by Victor Milán
“Why do you put up that treacherous, fat fuck Melchor?” he asked Karyl. The other surviving town lord, Yannic, still sulked in his manor, claiming incapacity from the wounds he’d had at Blueflowers. Rob reckoned he was malingering, and good riddance.
“Better to have him where we can keep an eye on him.”
“Which presupposes a man can stand the sight of him.”
Karyl shrugged. “I told him that if he showed any sign of getting out of line, I’d kill him.”
Rob laughed. Not because he thought Karyl was joking. But precisely because he wasn’t.
“So, what chance do you give us, Master Rob?” Karyl asked.
Rob clucked thoughtfully, low in his throat, rubbed his beard and nodded.
“We’ve scarce a thousand effectives,” he said. “Count Guillaume has at least half again as many, with twice the heavy-horse and three times our own dinosaur knights. He outnumbers us in every way, for a fact, except in missile troops, and in light-horse, which he’s got none to speak of. And while our common pikes are nothing to raise more than a horse-laugh from a Nodosaur centurion, they are trained at least halfway, with even some leather armor and iron hats from the Town Armory among them. So I fancy their chances against his larger mob of unhappy peasants with sharp sticks.
“Crève Coeur’s got no more field artillery to speak of than we do, which isn’t any. He does have some siege engines, but correct me if I’m mistaken, if we find ourselves on the receiving end of those, we’re doing something grievous wrong. And of course no one in all the land has anything like our six living fortresses. We’re better equipped than any scratch force has a right to be. But the Brokenhearts are better trained and experienced, along with there simply being more of the brutes. So, all taken with all—they’ll win. Unless, of course, we cheat like a bastard.”
He grinned, all wild and sudden. “And you’re just the man for that, Karyl Bogomirskiy!” he exclaimed.
Karyl flashed a rare smile. “I am.”
“So what about you?” Rob said, as the flash passion passed and left him chilled. “Do you think we’ve any chance, then?”
“You may recall I expressed my distaste for fighting battles I know I can’t win.”
Rob nodded. “Aye. And I note you didn’t kick, this time, about taking the field, but rather told the Council straightaway you were ready to march. So—what is it gives us this chance, against a foe who seems to be holding every trigram card in the deck?”
Karyl smiled. “Why, you, Master Korrigan,” he said. “You and your mad young men and women.”
Rob’s jaw fell open. Before he could think of anything sensible to let out of it—
“Master Rob,” a hesitant voice called.
Poised at the clearing’s verge, like a yearling springer ready to bolt, stood a young woman dressed in the leather jack and high boots typical of Rob’s scouts. Her blond hair hung in pigtails, framing a pretty, blue-eyed face. She wore a longsword slung across her back. The hilt was plain black wood and looked to have been polished by use.
“Valérie,” Rob said. “Come ahead, lass. We’ll not bite your head off. Have you something to report, then?”
Shyly she stepped forward, nodding. She dealt easily enough with Rob. But as far as he knew she had never met Karyl. And a lot of the newer recruits, having imbibed not only survivors’ tales that exaggerated the heartbreaking debacle of the Blueflowers into brilliant victory, but songs of Karyl’s epic past as well—no few penned, and frequently sung, by none other than Rob Korrigan—regarded him with near-worship.
She was a city girl, youngest child of a trading family. Évrard’s house was easily the biggest and richest, but Providence town was far too prosperous to support only the one. The important details were, she knew how to ride well, and was willing (or mad) enough to serve as one of Rob’s scouts.
It was a perilous undertaking, and no mistake. Over a score had already gone down, dead or injured. Only a handful had been captured. But the Brokenhearts treated them as they did captive woods-runners. It may have had the effect of making fewer willing to enlist—Rob honestly had no way to know—but it certainly inspired the remaining scouts to savage vindictiveness that matched their coureur de bois allies’.
“So, what have you to tell us?” Rob asked.
She flicked a nervous glance at Karyl. He nodded.
