by Morgan Rice
He kicked open the door and ran down into the crowd, the move shocking enough that he was able to get through the first press of people before they realized what was happening. Sebastian kept running, dodging between them, losing himself amongst the spectators even as he continued to head for the docks.
He would say this for Ashton: its twists and turns were almost designed for losing pursuers, the erratically built houses providing a host of tangled alleys and narrow runs. Sebastian made his way along one, came out the other side, and kept going toward the docks.
“Keep going,” he told himself. “Sophia is waiting.”
It was all he needed to provide his limbs with fresh strength. He dared to imagine what it would be like, traveling across to her, a ship carrying him north and then east, bypassing whatever fleet the New Army had and then swinging around to make it to Ishjemme. He dared to imagine Sophia standing on the shore waiting for him, looking out over the sea with hope still on her face in spite of all the time they’d been apart.
The docks were ahead now. Sebastian looked out at the forest of masts and realized that he had no clue which, if any, of them were heading in the direction he wanted. All he could do was run down to the dockside, shouting up to them in the hope that someone would hear.
“I am Prince Sebastian,” he called out. “I need to get to Ishjemme urgently, and I will pay any man who can get me there.”
He called it out again and again, hoping he didn’t sound like some madman who had stumbled onto the docks, knowing that the very act of shouting it to the world made it more likely that his mother’s men would find him before he got the ship he wanted. Most of the sailors looked down at him as if convinced that he was joking, or drunk, or both. A few more shrugged or shook their heads, obviously not intending to go in anything like the right direction. The business of the war meant that most of them were too busy loading cannon or preparing berths for troops.
“Try towards that end,” a man called down, pointing. “I think there were some Ishjemme merchants that way.”
“Thank you,” Sebastian called up. “You don’t know the good you’ve done with that.”
Sebastian ran along the length of the docks, dodging around the crab nets and the cargo crates, avoiding the people who were busy loading their vessels as he tried to seek out the ship that might finally take him to Sophia.
He felt free in that moment. Freer than he’d felt in a long time. He wasn’t the dutiful son anymore, or the husband about to be pushed into a marriage that would be good for the nation. He wasn’t the soldier who had taken a commission because his mother had decided he needed to earn respect. He wasn’t even the son who had been told that he stood to inherit the throne, along with all its problems.
He was just a man hurrying toward the woman who loved him in that moment. He was finally the man he should have been back when he first met Sophia, concerned about nothing but her. She was everything: his love, his hope, the woman who would be the mother of his child. He would be with her, and all the rest of it would fall away like mist.
That sense of freedom lasted right up to the moment he saw Rupert lounging on the edge of the docks, seated on a mooring post shucking an oyster with a knife while a dozen or more men stood around him.
“Ah, brother, there you are,” he said.
“What are you doing here, Rupert?” Sebastian demanded. “Come to drag me back the way mother wants again?”
“Well, I considered that,” Rupert said. He downed his oyster in one swallow, then casually tossed the shell out into the harbor. “But look at the thanks it earned me. Mother doting on you rather than me, wanting to go with your plan, wanting you to succeed. No, I don’t think we’ll be doing this Mother’s way.”
Sebastian approached cautiously. “So what then? You’ll let me go? I swear to you, Rupert, if you let me cross the sea to Sophia then—”
“Oh, is that what this is?” Rupert said. “Your whore is alive? I was wondering what could make you run out like this. Sadly, though, it doesn’t work like that. Do you think I’d trust you not to come back, not to try to claim what’s mine?”
Sebastian knew that his brother would never see the truth. Rupert couldn’t understand that not everyone in the world thought like him. Right then, Sebastian didn’t care. He would go through Rupert if he had to.
“No,” Rupert said, “there are already plans in place, and they do not include you wandering around as you will.” He turned to his men. “Take him.”
Sebastian drew his sword, thrusting at the first of the men to come at him. The man barely danced back in time. His pistol barked, and another man fell, wounded in the leg. When it came to getting to Sophia, there was nothing he wouldn’t do, no fight he wouldn’t take on.
The other men came in, though, and they didn’t do it in ones and twos. They rushed for him in a group, and although Sebastian felt his blade pierce one of their flanks, the others were on him as he did it. If they’d been trying to kill him, he would have been cut to pieces in seconds.
Instead, they came at him with fists and clubs, battering Sebastian to the floor and disarming him, holding him firmly as Rupert stepped back into view.
“This was an amusing diversion,” his brother said, with a cruel laugh. “But I’m afraid that I don’t have enough time to waste more on you now. Don’t worry, though, there will be plenty of time for you… later.”
He gestured, and Sebastian felt a club crash down on his skull.
He didn’t know how many times he slid in and out of consciousness in the minutes that followed. Sensations and sights came to him in short bursts, punctuated by darkness. He had the sense of being carried, and shoved roughly into a cart. He felt the bouncing of cobbles beneath it, and heard the rumble of the wheels. Somewhere beyond, there was the creak of a gate, and then rough hands were dragging him out again, down into a space where the lamplight seemed too bright, hurting Sebastian’s eyes.
