What?
“And you set up the supply line across the Gate.”
That has nothing to do with—
“You keep track of everything. You know how many men we have, how much food, how many muskets. You know how long it should have taken the palace to gain word of our approach. And how long it should take the royal army to prepare a response.”
The deadline for the latter had been three days ago—a fact as smothering as the canvas. He couldn’t be what she needed. Had tried for two years to convince himself that if he stayed at her side, loyalty would be enough. But he had reached the limit of his abilities. “I can’t serve on this council,” he said.
“Why not?” she demanded.
“Aurelia …” he stumbled. They had never discussed the disparity between them. “I’m below you.”
“No one is below me.”
He didn’t need her to be gracious now. He needed her to face reality. “I am no one.”
“Robert, that is the largest pile of horse dung—”
“You’re the leader!” he found himself shouting. “Of this mission. Of this country!” The quick arch of a sketched slope had driven the patience from his chest. “And I can’t …” He struggled for breath. “I can’t live up to that!”
She stumbled aside as though she had been pushed.
He shoved apart the canvas, breathed in the midmorning light. And fled.
Into vaguely organized chaos. Gone were the aspiring settlers and the white sails of frontier-bound wagons that usually filled this basin—a hoofprint-shape valley between the high curving rim of the Asyan and the departing sweep of the Fallchutes River. The migration north had halted in the face of war. Instead Aurelia’s forces clogged the basin, each region’s representatives divided ad hoc and then divided again: the tents of the Fortress, in rows; the Valshone, a black swath; the desert shelters, a tight circle beyond view at Robert’s back—on the opposite side of the walled fort. And the frontiersmen, without canvas, impossible to find.
Smoke billowed from the designated training area by the river’s edge.
Robert headed toward it, through a shifting landscape of swarming masculinity. Men hauling water, digging latrines, hacking thistles. Men cutting hides, mending clothes, cleaning weapons. Men tossing dice, shuffling cards, pulling teeth. Men hauling rocks for no clear reason other than to keep busy.
Crack! The sulfurous scent of gunpowder sharpened Robert’s senses.
A crowd blocked his view. Onlookers who must have selected the novices’ training as the morning’s prime source of entertainment. Mocking tones in two languages and several dialects fired as he plunged into close quarters. Sweat, mildew, and animal fat emanated from clothes on the figures jostling for space. He squeezed through the rifle slings and buckskin-clad elbows of a squad of frontier marksmen. Then at last emerged at the front of the throng.
“Prime and load,” a commanding voice battled to be heard over the raucous crowd. “Handle cartridge.”
A row of semiorganized men loading muskets stood facing the river. Robert’s gaze swept a quick search of the line. To find Thomas. Furrows creased the man’s forehead, scarlet coloring his face and throat to his open neckline, though it was impossible to know whether the bright shade was the result of drilling in the heat or the scrutiny behind him.
“Make ready.”
The former spy lifted his musket.
“Present.”
The weapon shifted to firing position.
“Fire!”
Shouts from the audience rivaled the noise of the muskets.
Robert closed his eyes. Nausea from the smoke swam in his stomach, the feeling heightened by the throng’s disorder and crass insults. He knew the frontiersmen lacked a head of command, but they clearly were not the only ones in need of discipline. If these men had served in the royal army, every last member of the crowd would have been flogged.
The present officer declined to fight the battle. “Dismissed!” he called, ignoring the jeers that sailed back in response.
Robert shouted the name of the former spy turned private.
Thomas turned, raised a hand, and broke ranks. “Vantauge,” he said loud enough to be heard over the subsiding jeers. “I don’t suppose”—he shoved his musket into Robert’s hand—“you could train me to hit something when I fire this?”
Robert’s grip tightened on the stock. He’d never fired a weapon with a smooth-bored barrel. Never had cause.
“It’s a musket,” scoffed one of the marksmen. “Aim ain’t part of its definition.” He lifted a rifle. “Fer that you need one of these.”
