The King's Peace

by Jo Walton

  “How much food can you spare?” Masarn asked, before the trumpet had even reached Grugin’s lips. The old man had clearly forgotten he was there, he started.

  “You always think of your stomach,” I said, as the commands to re-form and be ready to ride back blew loud and clear.

  “Somebody has to if I’m ever going to get back to my wife’s cooking,” said Masarn, patting his belly. The old woman laughed, a high cackle. She said something rapidly to Alswith. The armigers rapidly re-formed.

  “All that is left of last year’s grain and three sheep, she says,” Alswith relayed. “And more grain when it is cut, if Sweyn does not burn the place down for dealing with us.”

  I tried not to let my astonishment show. This was far away from anywhere we could even try to protect. The old man looked as amazed as I was; he was just starting to draw breath to splutter.

  “Thank you,” I said, and bowed to the old woman. “In Urdo’s name. Masarn, you and Haraldsdottar go with her to round it up, take whoever you need.” They went off and I gave five silvers to the old man. This was generous if we were tax gathering, but no more than fair in fact. They had been generous. As soon as we had loaded up we rode back as swiftly as we could to where we had left the others.

  When I got back with this news Urdo called an immediate council of praefectos. We sat in a circle on the floor of his tent. It was terribly hot. I would have given all three sheep for an hour in the baths.

  “I don’t believe a word of it,” Glyn said. “Fifty ships? Fifty? It must be what Sweyn wants us to think.”

  “Fifty ships would be two and a half thousand men, or twice that if he has made two trips,” Raul said, consideringly. “Five thousand would be close enough to the whole of his fighting force.”

  It had not occurred to me that he might have made more than one trip. “The farmers didn’t want to tell us he was there. They only mentioned it because Haraldsdottar told them who she was,” I repeated. Urdo looked thoughtful.

  “That could still be a ruse,” Glyn insisted. “Sweyn must want us to go north for some reason.”

  “I don’t think they could act that well,” I said.

  “Jarnsmen usually make very bad liars,” said Raul, affirmatively.

  “Is it possible he’s there?” Marchel asked.

  “Barely,” Glyn conceded. “Just. If Ohtar put all his men into ships the moment after the last we heard from Angas and rushed down here, he might have got here, three nights ago. But why would he?”

  “To try to take us by surprise?” I said.

  “Or to try to take Caer Avroc while we’re not expecting it?” Luth of the Breastplate suggested.

  A horrible thought occurred to me. “They didn’t say they saw anyone in them. Maybe he brought them down empty to load up Sweyn’s troops and take them back up to swoop down on Angas.”

  “We could lose the whole north,” said ap Meneth, grimly. “If he’s here and he has the ships then we have to stop him using them to get away again.”

  “Yes,” said Urdo. “With that many ships under his hand he can move almost as fast as we can, as long as there is water. If we can take or destroy those ships we have gained a great deal, whatever his plans are. Gathering so many together must have been difficult.”

  “Maybe Sweyn wouldn’t mind Ohtar losing those ships?” said Cadraith ap Mardol, thoughtfully. He looked tired. He had come up from the south that morning. “Maybe he wants to tempt us up there to get rid of them, and if we succeed it’s not too great a loss to him?”

  “Or maybe he wants to get them all together before we’re ready,” said Luth.

  “Then let him,” said Urdo. “We are ready now.” He reached behind him for a map. In the tent his familiar jumble of maps and writing tablets was stored in a wooden box with a sloping lid. The map of Tevin had been used so many times that the linen was coming apart at the folds. I am sure he knew it by heart, and I could have redrawn it from memory myself. “Marchel, ap Meneth, you know the land best. Take your alae north towards Caer Avroc. Raul, you go with them if you will. Go through the hamlets.” He touched his finger to them as Raul acknowledged the request. “Don’t harm the farmers, but be seen. The rest of us will follow, four or five miles behind, avoiding the hamlets. We will exchange messengers hourly, or when we need. Use the code words. If Ohtar is there alone, we will join you and fight him. Even with fifty full-laden ships we are many more in force, if not in numbers. If he is there with Sweyn and Ayl we will come up quietly. Attack the ships if you can. Negotiate for a little and then make a stand—two alae is enough to get them to form up. Pick your ground very carefully. Make sure you don’t get caught in a pocket between their forces. When they are ready to attack we will take them from the flank. Send your messengers very carefully.”

