The Tattered Banner

by Duncan M. Hamilton

  The others had gathered their wits quickly. They were professionals and the surprise of the attack would not affect them for long. They had returned fire with their own small bows and already one of the two attacking crossbowmen had been brought down. There were also men coming at them from the front and behind at street level, and the New Guard were wading into them with their horses. Two of them had also closed in around the Duke to protect him.

  Comfortable in the knowledge that the other bodyguards were handling things, Soren took a second to survey the situation. As soon as the surprise had subsided, the real threat had passed. Now it was nothing more than a mop up. He backed his horse up to bring himself closer to the Duke. Out of the corner of his eye he spotted a man in a black hooded cloak at the end of the street. By the time he looked directly, the man was gone. He had an uncomfortable sense of recognition in his stomach. He was sure that it had been Emeric.

  Soren was finding himself at dal Dragonet’s office more and more frequently. He was not particularly bothered by the fact, thus far it had usually signalled good news. The aide led him into the office as usual and dal Dragonet gestured for him to sit down. He looked agitated as he set a sheaf of papers down on the side of his desk.

  ‘I’m moving you from the New Guard,’ he said.

  Soren’s mouth opened in surprise but before he could speak, dal Dragonet continued.

  ‘After the attack the other day, the Duke has requested that you be made his personal bodyguard. I agree with his reasoning, so you will be moved to that detail immediately. It’s clear now that the threat we perceived to the Duke wasn’t a paranoid fantasy. Be vigilant. Where the Duke goes, you go. His life is your responsibility now, and I needn’t warn you of the consequences should we fail. You will need to know something else now also. We received word that the Ruripathians crossed the border in force last week and invested Northmarch castle. Part of their army went right past it and marched straight into Baelin. Word of this hasn’t reached the populace yet, but the news will be no more than a day or two behind our messengers. We have mobilised the army, and called up the reserves. The Duke needs to be ready to declare war and march as soon as word reaches the people on the street. His position is tenuous. A coup is as likely right now as another assassination attempt. Our enemies are within as well as without.’

  C h a p t e r 5 6

  THE DRUMS OF WAR

  There was something stirring about marching to war, and as soon as Soren found out that he would be going the excitement occupied most of his thoughts. The morning they rode out of the city, Soren had pride of place at the head of the army beside the Duke. His banner had arrived just in time and it was with great pride that he watched it flutter in the air at the end of his lance, just beneath that of the Duke, which was his privilege to carry.

  An honour guard of five thousand men had been chosen for a procession through the city before they joined with the main body of the army that was camped outside the walls. The streets were lined with people as they passed through the city, from the Palace through Highgarden down to Crossways and then out of the North Gate. Alessandra was there; standing with other well dressed ladies in an enclosure at the side of the road that had been cordoned off for them. Beautifully dressed and catching the eye of every soldier that filed past her, his eyes were the only ones she met. It angered him that after all that had passed between them she could still have such an overwhelming effect on him with nothing more than a gaze. There was a sadness in her eyes, but Soren refused to allow himself to be baited by it. He hardened his jaw and directed his gaze ahead, like a good soldier. He hated himself for doing it, but he could no longer admit how much he loved her, even to himself. It simply hurt too much.

  Soren loved being in an army encampment, the activity and the order of it all. There was no time to be wasted however, and as the honour guard passed through the camp, parts of it were being packed up as the men waited to fall in behind them and join the march. The army was so large that many of the men would be sleeping where their tents were that night, not having to pack and begin the march until the following morning. It made the army he had been part of in the east look like a small scouting force.

  They only marched for a few hours before they camped for the night. Soren was a little surprised when they came upon the Duke’s compound, already set up over a small rise in the road. A party had ridden on ahead to set it up so that it was all ready for him when they arrived. Considering the eagerness that all of the senior officers had been speaking with when talking about joining with the enemy at the earliest possible opportunity, Soren had expected that there would be several long forced marches in the early days of the advance. It surprised him to see that this army was going to be moving so slowly. It seemed that these officers were of a different calibre to those that had led the army in the east, all pomp and ceremony but no grit.

  They dined that night with a full silver service, fine wines and crystal goblets. The officers then all retired to their personal tents, while the army was settling in around them. Privileged aristocrats ran this army, and it made Soren uneasy to think what would happen when they were finally engaged in battle.

  The food was good, and he could appreciate that; he would never turn his nose up at a meal no matter how inappropriate he might consider its trimmings. He was thankful that the Duke had dedicated tasters though. The days when a full belly was worth the risk of being poisoned were well and truly behind him. He sat to the Duke’s right and to all intents and purposes was one of the privileged men that sat around the table despite never feeling like one. The only difference was that he was the only man at the table who was armed. Even dal Dragonet had surrendered his weapons as a gesture to the others, one or more of whom it was feared could be part of the conspiracy against the Duke. General Kastor was not there; he was in command of a division somewhere to the rear and hadn’t made it to the officers’ enclosure in time for supper. That, at least, was one threat avoided. He determined there and then that whatever unwitting role he had played in aiding the conspiracy, he would play a very conscious and determined role in pulling it apart and seeing that its perpetrators suffered the full consequences of their treachery.

