The Black Prince: Part II (9 page)

Hart knew how other men saw him. And he made no excuse for what he was. He, like Rudolph, had made his choices. He knew too that in doing so, he hadn’t curtailed his freedom. He’d never been free. He’d merely changed one set of restrictions for another.

He wondered what Lissa was doing. The sun was fully above the horizon now, the light bright against the wall of his tent. He’d stayed up all night, waiting, while she was sleeping. Waiting, and watching. And wishing he was watching over her. Now she was rising, at home in Barghast. Not her home, truly, and not his; but the only place that had ever felt like home to either of them.

She’d be taking her bath, he supposed. Having breakfast. Helping Thomasina with whatever ridiculous new project she’d undertaken. Was she thinking of him?

That she might be seemed too good to be true. He wasn’t…a well man, and he knew that about himself. What most did not know, save Isla and perhaps one or two others, was that he never had been. In Enzie, he’d developed quite a reputation for hunting bandits. Indeed that he’d almost single-handedly kept the roads safe was a source of pride in him for everyone except his father. Who seemed to take even Hart’s most minor successes as personal insults. But what those who praised him hadn’t known was that he’d greatly enjoyed, not simply dispatching these outlaws to the Gods but catching, holding, and torturing them first.

Not always, of course. Sometimes doing so was impractical. But there was a strange kind of pressure that built up inside him, leaving him feeling as stretched and bloated as an overfilled bladder. One that would burst, unless the pressure was released.

He had rules. He didn’t hurt children. Or women. Not truly. Not beyond whatever minor pain might—in regard to the women—enhance his pleasure, and theirs. Back in Enzie, he hadn’t hunted those bandits with families to support. Most of them weren’t violent, anyway, cadging the occasional ham from a supply cart rather than engaging in open conflict. They were no true threat to the roads. A man who lost his dinner might lose his dignity, but if he was paying so little attention to it in the first place that the opportunity arose for it to be stolen, then he wasn’t going to starve without it.

So Hart let them have their hams, and feed their children. Not all who were declared outlaw were truly evil. Many had committed sins only in the eyes of the church, or theirs were the kinds of sins that Hart’s father feared: speaking out against injustice, demanding their fair share, and otherwise rising above their station. Besides, Hart knew full well that without a father most children would starve. Or be forced, as Lissa had been, into a life where starvation might even seem the better fate.

Hart courted, rather, those men who—in his opinion—courted death. Rapists. Kidnappers. Those who slew pilgrims. Those who, like him, needed blood. So he made himself death and came to them, teaching them the true nature of those delights they’d thought they wanted. What was a man, to give and not receive? Hart had known pain. Enough pain that no pain frightened him now.

Save perhaps one.

The first thing he was going to do, he decided, was build a proper barbican on that stupid little island. He wondered if the lord’s apartments were old style or new. He couldn’t have Lissa share his apartments but nor would he house her outside of the castle. Ideally there would be adjoining apartments. And, if there weren’t, he supposed he might have to create some. Nor did he intend to share his apartments with his wife. They could each have their private chamber. An allowance for which, he was certain, she’d be grateful.

He was engaged in these mostly pleasant thoughts, his eyes closed, when the flap of his tent burst open.

He sat bolt upright, his eyes wide and his hand on the hilt of his sword.

Arvid. “A surrender?” No clashing of swords filled the air, nor humming of arrows as they sped to their targets. There were no screams, no cries. Only the sounds of the camp. The castle hadn’t attacked. Although still might, at any moment. Hart wasn’t fool enough to believe that because they hadn’t, they couldn’t.

Arvid shook his head. “You’d better come with me.”

It couldn’t be serious, or Arvid wouldn’t look so hangdog. And he’d have his own sword out. Hart got up and, cursing the fact that he’d spent the last hour thinking instead of sleeping, followed the tribesman through the camp and into the line of trees that shaped its back quarter.

Where Rudolph was standing over the body of the knight, Dunkirk.

Dunkirk was most assuredly dead. He could not have been deader if he’d already lain in that spot for a week. His eyes, glazing, stared up at the sky. His arms and his legs stuck straight out from his body. His face and hands were pale and unless he’d favored unusually tight trousers, his legs had swollen.

Ignoring Rudolph, Hart knelt down and felt for the nonexistent pulse. Dunkirk’s mouth was slightly open, and a black fly landed on his lower lip. Black flies were thought by most to be the curse of spring but Hart rather liked them. The males fed mainly on nectar while the females fed on blood.

Deciding that there was nothing to find there, the bug hoisted its bloated, grotesque body into the air and was gone.

Dunkirk’s skin was still warm, but cooling.

“I didn’t do anything!” Rudolph protested. “He just…I went to find him, like you said, the other night. I asked him for a chit. Like you said. He still hadn’t given it to me and well, since there was nothing else to do and—I mean, since you asked—I went to find him again.

“He was just sitting here. And then he saw me, jumped up, and started yelling. Like was my fault that he only had one horse! He should have been
happy
with one horse.” Rudolph paused, caught his breath. “Anyway, then he started sweating. And then he started complaining that he had indigestion. And then he just—fell over.”

But Hart understood what had happened. He’d seen it before. The sweating. The vellum-pale skin. Both of which got worse when he flew into his sudden and irrational fits of rage. Rudolph was right; he hadn’t done this to Dunkirk. Dunkirk, he of the missing horse, had done it to himself.

Hart stood. Rudolph was still protesting. “Relax,” he said. “He died of heart failure.”

“Oh.” Rudolph grew still. Contemplative. A long minute passed, while Rudolph summed himself up to ask his next question. He swallowed. “Are you, I mean—are you certain? Because I thought, you know…the sweating.” He swallowed again. “I thought maybe it was plague.”

That was it.

