The Warrior King: Book Three of the Seer King Trilogy (40 page)

“That was where we took our casualties, but we slew far more, ten, a hundred times more than we lost in the minutes we were in the middle of their host.

“We ran out the far side of the enemy camp, laughing like loons,” he said. “We stopped long enough for Cymea and the other mages to cast a diversionary spell, then ran on. Cymea said magicians were casting after us, but their strength was broken, their confidence shaken, and so we escaped, running down a farming road in broad daylight with no one, not sorcery, not soldiers, chasing us.

“North of the disaster we found an abandoned ferryboat, a big one, tied to a dock. We piled aboard and pushed off, and the current carried us downstream, through and around the islets, and we used the boat’s rudder to steer us through the mire. By the time we were forced to abandon the boat, bits and pieces of our handiwork were floating past us.”

“Bodies,” Cymea said softly, so we all had to crane to hear her. “I’ve never seen so many bodies. Bodies … and parts of bodies. And the creatures that still fed on them.”

She drank her glass dry, stood.

“And that was what we did to Tenedos.”

The officers were standing, cheering her and Yonge and the incredible victory.

I wonder how many of them noticed Cymea was crying.

It was a fine season as the Time of Dews gave way to the Time of Births, but the dark foreboding still hung over me. I’d been fighting almost continuously since I was eighteen. Twenty years of bloodshed or its threat, and I was tired.

“So what shall we do when peace comes?” Cymea asked. “It’s now we? I’m deeply honored,” I said, bowing in my saddle. “You’re about the only option I’m interested in,” Cymea said. “Play politics with my brothers and sisters? I don’t even know if the Tovieti would be willing to go into a legitimate government. I’ll wager it’s hard having to compromise with your enemies when the best solution before was just throttling them. For all I know, the Tovieti will develop a purity problem, go underground once more and dig out the yellow cords. Although I’ll always be a Tovieti in spirit, I don’t think that’s for me.”

“That’s a true blessing,” I said. “I can’t quite picture explaining why my partner’s a little late coming home — ’had to stop and strangle a couple of the local merchants she thinks are overcharging her, but won’t you have some tea while you’re waiting?’”

“What kind of home would we have?” she asked. “I don’t know,” I said, leaning over in my saddle, plucking a scarlet flower from a bush and presenting it to her. “I don’t know if I want to go back to Cimabue, even though I’ve blathered on about the joys of being a noble bumpkin.”

“And do you … we … want to live that far away from the swirl of events?”

“Hells yes,” I answered quickly. “I’ve been too much in those moils and toils. But we could live in … no, not in, but maybe near a city, and you could keep me posted. Ride back every night and tell the old man what the latest styles and gossips are.”

“Poot,” Cymea said. “Where I go, you go.”

“Something interesting just came,” I said. “You know, I never worried about money. Either I had none but had the army, or I had an enormous amount and couldn’t spend it all in a lifetime.

“Now?” I fished into my sabertache, took out a bare handful of coins. “I’ve had these since … since when? Since we looted the boat? And that’s all the gold I’ve got to my name.”

“Numantia will hardly let someone who’s done as much as you have starve.”

“You have more faith in people’s generosity once the emergency’s over, than I. I remember seeing all too many crippled soldiers put out to beg in the streets.

“Maybe,” I continued, “maybe I could get a job with Linerges, and we could go on the road, peddling fancies off a cart.”

“Poot twice,” she said. “But come to think of it, I doubt if my claims to the Amboina estates in Kallio will be honored, so I guess we’re determined on a life of being poor but dishonest.

“If it comes down to that, the hells, let’s go across the border and join your friend Bakr. You make being a Negaret sound like fun.

“If you get ambitious once we’re Negareting, you could always take over the throne in Jarrah. It sounds like their noblemen will spend more time hitting each other over the head than trying to take care of their country.”

“Poot three times,” I said. “Fuck a whole group of thrones. Can you see me as King Damastes?”

She looked at me queerly, and I felt a shiver. She changed the subject.

“At least one thing,” she said. “So far neither one of us has mentioned marriage.”

“You aren’t interested?”

