Traitor's Blade (The Greatcoats)

by de Castell, Sebastien

  Oddly, since Brasti had no way of knowing it, he was absolutely right.

  THE CARAVAN MARKET

  I mentioned that my mother and I lived on the outskirts of our town, which bordered another town named Luth. There was a wooden marker between the two, and Kest and I met there as boys when we were both around eight years old. I was very poor, with no father and no prospects, other than a possible future as the village idiot. Kest Murrowson was the child of a wonderful mother who worked as a healer and a father who was the town smith. Kest told jokes all the time – thereby putting me to shame even for the role of village idiot – but he never made fun of me for being poor or not having a father, and that instantly qualified him to be my best friend. He was a gentle boy who didn’t like to hunt or fish and never wanted to play with swords. I, on the other hand, was going to be a Greatcoat one day, just like in Bal’s stories.

  Kest’s father made some of the best swords in the region, and he had learned fighting ways in the wars with Avares, the country to the west that is populated by barbarians who occasionally gang up and make their way across the mountains and try to raid us the way they do their own people. They lose every time because our troops can fight war-style, in units, while theirs just sort of run at you shouting and pissing on themselves as they try to cleave your skull with whatever is handy.

  Anyway, Murrow, Kest’s father, was a fine swordsman, and since Kest showed no interest, he thought he could induce him to jealousy by teaching me. He showed me how to fight with the broadsword, often called the war-sword these days because duels are now fought with lighter weapons. But the sword I most fell in love with was the rapier: straight, sharp point, lightweight – at least in comparison to a war-sword – and with an elegant style that felt like dancing with Death. I was a good student, and I loved spending time with the family. But strangely, Kest was never swayed by the jealousy his father had sought to create. He watched me, complimented me periodically, but never showed any interest in taking up the sword himself.

  When I was ten years old, Murrow took me aside after practice one day and said, ‘Falcio, my boy, you’re going to be a fine swordsman one day. A fine one. I’ve never seen anyone take to it so quickly.’

  A ball of warm fire lit itself in my chest. He had never called me ‘my boy’ before, and it made me feel something, just for a moment, that I hadn’t felt in a long time. I resented Kest, not for having a father, or even for not caring, because he did, but rather because he didn’t try half so hard to please his father as I had done to please mine. But I didn’t really hold a grudge with Kest over his disinterest. He was smart, he told jokes; everyone liked him. He was good at plenty of things. I was happy he had left the sword to me.

  Years passed but I hardly took notice and before long we were turning twelve. My birthday had just passed and Kest’s was coming up. I won’t ever forget the day he came over to my mother’s cottage to tell me—

  Well, here’s how it played: he knocked on the door. I came out with a half-eaten piece of bread in my hand and he said, ‘Falcio, I need to ask you something. Well, to be truthful, I need to tell you something.’

  I placed the piece of bread down on the step and put my hands together in front of me, a nervous habit I had in those days. ‘What is it?’ I asked.

  ‘Well …’ He hesitated for a second, but then he took a breath and said, ‘I’m going to take up the sword, Falcio.’

  I let out my own breath all at once. ‘Damn, Kest, you scared the Saints out of me.’

  ‘I’m serious, Falcio. I’m going to take up the sword. I’m going to start today. I don’t want you to be upset or offended – it’s not because of anything to do with you. I just have to do this. I have to take up the sword.’

  I looked at him. I wanted to ask why, but somehow I knew he would never tell me. ‘Does this mean we can’t be friends?’ I asked, confused and a little hurt.

  ‘No – of course we’ll always be friends. That’s why I’m telling you this now, so you won’t think it’s something bad between us.’

  I thought about that for a second. ‘Well, okay then. That’s good. We can practise together. We can be the two best sword fighters in the town. People will come from all around to watch us. We can go see your father and start today!’ I figured I was being nice, since Kest was almost twelve and would never be able to catch up to me.

  Kest grinned, and we went to his house. When Murrow saw Kest, somehow he knew something had changed, and he pulled down another sword from his shelf without anyone saying a word.

