The Fell Sword (54 page)

‘Show the rest of the archers how to make them,’ the Duke said. He moved on.

Two spots to the right of Larkin, Cully said, ‘That’ll teach you, you fucking popinjay.’ He said it without appearing to move his mouth.

If the company looked good from the standpoint of sartorial splendour, their horses didn’t match the quality of their surcoats – even their old ones. Only the men-at-arms were mounted, and they rode an appalling collection of nags.

Officers conducted inspections, and then the whole of the Guard stood like additional polychromatic statues, completely at home with the other thousand bronze and marble figures in the Great Square. The Megas Ducas and his Primus Pilus rode to the centre of the three-sided square on borrowed horses and waited. They were joined by Count Darkhair and Count Giorgios Comnenos – both officers appointed to those ranks that morning.

The clock at the Academy struck six.

On the fifth strike of the wooden mallet against the great bell, the sound of hooves could be heard ringing on the frosted cobbles of the city.

As silence throbbed in the aftermath of the sixth ring, Count Zac rode into the Great Square followed by three hundred Vardariotes. They formed at the trot – formed line from street column, and then the line rode at a slight oblique – a very showy technique – to fit perfectly from the right marker of the company to the left marker of the Nordikans, facing the Scholae across the square.

Count Zac rode to the centre of the square and saluted the Megas Ducas with his heavy riding whip.

The Megas Ducas returned the salute and nodded. ‘Order of march – the right squadron of the Vardariotes, followed by the Scholae, followed by the Nordikans, followed by the company, followed by the left squadron of the Vardariotes. When we reach the gate, we will turn to the left and march around the city, returning by the Gate of the Vardariotes. We will maintain a practical march order all day; we will deploy into line of battle on my commands, we will make an impromptu camp at the Plataea on the Alban road for lunch. Any questions?’

Count Zac grinned. ‘Want a better horse?’ he asked.

The Duke managed a smile. ‘Very much. For me and everyone else in my company.’

Zac shrugged. ‘Those traitors who kill your horses – they did you a favour. Get better horses!’

‘You could help?’ the Duke asked.

Zac smiled. ‘I said I would – eh? Why have you not visited me?’

The Duke shook his head. ‘I’ve been sick,’ he said. ‘I’ll remedy that. Ready?’ He nodded and raised his baton.

Zac pulled his horse’s head around and galloped the few yards to his men, and barked commands and the right half of his regiment split off and filed away at a trot – headed south and east to the Gate of Ares. Their departure left a gap seventy files wide, and the Scholae, under orders from their new count, filed off by fours. The Nordikans simply marched – every right foot moving off together without the company’s shuffling, as they all seemed to wait for their file leaders and consequently accordioned over the square.

And finally, the last eighty files of the Vardariotes closed the rear. The whole process took almost ten minutes, and there was, on balance, more shouting than was probably needed.

The next day, Ordinaries from the palace took up flagstones across the square and revealed deep cylindrical holes. They opened a storeooom in the Imperial stables and produced cedar poles more than a foot thick, hard as rock, which they fitted into the holes so that the entire square seemed to sprout dead trees. There were new, green cedar trunks, too, stacked neatly by the gate, which the Guard had fetched in on their return the evening before, footsore and armour chafed. Men who had remained behind on guard duty or as escorts or workers in the Navy Yard were cursed as slackers.

The cedar trunks were stripped of branches by Nordikans and erected. In the Outer Court, the regiments paraded in armour, but without weapons, and officers of the Ordinaries opened the Imperial Armoury and handed out wooden swords, wooden axes, and wicker shields. From the full plate and chain of Francis Atcourt to the squat leather-coated Vardariotes’ youngest and slightest female archer, the whole of the Guard – again, with the exception of watch and escort detachments – formed up at the wooden posts. There were more than a hundred posts, and every one of them received ten soldiers and an officer.

Ser Milus was in his element. With a slim Imperial messenger as a translator, he strode to the central wooden post. ‘This is today’s enemy!’ he roared, and the translator repeated his words in shrill intensity. As she was barely clear of adolescence and only five feet tall, her version of his words lost something.

