Captive Prince, Volume 2

by C. S. Pacat

Laurent said, ‘I remember. You don’t like him. And, of course, he out-captained you on the field. I imagine you like that even less.’

  ‘You’ll never get inside Ravenel,’ Enguerran said, flatly. ‘Guion made it through your lines with his retinue. He’s riding for Ravenel right now, to warn them you are coming.’

  ‘I don’t think he is. I think he’s riding to Fortaine, so he can lick his wounds in private, without my uncle and I forcing him to make any uncomfortable choices.’

  ‘You’re lying. Why would he withdraw to Fortaine, when he has a chance to defeat you here?’

  ‘Because I have his son,’ said Laurent.

  Enguerran’s eyes flew to Laurent’s face.

  ‘Yes. Aimeric. Trussed and tied and spewing pretty venom.’

  ‘I see. So you need me to get inside Ravenel. That is the real reason I am alive. You expect me to betray the people I have served for ten years.’

  ‘To get inside Ravenel? My dear Enguerran, I’m afraid you are quite mistaken.’

  Laurent’s gaze travelled over Enguerran again, his blue eyes cold.

  ‘I don’t need you,’ said Laurent. ‘I just need your clothes.’

  * * *

  That was how they would get into Ravenel: disguised, in foreign clothing.

  From the beginning, there was a sense of unreality about it, hefting Enguerran’s shoulderpiece, flexing his hand in Enguerran’s gauntlet. Damen stood, and the cape swirled.

  Not everyone got armour that fit, but they had rescued Touars’s banners and righted them, and the red cloth and helms were straight, and they could be mistaken for Touars’s troop from a distance of forty-six feet, which was the height of Ravenel’s walls.

  Rochert got a helmet with a feather in it. Lazar got the standard-bearer’s silks and gaudy tunic. As well as his red cape and his armour, Damen got Enguerran’s sword and his helm, which turned the world into a slit. Enguerran had the dubious honour of riding with them not (as he might have been) stripped to his undergarments like a plucked chicken, but bound to a horse and dressed in unobtrusive Veretian clothing.

  The men had just fought an action, but exhaustion had transformed into the kind of high spirits that came from the heady mix of victory, fatigue and adrenalin. This wayward adventure appealed to them. Or perhaps it was the idea of a new victory, satisfying because it would be of a different kind. First smash the Regent, then pull the wool over his eyes.

  Damen was repelled by the disguise. He had argued against it. The deception was wrong, the pretence of friendship. The traditional forms of warfare existed because they gave your opponent a fair chance.

  ‘This gives us a fair chance,’ Laurent had said.

  The brazen audacity of this was characteristic of Laurent, though dressing up his entire troop was on a different scale to walking into a small town inn with a sapphire in his ear, batting his lashes. It was one thing to disguise yourself, another to force your whole army to do it. Damen felt trapped by the ornate deception.

  Damen watched Lazar struggling into his tunic. He watched Rochert compare the size of his feather with that of one of the Patran men.

  His father, Damen knew, would not recognise today’s escapade as a military action, but would scorn it as dishonourable, unworthy of his son.

  His father would never have thought of taking Ravenel like this. Disguised. Without bloodshed. Before midday the next day.

  He wrapped the reins around his fist, dug his heels into his horse. They sailed in through the first set of gates, with Damen’s shoulderpiece winking. At the second set of gates, a soldier on the walls waved a banner from side to side, signalling the portcullis open, and at Damen’s order Lazar waggled their own banner around in answer, while Enguerran jerked (gagged) in the saddle.

  It should have felt daring, intoxicating, and he was dimly aware that the men were experiencing it like that—that they had enjoyed the long ride that he had hardly registered. As they passed through the second gates, the men just barely had their exhilaration strapped down under straight faces in the long drawn-out space between heartbeats, waiting for the whistle and thunk of crossbows that never came.

  As the heavy latticed iron beetled above their heads, Damen found himself wanting it, wanting disruption, a cry of outrage, or of challenge, wanting it as a release to this—feeling. Traitor. Stop. But none came.

