makes them look younger than ever. But Jakob tried not to judge people for their poor choices.

He’d made a lifetime of them, after all.

‘We’ll soon know.’ He slid out his dagger and sawed through all that loose thread with one decisive cut. ‘Bows on the walls, Captain, right now.’ The man stared back, blinking, and Jakob caught a fistful of his surcoat and dragged him close. ‘No one wants to see doubts.’

‘Right … bows.’ And he started pointing men towards the stairways. Shove tasks in their face so they don’t notice death waiting, just beyond.

Jakob slowly stooped. Scraped up a handful of dirt. Rubbed it between his sore palms, between his aching fingers.

‘What’re you doing?’ asked Princess Alexia.

She looked even less like royalty than usual. Her wet hair had come loose and stuck to her pale cheek, clothes mud-spattered and one bony hand twisting the other. But Jakob learned long ago that you can’t judge someone’s quality by looking. They can find grace and greatness in the strangest ways, at the strangest times. Grace and greatness were out of reach for him now. Sunk in the past. But perhaps he could make the room in which others could find them.

‘An old habit,’ he said, slowly straightening. ‘Learned from an old friend.’ An old enemy. He thought of Han ibn Khazi’s face as he rubbed the desert dirt between his palms. That impossible smile while all around him men raged and wept. An eye of calm in a hurricane of panic. ‘Know the ground where you make your stand. Make it your ground.’ Jakob gave her the closest thing he could to Khazi’s smile. Even if it hurt that old wound under the eye. The one Khazi had given him. ‘Courage, Your Highness.’

‘Courage?’ she whispered, then flinched at a great bellow outside the walls. It hardly sounded like a man’s voice. More like an angry bull’s.

‘Or better yet, fury.’

‘Good advice,’ said Duke Michael, drawing his sword. You could tell from the way he held it – loose and easy like a joiner holds his hammer – that it was far from the first time.

‘Protect your niece.’ Jakob clapped him on the shoulder as he headed towards the gates. They rocked under a great blow from outside, the bar jumping in its brackets.

It reminded him of the siege of Troy, in the Second Crusade. The earth-shaking blows of the ram against the thrice-blessed doors. Splinters flying from the bars, thick as ships’ masts. Witch-fire flickering between the timbers as Bishop Otho, soon to be Saint Otho, roared out prayers to each archangel in turn, the battle-songs of the elves outside the walls providing an unearthly accompaniment.

It reminded him of the battle in the Ratva Bog. The roughness of the dirt against the grip of his sword. The flitting rain in his face and the air cold and sharp and clean in his lungs.

It reminded him of the day they stormed the tower at Corgano, that acrid, acid smell of burning thatch, the squeals of the wounded, the panic of the dying.

But you reach a certain age, everything reminds you of something.

The gates shuddered again.

‘What shall I do?’ asked Sunny, falling in beside him.

‘Live through it.’ Jakob grinned at her. Grinning at an elf. How things change. ‘It always turns to shit, eh, Sunny?’

‘Usually takes a bit longer than this.’ And she pulled up her hood, sucked in a deep breath, and vanished. For a moment he could see a kind of space in the rain where she was. Or where she wasn’t. Then even that was gone. It was coming harder, now, wind swirling through the yard and making the cloaks of the guardsmen flap, making the sign of the rolling bear dance on its one creaking chain.

Jakob shrugged his shield from his back. Winced at the twinge in his shoulder as he slid his left arm through the straps. ‘Steady!’ The half-roar, half-growl he’d honed to a deadly edge on a hundred battlefields. ‘Steady!’

You can stack your doubts high before. You can polish your regrets up after. But while the fight’s on, your purpose must be pure. Kill the enemy. Don’t die yourself.

He drew his sword. Winced at that old ache in his fingers as he gripped the hilt.

How things change. But how things stay the same.

Another bellow from beyond the gates. Another crashing blow on weathered wood.

‘Ready!’ he bellowed.

The oaths would keep him standing when his flesh failed. When his courage failed. When his faith failed.

The world could burn to ash and blow away and all could be lost, but his word would still stand.

The gates rocked again.

‘Alex, are you hurt?’

She heard the words but couldn’t make the bastards mean anything. She stared dumbly at Duke Michael, or her uncle, or whoever he was. ‘Eh?’ And she flinched as mud flicked her face.

The yard was chaos. Horses dragged to the little stable that couldn’t hold half so many, manes tossing, hooves thrashing, soldiers yelling and yammering, rushing to the walls.

One guard might’ve been younger than her and his helmet had a broken buckle. Kept falling over his eyes, and he’d push it up, and straight away it’d fall again.

The rain was pissing down now, spattering from a broken gutter. A guard was pulled from his saddle, hands gripping a snapped-off arrow-shaft in his belly.

‘Is it bad?’ he was snarling. ‘Is it bad?’

