by K. J. Parker
Myrtus and Axio immediately got out the maps; apparently she was included in the meeting, though she couldn’t see she had anything to contribute. “Let’s say they’ve each lost fifty per cent of their effectives,” Myrtus said. “That’s, what, twenty thousand each, give or take?”
Axio was grinning broadly. “More to the point, it sounds like they’ve reached the point where their best men just can’t take it any more. I told you it’d come to that.”
“If it’s true,” Myrtus conceded irritably. “But, yes, it looks like it, otherwise they wouldn’t have pulled back.” He’d been doing arithmetic on a scrap of paper. “They must be out of their tiny minds.” He handed the paper to Axio, who whistled and gave it to her.
“What does this mean?” she said.
“It’s our rough tally of how many men each side has left,” Axio replied. “These columns on the right are what they’ve got in the field, and these are reserves they haven’t called on yet. We’ve been keeping score for the last eighteen months.”
She stared at the paper. Obviously she wasn’t reading it right, because on the right-hand side, after scores of crossings-out, there were bottom-line totals of less than ten thousand under each heading, and nothing at all on the left. “I’m being stupid,” she said. “Please explain it to me.”
Myrtus snatched the paper back and glared at her. “It’s obvious,” he said. “Forza’s got about nine thousand, Senza’s down to about seven and a half, and there’s no more reserves.”
“No more—”
Axio shook his head. “Nobody left to enlist,” he said. “Dead, deserted, made themselves scarce before the recruiting sergeants got to them. Both empires, by our calculations, have finally run out of men.”
“No, but—” She broke off. Whatever she’d been about to say would have made no sense. “You mean, everybody’s—”
Axio nodded. “Dead, or hopped it. Which means the military capability of both empires combined is sixteen and a half thousand men. We’ve just hired forty thousand from Blemya, and we’ve got thirty thousand horse-archers—”
“More like forty-five,” Myrtus interrupted.
“All right, say forty thousand horse-boys. All paid for, all more or less in position.” He smiled. “Which doesn’t mean a damn thing,” he added, “because Forza with nine or Senza with seven and a half could chew us up and spit us out, no bother at all, so we’re not home yet, not by a mile. Still,” he added cheerfully, “that’s all right, because we aren’t looking to pick a fight with either of them.”
She looked at him. “I don’t understand.”
“We do nothing,” Myrtus said sadly. “We hold our forces in reserve and avoid contact with either side. That’s been the plan all along.”
Axio laughed. “The plan they didn’t tell him about when they made him commander-in-chief. That’s why he’s looking so miserable.”
Nobody left; all dead, or run away. But that didn’t seem to interest her fellow Commissioners. “So what’s the plan?”
Axio shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine,” he said. “Now if I was running the show, I’d be looking to take out the Belot boys. Only, since that hasn’t already happened, I’m guessing it’s not possible, or, at least, not possible yet. Of course, we have the ace up our sleeves.”
They looked at her; presumably she was supposed to be able to figure that one out for herself, if she was worthy to be a Commissioner of the Lodge. “Lycao,” she said.
Axio clapped his hands. “Good girl,” he said. “Yes, she’s got to be the key, it stands to reason. Senza will do anything to get hold of her, that’s one thing we can be sure of, and Forza knows that as well as we do. Therefore, Lycao’s got to be it. How they plan on going about it, however, is anyone’s guess. I don’t know, maybe they’ll tell you all about it in Rasch.”
“I’m still going there, then.”
“Of course you are,” Myrtus said. “You’ve got orders. This doesn’t change anything. Talking of which, it’s time you were on your way. You can have that fancy coach you came in.”
She was about to object when Axio said, “Tell you what, I’ll come with you. Me and the boy. See to it that you don’t come to any harm.”
“You’d be a bloody fool if you did,” Myrtus said quickly. “Rasch isn’t safe for you and you know it.”
“Safer than you think, actually,” Axio said. “Everyone there who could make trouble for me is dead.”
“There’s a warrant out—”
“Six, actually, but that’s old news. I don’t suppose anybody remembers that far back. Besides, I’ve got friends there who’ll see me right.”
“You can’t just go wandering off—”
Axio looked at him, and he fell abruptly silent. “Just had a thought,” Axio said. “I’m my brother’s next of kin. He must’ve been worth an angel or two. I wonder, did he make a will?”
She thought about it long and hard, when she should have been sleeping. Basically a matter of time and geometry. Three times out of five, when she imagined the scene in her head, she was able to kill Axio before Musen killed her. She considered various options for improving the odds – kill Musen first, surreptitiously half open the coach door and then kick him out, then stab Axio as he tried to catch him, find some excuse for leaving Musen behind at a way station, poison him the night before; poison Axio the night before. Try as she might, she couldn’t get the odds to come out better than three in five. Also, Oida hadn’t asked her to do it. Would he? She had to admit, she didn’t know.
While they were loading the coach with supplies and Axio’s luggage, she asked if she could have a word with him. “Sure,” Axio said, and she followed him into a stable. “By the way,” he went on, “I should be able to raise money in Rasch. I still owe you.”
