The campaign to crush the great lords had been a disaster from the outset and they’d not even fought a proper battle yet. As Mordecai had commanded, the New Man army had moved out just six days after he and Lord Atticus had arrived at the training camp. Thereafter, however, it had moved so slowly that it had taken weeks to make any progress at all. Supply carts and wagons had continually gotten stuck in the mud created by endless days of rain. Horses had lost shoes and gone lame. Soldiers only recently arrived from the farthest corners of the realm had been so worn out that they’d been unable to maintain a quick march through the mud, and there had been so many of them that instead of being able to execute them all for their infuriating disobedience, Mordecai had been forced to slow the pace considerably.
Their pace had been further slowed by the need to waste time pillaging the land as they went, for although they’d brought along supplies enough to see the men of consequence well fed, they’d not had time to establish a supply train robust enough to feed the entire army. As such, each time they’d passed by a farm or a village they’d emptied the larders and grain silos, slaughtered the animals and stripped the fields and fruit orchards. Farmers and villagers who’d protested the pillaging (or protested the enjoyment the soldiers had taken at the expense of their wives and daughters) had been slaughtered alongside their animals as a warning to their neighbours to keep their displeasure to themselves.
On top of all this, his soldiers had continued to desert at an alarming rate. Many of the deserters were conscripts who’d been forced into the army, and since Mordecai did not have the time or resources to waste hunting them down, he’d elected to mete out punishment to a random selection of those conscripts who yet remained behind. Most unfortunately, the sight of their heads jammed onto pikes carried along by their still-breathing comrades had done nothing whatsoever to prevent further desertions. On the contrary, it had caused the desertion rate to climb higher still.
It had climbed again when the attacks had begun. Nighttime raids had seen sentries’ throats slit, men slaughtered in their sleep, tacking sliced to ribbons, horses freed from their tethers and wagons set ablaze. During the day, bands of armed men would appear out of nowhere to hack his soldiers to bits. Or worse, they wouldn’t appear, their crossbow arrows would simply rain down. Then, as quickly as they had appeared (or not appeared), the virtually unscathed attackers would be gone, leaving nothing but death, confusion and fear in their wake.
As it happened, the route that Mordecai had insisted upon taking had gone a long way toward leaving his army vulnerable to these attacks. For while it was without question the shortest distance to Bartok Estate, where the great lords were reported to be gathering their army, the route ran between rocky outcrops and through small wooded areas that were perfectly suited to ambushes. Moreover, the road itself was so narrow that Mordecai’s army often ended up strung out over several miles, rendering it even more vulnerable.
The taller-by-a-head commander who’d earlier ridden back to find out the cause of the latest delay—the commander who’d not yet been cut down to size—had not said anything, but Mordecai knew what the bastard was thinking. He was thinking that if they’d spent a few weeks preparing and then taken the longer route that he’d recommended, they’d almost certainly be farther ahead by now. He was thinking that Mordecai didn’t know how to handle the men and that he didn’t lead the army half as well as Murdock would have done.
The idea that anyone would dare to think such blasphemy so enraged Mordecai that he abruptly decided to have the commander flogged to death upon his return to camp. As he opened his mouth to bellow the order, Mordecai noticed that the soldier standing before him appeared to have more to say.
“What?” snapped Mordecai.
“Y-Your Grace, the commander told me to bring you this,” stammered the soldier, hastily holding out a bloody scrap of cloth Mordecai had assumed was a bandage or compress.
“What it is?” demanded Mordecai, making no move to reach for it.
“An armband ripped from the sleeve of one of the attackers,” replied the soldier.
Irritably, Mordecai snatched the bloody scrap from the man’s hand, spread it flat on his own withered lap and then let out a cry of shock and dismay. It wasn’t the sight of the Bartok crest that caused him to cry out thusly, it was the sight of it entwined with a bastardized Erok royal crest.