Alex was no surgeon but she was pretty sure an arrow in you wasn’t good. Arrows are really sharp and your body’s just meat.

Her uncle had her by the shoulders, was giving her a shake. ‘Are you hurt?’ He was staring at her saddle, and she saw it had an arrow sticking out of it, too. Dark wood, and surprisingly long, the flights with a beautiful stripe to them.

‘Oh,’ she said. If she’d been sitting astride, it would likely have gone through her leg.

They had that guard on the ground, were dragging his mail coat up, padded jacket underneath sodden with blood, white skin slick with blood, and her uncle’s servant Eusebius was wiping the wound with a rag, and more blood was welling out, and he was wiping it, and more blood came, and more.

‘Oh,’ she said, again, and she found she was gripping her own belly, right where his wound was. Her knees were all wobbly, and her hair was stuck across her face, and she felt sick. Every instinct was screaming to run, but where to?

‘How many of them?’ someone shrieked.

‘Where are the arrows?’

‘God help us!’

‘Steady!’ roared Jakob of Thorn, and Alex flinched as the gate shuddered, and took a nervy step backwards to nowhere, then spun about as something crashed into the ground behind her.

One of the guards had fallen from the wall. Or been thrown. Because now someone jumped down on top of him. Dropped spear-first, nailing him to the ground through the chest.

Someone. Or something. It straightened before Alex’s smarting eyes, leaving its spear stuck where it was. Instead of a man’s nose it had a long snout, covered in tawny fur, one pointed ear sticking up and the other flopped over with a black tuft on the end. It glared at Alex with amber eyes. The eyes of the foxes she used to see on the rubbish tips at night, watching her outraged, as if to say, What are you doing in our city, bitch?

‘Saviour protect us …’ she heard Brother Diaz breathe.

Alex stood frozen as the thing swept a curved sword from a belt bristling with weapons, bared vicious little teeth, and gave a high yip of hatred as it swung at her.

There was a scrape of steel as Duke Michael barged her sideways, catching the sword on his, steering it wide so the point just missed her shoulder. With a flick of the wrist, he switched from parry to thrust, stepping forwards so his blade punched through the fox-man’s studded leather jerkin, then whipped back out.

Hard to tell his expression, on account of the brown fuzz on his face, but he made a sort of squeal and fell to his knees. His sword clattered down as he clutched at the wound, blood flooding between his furry fingers.

‘Into the inn!’ Duke Michael jabbed a finger at two of the guards. ‘You and you, with us!’

He bundled Alex through a doorway, into a low common room with crooked rafters, smelling of onions and disappointment. A miserable place even by Alex’s standards, which till a few days ago had been some of the lowest in Europe. Didn’t help that the wagon had smashed a ragged hole through the wall and brought down a chunk of ceiling. A chubby man cringed behind a counter covered in broken plaster.

‘What’s happening?’ he squeaked.

‘A man,’ burbled Alex, mindlessly, ‘and a fox.’

‘Eudoxia’s cursed experiments,’ spat her uncle. He caught the innkeep by his stained apron and dragged him close. ‘Where’s the back door?’

The man pointed a trembling finger into the darkness beside the fireplace, where a couple of logs sputtered in the blackened hearth. Eusebius padded towards it, sliding out a hatchet.

Duke Michael pressed something into Alex’s limp hand. A dagger, crosspiece like a snake, red jewels for its eyes. ‘Take this.’ He squeezed her fingers closed around the grip. ‘And be ready to use it.’

He led her across the common room, his sword gleaming red in his other hand. Two patrons cringed under a table. A serving girl with a big birthmark was pressed to the wall, gripping a jug in both hands.

Someone was screaming outside, metal scraping, honks and bellows like a farmyard on fire, the crashes of whatever heavy thing was beating on the gates, the smaller of the two guards flinching at each blow. The maid was sticking close behind him, her bonnet all skewed and tears streaming down her face, clutching the bag that held the combs and oils and pretty powders that were suddenly a relic of a vanished world.

Seemed Alex wasn’t the only one whose plans had turned to shit.

Eusebius had made it to the back door, was leaning against the chimney breast with one hand on the bolt. Ever so cautiously he eased it open, a strip of light down the side of his bald head as he peered out. He gave his master a nod.

Duke Michael licked his lips, spoke softly. ‘Stay close to me.’ He looked around as Eusebius eased the door wider. ‘And get ready to run—’

The two-log fire blazed up suddenly and the door blew off its hinges.

Alex’s hair was lashed in her face by the draught, the low room flooded with crazy light.

Duke Michael was flung away like a toy, his sword clanging into the corner.

The maid shrieked, dropping her bag, bottles and powders spilling.

A woman slipped in through the scorched doorframe. She was very tall, and very lean, and she wore robes stitched with arrows and circles of runes, and her eyes shone with the reflections of the little fires now burning all about the room, and no one ever looked more like a sorceress.

