Which, of course, he did. The man wasn’t a fool, just inclined to benefits of the doubt.
Either way, the men outside would kill him long before he got away, and all Berric’s death would mean was one less man in the rebel’s regional hierarchy. Another would take his place inside a day, if that.
Rurik. First name. Judging—no—hopeful eyes. Dreadful hope. He knows him. The way he tensed, yet feigned—tried to hide that he knew him. Distance.
“The brother,” he said slowly, hoping the words alone would draw something more. No response. Clear fact—that wasn’t how Berric saw him. “Ivon weren’t the only deserter we saw, but the brother weren’t one o’ them.”
Easing breath. The man looked to the floor, squeezed his hands ever so slightly together, and tried to lean back. A soldier playing at subtlety. Isaak kept his face blank and offered nothing more, lest he make a poor calculation.
“So how’d your band happen on him?”
Another piece. He licked his lips. The Gorjes were not after Ivon—they were after the other Matair. That boy is too close with vengeful men.
“Trails go where trails go. Thought we’d picked up the right one. Scouts didn’t come back.” Isaak grunted, feigned the look of a man wearying. “An’ for us, it’s as I said—they hit us when Felix took the piss.”
Berric nodded heavily, no doubt filed that bit away with all the rest. Then he rose, stretched, and ultimately advised him to see the camp’s blacksmith to have his manacles stricken off. For the moment he had passed the test, it seemed, but he was expected back at the captain’s tent by morning, for what he dubbed, “another friendly chat.”
Isaak stood, but hesitated there. There was something he—and his identity as the prisoner—simply had to know. “Ser?” It was enough to draw Berric back. “I hafta ask: why the interest in the little’un?”
A ghostly smile animated the soldier’s face. Then he said, very calmly, “Wanted to be certain your kind hadn’t killed him. That’s all.”
A dismissal as certain as anything. Isaak conducted an awkward bow and ambled out of there as quick as he could. Then he began his long hunt for the blacksmith.
For their camp, the rebels had chosen a sort of shallow bowl, opting for the discretionary screening the adjoining ridges provided them. It was a sort of crescent, orderly despite the rabble mass he had beheld at Verdan. He had to remind himself that these men, whatever else they might have been, had spent months as soldiers. They knew what they were doing—better, it seemed, than some men who made a career of it. Likewise, they seemed to know the best way to keep back the sun—the spot they had chosen had the added advantage of two towering oaks therein, their towering, leafy branches sheltering the camp.
Everything here was short, sloping field tents and staked, crinkled tarps. It was efficiently laid, providing many lanes of traffic. In that way, the men could move quickest, without fear of the same bumbling, chaotic rout that had awaited them at the river. He suspected many decisions now made in the Bastard’s camp were based on avoiding that particular repetition.
There was no sign of the Bastard. Given that the biggest tent in camp had gone to Berric, the obvious surmise was that this was not the rebel’s main camp—or at least, not his only camp. He meandered along the ridgeline, meant to go over it, but the sentries there turned him back.
All in all, it was a perfectly military establishment, more an encampment than a camp. He found himself nodding along with the crisp professionalism of the rabble therein—this was how a camp was supposed to be run. By that same vein, once he inquired it was not hard to locate his blacksmith. The workspace of the one he visited was plainly laid. A few gruff men worked equally rough fires, and though they lacked the easy competence of men born to the trade, they had the dedication of men long accustomed to it. Perhaps the real blacksmiths had long ago died, or fled—but those that remained carried on their trade in earnest.
“Bad luck,” one of them said as he bent over the chains.
He grinned at them. “Can’t be too bad, yeah? Walked through flames to get back.”
The man smiled crudely, then set about his labors. It was a quick, senseless thing—anyone with a hammer might have done. When he had his hands free, Isaak thanked them earnestly and took the opportunity to rub his chafed wrists. It was, he mused, a fine sort of pain.
