Tyrant's Throne
Page 45
My girl. Jillard was her true father and Feltock the man who’d protected her most of her young life. I felt like I’d lost something very precious, but I shook the thought away. Get over yourself, idiot.
‘Forgive me, General,’ Ethalia said, ‘but if the Avareans won’t yet be in Pertine, then who do you anticipate having to fight?’
The old man’s jaw tightened. ‘Our friends, my Lady. Our friends.’
*
‘Your Grace,’ I said calmly. It’s remarkably hard to be calm when you’re standing between two armies in front of a man who looks suspiciously like he’s about to order you killed.
‘Falcio, you damned fool,’ Meillard, Duke – no, Prince of Pertine – started. ‘Did you really think I’d let you march an army through my Principality?’
‘I’m sorry, your Grace. I must have been confused. I’d heard you were quite happy to let armies march across your lands.’
‘Falcio . . .’ Valiana warned.
Meillard gazed at her with a mixture of disgust and sympathy. ‘I thought better of you, Realm’s Protector. Despite your inexperience and sentimentality, you’ve often proved to be—’
She held up a hand. ‘Kindly spare me, your Grace. If you think you’re the first man to patronise me this way, you must have been sleeping during all the Ducal Council’s meetings.’
The old Duke’s solicitude vanished instantly. ‘Very well then, you want to be treated as an equal? Here’s the simple truth: your army is too small and your soldiers are largely untrained, hungry and already exhausted.’
He turned to Feltock, ignoring Valiana and me as well now. ‘Seventeen hells, Feltock! I knew you as a wise and steady General – did they cut out your brain when they took that eye of yours?’
Feltock showed not the slightest sign of ire or concern. ‘I’ve wondered that same thing myself, your Grace. You see, I’ve discovered that even with an arrow through the eye socket, clearly damaging the brain, the mind can still—’
‘Not the time,’ I said.
‘Ah, right.’ To Meillard he said, ‘I look forward to sitting down for a drink, your Grace. We can talk over the good old days.’
‘I’m afraid your days are numbered, Feltock.’
‘Quite likely. This Trattari bastard is apparently determined to bring me to an early grave.’
Meillard gave me one of those looks I often get from Dukes: ten gallons of condescending disappointment mixed with just under an ounce of grudging respect. ‘I’ve never understood why powerful men and women pay such heed to a failed farmer with nothing but a half-decent sword arm and a faulty sense of self-preservation. You know nothing of politics and even less of war.’ He glanced at Feltock. ‘Damn it, General, you’ve clearly got the Trattari’s ear. Speak honestly to him – advise him. Help him see reason.’
Feltock turned to me. ‘Falcio, this plan of yours is reckless and foolhardy. You should abandon it at once.’
‘So noted,’ I said.
Feltock turned back to Meillard and shrugged. ‘You see what I have to deal with, your Grace?’
The Duke growled, ‘I should have the two of you bastards hung for traitors.’
‘That part comes later,’ Brasti called out from behind us. ‘Also, we’re not the ones who committed succession.’
‘He means “secession”,’ Kest clarified.
Normally the two of them annoy me when they get like this, but the look of barely contained fury on Duke Meillard’s face brought a smile to mine. ‘You’re going to tell your commanders to cede the road to us, your Grace, then you’re going to allow five hundred of them to join our army and fight for their country, if they wish.’
‘Five hundred?’ Brasti walked over and looked past Meillard. ‘There’s a good thousand men there, Falcio.’
‘True, but I figure we’ll never get more than half of them to agree to join us, so we might as well make those ones feel special.’
Meillard grunted. ‘You think even one of my men would join your hopeless cause?’
‘Well, I admit the pay’s not great, your Grace, but the food’s about to get better.’
‘And how do you reckon that?’ Meillard asked. ‘You think I didn’t send scouts into Aramor? We know your supply lines are stretched – you’ve not enough food to last even a week.’
‘True – but that’s all about to change,’ I explained, ‘because you, Duke Meillard, are going to start supplying us with food and medicines and wood for arrows and bolts, as well as whatever billeting your people can provide without causing themselves undue suffering.’
He laughed. ‘And why would I do this, exactly?’
I let the smile fall from my face and made sure he could see I was deadly serious when I said, ‘Because right now I don’t give a shit about the Avarean invasion force. I don’t need an army bigger than theirs, your Grace. I only need one bigger than yours.’
Meillard’s eyes widened, then he swore, ‘You son of a bitch! You knew I’d block your way – you wanted me to do it – so you could take us on without fearing an attack to your flank.’
I gave him my best impression of a confused bystander. ‘Is that what I did, your Grace? I do apologise. It was an accident on my part, stemming from my complete lack of knowledge of politics and warfare.’
Meillard turned on Valiana and snarled, ‘You were supposed to be the Realm’s Protector! Would you truly wage war on your own people? You’re no better than that bitch Trin!’
As menacing as I’d tried to appear, Valiana was positively terrifying in her calm. ‘You made it quite plain, Prince Meillard, that you considered Pertine its own country – and a country that has sided with our enemy at that. Should you try to block our way, we will destroy your army, give your people six days to flee into Aramor, and then leave Pertine such a ruin that when the Avareans come, they will see there is nothing in Tristia worth invading.’
