The Warrior King: Book Three of the Seer King Trilogy

by Chris Bunch

  “Now?” I fished into my sabertache, took out a bare handful of coins. “I’ve had these since … since when? Since we looted the boat? And that’s all the gold I’ve got to my name.”

  “Numantia will hardly let someone who’s done as much as you have starve.”

  “You have more faith in people’s generosity once the emergency’s over, than I. I remember seeing all too many crippled soldiers put out to beg in the streets.

  “Maybe,” I continued, “maybe I could get a job with Linerges, and we could go on the road, peddling fancies off a cart.”

  “Poot twice,” she said. “But come to think of it, I doubt if my claims to the Amboina estates in Kallio will be honored, so I guess we’re determined on a life of being poor but dishonest.

  “If it comes down to that, the hells, let’s go across the border and join your friend Bakr. You make being a Negaret sound like fun.

  “If you get ambitious once we’re Negareting, you could always take over the throne in Jarrah. It sounds like their noblemen will spend more time hitting each other over the head than trying to take care of their country.”

  “Poot three times,” I said. “Fuck a whole group of thrones. Can you see me as King Damastes?”

  She looked at me queerly, and I felt a shiver. She changed the subject.

  “At least one thing,” she said. “So far neither one of us has mentioned marriage.”

  “You aren’t interested?”

  “Not unless there’s a way of doing it without it becoming my wife, like my horse, my house. I’m not a possession and never will be,” she said, a bit fiercely. “As far as I can see, the only purpose marriage has is if somebody’s dying, and there’s a lot of things to divide up, which it doesn’t sound like there’ll be for us.

  “Or, maybe, if there are children.” She bent her head, sniffed at the flower I’d given her. “I think I’d like that,” she said, softly.

  The cold came hard, as if a winter wind had blasted down the winding road.

  “Please, Cymea,” I said. “Please don’t talk about things like that.”

  “Why not?”

  Emotion washed over me.

  “Because … and I guess I’m going to sound as if I’m feeling sorry for myself, and maybe I am, but every time things like children and being happy for very long come up, they get taken away from me.”

  Her face hardened. “Am I always going to be reminded about that?”

  “Oh, for Irisu’s sake,” I said. “I didn’t mean it like that. I wasn’t thinking of anything, except that when things start going well for me, my luck always seems to go into the cellar. What’s the old soldier’s line — if it weren’t for bad luck, I wouldn’t have any luck at all? Sometimes it seems like that to me.”

  “Bad luck?” she said. “Ex-First Tribune Damastes á Cimabue, escaped prisoner á Cimabue, General á Cimabue, complaining about his luck?”

  “The glory sometimes doesn’t compensate,” I said.

  “You are feeling sorry for yourself. Here, lean over and let me kiss you.”

  I obeyed, feeling somewhat foolish.

  “Now, you take care of the outside luck,” she said. “I’ll handle the inside luck, all right? Your only concern is keeping my insatiable lust satisfied. Otherwise, I might have to go creeping out at night to Yonge’s tent.”

  “His tongue isn’t half as long as mine,” I said, glad to be onto another topic.

  “I wouldn’t know,” she said. “I found him a bit of a disappointment, when we were raiding. He never made even one suggestive remark, let alone anything else.”

  “Yonge?” I said, in some amazement. “Nobility from a man who fucked his way through most of the married women in Nicias, fighting a duel with every affair?”

  “Not this incarnation,” she said. “I’d heard the stories … hells, you’d told me some of them. He might as well have been a temple guard. Or I a temple virgin.”

  “I’ve heard about those temple virgins,” I said, looking lustful. “The subject of many a barracks ballad. What do you know on the subject?”

  “I was one, for about a month,” she said. “When I was being bounced from place to place.”

  “You didn’t tell me about that in your tale.”