But soldiers talked. Soldiers always talked, if one knew how to come at them. Already he had the advantage of a story—the manacles spoke for themselves. So it was an easy thing to turn the conversation to what had, supposedly, happened since his departure for his fateful hunt.
This was not, as he had suspected, the rebels’ only camp. The Bastard had divided his forces into two distinct camps, neither so far away as to be unable to support the other, but far enough to leave each separated from whatever travails or whims might seize the other. Unsettlingly, this was the smaller of the pair.
“Still more than enough to burn out these damned trees,” Isaak commented.
This did not engender pride. The blacksmith spat in the dirt, and grunted. “We lost nigh five thousand souls since we struck back for home. What about any o’ this strikes you as right?”
Isaak faltered, then, more hesitantly, “You losing faith, man?”
“Shit. Just gaining sense. We’re like to die in these woods, but it’s right what we do. What Tessel says. We don’t do it, thing is, all the rest o’ these folk—they’d just forget us again. Nothing right in that.”
Dreams of madmen. Before they happened, that was all they ever were. If one only listened to men like these, they would see the realities that came to make them inevitabilities.
There were no Gorjes left to the camp. Though he walked the length of the crescent, Isaak found nothing to imply that someone, anyone might come forward to challenge his claim as the last of his sellsword breed. They had all ridden out some nights before, and though more than one man asked after one or another of their ilk, most seemed quite content with the departure. Things were changing, seemed to be the consensus, and it was no longer prudent to depend on men that sold their swords to the highest bidder.
Things were changing. Two different captains had been appointed to root out Ivon and kill him. Their outriders and scouts were picked off, villages poisoned against them or more safely fled before them, and those men that didn’t then ride blind into ambushes themselves came back empty-handed. Many thought Berric was soon to be given command—he was only a lieutenant under some absent grunt named Vogel, it seemed.
So they had no eyes. No ears. A lot of fears. Isaak smiled at that. The fire had been the act of desperate men, a last ditch effort he could not see ending well for any of them. Their camps still had more men than all of Witold’s lands could muster, and no one was coming to relieve them. An open battle would spell death for any defiance here.
Even for a man with a story to tell, however, these open souls offered no beds to spare. “Sellswords,” one man quipped, “can sleep with the cattle.” It did not get quite so bad as that, but in the end they stuffed him into a tent with two others so grossly incompetent as to be bordering on criminal. They kept him up half the night with bickering over girls they had used to know.
Thus sleep, when it came, was a merciful reprieve. It was a time to withdraw into himself, to reflect, and to process. Most of all: it was a time for clever thoughts to spark strange dreams, wherein owls pecked out lions’ eyes, and a man on a flaming horse rode it clear off a cliff. It had been a long time since he slept as soundly.
Morning was the sound of one man slapping another, a sound like dying fish flopping on the shore. He rolled out of his tent in time to watch his bunkmates careen to the earth, ostensibly about money owed. Isaak stretched long, but gently, as gently pilfered the coins one of them had left lying about—they would, no doubt, blame the other—and started anew for the smithy. It seemed as good a place to start the day as any.
He was met half-way there by a small band headed in the opposite dire
ction, and he almost kept walking even as they turned. One shouted, apparently only belatedly recognizing him, and he turned, certain to make puzzlement his defining feature.
“Cap’n wants another word, sellsword.”
He cast an appraising eye over the thugs before him. There were only three of them, but they were dressed to the part, with weapons close at hand. Few around them seemed otherwise perturbed, meaning whatever it was about, it wasn’t dramatic enough to provoke interest. Best bets lay on acquiescing, and so he did, following them back to their master.
Though he had expected the tent, it became quickly apparent they were actually headed away from camp, rather than deeper into it. At the lowest point of the camp’s crescent, Berric stood with just two other men, surveying the now barren landscape before them. A quick glance of the ground suggested wheel tracks and a quick march of feet and hooves—likely a consequence of a fire burning out of control. It turned on its masters as readily as anyone.