Robert had owned a rifle. Knew he could fire one. He knew how to hunt.
But in the smoke of battle, no one had time to reload a rifled barrel. And no one at the back of the ranks would have the vision to sight a line of fire. Including the frontier marksmen. Something Robert hadn’t had the wisdom to bring to anyone’s attention during the council meeting. “I’ve never fired a musket,” he admitted.
Thomas held out a cartridge. “You’re in luck.”
Don’t think. Just load and fire. Prove this is where you belong. Robert grabbed the cartridge, tore the paper with his teeth, and pulled the weapon’s hammer. He sensed the men moving away, but they were irrelevant; his only distraction was himself. There was no patch to tighten the bullet. No need to measure the powder. He poured it in, first to the frizzen, then the muzzle. Inserted the lead ball and paper wadding. Rammed the contents down, lifted the musket. And …
Envisioned his dead cousin standing before him. Chris’s mocking eyes. His smirk. Absent of laughter. The young man who had died for folly. For Melony. For love.
Because Robert had not been wise enough to find another way.
The sole purpose of a musket is to kill. He lowered the weapon without firing.
Murmurs and smothered laughter escaped behind turned heads. His chest constricted. He had been lying to himself, thinking he could belong among these men any more than he had among the desert warriors. I don’t belong anywhere. With any of them.
The early morning’s conversation had made Robert feel out of place in the leaders’ tent. Now that same discussion made him feel wrong here. It would do no good to express his fears and confusion about battle strategy to these men. They had more pressing concerns. Like whether a weapon would fire at all, even when its trigger was pulled.
Stay together, Robert wanted to say to the men. Support each other. Remember your lives depend on one another.
But would the frontiersmen be together in battle? Or would they all be divided up among the leaders who had dismissed them? The marksmen could ride, he thought. A few still had a mount, and those would be placed with the Oracle. Were they prepared for that? Would they be able to keep up with the desert warriors? Able to follow along even though they couldn’t understand the language in which orders would be relayed?
What do I know about battle? At least these men have fought in one.
“The fight,” Robert said, returning the musket to its owner, “won’t be won with weapons.”
This time the laughter around him was openly derisive. “Pretty hard to win a battle without ’em,” one man scoffed, cocking his rifle for effect. Marksmen pounded him on the shoulders, then started shoving, trading insults. A rim of Valshone now skirted the jostling frontiersmen.
“It’ll be won with men,” Robert said. “And the royal army will have more of them. Better equipped. Better trained. Better organized. You go into any situation assuming that. Prepared to survive.”
The shoving halted.
“You survive,” he continued, “you win. The rest doesn’t matter.”
“Did Her Majesty teach you that in her tent?” The sarcastic voice came from among the Valshone.
“She’s alive,” Robert answered. “She’s put her life in your hands for Tyralt. You fail, she dies.” They were the words he’d told himself. Words he had lived with for over two years. Since he had faced Chris in the
arena. That single sword fight had engulfed an entire country.
The men throughout the crowd straightened, their weapons now tight against their shoulders. “We’ll defend her,” a man said.
Robert nodded. “I believe you will.”
And how will I defend her?
He turned and fled along the riverbank. The trampled earth blurred beneath him. His thoughts plunged into the river. The water here was smooth, wide, deceptive. How easy it would be to float downstream and let the Fallchutes carry him away. Until it tore him apart on the rapids.
“Vantauge!” Thomas’s voice called from behind him.
But Robert was already caught in the mental current. What purpose can I serve, marching to war, when I haven’t the strength to kill?
The voice, joined by jogging steps, drew closer. “I had faulty judgment.”
I’m the one without judgment.
The former spy arrived at Robert’s right elbow, the soldier’s face still red, his breathing less than steady. His unfired musket swung as though part of his left hand. “You and Chris, you were close?”
