If you believed Baron Morray’s complaints, not only had Tsurani troops put the red flower to every thatched roof in his barony last autumn, forcing the Baron now to spend sizeable sums for the hire of carpenters, daubers, and thatchers, but the mud and straw of LaMut invariably crumbled if a harsh thought was sent in its direction.
Arrangements would have to be made with Baron Mondegreen, the earldom’s Hereditary Bursar, for some loans of Crown money, no doubt, and Baron Mondegreen was as famous for being stingy with Crown money as he was for his own personal generosity, and it was likely that there was some other conflict between the two, given that Morray was serving as the Earl’s wartime Bursar, if only because he was more mobile and healthy than Mondegreen was. His position would enable – and require – Morray to pay soldiers, fealty-bound or mercenary, as well as provisioning troops and suchlike; it would not permit him to dip into the Crown purse for repairs to his own barony.
For Morray to be tupping the Baron’s wife while trying to get him to authorize a loan was probably not the wisest of ways to proceed, but Kethol had long since decided that wisdom and nobility seemed to go together only by coincidence.
The farming road they were using to make their way through the North Woods wound down into a draw, and then up and out through a shallow saddle between two low hills. The Earl’s Road cut across the top of the hills, but it wasn’t the fastest way to Morray, or from there to Mondegreen.
Lady Mondegreen left her maids behind as she rode up beside him. He nodded a greeting, and idly touched a hand to his forehead.
‘I want to thank you for escorting me,’ she said. Her voice was surprisingly low and pleasantly melodic, like a baritone wind-flute.
‘You are, of course, welcome, my lady,’ Kethol said.
And never mind that it was none of his idea, and he would have been perfectly comfortable leaving her to wait for the next company of Mondegreen cavalry to be cycled back to the barony. The larger the party, the better, sure – but that was only when you were counting fighting men, not when you added on baggage like noble women, no matter how pleasing to the eye they might be.
‘There’s something … frightening about a late-winter forest,’ she said. ‘When you look at the branches out of the corner of your eye, they sometimes look like skeletal fingers, reaching out for you. Add a few black robes, and you might think you had the Dark Brotherhood on every side.’
She rode almost knee-to-knee with him, letting the others lag behind.
‘I guess that is so.’ Kethol nodded. ‘But I’ve always liked the forest. All forests.’
‘Even when it looks so bare and desolate?’ she asked, lightly.
‘Looks can be deceiving, Lady.’ His knife came to his hand without him having to have thought about drawing it; Kethol reached up and cut a twig from an overhanging branch. A blunt thumbnail cut through a grey bud on the twig, revealing the green hidden inside. ‘No matter how dead it looks, there’s always life hidden here,’ he said.
Ahead, ashy corpses of burned trees told of where a raging fire had scarred the forest. Kethol remembered that specific fire, which had been started by fleeing Tsurani troops, and his jaw clenched at the memory.
‘The winter trees are merely … sleeping,’ he said. ‘But, in fewer days than you care to think, if you’ll probe with your fingers or a stick at the base of that burned oak, you’ll see sprouts reaching out to the sky.’
‘I see.’
‘You will.’ He smiled. ‘Ten years from now, you won’t be able to tell that there was a Tsurani bastard who lit a fire here like a dog puking over food he can’t steal in order to prevent somebody else from eating it.’
He gestured with his twig at the top of the hill that rose up beside them. ‘And right over there, maybe twenty or thirty years from now, there will be a little stand of oaks – short ones, granted, but real trees, and not merely saplings – drawing their sustenance from the ground below.’
She laughed, the sound of distant silver bells. Kethol normally didn’t like being laughed at, but her laughter was in no way insulting.
‘Why, Kethol,’ she said, as though more in shock than surprise, ‘one would think you were a poetic philosopher, not a soldier. Oaks, you say? Why oaks, rather than elms or pines or beeches? And how could you know that they’ll grow there, and not somewhere else?’
‘I could –’ No. He caught himself, and forced a shrug. ‘I guess there is no way that I really could know,’ he said. ‘But I believe it will happen. Tell you what, Lady: come back in twenty years and think kindly of me if you find a stand of oaks here.’