  After supper, Soren was relieved by dal Gawan. While he slept, the New Guard would watch over the Duke. He strolled out amongst the tents in the fresh evening air. Officers stood around communal fires, smoking twists of tobacco and laughing and joking. Most of them would never have been to war before. They would all be well-trained swordsmen, having had to pass through the Academy, which in most cases was a formality of their station in life, but they would lack the experience that combat brought.

  Near the edge of the officers’ camp and where the neatly laid out grid pattern of the army’s camp began, there was a small cluster of tents that were of a very different character to the rest. When he heard the first feminine voice, he smiled to himself. Where an army marched, a coterie of camp followers tagged along. They would be wives and sweethearts of the soldiers, some welcome, some not so, and enterprising whores who were willing to endure the privations of the road to earn a little extra money. Before the war was over, he fully expected that some of the wives and sweethearts would end up as whores, and some of the whores would end up as wives and sweethearts. Such was the way of war.

  He slept well that night, which was not something he did often. It confirmed in his mind that he was best suited to a martial lifestyle. He enjoyed the hard living and plain requirements. Being the Duke’s personal bodyguard was as high as a swordsman could hope to rise at such a young age, but it was largely boredom and struggling to look the part in a world that he had once coveted, but now realised he was completely unsuited to. He had been a fool, dreaming and wishing of having a place in high society. When the war was over and the conspiracy dealt with, he determined to resign from the Duke’s service. He would return to the Academy and complete his studies, and after that there was always plenty of mercenary work to be had. It was in combat that
he felt most alive, as though that was his place in life.

  Waking to the sounds of a military camp coming to life was a cheering thing for him. It was a world he understood and felt comfortable in. He could act with authority here, not concerned that he was committing some faux pas that would mark him out as a social pariah.

  ‘We break camp at ten bells, Banneret Soren,’ an adjutant called to him, when he walked out of his tent.

  Ten bells, Soren thought with surprise. It was only six. In his experience, an army’s camp would be broken with the army on the move by eight bells at the latest. He shrugged and waved a response to the adjutant, who smiled at the acknowledgment. In the Palace he was ignored like part of the furnishings. In the camp of an army he was a man of authority. He liked that.

  He made his way to the tent where they had eaten supper the night before in the hope of scrounging up some breakfast. What he found made him smile. The cooks had clearly been up at the appropriate waking time for an army, and the table was fully laid out in anticipation of the arrival of the earliest rising of the officers. As Soren was the first, he had his choice of the freshly cooked food. He over-ate a little, spending longer at the table than he would have were it not for the fact he had four hours to kill before the army would be getting under way.

  He returned to his tent and checked his kit, then rechecked it, and then oiled the blades of his sword and dagger. Eventually when ten bells came, he was waiting outside the Duke’s tent. Calling it a tent was somewhat deceptive, as it was more like a portable mansion, with thick carpets and heavy furniture that would be packed up and loaded onto carts to be taken to the next camp location.

  There was more activity in the command tent than he would have expected and it didn’t seem as though anyone was in a hurry to move. Although he had no role in the command hierarchy, as the Duke’s personal bodyguard, he had access to all areas. He wandered into the tent, passing the sentries with a cursory nod. Dal Dragonet leaned on the campaign table, his arms wide and his head hanging low.

  ‘We shall go out and meet them on the field of honour!’ barked a noble in a pristine uniform.

  ‘You don’t understand, my Lord,’ dal Dragonet replied, his head still hanging down, his voice sounding strained. ‘The army is not fully assembled, and we will be unable to meet them with sufficient force to stop them. We should retreat to the walls of the city where we will be able to form up the army in full strength and fight on reasonably favourable ground.’

  Soren turned to one of the adjutants waiting in the background. ‘What’s going on?’ he asked.

  ‘The scouts that came in overnight have reported that the Ruripathian army is less than a day to the north. Our pickets have already spotted some of their foraging parties. It seems like they really got the jump on us.’

  ‘Rubbish!’ barked another of the officers, drawing Soren’s attention back to the conversation at the table. ‘We cannot be seen to be running from the enemy. They have advanced far enough into our territory. Not one step further!’ This was met with resounding acclaim from the other officers. All men with trumped up notions of honour and no experience of war. Dal Dragonet’s was the only voice of reason, but he was not being listened to.

  ‘We shall send them yelping back to their frozen wasteland like the dogs they are!’ added another officer, which was received with another chorus of cheers.

  Soren had had about as much as he could stomach, so went back outside. He looked north and wondered just how far away the Ruripathian army was. It was impressive that they had marched so far so quickly, but it was entirely possible that the Ostian scouts had been slow in reporting their crossing the border, and that they had been moving south for longer than had been thought.

