by C. S. Pacat
Once or twice, he glanced at the low stretcher in the shadowed back of the room with a sheet passed over it. After a few hours, the door hanging was pushed open and tied back, as a party entered.
They were all lowborn, three men and a woman, and the man who had tied back the hanging directed them to the stretcher. The woman sat down heavily beside it and made a low sound.
She was a servant, perhaps a washerwoman judging by the forearms and the cap. She was young too, and Damen wondered if this was her husband, or her kin, a cousin, a brother.
Paschal quietly to Damen, ‘Return to your Captain.’
‘I’ll leave you to the room,’ said Damen, nodding.
The woman turned, wet-eyed. He realised that she had heard his accent. He knew that he possessed the colouring characteristic of Akielos, especially of the southern provinces. That alone might not have been enough to identify him as Akielon here on the border, except that he had spoken.
‘What is one of them doing here?’ she said.
Paschal said to Damen, ‘Go.’ It was too late.
‘You did this. Your kind.’ She moved past Paschal, who was stepping forward.
It wasn’t pleasant. She was strong, a woman in the prime of her life, with strength born of hauling water and pounding linen. Damen had to exert himself to hold her off, gripping her by the wrists, and one of Paschal’s tables was knocked over. It took her two male companions to pull her back. Damen raised a hand to his cheek where one of her nails had scratched him. It came back with a smear of blood.
They took her out. Paschal said nothing but silently began righting implements. The men returned after a while and took out the body, bearing it on a wooden support between. One of them paused his progress in front of Damen and just regarded him steadily. Then the man spat on the ground in front of him. They left.
Damen tasted something unpleasant in his mouth. He recalled with perfect clarity the herald who had spat on the ground in front of his father, in the war tent at Marlas. It was the same expression.
He looked at Paschal. He knew this about Veretians.
‘They hate us.’
‘What did you expect?’ said Paschal. ‘The raids are constant. And it was only six years ago that Akielons drove these men out of their homes, out of their fields. They have seen friends, family killed, children taken as slaves.’
‘They kill us too,’ said Damen. ‘Delpha was taken from Akielos in the days of King Euandros. It was right that she revert to Akielon rule.’
‘As she has,’ said Paschal. ‘For now.’
* * *
Laurent’s cool blue gaze revealed nothing about the meeting, not even that it had been long: four hours of talking. He still wore his jacket, and his riding boots. He regarded Damen expectantly.
‘Report.’
‘I didn’t manage to make a full circuit of the walls, I was stopped on the west side. But I’d say there are between fifteen and seventeen hundred men stationed here. It looks like Ravenel’s usual defensive contingent. The storehouses are full enough, but not at capacity. I didn’t see any signs of war preparations, aside from the outriders and doubled guard since this morning. I think this attack took them by surprise.’
‘It was the same in the great hall. Lord Touars did not have the manner of a man who was expecting a fight, for all he wants one.’
Damen said, ‘So the border lords are not working with your uncle to incite this war.’
‘I don’t think Lord Touars is,’ Laurent said. ‘We ride to Breteau. I have won us two or three days. It was grudging. But it will take that long for any communication from my uncle to arrive, and Lord Touars is not going to wage a breakaway war on Akielos all by himself.’
Two or three days.
It was coming; it was visible on the horizon. Damen drew in a breath. Long before troops assembled on either side of the border, he would return to fight on the side of Akielos. Damen looked at Laurent, and tried to imagine facing him over battle lines.
He had been caught up in the energy of—creating something. Laurent’s determination, the ability he had to beat odds had infected him. But this wasn’t a chase through a town, or a game of cards. This was Vere’s most powerful lords unfurling their banners for war.
‘Then we ride to Breteau,’ said Damen.
And he stood, without looking again at Laurent, and began the last preparations for bed.
* * *
They were not the first to arrive at Breteau.
Lord Touars had sent out a contingent of men to protect what remained, and to bury or burn the bodies, so that they would not attract disease or scavengers looking for carrion.
They were a small group of men. They had worked hard. Each of the barns, huts and outbuildings had been checked for survivors, and those few there were had been taken into one of the physician’s tents. The quality of the air was thick with the smell of burnt wood and straw, but there were no smouldering patches of ground. The fires had been put out. The pits were already half dug.
Damen’s eyes passed over a deserted hut, a broken spear-shaft protruding from a lifeless form, the remains of an outdoor gathering with knocked-over cups of wine. The villagers had fought. Here and there, one of the fallen Veretians was still clutching a hoe or a rock, or a pair of shears, or any of the crude weapons that a villager could muster at short notice.
Laurent’s men gave the respect of quiet hard work, clearing methodically, a little gentler when the body was that of a child. They didn’t seem to remember who and what Damen was. They gave him all the same tasks and worked alongside him. He felt awkward, conscious of the obtrusiveness, the disrespect of his presence. He saw Lazar draw a cloak over a woman’s body and make a small gesture of farewell, such as was used in the south. He felt all the way down to his bones how unprotected this place had been.
