‘So he took over a few of them, as many as he could win through cunning and skill.’
Valiana pointed at the cliff-top. ‘But what about them? Why are they here?’
‘They’re the audience,’ I replied. ‘They’ve come to see how well the Magdan leads his troops, how much rokhan he gains for them.’
Brasti was still staring at the horde off in the distance. ‘You’re saying this is some kind of test?’
‘This is how Morn proves himself worthy of being the Warlord of all Avares,’ Kest said.
The more I thought about it, the more apparent Morn’s strategy became. After he’d won over his first warband, he’d doubtless challenged other Warlords, and used the skills we’d learned as Greatcoats to kill them in duels so he could take their warriors into his ever-growing army. But how far could you go with that? Eventually people would become wise to him and start uniting against him. So the second part of Morn’s plan must have been to strike a deal: if he could win Tristia for Avares, they would let him carve out a piece of it for his new country that would be led by magistrates – not to mention make him the first man to command all the warbands of Avares in a thousand years. Not a bad legacy.
‘I don’t understand,’ Brasti said. ‘He’s trying to invade the country with only seven thousand men? We could have brought – what—?’ He turned to Feltock.
‘Fifteen thousand, at least, if we had all the Dukes with us.’
‘Which is too big a risk of losing,’ Kest said.
‘He needed to take most of our forces off the board, so he put on that little show for us in Avares,’ I said, feeling sick at just how easily I’d been played. ‘He made us think he had us so overpowered we could never hope to fight back. And we brought that message back to Tristia.’
‘The Dukes,’ Valiana said, understanding. ‘They believed we were outnumbered, so they accepted the Magdan’s offer of armistice in exchange for their seceding from Tristia.’
‘Not the Magdan,’ I said. That had been an illusion too, a feint. There was no Magdan. ‘His name is Morn.’
‘What about the cannon?’ Brasti asked. ‘We saw dozens of them – and racks of Shan steel weapons!’
‘What we saw,’ Kest said, and his tone told me he was kicking himself, ‘were a few genuine weapons, no doubt secured at ruinous cost. The rest were likely fakes.’ He turned to me. ‘That cannon we used to escape? The one that wasn’t covered up? That may well have been the only functioning one they had.’
A shadow passed across Valiana’s features. ‘All we had to do was stay united. Had we simply kept the country together . . . Tristia could have survived . . .’
That son of a bitch had outmanoeuvred us at every step. You would have made an excellent First Cantor, Morn, if only you hadn’t turned out to be such an arrogant prick.
I sat down in the snow and looked at the enemy forces. Somewhere out there, Morn was sitting in his tent, polishing his sword and laughing his head off. The others were staring at me, wondering if I’d lost my mind.
‘Will I have a chance to speak to Morn?’ I asked Feltock. ‘You said there would be an exchange of threats or whatever. Will he be there?’
‘The Generals always meet. You can come if you want – but what will you say to him?’
‘I’m going to challenge him to a duel.’
Brasti groaned. ‘Please tell me that’s not your big plan – didn’t he kick your arse last time?’
‘That was in the mountains. I wasn’t ready for him.’
Kest looked troubled. ‘Would he even accept such a duel?’
‘Of course not,’ I said. ‘He’s too smart. Even though I think he believes he can take me, he’d never risk it. He’s got this all planned out far too well.’
‘Then what’s the point?’
I kept staring at the enemy. Ever since this had begun, I’d been letting others tell me that the world was shaped by politics, by economics, by military strategy – all things I didn’t understand. I’d believed them, and let myself be pulled into an arena in which I could never hope to compete. But I’d allowed myself to be deceived. This wasn’t a war between nations, nor a duel between rivals.
‘It’s a performance,’ I said, rising to my feet.
‘What?’ Brasti asked.