  Marchel rolled her eyes. “Tempt them to somewhere where they have a flank?”

  Urdo took a drink from his waterskin. “Picking ground to fight is something we’ve all been practicing.”

  “You believe he’s there?” asked Galba. Urdo grinned.

  “I don’t say I believe everyone who gives grain, but it helps. It almost doesn’t matter. Either he is there or Sweyn is trying to split our forces. To make him think we have done so, it is necessary to look as if we’re doing it. He will try to catch us. We shall send out scouts wide from the main body in all directions. We don’t want Sweyn coming up on us unawares. If we can catch him then we only need an hour to be together again.”

  “Sweyn could be trying to get us up there while he tries for Caer Rangor again,” suggested Luth. I swallowed a sigh. Luth always thought entirely in terms of fortresses and land.

  “It doesn’t make any difference which wrong place we are in if he tries that,” said Urdo. “But I think this news of Ohtar is true, and I do not think Sweyn wants us to know it. Burn the ships. But if we have a choice, try hard to take Ohtar himself alive.”

  “Why?” asked Cadraith.

  “Only a king can surrender a kingdom,” said Urdo. “And without Ohtar, Bereich is a real problem. Borthas killed his son, remember, and his grandson has been brought up at Caer Avroc. If he took the crown, it would be the same as giving the country to Tinala. His daughter is married to Alfwin, and their sons are not yet old enough to rule. Alfwin is too much our friend to rule two Jarnish lands at once without the Jarnish lords rebelling. But Ohtar is an honorable man and has no heirs except those grandsons, who will be our friends when they are grown.”

  Luth frowned. “If we’ve won, though, we won’t have to worry about their politics? Alfwin and Guthrum are our allies, yes, but we can just send the others back where they belong and take back the land?”

  Urdo raised an eyebrow, and Raul groaned audibly. “Do you have any idea how many of them there are?” Urdo asked. “We don’t have enough people to farm the land we have. Are you going to individually push each Jarnish farmer into the sea? We could kill all the lords and burn the fields and make the farmers swear to us or starve. We may have to, though I still hope to avoid it. Or we may find, if we kill Ohtar or Ayl, that there will be some lord or king we can deal with. But hoping they’ll just go away is just stupid.” Luth looked at his feet. He was very brave, and his troops would follow him into a dragon’s mouth, as the saying was, but he wanted everything to be clear.

  “Many of them are our brothers in the faith,” Raul added gently, looking at Luth. “Even in Bereich where Ohtar kills what priests he catches, many of the ordinary people have taken the pebble.”

  “You’re both right,” said Luth, sighing. “I didn’t think it through.”

  Urdo smiled. “I’ve been thinking about it for years whenever there’s time to think.”

  “If Ohtar is killed though,” said Glyn, “couldn’t Alfwin rule in Bereich for his sons and have a regent rule Tevin for him?” Raul looked at him approvingly.

  “If need be,” said Urdo. “But I would rather keep things as simple as they might be. He may be killed in the chance of war and rearrange the
picture, but I can still tell my armigers not to seek him out with their spears.”

  We made noises of assent. “Anyway, shall we move?” Urdo asked. We all scrambled to our feet.

  After two hours the scouts started to report Jarnsmen among the trees. Marchel’s reports were much the same. The hamlets were as usual, no sign of armies, but people were moving. Soon it seemed the woods and gullies were full of them, everywhere we could not take a horse. We even felt the occasional arrow. There were never enough of them to charge, and we were very wary of fighting in woods in any case.

  We halted where the river widened for the horses to drink. “I don’t know about Ohtar, but someone is here,” Galba said ruefully.

  “It is very hard to estimate what their force is while they’re moving like that,” Cadraith said. “There seem to be more of them than I’d expect if it’s just Ohtar’s men. And they’re dressed like men of Tevin, not like northerners. When I was up with Angas I thought the Bereichers wore brighter colors.” These was not much sign of bright colors among these troops.