  Dal Dragonet walked quickly from the tent and when he spotted Soren he walked over to him. ‘The army is to march to engage the Ruripathians. You saw most of what happened in there. Gods help us!’

  Unlike on the march from the city, the Duke and his retinue were to make up the rear guard of the advance into battle. Each of the division commanders had gone to join their regiments so his camp was relatively quiet. The army was to advance in battle order and it took some time for the divisions to spread out in line abreast. It was late afternoon before they finally got under way and despite the apparent foolishness of their advance, it was a magnificent sight to behold, thousands of men in blue tunics, lined up in ranks underneath their different coloured regimental banners.

  When the army finally began to move off, the Duke’s camp looked very much as it had that morning, with no real preparation for the advance having been undertaken. The only concession that dal Dragonet had been able to win from the Duke was the agreement that he would remain well behind the line and in relative safety. It was expected that battle would be met early the next day, so the decision was made to remain where they were for the night, and to continue on at dawn. If they moved quickly, they should re-join the army before it engaged.

  C h a p t e r 5 7

  THE FINAL INTRIGUE

  The afternoon had become early evening when a carriage appeared on the road from the city. The Duke was resting in his tent and Soren’s hands went instinctively to the hilts of his blades. He watched the carriage make its way toward the camp until finally it arrived. He was a little touchy about security, only having four men of the New Guard, a few dozen soldiers and the men of the Duke’s retinue, who were of no fighting value with him. The arrival of the carriage concerned him.

  When Alessandra stepped out of it, he could not help but feel that this was a complication that he did not need. His mind bubbled with reasons for her being there, one of the aristocratic officers having hired her services being toward the top of the list. She caught his gaze, took a deep breath and approached him.

  ‘I need to talk with you,’ she said uncomfortably.

  ‘What could you possibly need to say to me, now of all times?’

  ‘The war is what makes it all the more pressing. I had to speak with you before the fighting starts. I received this letter yesterday evening and set out at first light. I didn’t expect to happen upon you so soon to be honest,’ she said. She held up a letter with a broken red wax seal. He was torn between not wanting to talk to her and desperately wanting to talk to her. He allowed his curiosity over the letter to sway his decision.

  ‘I don’t know what it is you need to say. I’ll listen, but be quick, I have duties to attend to,’ he said. He gestured for her to walk alongside him.

  ‘This letter. It’s from our patron, Lord Amero.’ She placed a bitter emphasis on the words ‘our patron’.

  ‘What did he have to say?’ Soren asked.

  ‘He told me the truth, for once. He told me why you disappeared that summer, why you had to go. He apologised for what he did,’ she said.

  Soren let out a sarcastic laugh. ‘Finally it seems he’s discovered a conscience.’ It gave him pause for thought. It just didn’t seem likely.

  ‘I felt that I had to come to set things between us to rights, before the fighting started, in case… I couldn’t leave this unsaid. After you disappeared I went to him to find out where you were. He said that you’d just gone. That he had no idea where. I was upset, and he was kind. He said that he felt bad for what had happened and that if I ever needed help I had but to ask. A few weeks later, the Don’s thugs came around. My uncle hadn’t been paying his protection money. They killed him and my aunt and burned the tavern to the ground. I managed to get away. I was so afraid and confused. I had nowhere to go and no one to help me. I remembered what he said, so I went to see him. I thought he might find me a job as a maid or something. Well, you know how that ended up.’ She smiled bitterly. ‘I didn’t think I’d ever see you again. I really didn’t. But I never stopped loving you.’

  Soren’s brain was racing furiously to answer an amorphous question that was floating around in his mind. In Soren’s time of knowing him, Amero had never done anything positive for another person unless it was a cons
equence of his own selfish plans. What had changed? Soren looked at Alessandra, studying her closely. She seemed confused by his scrutiny. What was her role in this? Was she part of something that she wasn’t aware of also? What did Amero have to gain by playing with his head like this?

  The impact of her words was like a kick to the stomach and he was finding it hard to think clearly. His love for her was so intense that resisting it made it feel as though his heart was being crushed in his chest. He did not doubt the sincerity of her words. He could hear the heartfelt honesty in her voice. He wanted to believe her more than anything in the world, and he did. But something was amiss, and he could not shake that feeling off. Why had Amero waited until now to send the letter? He was being played again and he could not allow it to happen.

  Soren began walking quickly toward the Duke’s tent, breaking into a run as he went and leaving Alessandra standing where she was in confusion. He pulled the door flaps apart and looked in, his heart dropping.

  ‘Alarm!’ He shouted at the top of his voice. Two guards rushed to him, while others made for their arms around the small camp. Soren turned to one of them, whose face had paled at the sight. ‘Get word to Lord Dragonet. The Duke is assassinated.’