“We spotted a party north and west of here, riding through the woods,” she said. “Eight people, mounted on amblers. There was Councilor Absolon and several other Gardeners. Uh, all from the better families. And … the Princess, sir, and her black-haired friend that came with her from Spaña.”
“And they’re going—?” Karyl prodded.
Rob felt absurdly gratified that she glanced to him before replying, as if to confirm it was all right. And then the awful impact of the girl’s inevitable next words struck him.
“West, Captain, sir. Toward Count Guillaume’s lines.”
Chapter 15
Cabeza de Tirán, Tyrant’s Head—Home to our Empire of Nuevaropa, the Tyrant’s Head forms the western end of the continent of Aphrodite Terra. Taken with the large island of Anglaterra across La Canal (the Channel), it supposedly resembles the head of a Tyrannosaurus rex. The mighty Shield Mountain range, El Scudo, separates it from the Ovdan Plateau. Its climate is mostly tropical, though it doesn’t have distinct rainy seasons. Humid coastal swamps and forests rise to a fertile central plateau, including Spaña’s arid La Meseta. The Tyrant’s Head is spanned from north to south by a forest of mixed conifer and deciduous trees called Telar’s Wood.
—A PRIMER TO PARADISE FOR THE IMPROVEMENT OF YOUNG MINDS
“My lord Count Guillaume,” said Melodía, her knees feeling the morning warmth the soft grass of the clearing through the fabric of her plain white gown. “We’ve come from Providence town to beg you for peace.”
Before her sat the Count of Crève Coeur on a folding gilt chair, with his elbow propped on one arm and his chin in his palm. He was a big man, not all of his size muscle, dressed in a silken gown, one side blue, the other green. The Broken Heart emblem was sewn in gold on the right breast: the blue side. His big, red face frowned beneath his shock of prematurely white hair. His expression showed perplexity rather than displeasure. Melodía hoped.
“Do you actually have the power to negotiate?” he asked. A knock-down awning of gold-trimmed green silk shaded him from morning sun already fierce through a high, thin screen of cloud. A half-dozen retainers clustered around him.
“I am Master Gardener Absolon,” said the tall, lank man who knelt on Melodía’s right. “I speak for the Council.”
“And these others?” Guillaume asked. He had a voice surprisingly high-pitched for a man of his size.
“Good Gardeners,” Melodía said. Three young women and two men, some of the most passionate believers in Melodía’s cause, had ridden hard with her from Providence town the day before. They camped the night in the forest, and set out at first light to kneel at the feet of the Count of Crève Coeur.
“And my friend Pilar.” Melodía was keenly conscience of her companion hovering at the edge of her vision, half-surrounded by spearmen with blue and green tabards over their mail hauberks. The gitana looked most uneasy.
You worry too much, dear friend, Melodía thought. I’ve seen the way. You’ll see.
Behind the supplicants stretched fields left fallow by farmers who fled the invading army as they would any natural disaster. Paradise had moved quickly to reclaim them with green grass and flowers in white and blue. Before them stood old hardwood trees with trunks stout as boulders. Around them Melodía heard the ruckus and rumble of a large army. Men shouted, sang, or cursed. Hornfaces grunted. Huge feet stamped. Weapons clacked on weapons and ladles in pots. War-duckbills droned and piped at one another as they fed on mounds of grain and vegetation fresh-cut by bustling grooms.
“It’s a trick, Lord,” said the tall, bulky-bodied man who stood at Guillaume’s right. Black brows gl
owered over a fleshy nose and heavy blue-shadowed cheeks. This must be the infamous Baron Salvateur, Melodía thought.
Guillaume waved a beefy hand at him. “Do they look threatening to you, Didier?”
“It’s not these poor nosehorn-calves who worry me,” the Baron said, “but the mind that may have sent them.”
“If you keep on like this,” Guillaume said, “next thing I know you’ll be checking beneath your cot before going to bed each night, to see if this bugbear Karyl is hiding there.”
Melodía’s cheeks flushed hot. “Captain Karyl hasn’t got anything to do with our mission, my lord. If he did, he’d hardly approve.”
“So. You offer surrender,” Guillaume said.