Berric beckoned him in readily enough, saying, “Morning, boyo. Not quite up to your arse in it yet, are you?”
“Is that about to change?”
For a moment, the captain looked startled. Then he grinned. Then he began to laugh. It was a quick, high thing, but pure, not mocking—he threw out an arm and ushered him into what was apparently an impromptu council meeting. The other pair there were not nobility. That much was plain. The one struck him as a one-armed statue—lean as a mule and probably half again as stubborn, if the looks he turned on Isaak were any indication. The other was little more than stubble of beard and a hooked nose squeezed into maille.
“If it did, I’m quite certain you’d simply strike your banners.” Berric smiled, but there was no mirth in it. “At least, that’s what Orif would do, if he’s not too busy plotting vengeance on little girls.”
There was an animosity there that had not been before. Isaak shuffled, cast his eyes to the floor—he tried to look as properly chastened as possible. Then a hand reached up and patted his shoulder. “There, there, lad. Just because your captain’s a cunt doesn’t mean you are” A troublesome sparkle lit his eyes, but the captain turned then, back to the woods.
“Captain Vogel here’s been given the main, while I seem to have been given the van.” He started to say something else, paused, and twisted on the one-armed man. “Forlorn Hope, I am.”
That figure was surprisingly soft-spoken for his stature as he said, “Don’t be dramatic.”
“But that doesn’t much concern you,” Berric turned back to Isaak. “You’re an anomaly. No band no more. No banner. Scarcely a name. But you’re a commodity, see, with something valuable. Know what that is?”
“Information?”
“Information! Precisely. Experience though, more accurately. You had a chance with Ivon, seen how he moves, and—”
“Did we catch him?” Isaak blurted.
There was a silence. He noticed how both Vogel’s and Berric’s eyes drifted toward their reddening compatriot. Ah. A sore subject. He spread his hands apologetically, but the other man scowled clear at him.
“Due to events beyond our control—”
“It’s his terrain! It’d be like hunting Zuti in the sand. How can I kill what I can’t even find?” The other man grunted, spat into the dirt.
“If we could simply look out and see him, it wouldn’t be a hunt,” Vogel observed.
“At any rate,” Berric brusquely interrupted, recapturing his train of thought, “we’re blind out there and we’ve wasted too much time here. Bulk of the army’s advancing on Gölingen; force a siege, after we slip men into Mummer’s Ford to hold the river crossing against the Surinians. But you, my fellow, are to have none of that glory.”
“Ser?”
“See, why we brought you here, sellsword, and what we want to know is—could you find the turncoat, if you had to? You’ve seen how he thinks, how he moves. I’d reckon you know a damn lot more about it than we do.”
“They call themselves the Ghosts of Verdan for a reason, Berric,” the other captain plugged bitterly. “They see our scouts before our scouts see them. And since your damned fire, folk won’t even entertain an informer. You know how many we’ve found strung up in the trees, these past couple days?”
Berric sighed. “No, but I’m sure you’ll…”
“Nine. Nine informers. Carved it right into their hides.”
The man was starting to get more than merely edgy. Real anger was blossoming in his pudgy cheeks. It might even have come to blows if the lanky fellow, Vogel, had not inserted himself between the pair with a motion so delicate as to be, practically, wind.
“Do us a favor,” the very picture of calm said. “Shut your trap.”
“Fire burns, and the world turns,” Berric muttered. “And you yearn for…what? Money? Land? Sheep?”
It took Isaak a moment to realize Berric meant him. He stammered, “Vengeance, messar. Vengeance. Got too good a beating not to want to give some back.”
The captain nodded, ran his tongue along his lips, and chuckled again. “Messar. What a very proper sellsword you are.” Again, that mischievous glimmer. Isaak found he was growing increasingly unsteadied by its gleam. “Good answer, though. You’re to stay with a detachment of the rear, under Tessel himself. It seems we’ve been casting too long in the dark.”