  “We can outrun them,” I said.

  “Do we want to?” asked Gwair Aderyn. “We want them in one place.”

  “And where do we run to?” said Urdo, thoughtfully. “If we ride very hard we can make Caer Avroc, or Caer Rangor not by sunset but tonight. Yet if either of those fortresses is under siege, we might not be able to get in rapidly.”

  “That would leave us very exposed,” Cadraith said, drily.

  “We’ll have to stop somewhere tonight where we can protect the horses,” Urdo said decisively.

  “There’s that depot up on Foreth,” Luth said. “I’ve been there taking supplies. It’s not guarded. The locals leave the place alone because they think it’s haunted, and it’s been useful to us before. We’d be on a hilltop, and there isn’t enough cover for them to creep up and start hamstringing horses.”

  “There’s no water up there,” said Gwair.

  “The river’s near the bottom of the hill,” Luth said. “If we water the horses before we go up, we’ll be all right. If they cut us off from the river then we can charge through them in the morning.”

  It seemed like such a sensible idea in the blazing afternoon. Even when we got to Foreth at evening with the mist rising off the river it seemed sensible. The wide hilltop had plenty of room for all the people and horses. To the west was one very steep side, almost too steep to walk up. The other sides sloped more gently and could be ridden. We made our way up the path to the top. There was plenty of food stored there, among the ruins of the old fort, covered over with new wooden boards. We could rest and be ready to go north or south if the scouts found any concentration of Jarnish troops. We set up camp in the remains of the ancient fort, near where the supplies were hidden, away from the table stone which was at the very top of the hill.

  The scouts kept reporting that the woods and the gullies and the waterways were full of Jarns. Urdo sent Marchel out with two pennons in addition to the usual scouts. We needed to know where their main body was. Reports came back of more groups of them moving towards us, and then sometime during the night reports stopped coming back. They didn’t push the inner ring of sentries set up around the hilltop at all.

  When Elidir woke me at dawn to tell me Urdo wanted me they were all around us, clustered at the points where we could charge, most of them directly downslope to the south. The main body was back towards the trees, and a line of pickets was nearer the foot of the hill.

  “We can charge now,” Luth was saying expansively as I came up. He was wearing his famous blue breastplate and looked splendid. “Right now. As soon as we can be mounted.”

  “The trees are crawling with them,” Galba said, screwing up his eyes. “There are what, maybe five thousand of them right there with Sweyn? That can’t be all of them. There are probably that many again in the woods, must be if Sweyn doesn’t want us to roll over him.”

  “There’s something else wrong.” Urdo seemed to be listening to something. “Anyone been down this slope?” We shook our heads. The nearer part was covered with heather and bracken, far from ideal for riding over. Below it became sheep-grazed turf, sloping gently towards the Jarnsmen. “Sweyn’s no fool to stand there and tempt us like that. I don’t think the slope is sound.”

  “If they’ve trapped it, then they must have done it before we got here,” said Luth, his voice catching a little.

  “Not your fault,” Urdo said, and clapped him on the back. “It isn’t as bad as it looks. We can check for holes and trenches and fill them in when they’re not looking and surprise them.”

  “When?” I asked. “Tonight? And charge tomorrow at dawn?”

  “Tonight. Yes,” said Urdo. “How much water is there?”

  Glyn sighed. “I filled all the buckets, but it isn’t really enough, certainly not if it gets hot like yesterday.”

  “It might rain,” said Luth. The mist was burning off even as he spoke. “It always rains in Tevin,” he added, without much conviction.

  “If he knows we have no water, he will wait for Ohtar, if Ohtar is really here somewhere,” said Galba.

  “Or just until we are too weak to do much damage,” Urdo agreed. “Sulien’s idea about dawn is a very good one if we could do it.”

  “They have some archers,” said ap Meneth, pointing. “See how many of those men there near the center of the pickets have bows? They never have many, but there are enough there to do damage if we charge here.”

  “Let’s check all the sides and make sure where they are. Also send people down discreetly to check if we’re right about the holes.”

