Derkensun drank. He looked at his own corporals; Bregil Whitehair, the oldest survivor of the Nordikaans, who had a scar that crossed his face and divided his beard in a way that always made Gabriel wonder why he was alive; Thorvin Lakbone, who was as big as a house and wasn’t actually a Nordikaan at all; Erik Snoder, with his glorious mane of red-gold hair and his brilliant accumulation of gold arm rings, all of which he wore, so that some called him Erik Goldarm. They were all big men, and all tended to be silent until they were drunk.
“Fuck,” Goldarm said. “Whatever he says, he’ll be emperor. So who cares? Just obey and drink your ale, Harald.”
“Ja!” muttered Whitehair, who was already working on getting drunk.
Lakbone ran his fingers through his beard. “You will recruit us back to strength, when you are emperor?”
“I sent a messenger bird a month ago,” Gabriel said.
Derkensun sat back. “Good,” he said. “We want a raven’s feast for the old emperor. We want this dragon.”
Gabriel knew that it was easy to treat Nordikaans as children, or caricatures of simplicity and violence, like their cousins, the Hillmen. So he thought for a moment.
“We will not get the dragon until very late in the game,” he said seriously. “And we will only have one chance at him.”
“But you will put our axes at the cutting edge of your shield wall,” Whitehair said.
Derkensun brightened. “You have this war plan already?”
Gabriel nodded. “Friends,” he said quietly. They were an odd audience, the Nordikaans. They had seen and fought almost everyone. In some ways they were more like creatures of the Wild than like men. It was hard to remember that Derkensun was young Mortirmir’s best friend. “This is not a simple war.”
Whitehair leaned back and laughed. “There are no simple wars,” he said. “When Baldir Rotgut steals Lodir Fuckface’s cow—even then, no war is simple. Many sides, many faces, many greeds, and many cowards.”
Gabriel nodded. “So, then. This war is more like walking a path through a swamp than like...” Words failed him. “Like fighting a normal war,” he said.
“So?” Derkensun asked.
“So, if I do everything right...if we win all the battles...if we make all the right guesses...then, in the end, we’ll get one chance to get the dragon. One. It could all come down to one sword, or one axe.” He looked around at their cold eyes, that shone like the northern lights.
“Ah,” Goldarm said. “That’s us you’ll be wanting, then.” He looked off into the far distance. “I’d like to kill a dragon.”
“And get revenge?” Derkensun asked.
Whitehair laughed. “Revenge is for boys who’ve never kissed a girl,” he said. “Kill a dragon and your name would live forever.”
“What’s that?” asked Bad Tom, coming catlike out of the dark.
“We are talking about killing the great dragon,” Whitehair said.
“I’m in,” said Tom.
“We drink to that,” Goldarm said. He rose, and the other Nordikaans rose with him. Gabriel rose too.
They drank.
* * *
An hour later, Gavin was lying on his stomach, naked, and his brother was probing the edge of his skin where the scales began with a pricker. “Fascinating,” he said. “Little tiny scales forming...”
Gavin drove a helpful elbow into his brother’s side.
Gabriel yelped. “Stop that!” he said.
“Mary wants a great knight, not a scaled monster,” Gavin said.
Gabriel nodded. “Well, you’ll be a handsome scaled monster,” he said. “I agree they’re spreading. It is as if your body had finally come up with a mechanism to grow scales.” He used the pricker again. “Better than chain mail, though.”
“I admit I thought the same,” Gavin said. “Damn it! I want to get married.”
“I think this calls for Master Smythe, and perhaps for Harmodius. Brother mine, I agree it’s a problem, but let’s get through the plague first. The news from the Brogat is very bad. And Mortirmir looks ready to drop.”
Gavin rolled off the bed. “I know,” he said. “I feel like an arse. But...Christ, it’s scary. I could accept one shoulder. Now...”
“I hear you,” Gabriel said.
* * *
They were up at first light, and Gabriel didn’t think his company had ever looked worse. He had knights on palfreys and riding horses, and the tack was a wreck; even Gavin had a mismatched saddle and bridle.
Gavin shrugged. “Leather just rotted away in the Adnacrags,” he said.