‘Still think it’s a good idea to secede from Tristia?’ I wondered aloud.
Meillard stared back at us, trying to work out if we really were ready to start a war between Aramor and Pertine that would end only in blood. I felt bad for him: Meillard wasn’t an especially bad man; he was just a little too used to getting his way.
Well, we all learn that lesson eventually, your Grace.
‘Very well,’ Meillard said at last. He motioned for one of his aides to come forward and issued a quick series of orders.
When he was done, the newly restored Duke of Pertine let out a sigh. ‘I’ve been on a knife’s edge about this whole secession nonsense since the beginning,’ he admitted, ‘but my Generals convinced me it was the only way we could survive.’
‘Those of us who fought the last wars are old men now,’ Feltock said. ‘Those battles were long ago, and our way of fighting as tired as we are. We’re facing something new now.’
‘And I suppose you’ve got some strategy to win, General Feltock?’
‘Me?’ Feltock chuckled. ‘Haven’t got a clue, to be honest. I can organise the troops, get ’em from one place to another with most of ’em alive, position cavalry and infantry – but winning? Against what’s coming?’ He shook his head and jerked a thumb at me. ‘I’m hoping the Trattari’s going to come up with something.’
Orders went down the line of both armies, and once it was done and we were amicably parting company, Meillard called out to me, ‘Do you really believe you can do it, Falcio?’
‘Do what, your Grace?’
‘Win a war the entire country knows cannot be won.’
Hopeless causes tend to end in blood and tears, but they do give opportunities for a good line here or there.
I grinned. ‘Just watch me.’
CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX
The Absent Cannon
The truth is, Meillard was right: I really don’t understand war. I’ve spent most of my adult life fighti
ng duels, so steel and bloodshed are old, if regrettable, companions. But war? Battles, sieges, troop movements, supply lines? None of that makes any sense to me. And worst of all is the waiting. A duellist deals in thrusts and parries, feints and counter-attacks. Our strength is in speed: decisions made in a fraction of a second, in lightning-fast movements. Go to any duelling court and count the seconds between the two opponents entering the circle, beginning to trade blows and one or both lying dead or injured. You’ll be lucky to get to sixty.
Wars take weeks, months, sometimes even years. The Shan have been at war with their Eastern neighbours for almost a century: children there are born, raised and die without ever having known peace. Do the people there spend their entire lives counting the minutes and praying the next will bring a trumpeting announcement of the end of the hostilities? Do they lie on their deathbeds, still at war, cursing the name of whichever ruler set them on this path in the first place?
On the snow-covered field of battle, our soldiers were frantically digging shallow holes and refilling them; we lacked the time and resources to build ballistae, trebuchet or other war machines that might have made a difference, so we had to put our hopes in less conventional methods.
I looked at the men and women, already exhausted, and wondered how many years would pass before the people of Tristia stopped cursing my name.
The field of battle. Through the exchange of emissaries we’d somehow agreed to this specific patch of land, this field that ends at a sheer cliff-face, the eastern edge of which separates Tristia from Avares, as the place to set about the business of killing each other.
‘They’re here,’ Brasti said, jogging towards me, Gwyn close behind him.
‘How far?’ Valiana asked. She, Feltock and Nehra had been working out troop deployment by arranging Filian’s coloured wooden blocks on a hastily sketched map. Who says war isn’t a game?
‘About two miles. It won’t be long now.’ He pointed towards the softly descending forest to the left of the cliff-face. ‘They’ll come down from there and then set up with the cliff at their backs.’
‘I told you we should have set traps in the forest,’ Feltock said.
‘How big is the horde?’ I asked Brasti.
For once, he was speechless. ‘Massive. Falcio, we couldn’t go far enough to see the end of their lines. It’s like . . . it’s like staring at the ocean and trying to count the drops of water.’
‘Would we kill them all with little traps in the hills?’ I asked Feltock.
‘Of course not, but—’
‘Then I’d rather not piss them off. The whole point of this suicide mission is to make the Avareans see us as honourable foes, after all.’ I looked back at our own soldiers. That was a lot of people to sacrifice just to make a positive impression on an implacable enemy.
‘I’ve got some of the local volunteers from Pertine organised,’ Ethalia said, coming up to stand beside me. ‘We’ve got a dozen tents set up over there as our infirmary.’
Ethalia had always been loath to shed blood, and now she was Saint of Mercy none of us knew what price she’d pay for doing so, but she had insisted on coming. It felt good to have her standing beside me; warmer, somehow. ‘I wish you weren’t here,’ I said.
She took my hand and drew me away from the others. ‘You need to stop saying that.’
‘Sorry,’ I said, not very convincingly.
Abruptly, she wrapped her arms around me, so tightly I could barely breathe. ‘You think I don’t know, Falcio? You expect to meet your end here. You hide it well, but I see it in your face every time you think no one’s watching.’
I hugged her back, suddenly afraid of the very thought she had given voice to. ‘I’m not suicidal. I don’t want to die, but I’ve been lucky for a very long time, Ethalia, and I think this time . . .’ I could feel her cheek brushing against mine.
