by S. U. Pacat
He could feel Touars’s force beginning to give way, feel his lines buckling, the charge near to gaining ascendancy, so that living men must get out of the way or find death. They would find death. He was going to carve up Touars’s force and hand it to the man he was challenging.
He heard Touars’s men give the call to regroup—
Break the lines. Break them.
He set out his own call for Laurent’s men to reform around him. A commander, shouting, could expect to be heard by, at best, the men next to him, but the call was echoed in voices, then in horn blasts, and the men, who had practised this manoeuvre outside Nesson over and over, came to him in perfect formation, with the majority of their number intact.
Just in time for Touars’s still struggling force around them to be rocked sideways by the impact of a second Patran charge.
The first rupture, a sharp burst of chaos. He was aware of Laurent alongside him—he could not be unaware. He saw Laurent’s horse stagger, bleeding from a long cut on its shoulder, while the horse in front of it went down—saw Laurent close his thighs, change his seat, and take his horse over the thrashing obstacle, landing on the other side with his sword drawn, and clearing ground for himself with two exact slices, mount wheeling. This, it was impossible not to recall, was the man who had beaten Torveld to the mark on a dying horse.
And Laurent, it seemed, had been right about one thing. The men around him had fallen back a little. For before them, all gold armour and glinting starburst, was their Prince. In the towns, in the processionals, he had always impressed, as a figurehead. There was a reluctance, among the common soldiers, to strike a blow directly against him.
But only among the common soldiers. He knows that any decision that ends with me on the throne ends with his head on the block, Laurent had said of Guion. The moment the battle began to shift in their favour, killing Laurent became Guion’s imperative.
Damen saw Laurent’s banner topple first, a bad omen. It was the enemy captain Enguerran who engaged Laurent, and who, thought Damen, would learn the hard way that the Regent lied when it came to the fighting prowess of his nephew.
‘To the Prince!’ Damen called, feeling the fighting change in quality around Laurent. The men began to form up—too late. Enguerran was part of a knot of men that included Lord Touars himself. And with a clear line to Laurent, Touars had begun to charge. Damen drove his heels into his horse.
The impact of their mounts was a heavy crash of flesh against flesh, so that both horses fell, in a tangle of legs and thrashing bodies.
Armoured as he was, Damen hit the ground hard. He rolled to avoid the lashing hooves of his horse as it tried to right itself, and then, with the wisdom of experience, he rolled again.
He felt Touars’s blade drive into the ground, slicing through the straps of his helm, and—where it should have hit his neck—scraping with a metallic sound down the side of his gold collar. He came up facing his opponent with his sword in one hand, felt his helm twist, a danger, and with his other hand, abandoning his shield, flung it off.
His eyes met those of Lord Touars.
Lord Touars said, ‘The slave,’ scornfully, and, having reclaimed his sword from the ground, tried to bury it inside Damen.
Damen cast him back with a parry and a strike that shattered Touars’s shield.
Touars was a good enough swordsman that he was not overcome by the first exchange. He was not a green recruit, he was an experienced war hero, and he was comparatively fresh, not having just fought point on a charge. He cast off his shield, gripped his sword and attacked. Had he been fifteen years younger, it might have been a match. The second exchange showed that it was not. But instead of coming at Damen again, Touars took a step back. The expression on his face had changed.
It was not, as it might have been, a reaction to the skill he faced, or the way that a man looks when he thinks that he has lost a fight. It was the dawning of disbelief, and of recognition.
‘I know you,’ said Lord Touars, in a sudden jagged voice, as though memory had been ripped from him. He threw himself into the attack. Damen, shock-emptied, reacted by instinct, parrying once, then spearing from below, where Touars was wide open. ‘I know you,’ Touars said again. Damen’s sword went in, and instinct pushed forward and drove it in further.
‘Damianos,’ Touars said. ‘Prince-killer.’
It was the last thing he said. Damen pulled the sword out. He took a step back.
He became aware of a man drawn alongside them, frozen in stillness even in the midst of battle, and knew that what had just happened had been seen, and overheard.
