by C. S. Pacat
And that was before the more specific rumours, the murmurings among the men, the sidelong speculation that had Nikandros in the warm summer evening, saying, ‘Take a slave.’
Damen said, ‘No.’
He buried himself in work, and in physical exercise. During the day he threw himself into the logistics and planning, the tactical groundwork that would facilitate a campaign. He plotted routes. He set up supply lines. He commanded drills. At night he went alone from the camp, and when there was no one around him, he took out his sword and practised until he was dripping with sweat, until he could no longer raise his sword but only stand, his muscles trembling, the tip of his blade pointed to the ground.
He went to bed alone. He undressed and sluiced himself down, and only used squires to perform those menial tasks without intimacy.
He told himself that this was what he had wanted. There was a working relationship between himself and Laurent. There was no longer—friendship—but that had never been possible. He had known it would not be some stupid fantasy of showing Laurent his country; of Laurent leaning against the marble balcony at Ios, turning to greet him in the cool air overlooking the sea, his eyes bright with the splendour of the view.
So he worked. There were tasks to do. He sent out a stream of correspondence to the kyroi of his homeland to announce his return. Soon he would know the initial extent of his support in his own country, and he could begin to settle the routes and advances that would secure him a victory.
He came to his tent after three hours of solitary weapons practice, his body damp with sweat that would be wiped down by body squires, since he had dismissed all his slaves. He sat down to write letters instead. The candles flickered low around him, but it was enough light for what must be done. He wrote by his own hand the personal missives to those he knew. He didn’t tell any of them the details of what had happened to him.
Across the evening fields, Jord, Lazar and the other members of the Prince’s Guard were somewhere in the Veretian encampment, working under the new regimen. He thought about Jord, staying in the fort that had been Aimeric’s home. He remembered Jord saying, You ever wonder what it would feel like to find out you’d spread for your brother’s killer? I think it would feel like this.
The silence was one of hollow hours filling up all the space in his tent, alone with the muted night-time activity of an army, when he found his final letter done.
To Kastor, he sent only a single message: I come. He didn’t watch that messenger depart.
It’s not naive to trust your family.
He had said that, once.
* * *
Guion was in a room that looked a lot like the room where Aimeric had bled out, though Guion had little physical resemblance to his son. There was no sign of the polished curls or the obstinate, long-lashed gaze. Guion was a man in his late forties, with an indoor figure. When he saw Damen, Guion bowed in the same way that he would have bowed to the Regent: deeply, sincerely.
‘Your Majesty,’ said Guion.
‘And just like that, you’ve changed sides.’
Damen looked at him with distaste. Guion was not, as far as Damen could discern, under any kind of arrest. He had free rein of the fort and was still, in many respects, the fort’s figurehead, even if Laurent’s men now held power. Whatever bargain Guion had struck with Laurent, he had received a great deal in exchange for his cooperation.
‘I have a lot of sons,’ said Guion, ‘but the supply isn’t infinite.’
If Guion wanted to run, Damen supposed, his options were limited. The Regent wasn’t a forgiving man. Guion had little choice but to receive Akielons into his chambers with geniality. What was galling was the ease with which he seemed to have adjusted to this change—the luxury of his apartments, the lack of all consequence for anything that he had done.
He thought of the men who had died at Charcy, and then he thought of Laurent, surrendering his weight to the table in the tent, his hand clasped to his shoulder, his face white with the last real expression he had shown.
Damen had come here to learn what he could of the Regent’s plans, but there was only one question rising to his lips.
‘Who hurt Laurent at Charcy? Was it you?’
‘He didn’t tell you?’
Damen had not spoken alone to Laurent since that night in the tent. ‘He doesn’t betray his friends.’
‘It’s not a secret. I captured him on his way to Charcy. He was brought to Fortaine, where he negotiated with me for his release. By the time he and I came to our arrangement, he had spent some time as a prisoner in the cells and had suffered a little accident to the shoulder. The true casualty was Govart. The Prince dealt him a tremendous blow to the head. He died a day later, cursing physicians and bed boys.’
‘You put Govart,’ said Damen, ‘in a cell with Laurent?’
‘Yes.’ Guion spread his hands. ‘Just as I helped to bring about the coup in your country. Now, of course, you need my testimony to win back your throne. That is politics. The Prince understands that. It is why he has allied with you.’ Guion smiled. ‘Your Majesty.’
Damen made himself speak very calmly, having come here to learn from Guion what he could not learn from his own men.
‘Did the Regent know who I was?’
‘If he did, having you sent to Vere was rather a miscalculation on his part, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ said Damen. He didn’t lift his eyes from Guion. He watched the blood rise and mottle Guion’s cheeks.
‘If the Regent knew who you were,’ said Guion, ‘then he hoped that when you arrived in Vere, the Prince would recognise you, and be provoked into a blunder. Either that, or he wanted the Prince to take you into his bed. The realisation of what he’d done then would kill him. How lucky for you that didn’t happen,’ Guion said.
He looked at Guion, sick, suddenly, of doublespeak, and double-dealing.
