Honor Among Thieves (51 page)
C
roy rode at the head of an army of two thousand men, of which only one in a hundred could understand his orders. It did not matter. The Skilfingers had provided excellent translators. They were used to this arrangement.
The Northern Kingdoms were perpetually at war with one another, their borders shifting back and forth a few miles every year. The territories changed hands so fast the cartographers could not keep up, and a map could only show shaded areas where each kingdom’s power was the strongest. Yet the wars had gone on so long, these combats had become formalized and played out by very strict rules, and so any given kingdom was fighting only a month out of any year. The cost of keeping, paying, and feeding standing armies was extraordinary, and Skilfing defrayed the expense by hiring out its soldiers as mercenaries to any nation that required them.
That meant the Skilfinger warriors behind Croy were well-trained, well-disciplined, and carried the best arms available anywhere on the continent. He had no doubt they would be a match for an equal number of barbarians.
The best estimate he had, though, was that eight thousand barbarians had surrounded Ness, forming an enormous camp all around the city. Among them were perhaps seven hundred berserkers—and even a heavily armored Skilfinger knight would have trouble standing against those mad warriors.
Sir Hew was correct. He had been wise to think Helstrow the better choice for demonstrating their newfound power. What could be accomplished by attacking Ness was an open question.
Croy did not care.
Cythera was in danger, and that was all that mattered.
Hew had given him no trouble at all. He was the regent now, and for all intents and purposes he would be the king of Skrae for the next four years. Hew obeyed his every command without question. If the look on Hew’s face sometimes betrayed his true feelings, Croy could learn not to meet the knight’s eyes. Bethane, however, proved less pliant. She had insisted on going with him when he marched toward Ness.
“It isn’t safe,” he told her.
“The only place I am safe is near you,” she said.
He had stood firm. As regent, he could command even her, though he was required by law to couch his orders in terms of perfect courtesy and protocol. He sent her north with an honor guard of ten Skilfinger knights. She would winter in Skilfing Town—the capital of Skilfing—as a pampered guest of the king and his court there. Come spring, it remained to be seen where she would go. Or even if there was a place for her to go.
Croy and Hew marched southwest toward Ness, giving Helstrow a wide berth but otherwise taking the most direct route. It was slow going. They had plenty of horses for themselves and the Skilfinger knights, but that was only one-tenth of their contingent. The rest were footmen, retainers of the knights, and they could only march twenty miles a day. Less, sometimes much less, when they had to march through heavy snow. There was a reason armies did not move much during the winter. Croy pressed them for twenty-five miles a day whenever possible, knowing full well that would leave them exhausted and less effective when they arrived.
He called very few stops. Hew advised him over and over that he must give the men a day of rest or they would be in no shape to fight, yet still he pressed on. When he was only fifty miles from Ness, though, only two days’ march away, he ordered the column to stop atop a barren hill overlooking wasted farmland.
He had heard a sound of distant thunder that rolled along the hills. In the distance he saw a column of smoke splitting the sky in half.
“It could be anything,” Hew told him, his voice for once sympathetic.
“It’s Ness.”
Hew sighed. “The barbarians could have put a village to the torch. It’s impossible to say how far away that smoke is—it could be right down the road. It could be nothing. Perhaps they set fire to the manor house at Middleholt.”
Croy watched the smoke rise into a perfectly placid sky.
“It’s Ness,” he said again.
The whole city could be burning. The barbarians might have taken it, and razed it to the ground. Cythera could be dead, she could be—she could be—
He closed his eyes for a moment only and prayed. He begged the Lady to let him see Cythera once more. If only for a moment before he died.
Then he opened his eyes again.
“There will be no day of rest,” he announced.
Sir Hew did not argue. The translators called out the order to the captains, who relayed it to their serjeants, who passed it on to the men in words they could understand. There was probably a great deal of grumbling back there but Croy didn’t have to listen to it. That was one advantage of being the man in charge.
“March, double time,” he said.
Behind him, drums began to beat, and a fife made a good attempt at playing a rambunctious tune.
