As Feathers Fall

by Chris Galford

  “I need someone at my side that knows the field, that I can rely on if it does come to the grim scenarios. And I cannot act with assurance if I know the one true general in our camp is beyond, if we find ourselves there.”

  His brother’s face darkened, but did not give itself wholly to wrath. “What is a man that would send his son to war, in his place?”

  “A loyal one,” Walthere answered.

  “If it is your will, I will do so, but I counsel against it. Amschel is—” His eyes strayed, to the son watching out of the corner of his eye, and a sigh shook them. Then Maynard turned his words to Amschel himself. “You are a fine fit, my boy, I should never say otherwise. But I have never been the man to cool my heels as others pitch the fires.

  “And more to the point,” he added, returning to his brother, “take the lot of us or take none of us, it does no good without more men. Charlotte has the right of it, but the fact remains, to do anything about it, to take this war beyond, we need the troops to muster. Their gathering may be slow, but it is great, and if it gathers, we will not be able to stand eternally against it.”

  At this, Sara raised her own perfumed hand. “I may have a suggestion, my lords.”

  They waited her out.

  “The nobles will not come to you. They hem and haw and fear, most of all. And scared men will hole up and they will not come out. Your grace has ever been with the people. If you can make them see the justness of your cause, or more importantly, reason with them that it will be you who emerges at the end—and thusly he who reins in their own lords, he who is responsible for their taxes—they will come, regardless of their own lords’ answers.”

  Koenraad sputtered into his tea. “It hasn’t worked so far, but I don’t doubt the goal. It’s bodies we need. We have the arms to spare, aye, Fitz?”

  “The stores are full to the brim, and ready to stick the impure,” Fitz chimed.

  “Don’t get smart, boy.”

  Maynard shook his head, though. “A flock is good. Bodies are needed. But all the arms in the world won’t help the untrained. I’ve been training my men for seasons. Militias don’t stand. Militias are distractions. Militias run. Why do you think the loyalists won’t fight us?”

  “Boyce’s little spiders suggest similar fears amongst our enemy. Those ships of which my daughter speaks are the turning point, the reinforcements they need. Strong men, who know their way around a blade.”

  Charlotte clapped her hands together. “Then it’s obvious. We must guarantee Mauritz never meets up with his new flock.”

  “Without moving ourselves,” Maynard grumbled.

  “And without our allies,” Koenraad conceded.

  But Maynard countered him, saying, “Do not so hastily dismiss the northerners. Simply because they do not march to our aid does not mean they will brook such a force on their own lands.”

  “And what will they do about it?”

  “What we need,” Sara interjected, “is to shift the momentum our way. Your folk are charismatic sorts, my dear count. You have the means to shift the tides.”

  “If you mean by poetry, we have already been plying the poets with our trade, I assure you.” Fitz reached into the breast of his tunic and produced a scrap of parchment with a flourish.

  “As the bard does say:

  There once was a king in Anscharde,

  ardent and proud, without regard.

  His wife stroked a bard,

  to escape the sighs marred

  by life’s devotion to southern lard.”

  When he had finished, he looked up again with a smile, to the disgust of more than half the room. Charlotte reconsidered hitting him, but true to form, not the slightest hint of a blush dared mar his doggish grin.

  “Saelec’s magnum opus, I think. Good humor. Just the sort of thing to get people—”

  A hesitant and hushed bit of falsified laughter breathed out between Sara’s lips, before she dismissed the man entire. “With due respect, I believe your daughter has it in her to fill this capacity, count.”

  Charlotte caught the instant his brow sagged, just so, in a slipped rebuke. Walthere spread his hands upon the table and cricked the corners of his lips. “Pardon?”

  “My mother is unable. My brother is too young, too vulnerable; the same for your own young son. You, my Lord Cullick, have a war to manage. Whom does this leave?”

  “Any number of able figures at my discretion,” Walthere rebutted, growing very still. Charlotte watched his hands, for subtle sign of the musculature which might signal a common man’s need to shift—traces of discomfort.

