Jane stared down at her home made map with satisfaction.

It showed every piece of ground within thirty miles of Elmton that was too shallow for ploughing, either because of 'devil stone' a few inches down or more mundane rock and concrete. Since the original maps had been drawn by a wide variety of different people over many years, though, there was little in the way of standardised labelling and Jane suspected that many of the areas simply labelled as rocky might, in fact, be areas of plasteel, deliberately not labelled as such in order to not reduce the value of the land in the eyes of the superstitious and deeply religious farmers.

Any one of those areas might be the location of Randall's secret spy base, but Jane had focused her attention on those areas that were labelled as regular in shape and around the right size. Of these, there were only two; the one she'd found on her second day and one other. The second was only half the size of the first, though, and on an area of land that had a significant slope down to a small river. Jane didn't know much about helicopters, but she knew that they liked to land on flat ground and so she dismissed it from consideration.

That left the first, on Elmhardy Farm. The one she'd already pointed out to Loach. She'd examined every map now and had found nothing that was half as good a prospect. She felt a sense of satisfaction, therefore, as she looked down at her map. There you are, she thought, like a police detective who'd found where the murder suspect was hiding. Got you. And soon now, very soon now, we're going to be coming to get you.

Just as soon as the orcs were gone. Food was being rationed now even though the city had not yet come under seige. No more food deliveries were coming in. Every farmer in the region was now sheltering within the city walls, leaving their farms untended. Any crops that hadn't been harvested had been abandoned to rain and wildlife and every hoof of livestock had been butchered to fill the city's salt cellars. Even if the orcs just turned around and left, the city and the region around it had already been condemned to years of agricultural and economic hardship. Hard Times were coming, and pretty much everyone in the city now wanted the orcs to attack just so that the men on the walls could give then some payback.

Jane was jolted out of her thoughts as the door opened and Philip walked in. "Okay if I intrude into your domain?" he asked.

Jane smiled. "Always okay," she replied. "Is Trabe okay with you being here?"

"He's out, meeting with a client. Won't be back for the rest of the day. The lads have taken the opportunity to take some much deserved time off. I was just leaving as well and I wondered if you wanted to go somewhere with me."

Jane grinned. "You're asking me out on a date?"

"I don't know what that means. I'm asking you to go downtown with me. Sit on a bench, feed the ducks. Listen to the band, maybe have some roast chestnuts. What do you say?"

"I'd love to. Let me get my stuff." She picked up her tunic and put it on, Philip waiting patiently as she did up the complicated laces. She knew that she'd been borderline scandalous in taking it off, even while alone in Trabe's back office, but nobody seemed to mind. Probably the men had enjoyed the occasional glimpses of her bare neck and wrists and hadn't wanted to do anything to spoil it.

Her cloak went on next, and as her hands slid into the sleeves she once again marvelled at the silky soft feel of the fur trimming. Real fur, taken from a real animal. Something that would have landed her in prison back in her own time and which would have caused her to be hated and despised by all right thinking people. She'd worn fake fur often enough, bought from suppliers who had sworn that it was indistinguishable from the real thing, but now she knew how wrong they had been. Nothing compared to the feel of real fur, and it wasn't even expensive! Even the lowliest peasant wore it. What would have been an unthinkable, illegal luxury in her own time was now as common and unremarkable as mud.

While her mind was on the subject, she noticed that the buttons of Philip's jacket were made of ivory. The first time she'd seen them she'd barely noticed. Some part of her, below the level of conscious awareness, had assumed that they were fake ivory. Maybe some kind of plastic, she'd thought, forgetting the century in which she now found herself. Now, though, it finally came home to her, very powerfully and very clearly, that his buttons were real ivory, that an actual, living elephant had died to provide them. The momentary sense of outrage she felt disappeared almost immediately as she remembered what the machines had done to the world. The entire natural world had been restored. There were probably millions, literally millions, of elephants on several continents around the world. Killing one, or fifty, for ivory meant as little as killing a cow for leather.

