by Glen Cook
Haroun’s would be the simplest solution.
He
would have them murdered.
“You wouldn’t dare!”
Men smashed against the door.
“Try me. The charge is treason. I believe Her Majesty will support it.”
Axes began splintering the door.
The Queen touched his arm. “Appearances will decide this. Back into the corner like you’re defending me.”
She had chosen. He smiled, did as she suggested. She attached herself to his left arm in the classic pose of damsel hanging on protector.
Lord Lindwedel surrendered. “All right, damn it. Have the documents prepared.”
Bragi held his pose long enough for Gjerdrum and the Queen’s troops to catch a glimpse. Thus it was that, dishonestly, he won their loyalty.
iv) The challenge
There was snow on the ground, a sprinkling scarcely thicker than frost, tainted ruby in the dawnlight. A harsh cold wind stirred skeletal trees. Bragi, astride a shivering horse at wood’s edge, glanced up the road that snaked over the hill masking Vodicka’s camp. With him were the irrepressible Mocker and a dozen of his own and the Queen’s men. Mocker blew into shaking hands and bemoaned the impulse that had brought him into the field.
For a week Ragnarson had maneuvered his forces into position, hoping for a fiat that would spare lives. He would need every man in the spring.
To the north, blocking the route to Volstokin, were Blackfang and Ahring with the Trolledyngjans and Itaskians. Sir Andvbur, for the moment commanding the Queen’s Own and Palace Guard, held the routes eastward. In the south lay Altenkirk with eleven hundred Wessons and Marena Dimura. The woods behind Vodicka were held by Kildragon and Preshka.
Everyone had been in position since the day before. The men had been given a night’s rest and plenty to eat… This one he wouldn’t hurry. It would be his most crucial battle, one that, in its handling more than its winning, could make him as Marshal of Kavelin.
“You’d better get going,” he told Mocker.
The fat man kicked his new donkey into a walk. He had volunteered to find Haroun. He would skirt the battle zone and, hopefully, would know the outcome before passing Kildragon’s last outpost. He also bore messages to Vodicka’s family.
Ragnarson turned to another of his companions. “Bring her out.”
Against his advice and over the protests of her supporters, the Queen had insisted on joining him.
In minutes she was at his side, bundled in furs that concealed ill-fitting chain mail. She bubbled.
Ragnarson nodded. “We begin.” He urged his mount forward. She kept pace. His party trailed by twos.
Ragnarson’s heart hammered. His stomach flipped and knotted. Doubts plagued him. Had he chosen the best course? Sure, it was the way to slay the rumors about him not leading from the front, but… What if Vodicka refused his challenge?
He leaned toward the Queen, said, “If you bring as much excitement and stubbornness to ruling as you do to getting in a fight, you’ll…”
Her thigh brushed his. He wasn’t sure, but it seemed she’d guided her mount the slightest bit closer to his. He remembered riding thigh by thigh with Elana, with mortal dangers waiting to strike.
“You’re a beautiful woman,” he croaked, forcing the compliment. Then he ameliorated his boldness with, “You shouldn’t risk yourself like this. If we’re taken…”
There was red in her face when she looked his way. Had he angered her?
“Marshal,” she said, “I’m a woman. Noble by birth, Queen in marriage to a man
long
dead, and leader by circumstance. But a woman.”
He thought he understood. And that was more frightening than anything that might be waiting beyond the hill.
They crested that hill. “You’re sure the messages went out?” He had asked her to send commands to every Nordmen to post public pledges of fealty or face banishment or death. News of today’s events would pursue the messengers, would convince or condemn.
“Yes.” Slight exasperation.
He studied the encampment. Vodicka had restructured it along Imperial lines, throwing up ramparts and cutting trenches. Towers for archers were under construction. It had taken two attacks for Vodicka to learn that he wasn’t on bivouac.
“Banners,” Ragnarson growled over his shoulder. They had been noticed.
The Krief family ensign broke beside a white parlay flag. Ragnarson advanced till they were just beyond the range of a good Itaskian bow. This would be the point for one of Greyfells’s rogues to materialize.
