by Stephen Hunt
‘I think Captain Carnehan would agree with you if he was here.’ Jacob was more than grateful that Carter wasn’t. For once, fate has taken my impetuous son out of harm’s way rather than carrying him towards it.
‘Talking about old friends: that mad one of yours, Sariel, is he able to do half of what he claims?’
‘Maybe even more than half.’
‘Well then, let’s go and make sure we keep the captain in the skinning game.’
Jacob and his cavalry company found the general staff holed up in the half-collapsed assembly building, just as Mrs Sackville had said they would. Guess even a treacherous old torturer has to slip and tell the truth once in a while. Nestling behind a ruined wall with no ceiling, the officers of the Army of the Spotswood stood hunched over a series of field tables nestled among cots filled with wounded soldiers, surgeons treating the injured, runners stumbling over the dead to deliver messages and carry new ones to battalions scattered around the city, hard-pressed defenders manning the battlements and trench works surrounding Midsburg. One of the wounded was Field Marshal Houldridge; his litter leant at an angle across a ruined wall so the army’s commander could bark out orders to staff officers and runners with a little more dignity than a bedridden patient. Judging by the blood seeping from his burnt and blackened tunic, Jacob would say he’d only just survived the suicidal cavalry charge. Prince Owen still seemed as sickly and distant as he had the last time Jacob had seen him. It’s like watching a sailor new on ship ride out his first storm. And this was a hell of a storm. But don’t worry, Your Highness. This isn’t your war anymore. And all it cost to take it away from you was a couple of hundred thousand dead Weylanders.
Field Marshal Houldridge’s demeanour turned as dark as his wounds when he caught sight of Jacob and his soldiers riding in. ‘What are you doing here, Carnehan? You’ve been dismissed. Is that the Second Royal Cavalry Brigade behind you? What in the name of the saints are they doing away from the field?’
‘Oh, we had to come and admire the genius of your defence up close. I tried to spy it from the city walls, but all I found were the screams of dying men and horses drowned in burning mud.’
‘Why are you here, Father?’ demanded Prince Owen. ‘There’s no place for you in Midsburg now.’
‘There will be after what’s left of the three armies is ordered to retreat north.’
‘Not this idiocy again,’ barked the field marshal. ‘We yet may have to fall back, but if so, we shall withdraw east. Link up with the Army of the Broadaxe, combine our forces and face these cursed invaders united.’
‘So you can repeat the siege of Midsburg in a second city? As fool an idea as I’ve ever heard,’ said Jacob, ‘even if the Vandian armoured vehicles weren’t swinging around your eastern flank and smashing through the city walls, cutting off your main avenue of retreat.’
‘I am still alive and I give the orders here!’
‘You’re about fifty per cent wrong, don’t make it a hundred,’ warned Jacob.
‘You dare to threaten me with mutiny, you abhorrent criminal!’ Houldridge’s hand dipped for the pistol in his belt and Jacob didn’t hesitate; the revolver’s grip was hard in his hand before the officer’s had cleared his belt, the gun bucking once as Houldridge slumped back into his cot, a neat hole drilled in his forehead. Half of the staff officers leapt for their rifles and belt guns, the few that weren’t staring in shock at their commander’s bleeding corpse, but Jacob’s cavalrymen had already swung up their carbines, a clacking of rounds being chambered as the horsed soldiers moved their rifle barrels threateningly between the motley assortment of grey-uniformed majors and colonels.
Criminal? You’d be surprised how many pardons a victory brings. ‘Some people just won’t listen. To be a mutiny, it’d still have to be your army,’ said Jacob.
‘What have you done?’ shouted the prince, his face draining white. ‘He was wounded, wounded.’
And now he’s dead. ‘What I should have done when you threw me out of your council of war,’ said Jacob. ‘You’re appointing me as your new field marshal, a battlefield commission just as legal and as proper as you like.’
‘You’re crazy! Field Marshal Houldridge was a good man, a family friend, my most loyal ally inside parliament’s army—’
You think that’s crazy? I haven’t even started yet. I haven’t got time to waste, not with Carter in danger up north. Damn Thomas Purdell. If ever a man deserved to die twice … Jacob waved his smoking pistol at the field marshal’s corpse. ‘All Houldridge was good for was getting better Weylanders than himself killed. Sariel’s in the forest north of here opening one of his sorcerous gates up into Northhaven. I’m taking any troops left alive in the city through it, and ordering what’s left of the three armies to fall back towards the high north and the Rodalian Mountains.’
‘You’ll abandon Midsburg to be burnt by the south? And what of all the innocents in Middenharn, Creedlore and Gunisade?’
‘This city’s going to burn anyway, the only question you need to answer is do you want your army’s ashes to be among its ruins? As for our other prefectures, the usurper’s regiments will be too busy chasing us to put the torch to every town and village they pass.’