Finally, she slung her leather drawstring purse over her shoulder. It had been meant to be held in one hand, but twenty first century life had left Jane used to having both hands free and so she'd sewn a long leather strap to it. It had drawn a great many astonished and slightly disapproving glances from the city's middle class women the first few times she'd gone out with it, but just recently she'd seen other women copying her, all with self conscious, slightly embarrassed smiles on their faces when they'd seen her. It amused her that she might be responsible for a new fashion craze about to sweep through the city and she wondered whether the new style of purse would end up being named after her.

Finally dressed for a British winter, she allowed Philip to lead the way through the building back to the entrance. He stood aside to allow her to exit first, then followed her through, closing the door and locking it, after which he hung the large, brass key around his neck by its chain and tucked it down inside his shirt.

The air was sharp and fresh, but there was barely any wind and Jane felt comfortably warm inside her several layers of undergarments. A light dusting of overnight snow was starting to melt where it hadn't already been crushed by feet and carriage wheels. Jane stared down at it in wonder and fascination. Snow! An almost mythical weather phenomenon back in her day. It had almost vanished from all but the most extreme polar regions as global warming had kicked in, raising sea levels and flooding the world's coastal cities. As she stared, more flakes began to drift lazily down. She watched them float before her eyes, almost hypnotised with delight, as Philip took her arm and led her along the busy street towards the gate in Harper's Wall and the large grassy mound that stood beside it.

"In centuries past," said Philip as they walked the road that circled the mound, "it used to be the tradition for anyone passing through the gate to drop some small morsel of food down through that hole there." He indicated a monolith, a pillar of stone about two metres high, that stood on the lawn of neatly trimmed grass surrounding and covering the mound. It had a wide slot near the top leading into the monolith's hollow interior. There were words carved above it. May the memory of the victorious dead never fade.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

"Didn't matter what," Philip continued. "A small piece of bread. A bit of pie crust. Something like that."

"Why?" asked Jane, staring curiously as they passed it by.

"That wall used to be the city's main outer wall, back when it was much smaller. Just a large town. This mound is a Hill of Slain. People who died defending the town from orcs. Their bones are still down there, under the grass. The custom back then was to drop food down to them, as a sign of respect. Some people still do it."

"What happened to it?" asked Jane, staring at the monolith in morbid fascination. "Did it just rot down there, or what?"

"I imagine rats ate it. They'll get anywhere there's food."

"So the rats..." Jane shivered in macabre horror, and with fascination as well, she was surprised to find. "Did they eat the... The bodies? The dead people buried down there? Did they eat them as well?"

Philip stared at her strangely. "The honoured dead are cremated before they're interred," he said. "You know that. Everyone knows that. There's nothing left but bones for the rats to eat."

"Yes, of course," said Jane, suddenly alarmed. Had she given herself away with her ignorance? "There's no Hill of Slain where I lived. It's a new town. Too young ever to have been attacked by orcs." She forced herself not to look at Philip to see how he received the hastily conceived lie.

She looked off to the left, where a crowd of people seemed to be forming. Voices were being raised in anger, easily audible in the cold, still air despite the distance. "Agitators," said Philip, grimacing with disgust. "We may be about to be attacked by orcs and they decide this is the perfect time to air their grievances. This is a time for all humans to stand together. Creating divisions among ourselves like that, at a time like this, is madness!"

Jane remembered what Loach had told her about Randall's strategy. "I think they're angry that the nobility don't fight on the walls with everyone else," she said.

"The nobles organise the city's defense," replied Philip, still staring at the crowd. "They see that the walls are in good condition, that there's a good store of food laid in, that the militias are trained, ready and well armed. One noble does more to defend the city than a dozen sweaty muscleheads."

"But once the walls are rebuilt and the food stores are full and the men are trained, they could join them on the walls," suggested Jane. "As a sign of solidarity."

"A sign of what?" said Philip, frowning at the unfamiliar word.

"You know. That we're all in this together, that sort of thing. If the orcs break in they'll kill everyone, including the nobles, so it'd be in their own interests to help defend the city."

"But some of them might be killed!"

"Then they would join the other victorious dead in the Hill of Slain."

Philip stared at her. "I can't tell if you're being serious or not. The bones of nobles mixed in with the bones of labourers and common tradesmen?"

"I'm sure people would be okay with them being interred in their own family mausoleum if that's what they wanted. The important thing would be that they shared the danger. Risked their lives with the common people."

