*
We watched them come, these men and women for whom war was religion and mercy a concept so foreign that Gwyn said the closest word to it in their language actually meant ‘to forget’. They jogged down the narrow, rugged path in groups of ten or twelve, huge packs on their backs, moving as easily as if this were nothing more than a pleasant hike on a fine day, rather than the beginning of the end of one of our two nations.
‘This is a rather odd sensation,’ Kest said.
‘What’s that?’ I asked.
‘Watching the enemy come on so slowly, seeing their ranks swell on the field and knowing there isn’t a single thing we can do about it.’
I walked a little farther away from the others to watch in silence as the Avarean numbers began to surpass our own. I was filled with a growing sense of unease. Brasti had been right about that cliff-top: Morn’s cannons could reach us from there, no matter how far we retreated. I’d spent an hour arguing the point with Feltock, but he and Valiana assured me that for every advantage another location further back might have, there would be just as many disadvantages. In the end, it came down to holding the line at the border between our two countries: that mattered, somehow.
‘When do you think the fighting will begin?’ I asked Feltock.
‘Tomorrow sometime,’ he replied. ‘There will be certain formalities first, of course.’
‘Such as?’
‘Well, each of us offers the other the chance to surrender. Then we make some rather elaborate threats about what happens if the other refuses . . . it goes on like that for a while.’
‘And then?’
The old man shrugged. ‘Then the dying begins.’
*
That night I awoke to find Kest shaking my shoulder. ‘Falcio,’ he said, keeping his voice quiet. ‘There’s something you need to see.’
My back was sore and my muscles stiff. I’ve always been rubbish in the cold. ‘What is it?’
‘The Avarean forces have arrived.’
I rubbed the sleep from my eyes. ‘Well, according to Brasti, there are more of them than anyone could ever count, so I can’t imagine that’s what you’re waking me up to tell me.’
He shook his head. ‘It’s not that; it’s . . . Well, you’d best come and see for yourself.’
We walked out to the edge. Our command tents were positioned on a small hill overlooking the field where our own soldiers slept uneasily, awaiting the morning. Gwyn was standing outside, waiting for us. He motioned to the other side of the field, where, at the bottom of the cliff, the Avarean forces had made their own encampment. There were thousands of them – they must have outnumbered us five to one . . . which, oddly, was not nearly as bad as I’d feared.
‘I thought there would be more.’ I turned to Gwyn. ‘Didn’t you say there were nearly fifty thousand warriors in Avares, spread out across more than two hundred warbands?’
He nodded.
‘Then why am I staring at . . . What? Ten thousand soldiers?’
‘A little more than seven thousand,’ Kest corrected.
Seven thousand. So they only outnumber us three to one. ‘Where in hells are the rest of them? You and Brasti both said you saw—’
Gwyn pointed his spear up high, towards the top of the cliff. ‘There.’
I strained to see, only barely able to make out the fires, and then after a moment, the tents behind them. ‘How many?’ I asked Gwyn.
‘All of them. More than forty thousand.’
Feltock came up behind us, Valiana with him. ‘What in hells?’ he asked. ‘Are they all planning to rain arrows down on us?’
Gwyn shook his head. ‘No, that is not the Avarean way. Even -archers must take their place upon the field and face the enemy if they wish to earn rokhan. I think . . . I think they are not here to fight.’
‘Then what are they here to do?’ Brasti asked. ‘Because this is a long way to travel just to enjoy the show.’
Valiana took his offhand comment poorly. ‘Do not call it that,’ she said, pointing at our camp. ‘In a few hours, many of those men and women will rise to greet their last sunrise. Their deaths will be real, not some cheap performance.’
I didn’t hear what Brasti said in reply, because Valiana’s last words were gnawing at me powerfully – I stared at the cliff-top, at the horde, thousands upon thousands of Avareans, waiting there like an audience anticipating the opening of the curtain. Somehow, weirdly, they reminded me of the guests sitting at their elegant tables at Margrave Evidalle’s wedding.
‘Son of a bitch!’ I swore.
All at once, and far too late, a dozen separate pieces locked into place: tiny questions I’d barely even considered because everything else had been so spectacularly falling apart all around me. How had an outsider like Morn managed to unite all the warbands in Avares? If he had such an unstoppable army, why had he bothered to sign non-aggression pacts with the Dukes? And, of course, the question I should have asked myself when Morn had first revealed himself to us in Avares: why had he been so quick to show me his strength when he knew I’d never switch to his side?
‘What is it?’ Valiana asked.
A sharp intake of breath from Kest told me he’d worked it out, too.
We stared at each other, silently cursing ourselves for missing the obvious – and, worst of all, for our own part in this folly.
‘Morn never united the warbands of Avares, did he?’ Kest asked.
I shook my head. ‘How could he? Two hundred bands? That would take decades.’
‘So he took over a few of them, as many as he could win through cunning and skill.’
Valiana pointed at the cliff-top. ‘But what about them? Why are they here?’
‘They’re the audience,’ I replied. ‘They’ve come to see how well the Magdan leads his troops, how much rokhan he gains for them.’
Brasti was still staring at the horde off in the distance. ‘You’re saying this is some kind of test?’
‘This is how Morn proves himself worthy of being the Warlord of all Avares,’ Kest said.
The more I thought about it, the more apparent Morn’s strategy became. After he’d won over his first warband, he’d doubtless challenged other Warlords, and used the skills we’d learned as Greatcoats to kill them in duels so he could take their warriors into his ever-growing army. But how far could you go with that? Eventually people would become wise to him and start uniting against him. So the second part of Morn’s plan must have been to strike a deal: if he could win Tristia for Avares, they would let him carve out a piece of it for his new country that would be led by magistrates – not to mention make him the first man to command all the warbands of Avares in a thousand years. Not a bad legacy.
‘I don’t understand,’ Brasti said. ‘He’s trying to invade the country with only seven thousand men? We could have brought – what—?’ He turned to Feltock.
‘Fifteen thousand, at least, if we had all the Dukes with us.’