There was steel at his wrists now, fastened into place with crude locks and rough chains. Hands shoved him forward, and Sebastian staggered, barely able to keep his footing as they shoved him toward a space that was little more than a tiny, stone-walled cell.
“They call this an oubliette,” a man said, close to Sebastian’s ear. “You’d better pray that your brother forgets you. You wouldn’t like the things that happen to the ones he remembers.”
They shoved him inside, and Sebastian barely even had the room to collapse. He wanted his last thoughts to be of Sophia, but somehow Rupert managed to invade even that, the memory of his laughter cutting through it, his remembered words promising cruelty to come.
“I’ll make time for you later.”
Sebastian didn’t want to think about what that might mean, not if his brother was already willing to do this. It begged another question, too: what was Rupert doing that meant he had no time?
What was his brother up to?
CHAPTER TWENTY NINE
The Master of Crows didn’t betray any emotion as he watched his forces being crushed, in spite of the scale of the reversal. He sat in a camp chair, letting his attention flow through his creatures, while around him, his captains babbled with reports, telling him about the fall of this village or that company. He let it wash over him.
“Dathersford is in ashes, my lord.”
“The second company is not reporting back.”
“Our eastern cohorts are reporting heavy losses to the fires and the free companies.”
They told him nothing that he could not see for himself. The crows flying over the battlefields told him the scale of the enemy’s assault, showed him the fires that were sweeping through the peninsula even now.
“Their commander is a ruthless man,” he said. “Half of the peninsula is a blackened thing. There will be no crops from it now.”
“He wins victories now, but his people will starve in the long run,” one of his captains, Olin, said.
The Master of Crows regarded the other man coolly. “The point
is that he is winning a victory now. Being able to smirk at his poor statesmanship from our graves is no consolation for being in them.”
He had to admit that he had not expected this tactic from his foes. Everything he had learned said that the Dowager and her commanders were conservative in their approach, determined to protect what was theirs rather than just deny it to another. The mind that had come up with this plan was more like a knife, sharp-edged and willing to cut through, regardless of the damage.
It wasn’t just the fires, although they had claimed many of his men already. The desperation of the free companies was another part of it as they found themselves driven forward by the royal regiments. Even the smallfolk had risen up again, perhaps sensing that they were doomed no matter what they tried.
“Do you have a plan, my lord?” Olin asked. The Master of Crows had the feeling that he had found himself elected by the others to ask the question.
It was a valid one. In a wider space, the Master of Crows might have found a way to prevail anyway. He might have slipped away from his foes and come back at them from a new angle. Caught in this peninsula, there was nothing but the tightening net of flames and steel.
“My plan is a simple one,” the Master of Crows said. “Sound the withdrawal.”
“The withdrawal?” Olin asked. “But my lord—”
The Master of Crows drew a pistol and shot him in one smooth movement. It wasn’t just that he couldn’t be seen to be questioned now. He couldn’t allow the other man to become a focal point for his captains. That was the way that rebellion lay.
If it helped to assuage some of his annoyance at seeing his troops turned back, that was entirely coincidental.
“We will pull back,” the Master of Crows said, in clear tones to prevent any misunderstanding. “We have spent enough time on this island for now, and I have no doubt that problems will be fermenting back on the continent. We will return in due course, but for now, this invasion is done.”
None of them argued. None of them dared to when the corpse of their colleague was already attracting its share of ravens. They probably thought of the retreat as an admission of weakness, but the Master of Crows knew better.
He stood, setting off for his flagship while his men hurried to relay his orders. He sent out the command to pull back through his creatures, not caring which units it left exposed.
“Let them die,” he muttered. “Let them all die.”
That was the part that lesser beings would never understand. They saw their petty wars in terms of winning and losing, conqueror and conquered. There was a point, though, when all of that gave way to a simpler truth: it didn’t matter which side was dying, so long as the crows were fed with the energy of the fallen.
Even losing, even pulling back, the Master of Crows could feel that energy flowing into him. Every man who fell to the free companies, every villager caught between the steel of both sides, fed that power. The New Army might not have gained land here, but the Master of Crows’ power felt like an ocean he would be able to dip into whenever he needed it.
He stepped lightly onto the deck of his flagship. “Prepare to return home.”
They sprang to obey. The Master of Crows looked out at the forces hurrying back to their ships, running to make it to the shore in time to escape, and he laughed, long and loud, at the ruthlessness that had forced them to it.
In the distance, he saw royal standards closing in with the sure steadiness of men who knew that the battle was already won. The Master of Crows stood, drawing one of his blades and essaying a duelist’s salute.
Whoever was up there, it seemed that the Master of Crows had finally found a foe sufficiently ruthless to be amusing. Between the two of them, his birds would feast very well in the days to come.