‘I won’t do it. I’ll sign a warrant for your arrest before I sign any commission for you in the assembly’s army.’
‘Oh, but I think you will,’ said Jacob. ‘Because before Sariel brought Carter’s riders back to help me, he took your friend Anna Kurtain from the hospital. Healed her pretty good, I’d say, given how many injuries she took protecting you from your stupidity.’
‘Healed? Anna’s healed?’
‘She was well enough to take a trip through Sariel’s gate. But Miss Kurtain won’t be going to Northhaven. I’ll drop her somewhere safe on the other side of Pellas, so far-called that it’ll take a thousand years for her messages to pass through the radiomen’s relays. You will never see or hear from her again. Or Anna can travel with us to the Rodalian border, for the price of that battlefield commission.’
‘You’re a dirty bastard.’
‘So I’ve heard. And unlike my predecessor, I’m the kind to win battles, not lose them.’
‘Everyone in Midsburg will die.’
‘No, I figure most of them will end up as slaves, at least the ones that can’t run fast and far enough. Either taken by the empire or seized as indentured labour for Marcus’s rich friends in the south.’
‘Stand and fight here,’ said the prince, half begging, half commanding.
‘I only fight battles I can win, Your Majesty, and this one was all on your good and dead friend.’
‘Then help the people of Midsburg escape north, too. If you’re taking the regiments you can take the townspeople.’
‘So I can watch women and children starve, leaving a trail of corpses behind us every day we retreat? No. I’ll have enough trouble supplying the army from Havenharl’s farms and winter grain bins. At least Marcus and his Vandian friends will feed any prisoners they chain up. Dead slaves don’t work as hard, or so I’ve been led to believe.’ Jacob unrolled the battlefield commission he’d prepared and passed it to Prince Owen. As he expected, the prince crumpled and signed the paper before returning it. Too weak to rule, too strong to be ruled. Well, that’ll be Weyland’s problem, not mine, after I’ve laid out a fine thick red carpet of corpses for him to walk across to his throne. ‘The Vandians are about to find out that the girl you’ve got in the assembly isn’t Lady Cassandra, Your Highness. I expect the bombardment will grow mighty fierce, then. Fall back through the north gate.’
‘I’m staying here,’ snarled Prince Owen. ‘With my people in the city. I won’t abandon them. Carter will return with Lady Cassandra soon. I can force them to terms using her as a hostage.’
‘A hostage is only any good if you’re willing to nail her to the battlements, which I know you won’t be. Besides, Midsburg’s people will be slaves long before my son flies back. You want to see Vandia’s sky
mines again on the wrong end of a whip?’
‘I’m staying here!’
‘As you like,’ said Jacob. He’s a master of the grand gesture, I’ll give him that. But as long as the south has a usurper, the north needs its pretender. Jacob drew his pistol smoothly and shot the prince through the leg, watching the young nobleman fall screaming to the cold ground clutching his smashed thigh. ‘The prince has been wounded by a sniper. Put him in the back of the wagon and dress his wound as you head to the forest.’
‘You treacherous dog!’ yelled Owen, struggling as he was helped to his feet by the cavalrymen.
Jacob shrugged. I suppose I’ll have to listen to his bleating for a while longer. Willow waiting with Sariel was enough of a conscience for the pastor. He hadn’t wanted the weight of her scruples in Midsburg. ‘Treachery? That’s no way to address your new field marshal, sire. I reckon if I wanted to be king, I might have shot you to begin with, and aimed for your thick skull. Crowns are heavy things, all that gold and silver. I prefer simple and honest lead.’ He waved his pistol at the survivors among the general staff. No way for me to tell which are the courtiers and placemen yet, and which are soldiers. But there’ll be plenty of opportunities to shake out the grit, Marcus and his allies will see to that. ‘Anyone who wants to live, follow me north. You’ll need the stomach to follow me and the stomach to fight better than today. Anyone with different ideas, save me the trouble of hanging you. There’s still Vandian steel left east of the city for you to mount a last, suicidal charge.’
Some officers came and some stayed, and in truth, it didn’t much bother Jacob either way. I can only use the ones smart enough to follow me.
‘Reckon Midsburg was a hell of a defeat,’ said Arick Densen as they rode out.
I hope the usurper believes that, because victory teaches little. ‘No,’ said Jacob to the sergeant. ‘Defeat never finishes an army, only quitting does.’ He listened to the shells falling from the guns of the south, watched helos fleeting above the smoking city like angry wasps. This is the last time the Vandians and Bad Marcus will be fighting on my side. They’ve given me my army. Now I’m going to show them just how to use it.
Also by Stephen Hunt from Gollancz:
In Dark Service
A Gollancz eBook
Copyright © Stephen Hunt 2015
All rights reserved.
The right of Stephen Hunt to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in Great Britain in 2015 by
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An Hachette UK Company
This eBook first published in 2015 by Gollancz.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978 0 575 09212 9
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