He turned, the truth on his face. Stripped bare, he could not hide himself in that moment. Laurent, he thought, and lifted his gaze to meet the eyes of the man who had witnessed the last words of Lord Touars.
It wasn’t Laurent. It was Jord.
He was staring at Damen in horror, his sword lax in his hand.
‘No,’ said Damen. ‘It’s not—’
The final moments of the battle faded around Damen, as he came to full comprehension of what Jord was seeing. Of what Jord, for the second time that day, was seeing.
‘Does he know?’ said Jord.
He had no chance to answer. Laurent’s men were swarming over Touars’s standard, toppling the banners of Ravenel. It was happening: Ravenel’s surrender spreading out from its defeated centre, and he was swept up in a surge of men, as the triumphant chant broke out in men’s voices, Hail to the Prince, and closer to, his own name repeated, Damen, Damen.
Amid cheers, he was given another horse and he swung up into the saddle. His body was sheened with the sweat of the fight; the flanks of his horse were dark-stained. His heart felt as it had in the instant before the impact of the charge.
Laurent reined in beside him, still astride the same horse, dried blood in a stripe along its shoulder. ‘Well, Captain,’ he said. ‘Now we merely have to take an impregnable fortress.’ His eyes were bright. ‘Those who surrendered are to be well treated. Later, they will be given the opportunity to join me. Set up what measures you see fit for the injured and the dead. Then come to me. I want us ready to ride for Ravenel within the half hour.’
Deal with the living. The injured were sent to the Patran tents, with Paschal and his Patran equivalents. All men would receive care. It would not be pleasant. The Veretians had sent nine hundred men and no physicians, not having expected a fight.
Deal with the dead. It was usual for the victorious to take up their dead, and then, if they were magnanimous, allow the same dignity to the defeated side. But these men were all Veretians, and the dead from both sides should be treated equally.
They should then ride for Ravenel, without delays or hesitations. At Ravenel, there would be, at least, the physicians Touars had left behind. It was also necessary to preserve the element of surprise, for which they had worked so hard. Damen drew on a rein, then found himself by the man he was seeking, pushed by some solitary impulse to the far end of the field. He dismounted.
‘Are you here to kill me?’ said Jord.
‘No,’ said Damen.
There was a silence. They stood two paces apart. Jord had a knife drawn, and held it low, a white-knuckled fist around the hilt.
Damen said, ‘You haven’t told him.’
‘You don’t even deny it?’ said Jord. A harsh laugh, when Damen was silent. ‘You hated us so much, all this time? It wasn’t enough to invade, to take our land? You had to play this—sick game as well?’
Damen said, ‘If you tell him, I can’t serve him.’
‘Tell him?’ said Jord. ‘Tell him the man he trusts has lied, and lied again, has deceived him into the worst humiliation?’
‘I wouldn’t hurt him,’ said Damen, and heard the words drop like lead.
‘You killed his brother, then got him under you in bed.’
Put like that, it was monstrous. It’s not that way between us, he ought to have said, and didn’t, couldn’t. He felt hot, then cold. He though
t of Laurent’s delicate, needling talk that froze into icy rebuff if Damen pushed at it, but if he didn’t—if he matched himself to its subtle pulses and undercurrents—continued, sweetly deepening, until he could only wonder if he knew, if they both knew, what they were doing.
‘I’m going to leave,’ he said. ‘I was always going to leave. I stayed only because—’
‘That’s right, you’ll leave. I won’t allow you to wreck us. You’ll command us to Ravenel, you’ll say nothing to him, and when the fort is won, you’ll get on a horse and go. He’ll mourn your loss, and never know.’
It was what he had planned. It was what, from the beginning, he had planned. In his chest, the beats of his heart were like sword thrusts.
‘In the morning,’ said Damen. ‘I’ll give him the fort, and leave him in the morning. It’s what I promised.’
‘You’re gone by the time the sun hits the middle of the sky, or I tell him,’ said Jord. ‘And what he did to you in the palace will seem like a lover’s kiss compared with what will happen to you then.’