Hart grabbed him by the shoulders. Rudolph looked like he might wet himself but Hart didn’t care. “Gods, man. You’re a genius.” And then, to Arvid and the other men surrounding them, “start cutting down trees.”

T
hey pushed the makeshift trebuchet up to the edge of the moat, using logs to roll it along. Rolling logs was, Arvid claimed, a game among the tribes. A stupid game, thought Hart. No more interesting than barrel racing or axe throwing or, Gods be merciful, dwarf hurling. But at least Arvid had the skill to direct the men and, so far, no one had lost a leg.

A thousand men at his disposal meant that the device had come together quickly. And they’d been working with a simple enough design: a rectangular frame formed the base, from which another frame rose at right angles. A tree trunk formed the throwing arm; attached to one end was a counterweight and, to the other, a sling.

The standard rule was that the counterweight should have at least a hundred times the weight of the intended projectile. The biggest and most powerful trebuchets had counterweights enclosed in boxes the size of a peasant’s hut. Hart didn’t have skilled carpenters at his disposal; he’d commandeered Dunkirk’s traveling trunks and filled them with rocks. They’d taken ten men each to lift. Hopefully they’d be enough. Hart didn’t care that his creation was ugly; only that it achieved its intended purpose.

Which was lying on the ground next to him.

A trebuchet wasn’t a quick fire weapon, like a longbow. It took a team of men to operate, all working in unison. With each command to
heave
, the arm was brought down. And down. Until the sling rested against the ground. A slight misstep and the counterweight would come crashing down, crushing those men attempting to load it. Then the arm was loosed to another command and the projectile flew as far as several hundred paces through the air.

The intended purpose to this feat of engineering was to breach walls.

But there was, Hart knew, more than one way to breach a wall.

He sent the same herald forward again to rouse the castellan’s attention. Or the earl’s. Or someone. Only today, unlike the previous day, plenty of eyes were already on him. They watched from between the crenellations on the battlements and undoubtedly through the arrow loops that served as windows, as well.

The same pair of heads appeared.

Hart strode forward.

“Behind me,” he said, “you see a red flag. Tomorrow’s flag is black.”

The castellan and his crony said nothing.

“Black signifies a promise. Behind me, too, is the means by which I intend to deliver that promise.”

At his signal, Arvid and one of the other men lifted up the wrapped cloak and let Dunkirk’s body tumble out. He landed face down, this time, but awkwardly. Rigor was already setting in and he no longer flopped, but bounced. He’d remain as stiff as a board for the next day or so, after which putrefaction would become apparent.

There was a collective gasp.

“Plague!” someone cried out.

“You have until tomorrow morning,” Hart said. “After which time, he joins you.”

He turned on his heel and retreated back up the bridge, feeling that same persistent itch between his shoulder blades. Right in the soft knot of flesh over his spine. But, like before, he refused to turn around.

It was a shame, really; if all went according to plan, then the trebuchet would never be more than an ornament. All that time, and all those materials, gone to waste. He supposed he might chop it up for firewood. He could hardly sit around admiring it into his dotage, on the chance that it might be used against him. How pleasantly surprised he would have been, to arrive at House Salm and find the means of its destruction waiting patiently outside the gates.

Rudolph was waiting for him at his tent. He followed Hart inside. He seemed, if anything, even more nervous than when he’d thought the unfortunate Dunkirk had expired of the plague.

Hart threw himself down on his pallet, determined to sleep.

Rudolph sat down in Hart’s chair. “But he doesn’t have the plague.”

Hart sighed. “But they don’t know that.”

Rudolph digested this apparently revelatory suggestion.

“They don’t know squat, except that he’s dead. And who’d be fool enough to claim they had plague, when they didn’t?”

“But, I mean, they’ll notice. That nobody else is sick.”

“No they won’t.” Hart turned his head, meeting Rudolph’s gaze. “Because while you and I are in here chatting, about a quarter of the men are digging graves. Another quarter are doing their very best to feign illness. Which shouldn’t be hard, as all that’s involved is lying about and doing nothing.”

“And you don’t think—whoever those people really are—are going to notice that they’re not sick?

“No.” Hart returned his gaze to the roof of the tent. “The power of suggestion is a powerful one indeed.”

He’d told them what to see and, because they were terrified, they would. Only the rare man who’d gained complete mastery over his emotions was capable of responding to a situation like this with reasoned study. And even such a man might be fooled, here. Plague was a common enough occurrence, in war. As was the use of plague victims. House Salm wouldn’t be the first stronghold decimated by contagion, delivered in just such a fashion.

He’d rest, and he’d wait, and then they’d see.

Rudolph was right about one thing: it wasn’t apparent who was in charge. If the earl was in there somewhere, hiding, or even if he was alive at all. Something was rotten at the core of House Salm; Hart just had to get inside to figure out what. And get inside he would. He’d claim his prize, and make himself a lord in more than fashion.

And he’d smile, then, when he thought of his father’s moldering corpse rolling over in its grave.

Chilperic was a far greater holding than Enzie had ever been, even at the height of its dubious glory. Hart had read about his family’s origins, including the occasional mention of its, ah, forcibly forgotten members that some unfortunate archivist had forgotten to remove. There had been a necromancer, once. And some miserable sort of person called George the Weak. Although Enzie had never been the most advantageous location to begin with, nor replete with the richest of resources, generation after generation had squandered its potential until there was none. His father, at the end of that line, had been the worst of them all.

He’d crowed over his inheritance just the same, some poor fool playing king for the day atop a pile of dung.

He’d thought Hart unworthy to inherit all that was his. But all that Hart had been denied, first in his childhood and then as a young man, he’d long since surpassed. Control over Chilperic would make him a wealthy man. And powerful. More powerful even than he’d grown in his own right, as the dreaded Viper of Barghast.