In the periphery of my vision, I saw dozens of pairs of eyes looking at me, waiting for me to deny it. They’d be waiting a long time.
‘Have you ever wondered why the King gave his daughter a commoner’s name?’ Morn waited for a moment then let out a barking laugh. ‘So this fool would protect her! That’s right: had he named her Elissa or Myrin, Tessa or Jadrine, the girl would never have survived Ganath Kalila in Rijou!’
I could see the muscles in Morn’s face clenched so tight his jaw looked as if it might crack from the strain. The raw outrage was so palpable that our own soldiers felt it – worse, I thought they were starting to share it. ‘But do you want to know the best part?’ Morn asked. ‘The part which will make every one of you drop your weapons right now and begin the long march home to your families?’
My own soldiers waited, staring at me, looking very much like they might soon turn from being an army to a lynch mob.
Morn dropped to his knees.
‘This,’ he said at last. ‘This is the greatest joke of all, because this is the one thing the Greatcoats are told never to do, the one thing your dead Queen said you should never do: kneel. Oh, everyone knows that the Greatcoats never kneel. But do you know why?’ Morn rose to his feet and bridged the distance between us until he was standing just inches away from me. ‘Because Falcio val Mond was on his knees when his wife was being raped and killed. Because that’s the one thing he can never allow himself to be again. Because of his cowardice on that day years ago, he will watch every one of you die without an ounce of remorse, knowing your loved ones are sure to follow. Just. So. Long. As. He. Never. Has. To. Kneel.’
Morn swung his hand back and for an instant I thought he was going to hit me, but then he squeezed his fist tighter and tighter until droplets of blood from the cut he’d made with his knife began to fall, staining the snow red. ‘I am one of you,’ he told the army. ‘And I regret that this is all the blood I can shed for you.’
He took three steps back and gestured for me to take my turn, without uttering another word.
None were needed.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO
The Funeral Oration
‘Aline,’ I said. ‘Her name was Aline.’
‘Falcio, don’t,’ Kest said, trying to pull me away. ‘Feltock can address the troops. You don’t have t—’
I shrugged off his hand. Kest sees the world in parries and thrusts, in calculation and miscalculation – and he’d just witnessed a catastrophic miscalculation on my part. I had underestimated Morn’s rhetorical skills.
The men and women of our army glared at me, their faces flushed with outrage and resentment, but most of all, with fear. Like any gifted demagogue, Morn had stoked the terror already in their hearts until it had become a blazing bonfire, and then offered them the means to rid themselves of it by giving them a target for their wrath: me.
‘Everything he said was true,’ I began. ‘Duke Yered came to our farm and he took my wife from me. His men killed her in a roadside tavern and all the while, I knelt in the dirt of our field, cowering, praying that she would come back to me.’
I looked at Kest, who was gazing at me with a mix of sympathy and confused impotence. There was no thrust to make here, no parry that could block the blow that had struck home long ago. ‘It’s odd . . . people talk about Aline’s murder as if it had happened to me, as if the worst thing that had taken place that day was that my wife was taken from me.’ I shook my head. ‘There stands poor Falcio val Mond. His wife was killed and now he’s lost.’ I looked back up at the rows upon rows of faces staring back. ‘Nothing happened to me. She was killed. Her life was taken.’
Unbidden, my legs carried me to stand before Morn. ‘This man came here to mock the death of my wife, and yet he never even said her name!’
Morn stared back at me impassively. Unconcerned. Unimpressed.
‘Say her name,’ I told him. ‘Say her fucking name.’
‘Aline,’ he said idly, a parent humouring a hysterical child in the midst of a temper tantrum.
I spun around and strode back to our line, stopping in front of a young man who held his spear in both hands as if he feared I were about to attack him. ‘Say her name,’ I said.
‘A . . . Aline,’ he stuttered.
I turned to the woman standing next to him. ‘Say her name.’
‘Aline.’