  Of course it didn’t. Of course the men of Ravenel welcomed them, believing them to be friends. Of course they trusted in the face of a deception, leaving themselves wide open.

  He forced his mind to the task. He was not here to hesitate. He knew this fort. He knew its defences and its pitfalls. He wanted it locked down. As they breached the walls, he sent men to the battlements, to the storehouses, to the spiral staircases that gave access to the towers.

  The main force reached the courtyard. Laurent drove his horse up the steps and crested the dais, his golden head arrogantly bare, his men taking up the central position in the great hall behind him. No doubt now who they were, as blue pennants unfurled, and Touars’s banners were thrown aside. Laurent wheeled his horse, and its hooves rang on the smooth stone. He was fully exposed, a single bright figure at the mercy of any arrows pointing downwards from the battlements.

  There was a moment when any soldier of Ravenel might have cried out, Treachery! Sound the horn!

  But by the time that moment came, Damen had men everywhere, and if one of Ravenel’s soldier’s reached for a blade or a crossbow, there was a swordtip in place to persuade him to put it down. Blue surrounded red.

  Damen heard himself call in a ringing voice: ‘Lord Touars is defeated at Hellay. Ravenel is under the protection of the Crown Prince.’

  * * *

  It was not all bloodless. They encountered real fighting in the living quarters, the worst of it from the private guards of Touars’s advisor Hestal, who was not Veretian enough, thought Damen, to feign happiness at the change in power.

  It was a victory. He told himself that. The men were enjoying it fully, the classic arc of it: the swell of preparation, the cresting of the fight, and the breaking, the heady rush of conquest. Buoyed on high spirits and success, they swept into Ravenel, the taking of the fort an extension of the elation of victory at Hellay, the skirmishes in the halls easy matters to them. They could do anything.

  It was a battle won and a fort taken, a solid base secured, and Damen was alive, and facing his freedom for the first time in many months.

  Around him there was celebration, an outpouring of revelry, which he allowed because the men needed it. A boy was playing a pipe, and there was the sound of drums, and dancing. The men were pink-flushed and happy. Barrels were upended into a courtyard fountain, so that men could scoop wine out as they pleased. Lazar handed him a full tankard. It had a fly in it.

  Damen put down the tankard, after disposing of its contents onto the ground with a sharp movement of his hand. There was work to be done.

  He dispatched men to open the gates for the returning army: the injured first, the Patrans following, the Vaskians with their loot—nine horses on a string. He dispatched men to the storehouses and to the armoury to make inventories, and to the private quarters to offer reassurance to the residents.

  He dispatched men to take Touars’s nine-year-old son Thevenin and hold him under house arrest. Laurent was developing quite a collection of sons.

  Ravenel was the jewel of the Veretian border, and if he couldn’t take pleasure in the celebrations, he could ensure that it was well manned, with a good strategy for defence. He could ensure that Laurent would have a strong foundational base. He set up shifts to man the walls and the towers, assigning each man to his strength. He picked up the threads of Enguerran’s systems, and reimplemented them, or changed them to his own exacting standards, giving command duties to two men: Lazar from their own troop, and the best of Enguerran’s men, Guymar. He would have an infr
astructure in place. One Laurent could count on.

  The work was falling into place around him when he was called from giving orders on the battlements to report to Laurent.

  Inside the fort, the style was older, reminiscent of Chastillon, the ornate Veretian designs worked in curved iron and dark carved wood, without the overlays of gilt, ivory, mother of pearl. He was admitted to the inner rooms that Laurent had made his own, flame-lit and as richly furnished as his tent. The sounds of celebration were muffled into softness by the ancient stone walls. Laurent stood in the centre, his back partly to the door, a servant lifting the last piece of armour from his shoulders. Damen came through the doors.

  And stopped. Attending to Laurent’s armour had lately been his own duty. He felt a pressure in his chest; everything was familiar, from the pull of the straps, to the weight of the armour, the warmth of the shirt where it had been pressed beneath padding.

  Then Laurent turned and saw him, and the pressure in his chest grew like pain as Laurent greeted him, half-stripped and bright-eyed.