‘I don’t want to see
this
,’ Ser Milus shouted, and he took a few casual pokes at the pell with his wood and leather pole-axe. ‘Any man who can cut all the way through his pell will receive an extra ration of wine tonight. So I want to see
this
!’ The knight danced forward and flicked his pole-axe at the heavy cedar pole. The head struck perfectly – his second strike caused the heavy cedar trunk to move slightly. He stopped and raised his visor, which had fallen over his face as soon as he lowered his head. ‘Fight the pell as you would fight a man,’ he called. He backed away and danced up again, and his pole-axe licked out and the blow was so powerful that every man on parade could feel the impact. The knight leaped away, recovering his guard, and struck again – an overhand thrust to the centre of the wood. ‘Make every blow count!’ he roared. ‘Hit his head, hit his arms, hit his thighs. Let me see you do it!’ he called. ‘Begin!’

They began. Each in turn would face the pell, move into range, and hit it. Some men were awkward, and some very unimaginative – some swung the same way at the pell every time. Some men understood intuitively and began to fight the pell, filling in both sides of a real fight. A few men rained blows down on it, the flurry meant to earn an extra tot of wine.

The officers bore down – singling one out for praise, and ordering another to take another turn.

The Primus Pilus went from pole to pole, taking men out of one line and marching them to another, so that by the time the most heavily armoured men were panting with exertion, there were members of all four regiments in every line. Wooden scimitars vied with wooden pole-axes to rock the heavy wood. Archers fenced with bucklered alacrity and Scholae threw blows from behind long, tapered shields while Nordikans chopped, sometimes like woodcutters and sometimes with blows as subtle as the lighter blades. The stakes were battered and rocked.

At noon, when the sun was high in the sky and there were five thousand people gathered in the square to watch, the men dispersed to tavernas and inns around the square to eat.

Ser Gavin and Count Zac sat on their horses just inside the gate of the Outer Court, at the head of a powerful troop – selected from all four regiments. As the Guardsmen ate and drank, fifty sentries watched the square, and Ser Gelfred and his huntsmen were out on the rooftops, watching.

But nothing happened.

By the time the sun began to set, most of the soldiers could no longer raise their arms above their shoulders.

That was the second day.

On the third day, there were archery butts standing in the square, and hundreds of yards of white rope to keep the spectators back. On foot, with longbow and horn bow, the men and women of all four regiments stepped up in one hundred and twenty lines at one hundred and twenty butts. As the day before, the Primus Pilus mixed every line.

Cully stood forth. ‘I want to see good clean hits at each range,’ he said. He walked over to a Vardariote and bowed. ‘May I use your bow?’ he asked.

The man drew his bow from its hip scabbard. It was horn and sinew, quite short. He also drew an arrow from his quiver on the other hip.

Cully turned to face the butts. He nocked, drew, and loosed. His shaft landed in the straw, a finger off dead centre, with a hearty
thunk.

‘Don’t get fancy. Don’t show off.’ Behind him, a surprisingly pretty Imperial messenger repeated his words in Vardar and in Morean. ‘Remember that short range has its own challenges.’ He grinned. ‘Every line contains a few archers and a lot of soldiers who’ve never loosed a bow. The line with the best score overall gets a gold florin a man. Second and third best scores get a double wine ration. So – better teach your duffers to shoot!’

He stepped out of the way. ‘Begin!’

On Thursday, they threw javelins.

On Friday, the infantrymen ran, and the horse soldiers rode across broken country. More than a dozen horses were injured and had to be put down. Men twisted ankles, and a great many of them cursed the Duke. At noon, the tired infantrymen ate in the chilly autumn sunshine under the cover of olive trees whose fruit was so near ripe that olives fell on men’s heads – they threw them at each other.

The cavalrymen arrived by a separate route, having used guides and picked up a troop of the local stradiotes – the first tentative sign of the local men showing even lukewarm support for the palace. More than a hundred men came; all of them had fought under Duke Andronicus’s banner within a month. Any who represented the local regiment came.

‘Half of them will be traitors,’ muttered Ser Gavin.

The Duke shrugged. ‘I want my new breastplate,’ he said. He looked under his hand at the local troops wheeling a long line of horsemen. ‘I don’t think we need to care if they are traitors, Gavin. Whatever they think in their hearts, they’re here.’

