“My thanks for that ringing endorsement,” said Rikke.
“They’ll be back, you know,” said the Nail. “Stour and all his warriors.” And he jerked his thumb towards the door as if he expected ’em to troop in any moment.
“Some will be,” said Rikke. “But if King Orso took any notice of the letter I sent him, they’ll have a much harder fight than they were expecting. So Stour’ll come back with a lot fewer warriors than you were expecting. If he comes back at all.”
The Nail stared at her, mouth slightly open.
“Spent a year in Ostenhorm,” she explained, “with what they call a governess.”
“What’s that? Some kind o’ witch?”
“A particularly boring kind o’ one. But to be fair, it turns out learning to write has its uses.”
“So…” The Nail narrowed his eyes, counting off the points on his fingers. “You promised the Young Lion you were going with him, then not only did you not go, you stole his ally’s land while he was gone, and warned his enemies he was coming.”
Rikke stretched her chin a long way forward to scratch at her throat, the way he’d done a moment ago. “Sounds somewhat underhand put that way. But once you’ve stabbed a man in the back, you’re best off stabbing him a few more times, don’t you reckon? Make sure of the job.”
“There’s my girl,” grunted Shivers.
“She was listening after all,” said Isern, stretching up on her tiptoes.
The Nail gave a disbelieving little titter, staring at her with something close to admiration. “I could really get to like you,” he said, and he whipped the black fur he wore off his shoulders. “You said something about a cushion?”
“What fine manners,” said Rikke, sitting up long enough for him to slip it behind her then wriggling back into it.
“Best not get carried away with yourself,” said Shivers, nudging at the drooping lid of his metal eye with a knuckle. “Black Calder’s still out there.”
Isern nodded. “He spent a lot of effort winkling his son onto that chair, d’you see? Won’t be overjoyed to hear you’ve wedged your skinny arse into his place.”
“He’ll be ready, the moment you trip up.”
“And he’s got friends all over,” said the Nail, “and debts owed, and favours to call on. King Orso won’t be ridding us of him, no matter what letters you write.”
“No,” said Rikke. “Black Calder we’ll have to deal with ourselves. And unlike his son, he’s a man who earned his name.”
“Earned it with cleverness and treachery and ruthlessness,” said Isern. “All qualities much loved by the moon.”
Shivers had his eye on Skarling’s Chair. “Trouble with being a strong man or a clever man with a big, bad name,” he said, and he ought to know, after all, “is that folk always have their best fight ready for you.”
The Nail nodded along in sympathy. “There are times I wish folk had never heard o’ me. Look small, look foolish, got no name, well… that’s when you’re given chances.”
“Mmmm.” Rikke tapped at the arm of Skarling’s Chair with her fingernail. Picked at the scratched and faded layers of paint that centuries of rulers had picked at before her. That Skarling Hoodless himself picked at, for all she knew. “No strength like looking weak, eh?”
“What you thinking?” asked Shivers.
“What my father would’ve said, once he got over the shock of seeing me here.” And Rikke looked up. “Sitting in it’s nothing special. It’s staying in it that’s the trick.”
The New Harvest
It was a surprise, in a way, to hear that birds still sang.
To see the sun still rose and the wind still blew. But things go on. Orso took a long breath that had a faint, sickening tang of battle about it. “Things always go on,” he murmured.
Not for everyone, mind you. The dead were everywhere. Sparsely dotted, away to the north, then more liberally sprinkled where the fighting had been fiercest, clogged up in knots. Heaps, almost. Perhaps men had felt the need to crawl towards other men while they still had the breath. Perhaps even the dead love company.
The corpse-gatherers had been labouring from before first light. Whole companies of them, dragging cadavers by hand, by stretcher and by cart into orderly piles at the corners of fields. There prisoners made unwilling gravediggers chopped away with pick and shovel in an effort to make holes big enough to hold them all. Flies, crows and human scavengers had meanwhile appeared from nowhere, flitting busily among the bumper crop of bodies while there were still pickings to be had.
