‘One hundred and seventy-five men and women. Two hundred and ten horses. The Nineteenth Regiment of the Itko Kanese Eighth Cavalry.’ The Captain’s throat tightened briefly . He looked at Lorn. ‘Dead’ His horse shied under him as it caught an updraft. He closed savagely on the reins and the animal stilled, nostrils wide and ears back, muscles trembling under him. The Adjunct’s stallion made no move. ‘All had their weapons bared. All fought whatever enemy attacked them. But the dead are all ours.’

– Un-named Captain to Adjunct Lorn, Ch. 1

This entire section was completely disconcerting. It’s not just the people mentioned in the above extract that are dead – there are plenty more – as we discover when Ganoes Paran, now a Lieutenant is tasked to take the Adjunct through the massacre to investigate a couple of beach huts that were found empty. Which seems like an odd thing to do, especially after she gives orders to the un-named captain to ensure that ‘all evidence of the massacre is to be erased.’ The only reason I can think of for that to be important is that it means Empress Laseen wants to keep up appearances – wants to maintain an illusion of control – and the knowledge/evidence of an attack such as this would undermine that and give her enemies an “edge”. I don’t know, I’m not an expert when it comes to that sort of thing. Anyway, I digress.

One of the things I like about this section is how much we see of Paran, and the type of person he’s become. I mean, obviously he’s older – the last time we saw him he was 12 and now he’s 19, so he’s still young, and with that comes a cockiness, or arrogance, which is apparent when he talks about being stationed in Unta. But he’s also pretty ballsy, and not scared about being blunt – and it’s clear that this has come from his experience on the front line.

‘Adjunct, for the past seven hours I have been knee-deep in torn flesh and spilled blood. I’ve been fighting crows and gulls for bodies – do you know what these birds are doing here? Precisely? They’re tearing off strips of meat and fighting over them; they’re getting fat on eyeballs and tongues, livers and hearts. In their frantic greed they fling the meat around…’ He paused, visibly regaining control over himself as he straightened in his saddle. ‘I’m not young any more, Adjunct. As for presumption, I honestly couldn’t care less. Truth can’t be danced around, not out here, not now, not ever again.’

– Ganoes Paran to Lorn, Ch 1.

As it turns out, this brutal honesty gets him onto the Adjunct’s team. Whether this is a good thing or not remains to be seen, but one thing is certain – the devastation of the ‘diversion’ of the first slaughter, is nothing compared to what he finds on the first mission that he is assigned. The Adjunct send him to the town where recruits are signed to fight for the Empire. We see the girl, Sorry, sign up for the Genebackis Campaign – specifically asking to be part of Whiskeyjack’s crew – and also that Lorn, the Adjunct had arrive from Unta only ten minutes before-hand. Sorry’s feet are stained red.

What Paran finds in Gerrom is harrowing. ‘A thorough eliminating of the trail’ he calls it. The distraction, left more destruction in its wake. And it’s so disconcerting it’s palpable. By the time Paran arrives in Unta through a magical warren and meets Laseen in her throne room in a scene I can only describe as being some sort of warped comedic relief, I was so overwhelmed with the emptiness of it all, that the other details didn’t hit me until I looked at the section again. There’s quite a bit here that was interesting:

• The slaughter by the hounds and subsequent sorcery performed in Gerrom was supposed to distract the Adjunct and the Empress in order to stop them finding out about Sorry.
• Paran’s meeting with Topper introduced us to magical warrens, used to travel vast distances very quickly.
• The Empress recognised Ganoes and remembered the conversation he had with the Commander at Mock’s Hold. Having read chapter 2, I thought that it was really interesting that Laseen says this: ‘I wonder what god tossed you two together on that parapet – I would do service to acknowledge its sense of humour.’
• Topper wasn’t happy that he didn’t know Paran and the Empress had met before
• Paran isn’t very comfortable being back home
• His youngest sister Felisin is the poet from the prologue?

‘On the third hill overlooking the fallen city of Pale, Tattersail stood alone. Scattered around the sorceress the curled remains of burnt armour – greaves, breastplates, helms and weapons – lay heaped in piles. An hour earlier, there had been men and women wearing that armour, but of them there was no sign. The silence within those empty shells rang like a dirge in Tattersail’s head.’

This chapter completely devastated me if I’m completely honest. Everything was so visceral, so real that I got swept away in the narrative and when I’d finished the section I felt like I needed a break. It was so intense. There is so much going on here, that it was totally batshit crazy – from Hairlock being cut in half and re-souled as a puppet which is really freaky because I imagine him to look something like this:

And then you have the immense loss of the Bridgeburners – from nearly one a half thousand to just thirty or so makes the losses in the previous chapter look mild in comparison – and then the betrayal.

I was furious, and upset and all discombobulated about the whole thing.

But my life, it was enjoyable! The sorcery battle was so immense – and our introduction to Lord Anomander Rake is not one that’s going to be forgotten any time soon. This is one powerful guy. There are so many pieces of this chapter that I loved reading – if I quoted them all, I’d end up typing the whole chapter out! I also really enjoyed that we learned more about the history of the Empire, but that again, it wasn’t written like an info dump. I’m finding the Bridgeburners a really interesting crew. We’ve discovered that the fisher-girl, Sorry is now with them and that she’s exhibiting powers of some sort because they all find her downright scary – and if this young girl can scare the pants off these soldiers and mages – that’s extremely disconcerting to say the least.

I was enthralled with The Fatid – The Deck of Dragons – and the way the cards “spoke” to Tattersail – and yet Hairlock, who has been presented as more ‘powerful’ than her, wasn’t aware of the spinning coin – which leaves me wondering if he’s as powerful as he thinks, or if it’s something to do with resonance between the reader of the cards and the cards themselves? There’s definitely more to them than just being a deck of cards, at least I think there is.