  “Nothing to tell,” she said. “Sleep on stone, get up before dawn, go to your cell when it’s dark. Pray a lot and eat food a peasant would scorn. Then pray some more. It was so deadly dull I didn’t even want to play with myself, although there were a couple of women who offered to take care of that detail for me. I was never so glad to move on in my life … other than when I was broken out of prison, back at the beginning.”

  So it went, idle chatter as the leagues wound past, and the roads grew better, the farms more frequent, and the bridges across the creeks and small rivers more modern, wider and stronger.

  The farmers and workers lined the roads now, sometimes cheering us, sometimes just watching curiously. Every now and again one of the few youths among them would follow in our dust until we camped, then enlist, eyes shining for glory and adventure.

  • • •

  Kutulu’s spies reported that Tenedos had regrouped and was moving north, again by boat and by land.

  But we were far ahead of him.

  • • •

  When we were about six leagues beyond Nicias, a rider came back from the scouts. We’d made contact with the Council’s army. I went forward with my command group and saw a smartly turned out troop of cavalry, wearing the gray with red of the Peace Guardians, led by an officer named Cofi, who announced himself, to my great if hidden amusement, as a domina instead of a shalaka. Evidently, with the Maisirians back across the border, their ranks were no longer in such high regard in Nicias.

  He bade us welcome and said an empty down a league farther would be ideal for our camp, although no one had expected quite this large a formation. He seemed a little upset by that.

  He said the citizens of Nicias welcomed the army, and vast amounts of supplies were already on their way to the down to prove their sincerity.

  “Good,” Linerges murmured. “Always good to keep the troops fattened. Keeps them from looting.”

  “Isn’t there something,” Yonge asked, equally quietly, “about feeding a calf while you’re thinking about a good recipe for sweetbreads?”

  “That too,” Linerges said. “I can tell we’re coming into the capital with a proper attitude.”

  “Except for him,” Yonge said, indicating me. “He no doubt thinks that all this is sincere and meant only to show the toadies’ sudden respect and love.”

  “I’m not that stupid,” I snarled. “Now shut up. That damned domina might have better ears than you think.”

  • • •

  In the old regular army … and I wondered if I was starting to become a frizzled old fart, thinking like that … soldiers set up their camp methodically. First the commander would determine which unit went where after riding the land with his subordinates.

  Each regiment, company, troop, squadron, whatever, would be marched to its designated area. Warrants would determine the locations of cook tents, horse lines, wagon parks, jakes, then a ranking warrant would take a post, and the soldiers would tell off on him, and the tents, or sleeping positions if the unit was living rough, would be laid out. The men would set to work with canvas, ropes, and mauls, and in an hour, sometimes less, you could look down any row of tents, and the lines holding the canvas taut would be perfectly aligned, like soldiers in formation.

  This wasn’t quite the style of my army. I rode across the down, decided which unit would go where, and then the units pitched their tents — those that had them — wherever was convenient, with close to the cook fires and far from the shithole preferred.

  Since it was wartime, my camps, while somewhat disorderly on the inside, were laid out like a prickly hedgehog. We barricaded the camp: stacked brush, long stakes sharpened on both ends and set in the ground facing outward, entrenchments, or even natural
barricades like thorny thickets. Guard posts were set at regular intervals before anything else was done.

  No matter how tired, the men always worked hard, for the quicker camp was set, the safer everyone was, and the sooner meals could be cooked and eaten.

  I chose a commanding hill for my headquarters, had Cymea’s and my tent pitched close behind it, and began digging my jakes while Svalbard tended to the horses and Cymea set up our bed, two camp cots Svalbard had modified to lash together, my field desk, her chest with magical implements, our bathtub, and that was all the furniture we owned.

  I’d barely turned a few spadefuls of earth when civilians swarmed into our camp. They must have left Nicias that morning and stayed behind Domina Cofi’s horsemen until told it was all right to proceed. They brought fresh vegetables, fish, cooked fowls, cuts of beef, wine, brandy, and often as not, themselves. The only thing I had my provosts refuse was the brandy, and I made sure the wine was evenly shared, so there wouldn’t be enough for any man to get drunk on.