‘I just might do that, Kethol,’ she said. ‘In fact, you may have my promise on it, and if you’re still serving the Earl, I’ll bet my silver real against your one copper that it will be elms or pines or something other than a stand of oaks, if you’d care to wager.’
He smiled. ‘Well, I doubt that I’ll still be in LaMut even come spring, but if I’m in the earldom twenty years from this day, I’ll knock on your castle gate, and ask to collect that bet.’
‘Or pay it.’ She raised an eyebrow, and smiled. ‘Unless you’d flee the earldom to avoid losing a copper?’
‘No, I wouldn’t do that, Lady.’
There was no point in mentioning that it was a safe bet, as the top of the hill was where he and Pirojil and Durine had buried the Tsurani Force Leader who had ordered the fire lit, scattering dozens of acorns over his bare chest before they had filled in the hole. The Tsurani’s eyes had gone wide as they started to shovel in the earth. But gagged with a leather thong that held his acorn-filled mouth half-open, he hadn’t said much beyond a few grunts, and hamstrung as he was at elbows, ankles, and thighs, he wasn’t going anywhere. They had not packed down the earth very hard after they buried him; he probably had at least a few minutes to think over the wisdom of having burned down that which he could not conquer.
Kethol didn’t mind the Tsurani having tried to kill him – that was business – but he took damage to a forest personally, and neither Durine nor Pirojil had raised a word of objection; they had just helped him shovel in the soil. He had no regrets, but burying a man alive wasn’t the sort of thing that he really wanted to mention to a pretty woman, much less a pretty noblewoman, not when she was flirting with him.
Which she clearly was.
That was probably just to make Baron Morray jealous, but that was fine with Kethol. His sleep would be warmed by thoughts of her this night, and if she slept under Baron Morray that did Kethol no harm.
Still…
They broke at midday for a skimpy meal of cold bread and sausage, washed down with water and a gillful of cheap wine for the soldiers, while the nobles shared a glass bottle of something finer.
Pirojil would have had the Tsurani ex-slaves water and feed the horses – they seemed well-tamed, after all, and didn’t quite get the notion that they were now free – but Tom Garnett had a different idea: as usual, one man from each squad was detailed to see to the animals of that squad, while the others ate and rested. There was little enough time to take your ease when you were on patrol, and it made sense to get what rest you could.
Pirojil didn’t argue. He just let Kethol take his turn seeing to their three horses, while Pirojil ate his bread and sausage quickly enough to avoid tasting it, then drank his wine even more quickly. It warmed him a little, as he huddled in his cloak against the cold.
Even so…
‘I’d best go see about watering something that needs watering,’ he said to Durine, as he slung his swordbelt over his left shoulder, then stalked off over the crest of the hill to relieve himself.
Below, one of the regulars, a lanky man with a bald patch on his scalp where a Bug had nicked him, took out a set of pipes, and another a small drum, and soon off-key renditions of old martial songs filled the air.
‘We are marching on Bosonia, Bosonia, Bosonia,
‘We are marching on Bosonia, Bosonia, today …’
The Tsurani, as usual, se
emed confused. Presumably, in the Empire, soldiers didn’t sing or drum unless ordered to do so. They probably didn’t fart unless explicitly instructed. These former slaves would find things much looser in service to the local nobles and franklins.
Pirojil’s lips tightened. The Tsurani were even worse than were the Kingdom regulars when it came to showing individuality. What was there about a regular soldier’s life that robbed him of any initiative?
He relieved himself quickly behind the broad bole of an ancient oak, while above a squirrel chittered at him. As he buttoned up his trousers, it was only a matter of reflex to check that the hilt of his sword was near his hand.
A twig snapped behind him, and his sword was no longer simply near his hand, but in his hand as he spun about to face –
Durine, a smile playing across his broad face, both hands up, palms out. ‘Stand easy, Pirojil,’ he said. ‘I guess I should have cleared my throat instead of stepping on a twig.’