Jord was loyal. Damen had always liked that about him, the steadfast nature that reminded him of home. Strewn around them was the end of the battle, victory marked by silence and churned grass.
‘He’ll know,’ Damen heard himself say. ‘When word of my return to Akielos reaches him. He’ll know. I wish you would tell him then that I—’
‘You fill me with horror,’ said Jord. His hands were tight on his knife. Both his hands, now.
‘Captain,’ a voice called. ‘Captain!’
Damen’s eyes were on Jord’s face.
‘That’s you,’ Jord said.
CHAPTER 17
HAND HARD ON Enguerran’s arm, Damen dragged the injured Captain of Ravenel’s troops into one of the round Patran tents on the edge of the battlefield, where they waited for Laurent.
If Damen was rougher than he needed to be, it was because he didn’t approve of this plan. Hearing it described, he’d felt as though his body was under a weight, a hard pressure. Now he released Enguerran in the tent and watched him get to his feet without helping him. Enguerran had a wound in his side that still leaked blood.
Laurent, entering the tent, pulled off his helm, and Damen saw what Enguerran saw: a golden prince with his armour covered in blood, his hair sweat-dampened, his eyes unsparing. The wound in Enguerran’s side had come from Laurent’s blade; the blood on Laurent’s armour was Enguerran’s.
Laurent said, ‘Get on your knees.’
Enguerran fell to his knees in a clank of armour.
‘Your Highness,’ he said.
‘You address me as your Prince?’ said Laurent.
Nothing had changed. Laurent was no different than he’d always been. The mildest comments were the most dangerous. Enguerran seemed to realise it. He stayed on his knees, his cape pooling around him; a muscle moved in his jaw, but he didn’t lift his eyes.
‘My loyalty was to Lord Touars. I served him for ten years. And Guion had the authority of his office, and of your uncle.’
‘Guion does not have the authority to remove me from the succession. Nor, it transpires, does he have the means.’ Laurent’s eyes passed over Enguerran, his bowed head, his injury, his Veretian armour with its ornate shoulderpiece. ‘We are riding for Ravenel. You are alive because I want your loyalty. When the scales fall from your eyes about my uncle, I will expect it.’
Enguerran looked up at Damen. The last time they had faced one another, Enguerran had been trying to bar Damen from Touars’s hall. An Akielon has no place in the company of men.
He felt himself harden. He wanted no part of what was about to unfold. Enguerran returned a hostile gaze.
Laurent said, ‘I remember. You don’t like him. And, of course, he out-captained you on the field. I imagine you like that even less.’
‘You’ll never get inside Ravenel,’ Enguerran said, flatly. ‘Guion made it through your lines with his retinue. He’s riding for Ravenel right now, to warn them you are coming.’
‘I don’t think he is. I think he’s riding to Fortaine, so he can lick his wounds in private, without my uncle and I forcing him to make any uncomfortable choices.’
‘You’re lying. Why would he withdraw to Fortaine, when he has a chance to defeat you here?’
‘Because I have his son,’ said Laurent.
Enguerran’s eyes flew to Laurent’s face.
‘Yes. Aimeric. Trussed and tied and spewing pretty venom.’
‘I see. So you need me to get inside Ravenel. That is the real reason I am alive. You expect me to betray the people I have served for ten years.’
‘To get inside Ravenel? My dear Enguerran, I’m afraid you are quite mistaken.’
Laurent’s gaze travelled over Enguerran again, his blue eyes cold.
‘I don’t need you,’ said Laurent. ‘I just need your clothes.’
That was how they would get into Ravenel: disguised, in foreign clothing.
From the beginning, there was a sense of unreality about it, hefting Enguerran’s shoulderpiece, flexing his hand in Enguerran’s gauntlet. Damen stood, and the cape swirled.
Not everyone got armour that fit, but they had rescued Touars’s banners and righted them, and the red cloth and helms were straight, and they could be mistaken for Touars’s troop from a distance of forty-six feet, which was the height of Ravenel’s walls.