‘It’s a play. This whole mess? It’s a piece of theatre.’ I gestured around. ‘There’s the stage, and there are the players, even if they don’t know it.’ I raised my arm towards the cliff-top. ‘There’s the audience. That’s what this has been, right from the start.’
‘A performance,’ Brasti repeated. ‘Only instead of a round of applause and some coins, Morn wants the audience to give him two countries.’
‘Exactly.’
‘Well then, we’re good and buggered,’ Feltock said. He looked at me. ‘What’s wrong with his face?’
‘Oh, that’s what Falcio looks like when he smiling,’ Brasti explained.
‘I’d dearly like to know what there is to smile about,’ Feltock said.
‘You asked why I was going to challenge him to a duel he’ll never accept? Because while I might be rubbish at politics, I might not understand economics or military strategy – hells, I don’t even know much about the theatre. But stories? I’ve spent my entire life trying to live up to the tales our people tell. I know how stories work and I’m going to use that to take Morn apart, one piece at a time.’
‘They still have four times as many soldiers,’ General Feltock pointed out. ‘How exactly do you plan to defeat this “Morn”?’
‘Simple. I’m going to tell a better story than he can.’
CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN
The Ritual
It was not yet dawn when I got up. I knew what I had to do now; I just had no idea how I was going to do it. Morn and his force were waiting for the next movement in this strange dance; they were sitting there patiently: row upon row of warriors in heavy chainmail and thick furs. These men knew how it all worked. They’d been bred for it.
I might not understand war but that hadn’t stopped me from starting one. Now I had to end it.
‘They make an impressive sight, don’t they?’ Nehra asked, taking up position beside me.
I had quizzed her on all the Avarean rituals of war, but right now a different question was bothering me. ‘What stops them from attacking us right now?’ I asked.
‘Nobody sends their troops to fight in the dark.’
I knew that was true; I’d read it somewhere. ‘But why is that?’ I asked. ‘I mean, how is it worse for one side than the other to attack at night?’
‘War isn’t a street-brawl, Falcio. Generals don’t like uncertainty. Each engagement is carefully planned: the timing of your attacks, how best to use the terrain, how to deploy your units, when to advance, when to retreat.’
I stared at the bearded warriors across the gap. ‘You make it all sound so civilised.’
‘It’s far more than that for the Avareans. War is a spiritual practice to them. It has commandments, rituals . . .’
I didn’t understand – religion has never made much sense to me – but I did need to start making sense of their faith. ‘Tell me again about the Scorn.’
‘It’s not complicated, Falcio. The Scorn is the ritual challenge that precedes the first engagement. So each side chooses a warrior who will ride up to the enemy line, and walk their horse along the ranks. The enemy forces will be shouting and screaming at them, seeking to unnerve them. If they so much as flinch, the enemy will fall upon them, cutting them to pieces.’
‘I imagine not flinching takes a good deal of training.’
‘Avarean children practise the Scorn even before they learn how to hold a sword.’ She put a hand on my arm. ‘Falcio, if you don’t think you can do it . . .’
‘It can’t be me,’ I said, which surprised her. ‘Nothing I
do will impress the Avareans. Even though Morn defeated me in battle, he’ll have talked me up – he needs to convince them that I’m special somehow. So even if I do survive the Scorn, it won’t make them think any better of Tristians as a people.’
‘Kest has the most self-control,’ Nehra suggested. ‘He might even—’
‘Not Kest, either. He’s been the Saint of Swords. Morn will have spread that around, too.’
‘Then who?’
I turned and left her standing there, not because I meant to be mysterious, but because even saying the name out loud made me sick to my stomach. It wasn’t fair – but then, that was the difference between a duel and a war. In a duel, it’s only your own life you throw away, not someone else’s. But I had declared war and now I was going to have to get used to the idea of trading other people’s lives for some small chance at Tristia’s survival. That’s how I’d made my choice of who to send.
I might not understand war, but I know duelling better than any man alive.