“I offer peace. Once we agree in principle we can discuss terms.”
“What do you offer me,” he said, “that would lead me to agree to give you peace, if not full submission? The Garden is the most troublesome neighbor, you know. They keep trying to infect my realm with their twin plagues of anarchy and egalitarianism. A Grey Angel has been seen Emerging in your county. Do you think those facts are unrelated?”
She frowned. “I heard a rumor to that effect in La Merced.” But why would I have taken it seriously? she did not say. But only so as not to anger the man she was trying to reason with.
“Which no one in Providence has heard,” Absolon said. His voice faltered a trifle. “I—the Count must be misinformed.”
“Your lack of order may have affected your intelligence-gathering,” Guillaume said.
“We offer you love, Count Guillaume,” Melodía said hastily.
For a moment they seemed to inhabit a bubble of silence that stilled even the invading army’s clamor.
“‘Love,’” said Guillaume, as if the word was some unfamiliar, funny-tasting food.
“Love,” she said, striking again while the iron was—she hoped—hot. Also she hoped to proceed quickly to the sit-down phase of negotiations; the bumpy hardness of the ground was beginning to tell on her knees. “The BOOKS OF THE LAW bid us love one another. If we act in a spirit of love, obedient to the Creators, what grounds can that give the Grey Angels to act?”
As if they existed, she thought. But she wasn’t here to argue theology—much less insult the Count’s. No matter how deeply mired he was in superstition.
Guillaume frowned. He sat up straight and scratched his clean-shaven chin as if genuinely intrigued.
“You’re serious,” he said.
“I am, Lord.”
“Wellll … what can love win me that force of arms can’t?”
Feel free to chime in any time now, Melodía thought furiously at her companions. They seemed unwilling to preempt a princess. We may need to work on this egalitarian thing.
“Perhaps nothing,” she admitted. “But at how much less cost to you than war?”
“And are you, or the people you claim to represent, willing to let my troops plunder and rape, with maybe a bit of torture thrown in?”
She recoiled. It felt as if she had been kicked in the stomach. “This isn’t something to joke about!”
“Who’s joking?” He held out a hand, took a swig of wine from a pewter flagon a lackey thrust into it. “The boys and girls have had a hard campaign; they need to take the edge off. And that seems a lot to ask people to undergo voluntarily. Which may have something to do with why it customarily isn’t.”
Melodía’s thoughts whirled like a wind-hada behind eyes that suddenly blinked at hot tears. “But—how can you take this so lightly? I offer peace. I offer love.”
“Haven’t you been listening to me, girl? I can impose peace, on my own terms. What do I want with love?”
He drained the mug and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand before tossing the flagon over his shoulder without looking. His servant fielded it deftly.
“In any event,” the Count said, “I can always find more peasant levies and mercenaries to make good my losses. Granted, peasants are more easily come by. But then again, dead mercenaries are notoriously lax about insisting on their pay.”
His retinue laughed uproariously at that. Except for Salvateur. He was staring at Melodía with what seemed to be increasingly narrow focus. With her heart sinking faster than it was already, she remembered his reputation for astuteness.
“If you’ll pardon me, Lord.”
“Oh, what’s that? Speak up, Baron; you’ve no need to wait upon ceremony with me.”
“Aren’t you Melodía Delgao Llobregat, Imperial Princess and scion of the Archduchy of Los Almendros?” Salvateur asked. “And isn’t that other woman your maidservant?”
Defiantly she tossed back the lock of hair that had escaped her Francés braid and begun to tickle her forehead.
“What’s that got to do with anything? I still kneel before the Count in all humility, and beg him to make peace.”
“‘What’s that got to do with anything?’”
The Count looked around at his retainers. After a moment they decided he was making a joke and laughed. Even Salvateur, who didn’t seem much used to the courtier’s role if Melodía was any judge (and she was), joined in.
“‘What’s that got to do with anything?’” the Count repeated. “Oh, come on, girl. Your Imperial Highness: stand up.”
She glanced back to nod at her companions. All rose as one. Melodía’s knees worked more stiffly than she liked, but she was glad to be off them.
