Warlords and Wastrels

by Julia Knight

  “I don’t see,” Vocho said to Cospel, blowing on numbing fingers, “why we couldn’t have found a nice, and above all warm, inn somewhere.”

  “Because Eder didn’t want to,” Cospel said. “Bit of a nut for doing everything hisself, so I hear.” He poked at the fire until sparks whirled up into the trees and Vocho began to worry they’d catch light, but at least his fingers weren’t numb any more.

  “Well, I wish he’d picked a warmer night for it. I thought it was supposed to be spring.”

  “It might be in Reyes,” a new voice said, “but up here winter lasts longer.”

  Vocho turned to see one of Eder’s troop crouching by the fire, warming her hands. She had a sharp face under a dark crop of hair tinged orange by the fire and an almost permanent wry smile as though she’d caught the world out. Carrola, he recalled, one of Eder’s seconds, a sergeant who was briskly efficient and seemed to hang on the captain’s every word.

  “Well,” he said, thinking about Kass wanting to know what was behind Eder’s manner, “I hope it decides to go away before we get too far up the mountains.”

  She laughed at that and got herself comfortable by the fire. Vocho wasted no time in settling next to her with a meaningful look at Cospel, who managed to leer with his eyebrows as he took the hint and left.

  “It should be starting to thaw up there by now,” she said. “Hopefully. It’ll be a late spring if it doesn’t, very late. Our gear might not be up to it otherwise, and we’ll have to refit at one of the towns. Better than lugging it all up here and suddenly it’s thaw.”

  “Got pretty chilly last time you went, so I hear.”

  “Pretty chilly,” she agreed.

  She gave him a sideways look that made him shiver, like she could see right through his bluff and bluster. He found his hand groping for his jollop and yanked it away.

  “Eder’s—”

  “A fine man, and one you shouldn’t ask me about,” she said sharply.

  “I’m sure he is, only—”

  “Only nothing, Vocho the preening, with your fancy clothes and fancier sword. He’s got no love for the guild, which is what I suspect you’re fishing about, but he’s my captain, and I’m not gossiping about him. OK?”

  He watched her face in the firelight, the way her chin jutted determinedly, how her eyebrow rose as though she could see inside him and didn’t think what she saw was worth a whole hell of a lot.

  “OK,” he said. “We can gossip about me though, right? If I’m honest, I prefer talking about me anyway.”

  Carrola shot him a sharp look, perhaps thinking he was making fun of her, but subsided with a laugh. “I’d heard that. All those stories about Vocho the Great, and I don’t doubt you spread them. How much is true?”

  “Not much,” he admitted and wondered at that because normally wild horses wouldn’t have dragged it out of him. But there was something about her, a sharpness to her glance that made him pretty sure she’d spot any lie of his, so there didn’t seem a lot of point trying. Embellishments, well, that was a different matter. That was hardly lying at all.

  By the time Eder came along she’d winkled out the almost true story about a notorious occasion involving him, the nuns with guns and the weasel, and they were giggling like drunkards.

  Eder put a stop to all that like a bucket of iced water down the back.

  “Carrola, I wondered where you’d got to.” There was a sharp undercurrent to his tone. “See to the horses.”

  She looked about to protest–the horses had all been seen to long since–but his jaw tightened, and she got up and went.

  “You leave my troop alone,” Eder said to Vocho when she was out of earshot. “I don’t want you infecting them with all your bullshit and lies.”

  “Now hold on a minute.” Vocho struggled to his feet, his hip making complaining noises about being sat on the cold ground for too long.

  “No, you hold on and listen. I know who and what you both are, and I don’t want you here. But if you keep your comments to yourselves, both of you, then we can make the best of it. I’m not an unreasonable man.”

  “Could have fooled me.”

  Eder ignored him. “If you don’t keep your mouth shut, then I am prepared to become very unreasonable. Clear?”

  “Oh yes, absolutely.”

  Eder seemed content with that and stalked off down to the other fire, where his troop sat silently as sleet turned to snow and the wind deepened with cold. He passed Kass coming up on the way, though he never gave even a hint that he’d seen her.

  “He looks like someone just pissed on his parade,” she said. “What did you say to him?”

