The Fell Sword (61 page)

‘And yet Gavin says he was defeated by the King in springtime. Anything the King can do, I can do. Better.’ The Earl rose to his feet.

Ghause curtsied. ‘My lord Earl, I fear that the Thorn we face now as a dangerous neighbour is ten times the warlock that our sons faced in the spring.’ She didn’t add,
he’s a mere pawn of something greater than himself.

The soldiers around the table looked at each other, but none of them looked at her except her husband. ‘Well, love, you’ve put the cat among the pigeons again. If it’s not a winter campaign on the lakes, my bones tell me we’ll face these Galles and their Huran allies in the spring.’ Muriens sat back. ‘My old tutor used to tell me that nature abhors a vacuum. And look – the lands north of the Inner Sea were a vacuum, and now they all come rushing in.’

Ser Edmund drank off his wine. ‘If it please Your Grace – we could do worse than to make an alliance with the Moreans. And we need to trade all the furs we have.’

The Earl was not a man to forget the value of money. ‘True, Ser Edmund. We’ll need every farthing to pay the garrison if we have a siege. Unpaid men serve too many masters.’ He strode to the edge of the platform and stirred the dead woman’s ashy remains with a toe. ‘Damn it, woman, you’ve cost me a good war.’

She laughed. ‘You can still do it. I’ll just have to plan on a cold bed for the balance of the winter.’

‘Meaning I’ll die, witch?’ He locked eyes with her.

‘Meaning just that, lover,’ she said. ‘And I’d rather not train up another husband. I’m an old woman.’

That night, she licked the nice salty place on the Earl’s neck and bit his ear and whispered, ‘He can watch us, even in this castle. The moths.’

He was no fool. Despite being deeply engaged in his favourite pastime – after war – he understood immediately. He didn’t pause his stroke, or fumble. But a moment later, he put both arms under her shoulder blades, lifted her a little, and breathed into her ear:

‘Son of a bitch.’

Mont Reale, One Hundred Sixty Leagues East of Ticondaga – Ser Hartmut Li Orguelleus, the Black Knight

Ser Hartmut stood at the stern rail of the command cabin of the
Grace de Dieu
, a cup of Veneti glass in his hand, drinking sweet Candian wine and looking at the fortifications and strong wooden houses of the Outwallers at the town he’d christened Mont Reale – the King’s mount.

‘We will land our soldiers and take this town as a secure base,’ he said.

Lucius remained silent with an effort.

De Marche shook his head vehemently. ‘My lord, we must not. That would alienate the very men and women whose favour we need. They are at war with their cousins to the south. We need to give them material aid.’

Ser Hartmut scratched his chin. ‘And get what in return?’

‘Control of the trade. A secure base—’ De Marche was ticking his points off, and Ser Hartmut laughed.

‘You two are trying to teach me how to make war.’ He laughed. ‘We can land and take the town and all the trade. And send it home to the King. At a fine price. There – I can think like a merchant!’

De Marche pursed his lips. ‘And next year?’

‘Next year we’ll be masters of Ticondaga and the whole of the river. We can take whatever we want and sell the rest into slavery. You, sir, are too modest, and you do not know the aims of our lord King, to which I am privy.’ He looked around. ‘You want a small profit that continues. I offer you an enormous profit, for a few years. Think of the slaves.’

De Marche blew out his cheeks, mustering arguments. As an apprentice seaman, he had shipped in the forecastle of a slaver – a big round ship out of Genua bound for the Hati lands, where once-great nations had been ground to savagery by waves of the wild off the Great Steppes. People in Hati would sell their own children as slaves. De Marche had seen it. And smelled it.

There were many things he would not do for money.

He changed directions. ‘You need soldiers for Ticondaga,’ he said. ‘These Huran will help you – if we help them first, against their enemies.’ He leaned close. ‘You heard what the Huran warrior said. Ticondaga has a garrison bigger than all your men and all my sailors combined.’ He looked at Lucius.

Lucius nodded. De Marche wasn’t sure whether Lucius had arranged the story as a fabrication or not, but he needed the Etruscan.

Ser Hartmut scratched again. De Marche felt that he looked too long at Lucius, but in the end he turned to his second squire – now his only squire. The young man – in full armour – poured more wine.

‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I’ll try your way. In truth, if it doesn’t work, we can always storm the town. Their palisades are pitiful.’