“I’m not sure whether we’re going to impress the queen or amuse her,” Gabriel said. He was in borrowed harness himself, plain stuff from the inn. Toby and all his armour were travelling with the queen.
But the flags were bright, and the company’s level of training had never been higher. Several dozen pages came with them—all volunteers—and a few dozen wine-sodden archers came out to wave them off and then stumbled back to their beds. The men-at-arms rode off by fours, and at noon, when they met the queen’s escort, they divided neatly on either side of the road, wheeled by sections to the center, so that they sat in two ranks facing inward, and they saluted the queen and her baby king by dipping their lances as she passed.
She laughed with delight, pausing to stop and thank many of them—Sauce, for example, and Francis Atcourt, whom she kissed. He blushed as red as a beet.
“He’ll never wash his lips again,” Sauce said a little too loudly. Ser Danved roared and smacked his hip, and Ser Berengar glared at him.
Then she invited Ser Michael, Ser Gabriel, Ser Gavin, and Ser Thomas Lachlan to ride by her side. Ser Gavin was kissed, in public, by Lady Mary, to the cheers of a hundred knights and ladies; Ser Michael held his son and kissed his wife. Gabriel waved at Kaitlin and she, bold as ever, got her horse to his side.
“I’ve met Blanche!” she said. “Who is hovering with the servants in the baggage. Gabriel, I know better than most what it is like to be the trull.”
Gabriel had a sudden desire to slip into the dust and vanish.
The queen smiled gently. “I will summon Blanche,” she said. “You are Ser Michael’s countess?” she asked.
The queen restored social order, and by the time Blanche came up, Ser Christos was describing for her the defeat of the emperor and the collapse of the imperial army.
“And yet many thousands were saved,” the queen said. She winked at Blanche, who was riding—by the apparent conspiracy of half the nobles in Alba—at Gabriel’s side, and blushing.
Ser Christos nodded. “A northerner—an imperial officer—formed a rear guard,” he said. “With some Outwallers and the survivors of the Scholae, they prevented a massacre.”
“I would like to meet this officer,” the queen said. She gave Gabriel a look.
He bowed in the saddle. “Ser Giannis Turkos is still in the field,” he said.
The queen rode along through the afternoon, asking questions about the magnificent, if unhuman, landscape of the Green Hills and the fells. Her brother came up and cantered into their group, admired a trout stream, and commented on the number of Occitan knights who had joined them, having ridden north for three weeks or more as a result of a mysterious summons.
They passed through the remnants of the drove, already off the main road and cresting the first high ridge of the fells, moving at a shepherd’s pace for the byres and folds above the inn.
The queen turned to Gabriel while her brother and Ser Michael began to exchange challenges for the tournament. “It has not escaped me that you have gathered virtually the whole force of the alliance in these mountains,” she said.
“Yes,” he said. “I think that we now understand the nature of the threat and the scale. And now we must take council, and come to agreements. And act.”
She turned. “And have a tournament,” she said, with some amusement. “Your rest from war is to play at war.”
He laughed. “Yes,” he agree
d. “Especially since there’s little risk of life and a good deal more wine and sleep.”
“Will you tell me what you fear, before I hear it in council?” she asked.
He nodded. “In short, Your Grace, everything about the plague now depends on Amicia, Harmodius, Lord Kerak, and Mortirmir. That is one problem for which I can contribute very little, unless they come to me for a little power.” He shrugged. “Then, as to the other matter, and the war...there is so much to tell. I will visit you tomorrow, I think.” He turned and smiled at Blanche.
She turned away.
“And you are doing what, exactly, about the imperial coronet?” the queen asked.
“Princess Irene is on her way to the inn,” Gabriel said. “I think she must be consulted.”
Blanche bit her lip.
“Of course,” said the queen with some asperity. “I would not like my new emperor to immediately demand an oath of fealty from me, Ser Gabriel.”
“Excuse me, Your Grace,” Blanche said. She turned her palfrey and rode out of the royal party, her back straight. Gabriel could see she was angry.
He also knew that he could not follow her.