Mordecai fell back in his cushioned chair, his heart clenching so hard that he actually found it difficult to breathe. When the attacks on his army had first begun, he’d assumed they were being perpetrated by landless, homeless malcontents or by the outraged neighbours of some of the farmers and villagers his soldiers had slaughtered along the way. When it became clear that the attacks were impeccably planned and executed, however, Mordecai had begun to suspect some nobleman’s trained knights. Still, because the attackers had appeared and vanished too swiftly for anyone to get a good look at their armbands, and since his own idiot soldiers had not managed to kill even a single one of them, it had been impossible to know exactly which nobleman had stooped so low as to attack like some lowborn bandit.
Until now, that is.
Now, if the entwined crests were to be believed, it appeared that it was not just that bastard Bartok who’d stooped so low but Queen Persephone as well! If the entwined crests were to be believed, she’d not vanished into thin air, after all. On the contrary, the gutter-reared tribal broodmare who’d refused him marriage, sons and her knowledge of the healing pool was back causing him trouble and in league with his mortal enemy.
Nervously wiping his grimy hands on his torn black pants, the soldier said, “Is there any order you’d like me to carry back to—”
“Get out,” said Mordecai softly.
The soldier was gone before Mordecai had finished speaking the words.
Flinging aside the bloody armband, Mordecai let his back bend and his heavy head droop. That he would soon know the whereabouts of the queen excited him almost as much as the knowledge that she was entwined with Bartok enraged him. While he was brooding upon the things he longed to do to each of them—and to the cockroach too, if he was still scuttling about—from a nearby tent came the sound of Lord Atticus shouting and pummelling one of the soldiers who’d been assigned to tend to his needs. As Mordecai listened to the drunken nobleman rant that his supper had been ruined because the sauce that had accompanied his roast pheasant had lacked the hint of mint that he’d specifically requested, Mordecai wondered for the thousandth time why he didn’t just lop the worm’s head off and be done with it. The answer, of course, was that Lord Atticus might yet prove more useful alive than dead but still. It was exceedingly tiresome listening to him complain.
When he heard the dreary sound of rain beginning to patter on the roof of the tent, it occurred to Mordecai that much about the game of war was tiresome. Suddenly, he was seized by a yearning to be back in the imperial palace, plotting from the comfort of his own chambers. His camp tent was far more sumptuous than anyone else’s tent, of course, but it did not come close to rivalling the luxury to which he was accustomed. Being “one of the men” had long since lost its shine and his poor body ached all the time. Running an army was far harder than it looked—not to mention far less glamorous—and he deeply resented the fact that—
“Your Grace?”
“I TOLD YOU TO GET OUT!” screamed Mordecai.
“I know, Your Grace!” cried the soldier, his knees all but knocking together. “But General Murdock is outside and he requests an audience!”
Mordecai was so surprised by these words that he forgot how enraged he was. “Murdock is alive?” he exclaimed. “Murdock is here?”
The soldier bobbed his head. “Yes, Your Grace. Just a few moments ago he—”
“Send him in,” snapped Mordecai.
The soldier departed even quicker than he had the last time. The next instant, Murdock crept into the room. He was thinner than he had been and dirtier than Mordecai had ever seen him. He was
wearing ill-fitting boots and breeches and a doublet with a bloodstained knife hole in the lapel—no doubt made by the General himself in an effort to eliminate any lingering reluctance the doublet’s previous owner had to handing it over.
Mordecai eyed his henchman, trying to decide how to greet him. On the one hand, Murdock had lost control of the imperial capital and for that he richly deserved to be punished. On the other hand, his arrival meant that Mordecai could wash his hands of the day-to-day tedium of running the army.
“Took you long enough to get here,” he finally muttered.
“Yes,” agreed General Murdock, reaching up to carefully smooth back a lock of greasy hair. “But I am here now.”
FORTY
FOLLOWING THE ARRIVAL of the Khan, it took eight days for Persephone and her royal Council to ensure that everyone and everything was prepared for the journey south to the imperial capital.