***
Prince Rupert watched the flames from well behind the front lines of the conflict. Only a fool threw himself forward into the teeth of the battle. Besides, between the wounded and the execution of traitors who had dared to surrender to the enemy, the screams here were more than enough to make him smile.
“Your highness,” General Sir Launceston Graves said, “it appears… it appears that the enemy is starting to pull back.”
“Starting to, General Graves?” Rupert countered. “We’ve been pushing them back since this started.”
The general and the other noble commanders had been squeamish about the plan at first. They’d executed it with grim faces, and executed fleeing soldiers with grimmer ones. They’d acted as if this were all some madman’s errand or unpleasant necessity, rather than the obvious thing to do.
“As you say, your highness,” the man said. “It seems that your move was… most inspired.”
If he was grudging about it, others were more effusive in their praise. One group of the men cheered as Rupert passed them; then another. The truth was that common men didn’t interest Rupert, but he understood enough about their uses to wave and smile.
He assessed the land around him. It was blackened and lifeless now, the fire having cleansed it. The shells of buildings stood empty and skeletal, their inhabitants having either fled or put to the sword. Rupert didn’t really care which.
He took a horse and rode toward the front, assessing the way things had gone. This was his favorite phase of any battle, when there was no chance of the enemy coming to kill him, only victims to choose.
“There is a cluster of the enemy ahead,” Sir Quentin Mires said, arriving on horseback with the air of a man eager not to miss any of the glory. “They are cut off from their ships.”
“Then let us see what can be done with them,” Rupert said. He spurred his horse on, riding forward securely now that he was sure the bulk of the enemy forces were retreating.
There were indeed enemies ahead, their ochre uniforms partly fire-blackened, partly mud-stained. Rupert could see them dug into hollows and wedged behind even the smallest rises in the ground. He tried not to think about how easy it would be for any one of them to send a musket ball his way.
Instead, he thought about how small they looked, and how frightened. Rupert quite enjoyed that thought.
“Shall we send the men forward to wipe them out?” Sir Quentin asked.
It was the obvious thing to do, and if he’d been alone, Rupert would probably have ordered it without hesitation. As it was, he could see the other man watching him, obviously judging him, trying to work out what he would be like in victory. That was the problem with politicians: nothing with them was ever simple, not even their support.
“I think the moment has come to be magnanimous,” Rupert said. Sir Quentin almost managed to hide the look of shock that crossed his face. He’d obviously been expecting a slaughter. Rupert made a point, though, of not being the man others expected him to be. If they couldn’t predict him, they would always be wary of him.
Besides, this was the kind of moment in which legends were built. Rupert heeled his horse forward.
“Your highness,” General Graves called out, barely keeping up with him. “Do you think that is entirely wise?”
“You are both welcome to stay behind,” Rupert called out. In fact, he hoped that they would. This would make for a far better image in the minds of those around him if he was alone.
“You there!” he called out. “Men of the New Army! I am Prince Rupert of the House of Flamberg.”
He readied himself to huddle down low on his horse’s neck, so that the beast would take any musket balls fired his way. If they were going to attack—Rupert didn’t think they would, though. He knew when men were broken.
“Your friends are gone, your forces broken. Even as I speak, the Master of Crows retreats. He has abandoned you.”
Rupert rode before them now. It made for a more impressive sight, and if one of them did decide to shoot at him, it at least meant that they were likely to miss.
“You have to decide if you want that to mean your deaths, or a chance at life,” he called out. “You have seen the kind of foes we can b
e, but I am also a prince, and a man of my word! So I say this: lay down your arms, and you will not be harmed.”
It probably helped that the men there didn’t actually know him. If they had, they would have sneered at the very thought of it. They saw what everyone saw though: the golden prince; the man worthy of their awe. One by one, they stood, dropping muskets and pikes, swords and axes. Rupert looked them over, then rode back to Sir Quentin.
“Have the men take them as our prisoners,” he said. “Tell them that, from now, the policy of slaughter is to be amended to one of capture.” He raised his voice so that the common soldiers might hear him. “I’m sure the Master of Crows will have left a lot behind in his eagerness to run. Gold, weapons, women. What do you say we claim some of it for ourselves?”
That got an answering roar from some of the nearby men. Rupert stood there basking in the adulation for a few seconds, then rode over to General Graves.
“A bold move, your highness,” the general said. “I’m sure people will speak of it. Prince Rupert the peacemaker. Prince Rupert the merciful.”
Rupert had no doubt they would. It was the main reason he had done it, after all.
“Forget the people, General. I’m more interested in what you think. Do I have your full support now? Both in the Assembly of Nobles and beyond it?”
He saw the general place his hand over his heart in what was probably meant to be some heartfelt gesture. “You do, your highness. You saved the country this day, and you have my support to the death.”
“Good,” Rupert said with a smile as he watched the prisoners being marched away. At some point, he would have them killed quietly. There was no point in wasting food on enemy mouths. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, General, there’s a lot I still have to do.”
CHAPTER THIRTY