  “Me? Nothing. Honestly!”

  “Well someone has.”

  “Look, all I did was talk to that Carrola a bit. I was hoping to find out why he hated us so much, but she wasn’t talking. About him anyway.”

  Kass frowned after Eder. “Something odd there. Very odd. Like why was he all sugar and sweetness while we were in Reyes, but now we’re out he’s pricklier than you with a hangover.”

  “Well, like the man said, he did lose some of his troop up here last time. Maybe he’s just edgy about losing any more. He seems a very, er, intent and conscientious sort of man.”

  “Hmm” was Kass’s only reply, and all she said before it was time to sleep.

  Kass spent the next day watching Vocho alternately desperately trying to impress Carrola and winkle information about Eder out of her. By the despondent look on his face when they reached a village at noon, she guessed he wasn’t getting very far or getting much except a few tart comments from Eder. While Vocho failed in his intent, Kass kept an eye on Eder.

  He sat, ramrod straight in the saddle, occasionally barking out commands and reprimands for minor infractions of what looked to her like arbitrary rules he’d imposed on his troop. Horses to be exactly in line, two abreast. Eyes front at all times, like they were on parade, only they weren’t on parade were they, and an eye or two to the sides might help up here, where laws were less set in stone than general pointers on how to be polite and not murder anyone if you could help it, please. They weren’t in the mountains proper yet, but there could well be highwaymen up here, or worse.

  No talking, another of his barked orders, his tongue lashing out when he caught one man whispering to the woman next to him. He’d been as bad when they’d mounted this morning, worse perhaps, inspecting every blanket, every bit, every braid in the horses’ manes and tails. One woman had got a bawling out for starting her chestnut’s braid a quarter-inch too high. Kass might have thought nothing of it if they were about to be inspected by Bakar perhaps, but out on the road? Heading towards lawlessness where braids wouldn’t help, a quarter of an inch out or no?

  She’d ridden out more times than she could recall, and could recall no other officer who didn’t loosen up from regimental best while they were at it. Nothing wrong with being a bit particular about your gear when it might save you, but there was a gulf of difference between that and this pedantry.

  The morning was biting cold as they reached the foothills, but the thin snow stopped just before noon. When they reached the small green at the centre of the village, Eder called for his troop to dismount, snarled at one who was half a second behind the command and set him the task of seeing to everyone’s horse instead of joining them for food.

  The village was much like any other–a straggle of houses puttering smoke from crooked chimneys, a smithy where it looked like half the men of the village gathered to keep warm by the forge, a bakery where the women did the same by the great oven, a gently rusting Clockwork God on the snow-crusted greensward at the centre.

  A gaggle of gangling children came to stare at them, but soon left after a few sharp words from Eder. One of the bolder ones lingered, and Vocho, with half an eye on Carrola, threw her a bull, which she caught in fumbling, surprised hands before she ran off whooping and crowing. Carrola laughed and looked like she was about to say something, but Eder’s sha
rp voice calling for her to attend him put paid to that. She smiled apologetically at Vocho and attended.

  Kass slid off her horse, shooed away another bold child who was about to take the reins, and saw to him herself. The boy, undaunted, ran to take Cospel’s reins for him instead, startling Cospel so much at being served rather than serving that he handed them over without a peep. Vocho, naturally, had immediately identified the crumbling house that served as the village inn and was already making for it before she’d finished with her mount. Kass followed more slowly, looking up at the sky, which promised more bad weather in the lowering clouds that obscured the looming peaks behind. They’d been promised a thaw, that the weather would turn, but the cold looked like it had settled in for good, as though this winter might last for ever. They’d have to see about better furs somewhere along the line–the only furs they’d managed to get in Reyes were more ornamental than warm because the city never got worse than a bit chilly even at winter’s worst.

  When she caught up with Vocho, he’d made a start on the woman whose house it was–the tiny front room served as the bar, while she ran up and down the stairs with jugs to fetch the foaming beer. Eder came in behind Kass, his disapproving glance chilling the already cold room by several degrees.

  The captain took off his gloves, laid them on a table and motioned for Carrola to sit next to him while they waited. They might wait a while because Vocho had the woman fully engaged, winking and cajoling his best. When he finally came and sat with Kass and Cospel, he had three plates of bread, cheese and cold meats and a bottle of what he said was “the best wine she had. I think it probably won’t take any skin off. But don’t bet on it.”

