Cosca snatched it from the air and took a couple of practice swipes. ‘Fine steel, Colonel, I congratulate you on your choice of blades, if not of strategy.’
‘You were paid by both? To fight neither?’ Andiche was smiling ear to ear as he draped one arm around Cosca’s shoulders. ‘My old friend! Why didn’t you tell me? Damn, but it’s good to have you back!’
‘Are you sure?’ Cosca ran him smoothly through the chest with Rigrat’s sword, right to the polished hilt. Andiche’s eyes bulged, his mouth dropped open and he dragged in a great long wheeze, his pockmarked face twisted, trying to scream. But all that came out was a gentle cough.
Cosca leaned close. ‘You think a man can turn on me? Betray me? Give my chair to another for a few pieces of silver, then smile and be my friend? You mistake me, Andiche. Fatally. I may make men laugh, but I’m no clown.’
The mercenary’s coat glistened with dark blood, his trembling face had turned bright red, veins bulging in his neck. He clawed weakly at Cosca’s breastplate, bloody bubbles forming on his lips. Cosca let go the hilt, wiped his hand on Andiche’s sleeve and shoved him over. He fell on his side, spitted, gave a gentle groan and stopped moving.
‘Interesting.’ Ishri squatted over him. ‘I am rarely surprised. Surely Murcatto is the one who stole your chair. You let her go free, no?’
‘On reflection, I doubt the facts of my betrayal quite match the story. But in any case, a man can forgive all manner of faults in beautiful women that in ugly men he finds entirely beyond sufferance. And if there’s one thing I absolutely cannot abide, it’s disloyalty. You have to stick at something in your life.’
‘Disloyalty?’ screeched Rigrat, finally finding his voice. ‘You’ll pay for this, Cosca, you treacherous—’
Friendly’s knife thumped into his neck and out, blood showered across the floor of the tent and spattered the Musselian flag that Sazine had taken the day the Thousand Swords were formed.
Rigrat fell to his knees, one hand clutched to his throat, blood pouring down the sleeve of his jacket. He flopped forwards onto his face, trembled for a moment, then was still. A dark circle bloomed out through the material of the groundsheet and merged with the one already creeping from Andiche’s corpse.
‘Ah,’ said Cosca. He had been planning to ransom Rigrat back to his family. It did not seem likely now. ‘That was . . . ungracious of you, Friendly.’
‘Oh.’ The convict frowned at his bloody knife. ‘I thought . . . you know. Follow your lead. I was being first sergeant.’
‘Of course you were. I take all the blame myself. I should have been more specific. I have ever suffered from . . . unspecificity? Is that a word?’
Friendly shrugged. So did Ishri.
‘Well.’ Cosca scratched gently at his neck as he looked down at Rigrat’s body. ‘An annoying, pompous, swollen-headed man, from what I saw. But if those were capital crimes I daresay half the world would hang, and myself first to the gallows. Perhaps he had many fine qualities of which I was unaware. I’m sure his mother would say so. But this is a battle. Corpses are a sad inevitability.’ He crossed to the tent flap, took a moment to compose himself, then clawed it desperately aside. ‘Some help here! For pity’s sake, some help!’
He hurried back to Andiche’s body and squatted beside it, knelt one way and then another, found what he judged to be the most dramatic pose just as Sesaria burst into the tent.
‘God’s breath!’ as he saw the two corpses, Victus bundling in behind, eyes wide.
‘Andiche!’ Cosca gestured at Rigrat’s sword, still where he had left it. ‘Run through!’ He had observed that people often state the obvious when distressed.
‘Someone get a surgeon!’ roared Victus.
‘Or better yet a priest.’ Ishri swaggered across the tent towards them. ‘He’s dead.’
‘What happened?’
‘Colonel Rigrat stabbed him.’
‘Who the hell are you?’
‘Ishri.’
‘He was a great heart!’ Cosca gently touched Andiche’s staring-eyed, gape-mouthed, blood-spattered face. ‘A true friend. He stepped before the thrust.’
‘Andiche did?’ Sesaria did not look convinced.