Unable to contain the pain Morn had so skilfully ignited any longer, I leaned back and gave voice to it, shouting at the cloudless sky above. ‘Her name was Aline!’
There was a deathly silence once the echoes had faded away. ‘There are no portraits of her,’ I said more quietly, ‘and most days I can barely remember what she looked like. Her voice . . . I’m not even sure if it was high-pitched or low any more. The feel of her skin, the scent of her hair . . . It’s all gone now. Everything about her is gone.’ I looked back at Morn. ‘Except her name.’
They stared at me, confused; their anger had faded into an obvious concern that I might well be losing my mind from grief. They weren’t far wrong. ‘King Paelis named his daughter after my wife. Was it to trick me into protecting her? Perhaps. Or maybe it was because of the countless hours I’d made him sit with me in his library, watching me get drunk on his wine while I told him about Aline, repeating the same stories over and over again, as if the only way I could keep her memory alive was to carve it into another’s heart.’ A small, humourless chuckle escaped my lips. ‘You know, the King never once met Aline, but he loved my wife almost as much as I did. I made sure of that.’
I gestured to Morn. ‘He’s right, you know: the Avareans are different from us. Tristians are farmers and labourers, crafters and merchants, liars and thieves. We are these things first, and only sometimes do we take up sword and spear to wage war. The Avareans are born to the blade. They are warriors first and everything else second.’
A shadow of a smile crossed Morn’s features. I was doing his work for him.
I turned back to the army. ‘Are you scared?’
Soldiers rarely admit to fear, even in the worst of circumstances, and yet a goodly number nodded.
‘Why did you bring us here?’ one of the men in the rear lines called out. ‘You said it yourself: we aren’t warriors. What is there for us to do here but die?’
Murmurs of agreement spread through the lines, a sea of pale faces trembling with fear. I glanced back at Morn, who was openly smiling now, although no doubt he was wondering what had come over me. He’d brought my troops to the very edge of breaking, taking away all the false confidence that comes from marching off to battle, singing brave songs and boasting to each other about their untried martial prowess. Now he watched, fascinated, as I took my own soldiers over the edge he’d so carefully led them to.
That was your first mistake, you bastard.
Ask any torturer – and I’ve known a few in my time – and they’ll tell you the secret to fear and pain is to measure it out in careful doses. Increase the victim’s sense of terror too much at once and you risk inuring them to your torments. My troops were so utterly consumed with fear and hopelessness now that had the Avarean commanders suddenly blown their horns and begun the charge to cut us down it would have been a huge relief.
Watch now, Morn. Watch and see the difference between you and me, between you and these people you thought you could rule.
‘We are the dead,’ I told them. ‘Soon, we will be forgotten. But do you want to know what’s worse than dying, worse than being forgotten?’ I pushed past the soldiers in the front lines until I reached the man who’d spoken earlier. ‘The person you love most in all the world? After tomorrow, they’re going to die. They’ll be forgotten, too.’
He looked back at me, his face pale, his eyes wide as that terrible thought burrowed into him.
‘Do you have someone you love back home?’ I asked.
He nodd
ed.
‘Give me their name.’
It took him a long time to answer, ‘Ludren.’
‘Speak up. I can’t hear you.’
‘Ludren,’ the soldier shouted.
‘What’s so special about this “Ludren”?’
‘He . . . he saved my life. Many times, actually. Even when we were boys, he . . .’
‘Would you see Ludren forgotten?’
His brow furrowed. ‘No.’
‘But who will remember Ludren after you’re dead? After everyone you know is dead?’
‘I . . .’
I turned and walked back to the front of the line. ‘When Tristia is gone, who will remember the names of those we loved, of those who made our lives worth living? Who will remember Ludren? Who will remember my wife? Who will remember the King’s daughter: the girl who could have saved this country from itself?’
I heard a sob, and then another, and more, coming from the rows and rows of soldiers. ‘What was her name?’ I asked. ‘I have forgotten it already.’