They waited. And waited. The nearest gate finally opened. Horsemen came forth.
“Here,” Ragnarson told the Queen, “is where, if I were Haroun, you’d learn the difference in our thinking. He’d make some innocuous signal and our bowmen could cut them down. Haroun goes for the throat.”
Vodicka wasn’t with the party.
“They look like they’ve spent a year besieged already,” the Queen remarked. She was old enough to remember the bitter sieges in her homeland.
Ragnarson signaled an interpreter. The common speech of Volstokin was akin to Marena Dimura. The upper classes used a different dialect.
The party was a mixed bag including several senior officers of Volstokin’s army, a few of El Murid’s advisors, Kaveliner turncoats, and a man with a bow who looked Itaskian.
A Kaveliner recognized the Queen, babbled excitedly to his companions.
“Tell them our business is with Vodicka,” Ragnarson told his interpreter. The lingua franca of the upper classes was the speech of Hellin Daimiel.
An officer replied, “I speak for King Vodicka. No need for the interpreter.” He spoke flawless upper-class Itaskian. “I’m Commander of the Household, Seneschal Sir Farace Scarna of Liolios.”
“Guild Colonel Bragi Ragnarson, Marshal of Kavelin, with and speaking for Her Supreme Highness Fiana Melicar Sardyga ip Krief, Queen of Kavelin, daughter and ally of His Highness Dusan Lorimier Sardygo, Lord Protector of Sacuescu, the Bedelian League, and the Auszura Littoral, and Prince Viceregal to Their Majesties the Kings of Dunno Scuttari and Octylya.” Which didn’t mean much, Sacuescu being powerless, Dunno Scuttari still recovering from the wars, and Octylya an Itaskian Protectorate as subject to pressure from the Queen’s enemies as friends.
“What do you want?”
Ragnarson was pleased by Sir Farace’s businesslike manner. A fighting man all his life, Bragi judged.
“I challenge Vodicka to individual combat. And demand the surrender of himself and his forces. The former as Champion, the latter as Marshal.”
“Champion?”
“Your King has had that much success, Sir Farace,” the Queen interjected.
Sir Farace said something in his own tongue. Reluctantly, all but he withdrew a hundred yards.
“Pull back the same distance, Dehner,” Bragi ordered.
“The lady, too, and it please you.”
Ragnarson turned. She was putting her stubborn face on. “My Lady.”
“Must I?”
“I think so.”
Once they were alone, scant swordswings apart, Sir Farace asked, “Man to man? Not as Seneschal and Marshal?”
“All right.”
“Can you beat us?”
“Easily. But I’ll starve you out instead. I’ve talked to deserters. I know what’s going on inside.”
“Damned foreigners… Intrigues and magic. And greed. Destroyed an army and a King.” He paused, spat. “I’d surrender. Save what I could. But I’m not His Majesty. The weaker he gets, the more he grows sure we can finish Kavelin if we’ll just hold on till we get another sorcerer from Al Remish.” He spat again. “He won’t surrender. He might fight.”
“You could sally, come over the hill, and surrender.”
“No.”
“I didn’t think so. How bad is he?”
“Very. Healthy, he’d give you a battle. He fought Tarlson to a draw
once. Years ago. He wears the scar proudly.”
“What happens if I kill him? In Volstokin?”
“You wouldn’t notice the change. His brother, whom you defeated at Lake Berberich, succeeds. The war goes on.”
“How, with Volstokin in ruins and threatened by famine?”
“The rumors are true?”
“I know bin Yousif.”
“Why this confrontation?”
“This army’s a nuisance. I’ve got more dangerous enemies to worry about. Suppose I grabbed Vodicka and threw him in a cell somewhere? Kept him in style, but didn’t ransom him?”
“A regency. Probably the Queen Mother. His Majesty’s brother, Jostrand, isn’t that popular.”
“And this infamous alliance with El Murid?”
“Dead. Dead as the Emperors in their graves.”
“Then imprisonment might best serve both Volstokin and Kavelin.”
“Perhaps.”
“A gift to show my feeling that there should be peace between us. Anstokin moves with spring. They intend to take the provinces above Lake Berberich, all the way to the Galmiches.”