  “Should we try and negotiate?” Cadraith asked.

  “I’ll send Raul down and see what they say. I wonder where Marchel’s got to?” I wondered too. She was in a very bad position—cut off from us, without much in the way of supplies and with no other help within reach.

  Urdo went to wake Raul. I sent Elidir to call my decurios and talked to them for a while. I was back at the edge in time to watch Raul pick some little branches from one of the rowan trees that clung between two rocks on the shoulder of the hill and trudge down towards the Jarnsmen.

  It was a very long day. My armigers were restless and unhappy. They wanted to fight or move. They were not used to being trapped. None of us were. I couldn’t work out what the awful waiting reminded me of; it wasn’t Caer Lind, when I had been too tired and strung-out to feel it. Raul went up and down several times. Watching him tramp wearily back up the path, pebble swinging, I remembered. I had felt like this at Thansethan, waiting for Darien to be born. I wished Garah was there to share the thought that the day was pregnant with battle. I didn’t know anyone else who would have laughed at it. We gave the horses what water there was. We grew very hot and thirsty ourselves.

  In the late afternoon Marchel charged them in their rear. She must have collected every scout between Foreth and Caer Lind; she even had a banner. It looked as if she had a whole ala. She was aiming directly for Sweyn, meaning to kill him and force his sworn men to break the line and chase after her to clear their honor. It would have been a good plan if it had worked. Unfortunately they stood firm and she did not come near him. It was over before we could mount up and come to her aid; she wheeled away to the west as fast as she had come.

  “Good,” said Urdo, from where we were watching. “Look. She’s shifted him.” Sweyn was moving his main body around so that they had their backs to the river, although there were still hundreds of them in the trees. “She can’t take him in the flank now, but it makes it much better for us. They’ve nowhere to run to. They’ll stay clumped there, too.” As the Jarns moved, Sweyn brought some of his pony men around out of the trees and sent them off after Marchel.

  “I hope they catch up with her,” I said, “it’ll probably make her feel a lot better to have something to wipe out.”

  “No doubt she’ll kill what outliers she finds,” Urdo said. “But I think Sweyn’s sending them out to watch for her
coming back, not to bring her to battle. There’s nothing like enough of them.”

  “I’ve fought them before,” Luth said. “They’re pretty useless. Our horses could fight them on their own.”

  “They were the same at Caer Lind,” I said, and grinned at him. He was still looking a little downcast. “Useless. Too small to be much trouble. They seem to have learned to ride them a bit better, though.”

  “Sweyn, or someone, is trying to learn what works for us,” Urdo said, turning his head to watch them go.

  Just before sunset Urdo called the praefectos together again in his tent.

  “Two can play games with mist,” he said. “When it is dark and the mist rises tonight we will send the quartermasters and grooms down to cover over the ditches and fill the holes on the south side. They can take the planks from the depot roof. One of your pennons can cover them, Gwair. Also make some half-peeled sticks from the thorn and the hazel trees down on the east side. Put them with the pale sides facing up towards us so that we can see the safe lanes. Then when there is light enough after the dawn we will charge.” It would be very dangerous work to do in silence, slitting the throats of their guards, filling holes, marking lanes. Gwair raised his chin. Urdo did not ask for suggestions, and he did not look as if he wanted any. But it had to be said.

  My mouth was so dry I squeaked when I began to speak. “What about water? Wouldn’t it be better to charge now while we still have strength?”

  “This was a holy place once,” Urdo said. “They named the Mother here with names of water. I am going to try and call it here again. The land remembers.” Galba caught his breath. “Do not raise hopes among the armigers that may be dashed, but be ready to water the horses when we can.”

  “Water on the top of a hill?” asked Gwair Aderyn. But he did not sound sceptical, he sounded delighted. The praefectos were exchanging pleased looks that we knew a trick Sweyn did not. I frowned.

  “I will do what I can. Luth, set up the sentries. Have them watch the main body of the Jarns as well as they can. If they find out what we’re doing, we need notice of it. Gwair, organize covering the pits.” Just then a sentry burst in, one of Galba’s people. “What is it?”