The Broken (The Lost Words: Volume 2) (59 page)

Gerald studied her. And he understood suddenly, anger rising in his check. “What Edwin did was wrong. But it does not deny your husband’s crimes. He was a traitor and died for that.” He handed her the wet sack containing Driscoll’s decomposing head. She didn’t reach for it. He let the sack drop. It was cruel doing this in front of the girl, but it had to be done. Every citizen in Roalas had to understand the price of treason.

Margaret—that was her name, he remembered vaguely—shuddered with emotion and carefully suppressed a fresh wave of tears. Her lips were pursed thin, bloodless. Muscles twitched in her cheeks. She boiled with rage and indignation and humiliation. Gerald doubted her late husband had consulted her about his change of allegiance. But whether she had been a part of that or not, she was part of his legacy now.

“You have until sunset to leave Roalas,” he stated. “If you stay, you and your children will be executed as traitors.”

Margaret slapped him. “Go to the Abyss!”

He let her be. “You have until sunset,” he repeated and walked away.

Clustered in row after row of cheap wooden buildings and old warehouses converted into training grounds, the city army district was almost a neighborhood itself, big, chaotic, cluttered with smithies and tanneries and shops that sold charms and greasy food and hawked cheap flesh.

Gerald found Edwin talking to a number of sergeants near the archery range. He was pointing toward the pincushion targets fifty paces away, explaining. Since the war against Athesia had become a siege, the need for skilled marksmen had risen. They needed more and more archers to take shots at Parusite rescue parties and sappers lurking near the walls. The need for sword and spear would mercifully never come.

“Edwin,” Gerald called, approaching in a steady pace, a wall of men behind him.

Edwin turned around, smiling. “Commander! Good to see you!”

“Did you visit Widow Driscoll while I was in the hospital?” he asked, never slowing down.

The other man frowned, confused by this abrupt approach. “Sure did. I gave her a visit.”

Gerald was just a pace away. “Did you molest her?”

The deputy seemed annoyed now. “What do you mean?”

Gerald stepped close. He could smell the man’s breath. “Did you rape her?”

Edwin missed the cue completely. “Well, I gave her a lesson in trea—”

He never finished the sentence. Gerald punched him hard in the face. He didn’t have much strength, but the blow connected well. He ignored the flare of pain going up his side as he pulled taut tender tissue. His knuckles sunk in the hollow below Edwin’s ear. Edwin grunted and fell.

“Fucking shit!” Edwin moaned, holding his jaw. He spat blood. “What the fuck?”

“You are under arrest for the abuse of your authority as a city official and a military officer and for assaulting a civilian. You will be tried for your crime. As of this moment, you are suspended from your duty as deputy commander.”

Edwin tried to rise, but he staggered, dizzy from the blow. “What are you doing?” he slurred.

Gerald just shook his head. “Enough talking. Arrest him.”

His escort stepped forward. They lifted the unprotesting officer from the ground. He was bleeding from the mouth in a long trickle. He looked like a cretin unable to control his saliva. Outrage and confusion danced on his face.

At that moment, Edwin tried striking back, a feeble, predictable attempt. Gerald was ready. He simply stepped back. One of his soldiers jabbed Edwin in the side of his head, upsetting his balance, making his weak punch fly off mark. It wasn’t just defense; it was a derogatory gesture, too. And a hint that said, plenty more of that, if you want.

“Fuck man, after all we’ve been through,” Edwin hissed.

“You should know the law better than anyone else. You let me down,” Gerald spoke softly as four soldiers led Edwin away. He struggled, but he didn’t try resisting too much. He looked angry and shocked at the same time. But he did know that if he tried fighting, he would taste a torrent of mailed fists in his ribs and face. Since three nights ago, Gerald was almost a living legend. The soldiers would do anything for him.

All around, sergeants and their trainees watched in stunned silence. Gerald said nothing. It was plain, simple justice. No one was above the law. Edwin would be tried and stripped of his rank. He might even get banished from the city, but it was a risk. Gerald would have to carefully decide how to treat the man. Letting him loose would be a mistake.

“Get back to your training,” Gerald said and left. Now, the court business.

He headed for the Imperial Manse.

CHAPTER 36

S
ergei needed a scapegoat. Someone, anyone.

The problem was, there was not a single nobleman under his banner who could be praised for their conduct in the disaster three nights ago. As one, the Parusite war leaders had failed in their command.

They milled around him like guilty hounds, tails tucked low, faces locked with an incriminating grimace of quiet fear, and their minds burdened with a dilemma—whether to stay visible and remind the king of their collective failure or hide until his anger passed. But they did not know what to do. They waited for some kind of a hint from him, yet his expression remained stony and blank. And that worried them even more.

Immediately after the battle, his lords had taken punitive measures against picket sentries and tower guards for failing to alert of the impending attack. Count Pavel had ordered his soldiers whipped. Yuri was considering the pillory for his footmen, right there in front of everyone, with rain and cold and the city’s keen archers in sight. The creative list of punishments ran as long as the wisdom of a wrongdoer. But it was a useless, meaningless act.

Standing out in the bad weather, shadowing their ruler, they waited for his wrath, condemnation, forgiveness, any thing. And they talked, because it was better than the grim silence.