With the promise of military aid, the skins flowed fast, and de Marche had his hold stowed in pelts and Wild honey in five days – days which Ser Hartmut spent training his soldiers to paddle the light bark boats the natives used, and to make war on water. He had three small row-galleys – broken down into numbered beams and pre-cut strakes in Galle – and the sailors knocked them together. All three of them had a heavy ballista on the bow and a pair of crossbows.

Just below the island, three great rivers joined, two flowing in from the north, carrying the scent of a place even wilder than where they were – pine needles and rock and snow. In the great pool below the falls, Hartmut drilled his soldiers on paddling and rowing.

After a week, he met de Marche for dinner in the aft cabin of the flagship.

‘How is trade, Master Merchant?’ he asked.

De Marche raised an eyebrow. ‘Since you are kind enough to ask, ser knight, we have done well – but we might have done better. The conflict between the Northern Huran and the Southern has kept many of the Outwaller fur merchants away. And there is a rumour that the Moreans are offering high prices and better goods. I have fewer giant beaver than I want – almost none of the white bears so prized at court.’

Ser Hartmut poured wine for the captain. The stern cabin was as small and neat as a lady’s solar, with fine oak panels set in a lattice of oak frames, so that the panels could expand and contract with weather and heat and still look splendid. A bronze-banded barrel of fortified wine gleamed like an embodiment of hospitality, and the low oak table was covered in glasses – real glass, cunningly made to be easy to hold onto at sea. The luxury of the small room contrasted utterly with the conditions that could arise outside. It was like a sliver of court, or a chapel of comfort.

Ser Hartmut seemed immune to the luxury, but de Marche had decided that the fearsome knight merely took the luxury for granted, as his due.

‘The Southern Huran have more furs?’ he asked nonchalantly. ‘And they are failing to bring them here?’

De Marche decided not to deliver an essay on the fur trade. ‘The Southern Huran are not required to trade here,’ he said, with a shrug.

Hartmut leaned back and laughed. ‘But we can oblige them to do so, surely. A few hundred barbarous savages – cursed by God? You wish to convince me to make war on these Southerners – very well, I am convinced. Let us do this thing. The season is very advanced – we’ll have to be quick.’

De Marche nodded. ‘We have the boats, your soldiers and my sailors, and the Northern Huran will give us another two hundred warriors. May I propose a plan of campaign?’ he asked.

Ser Hartmut gave him a jovial smile. ‘No. This is my business. See to your furs and bills of lading. This is war.’ He rose with a care, for he was a big man in a small cabin. ‘Let us drink a toast – to the King.’

The two men drank.

‘And another – to a profitable war!’ He laughed. ‘Send me the Huran lords, so they can hear my orders.’

De Marche nodded. ‘One doesn’t issue orders to Outwallers, Ser Hartmut.’

The knight nodded. ‘You don’t. I do. Send them to me.’

Giannis Turkos – Near Mont Reale

The onset of winter was so close that every gust of wind seemed like a warning from God to spur him on. Turkos rode as quickly as he could, once he reached dry ground, and pushed his mare harder than he had ever pushed another horse. But she responded gallantly, as if thanking him for saving her from the Ruk.

Turkos never named horses, because they died so fast under him, but she had earned a name, and by the time he made it back to Nap-na, he called her Athena.

‘You are the smartest horse I’ve ever known,’ he said, and fed her everything she could eat – slowly, so she wouldn’t gripe or bloat.

He met with Big Trout again, and they smoked. She was of the Old People, like his wife, and her Huran was fluid and difficult at first for him to understand in his current fog of fatigue. But she was patient and hospitable, and when he got a cup of her tea inside him, he found her quite fluent.

‘None of my men have made it so far,’ she said, when he described his route. ‘Long Swamp is less than ten miles from Sacred Island. Sossag land.’

He nodded. ‘I don’t know the castle I came across on a point of land facing Sacred Island,’ he said. He drew her a sketch on birch bark.

She looked at it for a moment. ‘Ba’ath,’ she said. ‘A big Sossag town.’

‘It’s been destroyed. The corpses lie in the streets.’ He looked away, because the images of desolation – of ice in the puddles and burned rafters and the wolf-gnawed corpse of a child too small to even seem like a person – were still with him.