The disposal of men made an industry, on the impersonal scale of the new age.
“All that work,” said Orso. “All that effort. All that ingenuity, and courage, and struggle, to make what? Corpses.”
“Few things indeed,” mused Pike, “seem to have so much appeal before, and so little after, as a battle.”
The fires in Stoffenbeck were out but smoke still crept from the embers to smudge the chalky sky. The picturesque town square was a ruin, several of its fine old houses blackened shells, its covered marketplace ripped open to the sky, the clock tower mangled beyond repair by cannon-stones. No bunting now in honour of Orso’s visit.
Rucksted frowned towards the rocky bluff, where yesterday’s cannons still poked from the hill like the prongs of an iron crown. “The world’s changing, that’s for damn sure. Now a man can put a spark to some powder and a thousand strides away another man’s blown limb from limb. There was a time you had to look in his eyes, at least.”
“That was better?” asked Vick.
“Victories always come with a cost,” said Sulfur, calmly. “When my master returns from his business in the West, I do not doubt he will be satisfied with the outcome.”
“Marvellous,” murmured Orso. “I have engineered a quantity of death to satisfy even the First of the Magi.” His eyes could hardly comprehend the carnage. He kept looking to one side, then scanning across, in an effort to take it all in. “How many people do you think died here?”
“Hundreds,” murmured Hoff, eyes wide.
“Perhaps thousands,” said Pike, listlessly. “But mostly on the rebel side.”
Orso took scant comfort from that. Most on the rebel side had been citizens of the Union, too. His subjects. They had fought bravely, loyally, for good reasons. But being right is of little value in war. A great deal less than being lucky, certainly. If the cavalry had not arrived when they did, it might have been Leo dan Brock shaking his head over the carnage. Except Orso doubted the Young Lion had the imagination for it.
“Can it really have been worth it?” he found he had said.
“Can what, Your Majesty?” asked Pike.
“Anything.” Orso waved a limp hand at the spectacle. “Can anything be worth this?”
“They gave us no choice,” grumbled Rucksted. “You were hardly the aggressor, Your Majesty.”
“I played my part,” muttered Orso, gloomily. “If they wanted the crown so bloody badly, I could just have given it away. It’s not as if I enjoy wearing the damn thing…” He glanced across the unhappy faces of his retainers. Probably not the victory speech they had been hoping for. Sulfur, in particular, was frowning thoughtfully. “But I suppose your master takes a dim view of unauthorised abdications.”
The magus bowed his head. “Were he to lose Your Majesty, I can only imagine his regret.”
They would have to imagine it, since Orso rather doubted Bayaz was capable of displaying any.
“There are many practical considerations,” said Hoff, hurrying to change the subject. “Large numbers of prisoners to consider.”
“Many from the Open Council’s forces.” Rucksted gave a disdainful sniff. “I hesitate to call them soldiers. Anglanders, too.”
“When it comes to the rank and file, I tend towards mercy,” said Orso. “We have enough Union men to bury.”
Pike inclined his head. “Fines, parole and forced labour may be of more value than mass executions.”
&
nbsp; “Provided mercy does not extend to the ringleaders,” said Sulfur. “Justice must fall on the guilty like lightning. As it did at Valbeck.”
Orso gave a grimace at that memory, but he did not disagree. “What about the Northmen?”
“Pulling back towards their ships in disarray,” said Rucksted. “Harried by our cavalry.”
“Let them go. I don’t want to waste one more Union life on the bastards.” In truth, Orso had no appetite for any further waste of life at all: Union, Northman, dog or flea.
“We’ll see every one of those swine herded from our land or buried in it.”
“Stour Nightfall himself is unaccounted for,” said Pike. “I fear we may not have heard his name for the last time.”
“We can put down the Great Wolf another day.” Orso paused a moment, frowning. “There was no trouble from the Breakers in Keln?”
Rucksted scratched at his beard. “Not a whisper. If there are Breakers down there, they were quiet as mice while my men were in the city.”