Even his son looked ashamed of the night’s failure. His spies had given him no early warning of the attack, another surprise by the sorely underestimated commander of the City Guard. Oleg wore a grim expression on his face. Kiril looked worried. Bogomir looked annoyed; his troops had taken the biggest toll in the fighting. Captain Speinbate was wisely keeping his distance. Rumor had it that his troops had descended on the dead without regard to the color on the tabards and the sigils on the shields. They had looted whatever they could, gold teeth and rings, taking whole fingers when the task of scavenging proved too difficult. Sergei didn’t recall their prowess in the heat of the battle, more sneaking and mopping, hardly worth the coin he paid them. And this boded ill for their role in the breaking of the siege.

The one sane man among this surly, panicky lot was the Eracian count. He could smell trouble and spent his time reading books in his tent. But the man had earned a notch of respect when he had offered his troops in the camp’s defense. “I may be a neutral party in this fight, but I’m your guest, and I want to repay the hospitality,” Bart had said. The handful of foreign troops could hardly make a difference, but the statement was appreciated.

Other than that, things didn’t look quite as shiny as only a week earlier. This was no easy victory he had been promised by the priests.

Seven thousand dead, another four thousand wounded, twelve hundred horses butchered or missing, four hundred fifty wagons of supplies torched, countless thousands of tents destroyed, tons of tools and weapons mangled or lost. Worst of all, the Athesian saboteurs had managed to burn two of his large siege engines. He had almost nothing to use against the city walls now. Rebuilding the catapults in bad weather would be almost impossible, with timber and rope soaked in rain and the roads churned into brown pulp. And he still had no idea of the damage his sister’s troops had suffered.

Then, to make things worse, he had lost both of the Athesian turncoats. One had been slain, and the other had decided to defect, again. Commander Edgar of the Fifth had seen his friend Driscoll die in battle and suddenly realized he was better off as a brigand, roaming the unoccupied northern Athesia. The bastard had taken away all of his troops. A large part of the Ninth had also vanished overnight, dispersed.

His spies reported some of them going back to Roalas, pretending nothing had happened, others forming mercenary and brigand units, others yet disbanding and going across the border into Eracia and Caytor, pretending to be refugees. It was a mess worth ten thousand soldiers, half of which were an unknown element in this war, fighting for no side but their own greed and whim.

The Athesians had dealt him a terrible blow. It was a mortifying display of skill and cunning he had not expected, with multiple diversions and tricks, all of which had worked. The smaller enemy had engaged his forces on three fronts at once and came out victorious. And they had lost only a handful of men, so he was told. A disgrace.

His old doubts crept back, making him wonder if this entire undertaking was not just too grand, too ambitious. Sasha was adamant in their superiority, but he didn’t feel so confident. There were simply too many problems. The Red Caps and his troops continued bickering. The Oth Danesh continued being pests. The new overlord of the seas was cooperative, but even he lacked the authority to enforce the new decree. Southern Caytor remained a ghost country, ravaged by raiding parties. Even his disciplinary executions did little to quench that mob. The risk of war with Caytor was huge; he might yet be forced to order his own men to fight the pirates and put an end to their barbarism. The weather was bad, the supplies scarce, and the risk of disease great.

On top of all that, he had a military defeat to swallow. A handful of city guards with no real battle experience had sallied forth and bloodied his elite troops. Their combat tactics were ruthless and disgraceful and sacrilegious. But they had fought like desert lions. He had never expected such fierce resistance and determination.

Sergei paced slowly near the charred ruins of a siege engine, letting his anger sink into the earth through his feet. He didn’t feel like talking to or berating anyone. The last three days had been a swirling mess of confusion and exhaustion, the acrid soot of burned bodies and canvas replaced by a cold, whipping rain and an endless moan of the wounded, a thousand reports and even more excuses, silent, tense meetings with people who knew their wrongs and awaited the wrath of their ruler with grim resolution. But Sergei had done nothing, making them fret even more. He wanted his mind to be calm and lucid before he delivered justice. And he still had not decided who to blame.

A scapegoat, he needed one desperately.

He was tired, just tired. But he could not just let things sort themselves out. Not when the future of the realms hung upon his decisions.

From the corner of his eye, he saw Under-Patriarch Evgeny striding toward him, wobbling the way only grossly fat people could. The man had lost his albino pet in the fray. The ferret had mostly likely fled somewhere quiet, or it had gotten trampled underfoot.

“Your Highness,” the priest called.

Sergei sighed. He could avoid everyone, but not the clergy.

Unlike his usual jovial self, the fat man looked weak and tired, just like himself. No small wonder, the brothers had been busy administering to the dead, and their task hardly seemed over. Most of the bodies had been recovered and named, but many still remained out there, bloating inside rusty armor, with birds pecking their soft, rotten flesh.

“A word with you, if I may, Your Highness,” the fat man said.

Sergei looked around. The remnants of a huge siege tower was as private as a front line could be. It would have to do. He motioned for Ipatiy to move away, out of earshot.

“Yes, Your Holiness?”

Evgeny clasped his pudgy hands beneath his generous paunch. “We must discuss several things.”

Sergei knew what this was going to be about. Combat clergy again. He was in no mood to listen to the under-patriarch preach about how the situation would have been saved if only he’d had his holy army to defend the siege lines.

Instead, Evgeny was almost docile when he asked about the Autumn Festival. “The holy days are almost upon us. We must have proper arrangements made in time. Despite the war, we must appease the gods.”