‘He has been here,’ Big Trout said suddenly. ‘He comes as an elder – called Speaker of Tongues.’ She looked at him, and her eyes were narrowed. ‘He thinks we are children, and fools. But he has made threats. And the young people love what he promises. He makes very specific promises.’ She sighed. ‘If we fight him we will be exterminated. But if we do not fight him—’ She shrugged.

‘What of the Sossag?’ Turkos asked, with some urgency. He needed to be moving. But he also needed every scrap of information.

‘They have sent him warriors,’ she said. ‘They had to, to save themselves. Now he walks wide under the trees, and the wind tells me he visits the Northern Huran.’

Turkos had been hearing that for two months. ‘And?’ he asked her.

She shrugged. ‘You would know better than I, Empire Man. The Northern Huran have a new ally – there are new ships on the Great River and many canoes full of warriors. Men coming back from the market at Mont Reale say that the Galles buy any furs brought to them, but not at the prices paid by the Alban merchants at Ticondaga, and the goods aren’t as good as your Morean produce. But there
are
no Alban merchants this year. And Westerners don’t like to go all the way to the Empire’s trading posts to sell their furs. But some will.’

Turkos nodded. ‘That’s why I’m here,’ he admitted.

She made a face. ‘I know, Empire Man. I didn’t think you rode west to look for Thorn because we are friends – eh?’

He nodded and poured more tea. ‘But I did. And I shared what I learned.’ He leaned forward. ‘Tell me what you learned from those who went east.’

She shrugged. ‘Not much more. Little Bow over there went all the way to the Empire’s post at Osawa.’

Osawa was the town on the Great River closest to Turkos’s own town. He quickened with interest, having been away for more than a month.

Big Trout beckoned to the hunter, who came and sat with them. The longhouse was a combination of a tavern and hostel – it had sleeping benches for sixty adults, and more if some could be convinced to share. It had three great hearths running down the centre, and Big Trout and her several husbands served food and heavy, dark beer to those who could pay. They even had a little wine. It was built of hides and straw mats, and was very comfortable even at the edge of winter. There was always a layer of smoke inside, but it was warm.

Little Bow proved to be a small, wiry man who looked Alban. He had a ready smile and a firm handshake.

Turkos listed Alban among his dozen languages, and he offered to buy the hunter a cup of wine.

‘That’s neighbourly of you,’ Little Bow said, and sat on a stool.

‘I’m interested in the fur trade,’ Turkos said.

‘You’re a riding officer for the Emperor,’ Little Bow said. ‘We all know what you do, Morean.’

Turkos shrugged.

Little Bow nodded. ‘I’m half Alban and half Outwaller, and neither half of me has any quarrel with the Empire,’ he said. ‘I took my wife and all my furs downriver to Osawa because I heard a rumour that it was the best money this year. There was a big fight down on the Cohocton – the Wild against Alba—’ He looked at Turkos, who nodded.

‘I hear the same,’ he said. ‘You may know more about it than I do.’

Little Bow nodded. ‘I met some Sossags who fought there. They said that the Wild took a fair lickin’. No matter – but the Alban merchants were stung pretty bad. You know that the Alban trade goes up to Lissen Carrak for the fair, and then the fur merchants take caravans over the mountains to Ticondaga—’

Turkos was now scribbling furiously on his wax tablets.

‘You didn’t know that?’ asked the hunter.

Turkos smiled. ‘I did and I didn’t,’ he admitted.

The man accepted wine from Big Trout. Morning Porcupine, her surly older husband, poured himself a tankard of heavy ale and sat with them.

Little Bow was obviously a man who liked an audience. His gestures grew, and his voice lowered. ‘So there’s no trade to be had at Ticondaga now, and anyway, the Earl, who is a cantankerous old cuss at the best of times, is getting ready to make war.’

Turkos nodded. ‘I know. I was just there.’

Little Bow nodded. ‘So I went to Osawa. On the way back, we landed at Mont Reale. There’s Gallish ships there – three big round ships and an Etruscan war galley.’

Turkos began writing again. ‘You said there was no Etruscan trade this year,’ he said.

Big Trout nodded. ‘I said that,’ she admitted.

‘Nor is there,’ Little Bow said in a know-it-all tone of voice. ‘There wasn’t an Etruscan to be seen. The scuttlebutt around the trading beach said the Galles had killed the Etruscans, but a Galle merchant who was decent enough to my wife told her they’d found three Etruscan ships all taken by silkies.’

The temperature in the longhouse seemed to plummet.