“We should take no chances,” said Pike. “Inquisitor Teufel and I will set out for Valbeck this afternoon. Ensure that the city is… pure.”
That word might have given Orso a cold shiver once, but perhaps the battle had washed away all his father’s good-natured indecision and exposed a flinty core of his mother’s cold-blooded scorn. The Union had to be brought together now. Whatever it took.
“Very good.” He drew his fur-trimmed cloak tight about his shoulders against the chilly autumn breeze and watched the corpse-gatherers at their work.
The door squealed open to reveal a dim chamber, walls glistening with damp, cut in half by rust-speckled gratings. Beyond, the wretched occupants of cells stuffed to bursting squinted into the light, shrank into the shadows, pressed themselves against the bars.
“Former members of the Open Council,” said the Arch Lector, with perhaps the slightest hint of satisfaction in his voice, if not his face. “Awaiting the king’s justice.”
Here they were, then. Some of the proud peacocks responsible for this epic disaster. There was little pride on display now. One listless young man had a bloody bandage wrapped around one eye. Another had hands over his face, shoulders shaking with silent sobs. The extravagant uniforms were torn and tattered, gold braid made muddy strings, glittering insignia of legions that no longer existed turned to so much trash.
“I must apologise for these quarters,” said Orso, stepping through the doorway and wrinkling his nose at the stink. “I know they are not quite what you are used to.”
“This is all a misunderstanding, Your Majesty!” one young lordling spluttered, face pressed so hard against the bars they left livid marks in the flesh to either side. “All a terrible misunderstanding!”
“Shut up,” snarled one of the guards, bashing the bars with a stick and making him recoil.
Orso had hoped to feel some satisfaction at the sight of his sneering adversaries from the benches of the Open Council ruined. But he felt mostly hollow, irritable and slightly disappointed that he felt nothing more. As if all meaningful emotion for the year had been used up during the battle in one profligate splurge.
“Most of those lords who rebelled are dead or captured.” Pike’s burned lip wrinkled. “Lord Isher escaped, but we will hunt him down, along with all the rest.” He gestured towards a fat man whose blond hair stuck out at all angles, his uniform so ripped it was scarcely decent, large patches of scratched and hairy skin showing. “Lord Barezin was found tangled in a briar patch. He fell from his horse while trying to flee.”
Even having heard the name, Orso could scarcely recognise the man. Barezin drew himself up with the most dignity a man stripped of all dignity could muster. “Your Majesty, I was hoping I might discuss with you—”
Orso had no stomach for his excuses, still less his bargaining. “I think everything of importance was said yesterday, on the field.”
Lady Wetterlant glared from behind the bars of the cell next door. There was an angry graze up one side of her face, but she did no pleading. “You may have won,” she snapped, “but I have no regrets!”
Orso gave a weary shrug. “Who cares?” he said.
“Your Majesty.” Pike leaned close to murmur. “I suggest they all be hanged as soon as is practicable.”
Hell, Orso hated hangings. But making the things you hate come to pass seemed to be the main duty of a king.
“See it done.” He shook his head. “What a bloody waste.”
It had been a morning of ugly shocks, but the sight of Leo dan Brock was somehow the worst of all.
A sheet was drawn up to his waist, but from its shape it was awfully clear that the surgeons had taken his left leg off above the knee. His left arm hardly looked better, wrapped in bandages to the shoulder, the dangling fingers swollen up like purple sausages. His chest, and his face, and his right arm were speckled with a hundred little nicks and scabs, stained with blue bruises. His mouth was bloated on one side, the gap of missing teeth showing through his twisted lip. He looked to have aged twenty years. All that indestructible bravado smashed out to leave him a shrivelled husk.
Orso’s great rival, in more ways than one, lying hopeless and humbled at his mercy. It should have been a proud moment. But all Orso felt was sadness. To see a man who’d been so enviably handsome, so ruined. To see a man so representative of the warrior’s virtues, so crushed. To see a man who’d stood so tall no room had seemed big enough, brought so horribly low.