Under the olive trees, men of the five regiments shared apples and watered wine, almonds in honey and hard sausage.

When the trumpets sounded, they fell in with alacrity.

They marched away in column, and twice they deployed from road column to fighting columns. Then the columns themselves deployed into line – by filing, by inclining, and then, to the Duke’s satisfaction, by inclining from the centre to the flanks, so that each column opened like a flower in spring and suddenly his whole little army was formed up in a long line, infantry in the centre, cavalry on the flanks.

Ser Gavin watched it happen. He rode with his brother, these days, in what had come to be known as ‘the household’. Ser Milus carried the standard; the trumpeter acted as their page; Ser Gavin and Ser Michael shared some of the duties of battlefield organisation and elite messenger service, and Ser Alcaeus translated, while Ser Thomas seemed to issue all the orders – the Duke seldom spoke. Gavin worried about him, because he so often seemed to be absent. He would gaze vacantly at nothing. And he drank.

All day. Toby, his squire, provided him with a succession of flasks.

Gavin thought,
If I drank like that, I wouldn’t be able to ride.

The company had, at best, five hundred men. Today, they were commanding fourteen hundred men in three languages, and they were learning new skills at every turn.

The Duke rode across the front – he’d halted on a small hill to watch the deployment – and he pulled up by Ser Thomas. ‘Wheel by companies from the right and form a column of march on the road. The Alban road.’

‘Where did you learn all these commands?’ Gavin asked. His brother certainly didn’t seem drunk when he
did
speak.

‘There’s books,’ Gabriel said. He smiled at his brother. ‘I’ll share them if you like. The Imperial Library has – fifteen? twenty? – books on strategy and tactics.’

Ser Gavin laughed. ‘This is the new knighthood,’ he said. ‘We’ll all be scholars.’

His brother made a face, as if he smelled something bad. ‘Wait until we fight someone who hasn’t read the books,’ he said.

Meanwhile, Ser Thomas showed his surprise only in the fidgeting of his horse, and then the little army was wheeling from line into column, every company of fifty tracing a quarter of a circle and then stepping off by fours from the right – threes for the cavalry – so that the shield wall turned into a long snake with Vardariotes at its head and tail, and the snake wriggled off into the hills north and west of the city. It was mid-afternoon, and the Duke was marching the army towards Alba. Leaving the city empty.

Kronmir spread some coins out on the table. ‘I want complete reports on how he deploys his forces – in what order, who is in the centre – everything you see. Nianna, I would like the muster list of the local militia who are following his banner.’

The madam shook her head. ‘I might be able to get it, but if Duke Andronicus uses it to kill men then I’m dead too. I’m too exposed.’

One of the sellswords laughed at her unintended pun.

Kronmir glared at the man. Nianna was his best agent, and her other roles – as a woman, as a prostitute – were of no interest to Jules Kronmir whatsoever, except in the degree to which they made her more or less useful as a source.

‘If I swear that the information will never be used for a cleansing?’ he asked.

‘Perhaps,’ she said. ‘I know who could provide it. What’s it worth?’

He sucked his front teeth. ‘Three hundred florins,’ he said.

She shrugged.

Kronmir hated having these conversations with multiple agents – hated the loss of compartmentalisation, hated that they’d even seen each other, much less that they might start something like collective bargaining. But the foreigner moved so quickly, and made so few mistakes, that he had to strike while the iron was hot.

‘You gentlemen – get in the saddle. Be wary – the Vardariotes are rumoured to be picking up every rider on the road. But bring me some information.’ Kronmir motioned to the door.

‘If’n the lady stands to earn three hundred florins,’ said a former soldier with an Alban accent, ‘Mayhap me and me mates might receive a slightly more marvellous remuneration, eh?’ He grinned a gap-toothed grin. ‘I have information to sell, too.’

Kronmir narrowed his eyes. ‘Well?’

The man shook his head. ‘Well,’ he said, suddenly unsure of himself. Something in Kronmir’s body language scared him. ‘Well – Ser Bescanon says the new Duke’s going to reinstate the Latinikon. Hire back all the mercenaries.’ He shrugged. ‘What’s that worth?’

Kronmir pursed his lips. ‘Ten ducats,’ he said, and counted them down.