Late on their last night in the bandit camp, Persephone pulled Azriel aside and asked him if he’d mind giving her one final lesson in battle strategy before they set out. Tired though he was, he smiled and followed her up the ladder into the tree shelter in which they’d been residing. Persephone waited quietly while Azriel lit candles, set the map and game pieces out on the desk and sat down on the bench. Then, instead of taking a seat on the bench next to him, she eased herself onto his lap, wrapped her arms around his neck and gave him a long, hot kiss. Her surprised (and suddenly wide-awake) strategy tutor offered up some extremely feeble protests in the name of the war effort and the standards set forth by the Tutors’ Guild, but these were rather suspect given that he had Persephone halfway out of her dress before he’d finished uttering them.
“By the gods, I find it very difficult to believe that you are going to be somebody’s mother,” said Azriel much, much later, as he lay sprawled on the mattress trying to catch his breath.
“Believe it,” said Persephone, smiling in the darkness as she, too, tried to catch her breath.
In response, Azriel rolled onto his side and laid his hand against her bare belly. He’d been able to feel the baby’s movements for some weeks now, and he seemed to never tire of them—just as Persephone never tired of the sight of his broad, bare shoulders silhouetted above her.
“He’s getting stronger,” murmured Azriel, his hand shifting slightly as the concentration of tiny kicks and punches shifted from one side of her belly to the other.
“In spite of my gut feeling, he might be a she,” warned Persephone, putting her hand over his.
“Impossible,” said Azriel. “I’ve never heard of a girl named Poddrick.”
Persephone chuckled throatily. “Azriel, I have told you many times that we are not naming the baby Poddrick,” she said.
Azriel chuckled too. Then he leaned over Persephone, gave her a lingering kiss on the mouth and whispered, “Call the baby what you will, wife—just keep you both safe from harm in the weeks to come.”
“I will,” she whispered. If I can, she added to herself.
It didn’t take long to get organized the next morning. Everyone’s packs had been checked and rechecked the night before, so the only thing left to do was to ready the horses and pack animals. Predictably, Fleet took exception to being saddled even though Persephone stood nearby heaping praise upon him.
As Azriel stalked off in search of a bucket of cut turnips in the hope that this would keep the “infernal bag of horsemeat” occupied for long enough to saddle him, Persephone went to bid a final goodbye to the women and children who were staying behind. She’d just scooped Sabian into her arms when there came from the other side of camp a shrill, horsey squeal followed by a crash and the sound of an irate Gypsy bellowing something about horse steaks.
“Well!” said Persephone brightly as she planted a noisy kiss on Sabian’s firm little cheek, set him down and looked around at the others. “It sounds as though we are almost ready to go. I shall think of you often, and if all goes well, when next we meet again, you will be able to call me queen in very truth.”
Instead of heading directly south after emerging from the Great Forest, Persephone and her army spent several days travelling east to avoid Lord Bartok’s army. Although reports suggested that the nobleman was doing exactly as Persephone had commanded, she did not yet trust him enough to risk coming face to face with his superior fighting force.
During the march east, they saw almost no one. It was sparsely populated land to begin with and Persephone insisted on giving the few farms and villages they did see a wide berth so as not to frighten the inhabitants. If there were other travellers on the road—and Robert assured them that there were, for the realm was filled with displaced lowborns forced to ever wander in search of a day’s work or a scrap of food—they did not show themselves.
At the outset, Persephone rode beside Azriel at the front of the army beneath the fluttering banner bearing her crest. By the end of the third day, however, her back was so sore that Azriel had to lift her out of the saddle. She tried to assure him (and herself) that she’d be fit to ride the next day, but Azriel was having none of it. After entrusting Persephone into Rachel’s care, he and Robert pocketed a purse of bandit gold and galloped back to the nearest village. They returned the next morning with a surprisingly fine litter and a disturbing description of villagers left traumatized and starving by Mordecai’s New Men, who’d passed through about a week earlier. Persephone immediately ordered men to return to the village with as much food as they could spare. It was not much—just some strips of dried bear meat and a small sack of hard biscuits. However, no one knew better than Persephone that a mouthful of food today could mean the difference between life and death tomorrow—and that a mouthful of food was often enough to keep hope alive as well.