Sir Farace grew pale. He started to say something, nodded. Then, “Of course. We should’ve anticipated it.”
“Our sources are unimpeachable.”
“I believe you. I’ll talk to His Majesty, but I guarantee nothing. Good fortune.”
“The same.” He said it to Sir Farace’s dwindling back.
v) Personal combat
“Well, what’d he say?” the Queen demanded.
“We might work something out.”
“You won’t attack?”
“Not if I can help it.”
“But…”
“I didn’t get this old fighting for fun. Let’s get back to the woods. This wind’s killing me.”
While the others piled brush into a windbreak and got a fire going, and saw to the horses and weapons, Bragi and the Queen sat on a log and stared at Vodicka’s encampment. Bragi was looking for weaknesses, the gods knew what.
“Beckring,” Ragnarson said presently. “Find Sir Andvbur. Tell him I need a crossbow, a pony or his runtiest horse, and a Cerny.” The Cerny, a breed developed near that small city in Vorhangs, was a gigantic horse meant to bear the most heavily armored knights.
“Now what?” the Queen asked.
“Hedging my bets. That’s another way you stay alive in this business.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I just remembered. Haroun isn’t the only guy who thinks his way. His whole race … Can you kill a man? If he’s trying to kill you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Better think about it. Better be ready when the time comes.” He began fiddling with his boots.
Beckring brought the animals and weapons just as a party left Vodicka’s camp. Ragnarson explained as he hurried his people to the meeting point. He rode the Cerny, she the pony. The men crowded close so they could hear.
When the Volstokiners arrived, without Vodicka or Sir Farace, Ragnarson had the Cerny sideways to them with the Queen masked behind him. He presented his shield side.
Sir Farace had been replaced by an idiot, a terrified, drooling victim of some disease that had crippled both brain and body.
Ragnarson had anticipated the action. Vodicka had done the same in other wars. He ignored the man, concentrated on the “advisers.”
They were too studiedly disinterested. He locked gazes with a hawk-nosed veteran who wore a mouth-corner scar that drew his lips into a permanent smirk.
Smirk-mouth’s eyes flicked, for the scantest instant, to the man who was to provide his diversion…
Ragnarson spurred the Cerny. His right hand, already low, yanked the throwing knife from his boot, snapped it at Scar-mouth’s throat. The Queen, no longer masked, discharged the crossbow into the chest of a second rider while all eyes remained on Bragi. His party produced their weapons and surrounded her. Before the startled Volstokiners, unprepared for their allies’ treachery, recovered, Bragi had gotten round their flank. There he met a third adviser in a flurry of swordplay, unhorsed him, and faced the Volstokiners as they turned to run.
The mixup was brief. Bragi lost one man. The other party lost five before they surrendered.
Ragnarson dismounted, removed his ax from his wargear, separated Scar-mouth’s head from his body. He handed it to the idiot. “Tell Vodicka this’s the game I play with treachers. Tell him I say he’s a coward, a baseborn whoreson who sends assassins after people he’s too craven to face himself.”
“We better get out of here,” said one of Bragi’s men.
“Yeah.” He scrambled onto the Cerny.
While they watched Sir Andvbur’s men skirmish with Volstokiners who had come out to aid their fellows, Bragi told the Queen, “You look ill. He would’ve killed you.”
“It’s not that. I’ve seen men die… The head…”
“Didn’t give me any joy either. But gruesome doings sometimes save lives.”
“I know. I understand. But that doesn’t make me like it.”
His own stomach was in poor shape.
The skirmishing died away. After transferring his gear to a fresh horse, Ragnarson mounted, said, “Time for the next phase.” He took a Royal standard from a bearer, spurred downhill.
He went at a trot, carefully studying the ground and distant ramparts. He went to a canter, then, at bowshot, to a gallop. Volstokiners watched in surprise as he spurred past their earthworks, shouting insults at Vodicka. A few desultory arrows reached for him.
One whirred past his nose. He laughed like one of the battle-crazy berserker heroes of his boyhood homeland. His hair and beard whipped with the speed of the horse’s passage. He hadn’t felt such exhilaration in years.
