The Falcon Throne (The Tarnished Crown Series) (83 page)

But there was better news waiting for them in the manor house study. Scarwid’s heir, Rufier, had arrived, along with two other northern lords.

“Your Grace,” Rufier said, bowing. “My father tenders regrets for his absence. His recent infirmity keeps him from the saddle. But I have
answered your call in his stead, and hold some one hundred men quartered just over the Marches border.”

Roric felt a little of his twisting tension ease. “That’s heartening to hear. Your family has ever served Clemen with honour.”

“Lord Aistan is on his way with near twice that strength of sword.”

“To arrive when?”

Rufier shook his head. “I’m sorry, Your Grace. I can’t say for sure. Two or three days, perhaps?”

“Serril and I between us hold near ninety more men-at-arms, Your Grace,” Welden of Stony Bridge said, standing with his neighbour. “Add our swords to Rufier’s, and to those wielded by Lord Humbert’s Marcher men-at-arms, and we’ll pose a threat not to be discounted.”

He forced a smile. “True.”

“I’m grieved the number’s not greater,” Welden said, frowning. “But alas—” He spread his calloused hands wide. “Here in the north we lost many good men to plague and black-lung, and some to slavery too. Finding men to train in their places has been tricky.”

“And as you know, Your Grace,” Serril said, his round, bearded face pleated anxious, “we keep your peace in northern Clemen, and have done for years. There’s been no need for barracks tumbled full of men.” A sharp glance at Humbert. “Or there hasn’t been. So we thought.”

“Cast no dark looks at Humbert,” Roric said, as his foster-lord jutted his beard. “No duke was better served by his Marcher lord than I am by Humbert. Balfre’s made sure to keep his daggered intentions well secret.”

The three northern lords murmured apologetic understanding. But watching them closely, he caught an undercurrent of doubt. So, was Humbert proven right yet again? Had Balfre’s lies about a treacherous bargain struck with Clemen’s duke spread beyond the Marches?

“My lords,” he said, resting his hand on the hilt of his dagger, sheathed at his hip. “With Eaglerock so far away, and your daily business keeping you for the most part in the north, we do not know each other well. To you and others like you, I’m a signet ring pressed into wax. A crudely etched face stamped into a coin. So let me share this much of myself. Whatever rumours you might have heard of clandestine dealings with Harcia, know them to be rank falsehood. I stand before you prepared to die in Clemen’s defence.”

Rufier, who looked older than his twenty years, flushed beneath his reddish, barbered beard. “Your Grace, I pay no heed to rumour. I grew
to manhood hearing my father speak of you with naught but love. You have his undying loyalty, and mine.”

“And ours,” Welden said swiftly, his hand touching Serril’s shoulder. They were both older than Rufier by roughly ten years, seasoned men who, like most lords in Clemen, had only ever played at war. “Your Grace, I’d ask you not to mistake our natural dread in your presence for a lack of respect–or any misgivings.”

“His Grace is glad to hear it,” Humbert growled, unimpressed. “My lords, you’re welcome to a bed for the night. But come the morning you’ll need to ride back over the border and fetch your men here.” He turned. “Egann–play the host, man. See these good lords settled.”

Roric kept his temper in check until he and his foster-lord stood alone in the study. “
Humbert!
What—”

“Pardon, Your Grace, pardon,” Humbert said, lifting both hands. “But whatever wrangling we must do I’d rather those chumbles weren’t witness to it.”

“And what makes you think we must—”

Humbert’s beard was jutting again, his eyebrows raised high. “Well, you were about to send them back to their men and order them to hold fast across the border till Balfre drew first blood, yes?”

“And if I was?”

“You’d be mistaken.”

“The mistake, my lord, would be in provoking Harcia with a flood of Clemen swords. Fright the Harcian Marches with these lords’ men and we give Balfre an excuse to blame the ensuing bloodshed on us!”

“
Roric!
When will you grasp it? Aimery’s cockshite son
has
his excuse! He’s made it up out of whole cloth and stitched it into a doublet he wears even now. And you know as well as I do that without those lords and their men is
no
hope we can break Balfre here in the Marches.” He tugged at his beard. “I can only cross fingers that Aistan and his swords arrive in time.”

Because if they didn’t, Clemen would be lost with scarcely a blow being struck. The thought of that burned.

“It can’t end like this, Humbert. Not after all we’ve fought for. All we’ve lost.”

