‘Falcio, don’t,’ Kest said, trying to pull me away. ‘Feltock can address the troops. You don’t have t—’
I shrugged off his hand. Kest sees the world in parries and thrusts, in calculation and miscalculation – and he’d just witnessed a -catastrophic miscalculation on my part. I had underestimated Morn’s rhetorical skills.
The men and women of our army glared at me, their faces flushed with outrage and resentment, but most of all, with fear. Like any gifted demagogue, Morn had stoked the terror already in their hearts until it had become a blazing bonfire, and then offered them the means to rid themselves of it by giving them a target for their wrath: me.
‘Everything he said was true,’ I began. ‘Duke Yered came to our farm and he took my wife from me. His men killed her in a roadside tavern and all the while, I knelt in the dirt of our field, cowering, praying that she would come back to me.’
I looked at Kest, who was gazing at me with a mix of sympathy and confused impotence. There was no thrust to make here, no parry that could block the blow that had struck home long ago. ‘It’s odd . . . people talk about Aline’s murder as if it had happened to me, as if the worst thing that had taken place that day was that my wife was taken from me.’ I shook my head. ‘There stands poor Falcio val Mond. His wife was killed and now he’s lost.’ I looked back up at the rows upon rows of faces staring back. ‘Nothing happened to me. She was killed. Her life was taken.’
Unbidden, my legs carried me to stand before Morn. ‘This man came here to mock the death of my wife, and yet he never even said her name!’
Morn stared back at me impassively. Unconcerned. Unimpressed.
‘Say her name,’ I told him. ‘Say her fucking name.’
‘Aline,’ he said idly, a parent humouring a hysterical child in the midst of a temper tantrum.
I spun around and strode back to our line, stopping in front of a young man who held his spear in both hands as if he feared I were about to attack him. ‘Say her name,’ I said.
‘A . . . Aline,’ he stuttered.
I turned to the woman standing next to him. ‘Say her name.’
‘Aline.’
Unable to contain the pain Morn had so skilfully ignited any longer, I leaned back and gave voice to it, shouting at the cloudless sky above. ‘Her name was Aline!’
There was a deathly silence once the echoes had faded away. ‘There are no portraits of her,’ I said more quietly, ‘and most days I can barely remember what she looked like. Her voice . . . I’m not even sure if it was high-pitched or low any more. The feel of her skin, the scent of her hair . . . It’s all gone now. Everything about her is gone.’ I looked back at Morn. ‘Except her name.’
They stared at me, confused; their anger had faded into an obvious concern that I might well be losing my mind from grief. They weren’t far wrong. ‘King Paelis named his daughter after my wife. Was it to trick me into protecting her? Perhaps. Or maybe it was because of the countless hours I’d made him sit with me in his library, watching me get drunk on his wine while I told him about Aline, repeating the same stories over and over again, as if the only way I could keep her memory alive was to carve it into another’s heart.’ A small, humourless chuckle escaped my lips. ‘You know, the King never once met Aline, but he loved my wife almost as much as I did. I made sure of that.’
I gestured to Morn. ‘He’s right, you know: the Avareans are different from us. Tristians are farmers and labourers, crafters and merchants, liars and thieves. We are these things first, and only sometimes do we take up sword and spear to wage war. The Avareans are born to the blade. They are warriors first and everything else second.’
A shadow of a smile crossed Morn’s features. I was doing his work for him.
I turned back to the army. ‘Are you scared?’
Soldiers rarely admit to fear, even in the worst of circumstances, and yet a goodly number nodded.
‘Why did you bring us here?’ one of the men in the rear lines called out. ‘You said it yourself: we aren’t warriors. What is there for us to do here but die?’
Murmurs of agreement spread through the lines, a sea of pale faces trembling with fear. I glanced back at Morn, who was openly smiling now, although no doubt he was wondering what had come over me. He’d brought my troops to the very edge of breaking, taking away all the false confidence that comes from marching off to battle, singing brave songs and boasting to each other about their untried martial prowess. Now he watched, fascinated, as I took my own soldiers over the edge he’d so carefully led them to.
That was your first mistake, you bastard.
Ask any torturer – and I’ve known a few in my time – and they’ll tell you the secret to fear and pain is to measure it out in careful doses. Increase the victim’s sense of terror too much at once and you risk inuring them to your torments. My troops were so utterly consumed with fear and hopelessness now that had the Avarean commanders suddenly blown their horns and begun the charge to cut us down it would have been a huge relief.
Watch now, Morn. Watch and see the difference between you and me, between you and these people you thought you could rule.
‘We are the dead,’ I told them. ‘Soon, we will be forgotten. But do you want to know what’s worse than dying, worse than being forgotten?’ I pushed past the soldiers in the front lines until I reached the man who’d spoken earlier. ‘The person you love most in all the world? After tomorrow, they’re going to die. They’ll be forgotten, too.’
He looked back at me, his face pale, his eyes wide as that terrible thought burrowed into him.
‘Do you have someone you love back home?’ I asked.
He nodded.
‘Give me their name.’
It took him a long time to answer, ‘Ludren.’
‘Speak up. I can’t hear you.’
‘Ludren,’ the soldier shouted.
‘What’s so special about this “Ludren”?’
‘He . . . he saved my life. Many times, actually. Even when we were boys, he . . .’
‘Would you see Ludren forgotten?’
His brow furrowed. ‘No.’
‘But who will remember Ludren after you’re dead? After everyone you know is dead?’
‘I . . .’
I turned and walked back to the front of the line. ‘When Tristia is gone, who will remember the names of those we loved, of those who made our lives worth living? Who will remember Ludren? Who will remember my wife? Who will remember the King’s daughter: the girl who could have saved this country from itself?’
I heard a sob, and then another, and more, coming from the rows and rows of soldiers. ‘What was her name?’ I asked. ‘I have forgotten it already.’
‘Aline,’ someone called out, then another, and another: ‘Aline. Aline.’
‘That’s right,’ I shouted, ‘Aline of Tristia. Some of you were at Castle Aramor when the God of Fear came to call, were you not? You’d come as pilgrims, begging for relief from despair when the Saints began to die. Some of you watched as that fourteen-year-old girl – what was her name again—?’
‘—Aline. Aline. Aline—!’