  The camp was more a feast than a military post, but there wasn’t any danger. Or not much, anyway. I’d expected something like this and told my officers to turn a blind eye to most things as long as there wasn’t any violence, and the provosts and the poor bastards on sentry-go didn’t get careless.

  I was about knee-deep in the earth, planning to dig to my waist, since it appeared we’d be in this encampment for a while, bare-chested and sweating, when bugles bellowed, and a galloper announced that Scopas and Trerice, accompanied by a hundred horsemen, had arrived.

  I started to clamber out and pull on my jacket when I caught myself and went back to digging. Indeed, when Scopas and Trerice arrived, they both showed surprise, seeing a general actually working, instead of ordering others about, exactly the impression I wished to make. This was an army where everyone worked, everyone fought, and if we went into the field together, that’d be the rule for the Council’s army as well.

  Scopas wore something that could have been called a military uniform, since it included high boots, breeches, and a high-necked tunic, but his vast chest was so ridiculously laden with golden and silver gee-gaws I couldn’t tell what army he thought he was serving in. Trerice wore, as before, his plain grays and ready weapons, and his eyes were as cold as his sheathed steel.

  Scopas greeted me effusively, calling me the hero of the time, one of the greatest generals … and warriors … Numantia had ever known, and so on and so forth, very definitely playing to the aides still ahorseback behind him, and to any of my soldiers within earshot. If Barthou had done this, I might have laughed, but I noticed Scopas’s shrewd eyes looked here, there, as he spoke, assessing the impact of his praise. This calculation and cunning was precisely why I wanted no part of politics.

  I climbed out of the hole. “Greetings, Councilor Scopas. And General, as I assume your title is now, Trerice. Might I ask where the honored Barthou is? I assume he survived the somewhat rapid withdrawal your forces made after I saw him last?”

  “His duties made it impossible to join us,” Scopas said.

  Trerice’s words, intended to be civil, came out a bit clipped, unsurprising after what I’d just said: “You have surprised us all, General.”

  “I should hope so,” I said, turned to Scopas. “I welcome you to the people’s army, Councilor. I wish that I had the words that you do and the ability to compose them as well. But I don’t, so that’s the best I can do.

  “Perhaps you’d join me in the mess, and we’ll find a bottle of wine worthy of your attentions. Trerice, I don’t recall if you drink.”

  “Seldom.”

  “My own habit.”

  “We’d like to take advantage of your hospitality,” Scopas said. “But we must return to Nicias before nightfall.

  “There is business, urgent business, that we must discuss. In private, if you wouldn’t mind?”

  “Perhaps in my tent?”

  They followed me inside.

  “This,” I introduced, “is Cymea. She’s one of my advisers and one of my wizards.”

  They both bowed politely, but it was obvious what they thought her to really be, considering her beauty. She responded politely, slipped out.

  “I assume this area is safe?” Scopas said.

  “Against eavesdroppers, I assume you mean,” I said. “For there’s no one in this camp who wishes you harm. It is. I always have Sinait, my chief wizard, secure my sleeping quarters against any intrusion.”

  Yonge would have been proud of my increasing ability to lie. Unless everyone was completely asleep, since I’d given no orders to the contrary, Sinait would be setting a Seeing Bowl at this moment, and most likely Kutulu himself would have his ears pressed against the back wall.

  Of course I didn’t think these two believed me, since they weren’t babes, either.

  I seated them, offered drinks again, which were refused.

  “Your exploits have certainly gone before,” Scopas said. “When last we spoke, things were somewhat different.”

  “They were, indeed,” I said. “I was your prisoner. Now I have about a million and a half men, probably another five hundred thousand joining in Kallio or following our tracks north. We’ve fought Tenedos twice, south of the Delta, once with arms, once with sorcery, and defeated him both times.”

  “We’ve heard of the one,” Trerice said, “and rumors of the other. But my intelligence suggests neither battle was conclusive.”

