*
Outside, when he pushed outside, the landscape lost colour, greying out.
He had his hand braced against the trunk of a tree when he came back to himself, and his body shook with anger. Soldiers shouting his name had ridden in here in the dark. They had cut down villagers with swords, burned them in their houses, a planned move meant to injure him politically. His stomach had heaved as though he had been sick. He felt in himself something dark and unnamed at the tactics of those he fought.
A breeze rustled the leaves. Looking around, half blindly, he saw that he had come to a small cluster of trees, as if seeking to escape the village. It was far enough removed from the ruined outbuildings that he had not directed any of his own men here, so that he was the first to see it. He saw it before his head really cleared.
There was a corpse near the tree line.
It wasn’t the corpse of a villager. Face down, it was a man, sprawled at an unnatural angle, in armour. Damen shoved away from the tree and approached, his heart pounding with anger. Here was the answer, a perpetrator. Here was one of the men who had attacked this village, who had crawled out here to die, unnoticed by his fellows. Damen rolled the stiffened corpse with the toe of his boot, so that it lay face up, exposing itself to the sky.
The soldier had the features of an Akielon, and around his waist was a notched belt.
Damianos did this. He said it was his message to Kastor.
He moved before he was aware of it. He went past the outbuildings, past his men digging pits for the dead, the charred ground underfoot still surprisingly warm. He saw a man wiping his ash-streaked, sweating face with his sleeve. He saw a man dragging something lifeless towards the first of the open pits. He had his fist in the fabric at Makedon’s neck and was flinging him backwards before he thought.
‘I will give you the honour of trial by combat that you do not deserve,’ said Damen, ‘before I kill you for what you have done here.’
‘You would fight me?’
Damen drew his sword. Akielon soldiers were gathering, half of them Makedon’s men, all wearing the belt.
As the corpse had done. As every soldier who had killed in this village had done.
‘Draw,’ said Damen.
‘For what?’ Makedon gave a scornful look at his surroundings. ‘Dead Veretians?’
‘Draw,’ said Damen.
‘This is the Prince’s doing. He has turned you against your own people.’
‘Don’t speak,’ said Damen, ‘unless it’s in contrition, before I kill you.’
‘I won’t pretend remorse for Veretian dead.’
Makedon drew.
Damen knew that Makedon was a champion, the undefeated warrior of the north. Older than Damen by more than fifteen years, it was said that Makedon only notched his belt once for every hundred kills. Men from all over the village were dropping shovels and buckets and gathering.
Some of them—Makedon’s men—knew their general’s skill. Makedon’s face was that of the elder about to school the upstart. It changed as their swords met.
Makedon favoured the brutal style popular in the north, but Damen was strong enough to meet his massive two-handed attacks and match them, not even needing to draw on his superior speed or technique. He met Makedon strength against strength.
The first clash sent Makedon staggering back. The second ripped his sword out of his hands.
The third came, death in steel shearing through Makedon’s neck.
‘Stop!’
Laurent’s voice cut across the fight, ringing with unmistakable command.
Makedon was gone. Laurent was there instead. Laurent had wrenched Makedon backwards to hit the dirt, and Damen’s sword was driving towards Laurent’s exposed neck.
If Damen had not obeyed, his whole body reacting to that ringing command, he would have severed Laurent’s head from his body.
But the instant that he heard Laurent’s order, instinct reacted, wrenching every sinew. His sword stopped a hair’s breadth from Laurent’s neck.
Damen was breathing hard. Laurent had pushed his way alone onto the makeshift battleground. His men, racing after him, had stopped on the perimeter of onlookers. The steel slid against the fine skin of Laurent’s neck.
‘Another inch and you rule two kingdoms,’ said Laurent.
‘Get out of my way, Laurent.’ Damen’s voice ground in his throat.
‘Look around you. This attack is cold-blooded planning, designed to discredit you with your own people. Does Makedon think like that?’
‘He killed at Breteau. He wiped out a whole village at Breteau, just like this.’
‘That was retaliation for my uncle’s attack on Tarasis.’
‘You would defend him?’ said Damen.
Laurent said, ‘Anyone can notch a belt.’
His grip tightened on his sword, and for a moment he wanted it to cut into Laurent. The feeling rose in him, thick and hot.
He slammed the sword back into its sheath. His eyes raked Makedon, who was breathing unevenly, looking from one to the other of them. They had been speaking quickly, in Veretian.
Damen said, ‘He just saved your life.’
‘I should give him my thanks?’ Makedon said it, sprawled in the dirt.
‘No,’ said Laurent, in Akielon. ‘If it were left to me, you’d be dead. Your blunders play into my uncle’s hands. I saved your life because this alliance needs you, and I need this alliance to overthrow my uncle.’
The air smelled like charcoal. From the deserted patch of high ground that he strode to, Damen could see the whole sweep of the village. A blackened ruin, it looked like a scar on the earth. On the eastern side, smoke was still rising from rubble-strewn dirt.
There was going to be a reckoning for this. He thought of the Regent, safe in the Akielon palace at Ios. This is cold-blooded planning designed to discredit you with your own people. Does Makedon think like that? Kastor didn’t think like that either. This was someone else.
He wondered if the Regent felt the same furious determination that he did. He wondered how he could be confident that he could deliver cruelty like this, over and over again, without consequences.
He heard footsteps approaching, and let them draw up beside him. He wanted to say to Laurent, I always thought I knew what it felt like to fight your uncle. But I didn’t. Until today, it was never me he was fighting. He turned to say it.
It wasn’t Laurent. It was Nikandros.
Damen said, ‘Whoever did this wanted me to blame Makedon, and lose the support of the north.’
‘You don’t think it was Kastor.’
Damen said, ‘Neither do you.’
‘Two hundred men cannot ride for days in open country without anyone noticing,’ said Nikandros. ‘If they did this without alerting our scouts or our allies, where did they launch from?’
It was not the first time he had seen an attack designed to frame Akielons. It had happened in the palace, when assassins had gone after Laurent with Akielon knives. He remembered with clarity the provenance of the knives.
Damen looked back at the village, and from it to the thin, winding road leading south. He said, ‘Sicyon.’