  “Absolutely not,” Fitz started.

  Maynard dealt with him swiftly. “Remember your place, Fitz.”

  He backed down, but the position he took beneath her seemed to open, to become more enveloping. A distraction from the people that mattered, but sweet for all that. He was worried. Charlotte gave his leg a squeeze.

  “And none which speak with such clear authority, such immediate grounding, as your own blood. Send me with her, if you fear the look of legitimacy, but send her regardless. You need a call to action. If not to gain bodies for your own momentum, then ser, to at least stymie your enemy’s own.”

  A chance to leave the castle, and all its carefully planned dalliances? Its host of meetings and calculated discussions with the same tired faces? She might have kissed the princess in that moment. They had talked about such possibilities themselves, of course, but only in the abstract—nothing so absolute as this.

  With her father, she could not let on her own doubts, though, or even the appearance of surprise. This had to be as natural a thought as afternoon tea.

  “If you think I will send my daughter into harm’s way after what has befallen Rosamine…”

  “I do not intend to go alone, father.” Her entrance was crisp, with straight-backed resolution. She had removed her teasing hand from Fitz’s leg and appeared, for all that she could while settled on that one’s lap, the picture of an attentive soldier. “If our enemies will not commit to action, this frees up some of our own men for the duty. Nor do I intend to stray far. But the northern lords need to be induced to fight. If—and I do not besmirch them, uncle—but if they are cowed, or face this threat but one on one, we will find ourselves in a pincer.”

  Walthere rolled the thought around with the hand he used to trace the table’s boards. “Tacticians now, are we?” But he knew the answer. He had raised his daughter to be his heir. “If they catch you, they will kill you.”

  “I know this.”

  “Your words may fall on deaf ears, or the northern lords may be every bit as irked to see you proselytizing as an army landing. There are no guarantees in this.”

  “I know this.”

  “Then go and see it done.”

  And so she did.

  That very day, after lunch, she rode out with an entourage of guardsmen and Sara and sycophants—some of her father’s beloved fops and spies among them—as far from the yolk of her father’s coddled protection as she could muster.

  They shunned the places she knew best—the castles and manors, towers and forts which often marked the upper hand of the upper class, and the seats of her father’s power. In most cases, they even shunned the cities, sufficing to suppose that word would spread there.

  Instead, they wandered from village to village and town to town, paying for room and board like any other travelers. No privilege was evoked—in fact, it was shunned more often than not—though Charlotte kept from no one the secret of her heritage. In truth, she flaunted it, and in that flaunting, was generous.

  Money played a part in it, to be sure. It could do much to balm the wounds of weary souls. But money was fleeting. Even among the poorest, it was a lesson time forgot. One could not engrain themselves through reliance on a “thing.” It was people that won hearts and ideas that kept them.

  Four days after she set out on her mad little ride, Charlotte was in the province of Lucretsia, too near—her accompani
ment complained—to the Bastard’s own precocious movements. She pointedly ignored the advice. Instead, at the same time most of the country was receiving news about the Emperor’s survival, and the extreme detritus involved in his revival, Charlotte waltzed into a town known as Grünesblatt, a few miles from the province’s all too loyalist capital, and began to speak.

  It was a little before dusk. There was a party of loyalist soldiers a few hours away, she knew, searching for her afield. The merchants were just readying to close up shop—she did not need to compete. The farmers and the ranchers were beginning to trickle in, exhausted after long hours in the heavy sun. A town crier had just made his latest proclamations, leaving an uneasy and gossipy crowd. In all, Assal himself could not have crafted a better time.

  And what must they see when they look on me? she thought as she stood atop a cart in the market square.

  What they saw was a golden-haired woman, dressed in the very finery—though of a men’s riding fashion, it had to be said—some of them, no doubt, slaved to grow the materials for, but would never have the wealth to own. A woman at once the embodiment of what they had long begrudgingly called their “betters,” and yet who puzzlingly wore a brace of pistols on her hip. Not a tax collector. Not on her way to some place grander. But on their streets, looking into the depths of their eyes.