*
‘First Cantor?’ she asked, sitting cross-legged on the ground, sharpening that idiotic rusted cutlass of hers with a whetstone and cloth, oblivious to the fact that her blade had no chance of ever piercing Avarean chainmail.
‘How old are you, Chalmers?’ I asked.
‘Eighteen.’
Eighteen years old. I wondered if she’d ever even kissed someone. Chalmers was young, guileless, and lousy with a blade. She wouldn’t last five seconds in the Scorn.
‘How did you become a Greatcoat, Chalmers?’
‘I told you before: the King appointed me. He named me the—’
‘Yes, but why? You couldn’t have been more than thirteen years old. I doubt you’d had much training in the law and it’s obvious it wasn’t for any skill with a blade. So why would King Paelis make you a Greatcoat?’
She put down the whetstone and laid the sword across her lap. ‘I used to spend all my time with my grandmother.’
‘The quartermaster.’
She nodded. ‘I liked the way she had to keep track of so many different things, find out why we had too few or too many of one item or another, who took them, and why.’ Chalmers smiled. ‘I really annoyed my grandmother, all my constant questions, so she started sending me out on these little missions: “Girl, there’s a half-wheel of cheese that’s gone missing from the food stores. Go find me the culprit!” or “Girl, there should be six hammers here but I count only five. Bring me the head of the man who has the sixth!”’
‘And did you?’
Chalmers lifted her chin just a hair. ‘Every time. Including the time when someone stole a small casket of elspeth leaves from the apothecary’s supply room. I followed every trace of that casket, every scrap of blue-green leaves through every tower and passage in the entire castle. It took me nearly eight weeks, but eventually I found the thief.’
‘Who was it?’ I asked, then the answer suddenly occurred to me. ‘Paelis? You caught the King stealing elspeth leaves?’
She nodded. ‘They’re mostly used to heal cuts, but apparently you can use them to create a paste that produces an intoxicating smoke.’
I laughed. The King had been absolutely shameless in his quest to find new and interesting ways to get himself drunk or addled. ‘And so he made you a Greatcoat?’
‘Not right then, no, but he asked how I’d found him out and when I explained it to him, he said to come see him when I came of age and he’d name me to the Greatcoats.’
‘But if you were only thirteen when he died—’
‘The night before the Dukes came for him, after he’d seen you and all the others, I went to see him. He wasn’t pleased to see me, but I said that if he was so damned determined to get himself killed then I would see him fulfil his promise to me first.’
‘And so he named you.’
She nodded. ‘I became the King’s Question that day.’ She rose and put her sword in its scabbard. ‘And before you make some snide comment, I’m as much a Greatcoat as you or Kest or Brasti or any of those others.’
‘Maybe more so,’ I said.
‘How dare you—! Wait, what—?’
She was so young . . . so damned young. And yet, what had Aline said to me? In an unjust country we are all nothing but victims, and the best we can hope for is one chance to prove ourselves, to turn our death into a sacrifice for what we believe in rather than a fate that was set upon us.
‘Greatcoat, report,’ I said.
She straightened herself before me. ‘My name is Chalmers, the King’s Question,’ she said.
‘And mine is Falcio val Mond, First Cantor of the Greatcoats, once called the King’s Heart. Chalmers, I have a mission for you.’
CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT
The Scorn
The chill air bit through both the leather and the inner lining of my coat. The breath leaving my mouth took the form of pale clouds. It wasn’t yet full winter and I’d been in colder places and times, so it was strange to me that I felt so uncomfortable. I wondered if perhaps the Avareans had some kind of magic at their disposal that froze the blood of their enemies, or if it was simply that moments such as these resist any sense of warmth.
I hate magic, but I think I hate war much more.
The crunch of footsteps in the snow drifted towards me, two sets of them. One strode, angrily, the other was quieter, more precise. Apparently Brasti and Kest had heard about the Scorn.
‘Are you out of your fucking mind?’ Brasti demanded.
