Arts of Dark and Light: Book 01 - A Throne of Bones (31 page)

“No, it is you who have never understood what that means, brother.” Corvus shook his head, half in pity, half in contempt. “You have it precisely backward. Other great houses are loyal to the family first, the city second. House Valerius stands apart because we do not distinguish between our interests and the nation’s interests. Honor demands, honor
dictates,
that we will be the last to exclude ourselves from the standards we demand of others. Even Gaius Valerius Fortex understood it at the end, and he died a true Valerian’s death.”

“Honor! You were always so damned concerned about your precious honor! That’s all this was, wasn’t it? You murdered my Gaius as a sacrifice to your filthy honor!” Magnus spat upon the ground. “That for your honor. It’s not even worth my piss, let alone my son!”

Corvus started to reply, but a rhythmic
tromp-tromping
of iron-studded sandals over the cobble-stoned street caught his attention. He looked back and saw the eight fascitori enter through the open gate in two lines of four. They were helmed and armored, and they bore the ceremonial axes indicative of their authority. They marched without hesitation past the horses, wheeled around, and stopped in front of Corvus’s horse.

“My lord consul, we are at your service.” The fascitori saluted as one, and Corvus nodded to acknowledge them. “I am Caius Vecellius.”

Magnus, however, only sneered at their arrival. “I see you feared to face me alone, little brother. Four legionaries, a squad of fascitors, and even a legate to hold your hand while you offer me sanctimonious justifications in defense of your murder.”

Corvus didn’t bother trying to argue with Magnus. What was the point? After all, it wasn’t entirely untrue, and he certainly felt safer now that the fascitors had arrived. But his brother wasn’t finished.

“Don’t make the mistake of thinking your imperium renders you immune from consequence, Corvus! I made you consul, and I can unmake you just as easily. And as for you, Marcus Saturnius, you had better leave for Cynothicus now if you know what’s good for you. I’ll find a way to see my son avenged. Just see if I don’t!”

“To think I once wondered where Gaius learned his lack of discipline!” Corvus spat back.

His brother struck Corvus across the face with an open hand. Magnus might be over fifty, but he was still a big man, and the force of the blow drove Corvus to one knee.

He tasted blood in his mouth; the unexpected slap had caused one of his canines to puncture his lip.

Slightly dazed, he rose to his feet again to see two of the fascitors had dropped their axes and seized Magnus.

Between them, they forced him to his knees, and Caius Vecellius stepped toward the kneeling man with a lethally impassive expression as he shifted his grip on his axe to hold it in both hands. The two legionaries had drawn their swords, as well.

The fascetor looked to Corvus.

“Do you want this man arrested, my lord consul? In striking you, he has struck the city.”

Corvus, his cheek burning, stared into his kneeling brother’s eyes. They were still red and filled with madness, but the fury had faded enough for him to see grief and despair behind it. Corvus suspected that his brother half-wanted to be executed for treason, if only to escape his pain. Fascitors had been known to behead men for lesser crimes than the one Magnus had just committed. And for the crime of
vituper-maiestas
, arrest meant summary execution.

He realized he had to leave right now and get the fascitors out of Magnus’s presence before what was already an ugly situation spiraled completely out of control. It was bad enough that he had had his nephew beheaded. If he didn’t end this farce immediately, he’d find himself saddled with the reputation as a fratricide, as well.

Corvus wiped the blood away from his mouth. “The ex-consul has insulted neither me nor Amorr, Caius Vecellius. He has only just now learned of the manner of his son’s death, and he is understandably aggrieved. It would be unjust to hold him responsible for his actions. Release him, and we will leave him and his family to their mourning. Now, I must speak with my consular colleagues, so if you will lead us to the Forum?”

“At once, my lord consul!” Caius Vecellius bowed smartly and returned his axe to his shoulder.

Two of his fellows helped Magnus to his feet, then rejoined the others and began to follow Vecellius toward the gates.

Corvus didn’t say anything to Magnus, he remounted in silence and turned his horse around.

Saturnius did likewise, and the two knights also clambered into their saddles and followed them out to the safety of the street.

When he reached the gates, Corvus looked back and saw that Magnus was still standing motionless, watching him, and his eyes burned with an unfraternal hatred that chilled Corvus’s soul.

“Well, that went well,” Marcus Saturnius said.

“In what way?” Corvus spat, and a red gobbet splattered against the white wall outside the gate, leaving a faint crimson stain behind as it slowly trickled its way down the wall.

“I was listening to the lads earlier,” the legate indicated the knights riding behind them. “It was four to one that either you or your brother wouldn’t survive that meeting.”

“And yet you decided to ride along—out of morbid curiosity?”

Saturnius grinned up at him. “I always bet the chalk, General. But sometimes it helps to keep an eye on your investment.”

FJOTRA

Fjotra found it strange to be standing on the broad deck of a Savoner warship rather than behind the narrow prow of a Dalarn snekkja, like the one on which she’d previously crossed the White Sea.

The Savoner ship, which the sailors called a caraque, was a little shorter, but much wider and taller than even the biggest drekar. It had three sails to the longship’s one, and it carried five hundred soldiers in addition to the crew of forty.

It had been slow and awkward in the harbor, wallowing like a whale about to beach, and she’d heard the laughter carried across the water from the hardy crew of the snekkja that had accompanied them in the return to Raknarborg.

But the laughter had quickly stopped once the sails were fully unfurled.

Then it had become obvious that
Le Christophe
, as the ship was called, and her three sister ships were capable of keeping pace with the longship. More than capable, even, especially when the wind wasn’t coming from the south. Their multiple sails allowed the caraques to beat against the wind more efficiently than the single fixed sail of the Dalarn ship.