And then he decided that he could. “Pardon me, Your Grace,” he said, and got his borrowed warhorse to a trot and then a canter. The knights of the royal guard waved, and then he caught her up.
“I’m sorry!” he said.
“You didn’t just leave the queen!” she spat.
“I did. I’m not planning to marry Irene, my sweet. I cannot seize the crown she must regard as her own without some discussion.” He reached for her hand.
“Everyone is watching us,” she said.
“Yes,” he agreed. “I think you should kiss me, the way Mary kissed Gavin. Then they’ll know why they were watching us.”
“Really?” she asked. “So that I can show them that you own me?” She turned her back, and rode away.
* * *
The queen watched Gabriel ride away. She pouted a moment, and Ser Francis shrugged, and she laughed. “I’m glad to see that in the midst of dire crisis, we still have the simpler dramas of court life,” she said. “By our lady,” she said. “It does my heart good to have you all about me. And sometimes, in these dark places, I begin to see some hope.” Her eye again fell on Ser Francis.
He blushed. Again.
* * *
The queen’s arrival raised the pitch of celebration at the inn, and she took the field prepared for her and raised her tent, a pavilion of red silk with a cloth of gold decoration and the royal standard flying from both of the peaks. A hundred royal servants, having travelled hard up the Albin from Harndon, arrived after the queen and began to lay out bake ovens and even a dance floor under the direction of Ser Galahad D’Acon, which the queen ordered tested immediately by her people. Galahad D’Acon danced with Lady Blanche, and there was a great deal of comment. The Red Knight watched from a distance and said nothing. Then he rode away with a heavy escort.
The next day, the Princess of Morea came in, escorted by her father’s regiments and a hundred knights of Alba and Occitan, led in person, again, by Gabriel. She was settled in a large pavilion under the imperial standard, and her army, a couple of thousand men, mostly city regiments of cavalry, went into camp in streets laid out and prepared by the quartermasters of the army of the north.
From Gavin’s room in the outer tower, Gabriel could see thousands of tents: white wedges, round pavilions, and more complicated wall tents and marquis and a dozen other shapes that covered the flat ground stretching away almost a mile to the north of the inn toward the lake.
“You think Ash knows we are here?” Gavin asked. He was lying on his stomach again, and this time, it was Harmodius tending him, with Master Smythe smoking by the window.
“I think he knows we’re here, and I want him to see that we have a bigger, better army than we had when we faced him at Gilson’s Hole.” Gabriel was watching a beautiful woman down in the inner courtyard. He knew her—he was trying to place her.
Master Smythe was watching the same woman.
Gabriel watched him a moment, too. “If you crack the plague,” he said.
Harmodius gave a grim smile. “If,” he said.
“He’ll feel it. He’ll see this army.” Gabriel shrugged. “Won’t he flinch?”
Master Smythe threw his arms wide in a theatrical gesture. “I would flinch,” he said. “Ash...” He shrugged again.
“That’s the woman you took fishing,” Gabriel said to Master Smythe.
Master Smythe smiled. “Yes.”
Gabriel raised an eyebrow.
“I didn’t eat her,” Master Smythe said.
“Ouch!” Gavin insisted. He smiled, though.
Harmodius shook his head. “It’s as if, rather than transferring to you some essence of an adversarius, instead, I unlocked some preexisting tendency for you to have scales.” He swore in frustration and tugged his own beard.
Gabriel was still watching Master Smythe. He saw the dragon’s countenance change at Harmodius’s pronouncement—the rapid sorting of facial expressions with which the dragon marked moments of intense confusion.
“I’m missing something,” he said aloud.
The dragon affected not to hear him.
Harmodius rose to his feet. “I don’t see anything more I can do here,” he said. “Amicia and Mortirmir are working together. I should be there.” He shrugged. “I suppose I thought this might have some connection to the plague.”
He seemed defeated, as restless, annoyed, and fatigued as the wreck of young Morgon Mortirmir, who’d just had a very loud set-to with a young Morean noblewoman in the outer courtyard.
Gabriel helped his brother get into his shirt.
“The funny thing is that I’m fine,” he said. “Better than fine. I feel—unstoppable. Immortal.”
