*
Damen’s experience with a divided troop meant he already knew what to look for: food going astray; weapons destined for one or other faction rerouted; essentials for daily tasks within the camp missing. He had dealt with it all on the ride from Arles to Ravenel.
He had not dealt with Makedon. Round one came when Makedon refused to accept the extra rations available to his troops from Fortaine. Akielons didn’t need pampering. If Veretians wished to indulge in all this extra food, they could do so.
Before Damen could open his mouth to respond, Laurent announced that he would likewise change the provisions among his own troops, so that there would not be a disparity. In fact, everyone from soldiers to captains to kings across both troops would receive the same portion, and that portion would be determined by Makedon. Would Makedon inform them now what that portion was to be?
Round two was the skirmish that broke out in the Akielon encampment: an Akielon with a bleeding nose, a Veretian with a broken arm, and Makedon smiling and saying that it had been no more than a friendly competition. Only a coward feared competition.
He said it to Laurent. Laurent said that from this moment on, any Veretian who struck an Akielon would be executed. He trusted the honour of the Akielons, he said. Only a coward hit a man who wasn’t allowed to hit back.
It was like watching a boar try to take on the endless blue of the sky. Damen remembered how it felt to be coerced to Laurent’s will. Laurent had never needed to use force to make men obey him, just as he had never needed men to like him in order to get his way. Laurent got his way because when men tried to resist him, they found, sweetly outmanoeuvred, that they couldn’t.
And indeed, it was only the Akielons who murmured in dissent. Laurent’s men had swallowed the alliance. In fact, the way Laurent’s men talked about their Prince now was not substantially different to the way that they had talked about him before: cold, ice-cold, except now he was cold enough to have fucked his brother’s killer.
‘The pledge should be made in the traditional manner,’ said Nikandros. ‘A night feast for the bannermen, and the ceremonial sports, the display fighting, and the okton. We gather at Marlas.’ Nikandros stuck another token into the sand tray.
‘A strong location,’ Makedon was saying. ‘The fort itself is all but impregnable. Its walls have never been breached, only surrendered.’
No one was looking at Laurent. It wouldn’t have mattered if they had been. His face showed nothing.
‘Marlas is a large-scale defensive fort, not dissimilar to Fortaine,’ Nikandros said to Laurent, later. ‘Big enough to house both our men and yours, with substantial interior barracks. You’ll see its potential when we get there.’
‘I’ve been there before,’ said Laurent.
‘Then you’re familiar with the area,’ said Nikandros. ‘That makes it easier.’
‘Yes,’ said Laurent.
After, Damen took his sword out to the edges of the camp to practise, finding the clearing that he preferred in a thicket of trees, and beginning the series of exercises that he performed every night.
Here there were no barriers to his skill. He could drive himself hard, strike, turn, force himself faster. In the warm night, his skin quickly pricked with sweat. He pushed himself harder to the ceaseless movements, action and reaction that anchored everything to the flesh.
He poured all he felt into the physical, the emulation of fighting. He couldn’t shake it off. He felt it like an unceasing pressure. The closer they came to it, the stronger it grew.
Would they stay at Marlas, in adjoining apartments, receiving Akielon bannermen during the evening from twin thrones?
He wanted . . . he didn’t know what he wanted. For Laurent to have looked at him when Nikandros had announced that they would travel to the place where, six years ago, Damen had killed his brother.
He heard a sound to the west.
Panting, he stopped. Sweat-covered, he heard it again, the slight smothered laughter, and then the whistle and thunk, the jeers, a low moan. Instantly he recognised the danger: a spear thrown. Yet the laughter was too incautious, too loud for an enemy scout. Not an attack. A small party breaking army discipline, who had snuck out at night to hunt or tryst in the woods. He had thought his troops more disciplined than that.
He went to investigate, quietly, watchfully, past a series of dark tree trunks. A rueful flicker of guilt: he knew that these men breaking curfew would not expect their King to appear and admonish them personally. His presence was ludicrously disproportionate to their crime, he thought.
Until he reached the clearing.
A group of five Akielon soldiers had indeed left the camp to practise spear throwing. They had brought a bundle of spears and a wooden target from the camp. The spears lay on the ground in easy reach. The target was set against the trunk of a tree. They were taking turns throwing from a mark toed into the earth. One of them was taking his place at the mark and hefting a spear.
Pale, rigid with fear beyond terror, there was a boy spread-eagled on the wooden target board, tied at the wrists and ankles. From his torn, half-unlaced shirt, the boy was clearly a Veretian, and young—eighteen or nineteen—his light-brown hair a matted tangle, his skin mottled with a bruise that covered one eye.
A few spears had already been thrown at him. They stuck from the target like pins. One protruded from the space between his arm and side. One to the left of his head. The boy’s eyes were glassy, and he held himself motionless. It was clear from the number of spears—and their position—that the aim of this contest was to throw as close to the boy as possible, without hitting him. The thrower drew back his arm.