  “No,” I said. “But both accomplished far more than when our forces were at Paestum.”

  Scopas looked pointedly away. Trerice’s anger was clear. “Back then … we … neither side … had the experience we have now, and Tenedos was able to strike us in the most vulnerable area,” he snapped.

  “Good generals do things like that,” I agreed, enjoying Trerice’s discomfort. “Now we must make sure he doesn’t do it again.

  “That is,” I said carefully, “if I’m correct in assuming any sort of alliance. Perhaps you wish to continue your old fealty to the Maisirians, in which case I must consider both of you my country’s enemies.”

  “No, no,” Scopas said hastily. “That was something we were forced to do, to save what was left of Numantia. But you, thank Irisu, have removed that problem, for which we’re all extraordinarily grateful.”

  Trerice didn’t look grateful at all but held his tongue. “The question then becomes,” I said, “what comes next?” Scopas blinked. “Why … we deal with Tenedos in the best way possible.”

  “To me, that means only one thing,” I said. “We completely destroy him.”

  “Is that a wise position?” Scopas said. “If we leave him … and his soldiers … no options other than total defeat, won’t that make them fight all the harder? Make them willing to destroy all rather than accept defeat?”

  “Listen to me, Scopas,” I said. “Tenedos already has taken that stance. Do you know what he’s doing? He’s seizing innocent villagers and using his magic to turn them into warriors. Have you heard about that? Has your vaunted intelligence told you about those soldiers who, when they’re cut down, turn back into babes and beldames?”

  Scopas was shocked, Trerice tried to hide his surprise.

  “We’d heard something about his having significant increases in his forces,” the general said uncomfortably, “but … no. We hadn’t heard the details.”

  “My staff will brief you, as soon as I authorize it,” I said. “Do you see what I mean? There can be no surrender but an unconditional one.

  “And when we have seized Tenedos, we must make sure he’ll never be able to try to seize power once again.”

  “You mean kill him? Without a trial?”

  “I mean kill him,” I said firmly. “Or, if you want it to sound less grim, reunite him with his beloved gods-damned Saionji, if that’s more comfortable on your lips. We can have a trial, if it pleases you, after the funeral pyre burns out.”

  “General Damastes,” Scopas said, “I realize, as a soldier you tak
e, must take, a firm position. But — ”

  “There are no buts,” I said. “That is the position we take … not just myself, but my entire army. We don’t have a motto, but if we did, it’d be Tenedos or Death. And death’s a lot cleaner than allowing him to take control again of our country, of our souls.”

  Scopas took a deep breath, Trerice looked grim.

  “I see your point,” Scopas said. “And perhaps that’s what we lack … what we have lacked. Perhaps we need to take a firmer stance, and oppose the ex-emperor more directly.

  “Perhaps that’s your great strength, what you can add to our government.”

  It was my turn to look noncommittal.

  “Here is what we came to ask,” Scopas said. “There have been few enough victories to cheer the citizens of Nicias. Would it be possible to have a triumph? A review of your army, as soon as possible. The people want to see the victors of the Latane, which is what they’re calling you now. They want to see you, Damastes.”

  “It would be a simple matter,” Trerice said. “This area you’re camped in is intended to be only temporary. A larger camp, better drained, with some outbuilding already standing, is being set up for you to the west of Nicias. Perhaps you remember it from your army days, General. It was the old sporting and review grounds outside the city.”

  I did remember it and had enjoyed its greens and sweated on its dusty parade fields. It was convenient to the capital, just on the other side of one of the wider branches of the Latane, served by regular ferry services.

  I considered, saw no hidden tricks, and recognized another advantage. “Yes,” I said. “We could do that. Perhaps it might do my soldiery some good as well, to see who we’re fighting for.”

  That was about the end of the conversation. But after I’d bidden the two farewell, and they’d ridden away with their retinue, I saw a piece of paper on my field desk that hadn’t been there before.

  It was in Scopas’s careful script that I knew well from my time serving the Rule of Ten:

  • • •