M
örget raced back into the camp, Balint at his heels, clucking at him not to exert himself and reopen his wound.
He had never felt healthier nor more vigorous in his life. He clutched in one hand the severed shard of Fangbreaker. In the other he held Dawnbringer, the blade naked and whole. A symbol, if one was even needed, that he was the stronger leader.
He would slay Mörgain in front of every warrior in the horde—after all, she had started their duel, and no man would stop him from finishing it—and then he would have no rivals. No one to challenge his supremacy.
Yet when he arrived at the camp, it was to find a third of the tents already taken down and packed away. Everywhere barbarians were on the move, bundled in thick furs as if they planned a long journey through the snow.
Hurlind lay drunk in the aisle between the encampments of two clans. The worthless scold stared up at Mörget with a bleary eye. Dried mead formed a crust around his mouth. “Hail the returning hero,” he slurred, and pushed himself up on one elbow. “Survivor of a great ordeal. It’s not every man who can take a spanking from his little sister and hold his head high.”
Mörget gave the old man a savage kick to the ribs. “You’re no favorite of the Great Chieftain anymore. Just another warrior, barely able to lift a blade. If you can fight, then stand. If not, I’ll take you on as my thrall.” Mörget wanted nothing more than to slaughter the scold where he lay. But the law was clear—scolds, even the scolds of dead chieftains, could not be killed for words. Only for treachery or for boring their audience.
Balint bent over the old man and stared into his face. “Where is Mörget’s sister? My master has unfinished business with her.”
“She’s there,” Hurlind said, gesturing vaguely toward the center of the camp. “Gathering her warriors. She said you were dead, Mountainslayer.”
Mörget kicked Hurlind again and hurried through the maze of tents. Even as he watched, more of them came down. Their poles were separated into pieces, their hides shaken wildly to clear off accumulated ice, then folded and shoved into packs.
Mörget grabbed the first man he saw and threw him into the snow. “Put that tent back up,” he commanded. The warrior just glared at him.
Enough. They would all obey him when he was named Great Chieftain. They would learn to fear him, one and all. He raced toward the thickest knot of activity, where horses were being loaded with gear and axes were being wiped down with animal fat to keep off the rust.
Mörget shoved his way through the milling warriors and thralls until he spied Mörgain sitting her horse in the very midst of the chaos.
She laughed bitterly to see him. “I like your new necklace,” she said, pointing at the coarse thread that held his throat together. Balint had been an indifferent seamstress, though she had saved Mörget’s life. “Perhaps I’ll give you a matching belt, after I cut you in half.”
“That might prove difficult, with a broken sword.” Mörget held up the shard of Fangbreaker until it blazed in the sun.
For a moment all the activity in the camp stopped. Men dropped their burdens, tents remained erect as their owners leaned on their poles.
Everyone wanted to see what happened next.
Mörgain’s horse whickered, perhaps sensing that anything—anything at all—could happen in the next moment. She patted the animal’s neck.
Mörget lifted Dawnbringer and struck its blade against the shard of metal in his hand. Light burst from his Ancient Blade, light brighter than the reflection of the sun. “I would continue our conversation,” he said.
The swordsmen of the West used the word conversation to describe the ringing back-and-forth of two blades engaged in combat. Every man listening got the joke. A few even chuckled.
Mörgain drew what remained of Fangbreaker. Though it was much shorter than Dawnbringer now, it was still broader and heavier. It looked more like a meat cleaver than a sword. But it was still more than capable of killing a man.
Especially one who had been mortally wounded the night before, and saved only by the ministrations of a clever dwarf.
Mörget took a step toward his sister. If this is how it ends, let it end, he thought. Let her slay me, and I will accept that my
wyrd
has run its course.
Yet it seemed his doom had further to take him.
With a look of supreme disgust, Mörgain put her broken sword back in its sheath. “Nothing would give me greater pleasure, brother. Yet I haven’t the time. My clans have spoken. We head east, to winter in Helstrow. Where we should have been all along. That was the wish of the Great Chieftain, after all, until you tricked him into coming here for no profit.”