He stopped beyond bowshot and waited. Then his high spirits got the better of him. He made a second passage, this time planting the Queen’s standard on a mound near Vodicka’s gate.
“You’re mad!” the Queen cried, when he returned for a fresh mount. “Completely insane!” But she was laughing. And there was a new, more promising sparkle in her eyes.
“He’s got to come out now. Or admit he’s a coward to his whole army.”
“He’ll come in full knight’s regalia,” said Sir Andvbur, who had grabbed an opportunity to put himself near the Queen. “You won’t be able to handle him…”
His spirits still soared. “Watch me!” Despite the cold, he shed garments till he was down to basic Trolledyngjan war gear. He hung helmet, shield, and sword on his horse, then ran into the woods where a Guard’s infantry company lay hidden. He returned with a long pike.
“What you got to do,” he explained, “is outgut them. When they
know
you’re easy meat, but you stand your ground and grin, they get nervous. And make mistakes.”
He realized he was showing off, but what he saw in the Queen’s eyes made rational behavior impossible.
He rode to the meeting point, dismounted, planted a fresh standard, walked twenty paces downslope, leaned on the pike.
Trumpets winded. The encampment gate opened. A knight came forth.
This time Ragnarson faced Vodicka. He continued leaning on the pike, motionless. The horseman trotted back and forth, getting the feel of the earth, then rode uphill and stopped a hundred yards away.
As Ragnarson examined that mass of blood and steel, weighing nearly a ton and a half, he began to doubt. The horse was as protected as its rider.
Bragi continued leaning as if bored. He was committed.
Vodicka wasted no time talking. He couched his lance and charged.
The King’s horse began to loom castle-huge. Bragi dropped to one knee, set his pike, lifted his shield. Could he hold each solidly enough?
He had made a major miscalculation. Vodicka’s lance outreached his pike.
He shifted slightly, was unable to finish before impact.
Vodicka came in with his lancehead aimed at Ragnarson’s ches
t, intending to blast him off the pike and finish him with his sword.
Bragi twisted his shield and pushed, to deflect the lance.
It ripped through his shield, down the underside of his forearm. Its impetus bore him over backward. But his right arm and hand remained oak-firm for the instant needed to bring Vodicka to grief. The pike head met the horse at the juncture of shoulder and breastplate. The screaming beast’s momentum levered it into the air.
Ragnarson’s sprawl forced Vodicka’s lancehead into the earth.
Rearing horse and levering lance separated Vodicka from his saddle. As Ragnarson scrambled away, Volstokin’s King landed with a horrendous clangor. Bragi was on him instantly, swordtip at the slot in the man’s visor.
“Yield!”
“Kill me,” muffled, weak.
Ragnarson glanced toward Vodicka’s encampment. No rescue mission yet. He wrestled the helmet free. Yes, he had caught the genuine fish. He punched the King’s jaw.
“Ouch!” He kissed his knuckles, with a knife cut the straps and laces holding Vodicka’s armor. He finished barely in time to get uphill ahead of a band of would-be rescuers.
“He’s in bad shape,” Ragnarson told the Queen as he rode up. “Better get him to a doctor. To the palace. Won’t be worth a farthing dead. Somebody find me some bandages.”
While men dragged Vodicka away, the Queen took Ragnarson’s hand. “For a minute I thought…”
“So did I. I’ll grow up one of these days.” Examining his arm, he found no major veins severed. A surgeon put a field dressing on, told him to avoid exertion for a few days.
“Sir Andvbur,” he said, “begin the next phase.”
The knight’s men began pushing earthworks forward.
T
WELVE:
T
HE
Y
EARS 1002-1003 AFE
C
OMPLICATIONS AND
N
EW
D
IRECTIONS
i) Recovery and preparation
Volstokin’s army fell apart. Man by man, then by companies, Vodicka’s soldiers surrendered their weapons, and began the walk home. Within a week the encampment was deserted—except for El Murid’s advisers and a few high officers. Ragnarson withdrew to the capital. Blackfang and the Trolledyngjans finished the job.