Rochert got a helmet with a feather in it. Lazar got the standard-bearer’s silks and gaudy tunic. As well as his red cape and his armour, Damen got Enguerran’s sword and his helm, which turned the world into a slit. Enguerran had the dubious honour of riding with them not (as he might have been) stripped to his undergarments like a plucked chicken, but bound to a horse and dressed in unobtrusive Veretian clothing.
The men had just fought an action, but exhaustion had transformed into the kind of high spirits that came from the heady mix of victory, fatigue and adrenalin. This wayward adventure appealed to them. Or perhaps it was the idea of a new victory, satisfying because it would be of a different kind. First smash the Regent, then pull the wool over his eyes.
Damen was repelled by the disguise. He had argued against it. The deception was wrong, the pretence of friendship. The traditional forms of warfare existed because they gave your opponent a fair chance.
‘This gives us a fair chance,’ Laurent had said.
The brazen audacity of this was characteristic of Laurent, though dressing up his entire troop was on a different scale to walking into a small town inn with a sapphire in his ear, batting his lashes. It was one thing to disguise yourself, another to force your whole army to do it. Damen felt trapped by the ornate deception.
Damen watched Lazar struggling into his tunic. He watched Rochert compare the size of his feather with that of one of the Patran men.
His father, Damen knew, would not recognise today’s escapade as a military action, but would scorn it as dishonourable, unworthy of his son.
His father would never have thought of taking Ravenel like this. Disguised. Without bloodshed. Before midday the next day.
He wrapped the reins around his fist, dug his heels into his horse. They sailed in through the first set of gates, with Damen’s shoulderpiece winking. At the second set of gates, a soldier on the walls waved a banner from side to side, signalling the portcullis open, and at Damen’s order Lazar waggled their own banner around in answer, while Enguerran jerked (gagged) in the saddle.
It should have felt daring, intoxicating, and he was dimly aware that the men were experiencing it like that—that they had enjoyed the long ride that he had hardly registered. As they passed through the second gates, the men just barely had their exhilaration strapped down under straight faces in the long drawn-out space between heartbeats, waiting for the whistle and thunk of crossbows that never came.
As the heavy latticed iron beetled above their heads, Damen found himself wanting it, wanting disruption, a cry of outrage, or of challenge, wanting it as a release to this—fe
eling. Traitor. Stop. But none came.
Of course it didn’t. Of course the men of Ravenel welcomed them, believing them to be friends. Of course they trusted in the face of a deception, leaving themselves wide open.
He forced his mind to the task. He was not here to hesitate. He knew this fort. He knew its defences and its pitfalls. He wanted it locked down. As they breached the walls, he sent men to the battlements, to the storehouses, to the spiral staircases that gave access to the towers.
The main force reached the courtyard. Laurent drove his horse up the steps and crested the dais, his golden head arrogantly bare, his men taking up the central position in the great hall behind him. No doubt now who they were, as blue pennants unfurled, and Touars’s banners were thrown aside. Laurent wheeled his horse, and its hooves rang on the smooth stone. He was fully exposed, a single bright figure at the mercy of any arrows pointing downwards from the battlements.
There was a moment when any soldier of Ravenel might have cried out, Treachery! Sound the horn!
But by the time that moment came, Damen had men everywhere, and if one of Ravenel’s soldier’s reached for a blade or a crossbow, there was a swordtip in place to persuade him to put it down. Blue surrounded red.
Damen heard himself call in a ringing voice: ‘Lord Touars is defeated at Hellay. Ravenel is under the protection of the Crown Prince.’
It was not all bloodless. They encountered real fighting in the living quarters, the worst of it from the private guards of Touars’s advisor Hestal, who was not Veretian enough, thought Damen, to feign happiness at the change in power.
It was a victory. He told himself that. The men were enjoying it fully, the classic arc of it: the swell of preparation, the cresting of the fight, and the breaking, the heady rush of conquest. Buoyed on high spirits and success, they swept into Ravenel, the taking of the fort an extension of the elation of victory at Hellay, the skirmishes in the halls easy matters to them. They could do anything.