Pirojil had to laugh. Snapped twigs as warnings of impending attack were a staple of late-night, campfire stories. For the most part, twigs bent and didn’t make any noise, except in the driest times of the year. Besides, in real life, an enemy was rarely considerate enough to give a warning before an assault: it kind of ruined the whole idea of a surprise attack.
Pirojil replaced his sword. They might be friends and longtime companions, but Durine’s hand never strayed far from the hilt of his own sword until Pirojil finished resheathing. Some habits were hard enough to break that they probably weren’t worth breaking.
‘Excuse me,’ Durine said, politely turning his back as he unbuttoned his own trousers.
A stream of piss steamed and smoked in the chilly air for an improbably long time.
‘With all the places to relieve yourself,’ Pirojil said, ‘did you really need me to be a witness?’
Durine buttoned his fly. ‘Well, truth be told, I always do prefer to have you or Kethol at my back when I’m occupied handling something this large and delicate, but no, I figured we ought to talk.’
‘So, talk.’
Durine shook his head. ‘I don’t like any of this. Playing bodyguard to an officer is one thing – you don’t have to worry about your own soldiers trying to knock him off –’
Pirojil’s eyebrows rose and he gave Durine a fish-eye.
‘All right, you usually don’t have to worry about your own soldiers trying to knock him off, just about enemy troops bothering him while he’s busy running a battle. I like doing bodyguard stuff.’ He patted his waist.
Pirojil nodded, though he did not meet the other’s gaze. It wasn’t that he was unwilling to. It was just a reflex for him, after all this time, with both Kethol and Durine: they automatically divided the world into fields of fire; it had saved their lives more than several times.
‘I know,’ Pirojil said. Bodyguard duty usually meant some extra coins, and the meals tended to be better, and while you were near enough the front not to get bored, you were also not so close that you had to worry about somebody leaping out at you while you were harvesting a bit of loot. ‘Not the sort of thing I would have volunteered for, but I don’t remember being asked to volunteer, do you?’
‘So why us?’
‘I don’t know, although I have some ideas. For whatever they’re worth.’ Pirojil shrugged. ‘I don’t think it’s because the Swordmaster thinks we’re better than his own troops.’
‘We are.’
Pirojil couldn’t help but grin. ‘Well, I think that, and you think that, and Kethol thinks that we’re better than they are – but I’m willing to bet that the locals don’t think we are.’
‘Their problem.’
‘No. Our problem. What we are is uninvolved, which is good.’
‘Good?’
‘Good for us. We’re not expected to take sides in local rivalries, which means that we can expect not to have our throats cut for making the wrong move at the wrong time.’
‘So you like this?’
‘I didn’t say that. The bad part is that we’re uninvolved –’
‘You said that was the good part.’ Sometimes Durine was just too slow. Not that Pirojil would complain; Kethol was worse.
‘It’s good and bad,’ Pirojil said slowly, patiently. ‘Most things are. The bad has two parts: someone might try to cut our throats for just being in the way.’
‘Nothing new in that.’
‘And we’re expendable.’
‘Nothing new in that, either.’
‘More so than usual.’
‘Ah!’ Durine nodded, finally understanding. ‘Politics.’ He said it as if it was a curse.
‘Politics.’ Pirojil nodded. ‘Look at it from the political angle. If Baron Morray, say, falls down a flight of stairs and breaks his neck, the Earl can either treat it as an accident, or as our fault. If it’s an accident, well then, there’s no political problem, and Luke Verheyen isn’t to blame – nobody is.’
And that’s a good thing, isn’t it?’
‘Sure. But if it’s not an accident – if, say, the Baron was murdered – then whose fault is it?’
‘The murderer’s?’
Pirojil wasn’t sure whether to groan or laugh. ‘Sure: the murderer. And who is the murderer? Verheyen, the hereditary enemy, who is eyeing the earldom every bit as much as Morray is? Or the three freebooters who, upon a careful search, will of a certainty seem to have too much money on them?’
‘So what do we do?’