From that point on, Persephone rode Fleet only infrequently. Since they could not leave the queen’s mount rider-less without risking spies and subjects alike—none of whom knew she was pregnant—questioning her fitness to lead her troops, Rachel often donned Persephone’s armour and rode the disgruntled Fleet in her stead. Whenever she did, Persephone spent her day fidgeting inside the curtained litter and chatting with Ivan, who’d found her almost as soon as they’d emerged from the forest and who frequently perched on the roof of the litter. Besides listening to Persephone, Ivan spent his days glaring at those humans who offended him (all of them) or disembowelling some creature he’d snatched out from under poor Cur’s nose.
When Azriel judged that they were a day outside Parthania, he sent heralds ahead to proclaim the news that Persephone was coming. Around mid-afternoon, she and Rachel traded outfits and places, and shortly after sunset they crested a hill and saw the great walls of Parthania looming in the distance.
Silhouetted against a sky streaked orange and red with the last light of the dying day, the walls seemed to stretch from one horizon to the other and all the way up to the heavens.
It was still the most awesome sight Persephone had ever seen. Unlike that first time she’d seen it all those months ago, however, this time she did not gape like an ignorant slave girl on her first trip to the imperial capital.
This time she gazed upon it like a queen returning home.
Turning to Azriel—who was staring at her as though she was the most awesome sight he had ever seen— Persephone took a deep breath, straightened her silver crown and said, “Ready, my love?”
“For anything,” he said with a flicker of a smile.
FORTY-ONE
GENERAL MURDOCK slipped into the tent where Mordecai was supping with Lord Atticus. Affecting not to notice his henchman, Mordecai selected a meaty bone from the nearest platter and tore into it. In the two weeks since Murdock’s unexpected arrival, Mordecai’s feelings toward the man had not thawed. Indeed, they’d grown considerably icier, for while Murdock’s presence had unquestionably freed Mordecai from the day-to-day tedium of running the army, it had also served to call attention to the ineptitude with which Mordecai had performed that same function. That is beca
use Murdock had been able to quickly and efficiently address every single issue that had plagued Mordecai from the outset. After slow-roasting the training camp commander over an open fire, Murdock had established an adequate supply train, begun a brilliant campaign of retaliation against Bartok, slowed the desertion rate and generally re-established order among the troops. In short, he’d done everything in his power to prove himself a loyal, competent and hard-working servant.
Mordecai despised him for it.
After noisily sucking every last bit of marrow out of the bone and tossing it aside, Mordecai deliberately wiped his greasy fingers on the clean white tablecloth and took a long draught of wine. Then and only then did he cast a brooding look at his general and say, “Well? What is so important that it could not wait until after supper, Murdock?”
Not seeming the least perturbed, General Murdock— who’d long since found new clothes and regained much of the weight he’d lost during his imprisonment—stepped forward. “Your Grace,” he said, “I’ve just received word that Queen Persephone was spotted two days’ march from the imperial capital. At the rate she was travelling, she could be at the city gates even as we speak.”
Without thinking, Mordecai put his hand over his heart. “And?” he asked breathlessly, half rising out of his cushioned chair.
“And she could not be recaptured because she and the Gypsy were riding at the head of several thousand Khan warriors,” said Murdock.
At these words, Mordecai’s mouth dropped open and he fell back into his chair so abruptly that he jarred his twisted back.
Lord Atticus looked incredulous. “Do you mean to say that there are thousands of armed barbarians traipsing around the realm, and you only just found out about it now?” he jeered. Jabbing his dagger into a large piece of juicy rare beef, the young nobleman shoved the meat into his mouth and said, “What kind of a general are you?”
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