  When Kest first picked up the sword, I thought it would be hard for him – sure, he had watched me train and he probably had a good idea about how the parries and strikes should go, but he was bound to be awkward, and he hadn’t built up his muscles the way I had from years of practise. And, for the first hour or so, he was, missing the parries and falling all over himself whenever he tried a cut. But he just kept at it, going back and repeating move after move, stroke after stroke.

  By the end of the morning, he could beat me every time. By the end of that evening, he had beaten his father, and by the time Kest’s thirteenth birthday passed, there was no one on this earth who could best him with a sword. He never told me why he changed his mind about fighting, but he was the greatest swordsman in the world, and he never, ever told jokes.

  *

  ‘Let it be, Brasti,’ Kest said, but Brasti shook his head and climbed down from his horse.

  ‘Right, of course, why bother complaining about it when we’re good and buggered no matter which way we go?’

  All the main exits from town were sealed except for caravan traffic.

  ‘Hide, fight or flee?’ Kest asked me.

  I started to think about it for a second, but Brasti didn’t wait. ‘I already told you, we can’t get out of here. They aren’t letting anyone but the Saints-damned caravans through, and we can’t fight them all. We have to hide out until things die down.’

  ‘Things won’t die down until we do, or until we find the assassin,’ Kest said. He folded his arms and went back to waiting for me to say something intelligent.

  Whoever had killed Lord Caravaner Tremondi had worked out their plan perfectly. Everybody knew he was rich and everyone knew his bodyguards were Greatcoats. It wasn’t hard to believe that three Trattari would kill their employer to take his money. If we were caught, no one was likely to believe us, and if we escaped – well, that just proved our guilt, didn’t it? Either way, the murderer was completely free of suspicion. She was probably walking around the city right now, enjoying the rest of her day.

  ‘There’s no way we’re going to be able to track down the killer,’ I said. ‘We can’t possibly say we were right there in the room with her but can’t describe what she looked like. In a few hours the whole city of Solat is going to be looking for us.’

  Brasti threw his hands up in the air. ‘So we run. Again. Like cowards.’

  ‘We’ve got fairly skilled at it,’ Kest pointed out.

  ‘You can get good at anything if you practise every day.’

  ‘We go to the caravan market,’ I said. ‘The constables are still searching for us in the city – they know we’ll try to hide out, so they’ll want to catch us before we go underground. But they won’t have alerted anyone in the caravan market yet.’

  ‘Brilliant,’ Brasti said, clapping his hands. ‘The caravan market – and I thought I was supposed to be the dumb one.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Kest said evenly, ‘you still are.’

  ‘I thought you didn’t tell jokes.’

  ‘I don’t.’

  I let the two of them bicker while I considered our situation. Our best chance at getting out of the city and getting hold of some money was to be hired as guards or duellists at the caravan market. A warrior who could fight military-style or solo was a great asset on the roads these days. But other than Lord Tremondi, few caravaners were willing to hire Trattari, so that meant we’d have to take what we could get – and
take it quickly – before the constables decided to search the market. I suspected it was the last place they would want to find us, though; word that a Lord Caravaner had been murdered in the city would spread quickly, and that wouldn’t do much for trade. Better for the city constables if they could keep it quiet for a while. Better for us, too.

  ‘We stick to the plan,’ I said at last. ‘We were heading out with Lord Tremondi because he was taking the southern trade routes and we needed passage to Baern, right? We don’t have any money, and even if we could sneak our way past the civilian gates, we won’t get far without coin. So I say we make for the caravan market, get ourselves hired with another caravan and follow them right out of the Market Gate. The constables don’t control that one anyway, so we’re less likely to get caught.’

  ‘What about Tremondi’s plan? What about the Greatcoats becoming the wardens of the trade routes?’ Brasti asked.

  ‘That’s likely as dead as Tremondi himself now,’ Kest replied.

  I had to agree. ‘Even if someone does bring it up for a vote, they’ll never take a chance on us now.’