‘The obvious: we try to keep Baron Morray from falling off his horse and breaking his neck while we’re on patrol, or falling down the stairs and breaking his neck when we’re at Morray and Mondegreen. We get him back to LaMut intact and breathing, and hope to be relieved of this duty there. If somebody tries to kill him, we stop them; if we can’t, we be sure to capture at least one assassin alive, and make sure he is able to tell who paid him, which won’t have been us.’
‘And if we can’t?’
Pirojil just frowned at him. That was obvious. ‘We kill everybody within reach, grab their horses and anything of value they have on them, and then we see if we can outrace the price on our heads.’
‘And what do you think are our chances of that?’
‘Sixty-sixty –’
‘Optimist.’
‘– on a good day.’ Pirojil arched an eyebrow. ‘If you have a better alternative, don’t sit on it – trot it out and let’s talk about it.’
Durine shook his head. ‘No. I’ve no better idea, and that’s a fact.’
‘Then we go with –’
‘Mount up,’ sounded from below. Tom Garnett’s voice carried well. ‘We’re wasting daylight.’
‘We’d better get down before they leave without us,’ Pirojil said.
‘Yes, I suppose so.’ Durine nodded, and his massive brow wrinkled. ‘But I see what you mean. Very clever of the Swordmaster, eh?’
‘Eh?’
‘I mean, if somebody does manage to kill Baron Morray out here, or if he does have a fatal accident, wouldn’t the Swordmaster know that we’d be blamed and would have to run for it?’
‘Well, yes.’
‘So he wins either way.’
Pirojil had to nod. The Swordmaster would win, either way, at that. A dead baron wasn’t an insuperable problem – the war had been almost as lethal for the nobility as it had been for the common soldier – but feuding barons getting the idea that assassination was acceptable was another thing altogether. Much better to blame the three freebooters, who had had no connection with any nobility faction. Someone would make it obvious they had just decided to kill and rob the Baron themselves – and whether Pirojil, Kethol and Durine were killed, captured, or escaped was immaterial; that’s what the official story would be.
Maybe Durine wasn’t really so stupid after all.
The Swordmaster surely wasn’t.
Shit.
They were only an hour south of Mondegreen when the Tsurani attacked.
There was no w
arning, at least none that Durine noticed, not even in retrospect. Neither Kethol nor Pirojil had any, or they would have given a signal.
One moment the company was riding, in two ragged columns, down a farming road, a frozen, fallow field of hay on each side, and the next moment, dozens of black-and-orange-armoured soldiers were swarming out of the ditch where they had lain, hidden beneath a layer of hay.
Durine spurred his horse into the soldier who, broadsword in his hands, was making for Morray. The horse ploughed into the Tsurani, knocking him down, while Durine leapt to the ground on the far side.
That was the trouble with being mounted. You were too dependent on the movements of the horse, and with anything but a superbly trained warhorse under you that was hopeless. Durine needed solid ground beneath his boots if he was going to stay and fight, and he was going to stay and fight.
He leapt back to avoid a wild swing from another Tsurani swordsman, then lunged forwards, kicking at his deceptively fragile-looking breastplate while hacking down at another opponent.
There were shouts and screams of pain all around him, but Baron Morray was still on his horse, and Durine slapped the flank of the mare with the flat of his blade, sending the animal galloping down the road with the Baron clinging desperately, towards where Kethol and Pirojil were still mounted.
It was always tempting to underrate the locals – a professional mercenary, if he lived, survived far more fighting than all but the most seasoned Eastern soldiers, and far more than Westerners – but Tom Garnett was no green captain, eager to fall into a Tsurani trap: he was already leading the front of the column out onto the field, attempting to outflank the attackers quickly, and not simply galloping into the secondary ambush that almost certainly waited for the company down the road.
Durine found himself awash in a sea of orange-trimmed black armour. He lashed out with feet, sword, and his free fist, hoping to clear enough space to make his own escape before he was drowned in Tsurani.
He more felt than saw or heard Pirojil at his back, and moments later, Pirojil was joined by half a dozen lancers, who had apparently circled around to strike at the Tsurani from the rear.