He told himself that this was an eye-for-an-eye retaliation for a raid on Akielos. He even understood how and why it might have happened. An attack on an Akielon village demanded retribution, but the Veretian border garrisons were too strong to target. Not even Theomedes, with all the might of the kyroi behind him, had wanted to challenge Ravenel. But a smaller party of Akielon soldiers might cross the border between the garrisons, might penetrate into Vere, find a village that was unprotected, and smash it.
Laurent had come to stand beside him.
‘There are survivors,’ said Laurent. ‘I want you to question them.’
He thought of the woman, struggling in his arms. ‘I shouldn’t be the one who—’
‘Akielon survivors,’ said Laurent, shortly.
Damen drew in a breath, not liking this at all.
He said, carefully, ‘If Veretians had been captured after this kind of attack on an Akielon village, they would have been executed.’
‘They will be,’ said Laurent. ‘Find out what they know about the raid on Akielos that provoked this attack.’
There were no restraints such as he had briefly supposed, but as he drew close to the pallet in the dark hut he saw how little need the Akielon prisoner had for them. In and out, his breathing was audible. The wound to his stomach had been tended. It was not of the sort that could be healed.
Damen sat down by the pallet.
It was no one he knew. It was a man with thick curling dark hair and dark eyes with heavy lashes; the hair was sweat-tangled, and sweat filmed his brow. The eyes were open, and watching him.
In his own language, Damen said, ‘Can you speak?’
The man gave a rattling, unpleasant breath and said, ‘You are Akielon.’
Under the blood, he was younger than Damen had first thought. Nineteen or twenty.
‘I’m Akielon,’ said Damen.
‘We have—retaken the village?’
He owed this man honesty; he was a countryman and close to the end. He said, ‘I serve the Veretian Prince.’<
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‘You dishonour your blood,’ said the man, in a voice thick with hate. He flung the words with all his remaining strength.
Damen waited for the spasm of pain and effort that wracked him after that to pass, for his breathing to return to the laboured rhythm it had had when he entered the sickroom. When it did, he said, ‘A raid on Akielos provoked this attack?’
Another breath, in and out. ‘Did your Veretian master send you to ask that?’
‘Yes.’
‘Tell him—his coward’s attack on Akielos killed less than we did.’ Proudly.
Anger was not useful. It came over him in a wave, and so for a long time he didn’t speak, just stared at the dying man, flatly.
‘Where was the attack?’
A breath like bitter laughter, and the man closed his eyes. Damen thought he wasn’t going to say more, but: ‘Tarasis.’
‘It was clan raiders?’ Tarasis lay in the foothills.
‘They pay raiders.’
‘They rode through the mountains?’
‘What does your master care for—this?’
‘He is trying to stop the man who attacked Tarasis.’
‘Is that what he told you? He’s lying. He’s Veretian. He will—use you for his own ends—as he uses you now, against your own people.’
The words were growing more laboured. Damen’s eyes passed over the haggard face, the sweat-drenched curls. He spoke in a different voice.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Naos.’
‘Naos, you fought under Makedon?’ For Naos wore the notched belt. ‘He used to buck even at the edicts of Theomedes. But he was always loyal to his people. He must have felt them badly wronged to break Kastor’s treaty.’
‘Kastor,’ said Naos, ‘the false king. Damianos—should have been our leader. He was the prince-killer. He understood what Veretians are. Liars. Deceivers. He would never have—climbed into their—beds as Kastor has done.’
‘You’re right,’ said Damen, after a long moment. ‘Well, Naos. Vere is rousing its troops. There is very little to stop the war you want.’
‘Let them come—Veretian cowards hide in their forts—afraid of an honest fight—let them step outside—and we will cut them down—as they deserve.’
Damen said nothing, he just thought of an unprotected village now turned to stillness and silence outside. He stayed by Naos until the rattle was quiet. Then he rose and went out of the hut, through the village, and back to the Veretian camp.
CHAPTER 12
Damen gave the story of Naos a stark, unadorned retelling. When it was finished Laurent said in an inflectionless voice, ‘The word of a dead Akielon, unfortunately, is worth nothing.’
‘You knew before you sent me in to question him that his answers would lead to the foothills. These attacks were timed to coincide with your arrival. You are being drawn away from Ravenel.’
Laurent gave Damen a long, pensive look and said, eventually, ‘Yes, the trap is closing and there is nothing else to be done.’
Outside Laurent’s tent, the grim clean up continued. On his way to saddle the horses, Damen came across Aimeric, dragging tent canvas that was slightly too heavy for him. Damen looked at Aimeric’s tired face and his dust-covered clothes. He was a long way from the luxuries of his birth. Damen wondered for the first time what it felt like to Aimeric to ally himself against his own father.
‘You’re leaving camp?’ said Aimeric, looking at the packs Damen held. ‘Where are you going?’
‘You wouldn’t believe me,’ said Damen, ‘if I told you.’
* * *
It was a case where numbers were not helpful, only speed, stealth and knowledge of the territory. If you were going to spy for evidence of a strike force in the hills, you did not want the sound of pounding hooves and the flash of burnished helmets announcing your intentions.