  ‘How do you like my fort?’

  ‘I like it. I wouldn’t mind seeing you with a few more,’ said Damen. ‘To the north.’

  He forced himself forward. Laurent swept him with a long, gleaming look.

  ‘If you didn’t fit Enguerran’s shoulderpiece, I was going to suggest you try the panoply off his horse.’

  ‘“I will take Guion”?’ said Damen.

  ‘Be fair. You won the battle before I could get to him. I thought I’d have half a chance, at least. Are all your conquests that decisive?’

  ‘Do things always work out as you plan?’

  ‘This time they did. This time everything did. You know, we just took an impregnable fort.’

  They were gazing at one another. Ravenel, the jewel of the Veretian border: a punishing ground fight at Hellay, and a piece of mad trickery in mismatched clothing.

  ‘I know,’ he said, helplessly.

  ‘It’s double the men I was anticipating. And ten times the supplies. Shall I be honest with you? I thought I’d be taking a defensive position—’

  ‘At Aquitart,’ said Damen. ‘You had it supplied for a siege.’ He heard, as if from a distance, that he spoke in his usual voice. ‘Ravenel’s a little more defensible. Just have your men check under the helms before they open the gates.’

  ‘All right,’ said Laurent. ‘You see? I’m learning to take your advice.’ He spoke with an unselfconscious little smile that was wholly new.

  Damen forced his gaze away. He thought of the work proceeding outside. The armoury was stocked, and more than stocked, meticulous rows of smooth metal and sharpened tips. Most of Touars’s men stationed in the fort had transferred their loyalty.

  The walls were manned, and the ordinances for defence had been laid out. The equipment was readied for use. The men knew their duty, and from storehouses to courtyard to great hall, the fort was prepared. He had made sure of that.

  He said, ‘What will you do next?’

  ‘Bathe,’ answered Laurent, in a tone that said he knew perfectly well what Damen had meant, ‘and change into something that’s not made of metal. You should do the same. I had the servants lay out some clothing for you that befits your new station. Very Veretian, you’ll hate it. I have something else for you as well.’

  He turned back in time to see Laurent move briefly to pick up a half-circle of metal from a small table by the wall. It felt like the slow push of a spear into his body, the awful unfolding inevitability of it, in front of servants, in this small, intimate room.

  ‘I didn’t have time to give this to you before the battle,’ said Laurent.

  He closed his eyes, opened them. He said, ‘Jord was your Captain through most of our march to the border.’

  ‘And you are my Captain now. That looks like it was close.’ Laurent’s gaze had shifted to his neck, where the collar was scarred from Touars’s blade; iron had bitten deep into the soft gold.

  ‘It was,’ said Damen, ‘close.’

  He swallowed down hard on what crawled in his throat, turning his head to one side. Laurent held the Captain’s badge of office. Damen had seen Laurent transfer it once before, from Govart to Jord. Laurent would have taken it from Jord.

  He still wore full armour, unlike Laurent, who stood before him, his yellow hair sweat-tendrilled from the fight. He could see the slight red imprints where Laurent’s armour had pressed through padding on his vulnerable skin. Breathing was a tight, painful thing.

  Laurent’s hands rose to his chest, finding the place where cape met metal. The pin under Laurent’s fingers pricked fabric, slid, then fit to the clasp.

  The doors to the room opened. Damen turned, unready.

  A swell of people were spilling into the room, bringing with them the jovial atmosphere from outside. The change was sudden. Damen’s heartbeat was at odds with it. Yet the mood of the newcomers was congruent with Laurent’s, if not his own. Damen had another tankard thrust into his hand.

  Unable to fight the tide of celebration, Damen was swept away by servants, by well-wishers. The last thing he heard was Laurent saying, ‘See to my Captain. Tonight he is to have anything that he asks for.’

  * * *

  Dancing and music wholly transformed the great hall. People in clusters laughed and clapped enthusiastically out of time with the music, rosily drunk because the wine had preceded the food, which was only now being brought.

