‘Just get off the—’
‘I need to know,’ she said, ‘why won’t your idea work? You said yesterday that the Avareans already expect you to go, so it won’t impress them when you do.’
‘Chalmers, don’t start—’
‘You think I’ll start crying, or begging for mercy once I’m near them? You think I’ll try to run away before I get to the end of their line. You expect me to fail.’
‘I absolutely expect you to fail,’ I admitted. ‘I’m afraid you’ll do so too soon and they’ll laugh at us.’
The words hit her like a slap in the face, but after a few seconds she nodded. ‘You’re probably right.’ She looked down at her shaking hands. ‘I’m not even sure at this point that I’ll be able to stay on the horse long enough to ride out to them.’
‘It’s perfectly normal. Dismount. None of our men know that you were going to ride the Scorn, and none of them ever will.’
‘What would you do in my place?’ she asked.
A hundred decent lies came to my lips; it wasn’t hard to think of reasons to not do this foolish, futile act. But something about Chalmers, her strange devotion to knowing the truth, forced me to say, ‘I would ride out to those men with their swords and their chainmail. I would show them my fear – all of it. I would let them see every ounce of terror inside me. But when the urge to turn and run came upon me? I’d think back to a girl I once met on a wedding barge, wearing her poorly made leather coat – not even a proper greatcoat, mind you – and wielding nothing but a broken cutlass as a dozen guardsmen surrounded her. I’d remember the way she held her ground as they closed in on her and asked them, “I don’t suppose any of you gutless rat-faced canker-blossoms would like to surrender?”’
Chalmers laughed – a brittle, fragile thing, as much a defiance of her own fear as a reaction to what I’d said, but then she asked, ‘Do you think I should try that line out on the Avareans?’
Without waiting for a reply, she kicked Arsehole’s flanks and took off for the enemy line.
CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE
The King’s Question
Imagine for a moment riding towards a line of enemy soldiers, the distance between you shrinking faster than you would have thought possible. You want to look back, to see your own people behind you, but you can’t, because if you do, you’ll turn the horse and flee for safety.
The line gets closer.
The terrain beneath your mount’s hooves feels uneven, and you’re certain that at any moment he’ll fall and break a leg, leaving you tumbling down to the ground. Even when he doesn’t, the cold wind assails you, making the tips of your fingers so numb that you don’t think you’ll be able to hold on. For all your shivering, sweat begins to trickle down your face and inside your clothes. The line of fierce, wild men grows closer, their faces wild. Feral. Hungry.
The line gets closer.
The shouts and hooting begin, filling your ears, creeping inside you all the way down your spine. These men are not just going to kill you: they’re going to tear you limb from limb, laughing as they do it.
The line keeps getting closer.
It would be easy to believe you could just keep riding, that somehow you will find hard steel at your core that won’t bend. Perhaps you imagine just closing your eyes and throwing your life away as if you were jumping off a cliff, uttering your own gorge prayer. Maybe you could find something – anything – that would keep you riding all the way to the enemy line.
And if you did? That would be the easy part.
‘She’s there,’ Nehra said. I hadn’t even heard her coming up. I hadn’t seen her because my own eyes had been closed.
I couldn’t see what the Avareans were doing, but somehow I could feel it, as if the air itself was vibrating as they leered at Chalmers, taunting her. No doubt Morn had made sure at least a few of them knew enough of our language to shout threats at her, promises to seek her out during the battle, to bring special torments to her when they got their hands on her.
‘Why isn’t she taunting them back?’ Brasti asked. ‘I though the whole point was to scorn the enemy and make them react.’
‘I told her not to.’
The Avarean soldiers were jeering at her, howling like animals, and every time I heard screams I kept thinking they must be Chalmers, already torn from her horse. But this, too, was merely one of the ways they sought to make her flee.
‘Why did you tell her not to give her own insults?’ Nehra asked. ‘It would make it easier on her.’
‘Because it’s not who she is.’
Tristia has never been a nation of warriors. We aren’t born to the shield. Our army is weak, our people disunited. We are a country only by virtue of geography; in all other ways, we are individuals. Chalmers was an individual: a quirky woman who liked mysteries and wanted to spend her last day on this earth wearing a greatcoat even though she knew as well as any of us that it didn’t mean anything any more. Let them see that. Let them see Chalmers.
The noise of the enemy grew louder, filling the plain. I heard the steel of the blades of those in the rear lines clanging against their shields, trying to get Chalmers to react.
‘Remarkable,’ Kest said.
‘What is it?’ I had to squint to see much more than a blur of steel and fur.
‘She’s reached the end of the line,’ Brasti said. ‘She’s alive!’ He turned to Nehra. ‘That’s it then, right? She’s done the line and now she can ride back.’
‘No,’ I said.
‘What do you mean, “no”?’ Brasti asked.
I didn’t answer. They would understand soon enough. I had told Chalmers that if she somehow managed to survive the first pass of the line that she should turn her horse right back around and ride it again.
*
‘We’ve got to get her!’ Brasti shouted, heading towards the horses.
I grabbed him by the arm and dragged him back. ‘Don’t. Let her do this.’
‘She’ll be fucking killed!’ He threw off my grip. ‘You made her do the scorn ride. She survived it – that’s enough!’
‘Brasti’s right,’ Kest said, his eyes narrowed as he peered out towards the enemy line. ‘The Avareans are getting more and more riled up. They won’t let her survive a second pass. We should—’
‘If you try to rush after her, you’ll make matters worse,’ Nehra said. She didn’t look pleased with me at all. ‘The Avareans will consider it a breach of the ritual. They’ll swarm over you and any goodwill we might have generated will be gone.’
Brasti glared at me. ‘So we just watch her die?’
‘Maybe,’ I replied. ‘She was ready for that possibility.’
‘Possibility? It’s a fucking certainty!’