How had Thomas known about the vision in front of the musket? But the story of the duel was common knowledge. And Daria could not be trusted to keep her insights from her husband.
“He was my cousin,” Robert said.
“But you don’t talk about him?”
No. He quickened his pace. He had spoken about the guilt and death, but since that loss, he had never really spoken about his cousin. About all the hours—years—the two of them had spent side by side, pushing one another. Chris’s teasing, taunting voice pulling Robert from his dull reality. His cousin’s knack for trouble, a talent honed from a lifetime of being secondary on his father’s list of priorities. Chris’s intelligence and quick wit, testing knowledge and boundaries in ways his teachers had failed to value. Because Chris questioned everything: orders, morals, homework. He had been driven to avoid work rather than embrace it.
The key, Robert knew, was to tell his cousin that he could not do something.
To assert that perhaps Robert could do it better.
Chris had always been willing to prove him wrong. Especially in the practice yard.
“He had a reputation,” Thomas interrupted, “for being one of the best swordsmen in Tyralt.”
And only then did Robert realize he had been talking aloud, about his cousin’s strengths and failures. He swerved around the root system of a giant, fallen spruce. Its branches were immersed in the river, the tree’s trunk angled upward.
The former spy swerved as well, refusing to be shaken from his topic. “I saw your cousin duel for sport once. His opponent was fortunate to limp away.” Thomas’s gaze fell to the sword at Robert’s hip. “If you defeated Christopher Vantauge, you must be exceptional.”
The image of Aurelia, crumpled on the ground in the palace arena, slammed into Robert’s consciousness. “I had more to lose.”
“I doubt that,” Thomas said, stepping in front of his companion. “I think it’s more likely he had a fault in judgment, as I did this morning.” The soldier’s weapon shifted to his other hand. “I shouldn’t have pushed you to fire the musket. I’d heard the rumors claiming you wouldn’t touch a weapon, and I … foolishly thought you needed support. You realize”—the former spy planted his feet, gray eyes direct—“you were the only one of us in that council meeting this morning.”
Robert looked away and found his gaze scaling a concave wall of eroded earth. Slanting spruce leaned dangerously from an overhang at the height of the embankment. He had reached the end of camp.
“The rest of that council,” Thomas continued, “they were all born to their positions. You’re the only one in that tent speaking for the common people of Tyralt.”
How had this dialogue become about the war council?
“Aurelia speaks for you,” Robert said. I’m the one who didn’t say anything.
“Does she?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure?” Thomas questioned. “Are you certain she’s speaking for us and not her own power?”
Robert spun back to face the sea of canvas tents. “She returned because of the people of Tyralt. She’s risking her life—”
“Our lives.” Thomas stepped to his side.
“You enlisted,” Robert pointed out.
“I chose to fight for the liberty of Tyralt.”
“The revolution and following Aurelia are the same. You chose to follow her.”
Thomas’s eyes measured his. “She’s not the one we followed.”
Of course they had! They hadn’t followed Lord Lester. He would still have been guzzling his sorrow if she had not confronted him. “Aurelia is the leader of this mission.”
“Has she given you her virtue?”
Anger swelled within Robert’s chest. This man had no right—
“Because if she has,” Thomas continued, “that means something. If she’s given you her virtue, then she’s forfeited her claim on the throne and she means what she says. If not, then—”
Politics! All this man cared about was politics!
There had been a dangerous, passionate night between Robert and Aurelia in the desert two years ago; he had not been the one, then, with the strength to draw the line. But he could draw one now.
He clenched the hilt at his hip. “Walk away, Thomas.”
The soldier dropped a glance to the scabbard, nodded, and strode off toward the tents. Then paused, looking back. “I hope you’re right about her. For your sake. And for ours.”
