The Dread Wyrm (Traitor Son Cycle) (6 page)

“You are taking the precautions of war,” Count Zac said, somewhere between a protest and a query.

“Master Smythe made his views plain,” he said. “There’s a big force north of us, forming at the edge of the Adnacrags. We’re leaving the Empire and entering Alba. The sun has been warm long enough for every Outwaller in the world to have slipped south past Ticondaga. Right? We’re at war. When someone like Master Smythe gives you a warning, you’re a fool not to heed it.”

Their nods were uniform.

“Good. Let’s ride,” the captain said in his captain voice.

That voice relieved Sauce. The more he was Gabriel, the less she felt she knew him. She preferred the captain, with his steady arrogance and his adamantine self-assurance. Gabriel had entangling alliances that the captain didn’t have—a mother, a family, a set of alien obligations.

Sauce got her steel-clad leg over her riding saddle and waved at her squire, who had both her chargers. “Keep close,” she said. If the captain said war, it paid to listen.

The new trumpeter sounded a long call—the last summons. Ser Alison trotted her horse along the restless ranks of her ten lances, arrayed just outside the inn’s gates. Then she placed herself at their head and saluted the captain as he rode out with Ser Michael and the banner—three
lacs d’amour
in gold on black. Father Arnaud carried the banner today. The company was split into three, Sauce knew, and had new recruits in every lance, so that discipline had to be fiercer than usual and little things like saluting were suddenly important. The company’s gonfalonier, Ser Bescanon, was now the
primus pilus
, and few of the oldsters took well to his taking Bad Tom’s role. No new banner bearers had been appointed, and the company’s well-loved Saint Catherine was in Liviapolis with Ser Milus and the White Banda.

Behind the captain’s own extended lance—banner, trumpeter, his own
squire, Toby Pardieu, and his page, Nell, and his archer, Cully—came the lances of his household; Father Arnaud had acquired his own lance, with two squires and two pages—a popular man, for all that Sauce found him hard to talk to. Then Ser Francis Atcourt, with his squire, page, and pair of veteran archers. Then Angelo di Laternum, once Ser Jehan’s squire, now leading his own lance. The last two knights were magnificent in new armour that flashed in the sun; Chris Foliak, always a popinjay, and Ser Phillipe de Beause, who was a famous enough jouster to have his own invitation to the royal tournament. Behind them came the newest recruits—two gentlemen of Occitan, Ser Danved Lanval and Ser Bertran Stofal and their squires, pages and archers. Ser Danved was almost as wide as Ser Bertran was tall, but they were veteran lances from the south, and they were accounted fine jousters. Ser Danved had a loud voice that was almost always on offer—a contrast to his brother-in-arms, who was almost always silent.

The command lances were all in scarlet and gold, even the pages. The pages wore eastern turbans with plumes over their helmets, and had curved sabres, Etruscan steel breastplates, and hornbows. They rode fine eastern mares, small horses with elegant heads and endless enthusiasm.

The command lances reeked of opulence and military power. Sauce knew it was advertising, but in war, advertising paid off as well as it did in prostitution, and she laughed to think about the similarities between her first profession and her second.

The command lances turned sharply off the road after trotting out of the gate and formed from column into line facing her across the road. The captain caught her eye and smiled. She saluted again with her sword.

Count Zac cantered across her vision, beautifully intercepting his troop of Vardariotes, two dozen steppe nomads who were at least two thousand leagues from home and two hundred from their barracks at Liviapolis. Sauce had no idea what bargain the captain had struck with the Emperor, but it had included the loan of her lover, and she thanked him silently, even if the man was being an arse this morning.

Zac looked at her, horse perfectly collected under him as he passed as if in review in front of the captain. He had the golden mace of his imperial authority in his fist, and he used it to salute the captain, and then he turned and flashed her one of his wide-open grins.

She relaxed. She hadn’t realized how much their spat had put her on edge, but as soon as she relaxed, she mocked herself inwardly for allowing a man—any man—to dictate anything to her.