‘He gave his life . . . to save mine.’ Cosca’s voice almost croaked away to nothing at the end, and he dashed a tear from the corner of his eye. ‘Thank the Fates Sergeant Friendly moved as quickly as he did or I’d have been done for too.’ He beat at Andiche’s chest, fist squelching on his warm, blood-soaked coat. ‘My fault! My fault! I blame myself!’
‘Why?’ snarled Victus, glaring down at Rigrat’s corpse. ‘I mean, why did this bastard do it?’
‘My fault!’ wailed Cosca. ‘I took money from Rogont to stay out of the battle!’
Sesaria and Victus exchanged a glance. ‘You took money . . . to stay out?’
‘A huge amount of money! There will be shares by seniority, of course.’ Cosca waved his hand as though it was a trifle now. ‘Danger pay for every man, in Gurkish gold.’
‘Gold?’ rumbled Sesaria, eyebrows going up as though Cosca had pronounced a magic word.
‘But I would sink it all in the ocean for one minute longer in my old friend’s company! To hear him speak again! To see him smile. But never more. Forever . . .’ Cosca swept off his hat, laid it gently over Andiche’s face and hung his head. ‘Silent.’
Victus cleared his throat. ‘How much gold are we talking about, exactly?’
‘A . . . huge . . . quantity.’ Cosca gave a shuddering sniff. ‘As much again as Orso paid us to fight on his behalf.’
‘Andiche dead. A heavy price to pay.’ But Sesaria looked as if he perceived the upside.
‘Too heavy a price. Far too heavy.’ Cosca slowly stood. ‘My friends . . . could you bring yourselves to make arrangements for the burial? I must observe the battle. We must stumble on. For him. There is one consolation, I suppose.’
‘The money?’ asked Victus.
Cosca slapped down a hand on each captain’s shoulder. ‘Thanks to my bargain we will not need to fight. Andiche will be the only casualty the Thousand Swords suffer today. You could say he died for all of us. Sergeant Friendly!’ And Cosca turned and pushed past into the bright sunlight. Ishri glided silently at his elbow.
‘Quite the performance,’ she murmured. ‘You really should have been an actor rather than a general.’
‘There’s not so much air between the two as you might imagine.’ Cosca walked to the captain general’s chair and leaned on the back, feeling suddenly tired and irritable. Considering the long years he had dreamed of taking revenge for Afieri, it was a disappointing pay-off. He was in terrible need of a drink, fumbled for Morveer’s flask, but it was empty. He frowned down into the valley. The Talinese were engaged in a desperate battle perhaps half a mile wide at the bank of the lower ford, waiting for help from the Thousand Swords. Help that would never come. They had the numbers, but the Osprians were still holding their ground, keeping the battle narrow, choking them up in the shallows. The great mêlée heaved and glittered, the ford crawling with men, bobbing with bodies.
Cosca gave a long sigh. ‘You Gurkish think there’s a point to it all, don’t you? That God has a plan, and so forth?’
‘I’ve heard it said.’ Ishri’s black eyes flicked from the valley to him. ‘And what do you think God’s plan is, General Cosca?’
‘I have long suspected that it might be to annoy me.’
She smiled. Or at least her mouth curled up to show sharp white teeth. ‘Fury, paranoia and epic self-centredness in the space of a single sentence.’
‘All the fine qualities a great military leader requires . . .’ He shaded his eyes, squinting off to the west, towards the ridge behind the Talinese lines. ‘And here they are. Perfectly on schedule.’ The first flags were showing there. The first glittering spears. The first of what appeared to be a considerable body of men.
The Fate of Styria
‘Up there.’ Monza’s gloved forefinger, and
her little finger too, of course, pointed towards the ridge. More soldiers were coming over the crest, a mile or two to the south of where the Talinese had first appeared. A lot more. It seemed Orso had kept a few surprises back. Reinforcements from his Union allies, maybe. Monza worked her sore tongue around her sour mouth and spat. From faint hopes to no hopes. A small step, but one nobody ever enjoys taking. The leading flags caught a gust of wind and unfurled for a moment. She peered at them through her eyeglass, frowned, rubbed her eye and peered again. There was no mistaking the cockleshell of Sipani.
‘Sipanese,’ she muttered. Until a few moments ago, the world’s most neutral men. ‘Why the hell are they fighting for Orso?’