‘Aline,’ someone called out, then another, and another: ‘Aline. Aline.’
‘That’s right,’ I shouted, ‘Aline of Tristia. Some of you were at Castle Aramor when the God of Fear came to call, were you not? You’d come as pilgrims, begging for relief from despair when the Saints began to die. Some of you watched as that fourteen-year-old girl – what was her name again—?’
‘—Aline. Aline. Aline—!’
‘—she stood before him – the God of Fear himself – and she faced him down.’
‘It’s truth he speaks,’ a woman called out. ‘I was there. I saw what she did.’
‘Damned right she did!’ another soldier shouted, and soon people were cheering her name – ‘Aline! Queen Aline!’ – as if they’d forgotten she was dead.
I waited until the shouts died down before I spoke again. ‘Would you have her name be lost? Her tale unwritten?’
‘No!’ they yelled, now furious at the very suggestion. ‘NO!’
‘We are the dead,’ I shouted back, striding up the line. ‘We are the forgotten. But Aline’s name – the name of the girl who was everything that was best about this country – her name will not be forgotten!’
‘Aline! Aline!’
‘Do you know why?’
‘Aline! Aline! Aline!’
I turned and faced Morn, but I stared right past him to the thousands of soldiers on the other side of that field and with all the breath in my lungs shouted, ‘Because. I. Will. Not. Allow. Them. To. Forget. It!’
A rumbling was rising up in our troops, growing in strength until it practically vibrated the ground beneath our feet.
‘I may be a dead man, soon to be forgotten, but I will carry Aline’s name on my lips into battle tomorrow.’
‘Aline,’ they repeated, not shouting it now, but speaking it firmly, with unbreakable determination: no longer a name, an oath.
‘I will carry my wife’s name, too, just as each of you will carry the names of those you love best, those who must not be forgotten. Let those names be our battle-cries.’ I gestured to the Avareans. ‘Look at those warriors opposite. See how fierce and strong they are? They do not fear us. And yet from tomorrow until the day they die, those warriors will remember the names we spoke as their blades pierced our bodies. They will know the names of those for whom each of us fought and died. They will know the name of the Queen of Tristia.’
‘Aline! Aline! Aline!’
I looked up at the horde waiting there on that cliff-top a hundred feet above us. ‘And a hundred years from now, when the great-great-grandchildren of these so-called warriors see the name of an obscure little country that once knew songs and dance and love and loss, they will know what the word Tristia really means: it means a nation of heroes.’
The roaring cheers went on for a long, long time, and all the while Morn and I stood watching each other, listening to the sound of the soon-dead rise above fear, above even sorrow.
Only after I was done did Morn finally make the effort to smirk and say, ‘Not bad, Falcio. You must have just a bit of the Bardatti in you.’ As he turned to walk back to his lines, he motioned for me to follow him. ‘I suppose you’ll want to speak to my troops now.’
I remained where I was.
‘No need,’ I said. ‘I already did.’
CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE
The Dal Verteri
I slept unexpectedly well that night. Somehow Morn’s speech had brought me a strange kind of peace. He’d been right about so many things, not least that much of what I’d tried to accomplish had been done in a vain effort to make up for my cowardice the day Aline was taken. But while I’d long ago acknowledged that to myself, I realised that Morn had also been right about the reason for my obsession with the rule that a Greatcoat never kneels; I hadn’t known that.
But Morn had been an even bigger fool than I was, to believe I’d be shamed by those truths. I needed to make no apologies for trying to become the man Aline would have wanted me to be. We used to spend hours sitting in the dark at night, huddled under our covers like children, me telling Aline all the stories the Bardatti Bal Armidor had told me about the Greatcoats. ‘Well then, my darling,’ she’d say when she’d finally had enough of my rambling, ‘if it’s all so marvellous, then I suppose we’ll need to find a decent sword and a better coat.’