Count Zac and his troop wore the scarlet and gold of the imperial livery. For the first time, Sauce noted that, since the captain had added gold to his own livery, his command lances matched the imperial livery.

She frowned.

Ser Michael’s lances—he commanded eight of them, this trip—appeared next. He had the bulk of the new recruits, and some men, even
men-at-arms and knights, didn’t have their scarlet yet. They were out of scarlet cloth, and only the fair at Lissen Carak or the shops of Harndon would improve their lot. But they still made a brave sight—twenty men-at-arms and as many archers and pages, although Sauce could see some awkward young men and a shockingly slim young woman who lacked a saddle, an arming coat, or even a sword. She had a bow over her shoulder and she rode barefoot.

“Who’s the trull?” Sauce asked without turning her head.

Ser Christos—a Morean veteran with enough experience to lead an army, who’d been assigned to her, a man who’d actually wounded Bad Tom in single combat—grunted. “You should see her shoot,” he said. “I didn’t catch her name.” His Alban was halting but coming along, and his tone was confiding but respectful. He’d given her no trouble and in fact, despite his odd accent and weird views on religion, was like an old veteran and not a new recruit, so she turned in her saddle and gave him a gap-toothed smile. “Someone should get her some kit,” she said.

Mag had rolled her slab-sided wagon to the edge of the road, at the head of twenty such. She leaned down. “We’re out of everything,” she said. “And I mean, everything.”

Sauce was watching Ser Gavin’s lances pass by. They were well-ordered. Ser Gavin had mostly Albans, and he’d picked up four new lances at the inn, young men in search of “adventure.” So his troop also looked like a patchwork quilt of unmatched horses and mixed armour.

Ser Dagon had veterans, too, and his men looked worn and able, at least to a professional eye. Not a buckle out of place, and most of the brass and bronze polished, after a night of heavy drinking. For Sauce’s money, the apparently indolent Ser Dagon was a more natural choice for
primus pilus
and she was still puzzled that the captain had given Bad Tom’s job to the former captain of the Emperor’s mercenaries, an Occitan knight who hadn’t had any great reputation in the Emperor’s service and whose company Bad Tom had wrecked in a single charge. But as the Occitan knight’s lances came down the road, Sauce had to admit they looked good, and the man knew all the Archaic war manuals that the captain worshipped as other men worshipped… well, the Bible. The Occitan knight’s men rode matched bays, every one of them, knight, page or archer. Almost all of them had scarlet arming coats or at least temporary surcoats, and their metal was all well-polished.

Ser Alison looked back at her own. She had a mixed bag. The Moreans liked her—they’d nicknamed her “Minerva” and none of them gave her any crap, and her Morean Archaic was native. So she had more men-at-arms with worse equipment but excellent drill. She needed to come up with a great deal of gold to pay for a hell of a lot of new harness.

But they were good men and women, and they were hers. The last fight had promoted her to sub-contractor—she now hired her own lances and
took a bigger cut, instead of merely working for the captain as a junior officer. Short of having her own company, she had arrived.

She grinned. The sun was shining, and she was a knight. She still had her sword in her hand from saluting the captain and the banner, and she turned her riding horse and waved her sword like some knight of romance. “On me!” she called.

Her knights and their lances filed off from the right, enveloping Mag’s wagons between two long files of fighters. As soon as they were clear of the stone-wall-lined roads through the endless sheep and cattle pens—all full of the drove—she raised one gauntleted hand over her head and moved it in a circle, and her pages left the column to rove over the countryside alongside the column, east and west.

That always gave her joy—a mere hand motion, and thirty people sprang into action.

Sauce herself trotted alongside Mag’s wagon. Her riding horse didn’t quite bring her level with the head woman.

“All done,” Mag said, biting off her thread with sharp teeth. “And now I don’t have any more scarlet silk twist, either.”

Sauce smiled. “Thanks, Mag. It’s beautiful. Your work is always beautiful.” She handed her coat back to Robin, who turned his horse and went back along the column to put the precious garment safely in a pannier.