Philip's face reddened as though some powerful emotion was building up inside him, but then he laughed. "You had me going there for a minute!" he said. "The way you can say the most outrageous things with a perfectly straight face! For a moment there I thought you were being serious!"

I was being serious, Jane thought, but she made herself laugh back as if he was right, as if she had been playing a joke on him. Pressing the point would only result in her getting thrown in prison as an agitator or in a lunatic asylum as a madwoman, and she was suddenly sure that Philip would hand her over to the authorities in a heartbeat if he suspected her of either. As far as he was concerned, as far as everyone in the upper classes was concerned, their privileged positions were the right and proper way of things. If any social change were to take place, she thought, it would probably take centuries and wouldn't come about as a result of one woman asking the wrong kind of questions.

They passed through the gate in Harper's Wall, nodding their heads to the guards on duty as they went, and found themselves in a wide, tree lined street bordered by neatly tended grass and carefully pruned shrubs. Some of the gardens had ponds with fountains while others had beds of bright, colourful flowers and marble statues. The houses themselves were set back from the roads and rose to three storeys, some with round towers that rose another storey into the sky. Philip laughed sardonically at the sight of them. "Everyone has to have a round tower these days," he said. "VIX only knows what they actually use them for. They're far too small to have any actual useful space inside them. A study, perhaps. A small office for the man of the house to do his paperwork in after he's climbed the narrow spiral staircase. That would be my guess."

"Your house doesn't have a round tower then?" asked Jane innocently.

"VIX forbid. The day we become slaves to fashion, that's the day I go to my grave."

"And not in the Hill of Slain," said Jane with a wicked smile. Philip laughed and held her arm tighter.

Jane thought he might take her to see his house, but he took her to a park instead. A large area of grassland with trees and wooden benches, the whole thing surrounded by a metal railed fence. Philip took her to one of the benches and they sat on it, which immediately summoned a flock of pigeons to land in front of them, cooing and staring up at them as they waited for the expected breadcrumbs. When no food was forthcoming, though, most of them drifted away in search of better luck elsewhere, leaving just one or two who still felt lucky.

"If we do come under seige and food runs low, there's supposed to be good eating on pigeons," she said. "One good meal on each bird at least."

She'd meant it half as a joke but Philip nodded thoughtfully. "I wouldn't worry about it," he said. "We'll be okay here, in the Noble District. We have our own food supplies laid in. We can let the commoners have the pigeons."

Jane carefully kept her feelings from showing on her face. I come from a privileged lifestyle, she thought. Was I like that, back in my old life? She'd never really thought about how the great majority of the human race had lived, back in the late twenty first century. Not until she'd met Emily and heard her berating Randall and Loach on what mankind had done to the planet. Billions breathing polluted air, drinking tainted water and having nothing to eat but soya and algae grown in vats. All while she, Jane, had breathed clean, filtered air and enjoyed real meat that had once been living animals. She felt herself growing sick with guilt. What had God thought of her, back then? She had so much to atone for!

"Aren't you worried that the common people might try to break into the Noble District?" she asked. "If they're starving and they know that we have food..."

"There'll be a wall between them and us," Philip reminded her. "A wall designed to keep orcs out. All we'll have to do is sit tight until the army arrives."

"But who'll be defending the walls? Nobles don't fight, remember? The people defending the walls will be the very people who want to take our food."

"The wall will be defended by the army. There are a thousand professional soldiers in the city, and their loyalty is to the people who pay them."

"And what if the soldiers have all been killed by the orcs?"

Philip reached over to take her hand. Jane resisted an urge to pull her hand out of his grasp. All of a sudden she had nothing but revulsion for this man. She tensed up and endured the feel of his fingers curling around her own. "Jane darling, you're worrying about nothing. We've been fighting the orcs for a thousand years. Every city in Saxony, every city in the world, has been in this position before. The orcs are the only danger. The common people see them as the enemy, not us. The army will be here before famine becomes a problem, and if they're defeated then the orcs will break in and kill us all before hunger becomes a problem." He gave her fingers a squeeze. "So you see? Nothing to worry about."

"Nothing to worry about," agreed Jane. "I'm sorry, my hands are cold. I need to put on my gloves."

Philip nodded and released her hand.