‘Then who would stay at the farm to protect you?’ I’d asked.
I couldn’t see in the dark, of course, but I knew she’d be smiling in that lopsided way of hers. ‘Me? What makes you think I’m letting you go off to be a Greatcoat when I’m clearly better suited to the role?’ She’d pat me on the cheek. ‘Do look after the goats while I’m away, dear.’
The sound of chuckling woke me, and it took me a moment to realise I was the one laughing.
‘Falcio?’ Ethalia asked, from where she sat a few feet away in the shadows. ‘Nehra’s called for us.’
As I wiped the blurriness from my eyes, she looked as if she’d been sitting there for a while. ‘You didn’t wake me.’
‘You were smiling in your sleep. I didn’t want to take that away from you.’
‘Come here,’ I said.
She got up and walked over, and she let me take her hand in mine, but then gave me a warning glance. ‘Falcio val Mond, if you so much as think of telling me to leave before the battle, I will set my Awe upon you with such force that even you won’t be able to resist it.’
‘How could I?’ I asked. ‘I am perpetually in awe of you.’
She gave me a small smile. ‘Sometimes you’re worse than Brasti.’
I rose and pulled her to me, revelling in the sensations of being close to her, and more, being unashamed of it. I had loved Aline: she had been my wife, and my guide, in life and in death, and I had tried my best to follow her example ever since. I would do so now, too. ‘You seem to be rather a silly woman,’ I told Ethalia. ‘I think a sensible husband might be in order.’
She made one of her eyebrows arch. I wished I could do that. ‘You will let me know when you find one for me, I hope? In the meantime, we’ve kept Nehra waiting long enough.’
She pulled me towards the entrance of the tent, but I held firm for a moment. When she turned and looked at me questioningly, I said, ‘I won’t ask you to leave, Ethalia. If you decide to fight . . . if this is where you choose to meet your end . . . then I’ll be next to you when Death comes, and he’ll have to answer to both of us.’
Ethalia placed her free hand behind my neck. ‘Falcio val Mond! Is the world coming to an end, or are you growing wiser with age?’ Before I could answer she pulled me close and pressed her lips to mine, a kiss so filled with hope that it left no room in me for despair.
‘Well, it’s about time,’ Rhyleis said.
Ethalia and I reluctantly separated. ‘Rhyleis,’ Et
halia sighed. ‘Do you follow us around for no better purpose than to—’
‘I do, in fact,’ she replied with a grin. ‘I will have my great love song from the two of you, even if I have to tie you both to the bed myself.’
‘That sounds much less romantic than you think it does,’ Ethalia said.
The young Bardatti tilted her head. ‘Really? I suppose I’ll have to keep practising. In the meantime, Nehra sent me to get you.’
‘She sent you?’ Ethalia asked.
‘Well, it is possible she actually sent someone else and specifically ordered me to stay away from Falcio, but she knows me well enough by now to realise that’s not going to happen.’
She led us outside and down the eastern slope of the hill. The moon was hanging low on the horizon, its dim light casting pale shadows in the snow of the nearly two hundred men and women waiting there. ‘Hello, Ethalia, First Cantor,’ Nehra said. ‘Falcio, it’s time you met the Dal Verteri.’
My eyes went first to my fellow Greatcoats: Kest, Brasti, Valiana, Mateo and most of the others from Castle Aramor were standing alongside those that Chalmers’ Scorn ride had brought back to us: twenty-one in all, as I’d ordered Antrim and Allister to keep half a dozen of ours in Aramor to protect King Filian. I’d read enough in between fencing and swordsmanship manuals to know that war was an excellent time for assassination attempts against monarchs.
Nehra’s Bardatti, next to them, held cloth-covered instruments of one kind or another: war drums, pipes and battle horns, even guitars like the one Nehra herself carried. I didn’t bother making any scathing remarks about the effectiveness of singing someone to death – it was clear from the way they were all glaring at Brasti he’d already got to it.
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