‘Who says they are?’ When she turned to Rogont, he was smiling like a thief who’d whipped the fattest purse of his career. He spread his arms out wide. ‘Rejoice, Murcatto! The miracle you asked for!’
She blinked. ‘They’re on our side?’
‘Most certainly, and right in Foscar’s rear! And the irony is that it’s all your doing.’
‘Mine?’
‘Entirely yours! You remember the conference in Sipani, arranged by that preening mope the King of the Union?’
The great procession through the crowded streets, the cheering as Rogont and Salier led the way, the jeering as Ario and Foscar followed. ‘What of it?’
‘I had no more intention of making peace with Ario and Foscar than they had with me. My only care was to talk old Chancellor Sotorius over to my side. I tried to convince him that if the League of Eight lost then Duke Orso’s greed would not end at Sipani’s borders, however neutral they might be. That once my young head was off, his ancient one would be next on the block.’
More than likely true. Neutrality was no better defence against Orso than it was against the pox. His ambitions had never stopped at one river or the next. One reason why, until the moment he’d tried to kill her, he’d made Monza such a fine employer.
‘But the old man clung to his cherished neutrality, tight as a captain to the wheel of his sinking ship, and I despaired of dislodging him. I am ashamed to admit I began to despair entirely, and was seriously considering fleeing Styria for happier climes.’ Rogont closed his eyes and tilted his face towards the sun. ‘And then, oh, happy day, oh, serendipity . . .’ He opened them and looked straight at her. ‘You murdered Prince Ario.’
Black blood pumping from his pale throat, body tumbling through the open window, fire and smoke as the building burned. Rogont grinned with all the smugness of a magician explaining the workings of his latest trick.
‘Sotorius was the host. Ario was under his protection. The old man knew Orso would never forgive him for the death of his son. He knew the doom of Sipani was sounded. Unless Orso could be stopped. We came to an agreement that very night, while Cardotti’s House of Leisure was still burning. In secret, Chancellor Sotorius brought Sipani into the League of Nine.’
‘Nine,’ muttered Monza, watching the Sipanese host march steadily down the gentle hillside towards the fords, and Foscar’s almost undefended rear.
‘My long retreat from Puranti, which you thought so ill-advised, was intended to give him time to prepare. I backed willingly into this little trap so I could play the bait in a greater one.’
‘You’re cleverer than you look.’
‘Not difficult. My aunt always told me I looked a dunce.’
She frowned across the valley at the motionless host on top of Menzes Hill. ‘What about Cosca?’
‘Some men never change. He took a very great deal of money from my Gurkish backers to keep out of the battle.’
It suddenly seemed she didn’t understand the world nearly as well as she’d thought. ‘I offered him money. He wouldn’t take it.’
‘Imagine that, and negotiation so very much your strong point. He wouldn’t take the money from you. Ishri, it seems, talks more sweetly. “War is but the pricking point of politics. Blades can kill men, but only words can move them, and good neighbours are the surest shelter in a storm.” I quote from Juvens’ Principles of Art. Flim-flam and superstition mostly, but the volume on the exercise of power is quite fascinating. You should read more widely, General Murcatto. Your book-learning is narrow in scope.’
‘I came to reading late,’ she grunted.
‘You may enjoy the full use of my library, once I’ve butchered the Talinese and conquered Styria.’ He smiled happily down towards the bottom of the valley, where Foscar’s army were in grave danger of being surrounded. ‘Of course, if Orso’s troops had a more seasoned leader today than the young Prince Foscar, things might have been very different. I doubt a man of General Ganmark’s abilities would have fallen so completely into my trap. Or even one of Faithful Carpi’s long experience.’ He leaned from his saddle and brought his self-satisfied smirk a little closer. ‘But Orso has suffered some unfortunate losses in the area of command, lately.’
She snorted, turned her head and spat. ‘So glad to be of help.’
‘Oh, I couldn’t have done it without you. All we need do is hold the lower ford until our brave allies of Sipani reach the river, crush Foscar’s men between us, and Duke Orso’s ambitions will be drowned in the shallows.’
‘That all?’ Monza frowned towards the water. The Affoians, an untidy red-brown mass on the neglected far right of the battle, had been forced back from the bank. No more than twenty paces of churned-up mud, but enough to give the Talinese a foothold. Now it looked as if some Baolish had waded through the deeper water upstream and got around their flank.