  Eder’s men and women entered in dribs and drabs behind him, upright and silent before their officer’s disapproval, and the woman was hard pressed serving them all, but finally everyone was fed and watered. A few locals had come in too, to gawp or exchange gossip, though Eder gave his troop a sharp order to shut up when one opened his mouth.

  One old man sidled up to Kass’s table, crabbed and wrinkled like an old apple, his moth-eaten furs over a thick tunic a mismatch of rabbit and fox and threadbare wolf that had seen better days. And incidentally stank like a week-dead cow. “My boy says you lot are off up the mountains, to find these bandits then?” he said. “The Scar and Skull?”

  “That’s right,” Vocho said around a mouthful of bread.

  The old man sniffed derisively, making his skinny drooping chins wobble. “You’re going to need a lot more riders in that case. Ain’t you heard?”

  “Heard what?” Kass said, acutely aware that Eder was listening while trying to appear uninterested.

  “Moving down the mountains they are. Further every time, and more vicious every time as well. Getting closer to us. Funny, ain’t it, that they can move about all right in feet of snow and yet the prelate’s men get stuck if there’s half an inch? Ain’t seen none of them lot up here for months and months, though I heard they went over eastwards. We’ve not seen the guards since before all that business down at the city. Not since this winter turned so hellish bad.”

  “Well, you’ve got a couple of guildsmen now, so—” Vocho began.

  Eder stood up behind the old man with a scrape of his chair and with a cold glance ordered his crew out.

  “He’s starting to get on my nerves,” Vocho muttered.

  “Mine too,” Kass said. The old man was still hanging about, looking like he had something else to say. She cocked a questioning eyebrow his way.

  “If it’s the guild,” he said. “Well… we heard all sorts of things. Like they got a guildsman with them now, and there’s magicians about, and—”

  “A magician?” Vocho choked on his bread, and Cospel had to bang him hard on the back before he could breathe again.

  “Aye. After all that down in the city, well, a lot of people run up into the mountains after, see? Ikarans, a few Reyens even. They didn’t stop long here, like. But there was this fella, he was right odd. Always kept his gloves on, and the priest reckoned that was a sure sign. Funny things happened around this fella too. Or rather people acted funny around him.”

  “Like how?” Kass asked.

  The old man sniffed meaningfully, and Cospel got the hint and gave him some wine.

  “Very kind of you. Well, like old Barley, see. Now he was a lazy old sot, always was. His farm only just about fed him and his missus, because he never liked to do no work. Left it all to her, and she weren’t much better neither. And all of a sudden he was up and doing things, like, to help this chap. Barley’s wife made him some new clothes. Badly mind, she wasn’t never no seamstress. And Barley himself ran around like a headless chicken to do all this chap’s errands for him. Then he sold his pig.”

  “Sold his pig? What’s that got to do with it?”

  The old man laughed, slung the wine down his neck in one go, and at Kass’s nod Cospel filled the cup again. “Aye. That pig was the one thing he ever spent any effort on. Champion pig, it was, and it wanted for nothing. Best food, better than Barley ate, I expect, and he gave the bloody thing beer. It fathered most of the bacon for a twenty-mile lick. Probably worth as much as the rest of his farm put together. He sold it for half that, less, to buy this chap a horse. Gave him the money left over, and all. Then the chap gets on the horse and rides off towards the mountains without so much as a by your leave in the clothes and furs they made for him. And as soon as he’d gone, old Barley was down here like a man with a three-month hangover, hollering that someone had stole his pig and threatening dire things to whoever done it. Didn’t remember a damned thing about the chap, or selling his pig or nothing.”

  “Well that’s certainly odd—”

  “And when the priest tells him he sold the pig, what do you think he said?”

  Kass eyed the man–he was getting a lot of satisfaction out of this, and she wondered if he was the person who’d bought a half-price champion pig. “I have no idea.”

  “He said the man’s hands told him to. Now, what do you think of that?”

  Kass shot Vocho a look, noticed how his knife had dropped back to the plate, and even his wine was untouched.

