The Black Prince: Part II (8 page)

T
he morning had dawned crisp and clear. The rain had stopped. They’d had an easy march over the crest of the hill and down to House Salm, a square castle enclosed by a square moat.

The natural discharge from the canyon had been diverted into what looked, with its right angles, like nothing so much as an overgrown garden pond. The scout had been right about its distance from the walls, although the water stretched for closer to ten paces in either direction. Ten paces, seventy-five hands. The water lapped against dressed stone, rather than mud.

What kept the moat filled, Hart guessed, was its depth and the fact that the enclosure acted like a dam. A man couldn’t wade. Even the tallest man would have to swim. He wondered where the downstream outlet, or outlets were. And supposed he’d find out. Eventually.

One way or another.

Rising from the water were walls cut from the same stone as those supporting the moat. A pale yellowish color, unlike the leaden gray that so characterized Barghast. Round towers stood sentinel at each of the four corners, with square towers bisecting the walls between. The tops of the towers, and the walls, were crenellated. A glorious place for archers, this House Salm.

The main gate was flanked by the two most impressive towers of them all, their decoration simple but intimidating. Here the crenellations were buttressed into overhangs, giving the defenders excellent access to whomever might come over the bridge. There was a garrison in those gatehouses, he knew. Watching them. There should have been members of that garrison on the wall between the towers, guarding the gate. But there wasn’t. Hart saw no one.

“Brother.” Arvid spoke quietly, his words for Hart alone. “Are they all dead of plague?”

Hart wondered.

The first part of the bridge was wood. Which was unfortunate. Wood, however lovingly crafted into whatever shape, burned. Then there was a sort of small island, perfectly round, from which a jetty projected. To that jetty, the drawbridge presumably connected. When it was down.

No pennants flew.

“We have to send a herald.”

“I’ll go.”

Hart glanced at Rudolph. “No.”

“But I can—”

“You can. Your horse can. But I’ll not see you feathered just yet. You’re worth more to me than a horse or, indeed, one of these pissing fool Southrons. And you’re certainly worth more to my sister.”

“But.” Rudolph’s voice was timid. “I’m a Southron.”

Arvid clapped him on the back, hard enough to send him sprawling. “Don’t insult yourself, little girl-man.”

It seemed so strange that they were, the three of them, joking before the enemy’s gates as though they were having a picnic. But what else was there to do? They might as well have been alone. Might indeed be alone, if Arvid’s supposition were right. Behind them, their own men waited. And from them, eventually, a herald was produced. Whatever they’d all expected, it wasn’t this; and the herald looked equally confused.

He was given his instructions and, minutes later, began his lonely journey across the bridge.

Hart had been fully prepared for a number of contingencies. Had spent sleepless night after sleepless night in a fury of self-recrimination for not having prepared for more. Even though doing so had been impossible. He’d formed any number of plans in his mind and discarded them, the best plan so far being one that he’d only half formed and hadn’t even shared with Arvid.

But the further he’d come, the less reality had conformed to his expectations.

And the more concerned he’d become.

There should have been patrols, or at least scouts. Just as a matter of course. Hart would have sent them out on a regular basis, in his enemy’s shoes, so as not to become a sitting duck in his own hall. But even without some sort of intelligence gathering program in place, these dimwits should have known that a thousand men were encroaching on their position. A thousand men were hard to hide.

Hart had expected them, for days now and certainly all night last night, to strike first: to fire the supply carts, to sow chaos. Anything to weaken them before they reached House Salm. To reduce their threat, even if only by reducing their morale.

And, arriving literally on his enemy’s doorstep, he’d expected a hail of arrows.

He hadn’t come under a flag of truce; he hadn’t given the earl or any of his men any reason to believe that parley was even an option.

The herald stopped, raised his horn and blew. Then he spoke. “In the name of King Piers, by the grace of the Gods, of Morven, Weryon, and the Southern Isles, defender of justice, Lord Hart of Caer Addanc, brother to the king and with the backing of the king’s army, declares that this house and lands are forfeit for treason. He further demands that the gate be opened so those within can face justice. The king is merciful. Long live the king!”

Hart, for his part, stared straight ahead. Looking, he knew, every inch the Viper of which so many Southrons had been warned. Arvid, beside him, did the same. The herald’s address had been impressive. He’d conjured it up, as they all did, from his own imagination. Taking the basic facts and weaving them into something quite poetic.

Hart wasn’t a knight. And he wasn’t a lord. Yet. Save by virtue of his connection to the king, through Isla. Which afforded him that style. But Southrons needed titles. Those inside might be drinking their own urine for survival and sharing a single crust of bread between them, but they’d never surrender to a man without one. Even if they wanted to. They’d sit about debating the cost to their collective honor until they’d literally expired in their chairs.

“Lord Hart,” the herald continued, “because he is equally as beneficent, offers the chance to parley. Whoever emerges under the white flag, and approaches the parley tent, shall not be harmed.”

Nothing.

The parley tent was Hart’s tent, a simple thing constructed from wooden poles and white canvas.

There was still no response of any kind from the castle, for some time, until finally a pair of heads appeared, above the gate. Hart couldn’t hear what they were saying but, from their body language, they appeared to be fighting. With each other. Gods. One cuffed his fellow on the side of the head and the other must have kneed him in the groin in retribution, for he suddenly bent double.

Two men.

No guards.

This was surreal.

One of them finally seemed to gain the upper hand, and began shouting. “We would speak with Lord Hart, and hear these words from him!”