‘It is, and it appears that we are already well on our way to . . . ah.’ Rogont had seen it too. ‘Oh.’ Men were beginning to break from the fighting, struggling up the hillside towards the city.
‘Looks as if your brave allies of Affoia have tired of your hospitality.’
The mood of smug jubilation that had swept through Rogont’s headquarters when the Sipanese appeared was fading rapidly as more and more dots crumbled from the back of the bulging Affoian lines and began to scatter in every direction. Above them the companies of archers grew ragged as bowmen looked nervously up towards the city. No doubt they weren’t keen to get closer acquainted with the men they’d been shooting arrows down at for the last hour.
‘If those Baolish bastards break through they’ll take your people in the flank, roll your whole line up. It’ll be a rout.’
Rogont chewed at his lip. ‘The Sipanese are less than half an hour away.’
‘Excellent. They’ll turn up just in time to count our corpses. Then theirs.’
He glanced nervously back towards the city. ‘Perhaps we should retire to our walls—’
‘You haven’t the time to disengage from that mess. Even as skilled a withdrawer as you are.’
The duke’s face had lost its colour. ‘What do we do?’
It suddenly seemed she understood the world perfectly. Monza drew her sword with a faint ringing of steel. A cavalry sword she’d borrowed from Rogont’s armoury – simple, heavy and murderously well-sharpened. His eyes rolled down to it. ‘Ah. That.’
‘Yes. That.’
‘I suppose there comes a time when a man must truly cast prudence to one side.’ Rogont set his jaw, muscles working on the side of his head. ‘Cavalry. With me . . .’ His voice died to a throaty croak.
A loud voice to a general, Farans wrote, is worth a regiment.
Monza stood in her stirrups and screamed at the top of her lungs. ‘Form the horse!’
The duke’s staff began to screech, point, wave their swords. Mounted men drew in all around, forming up in long ranks. Harness rattled, armour clanked, lances clattered against each other, horses snorted and pawed at the ground. Men found their places, tugged their restless mounts around, cursed and bellowed, strapped on helmets and slapped down visors.
The Baolish were breaking through in earnest, boiling out of the widening gaps in Rogont’s shattered right wing like the rising tide through a wall of sand. Monza could hear their shrill war cri
es as they streamed up the slope, see their tattered banners waving, the glitter of metal on the move. The lines of archers above them dissolved all at once, men tossing away their bows and running for the city, mixed up with fleeing Affoians and a few Osprians who were starting to think better of the whole business. It had always amazed her how quickly an army could come apart once the panic started to spread. Like pulling out the keystone of a bridge, the whole thing, so firm and ordered one minute, could be nothing but ruins the next. They were on the brink of that moment of collapse now, she could feel it.
Monza felt a horse pull up beside her and Shivers met her eye, axe in one hand, reins and a heavy shield in the other. He hadn’t bothered with armour. Just wore the shirt with the gold thread on the cuffs. The one she’d picked out for him. The one that Benna might have worn. It didn’t seem to suit him much now. Looked like a crystal collar on a killing dog.
‘Thought maybe you’d headed back North.’
‘Without all that money you owe me?’ His one eye shifted down into the valley. ‘Never yet turned my back on a fight.’
‘Good. Glad to have you.’ It was true enough, at that moment. Whatever else, he had a handy habit of saving her life. She’d already looked away by the time she felt him look at her. And by that time, it was time to go.
Rogont raised his sword, and the noon sun caught the mirror-bright blade and struck flashing fire from it. Just like in the stories.
‘Forward!’
Tongues clicked, heels kicked, reins snapped. Together, as if they were one animal, the great line of horsemen started to move. First at a walk, horses stirring, snorting, jerking sideways. The ranks twisted and flexed as eager men and mounts broke ahead. Officers bellowed, bringing them back into formation. Faster they moved, and faster, armour and harness clattering, and Monza’s heart beat faster with them. That tingling mix of fear and joy that comes when the thinking’s done and there’s nothing left but to do. The Baolish had seen them, were struggling to form some kind of line. Monza could see their snarling faces in the moments when the world held still, wild-haired men in tarnished chain mail and ragged fur.
The Great Leveller: Best Served Cold, The Heroes and Red Country Page 53