“Not unless there’s a way of doing it without it becoming
my
wife, like
my
horse,
my
house. I’m not a possession and never will be,” she said, a bit fiercely. “As far as I can see, the only purpose marriage has is if somebody’s dying, and there’s a lot of things to divide up, which it doesn’t sound like there’ll be for us.

“Or, maybe, if there are children.” She bent her head, sniffed at the flower I’d given her. “I think I’d like that,” she said, softly.

The cold came hard, as if a winter wind had blasted down the winding road.

“Please, Cymea,” I said. “Please don’t talk about things like that.”

“Why not?”

Emotion washed over me.

“Because … and I guess I’m going to sound as if I’m feeling sorry for myself, and maybe I am, but every time things like children and being happy for very long come up, they get taken away from me.”

Her face hardened. “Am I always going to be reminded about that?”

“Oh, for Irisu’s sake,” I said. “I didn’t mean it like that. I wasn’t thinking of anything, except that when things start going well for me, my luck always seems to go into the cellar. What’s the old soldier’s line — if it weren’t for bad luck, I wouldn’t have any luck at all? Sometimes it seems like that to me.”

“Bad luck?” she said. “Ex-First Tribune Damastes á Cimabue, escaped prisoner á Cimabue, General á Cimabue, complaining about his luck?”

“The glory sometimes doesn’t compensate,” I said.

“You
are
feeling sorry for yourself. Here, lean over and let me kiss you.”

I obeyed, feeling somewhat foolish.

“Now, you take care of the outside luck,” she said. “I’ll handle the inside luck, all right? Your only concern is keeping my insatiable lust satisfied. Otherwise, I might have to go creeping out at night to Yonge’s tent.”

“His tongue isn’t half as long as mine,” I said, glad to be onto another topic.

“I wouldn’t know,” she said. “I found him a bit of a disappointment, when we were raiding. He never made even one suggestive remark, let alone anything else.”

“Yonge?” I said, in some amazement. “Nobility from a man who fucked his way through most of the married women in Nicias, fighting a duel with every affair?”

“Not this incarnation,” she said. “I’d heard the stories … hells, you’d told me some of them. He might as well have been a temple guard. Or I a temple virgin.”

“I’ve heard about those temple virgins,” I said, looking lustful. “The subject of many a barracks ballad. What do you know on the subject?”

“I was one, for about a month,” she said. “When I was being bounced from place to place.”

“You didn’t tell me about
that
in your tale.”

“Nothing to tell,” she said. “Sleep on stone, get up before dawn, go to your cell when it’s dark. Pray a lot and eat food a peasant would scorn. Then pray some more. It was so deadly dull I didn’t even want to play with myself, although there were a couple of women who offered to take care of that detail for me. I was never so glad to move on in my life … other than when I was broken out of prison, back at the beginning.”

So it went, idle chatter as the leagues wound past, and the roads grew better, the farms more frequent, and the bridges across the creeks and small rivers more modern, wider and stronger.

The farmers and workers lined the roads now, sometimes cheering us, sometimes just watching curiously. Every now and again one of the few youths among them would follow in our dust until we camped, then enlist, eyes shining for glory and adventure.

• • •

Kutulu’s spies reported that Tenedos had regrouped and was moving north, again by boat and by land.

But we were far ahead of him.

• • •

When we were about six leagues beyond Nicias, a rider came back from the scouts. We’d made contact with the Council’s army. I went forward with my command group and saw a smartly turned out troop of cavalry, wearing the gray with red of the Peace Guardians, led by an officer named Cofi, who announced himself, to my great if hidden amusement, as a domina instead of a
shalaka.
Evidently, with the Maisirians back across the border, their ranks were no longer in such high regard in Nicias.

He bade us welcome and said an empty down a league farther would be ideal for our camp, although no one had expected quite this large a formation. He seemed a little upset by that.

He said the citizens of Nicias welcomed the army, and vast amounts of supplies were already on their way to the down to prove their sincerity.

“Good,” Linerges murmured. “Always good to keep the troops fattened. Keeps them from looting.”

“Isn’t there something,” Yonge asked, equally quietly, “about feeding a calf while you’re thinking about a good recipe for sweetbreads?”

