With a rabble like this, Laurent’s pretty face wasn’t doing him any favours. Damen must have heard a dozen slurs and sly insinuations before he’d even saddled his horse. No wonder Aimeric had been furious: even Damen, who had frankly no objection to men slandering Laurent, was finding himself annoyed. It was disrespectful to speak that way of any commander. He’d loosen up for the right cock, he heard. He pulled too sharply on the girth strap of his horse.
He was out of sorts, perhaps. Last night had been strange, sitting across a map from Laurent, answering questions.
The fire had burned low in the hearth, warm-embered. You said you knew the territory, Laurent had said, and Damen had found himself confronted with an evening spent dispensing tactical information to an enemy he might expect to face one day, country against country, King against King.
And that was the best possible outcome: it assumed that Laurent would beat his uncle, and that Damen would return to Akielos, claiming his throne.
‘You have some objection?’ Laurent had said.
Damen had drawn in a deep breath. A strong Laurent meant a weakened Regent, and if Vere was distracted by a familial squabble over the succession, that only benefitted Akielos. Let Laurent and his uncle duke it out.
Slowly, carefully, he had started talking.
They had talked about the terrain on the border and about the route they would travel to get there. They would not be riding in a straight line south. Instead, it was to be a two-week journey southwest through the Veretian provinces of Varenne and Alier, their route hugging the Vaskian mountain border. It was a change from the direct route that had been planned by the Regent, and Laurent had already sent out riders to inform the keeps. Laurent, Damen thought, was buying himself time, extending the journey as much as was plausibly possible.
They had talked about the merits of Ravenel’s defences when compared to Fortaine. Laurent hadn’t seemed to show any inclination to sleep. He had never once glanced at the bed.
As the night wore on, Laurent had abandoned his deliberate comportment for a relaxed, youthful pose, drawing one knee up to his chest and slinging an arm around it. Damen had found his gaze drawn to the easy arrangement of Laurent’s limbs, the balance of wrist on knee, the long, finely articulated bones. He had been aware of a diffuse but growing tension, a sensation almost like he was waiting . . . waiting for something, unsure what it was. It was like being alone in a pit with a snake: the snake could relax, you could not.
About an hour before dawn, Laurent had risen. ‘We’re done for tonight,’ he had said briefly. And then, to Damen’s surprise, he had left to begin preparations for the morning. Damen had been brusquely informed that he would be summoned when he was needed.
The castellan had called for him some hours later. Damen had taken the chance to snatch some sleep, determinedly retiring to his pallet and closing his eyes. The next time he had seen Laurent had been in the courtyard, changed and armoured and coolly ready to ride. If Laurent had slept at all, he hadn’t done so in the Regent’s bed.
There were fewer delays than Damen expected. Laurent’s pre-dawn arrival and whatever cold bitchy remarks he had made—sharpened by a night without sleep—had been enough to eject the Regent’s men out of their beds and into a semblance of lines.
They rode out.
*
There was no immediate disaster.
They rode through long green meadows scented with white and yellow flowers, Govart crude and commanding on a warhorse at their head, and beside him—young, elegant and golden—the Prince. Laurent looked like a figurehead, eye-catching and useless. Govart had not been disciplined at all for his stableboy-induced tardiness, nor had anything happened to the Regent’s men for shirking their duty last night.
There were in total two hundred men, followed by servants and wagons and supplies and additional horses. There was no livestock, as there would be following a larger army on campaign. This was a small troop with the luxury of several supply stops on the way to their destination. There were no camp followers.
But they stretched out for almost a quarter mile, because of stragglers. Govart sent riders from the front streaming down to the end of the column to shout them into action, which caused a minor ruckus among the horses, but no noticeable improvement in forward motion. Laurent watched all of this, but did nothing about it.
Setting up camp took several hours, which was too long. Time wasted was time robbed from rest when the Prince’s men had already been up half the preceding night. Govart gave basic commands but did not care much for fine work or detail. Among the Prince’s men, Jord shouldered most of the responsibilities of Captain, as he had done last night, and Damen took his orders from him.