“Don’t be daft,” said the other. He was addressing his companion, but his voice carried quite clearly across the water. “He’s not a lord. He’s some sort of peasant! We shouldn’t listen to him.”

“I can scarce believe my ears, brother.”

Hart could.

He strode forward. Let them see that he was not afraid. That he would not cower in the shadows.

He looked up. The pair of heads, so far above, were as small as a pair of harpaston balls. And indeed he felt as though he were playing harpaston: a brutal game characterized only by its glaring lack of rules. A favorite of Asher’s, he knew; his nephew enjoyed kicking around the ball and hollering like a madman or, sometimes, simply picking it up and charging across whatever boundary had been set up as the goal line.

“Whom do I address?”

“The castellan,” said the first head. The second head didn’t deign to respond.

“My herald speaks truth. I represent the king and the king’s justice, and I am here to request your surrender.”

“Preposterous!”

The second man, who still hadn’t revealed either his name or position, was flustered. Hart, meanwhile, was the soul of calm. He wanted these men, and all who watched him from the windows, to see just how confident he was. In himself, in his army, and in the king. He stood before them, exposed. Without armor. Without protection of any kind, save for the justice he brought.

“You have three days,” he said.

“What?”

“Today is the first day. I shall raise a white flag above the parley tent, indicating my and the king’s willingness to accept a peaceful surrender. Through this day, until sunrise tomorrow, none inside the castle shall be harmed. All shall receive a pardon and be free, thereafter, to go—or remain—in peace.

“If no surrender is forthcoming, then come tomorrow’s dawn I shall raise a second flag. A red flag. After this point, when I breach your walls, the men will be killed. But I, because I am the soul of mercy and because the king is the soul of mercy, shall spare the women and children.”

He paused.

“On the third morning, all within shall rise to see a black flag. Thus signifying that you have exhausted my mercy. And the king’s. All within shall perish. My men are thirsty for vengeance,” he added. “I restrain them now, out of the writ that I come to enforce. But on the third day, and in the days to come, I shall not. Because on the third day I declare you outlaw.”

The king’s justice was only for citizens. Let them throw away their citizenship and let them throw away its privileges. Hart didn’t care. He turned and, without further word, walked back across the bridge. Toward his camp. Toward his tent. Where he would wait.

He didn’t turn. Refused to give his enemies even that small satisfaction. But during the whole of that walk, the longest of his life, the spot between his shoulder blades itched.

T
he night passed without incident.

Watch fires blazed on the ramparts and before them, Hart saw the shadows of men. So the castellan and his crony weren’t alone in there. There had still been no sign of the earl, though, nor of his son. Balzac, whose man had disemboweled Hart in the mountains. Hart hadn’t asked where they were, because doing so would indicate a lack in his own intelligence. Let them think him omniscient.

He’d waited but, to no one’s surprise, there had been no surrender. Neither had there been an offer of parley. House Salm, he could only conclude, hadn’t read its history books.

The flags had been part of that kernel of an idea. In his nights alone at Caer Addanc, he’d grown fond of reading about a certain leader from the East. A man by the name of Temujin the Great, whose father had been killed by political rivals when he was only nine. After which he, his mother, and his six siblings had been expelled from their village and forced to survive on forage.

Temujin had taken a wife after killing her brother in a dispute over food. But most of the chronicles claimed that she loved him. But if her life with her brother had been difficult, her life with her new husband was hardly better; they were kidnapped, together, and forced into slavery by those same political rivals who’d killed his father. Somehow, though, within a handful of years he’d emerged as the leader of his kidnappers. And his conquests began.

Those initial conquests had been backed by little in the way of resources. Temujn was young and, at in the beginning, without much support. But he’d faced the same problem that Hart had, that all conquerors had: he had to eat. His men had to eat. His animals had to eat. It was he who’d developed the flag system, understanding full well that the mind would win where the sword failed.

The first few cities didn’t surrender.

The rest did.

Hart could only hope that those inside the walls would grow more imaginative.

The sun rose, as he watched, along with the red flag.

He retreated into his tent, to rest. There was nothing to do
but
rest. What he would not let others see, though, was any hint of impatience. Let them think that this, to him, was like any other day. Let them think, as so many already did, that ice filled his veins.

He laid down on the pallet that passed for his bed, his hands behind his head. He’d left his boots on. War, he concluded, was a thousand thousand minutes of purest boredom punctuated by the occasional minute of purest terror.

He hadn’t revealed this, even to Arvid, but he truly didn’t know what would happen next. His idea was still in the germination phase had only so far grown to include, in conjunction with the flags, do something vaguely threatening that would simultaneously communicate the seriousness of his intentions and leave them quaking in their boots.

He’d told Rudolph that truly brave men were always afraid, in times like these. But a good leader was the only one who knew that he was. Although the truth was that Hart didn’t precisely know how he felt.

Other than tired.

Rudolph, he had to remind himself, was a child. A child who’d had the chance to marry whomever he wanted and had squandered it. Not because he didn’t care, as some might be tempted to assume, but because he cared too much. About what his mother would think. And his father. And his betrothed. And the church. So he’d tried to make the best of what he must have realized, some time ago, was a bad situation. Thinking he was achieving some arbitrary standard of
the right thing
.

While thinking, too, that he had no right to decide the matter for himself. Men like Rudolph grew up not knowing that
right
was a mutable concept. In Hart’s experience, all men were trying to do the right thing. If you asked them. They merely disagreed on what that was.