Acres of orange canvas seemed to curl away from me on both sides. I looked at it and saw the massive letters, backwards and upside down: ‘Riverworks Company Est. 1692’. A glance up to the roof of the hall told me I had snapped the flagpoles holding Frost’s banner. They hung down, trailing it between them.

I hugged my head, rolled over and moaned. My right arm and shoulder were skinned and bleeding profusely. Sliding on the cobbles had worn a hole in the banner, through my jeans’ denim as if it was tissue, and blood was trickling down my right leg. My shirt was laddered and my axe scabbard reduced to leather shreds.

I rotated my shoulder, gasping at the pain.

A jangle of chain mail and the flash of plate armour-Tornado was running towards me out of the hall. The front of his helmet was featureless and forbidding. He hooked the visor back and I saw his shocked face. ‘Jant, are you all right?’

‘I think so…I mean, I’m bleeding…Shit, I’m bleeding!’

‘You lucky bastard.’ Tornado pointed at the broken banner. I shrugged lopsidedly at him.

He slipped his shield from his arm and stuck it upright with its spike between the cobbles. It had a printed street map and the horn blast codes pasted on the inside. He hung his axe on top.

Tornado, I’m so glad it’s you. I would have wasted hours trying to explain my ordeal to someone with more imagination. Now the nightmare faded rapidly when faced with this bloodstained mail-coiffed frontiersman smiling like a maniac behind a blade I would have been unable to lift.

I said faintly, ‘Who’s dead?…I felt the Circle break. Who did we lose?’

‘The Lawyer.’

‘Gayle? Damn…’

‘Thunder.’

‘Thought so.’

‘And Hayl.’

‘Gayle, Hayl and Thunder…That’s one fuck of a storm…’

Tornado wiped the edge of the padded hood drawn over his forehead and the thick stubble on his cheeks. ‘Come inside.’

I took a couple of steps and stumbled, but he supported me. He said, ‘When all this started Hayl rode out to the dam to close the winch tower portcullises. We didn’t want Insects to crawl through. Then they started flying! He shut the gates but he, like, never made it back. Thunder was covering him with bombardment from the trebuchets, but the first Insects came down and swamped his crew. He didn’t stand a chance, either. Gayle’s men tried to stop the artillerists fleeing and she got killed with ‘em. Lightning made everyone else stay inside. Flying Insects-I haven’t, like, seen anything like this before. We need to tell San. We need Rayne too.’

‘She’s on her way.’ I sighed. Concussion was greying-out my thinking, and I could do nothing more. Tornado walked me into the hall and we pressed through the crowd of civilians and armoured soldiers. Vowing to pretend it was only a hangover I climbed the stairs to my room, still feline but not in as much that cats walk in straight lines. I dressed my skinned arm and leg myself and collapsed on the bed.

The clatter of hooves in the street roused me. I lay with a terrible pain in my arm and a stiff ache in my wings, feeling like death-fast-thawing like a corpse out of the Ilbhinn glacier. I wondered why I was always doing this to myself, until I remembered I came by this pain in the line of duty rather than pleasure.

The sound of hooves intensified, with the jingling of bells. There must be a whole company outside. I tried to get out of bed and gasped as the ache fired into a streak of agony. I slipped a T-shirt on and looked out of the window. It gave onto the second ring; the road below was full of horses, and lancers riding in full plate, holding their lances point down. Their line, two abreast, wound around the corner. The noise of bells on their bridles might reassure the horses, but it put my nerves on edge.

High over the barracks roof, a few Insects were twisting up into the air.

The lancers passed by and the street emptied. On the cobbles a dispersed smear of brown fur and pink bone was all that remained of the Eske fyrd’s grizzly bear mascot. Behind it, a door to the barracks block was open and two soldiers with crossbow bandoliers stood on its step. One leant forward to light a cigarette, then straightened up and blew out smoke.

A quick movement caught my attention. An Insect ran round the corner and hurtled down the street. The smokers slammed their door shut. The Insect dashed beneath my window, then seemed to lose its footing with all six legs at once. It fell and bowled tail over forelegs with its own momentum, crashed into the wall and lay still, with a red-fledged arrow sticking out of it.

Lightning will be awake, then.

The door was ajar and I heard Tornado’s voice counting to ten three times as he ascended the stairs. He reached the top and knocked so powerfully that the door swung wide.

I called, ‘Yes!’

He continued knocking.

‘It’s bloody open; you can bloody come in if you bloody have to!’

He entered, still in filthy armour, and a scowl. ‘You’re looking good this morning.’

‘The flight is starting again. What time is it?’

‘Six a.m. There aren’t as many, yet, but the ones that came down yesterday are still clogging the roads. Wrenn’s clearing the middle road with a company of hastai, and I’m going to relieve him soon. Lightning says where are you? Lourie sent me because Lightning bawled at him to come and fetch you. He said, “Get that lanky Rhydanne git down here now!”’

‘Lourie said that?’

‘No. Lightning.’

‘Ah.’ I tried to comb my hair and gave up, made the mistake of consulting the mirror. Blood and iodine had seeped through the bandage on my shoulder and dried, sticking it to my skin.

Tornado bent to peer out of the window. ‘I’ve never seen the like of Insects in the air. I bet it pisses featherbacks off to find that Insects can use their wings.’

I agreed. ‘There we were, happily taking wings as trophies and using them to glaze windows, never thinking they could grow them and use them to fly.’

‘I wouldn’t have believed it.’

‘They’re heavy, graceless fliers. They seem glad when they touch down.’

Tornado shrugged. ‘You were pretty impressive.’

‘Up until the point I crashed. Look how badly skinned I am.’ I glanced at my scale mail hauberk and gambeson, which I hang upright on crossed poles like a scarecrow. My helm sat angled on top, the rust-stained tail of its white horsehair crest hanging down.

‘At least you’re not mad.’

I paused in lacing my boots and blinked at him. ‘Mad? Why should I be mad?’

‘You should see Frost.’

We descended the stairs into the hall full of soldiers and townspeople, not crushed together like last night but running about in panic, shouting over the distant buzzing. Zascai came and went from the doorway, crowding around Lightning, who stood leaning against the doorjamb, scribbling a note. He had his bow on his shoulder and, standing at his heel, his favourite deerhound, Lymer the-two-hundred-and-tenth, watched the street attentively.

He folded the paper and handed it to a runner, who raced out of the hall. I pushed to his side but he didn’t notice me.

Immediately a fyrdsman vied for my attention: ‘Comet, what do I do if-’

‘Wait,’ I said.

‘But how can they be flying?’

‘Just wait!’

The same was happening to Tornado, who was dealing out orders for an infantry company. Eszai are equal in status and there is no hierarchy among us, meaning there is no final authority in a crisis and, if we have no pre-planned strategy, it causes problems. Lightning tended to dominate and I usually deferred to him, knowing he was the best of us at envisaging the whole battlefield. He could remember where every company was at any given time.