“It’ll end as it ends, boy. All we can do is defend Clemen with what we have.”

A terrible sorrow welled. “Our poor duchy. What it’s suffered. I should have been a better duke.”

“Cockshite and codswallop!” Humbert growled. “Take pizzling thoughts like that into battle with you, Roric, and you’ll be dead before your sword’s out of its scabbard. Go and soak your head a while. Drown that maggoty doubt. We’ve supper to eat, and strategies to talk over with Scarwid’s boy and the other two, and the last thing they need is a duke lost to moping.”

Roric rubbed his tired eyes. And there was Humbert in a nutshell. A handful of days only, they’d been back in each other’s company. And yet he was ordering his duke about, foster-lord to squire, as though nothing had changed. As though there’d been no Lindara. No Vidar. No dead, deformed babe. As though Harald yet lived, and Liam, and Argante, and all
he
was, or could ever hope to be, was the bastard cousin of Clemen’s hated duke.

A powerful man, Humbert. Not always admirable. A man who’d used his power to help and to hurt. Loving him was hard. And it was harder still to forgive him–or to know if forgiveness had been earned, or was even deserved.

But then… couldn’t he say the same of himself? Humbert wasn’t the only one to make mistakes.

“Roric,” Humbert said, his voice gentled, “stop fretting. You’ve done all you can.”

“You know I haven’t. I could’ve disregarded Aistan and Ercole’s advice. The months I’ve spent with the travelling courts, in disputations, inventing new laws, new taxes, strangling unrest, seeking remedies for our empty coffers–if I’d spent that time preparing Clemen for war—”

“You’d have convinced Aimery that Clemen was a danger to Harcia. Had him thinking we meant to declare war against him–with Balfre urging him on.”

“So you’re saying there was
never
any hope for peace?”

Humbert smoothed his disordered beard. “If I’ve learned nothing else in these Marches, it’s that Balfre’s a belligerent fuck eager to wage war on Clemen. And there’s not one shiting thing you or I or any man alive or dead could’ve done to prevent him from getting his way. Which means yes, Roric. Peace was always a pipe dream.”

“You truly believe that.”

“I do.
And
I believe that’s enough philosophy for one night.” Humbert crossed to the study door. Opened it, and stood back. “Now, boy, you might not be hungry but I’m ready to chew the hind end off a donkey. So. After you Your Grace.”

Surprising himself, Roric laughed. And then he did as he was told, and led the way out of the study.

Creeping barefoot out of the snoring barracks, leaving Benedikt a huddled lump beneath the blankets, Liam made his stealthy way past the stables and the armoury to the fringe of old elm trees hemming the tilt yard’s far edge. The air was cool, the moonlight meagre. Owls hooted softly from the depths of the nearby woodland. A horse whickered. A fox barked. Familiar night sounds. No need for alarm.

Berold’s ring was hidden in a knothole between two branches halfway up the fourth elm tree from the left. After a childhood of tree-climbing in the Pig Whistle’s home wood, Liam scaled the elm’s trunk without needing to think. Found finger and toeholds by instinct, feeling the rasp of dry bark against his bare soles and palms like a friend’s touch. His reaching fingers found the ring, strung on its strip of leather and wrapped in muslin and burlap, thrust deep into the slowly rotting knothole. Relief had him closing his eyes, just for a moment. It had been a risk, hiding the proof of his birthright in a tree but he’d had no choice. Wearing it in the barracks was impossible and he’d needed to keep it close so that when the time came, he could easily retrieve it.

And that time was upon him. An advance rider had come in from Harcia just before lights out. In a few hours Balfre would be returned to the Marches, with Waymon and more Harcian lords and hundreds of blood-hungry men-at-arms. Humbert and his few men, they’d be swept away like twigs in a flooded creek. And after that it would be Roric’s turn. There was nowhere in Clemen the murdering bastard could hide where he’d not be found and killed. By himself. By Balfre. By some unwitting man-at-arms. In the end it was all the same. One way or another, Duke Harald would be avenged.

Grinning in the darkness, Liam unwrapped his ring, shoved its cloth wrappings back into the knothole, then slipped it over his head on its old bootlace. Tucked under his shirt, it rested against his chest–a promise of the greatness he was destined to achieve.

He climbed down the tree, neat as a cat. Turned to shadow-slip his way back to the barracks before he was missed–and was struck by a thought that nailed his bare feet to the chilly, damp grass.