“That too,” Linerges said. “I can tell we’re coming into the capital with a proper attitude.”

“Except for him,” Yonge said, indicating me. “He no doubt thinks that all this is sincere and meant only to show the toadies’ sudden respect and love.”

“I’m not
that
stupid,” I snarled. “Now shut up. That damned domina might have better ears than you think.”

• • •

In the old regular army … and I wondered if I was starting to become a frizzled old fart, thinking like that … soldiers set up their camp methodically. First the commander would determine which unit went where after riding the land with his subordinates.

Each regiment, company, troop, squadron, whatever, would be marched to its designated area. Warrants would determine the locations of cook tents, horse lines, wagon parks, jakes, then a ranking warrant would take a post, and the soldiers would tell off on him, and the tents, or sleeping positions if the unit was living rough, would be laid out. The men would set to work with canvas, ropes, and mauls, and in an hour, sometimes less, you could look down any row of tents, and the lines holding the canvas taut would be perfectly aligned, like soldiers in formation.

This wasn’t quite the style of my army. I rode across the down, decided which unit would go where, and then the units pitched their tents — those that had them — wherever was convenient, with close to the cook fires and far from the shithole preferred.

Since it was wartime, my camps, while somewhat disorderly on the inside, were laid out like a prickly hedgehog. We barricaded the camp: stacked brush, long stakes sharpened on both ends and set in the ground facing outward, entrenchments, or even natural barricades like thorny thickets. Guard posts were set at regular intervals before anything else was done.

No matter how tired, the men always worked hard, for the quicker camp was set, the safer everyone was, and the sooner meals could be cooked and eaten.

I chose a commanding hill for my headquarters, had Cymea’s and my tent pitched close behind it, and began digging my jakes while Svalbard tended to the horses and Cymea set up our bed, two camp cots Svalbard had modified to lash together, my field desk, her chest with magical implements, our bathtub, and that was all the furniture we owned.

I’d barely turned a few spadefuls of earth when civilians swarmed into our camp. They must have left Nicias that morning and stayed behind Domina Cofi’s horsemen until told it was all right to proceed. They brought fresh vegetables, fish, cooked fowls, cuts of beef, wine, brandy, and often as not, themselves. The only thing I had my provosts refuse was the brandy, and I made sure the wine was evenly shared, so there wouldn’t be enough for any man to get drunk on.

The camp was more a feast than a military post, but there wasn’t any danger. Or not much, anyway. I’d expected something like this and told my officers to turn a blind eye to most things as long as there wasn’t any violence, and the provosts and the poor bastards on sentry-go didn’t get careless.

I was about knee-deep in the earth, planning to dig to my waist, since it appeared we’d be in this encampment for a while, bare-chested and sweating, when bugles bellowed, and a galloper announced that Scopas and Trerice, accompanied by a hundred horsemen, had arrived.

I started to clamber out and pull on my jacket when I caught myself and went back to digging. Indeed, when Scopas and Trerice arrived, they both showed surprise, seeing a general actually working, instead of ordering others about, exactly the impression I wished to make. This was an army where everyone worked, everyone fought, and if we went into the field together, that’d be the rule for the Council’s army as well.

Scopas wore something that could have been called a military uniform, since it included high boots, breeches, and a high-necked tunic, but his vast chest was so ridiculously laden with golden and silver gee-gaws I couldn’t tell what army he thought he was serving in. Trerice wore, as before, his plain grays and ready weapons, and his eyes were as cold as his sheathed steel.

Scopas greeted me effusively, calling me the hero of the time, one of the greatest generals … and warriors … Numantia had ever known, and so on and so forth, very definitely playing to the aides still ahorseback behind him, and to any of my soldiers within earshot. If Barthou had done this, I might have laughed, but I noticed Scopas’s shrewd eyes looked here, there, as he spoke, assessing the impact of his praise. This calculation and cunning was precisely why I wanted no part of politics.

I climbed out of the hole. “Greetings, Councilor Scopas. And General, as I assume your title is now, Trerice. Might I ask where the honored Barthou is? I assume he survived the somewhat rapid withdrawal your forces made after I saw him last?”