‘As you say.’ He grinned at her. He seemed in good spirits.

‘What are you doing?’ I asked again.

She stamped her steel-toed boot on the paving stone. ‘If you went down into the chamber, you’d see the top of the gate emerging from the floor, with the ropes attached to it. Millions of tonnes of water are pressing on the gate, keeping it shut. So we are digging down on either side of it.

‘We are going to provide a new passage for the water over the top of the gate, then down into the original outlet pipe. Of course we’re digging on the downstream side first to open up the passage to the face of the dam. Then I’ll ask them to excavate the other side. Water will burst up, fill the chamber and drain away down the downstream side, out through the face of the dam, like it’s supposed to. We will drain the lake, lads! You’ll be heroes!’

The men broke out in optimistic smiles.

I said, ‘Really? Won’t the water gush back up the shaft?’

Frost’s lips set thin. ‘No.’

‘But-’

‘Sh!’ she snapped. ‘I’ll put a lid on it, or something.’ She took my sleeve and turned me away from the toiling fyrdsmen. ‘Not in front of them. Don’t ask any questions, just spread the news as to what I’m doing.’

I said, ‘The downstream face is covered with larvae too. I expect some will have crawled up the passage.’

She stared at me, then nodded. ‘Oh-when we break through? Yes, some might crawl into the chamber but we have our pickaxes. And the water will flush the rest out. I left a few stores here but we don’t have many spades. Fly thyself to the town and bring us more supplies.’

‘There’s a limit to the weight I can carry.’

‘Yes, of course. Bring what thou canst, thou wilt have to make a few trips. I want water, clean fresh water-’ she gestured in the direction of the lake ‘-because my men can’t drink that muck and this is thirsty work. They’re afforst from the ride, and forspent already.’

‘Frost, the first law of communication is to speak the same language as the person you’re speaking to.’

‘Sorry. You know what I bloody mean. Bring some more lanterns, another couple of spades because we don’t have enough to go around, and some food.’ She dithered. ‘Oh, and can you bring me some coffee too?’

‘Sure.’

‘I can make it on the stove. It’s going to be a long night and I think I’m going to need it. We’ll keep digging until we make the breakthrough. The men have to remove all the cladding from the floor of the chamber with muscle power alone; there’s no way we can use acid down there.’

I shook my head. ‘You’re mining out the core of your own dam?’

‘No. I’m just making two little holes, one either side of the gate.’

‘But whoever’s trapped in the chamber will-’

‘Will be able to climb to safety up the brackets,’ she said firmly. ‘Now, do you have a pen and paper? I need to write a message to the Emperor. Go and fetch the water bottles, and when you return I’ll have it ready for him.’

I nodded to her, then quickly scaled the tower wall, slipped through the window and felt the pull as my wings took my weight. I flew back to Slake Cross.

The town was a collage of hideous sights. It was incredibly crowded; people were still coming in from the battlefield but they were also drawing back behind the town’s walls out of the canvas city. We had no chance of holding the palisade and camp against the approaching larvae. They could climb, and they could swim, too, so the moat was useless. The tower tops bristled with soldiers ready to repulse them.

I ran towards the centre square and the water pumps, passing stretcher-bearers carrying horrifically injured men. They left trails of blood through the streets already slippery with mud and horse dung. Exhausted soldiers crowded the staircases and corners, trying to summon the last reserves of energy. Some were chewing handfuls of hazelnuts, their iron rations. The walking injured leant against walls waiting for their friends to bring them pannikins of stew. Soldiers bare to the waist were queuing endlessly outside the shower block. Its doors were wide-men too tired to undress were standing clothed under the flow of water.

More queues of thousands: up to the enormous cooking pots on a table under an awning. Under the Cook’s cornucopia banner, his assistants were doling out tremendous quantities of bean stew to whoever was well enough to take it. Soldiers were waiting in line holding their bowls.

As I passed them, Tre Cloud darted out. ‘The Swordsman’s lost his leg!’ he cried. ‘Featherback lancers just carried him in.’

‘Is he conscious?’

‘I’d say. He’s bawling blue filth.’

I set off sprinting to the hospital. I could hear the screaming from a street away. I skirted round wounded men laid side by side on stretchers in the street against its wall, and entered onto a floor slick with red. Gore was spattered up the walls to above head height. Doctors were concentrating on their immediate patients and yelling for assistance, dressings, fresh water. Nurses carrying pitchers or bandage rolls shouldered past each other, dashing through the maze of beds.

All around me men were lying, moaning, crying. One reached out and grabbed my belt. I looked down at him, and as I did so, he died.

I slipped on blood, distracted by the tremendous variety of injuries. There were lots of empty eye sockets, or men with bandages over their eyes, because larvae had pulled their eyes out. There were plenty of men with cloth wrapped around bloody stumps; adult Insects had lopped off arms and legs. There were wounds to the throat, to the groin, to joints that were less protected by plate. Along the walls slumped hundreds of men with extreme exhaustion and dehydration-every one being given litres and litres of salty water. One porter with a mop was ineffectually stirring the pools of glutinous blood on the flagstones. It reflected the camp beds along the wall.

Lying in a corner there was a man whose face had been chewed down to the bone on his forehead and cheeks-I could see into his mouth. And in another corner-something so terrible I quickly blotted it from memory.

I saw Wrenn-lying by the wall, on a stretcher bed extending towards the middle of the room. Three lancers in plate were holding him down, one on his either shoulder and one on his leg. His other leg was nothing but a bleeding stump, bitten off below the knee. He was kicking it in the air and drops of blood were spattering on the soldiers. He was yelling, his mouth a black oval, his cheeks stretched and eyes slitted. Where his shin should be, I saw the white ends of neatly severed bone.

They had stripped him down to his padded gambeson but he still had armour on his uninjured leg. He was covered in many smaller excruciating wounds, bleeding heavily through tears in the jacket. Most of them were deep punctures, where larvae’s fangs had slid in like curved smooth thorns, but they were nothing compared to what had happened to his leg.

Rayne was resuscitating a man with a crunchy broken jaw and a mushy nose. She left him to her assistant and dashed over, leaving sticky footprints.

She gave Wrenn an injection into the crook of his arm, pressed a cotton pad on the place, withdrew the needle. She quickly dropped some clear liquid on a white tile, and mixed it with a drop of blood pricked from one of the three soldiers who looked most like him. The mixture did not go grainy but stayed smooth, so she patted the windowsill for the lad to sit up there, and she rigged up a waxed cotton tube that would transfer blood down from his arm into Wrenn’s.

Wrenn was yelling all the time. ‘No! Put me back on the field! Leave me there! I want to be left! Bitch!’

She grasped his hand and he tried to fend her off, but he calmed a little as the scolopendium took effect. ‘Leave me! I can’t be Eszai any more! Let me die!’