Balfre might be duke of Harcia. He might command a thousand men-at-arms, or more. Have the power of life and death over every baron in his duchy, every baker, every whore. And though he believed that in
riding to ruin Roric and claim Clemen he served no man but himself–he was wrong.

Everything Balfre does will help put me on the Falcon Throne. So even though he thinks he commands me, it’s really me who commands him. His army is my army. His war is my war. And victory, when it comes, it won’t be his. It’ll be mine
.

He slapped his hand over his mouth, to stop himself from laughing. And then he crept back to the barracks, unseen. Slid beneath the blankets on his cot, unnoticed. And fell into a light slumber imagining the look on Benedikt’s face when he told his brother the joke.

Four hours after Balfre’s tumultuous dawn return to the Harcian Marches, so many lords and men-at-arms to batter Humbert and his men that the barracks grounds spilled over and horse-lines were set up in the woods, word came from the serjeants riding the Marches’ open roads that several score of men-at-arms had crossed the Clemen border.

A final, frantic whetstone honing of sword and dagger. Horses saddled and bridled, their shoes hammered tight. Men-at-arms rallied, formed into patrols and assigned to a lord or shouting serjeant. Each man given a bold red linen sash to tie across his body, because the Harcian Marches now overflowed with unfamiliar faces.

Encased in mail and boiled leather, lethally sharpened sword and dagger strapped to his side, and surrounded by countless other dangerous men, Liam sat his horse beside Benedikt, out in front of Balfre’s manor house, and watched Balfre and Waymon confer with a half-dozen other Harcian lords and his Marcher serjeants. Shining in gold-chased silver armour over black mail, Harcia’s new duke looked confident, his gestures emphatic and unhesitating as he gave his orders. Nothing about him suggested he expected anything less than victory or hinted at grief for his dead father.

Under cover of the muttering men around them, Benedikt leaned close. “Ye be all right, Willem?”

They’d been ordered to follow Serjeant Eadin in their skirmishing against Clemen. A stroke of luck, that. Eadin was a feggity man, easy to give the slip. And no matter what Balfre planned, that was
their
plan: to slip out of the Harcian Marches first chance and go ahunting of Lord Humbert in his own back yard. That would be easy too. Growing up in the Pig Whistle, they’d run loose on both sides of the Marches more than any other man-at-arms in Balfre’s service. Not even Serjeant Grule knew
the Clemen Marches’ nooks and crannies as well as they did. Likely they’d have to risk themselves fighting for a while, but that was fine. He weren’t fretted. Him and Benedikt, they knew which end of a sword was which, these days. Hadn’t Grule often praised them on their sword-play since they’d joined Balfre’s barracks? Hadn’t they already survived skirmishing with Clemen more than once?

He grinned at his brother. “I be rosy, Benedikt. You?”

“Rosy enough,” Benedikt said, running a finger round the throttling neck of the mail beneath his leather jack. “But I’ll be glad to get started.”

And so would he.

Their wish was granted soon enough. At Balfre’s command the huddle of lords and serjeants broke apart. As they went about mounting their horses, Balfre’s destrier was brought to him by a liveried squire. A magnificent beast, black as pitch, with a bloody flame of rage in its eyes. Balfre swung himself into its saddle with enviable ease and pranced the animal closer to his gathered men-at-arms so he might be more easily heard. Harcia’s duke lifted a gauntleted hand, and all the muttering conversation in the ranks ceased.

“Faithful servants of Harcia,” he said, his raised voice carrying clearly beneath the lightly clouded spring sky. “I have but two words for you before we ride out to crush treacherous, warmongering Clemen, whose lies and deceit hastened the great Aimery’s death.
No mercy!
”

His eager men-at-arms took up the cry. “
No mercy! No mercy! Avenge Aimery! No mercy!
”

“
No mercy!
” Liam shouted, thinking of Roric and of Humbert, who’d helped put the murdering bastard on his throne. He glanced sideways at his brother, lustily shouting with the rest. Caught Benedikt’s eye and laughed, feeling his horse quiver with stirred excitement, and his own hot blood rise. “
No mercy!
”

Balfre’s warhorse reared once, hooves raking the air. Then the serjeants joined their assigned men-at-arms, and Waymon and the other Harcian lords, their armour far short of Balfre’s splendour, fell in behind their duke as he spurred his destrier into a knee-snapping prance and led them, and his men-at-arms, towards the manor house gates.