Damen could only stand and watch as the thrower’s arm whirled, the spear loosing and beginning its clear pure arc—unable to intervene in case it caused a misthrow that killed the boy. The spear sheared through the air, and hit exactly where it had been intended, between the boy’s legs, just shy of his flesh. It stuck out from the target, grotesquely lewd. The laughter was ribald.
‘And who will throw next?’ said Damen.
The thrower of the spear turned, his taunting expression changing to one of shock and disbelief. All five of them stopped and flattened themselves to the ground.
‘Stand,’ said Damen, ‘like the men you think you are.’
He was angry. The men, standing, perhaps did not recognise that. They didn’t know the slow way that he came forward, or the calm tone of his voice.
‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘what it is you are doing here.’
‘Practising for the okton,’ said a voice, and Damen looked them over but couldn’t see who had spoken. Whoever it was had paled after he said it because they were all pale, and nervous-looking.
They wore the notched belts that marked them as Makedon’s men—one notch for each kill. They might even have expected to get approbation from Makedon for what they had done. There was an uneasy expectancy in their postures, as though they were uncertain of their King’s reaction, and had some hope they might be praised, or let off with no admonishment.
He said, ‘Do not speak again.’
He went to the boy. The boy’s shirt sleeve was pinned to the tree by a spear. His head was bleeding where a second spear had grazed it. Damen saw the boy’s eyes darken in terror as he approached, and anger was like acid in his veins. He wrapped his hand around the spear between the boy’s legs and pulled it out. Then he pulled out the spear by his head, and the one pinning his shirt sleeve. He had to draw his sword to cut the boy’s ropes, and at the sound of metal, the boy’s breathing went high and strange.
The boy was badly bruised, and he could not stand under his own weight once the ropes were cut. Damen lowered him to the ground. More had been done to him than target practice. More had been done to him than a beating. They had put an iron cuff around his left wrist, like the gold cuff around his own—like the gold cuff around Laurent’s. Damen knew with a sickening feeling in his stomach exactly what had been done to this boy, and why.
The boy didn’t speak Akielon. He had no idea what was happening, or that he was safe. Damen began to speak to him in Veretian, slow, calming words, and after a moment the boy’s glazed eyes focused on him with something like understanding.
The boy said, ‘Tell the Prince I didn’t fight back.’
Damen turned and said in a steady voice to one of the men, ‘Bring Makedon. Now.’
The man went. The other four stood in place while Damen went to one knee and addressed the boy on the ground again. In a soft, low voice Damen kept him talking. The other men didn’t watch because they were too low-ranked to be allowed to look a king in the face. Their eyes were averted.
Makedon did not come alone. Two dozen of his men came with him. Then came Nikandros, with two dozen men of his own. Then a stream of torchbearers, turning the dim clearing into orange light and leaping flame. The grim expression Nikandros wore showed that he was here because Makedon and his men might need a counterweight.
Damen said, ‘Your soldiers have broken the peace.’
‘They will be executed.’ Makedon said it after a cursory glance at the bleeding Veretian boy. ‘They have dishonoured the belt.’
That was genuine. Makedon didn’t like Veretians. He didn’t like his men dishonouring themselves in front of Veretians. Makedon wanted no whiff of Veretian moral superiority. Damen could see that in him, as he could see that Makedon blamed the Veretians for the attack, for the behaviour of his men, for being called to account by his King.
The orange torchlight was unsparing. Two of the five men struggled, and were taken from the clearing unconscious. The others were roped together with pieces of the tough fibrous rope that had bound the Veretian boy.
‘Take the boy back to our camp,’ Damen said to Nikandros, because he knew exactly what would happen if Akielon soldiers bore the bleeding, bruised boy back to the Veretians. ‘Send for Paschal, the Veretian physician. Then inform the Prince of Vere what has happened here.’ A sharp nod of obedience. Nikandros departed with the boy and a section of the torches.
Damen said, ‘The rest of you are dismissed. Not you.’
The light receded, and the sound, disappearing through the trees until he was alone with Makedon in the night air of the clearing.
‘Makedon of the north,’ said Damen. ‘You were a friend to my father. You fought with him for almost twenty years. That means a great deal to me. I respect your loyalty to him, as I respect your power and need your men. But if your soldiers harm a Veretian again, you will face me at the end of a sword.’
‘Exalted,’ said Makedon, bowing his head to hide his eyes.
‘You walk a fine line with Makedon,’ Nikandros said, on his return to camp.
‘He walks a fine line with me,’ said Damen.
‘He is a traditionalist, and supports you as the true King, but he will only be pushed so far.’
‘I’m not the one pushing.’
He didn’t retire. He took himself instead to the tent in his camp where the Veretian boy was being tended. He dismissed the guards there, too, and waited outside for the physician to come out.