• • •
The morning’s conversations stayed in Robert’s mind all afternoon, no matter how hard he tried to lose himself in the task of checking wagons for soundness. Lord Lester’s battle plans, Aurelia’s expectations, the chaos among the men, Thomas’s assertion that Robert was supposed to speak for them: the words poured through cracked wood, pounded with every thud of a hammer, screeched with the pull of every nail. Phrases acted like tangled harness, knotting and looping within his head. By dusk, his sense of control had deteriorated to the point at which he could not bear the thought of joining a campfire.
Instead he left the crowded basin, hiked up to its rim, and plunged into the forest in a blind attempt to unsnarl his mind. The day’s arguments refused to release him, especially the final one. Because Robert had argued that to support Aurelia and the revolution were the same. And he had believed it.
When had that happened? And which was he guiltier of failing to defend?
Dusk deepened beneath the branches of blue-green spruce. Robert pushed away his questions and scanned the forest floor for a safe place to build a fire. He found a spot in the form of a deep indentation that marked a raised root system. But any fallen wood here, at the basin’s rim, had already been scavenged. He settled for stripping branches from a tree and used his own tinder—a rat’s nest he had stored away. The green wood all but refused to burn.
Resigned to the weak flame, he seated himself close, reached into his pack for pemmican, and began to gnaw on the mix of dried venison and berries. His thoughts returned to the morning’s council meeting: the battle plans, the dismissal of the frontiersmen, the slope. The intensity on Aurelia’s face. He had seen that dark look too often to believe their argument was finished.
Perhaps he would sleep rough.
“You know, boy,” Lord Lester’s voice came out of the darkness, “if you hurt my stepdaughter, I will have you hung by your toenails until you wish you had died on a rack.”
Curse it. Branches rustled from behind, and Robert flayed himself for letting his thoughts undermine his survival skills. “I doubt,” he rallied, “that Aurelia would think you know her well enough to merit making a threat on her behalf.”
“Nonetheless, the threat is valid.” Her stepfather emerged, stomped his way around the fire, and snorted, no doubt at the paltry flame. Then he eased his large bulk down to a sitting position on the ground. “Rumor has it you had a noteworthy conversation with som
e of the men today.”
Was he here to deride Robert about his refusal to wield a weapon? Don’t fool yourself. He’s here because of her.
Lord Lester lifted a green stick from the largely nonburning pile. He spoke again. “Thought I might find you among the frontiersmen.”
“I’m not one of them.” Robert had accepted that much.
“No,” the general stated. “A leader can’t be one of his own men.”
Robert felt his chest lock. He was not a leader! Why must every conversation today hinge on his weaknesses? He couldn’t fire a musket. He lacked the knowledge to contribute to a council meeting. He had not even been brave enough to ask questions. “There’s a group of frontier marksmen,” he said, hoping to correct at least one error. “They can hit a moving target at three hundred yards. Those men will be wasted at the back of our forces.”
The general tilted the green stick into the flame. “Might have to change that then.”
Robert breathed.
“Any other pressing thoughts?” asked Lord Lester, stirring the fire without success.
A question from the meeting burst forth: “How will the frontiersmen understand commands if they’re assigned to the Oracle?”
“Drums.”
“The men of the desert and Darzai don’t use drums.”
His Lordship grunted. “They will now.”
“And the Valshone use whistles.”
Another grunt.
“I think most of the men have already learned the Valshone signals,” Robert said, then tried to explain. “There are only a handful and they correspond with Tyralian drum commands. But the Oracle’s men don’t fight with Tyralian military commands. Those desert riders, they’re fast and silent. They won’t be firing muskets. They took a ridge in the battle against Anthone that most forces their size would never have seized. I don’t think drums—”
“Son.” The harsh tone cut him off. “We can discuss drums tomorrow.” Lord Lester tossed the branch aside and heaved himself to his feet. “But at this moment, there’s a young woman alone in your tent—the only woman in this entire camp—and she ate supper by herself tonight. Can you explain that?”
Robert blinked. Aurelia never ate alone.
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