Their pride affronted, her kinsmen had labored manfully at the oars for hours the one day that a westerly wind had prevented their progress, angrily refusing when the Lord Admiral Hurualt asked if they wished one of the Savoner ships to tow them.

That one day aside, the crossing had been a quick and uneventful one, although by the second day, the smell of what was essentially an entire Dalarn village crammed into a single large ship had become something that Fjotra feared she would never be able to wash off or forget.

However, the Red Prince had been kind to her and had even asked her to dine with him and the Lord Admiral on the first evening. The Savoners ate remarkably well even when at sea, as she was astounded at the quality and variety of the foods that were served. She dined on stuffed duck and pigeon eggs washed down with a sweet white wine that bubbled and burned as it went down, all the while knowing that on the longship, the men were eating pickled herring and three-day old bread washed down with water.

It was early morning when land was first sighted, and they reached the bay over which Raknarborg’s three towers cast their shadow before midday. She didn’t realize how frightened she had been that the fortress would have fallen in her absence until she saw the towers, intact and unburned, and felt her knees weaken with abject relief.

She wished she could send Brynjolf a message and put his mind at ease, but he had been left behind. Brynjolf had survived both the stabbing wound in his chest as well as the arm that had been broken in his fall from the wall. He had not recovered sufficiently to accompany the Red Prince to Raknarborg, however, which was why it had fallen to Fjotra to serve as the royal Dalarn aide-de-camp to the heir to the Savoner throne. There was the possibility of sending him a message via fire-talking, but the younger of the expedition’s two battlemages had told her that, although a fire could be built on a ship, the fire-talking the mages used to speak with each other over long distances did not work across oceans, rivers, or large bodies of water.

Although the issue of fealty had been agreed, and sufficient treasure had been loaded on the four Savoner ships to satisfy the Red Prince that the negotiated payment to the crown would be made, there was still tension between the heir to the throne and Fjotra’s father. As one of the few who could speak to both men, and the only one personally acquainted with both, Fjotra was required to serve as their primary translator, with the assiduous assistance of the young battlemage, Patrice. But the two men butted heads from the start.

The main issue of contention was when the evacuation would begin taking place. The three of them were standing on the South Tower, which overlooked the harbor. Her father wanted to load up all of the available ships with women and children and send them south at once, whereas the Red Prince had insisted that the four Savoner ships must remain at Raknarborg in case an urgent retreat across the sea was required.

“I do not wish to accuse this royal princeling of cowardice,” Skuli told her in their own tongue as the prince glared incomprehendingly at him. “But what sort of warrior’s first concern is being able to run from the fight?”

“He is no coward, Father,” she assured him. “No coward would have come here. He did not have to make our people’s battle his own.”

“Then remind him of the treasure. Little good it will do him or our new liege lord if it never crosses the sea.”

“What does he say?” the prince demanded to know.

“He say he know you are brave, maybe too brave, for you come here.” The prince nodded, satisfied. “He say you take treasure to your father with the women and the childrens. Six days, all ships come here.”

“I have sixty longships,” her father pointed out. “We must keep ten here to guard against the wolfships entering the bay. But fifty can carry fifteen hundred women and children besides their crews. That needs five trips…a month for all of them. With the Savoner ships, we can take forty-five hundreds, which means only two trips and less than a fortnight on the sea.”

“That is nine thousand. But you said we have about seven thousand women and children?”

“Seven thousand, three hundred eighty four. Yes, we only need three of the Savoner ships. Tell him that. If he’s more concerned about his own skin than his troops, then he’ll be satisfied with the one.”

Fjotra smiled at the Red Prince, who was no longer glaring at her father, but still looked less than pleased with him. The comtesse had told her that the prince was a man who well appreciated women, and she noticed that despite her youth and uncertain grasp of his tongue, he seemed to be rather easier for her to manage than for any of the men, Savoner or Dalarn. “Your royal highness, my father say he want send 50 longships and three of your big ships tomorrow. Then we stay here twelve, thirteen days.”

“Only three caraques? I thought he wanted to send all four. But even three presents a problem. I’m not concerned about myself. I can always keep a longboat crewed and kept ready for the battlemages and me. On the other hand, one could argue that there is considerably less risk to my men if we are only here for two weeks rather than a month while the noncombatants are ferried over. Can you ask him when the last attack was?”

“Eight days ago,” Fjotra’s father told her.

“So, eight days ago. And you reavers turned them back without any help from us. I don’t see why together we shouldn’t be able to fend off another attack or two, no matter how many of them there are. Very well, I agree. Three of my ships will assist the transporting. But until their return, one longship and its crew are to be set aside for my personal use.”

She translated his suggestion for her father, who agreed to it at once. That issue was much more easily resolved than their difference of opinion over the best way to defend Raknarborg while four thousand children and five hundred of their mothers were sailing to safety on the other side of the sea. Skuli wanted to remain safely ensconced behind the high walls of Raknarborg, whereas the Red Prince was intent on actively sending out patrols night and day in an attempt to gauge the strength of the enemy as well as its current locations.

As a tactic, it wasn’t a bad one, except for the fact that the Savoners were completely ignorant regading the wild lands surrounding the fortress on three sides and required guides familiar with the local environs if their patrols were going to serve any purpose. But the only available guides didn’t speak their language.

The two men argued vociferously, and mostly through her, for nearly two hours before Skuli finally, reluctantly, agreed to provide each day-patrol with two Dalarn guides and each night-patrol with four. With no translators, they would have to communicate as best they could.