“The Great Chieftain is dead,” Mörget pointed out. “His wishes—”
“His wishes remain our course, because he has not been replaced. No man unites the clans now. No man speaks for us all.”
“Call a conclave. Bring every chieftain forward. We will elect a new Great Chieftain here and now.”
There was a great cheering and acclaim from the gathered warriors—yet it was not unanimous. More than a few of the chieftains only stood tight-lipped and glaring.
“I think not,” Mörgain said. Her skull-painted face cracked in a wide grin. “You forget, my brother, that I am a chieftain myself. And a conclave cannot be called unless every chieftain agrees to attend. I refuse.”
A chorus of hissing and calls of cowardice fell on Mörgain like a salvo of arrows—but not every man joined in. She turned and gestured at her thralls. They sluggishly returned to their work, breaking down tents and packing horses. They were making ready to leave at once.
And there was nothing Mörget could do to stop them.
Ah, but there was one thing. He could officially challenge her. He could name her a coward. He could call on his own chieftains to fight Mörgain and her clans. He could make war on her.
Civil war—while the Army of Free Men camped not thirty miles away, and Ness stood looming over them, unconquered. Mörg the Wise would have had a good laugh at the very idea. It would take a leader of surpassing folly to even consider it.
Mörget’s
wyrd
thought it was exactly what he should do.
His sister looked down at him, waiting to see which way the wind would blow. She was ready come what may.
Mörget burned, his heart and his head already coming to blows inside him.
“You’re a fool if you don’t put that sword away,” Balint whispered up at him. “No man leads a nation with his cock hanging out of his trousers.”
She was right. Reason could make only one choice, and even bloodlust must bow to reason some of the time.
Mörget smiled down at Balint. Then he put Dawnbringer in its scabbard. He held onto the shard of Fangbreaker. It was his last badge of glory, the one thing Mörgain couldn’t take from him.
“How many clans ride with my sister?” he shouted.
Nearly a third of the chieftains gathered before Ness gave their names. Two thousand warriors and thralls would march with them.
That still left plenty of men loyal to Mörget. Far more than he needed to take the Free City. “When I’m done here, I’ll come for each of you. I won’t rest until you pay for this betrayal,” he said.
“You know where to find them,” Mörgain said. “Come to Helstrow and we’ll be waiting. That is, if you live through the winter.” Then she spurred her horse and rode off.
“Go,” Mörget said to the faithless chieftains who followed her. “Go hide from snow and wind behind a high wall, you cowards.” He watched and shouted abuse until the last man had taken to his heels, heading east along the road. Then he turned his face away from them and started for where Hurlind lay in the snow.
His rage demanded bloodshed. If he could not avenge himself on his sister, he would turn instead on the last of his father’s faithful retainers. He would kick Hurlind until he was given lawful provocation—and then he would carve the old man like a goose.
Before he could reach the scold, though, a peal of thunder rocked the earth and Mörget was thrown into the snow. Balint lay next to him, struggling to get up.
He looked at the walls of the city and saw a great pillar of smoke rising toward heaven. “What in the name of Mother Death just happened?” he demanded.
The dwarf looked where he pointed. “Perhaps they’ve decided if they can’t hold their city, they’d rather burn it down.”
“If I take Ness, only to find it a burned-out husk,” he said to her softly, “they will write songs about my folly. And I will never become Great Chieftain. You get that wall down.”
“Work’s going on apace, but you can’t hurry a shit or a siege,” Balint insisted.
“You can,” he told her, “when the option is having your belly slit and being dragged behind a horse by your bowels.” He grabbed her collar. The spikes dug into his hand until it bled. “You bring it down on the morrow. Use every man in this camp, force on them every pick, every shovel. Dig with your broken fingernails if you must. You bring that wall down before one more chieftain decides to follow my sister. Do it or I will use your defleshed skull as a codpiece.”
The vulgarity of his oath seemed to get her attention. She ran toward the mouth of the tunnels faster than he’d ever seen a dwarf move before.