  ‘Well then, Falcio,’ Brasti said, his voice thick with anger and frustration, ‘let me be the first to thank you for ensuring that the three of us die in pursuit of a fruitless quest for your personal redemption!’

  ‘We still have a chance, Brasti – even Tremondi had heard rumours of the King’s Jewels in Baern.’

  ‘Sure,’ he said, ‘just like there were rumours about Cheveran and even bloody Rijou. “Look to the lowest of the noble families.” What in all the hells is that supposed to mean? None of them wants anything to do with us—’

  ‘If we can find—’

  He turned away from me.

  I didn’t need to, but I said it anyway: ‘It’s my geas, Brasti. It’s the last thing the King asked me to do.’

  The week before the Ducal Army took the castle, the King met with each of his one hundred and forty-four Greatcoats individually, and he gave every single one of us a mission. He called it a geas – something he’d read in one of his old books, no doubt. Some of us he swore to secrecy, others he did not. My mission was to find the King’s Charoites. I’d never heard of any such thing before, but it wasn’t the first time the King had commanded me to do something without bothering to fill me in on the details.

  Brasti threw his hands up in the air. ‘He gave all of us geasa, you idiot – you, me, Kest, and all the others too. But the King is dead, Falcio. They killed him, and we stood by and let the Dukes take the castle. And when they were done with him, they stuck his head on a pole in the courtyard, and we stood by while they did it. At your orders.’

  ‘You shouldn’t start this again,’ Kest warned, but Brasti was on a roll now.

  ‘And you, you bloody great ass – what was the fastest sword in the world doing while they took the King? Resting in its damned sheath, wasn’t it?’

  ‘I didn’t see any arrows flying, either,’ Kest replied calmly.

  ‘No, you didn’t, because I was a good little Magister, just like you were. But where does that leave us? We gave up our lives for a stupid dream, and now it’s dead, and we’re the only Gods-damned fools who haven’t figured it out yet.’

  ‘If it’s all such a joke, then why is it you’ve never told us what your geas is, Brasti?’ I asked. ‘It’s because he told you to keep it a secret, isn’t it?’

  Brasti turned away, but I grabbed him by the shoulder and spun him back around. ‘If everything he cared about died with him, then why do you still keep his secret? I’ll tell you why, Brasti, it’s because you know the dream doesn’t have to be dead if we keep believing in it.’ But even as I said the words, I realised I had made a mistake.

  ‘Damned Saints, Falcio, you’re the worst,’ Brasti shouted, and I couldn’t stop myself flinching. ‘You bought into all those ideas about justice and freedom just as much as Paelis did.’ He swung his arms wide. ‘Look around you, Falcio. People hate us – no, they despise us. They curse our very names. When a man does something so heinous that they can’t find a word bad enough for it, they call him “Trattari”. That’s not how I wanted to spend my life.’

  ‘You think life is easier on peasants? Or for that matter on anyone else living under the Dukes, the self-styled Princes? These men who rule their Duchies like Gods were only ever kept in check by the King and by us.’

  ‘Don’t start “The Song of the Peasants” with me, Falcio. I was born just as poor as you were and I saddled up and rode out there as much as you did. I risked my life plenty of times, and I was willing to die a hero’s death, too. But I won’t die a traitor’s death. It’s not right, it’s not—’

  ‘Fair?’ Kest asked.

  Brasti stopped for moment, and I could see the pain inked across his face. When I first met him, he was one of the most contented people you could imagine. He wore the world like a gold cloak on his shoulders, and he walked about in the utter certainty that all was well with Brasti and all was well with the world. And in five minutes’ time, he’d put that mask on again and you’d never know the difference.

  But that’s all it was now: a mask. Underneath he was so bitter, betrayed by everything and everyone, and probably me most of all. I wondered how long it would be before he stopped listening to me when I told him not to steal. I wondered how many of us had already turned to thievery or banditry just to survive. We had been heroes for a little while and now we were just traitors with useless pardons, no allies and no purpose. Maybe we really were tatter-cloaks now.