At night the camp was quiet and dark, but this tent was marked by a torch flaming outside, and he could see the lights from the Veretian camp to the west. He was aware of the oddness of his own presence—a king waiting outside a tent like a hound for its master—but he stepped forward quickly when Paschal emerged from the tent.
‘Your Majesty,’ said Paschal, surprised.
‘How is he?’ He said it into the odd silence, facing Paschal in the light from the torches.
‘Bruising, a broken rib,’ said Paschal. ‘Shock.’
‘No, I meant—’
He broke off. After a long moment, Paschal said, slowly, ‘He is well. The knife wound was clean. He lost a lot of blood but there is no permanent damage. He has healed quickly.’
‘Thank you,’ said Damen. He heard himself continue, ‘I don’t expect—’ He stopped. ‘I know that I betrayed your trust, and lied to you about who I am. I don’t expect you to forgive me for that.’
He could feel the incongruity of the words, falling awkwardly between them. He felt strange, his breathing shallow.
He said, ‘Will he be able to ride tomorrow?’
‘You mean to Marlas?’ said Paschal.
There was a pause.
‘We all do what we have to,’ said Paschal.
Damen said nothing. Paschal continued after a moment.
‘You should prepare yourself, too. It’s only deep in Akielos that you’ll be able to confront the Regent’s plans.’
A cool night breeze passed over his skin. ‘Guion claimed not to know what the Regent plans to do in Akielos.’
Paschal looked at him with his steady brown eyes.
‘Every Veretian knows what the Regent plans to do in Akielos.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Rule,’ said Paschal.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE FIRST MILITARY coalition of Vere and Akielos launched from Fortaine in the morning, after the execution of Makedon’s men. There were very few problems, the public killings having been good for the soldiers’ morale.
They hadn’t been good for Makedon’s morale. Damen watched the general swing himself into the saddle, then tug hard on a rein. Makedon’s men were a line of red cloaks stretching across fully half the length of the column.
The horns sounded. The banners went up. The heralds took up their position. The Akielon herald was to the right, the Veretian herald to the left, their banners carefully matched to be the same height. The Veretian herald was named Hendric and he had very strong arms, because banners were heavy.
Damen and Laurent were to ride alongside one another. Neither one of them had the better horse. Neither one of them had the more expensive armour. Damen was taller, but nothing could be done about that, Hendric had said with an impenetrable expression. Hendric, Damen was learning, had something in common with Laurent, in that it was never a simple matter to tell when he was joking.
He brought his horse alongside Laurent’s at the head of the column. It was a symbol of their unity, the Prince and the King riding side by side, as friends. He kept his eyes on the road.
‘At Marlas, we’ll stay in adjacent chambers,’ said Damen. ‘It’s protocol.’
‘Of course,’ said Laurent, his eyes also on the road.
Laurent showed no sign of distress, and sat upright in the saddle, as though nothing at all had happened to his shoulder. He spoke charmingly to the generals and even made pleasant conversation in response to Nikandros, when Nikandros spoke to him.
‘I hope the injured boy was returned to you safely.’
‘Thank you, he returned with Paschal,’ said Laurent.
For a salve? Damen opened his mouth to say, and didn’t.
Marlas was a day-long ride, and they set a good pace. The air was loud with sound, a line of soldiers, outriders ahead, servants and slaves behind. When the column passed near, the birds took off, a herd of goats fled over the side of the hill.
It was afternoon when they reached the small checkpoint manned by Nikandros’s soldiers and overseen by an Akielon signal tower. They rode through.
The landscape on the other side looked no different; rich grass fields, green from a spring of generous rain, bruised at the edges from their passing. In the next moment, the horns rang out, triumphant and lonely at the same time, the pure sound absorbed by the sky and the wide open landscape around them.
‘Welcome home,’ Nikandros said.
Akielos. He drew in a breath of Akielon air. In months of captivity he had thought of this moment. He couldn’t help glancing next to him at Laurent, his posture and expression easy.
They rode through the first of the villages. This close to the border, larger farms had rudimentary outer walls of stone, and some were like improvised forts, with lookouts or well-tried defence systems. The passing of the army wouldn’t be a surprise, and Damen was prepared for the people of his country to react to it in various ways.
He had forgotten that Delpha had become an Akielon province only six years ago, and that before that, for the span of their entire lives, these men and women had been citizens of Vere.
The silent faces gathered, women and men, children, in doorways, under awnings, standing together as the army passed.
Tense, afraid, they had come out of their homes to watch the first Veretian banners flying here in six years. One of them had fashioned a crude starburst, with sticks. A child held it up, like the image she saw.
The starburst banner means something here on the border, Laurent had said.
Laurent said nothing, riding straight-backed at the head of the column. He did not acknowledge his people, with their Veretian language, customs and allegiances, making their small living on the border. He was riding with an army of Akielons who wholly controlled this province. He kept his gaze ahead; so did Damen, feeling the everlasting pressure of their destination with every step.