‘You swore a sacred duty to hold the throne in trust for your Prince. Instead you turned on him, for power, for personal gain. What has that won you?’
For the first time he saw something genuine flicker in Guion’s expression.
‘He killed my son,’ said Guion.
‘You killed your son,’ said Damen, ‘when you threw him into the path of the Regent.’
* * *
Damen’s experience with a divided troop meant he already knew what to look for: food going astray; weapons destined for one or other faction rerouted; essentials for daily tasks within the camp missing. He had dealt with it all on the ride from Arles to Ravenel.
He had not dealt with Makedon. Round one came when Makedon refused to accept the extra rations available to his troops from Fortaine. Akielons didn’t need pampering. If Veretians wished to indulge in all this extra food, they could do so.
Before Damen could open his mouth to respond, Laurent announced that he would likewise change the provisions among his own troops, so that there would not be a disparity. In fact, everyone from soldiers to captains to kings across both troops would receive the same portion, and that portion would be determined by Makedon. Would Makedon inform them now what that portion was to be?
Round two was the skirmish that broke out in the Akielon encampment: an Akielon with a bleeding nose, a Veretian with a broken arm, and Makedon smiling and saying that it had been no more than a friendly competition. Only a coward feared competition.
He said it to Laurent. Laurent said that from this moment on, any Veretian who struck an Akielon would be executed. He trusted the honour of the Akielons, he said. Only a coward hit a man who wasn’t allowed to hit back.
It was like watching a boar try to take on the endless blue of the sky. Damen remembered how it felt to be coerced to Laurent’s will. Laurent had never needed to use force to make men obey him, just as he had never needed men to like him in order to get his way. Laurent got his way because when men tried t
o resist him, they found, sweetly outmanoeuvred, that they couldn’t.
And indeed, it was only the Akielons who murmured in dissent. Laurent’s men had swallowed the alliance. In fact, the way Laurent’s men talked about their Prince now was not substantially different to the way that they had talked about him before: cold, ice-cold, except now he was cold enough to have fucked his brother’s killer.
‘The pledge should be made in the traditional manner,’ said Nikandros. ‘A night feast for the bannermen, and the ceremonial sports, the display fighting, and the okton. We gather at Marlas.’ Nikandros stuck another token into the sand tray.
‘A strong location,’ Makedon was saying. ‘The fort itself is all but impregnable. Its walls have never been breached, only surrendered.’
No one was looking at Laurent. It wouldn’t have mattered if they had been. His face showed nothing.
‘Marlas is a large-scale defensive fort, not dissimilar to Fortaine,’ Nikandros said to Laurent, later. ‘Big enough to house both our men and yours, with substantial interior barracks. You’ll see its potential when we get there.’
‘I’ve been there before,’ said Laurent.
‘Then you’re familiar with the area,’ said Nikandros. ‘That makes it easier.’
‘Yes,’ said Laurent.
After, Damen took his sword out to the edges of the camp to practise, finding the clearing that he preferred in a thicket of trees, and beginning the series of exercises that he performed every night.
Here there were no barriers to his skill. He could drive himself hard, strike, turn, force himself faster. In the warm night, his skin quickly pricked with sweat. He pushed himself harder to the ceaseless movements, action and reaction that anchored everything to the flesh.
He poured all he felt into the physical, the emulation of fighting. He couldn’t shake it off. He felt it like an unceasing pressure. The closer they came to it, the stronger it grew.
Would they stay at Marlas, in adjoining apartments, receiving Akielon bannermen during the evening from twin thrones?
He wanted . . . he didn’t know what he wanted. For Laurent to have looked at him when Nikandros had announced that they would travel to the place where, six years ago, Damen had killed his brother.
He heard a sound to the west.
Panting, he stopped. Sweat-covered, he heard it again, the slight smothered laughter, and then the whistle and thunk, the jeers, a low moan. Instantly he recognised the danger: a spear thrown. Yet the laughter was too incautious, too loud for an enemy scout. Not an attack. A small party breaking army discipline, who had snuck out at night to hunt or tryst in the woods. He had thought his troops more disciplined than that.
He went to investigate, quietly, watchfully, past a series of dark tree trunks. A rueful flicker of guilt: he knew that these men breaking curfew would not expect their King to appear and admonish them personally. His presence was ludicrously disproportionate to their crime, he thought.
Until he reached the clearing.
A group of five Akielon soldiers had indeed left the camp to practise spear throwing. They had brought a bundle of spears and a wooden target from the camp. The spears lay on the ground in easy reach. The target was set against the trunk of a tree. They were taking turns throwing from a mark toed into the earth. One of them was taking his place at the mark and hefting a spear.
Pale, rigid with fear beyond terror, there was a boy spread-eagled on the wooden target board, tied at the wrists and ankles. From his torn, half-unlaced shirt, the boy was clearly a Veretian, and young—eighteen or nineteen—his light-brown hair a matted tangle, his skin mottled with a bruise that covered one eye.