  “Probably just going back to Ikaras,” she said. “Escaping the battle like everyone else.”

  “Oh no, miss.” The old man grinned, wrinkling his face like a demented walnut. “See, we had a refugee or two the other way, coming down the mountain these last weeks. Escaping the bandits, see? The university shut, didn’t it, in Ikaras? New queen don’t like magicians, told ’em all to sling their hooks. No place for ’em now, so where’s he going to go? And the winter, it’s been a terrible hard winter, worst I’ve ever known it and I’ve known it cold enough to make a man’s nose snap clear off. Heard a lot of things from these people, I did, a lot of things.”

  “Yes?” Kass topped his wine up. She wished he’d just get on with it, but seeing as he was the only one talking, it wasn’t prudent to say so. “Such as?”

  “Well, see, like this chap, he went up into the mountains, but the snow started next day–early it was, and sudden. He’d have not got far, even with magic, in that storm. Then not long after that Scar starts getting right bold. Skull joined her about then too. And she had a magician with her, for sure. Drinks up all the blood she can get him, he does, fries a few people for her, boils their brains in their heads, that’s what they say, and that he can melt snow and make it, that he’s the one making the winter hang to the mountain with its fingertips. I reckon he’s how come they can move around in all the snow, where good honest Reyen men are snowbound. I do hear say.”

  The sound of horses clattering off brought Kass back from pondering this suggestion.

  “The cheeky bugger!” Vocho burst out. “He’s gone without us!”

  By the time they made it out of the makeshift inn, leaving half their lunch and a fair bit of wine to the gleeful old goat who’d been so forthcoming, Eder was long gone and pushing so hard it took them a good two hours to catch him.
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  Chapter Eight

  Four months ago

  Petri blinked sweat out of his eyes before the wind could freeze it and smacked the man straight in the mouth. Left hand or not, there was enough blind rage behind it to knock him flat on his arse.

  “Say that again, and I’ll do that with a blade,” Petri said. “And it’ll make this face look like a beauty by the time I’m done. Clear?”

  The man struggled up out of the wind-blown snow that streaked the little valley, spat blood from his mouth, started to say something then seemed to think better of it as he glanced over Petri’s shoulder. He nodded sullenly before he stalked off, followed by the other half-dozen or so Petri had spent the morning teaching swordplay to with mixed results.

  Petri took a look at what had changed the man’s mind and saw ponies coming, Scar at their head. The shaggy sure-footed beasts were trudging from the ramshackle barn that saved them from the worst of the weather and where Petri had taken to sleeping when he could bludgeon himself a place, which was most nights now.

  Scar halted her pony by him and looked at the imprint in the snow, tinged in blood. “Making your mark, I see. And making a few enemies, if what I hear and the bruises I see are right. Get ready.”

  “For what?”

  A smile lightened her face. “To see what good you’re doing. A raid–a village down over the border in Ikaras. Oh, don’t get too cocky. Today you watch, and tomorrow and the day after too probably because it’ll take long enough to get there in this snow. Learn, see how we do things. Get yourself a pony and stay at the back. But it’s time you saw who and what we are.”

  She turned away leaving Petri grinding his teeth, but he found the only mount left–a scraggy pony–and got himself ready. Kepa sat atop the biggest pony they had and still his legs dangled, but he was at the front, at Scar’s right hand, and Petri was left to the back. Not for long, if he had his way.

  It was a long trek through the snow, hip deep on the ponies in places so they had to stop and dig. The short day waned, and they still hadn’t found the village, so finally Scar called for them to make camp. It was just over the Ikaran border, or so Kepa said–gods knew how they knew where it was under the snow. They spent a cold and cheerless night in caves they scraped out of the snow for themselves, laid blankets on the ponies. Kepa made a fire, but it only took the worst of the wind, didn’t keep them warm only alive. They huddled around it, the rest talking in low voices about what they’d find tomorrow and about the meagre rations lately, though a look from Scar soon shut that talk up. Rations were meagre indeed though–their meal was watery barley broth and no bread. Kepa had grown friendlier since their set-to in the barn and now sat next to Petri and rubbed at his rumbling belly. “Better be something good in this village, or I’m going to waste away.”