He had been a hero to many. The Young Lion!
By the Fates, look at him now.
“Your Majesty,” he croaked out, in evident agony, his left arm useless as he tried to wriggle up his pillow to a more seemly position. As if any position was seemly for a man who had just lost half his limbs in one of the most infamous defeats in Union history.
“Your Grace.” The title was probably inappropriate now, but Orso hardly knew what else to say. He glanced up at Gorst, looming watchfully by the door. “You can leave us, Colonel.”
“Your Majesty?”
“What will he do?” snapped Orso. “Hop from his bed and bite me to death?”
Gorst lowered his eyes and trudged from the room, pulling the door shut. When Orso turned back, Brock had a pained grimace on his face.
“Don’t you dare take exception to my fucking tone!” snapped Orso. “Among all this suffering, you’re one of the few who can truly say they brought it on themselves.”
Brock looked down, and plucked weakly at the sheet beside the stump of his leg, and said nothing.
Orso slumped into the one hard chair in the narrow room. “Why the hell did you do it? You had everything. Wealth and status and admiration. Even your bloody enemies liked you! Do you really believe your cronies would have done so much better a job than mine?”
Brock opened his mouth. Then he gave a wincing shrug, and a grunt of pain, and his shoulders sagged. “Does it matter now?”
There was a silence, then Orso slumped even lower. “Very little.”
“My wife…”
Orso felt an ugly spasm through his face. The mere thought of Savine’s name was still painful. A splinter he could never work free. “Missing,” he growled. “But Arch Lector Pike has men searching for her. She will not get far.”
“She had no part in this—”
Orso barked out a joyless laugh. “Please. As if she ever went into anything without her eyes wide open. I’ve no doubt she’s every bit as guilty as you are, if not more so. She doesn’t even have youth, stupidity and a massively bloated sense of her own importance as excuses.”
Cruelty to a man so utterly broken in body and spirit did not help Orso in the least. It just made him feel cruel. He could be generous in victory, couldn’t he? He had won, hadn’t he?
So why did he feel like he lost?
“My friends…” croaked out Brock. His eyes looked a little wet. But perhaps that was from the agony.
“Dead,” said Orso.
Brock bared his
teeth as he tried to shift back on his bed. They were pink with blood still. “Can I ask… that they get a decent burial, at least?”
“In a pit with the rest. I have hundreds of loyal men to bury. I can waste no effort on traitors.” Bloody hell, he hated this. He stood, shoving back his chair, and turned towards the door.
“They were good men,” he heard Brock whisper. For some reason, it made Orso feel exceptionally angry.
“Good men and bad, they’re all meat now. If it’s any consolation, you won’t need to worry about it long. Your hanging’s within the week.”
And he strode for the door with his fists clenched.
The Truth
“Ah!”
“My scripture teacher used to tell me…” murmured Zuri, eyes narrowed with concentration as she stitched, “that pain is a blessing.”
“I like the man less and less.” Savine managed a watery grin. “Not the first time your needle’s come to my rescue. Usually it’s been sewing on a loose button… rather than stitching my head together…” She noticed that Zuri had a rip down one side of her dress, tightly wound bandages showing beneath, and the brown dirt smeared around that rip was not dirt at all, but dry blood.
“Zuri—”
“No need to worry about me.” She did not take her eyes from her work. “The blood is not mine.”
Savine rolled her eyes further down to look at her own dress. That same dirt was caked all down the front. “It’s mine?”
“My scripture teacher also told me…” still sewing as carefully and precisely as ever, “that scalp wounds bleed a great deal.”
“A man of varied interests.”
“You have no idea.”
Witty back and forth, as if they were discussing business on an ordinary day rather than hiding in a muddy hollow under the roots of a fallen tree, with everything in utter ruins. Savine wrapped her arms around herself, wrapped her arms around her baby and felt it move, thank the Fates. Her shoulder, her side, her neck were one great stiff throb where she must have hit the ground. She could easily have been dead.
The Trouble with Peace Page 57