  Kest said something else to Brasti and he answered back, but I didn’t really hear it. For five years I had been following the only clue the King had given me: I’d sought out his allies amongst the lesser noble families. Many were dead now, of course, slaughtered by the Dukes’ Knights on a variety of trumped-up charges, and the few who remained refused to deal with any Greatcoats. The one exception came in the form of a hastily scrawled note, handed to me by the servant of Lady Laffariste, once a confidante of the King’s; it said, simply, ‘Not now. They need more time.’ It was faint hope, and not nearly enough for Brasti, no matter how loyal he was underneath it all. The argument over the King’s last command was an old one between us, and one neither of us would win. Either the King’s Charoites were out there somewhere and we would find them, or we would end our days at the end of a noose.

  I got back up on my horse and started down the cobbled streets towards the market. I assumed Kest and Brasti would follow eventually, but at that precise moment, I didn’t really care either way.

  *

  It took us an hour to make our way from the centre of the city to the caravan market without being discovered. I still reckoned our best chance was to head south for Baern, where Lord Tremondi’s rumours placed one of the King’s Charoites – supposedly ‘wandering around’ the coast near the city of Cheveran. Despite Brasti’s reasonable objection that we still had no idea what the King’s Charoites were, even he didn’t have a better destination in mind. We had to get out of Solat, and they hated us in the north from Rijou to Orison. Mind you, we weren’t particularly liked anywhere.

  ‘We don’t hire bloody tatter-cloaks here,’ the caravan captain told me, pushing my chest with a callused hand, ‘so just be off. Go try and screw someone else out of their money.’ The old man was a veteran; you could see it in his stance and wiry muscles. There were seven carts in his caravan, and the lead carriage was an ornate monstrosity which presumably housed the caravan owner. I looked it over critically. It would make a remarkably good target for brigands.

  ‘Look,’ I said as amiably as I could manage, ‘you’re short several men, and you’re not going to be able to find anyone as capable as the three of us, especially not for what you’re paying.’

  ‘I’m not paying horse droppings to you, Trattari.’

  Even for an old man, he filled out his leather jerkin well enough to make a man hesitate before getting into a fight with him. I’m a cautious person by nature, so I turned to l
eave, preparing myself to try again with one of the other caravans, but a second later, he called out to me, ‘Why don’t you go and mount that King Paelis of yours one more time, eh? I reckon he’d be willing, and his body’s probably still lying where they left it. Of course, you’d have trouble finding the pole they put his tyrant head on!’

  Now that was strange. Somehow my sword was in my hand and I was facing the caravan captain and I felt good. Really good. I was completely relaxed. I was going to follow the first rule and put the sharp end of my weapon through his mouth, and that was going to feel really, really good because, for the rest of my short life, I would always know there was one person less in this world spewing filth about my King.

  Five of his men drew swords on me, and I spotted another behind the lead carriage with a pistol. Damn, that was going to require some fast work on my part. Once you get hit with the ball from a pistol, you really only have a few seconds to get the pointy bit into someone’s mouth before you fall down and die.

  ‘Now boys,’ Brasti said, drawing back his bowstring, ‘if I see your friend with the pistol so much as hold his breath I’ll end him. And trust me, the five of you against the three of us makes for very bad odds for you.’

  The captain was about to give the signal to attack when a voice called from inside the carriage, ‘How about five against one, then?’ The voice was female, and it had a mocking quality buried under what would have normally been a seductive tone.

  ‘My lady—’ the captain began.

  ‘Peace, Feltock. You may be captain, but I own this caravan.’

  ‘Your lady mother does, anyway,’ he muttered as a young woman in a blue handmaiden’s dress exited the carriage and walked timidly towards the captain.

  She had dark hair and delicate features, and she paused to collect herself before looking up at us shyly. ‘My lady commands that if the Trattari – forgive me, sir, the Greatcoat – can best five of our men, then she will employ you and your fellows at the full caravan guard rate.’