  When she spoke, it was of tyranny and godliness, brimstone and bastards, but above all else, she spoke of hope. Not in abstracts, or courtly vagaries, but with the pointed, homespun sense of fact that the people had to live with every day.

  Taxes did occupy a small, seething part of her argument. She tried not to dwell on them.

  Instead, she attacked indecision itself.

  “But what am I? Another voice risen to command. Another note, too quickly shunted out.” And here she paused for effect, smiling with a pitiful shake of her head. “One of many. I know this, and you, who bear the burden of our calls, understand it too well. Is it not time we cease this charade? That someone, anyone, might put an end to the cries that plague our nation and keep it from the sweet rest it so deserves?

  “Ah, but I tell you now, that is the problem. We desire rest, and so we rest before our time. How many of you have received the calls to arms, yet in turn, how many see our noble lords riding one way or another? Fear paralyzes them, and so they call their banners, and they wait. They wait while the seed rots in the barns. They wait while armies foreign and domestic pillage and burn everything that isn’t hidden behind—conveniently enough—the stone walls they call their own. They hide, and when this plague or the other passes, they emerge not with victory in their hands or a cause within their hearts, but to turn to you, who shielded them from all that they have faced, and say, ‘Where is my grain? Where is my wine?’ And they do not hear the laments that echo back to them.

  “Truth? They do not care. And in that lack of care, they force you to care. To bear the burden. Where is the fairness? Well I tell you this: no justice has ever been served to those that huddle and whine. It is taken by those that have made it so. None of us want to bear the burden. The difference is, some will regardless, and some won’t.

  “I am sure you have heard many things about my family. About my future husband, and I. Traitors and bastards all, no doubt. Perhaps, to some. And I do not begrudge those that would take up that call—if they believe it. They made a choice. As have I. As has my father. That this land is broken. That this land is corrupt. That this land would give itself to foreign hands, and forget the very notion that once made it strong.

  “Messars, Goodwomen, I am a lady. I am a woman. I am the daughter of the lion, and a child of the gryphons. I am a creature of the wild that would live and die a creature of the wild. I do not expect you to understand me. I am not so vain. But the idea, the decision—make it this that we might share. And tell your lords and ladies in their turn, and force the hand they will not move. Force what time alone shall not render. Or I tell you all, men and women, lords and ladies, it shall not matter; we shall be torn asunder in the silence of our indecision.”

  In the poetry she often chided, the bards liked to give the hero his due. This came in cheers and gold, banners and women and nations. Hate those childish notions as she might, they left some impression all the same. Those who heard them gained an expectation of what was to come. Of what they might hear in reply. Charlotte Cullick was no child, but she was not so dead inside as to flee from hope entire.

  There were some shouts. There were murmurs—of dissent or assent she had not the time or energy to decipher. Confusion addled them. Anger riled them. Her own, sheer audacity stirred them. Mostly, it was a rippling hush, as though a rock tossed into the expanse of a broad lake.

  Yet she knew when her time was done. She dropped off the cart she had taken for a stand and motioned her men to leave. They were still pushing through the crowd when one of the perimeter scouts returned, scattering folk with his shouts and the fury of his gryphon’s claws.

  He pulled reins before Charlotte. Another man caught those reins as she moved eye to eye with his mount.

  “What news?” she asked, already guessing.

  “The loyalists loom from the west, my lady. They have caught our scent and they make for the town. Too many to meet in the open field.”

  The rest of her men were already mounting. Charlotte, surveying the scene, gave her eyes a long moment to wander. They saw many people, all studying her with a mix of dread, hatred, and adoration. In the end, she knew it was but a matter of which emotion ran strongest in their blood.

  She looked the nearest townsman in the eyes as she declared, “Make a choice. One way or the other, it is all that we can do.”

  No hands reached out to stay her. Though she walked through a turbulent sea, her weapons did not weigh her. She took a breath and stepped forward into the mass.