Gabriel froze with one hand on the laces for Gavin’s inner doublet. “That’s an interesting choice of words,” he said. He coughed, and the black flecks spread across his hand, and some lingered like spore in the air. “One thing I am not feeling is immortal,” he said.
“You aren’t afraid?” Gavin asked. He wasn’t trying to be insensitive. He was genuinely puzzled.
Gabriel chewed on his lips, his latest tic. “Every day, I have less breath,” he said. “I can’t really practice at the pell. I’m growing weaker.” He leaned on the frame of the window, looking down into the courtyard, where the dragon’s girl was hanging washing. She was lithe, and athletic, and very attractive. “If they don’t find a solution, a lot of us are going to die,” he said. “I confess it was not the biggest matter to me at first. But every cough—those black flecks are the necrotic result of the decay of my lungs. It was supposed to happen in an hour. But...”
He paused. “She’s pregnant,” he said aloud.
“Who?” Gavin asked. “Blanche?”
Gabriel whirled, and for a moment they were brothers. The tussle went on for several rounds, and grunting was the only noise, with the exception of two “you bastards” and a sucker punch.
“You aren’t so out of shape,” Gavin said.
Gabriel was breathing very hard, wheezing. He could see spots in front of his eyes. On the other hand, he was on top of his bigger brother, straddling his chest.
“That was a little nasty,” Gavin went on.
Gabriel tried, and failed, to hide a smirk. He got off. “Blanche thinks she’s going to be replaced by Princess Irene,” he said.
Gavin pursed his lips, manfully hiding how much his brother hand just hurt his hip. “Well? The betting says you take the empire over the laundress.”
Gabriel nodded. “Eh,” he said, rubbing his jaw. “If only it were that simple.”
“I have a hard time imagining you with Irene,” Gavin said. “She tried to kill you. Or that’s what Sauce says. Not that I don’t understand the temptation. She can hardly be the only woman who has tried to kill you.”
“She’s the only one who proposed marriage l
ater,” Gabriel said. “I’m guessing...never mind.” He looked down. “I don’t think Blanche is pregnant, thanks for asking.”
Gavin laughed carefully, so as not to reignite whatever had just happened. “Mater wanted you to marry Irene.”
“Exactly,” Gabriel said.
“She could be fey. She knew things.” Gavin shrugged.
“You in a hurry to see me dead?” Gabriel said. “Some amount of time after I marry Irene, you’ll find me drowned in my bath, dead in a fall from my horse, or having somehow cut off my own head with my sword.”
Gavin sat back on the bed where he’d ended up. “Ah. I confess, that puts a different face on the betting.”
“I would marry Blanche, even without the queen’s foolish interference...”
“Whoa!” cried Gavin. “That’s...harsh.”
“But if I say so before I meet Irene,” Gabriel shook his head. “Anyway, Blanche is not speaking to me.”
Gavin laughed. “Oh. That kind of trouble. Well...I’ll face a dragon with you, brother mine. But I won’t be helping you face down some spurned princess. By the way, Aneas is fine.”
“Chasing Kevin Orley,” Gabriel said absently.
“Chasing the man who killed our parents,” Gavin said.
Gabriel shrugged. “No,” he said. “Orley’s as much a victim of all this as I am. Thorn and Ash killed our parents. If Orley would disown Ash, I’d grant him an estate somewhere.”
“Christ, are you insane?” Gavin was up off the bed. “Clean wode?”
Gabriel shrugged. “None of it matters. Listen, brother mine: I have the plague, I’m the captain general of the coalition against Ash, we’re bleeding people and losing revenue, there’s a whole other kind of monster loose in Antica Terra, and when the stars align, we’re going to be invaded by some new horrible menace. Oh, and my mistress has just walked out on me. And to me, right now, that’s the worst of all. I’m not...big enough...for this. When I walk out of this room, I have to be the fucking imperturbable captain general. I have to crack jokes, look good, and smile while I cough out my lungs and watch Blanche dance with D’Acon like she did last night. In a few days, after crossing lances with you to open the tourney, I get to sit down with everyone who matters in the alliance and hammer out a plan to win.”