  The kitchens had rallied. The cooks cooked, the attendants attended. Nervous at first over the change in occupancy, the household staff had settled, and duty was transforming into willingness. The Prince was a young hero, coined in gold; look at those eyelashes, look at that profile. The commons had always loved Laurent. If Lord Touars had hoped for the men and women of his fort to resist Laurent, he had wished in vain. It was more like the commons rolled over and waited to be rubbed on the belly.

  Damen entered, resisting the urge to tug on his sleeve. He had never been so overlaced. His new status meant an aristocrat’s clothing, which was harder to put on and take off. Dressing had taken almost an hour, and that was after bathing and all manner of attentions that had included trimming his hair. He had been forced to take reports and give orders over the heads of servants, while they meticulously attended to his laces. The last report from Guymar was what now had him scanning the crowd.

  He’d been told that the small retinue that had ridden in with the last of the Patrans was that of Torveld, Prince of Patras. Torveld was here accompanying his men, though he had not taken part in the fight.

  Damen moved through the hall, with Laurent’s men congratulating him on all sides, a slap on the back, a clasp of his shoulder. His eyes stayed fixed on the yellow head at the long table, so that it was almost a surprise when he found the knot of Patrans elsewhere in the room. The last time Damen had seen Torveld, he had been murmuring sweet nothings to Laurent on a darkened balcony, with the night flowers jasmine and frangipani blooming in the garden below. Damen had been half expecting to find him in intimate conversation with Laurent once again, but Torveld was with his own retinue, and when he saw Damen, he approached him.

  ‘Captain,’ said Torveld. ‘That is a title well earned.’

  They spoke about the Patran men, and about Ravenel’s defences. In the end, what Torveld said about his own presence here was brief:

  ‘My brother is not happy. I’m here against his wishes, because I have a personal stake in your campaign against the Regent. I wanted to face your Prince man to man, and tell him that much. But I will ride for Bazal tomorrow, and you will have no more help from Patras. I cannot act further against my brother’s orders. This is all I can give you.’

  ‘We are lucky the Prince’s messenger got through with his signet ring,’ Damen acknowledged.

  ‘What messenger?’ said Torveld.

  Damen thought the answe
r political circumspection, but then Torveld added, ‘The Prince approached me for men in Arles. I didn’t agree until I was six weeks out of the palace. As for my reasons, I think you must know them.’ He motioned for one of his retinue to come forward.

  Slender and graceful, one of the Patrans detached himself from the group by the wall, dropping to his knees in front of Damen, and kissing the floor by his feet, so that Damen’s view was of a tumble of curls, burnished honey-gold.

  ‘Rise,’ said Damen, in Akielon.

  Erasmus lifted his bowed head, but did not come up from his knees.

  ‘So humble? We’re the same rank.’

  ‘This slave kneels for a Captain.’

  ‘I’m a Captain through your help. I owe you a great deal.’

  Shyly, after a pause: ‘I told you that I would repay you. You did so much to help me in the palace. And . . .’ Erasmus hesitated, looking over at Torveld. When Torveld nodded that he should speak, he lifted his chin, uncharacteristically. ‘And I didn’t like the Regent. He burnt my leg.’

  Torveld gave him a proud look, and Erasmus flushed and made obeisance again with perfect form.

  Damen repressed another instinct to tell him to stand up. It was odd that the usual manners of his homeland should feel so strange to him. Perhaps it was just that he had spent several months in the company of pushy, forward pets and unpredictable Veretian free men. He looked at Erasmus, the demure limbs and the lowered lashes. He had bedded slaves like this, as pliant in bed as they were out of it. He remembered enjoying it, but the memory was distant, as though it belonged to someone else. Erasmus was pretty, he could see that. Erasmus, he recalled, had been trained for him. He would be obedient to every order, intuit every whim, willingly.

  Damen turned his eyes to Laurent.

  A picture of cool, difficult distance confronted him. Laurent sat in brief conversation, wrist balanced on the edge of the great table, fingertips resting on the base of a goblet. From the severe, straight-backed posture to the impersonal grace of his cupped yellow head; from his detached blue eyes to the arrogance of his cheekbones, Laurent was complicated and contradictory, and Damen could look nowhere else.