The last time that Laurent had chosen to separate himself from the troop, Damen had argued against it. The easiest way for your uncle to get rid of you is to separate you from your men, and you know it, he’d said at Nesson. This time Damen didn’t put any of his arguments, though the ride Laurent was proposing this time was through one of the most heavily garrisoned regions on the border.
The route they would travel would take them a day’s ride south, then into the hills. They would seek out any obvious evidence of an encampment. Failing that, they would attempt to rendezvous with the local clans. They had two days.
An hour put several miles between them and the rest of Laurent’s men, and that was when Laurent pulled on a rein and circled his horse around Damen’s briefly; he was watching Damen as though he was waiting for something.
‘Think I’m going to sell you to the nearest Akielon troop?’ said Damen.
Laurent said, ‘I’m quite a good rider.’
Damen looked at the distance that separated his horse from Laurent’s—about three lengths. It was not much of a head start. They were now circling each other.
He was ready for the moment when Laurent put his heels into his horse. The ground flashed by and an interval passed breathlessly with some very fast riding.
They couldn’t maintain the pace: they only had one set of horses, and the first declivity was lightly forested, so that weaving was essential and a gallop or fast canter impossible. They slowed, found leaf-strewn paths. It was mid afternoon, the sun high-flung in the sky, and the light streamed down through the tall trees, dappling the ground and turning the leaves bright. Damen’s only experience of long, cross-country riding was in a group—not two men alone on a single mission.
It was a good feeling, he found, with the flash of Laurent’s insouciant riding ahead of him. It felt good to ride out knowing that the outcome of the ride was dependant upon his own actions, rather than being delegated away to someone else. He understood that the border lords, determined on a course of action, would find a way to dismiss or ignore any evidence that did not fit their plans. But he was here to follow the thread of Breteau to its conclusion, regardless. He was here to find out the truth. That idea was satisfying.
After a few hours, Damen emerged from the trees into the clearing on the edge of a stream, where Laurent was waiting, resting his horse. The stream flowed quick and clear. Laurent let his horse stretch out its neck, let six inches of reins slip through his fingers, easy in the saddle as his horse dropped its head, seeking out water, blowing across the surface of the stream.
Relaxed in the sunlight, Laurent watched him approach, as one expecting an arrival welcome and familiar. Behind him the light was bright on the water. Damen let his horse grasp the bit and draw him forward.
Cleaving the silence came the sound of an Akielon horn.
It was loud and sudden. The birds in the nearby trees made disrupted notes of their own and flew upwards out of the branches. Laurent whirled his horse in the direction of the sound. The horn came from over the rise, which could be seen from the disturbance of the birds. With a single look at Damen, Laurent pressed his mount over the stream, towards the crest of the hill.
As they rode up the slope, a sound began to intrude over the noise of the fast-running stream water, as if many feet were in half-regular march. It was a sound he knew. It did not come only from the tramp of leather boots on the earth but from hooves, the clinks of armour and the turning of wheels, all of which gave it its irregular pattern.
Laurent reined in his horse as they crested the hill together, barely hidden from sight behind outcrops of granite.
Damen looked out.
The men spanned the length of the adjoining valley, a line of red cloaks in perfect formation. At this distance, Damen could see the man blowing the horn, the ivory curve that he raised to his lips, the flash of bronze at the tip. The standards that were flying were the standards of the commander Makedon.
He knew Makedon. He knew that formation, he knew th
e weight of that armour, he knew the feel of the spear-shaft in his hand—everything was familiar. The sense of home and the yearning for home threatened to overwhelm him. It would feel so right to rejoin them, to emerge from the grey maze of Veretian politics, and return to something that he understood: the simplicity of knowing his enemy, and facing a fight.
He turned.
Laurent was watching him.
He remembered Laurent sizing up the distance between two balconies and saying, ‘Probably,’ which, once appraised, had been enough for him to jump. He was looking at Damen with the same expression.
Laurent said, ‘The nearest Akielon troop is nearer than I expected.’
‘I could throw you over the back of my horse,’ Damen said.
He wouldn’t even need to do that. He would just need to wait. Outriders would be galloping through these hills.
The horn split the air again; every mote of Damen’s body seemed to ring with it. Home was so close. He could take Laurent down the hill and deliver him into Akielon captivity. The desire to do that thrummed in his blood. Nothing was standing in his way. Damen pressed his eyes closed briefly.
‘You need to take cover,’ Damen said. ‘We’re inside their scouting lines. I can ride as lookout until they’ve moved on.’
‘Very well,’ Laurent said, after a heartbeat passed with his eyes watching Damen steadily.
* * *
They agreed on a rendezvous, and Laurent took off with the restrained urgency of a man who has to find some way to hide sixteen hands of bay gelding behind a shrub.
Damen’s job was harder. Laurent had not been out of sight ten minutes before Damen heard the unmistakable vibration of hooves, and he barely had time to dismount and hold his horse silently, pressed into a tangle of undergrowth, before two riders thundered by.