‘Probably,’ I conceded.
He and Kest came alongside me. ‘You’re sending an eighteen-year-old girl who doesn’t even have a proper greatcoat to be torn to pieces by a bunch of fucking barbarians whose only method of population control probably comes from eating their own young!’
‘There’s no other way.’
‘You could go yourself – or send Kest, or hells, if you have to, send me. I’ll die for your stupid cause if that’s what it takes.’
‘It won’t work if it’s one of the three of us.’
His eyes narrowed. ‘What won’t work?’
I didn’t answer. I found the language of war too bitter on my tongue.
Kest understood, of course. ‘You want to show the Avareans who we are,’ he said softly.
‘Except they value strength!’ Brasti shouted, far too close to my ear. ‘You’re sending the weakest among us – even Valiana had more training with a sword when she took up the coat!’
‘That’s why he’s doing it,’ Kest said. He could sense my discomfort and so he spoke for me, to shield me from even that well-deserved pain. ‘Nothing about us will impress them except our willingness to fight.’
Brasti stood in front of me. ‘So you’re sending her to die in the hope that a bunch of piss-drinking warriors admire us for it?’
‘I don’t care what the Avareans think.’
‘Please, Falcio, tell me you haven’t fooled yourself into believing you can make the Magdan put a stop to this by showing him just how courageous Chalmers is?’
‘I don’t care what he thinks either.’
‘Then . . . oh, you bloody fool.’
‘It’s the only play,’ I said.
Brasti shook his head. ‘Damn you, Falcio. Damn you and damn the King for this idiotic dream of yours. They won’t change sides. They won’t take down the Magdan for us.’
‘I don’t expect them to.’
‘Then what—?’
I couldn’t stand it any more, the pecking, scolding tone in his voice that was so close to the one in my head. I grabbed him by the collar of his coat and growled, ‘It’s all I have left, Brasti – these small, petty gambits. You seriously think I have any faith in my fellow Greatcoats any more? They walked away from the King’s dream! They abandoned the missions he gave them, and the oaths they swore!’
Brasti pushed me off of him. ‘Then what good will sacrificing Chalmers do?’
For all my anger, I couldn’t answer, so Kest did it for me. ‘It will slow them down.’
Brasti turned to face him. ‘Slow them down?’
‘Even if they’ve turned against us, watching Chalmers – someone near the age when most of us took up our coats – will give them pause. When the fight comes, it will make them question themselves and, if we are very lucky, it will make them hesitate, just a little.’
‘So you agree?’ I asked.
Kest shook his head. ‘No. I understand, but that’s not the same thing. Falcio, you’re still thinking like a duellist. This is war. When the battle begins, they won’t be thinking of anything except the chaos and bloodshed all around them. They will fight on instinct.’
‘Maybe,’ I conceded. ‘But maybe you’re wrong.’
‘These are poor odds on which to bet a young woman’s life.’
A bitter laugh came out from somewhere deep inside me. ‘Is that what you think? A poor bet? Kest, once the fight starts, she’ll be there, in the midst of it. She’s rubbish with a blade and she has no experience with war. She’ll die before the first day is out. I’m just trying to give her one chance to die for something that matters.’
Kest and Brasti just stood there, looking at me. I knew they were trying to gauge whether I’d lost my mind or not.
Finally Kest said, ‘It is a cold logic that’s guiding you, Falcio.’
‘Look around,’ I said, turning to set down the path from the hill to where Chalmers would ride to her death. ‘It’s a cold fucking country.’
*
The Avareans sent their warrior first. He was a broad-chested, broad-shouldered young man riding a heavy warhorse covered by ring mail, though he himself was shirtless, and sporting half a dozen red cuts on his skin. We had watched from a distance as a dozen Avareans had apparently fought each other for the privilege of riding the Scorn. They are a strange people.
‘You sure about this?’ Feltock asked, watching along with me.
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