‘You think Death himself will finally catch up to you.’
It sounded silly when she said it, but it was true, and I had nothing to offer that might comfort her.
‘Do you know why I came, Falcio?’ She didn’t wait for a reply. ‘I’m here because when . . . when it happens, when Death comes for you, I will stand in his way and refuse to let him have you.’
‘I don’t think it works that way, sweetheart.’
She buried her face in my shoulder. ‘It ought to.’
*
We watched them come, these men and women for whom war was religion and mercy a concept so foreign that Gwyn said the closest word to it in their language actually meant ‘to forget’. They jogged down the narrow, rugged path in groups of ten or twelve, huge packs on their backs, moving as easily as if this were nothing more than a pleasant hike on a fine day, rather than the beginning of the end of one of our two nations.
‘This is a rather odd sensation,’ Kest said.
‘What’s that?’ I asked.
‘Watching the enemy come on so slowly, seeing their ranks swell on the field and knowing there isn’t a single thing we can do about it.’
I walked a little farther away from the others to watch in silence as the Avarean numbers began to surpass our own. I was filled with a growing sense of unease. Brasti had been right about that cliff-top: Morn’s cannons could reach us from there, no matter how far we retreated. I’d spent an hour arguing the point with Feltock, but he and Valiana assured me that for every advantage another location further back might have, there would be just as many disadvantages. In the end, it came down to holding the line at the border between our two countries: that mattered, somehow.
‘When do you think the fighting will begin?’ I asked Feltock.
‘Tomorrow sometime,’ he replied. ‘There will be certain formalities first, of course.’
‘Such as?’
‘Well, each of us offers the other the chance to surrender. Then we make some rather elaborate threats about what happens if the other refuses . . . it goes on like that for a while.’
‘And then?’
The old man shrugged. ‘Then the dying begins.’
*
That night I awoke to find Kest shaking my shoulder. ‘Falcio,’ he said, keeping his voice quiet. ‘There’s something you need to see.’
My back was sore and my muscles stiff. I’ve always been rubbish in the cold. ‘What is it?’
‘The Avarean forces have arrived.’
I rubbed the sleep from my eyes. ‘Well, according to Brasti, there are more of them than anyone could ever count, so I can’t imagine that’s what you’re waking me up to tell me.’
He shook his head. ‘It’s not that; it’s . . . Well, you’d best come and see for yourself.’
We walked out to the edge. Our command tents were positioned on a small hill overlooking the field where our own soldiers slept uneasily, awaiting the morning. Gwyn was standing outside, waiting for us. He motioned to the other side of the field, where, at the bottom of the cliff, the Avarean forces had made their own encampment. There were thousands of them – they must have outnumbered us five to one . . . which, oddly, was not nearly as bad as I’d feared.
‘I thought there would be more.’ I turned to Gwyn. ‘Didn’t you say there were nearly fifty thousand warriors in Avares, spread out across more than two hundred warbands?’
He nodded.
‘Then why am I staring at . . . What? Ten thousand soldiers?’
‘A little more than seven thousand,’ Kest corrected.
Seven thousand. So they only outnumber us three to one. ‘Where in hells are the rest of them? You and Brasti both said you saw—’
Gwyn pointed his spear up high, towards the top of the cliff. ‘There.’
I strained to see, only barely able to make out the fires, and then after a moment, the tents behind them. ‘How many?’ I asked Gwyn.
‘All of them. More than forty thousand.’
Gwyn shook his head. ‘No, that is not the Avarean way. Even archers must take their place upon the field and face the enemy if they wish to earn rokhan. I think . . . I think they are not here to fight.’
‘Then what are they here to do?’ Brasti asked. ‘Because this is a long way to travel just to enjoy the show.’
Valiana took his offhand comment poorly. ‘Do not call it that,’ she said, pointing at our camp. ‘In a few hours, many of those men and women will rise to greet their last sunrise. Their deaths will be real, not some cheap performance.’
I didn’t hear what Brasti said in reply, because Valiana’s last words were gnawing at me powerfully – I stared at the cliff-top, at the horde, thousands upon thousands of Avareans, waiting there like an audience anticipating the opening of the curtain. Somehow, weirdly, they reminded me of the guests sitting at their elegant tables at Margrave Evidalle’s wedding.
‘Son of a bitch!’ I swore.
All at once, and far too late, a dozen separate pieces locked into place: tiny questions I’d barely even considered because everything else had been so spectacularly falling apart all around me. How had an outsider like Morn managed to unite all the warbands in Avares? If he had such an unstoppable army, why had he bothered to sign non-aggression pacts with the Dukes? And, of course, the question I should have asked myself when Morn had first revealed himself to us in Avares: why had he been so quick to show me his strength when he knew I’d never switch to his side?
‘What is it?’ Valiana asked.
A sharp intake of breath from Kest told me he’d worked it out, too.
We stared at each other, silently cursing ourselves for missing the obvious – and, worst of all, for our own part in this folly.
‘Morn never united the warbands of Avares, did he?’ Kest asked.
I shook my head. ‘How could he? Two hundred bands? That would take decades.’