  And she passed out the other side, to slip her feet into the stirrups of her gryphon and beat its wings against the golden dusk.

  If anyone noticed the sweat matting her golden locks, no one let it sway them as she set a steady pace into the setting sun, not looking back at all.

  When all were free of the village, she gave a cry of “Ride!” on her captain’s affirmation, and they broke in a scattered wedge for a gap in the eastern hills. Some of the men swore at her back, but Charlotte merely dug in her heels and lowered her head to her gryphon’s neck, ignoring them. Her heart beat quick in her chest, and for the first time that afternoon she truly breathed—and shortly thereafter, smiled.

  Death can come but once. But fear, unaccounted, will render its apparition a thousand times.

  They set a bone-jarring pace for nearly an hour, but all the same, some of their pursuers gradually gained. Simply: not all her company were accustomed to speed. Gold tinted red and descended into naught but a slim disk across the flatlands, and still the bastards rode them down. Shadows grew larger on their heels, beginning as apparitions and warping into the hideous guise of men—the outriders of a company, most like, and a match for them by numbers.

  “Break!” Charlotte shouted as the glint of metal further defined their pursuers. In practiced poise, her party split in twain, one half peeling north under their captain, while her own turned south. The action split their riled foes down the middle, not to be discouraged. She gritted her teeth and twisted back in her saddle, shouting a most unlady-like curse on all their heads.

  A man to her right flinched as a bolt flung erratically overhead. Wind in her hair, the clamor of hooves and claws jolting her from head to toe, she had the silliest urge to roar. Instead, she twisted around her other side, and with one hand clutched tight against the reins, let a pistol roar for her. An improbable, desperate attempt, she thought, for any on such a field.

  A man screamed and his shadowy bulk fell beneath a rush of hooves. Another bolt whipped by in reply. “Brace!” she cried.

  It was a moment that emphasized another critical difference between gryphons and horses. Horses turned. Gryphons rounded
on a penny’s fall. Their pursuers bore beneath their bowed legs the power of a horse’s gallop. Charlotte’s party had the fury of a gryphon’s claws. Between legs and reins, most of their party pressed their steeds’ wings abroad and pitched, twisting, into the air.

  It was a flutter, not a flight—a twisting break that saw them facing their pursuers and dropping down again upon them. There was no time for them to pull up short. One was close enough he escaped beneath their claws. The rest were either taken from their saddles or found themselves suddenly floundering beneath a fury of nails, both iron and bone.

  Charlotte jolted as her own mount heaved its claws into a man’s fore. She did not even get a good look at him. Light leather, a scout’s garb—this was all she beheld, and she knew it was not enough to save him. The force of connection nearly bolted her from the saddle, but there was never any doubt for her victim. He began a scream that the force knocked ragged, and from the way the air popped between them, he did not impact the ground whole.

  The rest of the fighting was short and bitter. A mace managed a crippling blow to one of her guardsmen’s arms, but otherwise, it was a one-sided affair. Only two of theirs escaped their sudden about–face intact, and only one of these turned back to fight. He was carved down quick enough, while his fellow fell beneath the twang and thunk of a crossbow’s kiss.

  None of their pursuers got out.

  “And the others? How do you suppose they fared?” Charlotte asked, glancing back for the hills.

  Another twenty minutes, perhaps, and the rest of their company rejoined them. One man, whimpering from a lead ball taken under the shoulder, lay strewn across his horse. He was not expected to survive. The rest, however, came as bloodied and untouched as they.

  The hills had been a natural place for an ambush. The rest was merely planning.

  The captain rode straight to Charlotte at their rejoinder, and dipped his head in greeting. “You heeded instruction, Lady Charlotte. I have known many a man too haughty to do the same,” he said shortly, with easy authority. One of Maynard’s men—a bearded, chunky fellow of middling years, with eyes that left no stone unturned. His words held not the tang of chastisement they might have in another’s voice.