A few spears had already been thrown at him. They stuck from the target like pins. One protruded from the space between his arm and side. One to the left of his head. The boy’s eyes were glassy, and he held himself motionless. It was clear from the number of spears—and their position—that the aim of this contest was to throw as close to the boy as possible, without hitting him. The thrower drew back his arm.
Damen could only stand and watch as the thrower’s arm whirled, the spear loosing and beginning its clear pure arc—unable to intervene in case it caused a misthrow that killed the boy. The spear sheared through the air, and hit exactly where it had been intended, between the boy’s legs, just shy of his flesh. It stuck out from the target, grotesquely lewd. The laughter was ribald.
‘And who will throw next?’ said Damen.
The thrower of the spear turned, his taunting expression changing to one of shock and disbelief. All five of them stopped and flattened themselves to the ground.
‘Stand,’ said Damen, ‘like the men you think you are.’
He was angry. The men, standing, perhaps did not recognise that. They didn’t know the slow way that he came forward, or the calm tone of his voice.
‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘what it is you are doing here.’
‘Practising for the okton,’ said a voice, and Damen looked them over but couldn’t see who had spoken. Whoever it was had paled after he said it because they were all pale, and nervous-looking.
They wore the notched belts that marked them as Makedon’s men—one notch for each kill. They might even have expected to get approbation from Makedon for what they had done. There was an uneasy expectancy in their postures, as though they were uncertain of their King’s reaction, and had some hope they might be praised, or let off with no admonishment.
He said, ‘Do not speak again.’
He went to the boy. The boy’s shirt sleeve was pinned to the tree by a spear. His head was bleeding where a second spear had grazed it. Damen saw the boy’s eyes darken in terror as he approached, and anger was like acid in his veins. He wrapped his hand around the spear between the boy’s legs and pulled it out. Then he pulled out the spear by his head, and the one pinning his shirt sleeve. He had to draw his sword to cut the boy’s ropes, and at the sound of metal, the boy’s breathing went high and strange.
The boy was badly bruised, and he could not stand under his own weight once the ropes were cut. Damen lowered him to the ground. More had been done to him than target practice. More had been done to him than a beating. They had put an iron cuff around his left wrist, like the gold cuff around his own—like the gold cuff around Laurent’s. Damen knew with a sickening feeling in his stomach exactly what had been done to this boy, and why.
The boy didn’t speak Akielon. He had no idea what was happening, or that he was safe. Damen began to speak to him in Veretian, slow, calming words, and after a moment the boy’s glazed eyes focused on him with something like understanding.
The boy said, ‘Tell the Prince I didn’t fight back.’
Damen turned and said in a steady voice to one of the men, ‘Bring Makedon. Now.’
The man went. The other four stood in place while Damen went to one knee and addressed the boy on the ground again. In a soft, low voice Damen kept him talking. The other men didn’t watch because they were too low-ranked to be allowed to look a king in the face. Their eyes were averted.
Makedon did not come alone. Two dozen of his men came with him. Then came Nikandros, with two dozen men of his own. Then a stream of torchbearers, turning the dim clearing into orange light and leaping flame. The grim expression Nikandros wore showed that he was here because Makedon and his men might need a counterweight.
Damen said, ‘Your soldiers have broken the peace.’
‘They will be executed.’ Makedon said it after a cursory glance at the bleeding Veretian boy. ‘They have dishonoured the belt.’
That was genuine. Makedon didn’t like Veretians. He didn’t like his men dishonouring themselves in front of Veretians. Makedon wanted no whiff of Veretian moral superiority. Damen could see that in him, as he could see that Makedon blamed the Veretians for the attack, for the behaviour of his men, for being called to account by his King.
‘Take the boy back to our camp,’ Damen said to Nikandros, because he knew exactly what would happen if Akielon soldiers bore the bleeding, bruised boy back to the Veretians. ‘Send for Paschal, the Veretian physician. Then inform the Prince of Vere what has happened here.’ A sharp nod of obedience. Nikandros departed with the boy and a section of the torches.
Damen said, ‘The rest of you are dismissed. Not you.’
The light receded, and the sound, disappearing through the trees until he was alone with Makedon in the night air of the clearing.
‘Makedon of the north,’ said Damen. ‘You were a friend to my father. You fought with him for almost twenty years. That means a great deal to me. I respect your loyalty to him, as I respect your power and need your men. But if your soldiers harm a Veretian again, you will face me at the end of a sword.’
‘Exalted,’ said Makedon, bowing his head to hide his eyes.
‘You walk a fine line with Makedon,’ Nikandros said, on his return to camp.
‘He walks a fine line with me,’ said Damen.
‘He is a traditionalist, and supports you as the true King, but he will only be pushed so far.’
‘I’m not the one pushing.’
He didn’t retire. He took himself instead to the tent in his camp where the Veretian boy was being tended. He dismissed the guards there, too, and waited outside for the physician to come out.
At night the camp was quiet and dark, but this tent was marked by a torch flaming outside, and he could see the lights from the Veretian camp to the west. He was aware of the oddness of his own presence—a king waiting outside a tent like a hound for its master—but he stepped forward quickly when Paschal emerged from the tent.