“I’ve got a message for you.”
“What?”
“From your brother.”
Axio frowned. “Before or during?”
“He asked me to deliver it just before he died.”
“Ah. Right, let’s hear it.”
“He says, he forgives you.”
“Does he indeed?”
“And he said to tell you,” she went on, “the fifth card was a four.”
Axio went bright red in the face. “Bastard,” he snapped. “God damn it. I should’ve known. I really should have known.”
She backed away a step. “You don’t have to explain if you don’t want to.”
“He screwed me, is what it is. He took me for a bloody fool, and I let him.” Axio sighed, and sat down on a rail. “I guess I was about sixteen, so he’d have been, what, thirteen and a bit? We were playing cards. He was a lousy card player. At least, I always beat the shit out of him. But there was this one time. We were playing Fives. You know the game?”
She shook her head.
“It’s the same as ordinary Dragons’ Teeth, but with five cards. And he had jack, ten, nine and some piece of rubbish, a two or a three, and I had three queens and a pair. Mine were all showing, of course, he had one card hidden, and he bet me his whole pile – sixty stuivers, I think it was, anyhow, a lot of money for us in those days. I couldn’t match the bet, so I had to fold. Go on, then, I said, show me what you’ve got, and he refused. Said he didn’t have to. I told him, he’d won, even if he’d been bluffing, and I wanted to see what he’d got. He said no, I wasn’t entitled to. So I made a grab at him, and he jumped up and danced round the table a bit, I got a hold on his shirt front, and you know what he did? He ate the bloody card. Stuffed it in his mouth and chewed it up, just so I couldn’t see. So I told him, tell me what it was or I’ll smash your face in. He wouldn’t tell me. And I kept on and on at him for years after, and he was just plain stupid-stubborn. I stole his best shirt and his new shoes, told him I’d put them on the fire if he didn’t tell me what the card was. Fine, he said, go ahead, and he just stood there and watched them burn. Cracked two of his ribs once, and he wouldn’t tell me.” Axio sighed. “He had this nasty st
reak, you know, he liked to torment people, and it was the only way he knew he could get back at me. And all along it was a bloody four.”
She drew a deep breath and let it out again. “You believe him, then.”
“What, on his deathbed?”
She shrugged. “In his place, I’d have lied. If I’d had a queen or an eight, I mean. I’d rather leave you thinking I’d been screwing you all these years.”
He gave her a look that genuinely scared her. “Four of what, did he say?”
“No. Just a four.”
“Bastard. But that was always his problem. He never would admit it when he was beaten.” His face stopped being scary and turned very sad. “You think he was lying?”
“I don’t know. I just told you what I’d have done.”
Axio shook his head and turned away. “You know what,” he said. “I never realised he hated me so much.” And then he burst into tears.
Read on in The Two of Swords: Part 18.
extras
meet the author
K. J. Parker is the pseudonym of Tom Holt, a full-time writer living in the south-west of England. When not writing, Holt is a barely competent stockman, carpenter and metalworker, a two-left-footed fencer, an accomplished textile worker and a crack shot. He is married to a professional cake decorator and has one daughter.
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BY K. J. PARKER
The Fencer trilogy
Colours in the Steel
The Belly of the Bow
The Proof House
The Scavenger trilogy
Shadow
Pattern
Memory
The Engineer trilogy
Devices and Desires
Evil for Evil
The Escapement
The Company
The Folding Knife
The Hammer
Sharps
The Two of Swords: Volume One
The Two of Swords: Volume Two
The Two of Swords: Volume Three
The Two of Swords (e-novellas)
BY TOM HOLT
Expecting Someone Taller
Who’s Afraid of Beowulf?
Flying Dutch
Ye Gods!
Overtime
Here Comes the Sun
Grailblazers
Faust Among Equals
Odds and Gods
Djinn Rummy
My Hero
Paint Your Dragon
Open Sesame
Wish You Were Here
Only Human
Snow White and the Seven Samurai
Valhalla
Nothing But Blue Skies
Falling Sideways
Little People
The Portable Door
In Your Dreams
Earth, Air, Fire and Custard
You Don’t Have to be Evil to Work Here, But It Helps
Someone Like Me
Barking
The Better Mousetrap
May Contain Traces of Magic
Blonde Bombshell
Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Sausages
Doughnut
When It’s A Jar
The Outsorcerer’s Apprentice
The Good, the Bad and the Smug
The Management Style of the Supreme Beings
Dead Funny: Omnibus 1
Mightier Than the Sword: Omnibus 2
The Divine Comedies: Omnibus 3
For Two Nights Only: Omnibus 4
Tall Stories: Omnibus 5
Saints and Sinners: Omnibus 6
Fishy Wishes: Omnibus 7
The Walled Orchard
Alexander at the World’s End
Olympiad
A Song for Nero
Meadowland
I, Margaret
Lucia Triumphant
Lucia in Wartime
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