‘Not interrupting, am I?’ she asked as Alex stumbled back, tripped over the hem of her dress, and went sprawling.

The big guard shouted something as he stepped forwards, then all at once went up in flames, his circle-marked surcoat on fire, his hair curling and twisting and drifting off him like burning straw.

Searing lines shot through the dark. The serving girl screeched, thrashing on the ground, legs on fire. The smaller guard turned to run. The sorceress pointed at him and he fell, crawled, his armour glowing like horseshoes on a smith’s anvil, then his surcoat caught fire and he wriggled and howled and clawed at himself, steam clouding from his back.

Alex scrabbled away on her arse, through the mess of the maid’s broken bottles, not even able to get the breath to scream, choked by the stink of char and burned flesh and the flowery notes of spilled perfume.

She still had the dagger in her sweaty hand but she never thought of using it. She only held on ’cause she’d forgotten how to make her hand come open.

The sorceress’s bright eyes flicked towards her, and she smiled.

‘Where do you think you’re going?’

Brother Diaz prayed.

It was hardly the first time. Prayers are to a monk as stones to a mason, after all – you really can’t do the job without them. Back at the monastery he’d filed into the church dawn, noon, and evening, occasionally led a service for the locals, a couple of baptisms, one slightly anticlimactic funeral. But he’d done plenty of private praying, too – that he might finally make a mark, make his brothers jealous, make his mother proud – and he liked to believe he was really rather good at it. Congratulate himself on his thorough knowledge of the psalms.

It was only in this moment of mortal terror that he realised: his mouth might have said the words, but his heart had never really been in it.

His heart was in it now.

‘O God,’ he gasped, clasping his hands to make one trembling fist and turning his eyes to the spitting heavens, ‘O Father, O light of the world, bring down your cleansing fire and deliver us from darkness.’

The inn’s gates were rocked by a crashing blow, another great splinter flying from the back and bouncing across the yard to clatter into the stricken wagon.

‘Steady!’ growled Jakob of Thorn.

How could anyone be steady while under attack by creatures that were neither man nor animal, but some unholy fusion of the two? The misshapen corpse of the one Duke Michael had killed lay in a slick of blood. It had surely stood on two legs, surely wielded human weapons, but those eyes, still goggling at the sky, were undeniably fox-like. Saviour’s breath, those fuzzy ears!

Brother Diaz fell to his knees in the mud, clutching the wooden circle he wore around his neck, symbol of the Saviour, through which one finds the passage to heaven. ‘O Holy Daughter, O blessed sacrifice, in your infinite mercy, protect us.’

A huge figure, strapped with plates of spiked armour, had climbed onto the parapet and was swinging a great axe at two of the Papal Guards. Brother Diaz had thought at first he wore a horned helmet but now, squinting through the drizzle, it was evident the horns grew from his head. He bellowed into the rain, and with his next swing smashed one of the guards screaming off the wall in a shower of blood.

If humanity was fashioned in the image of God, what monstrous corruptions of His holy purpose were these? Brother Diaz had read rumours of such things in the monastery’s more fantastical volumes, but always far from the righteous light of the Church, lurking at the edges of the map where the cartographer was just squiggling guesses.

He fumbled in his collar and drew out the silver vial, the sacred blood of Saint Beatrix, and gripped it and the holy circle together. Clearly, he needed every scrap of divine assistance he could get. ‘O Blessed Saint Beatrix, lend me your unconquerable faith, your dauntless courage. Forgive my weakness and stand by me in my time of trial.’

Someone screamed. One of the guards, shot with an arrow, and he toppled from the wall and crashed through the thatched roof of a lean-to shed to lie weakly groaning in its wreckage. Something sprang over the battlements and onto the walkway where he’d stood. A woman with a bow in her hands, another over her back, and at least three quivers of arrows slung about her person, but with great, long, folded legs like a rabbit’s.

This was no crusader fortress, bolstered by the White Art of the Faith, merely a badly maintained inn, its crumbling wall scarcely taller than a man. Brother Diaz squeezed his eyes shut and prayed more fervently than ever before, tears squeezed from beneath his prickling lids.

‘I know I am an unworthy vessel, stained with lust and lechery, but fill me with your blessed light, let me not fear, let me not—’

At a final crashing blow one of the brackets tore from the wall in a shower of dust, the splintered bar flew back, the broken gates shuddered inwards, and the prayers died on Brother Diaz’s lips.

Jakob of Thorn stood framed in the open gateway, grey and stubborn as a wind-bent tree, dwarfed by the monster that now stooped under the high arch.

A towering beast, draped in rusty chain mail and with a great studded club in its furry fists. A goat-legged, goat-headed, goat-horned abomination, bristling with weapons. It stretched out its neck, slotted yellow goat eyes popping, and gave a furious, thunderous, earth-shaking bleat.