Here Vogel entered, apparently dissatisfied with Berric’s ending. “We can’t push too far with these rats nibbling at our toes. So…some action is demanded. You’ll hit the scattered lords of this forest in their strongholds, while the bulk does its work. Deprive them of their homes, deprive them of their heroes, and what do they have left?”
“Swords?” Berric mused aloud. Vogel’s lips pursed on one side—the one side of his face, Isaak now saw, was as useless as his arm—but did not bother to denounce the man.
The world writ large: burn them out, and what do you leave them? Nothing. And men with nothing always fight harder than men with something to lose. There were points at which men broke, but rarely did they break the way their enemies wanted them to. A good leader knew not to use a sword when an olive branch might do.
Isaak frowned inwardly, considering all of this. The rebel was a force built on a single man, a man who sought to elevate himself above manhood, into the auspices of an idea. Ideas could not be killed. They could be dampened, twisted, but never killed. Yet he in turn was dampened by the very manhood he sought to leave behind—he was vain, their general was. Vain and confident and frightened and reactionary. Most of all, he was reactionary. He led from the front because he did not trust the others that might take it from him.
A man like that was not long for this world. If there was one last good thing he might do upon this earth, he would see to it that it was to guarantee this. That way, someone might tell his daughter he was something more than the sum of whispers.
He bowed low to his betters, so low as to be pitiful. In the dirt that greeted him there were bugs, bugs crawling in the prints of men, and he found his thoughts drifting far and away to a boy he had tried to kill, and the wonder of what war changed, and men changed, and names most of all; too often, he wondered if names meant anything at all.
* *
Sneaky kept armies alive. Informers were key to that position. Blackmail, bribery, rumors—all the light touches men like Isaak had been built for, but for which Roswitte had no stomach—hamstrung communications and decision-making in an enemy.
Ideally, anyway.
The little bear of Verdan hunkered against a shuttered window, peering out through the cracks. Her men had gone quiet as mice. Across the square, silhouetted by damp light, a human pack of soldiers wandered into view. They were met under lamplight by a pair of informers they had purchased some time ago—millers without any need for so frivolous a thing as loyalty.
The millers, Schnalzen and Gunther, exchanged a few words with the soldiers before dutifully guiding them toward the tavern. All their business was conducted there, and tonight they had a g
reat deal of it to discuss. Tonight, they would be able to offer up the man the Bastard had put a bounty on so large a lord’s head might have spun clean round.
At least, that was how it was supposed to go. Most of the rebels went right in, along with their informants. Only one remained outside, to screen for any trouble. He was still watching the street when one of Roswitte’s men sidled up behind him and stuck a knife in his throat. That was the signal for the rest to move, and Roswitte and the others slipped out onto the murky roads, mercifully untouched by the flames, but only because the place was built so dreadfully near a swamp. Mosquitoes swarmed and the air heaved. She wanted this over as quickly as possible.
Ivon’s men were already in the room. They had been in town when she arrived the day before, though their time for acquaintance had been cut short by this dark necessity. There were informers, and there were men that acted like informers.
In the hunt, the hunter was not always the strongest creature in the wood. Guile, as often as brawn, carried the day, and guile told them: there was not a soul left in these woods that would turn a coat on Ivon, after the Bastard had set those flames.
It was a comfortable hangout, the tavern was. Roswitte had a few men attend to the backdoor while she and hers went right through the front door. Evening made the place busier than they might have preferred, but it was still a small town. The crowd froze, suddenly faced by bared blades and stiff armor, and at eyes determined on a hunt. There were only a few there that actually knew what was supposed to go down.
The tavernkeeper, obviously one of them, quickly made himself scarce. As to the bundled soldiers of the Bastard’s army, still nursing drinks in a corner of the tavern, shock exploded suddenly into desperation. They knew they were trapped. They were even smart enough to know, most like, exactly how they had just been duped. One man lunged for the informers, but the informer nailed his hand to the table with a knife.
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