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THE VEIGA GATHERED IN THE DIP OF THE VALLEY WHERE the river rushed. The worst disadvantage, the lowest ground. But Kissen knew what disadvantage meant. She knew how to make it her own.

Talking to veiga was worse than herding damned cats. They all thought they were smarter, better, and brighter. Kissen preferred the older ones: Gannet, a woman Kissen had never met before, Pruro whom she knew by name, and Erl who had put on weight and power in his older age.

And as soon as the veterans were on board, the rest fell into line. Older veiga were worth their weight in gold: only clever bastards fuck with gods for years and still win.

Half of the others in Arren’s gods’ army were barely brushing twenty, having taken up briddite and the veiga stamp with the hope of good pay and glory. Few of them had done more than trash a few shrines or whip the feet of pilgrims, and taken a pretty penny for doing so. Idiots.

But at least they were idiots that had to back her up.

‘The stage already set then?’ asked Gannet, chewing on a wad of leaves that stank something awful and turned her teeth yellow; she nodded to the huge contraptions that had been raised around them.

‘Let’s hope so,’ said Kissen. There was little breeze down in the basin, but the high winds of the sky were moving fast, and the pressure in the air swelled with stormthreat.

The woman cackled and tucked the wad behind one of her teeth, and pulled out a sickle of briddite, spinning it on its leather thong.

‘This is the last time veiga should get involved with kings,’ said Erl.

‘You’re the one wearing his sigil,’ said Gannet, nodding at his cloak, which was indeed pinned with a stag’s head backed by rays.

‘I enjoy wearing the head of a dead god,’ he grinned. He had two front teeth missing. ‘And it’s spare briddite in case I run out.’

‘What are you going to do, throw it?’

‘B-briddite doesn’t hurt her,’ said Hovan, the gods commander, for the hundredth time, where he stood in his thick armour and the colours of House Spurrisk. He looked liable to shit his pants. Fair play to him, as long as he did it in the right direction.

‘It doesn’t need to hurt her,’ said Kissen. ‘It just needs to hold her.’

‘We-we’re all going to die, aren’t we?’

Kissen glanced at him. They were in the pit of the valley, a godless river oozing past their boots.

When the Talicians came, their little force would be directly in their line of sights.

The king, however, came clipping down the slope, carefully arrayed in shining armour, followed by a large command of knights in blue and gold at his back, on foot.

Even his cleric was coming, bright white amid the blue, walking by the silver-haired Commander Peta, ready for her god to win.

Sunbringer versus flamebringer, fireheart versus wildfire.

Kissen glanced around the armies hidden in the valley.

Lessa Craier she could recognise by the silver and green she wore, the same as her cloak.

Kissen relished the memory that shivered through her, the taste of the night, the tangle of the sheets.

Her lady’s mouth, hands, fierceness, filling her up with pleasure.

‘Everyone dies,’ said Kissen softly. Then she shook herself, raising her voice. ‘Everyone dies!’ she yelled. ‘People and gods, lions and sheep. Storms pass, winds howl, the sun sets, and the night grows dark. We all go to dust and nothing. Everybody dies.’

They were looking at her, an army she never asked for, for a king she never wanted. Her sisters gone, Inara safe, Elo and Lessa ready to ride into death.

‘But we choose!’ Kissen bellowed. ‘We choose how to live!’