“What it has to do with anything,” Guillaume said, “is that you’re now my honored guest, while I negotiate with your Imperial father about payment for your safe return. As for the rest of you lot—”
He looked to his shield-bearers. “—take them away. Let the troops amuse themselves with them. It’ll whet their appetites for the pleasures to come when we’ve whipped down these leveling Providence scum. Then bring out my hunting-pack. My horrors need the exercise; we could use the sport.”
“You don’t dare—” Melodía shouted.
Hands grabbed her arms. Hard fingers dug deep. She smelled man-sweat and sun-heated dinosaur leather.
“My dear, silly little Princess,” Count Guillaume said mildly, “of course I dare. After all, you’re a renegade and fugitive from Imperial justice, aren’t you? Be grateful to me for sparing you and your serving-wench. I could send back both your heads to La Merced, you know. And your father would have to thank me for the gift!”
And he guffawed as if that was the grandest joke of all.
* * *
In the afternoon stifle of the tent, Melodía lay on her side and suffered.
Her arms ached from her wrists being tied behind her back. The physical was the least of her hurts.
Twice recently she had known what she felt like utter despair. First, in her cell after Falk raped her. Then on the road, when the exhilaration of her escape had faded and the terrible reaction set in.
Yet this was every bit as bad. It might be worse.
The tent smelled of horsehair, warm silk, her own sweat, and limestone-stringent dust. Outside the camp vibrated with the usual sounds of an army in the field. She strained her hearing, half trying to hear cries if her friends were being tormented, half dreading to hear them.
She didn’t. The fact did not comfort her.
I brought them here, she thought. I got them into this.
Though she had blamed herself a thousand different ways for her arrest on trumped-up charges, she knew, intellectually, it wasn’t her fault.
But she had gone passive. She had trusted her father. Imperial justice. Her own innocence.
It had gotten her literally fucked in the ass.
Now innocence of another kind had dropped people who trusted her into deadly danger. Possibly herself as well. That remained to be seen, although she trusted Guillaume’s assurances he meant her no harm. She was too valuable to him intact.
To think I thought love could sway a creature like that. Her naïveté of minutes before now turned her stomach.
But even as she imploded in
to despair, pressing outward against that was the urgent desire to do something. She had to help her friends. She hadn’t collapsed so far as not to realize that meant she had to do something for herself first.
But how? She had been left with wrists and ankles tied in silk scarves—no doubt to further impress upon her that she was the Count’s captive and must accept his will.
She couldn’t think. Far easier to slump, to dwindle to a point in darkness and let the outside world do as it would.
But she couldn’t. Quite. They counted on you. You’re their only hope.
She recalled a conversation with Jaume. Long ago, long before romance was any more than a child’s idle dream. Her father was still an Archduke, then, and Jaume a brash young hero/poet, widely celebrated, but struggling to build his newly chartered Order and to attract the best of Nuevaropan chivalry, the smartest, most talented, bravest, most moral, and most beautiful knights to become his Companions.
She mentioned—she forgot now why—that her dueña, Doña Carlota, had told her anger was bad and should be banished. Jaume smiled and said it wasn’t possible. Nor even desirable.
How, she wondered, could anger can be good?
Is fire bad? he asked her. It can cause horrific pain and injury. It can destroy beauty faster than almost anything else. Yet how could we live without it? It also gives us beauty, and helps sustain the life to enjoy it.
Fire, she admitted, could be both good and bad.
Precisely! he exclaimed, with that happy enthusiasm she loved so well. Fire has two opposite values. It can be used for good or bad, like a knife. Like any tool. So with some emotions.
Some? she wondered.
Some, he said. Envy, worry, despair—these can’t help us, only hurt. Think of them as Poison. Other emotions can be good or bad. Love is one. Hate another, albeit dangerous. And anger. Anger is the most, in ways, like fire.
Among other ways in this: the fire of anger can burn away such poisons as despair.
So now Melodía started getting mad.
And then a knife-blade poked through the silken wall of the tent a handspan from her eyes.