Mag smiled, looking both tired and old. “Thanks, dear.” She shrugged. “I was making something, and now—”

Sauce knew that she’d lost her man—Ser John le Baillie. One of the best of the men. Only a middling warrior, but patient and good at almost everything. She’d liked John, who’d never given her any shit. Unlike many men.

“Have you misplaced it?” Sauce asked.

Mag shook her head. “I’ve lost interest in it,” she said. “I was making John a nice pourpoint. Like yours.”

“Oh,” said Sauce. She felt foolish. Mag was as well armoured as the captain, in her own way. She never gave out much of her feelings, which Sauce rather liked.

Sauce tried to change the subject. “Have you noticed the captain’s got his household in the imperial colours?” she asked.

Mag laughed. “Noticed? I cut the cloth, Sauce.” She smiled. “Cloth of gold. Sometimes I find all this a little hard to believe.”

“Me, too,” Sauce allowed.

They rattled along for half a league. For all their late start, it was a beautiful day. Behind them, the Green Hills rolled away to the north, with Mons Draconis rising to the north-east, its volcanic cone appearing soft in the middle distance and out of proportion to the rolling downs on either hand.

But ahead, like a wall across their path, stood the forest. It didn’t mark the edge of the Wyrm’s circle, which was a good deal farther on, but it did mark the border of the Wild. Morea was old, and settled, and the hand of man lay
heavily there, but to the west of the vales of the Green Hills the woods grew tall and old, and despite the royal roads, a squirrel could leap from tree to tree from the wood line ahead all the way to the northern end of the Adnacrags or west to well past the wall where it came south of the inner sea.

“Hard to think that all this was ours once,” Sauce said.

Mag was coming home to her own country, but she nodded. “Certes,” she said. “When I was a girl, we used to play knights and monsters in the old shielings behind our house. A travelling friar told me they were part of a town—a really big town. All this was farms, once. Men lived here.”

The trees ahead were as tall as church spires. “That was a long time ago,” Sauce said.

“Aye,” Mag admitted. “Two hundred years and more before Chevin was fought.”

“There’s now as much Wild inside the wall as outside,” Sauce went on.

Mag nodded. “I heard there’s as many folk living in the Wild as in the civilized lands,” she said. “The Wyrm—Master Smythe as is—said something to the point.” She smiled at Sauce. “So what’s the Wild? If’n folk live there? And what’s civilized?”

Sauce, who’d grown up as a whore, didn’t need that comment explained at all.

Because it was early spring, many of the trees were still bare, although there was a sort of green haze over the distant woods that suggested growth and budding. And there was no dust. The royal road under their hooves and wheels was stone. Sometimes it washed out and had to be repaired, and some of the patches could crumble but mostly it was hundreds of leagues of flat, straight road, wide enough for two wagons abreast.

Behind them on the road came the Drover’s household, a dozen mounted carls with heavy axes on their shoulders. Thanks to Tom, they rode instead of walked. They wore full mail and gleaming helmets, some of apparently eldritch design with tall peaks and long bills and scallops and whorls. Hillmen were much given to display. Gold glinted from their belts and harnesses.

Bad Tom made no move to ride up and join either Sauce or Mag.

“You going to speak to Tom about your Sukey?” Sauce asked.

“No,” Mag said, in a tone that suggested that no further discussion needed to be had on that subject.

Sauce considered riding out and inspecting her outriders.

She tried a different approach. “You ever consider what the captain’s actually after?” she asked Mag.

Mag smiled. It was her warmest smile of the day so far. “Yes,” she said softly. “All the time.”

Sauce shook her head ruefully. “I just want it to go on and on. Adventure after adventure. But he’s after somewhat, ain’t he?”

Mag nodded. “Yes, dear.”

Sauce turned and looked at the older woman. “Don’t patronize me,” she spat.

Mag rolled her eyes. “No. Sorry, sweet. But none of you think about it much. You just swing your swords and ride on, don’t you?” She looked north. “He’s made himself the Duke of Thrake.”

“But that’s not for real.” Sauce looked up at the older woman. “He’s not going to sit at Lonika and administer justice and be a great lord, is he?” In fact, she realized, she’d watched him do so for five days after the battle at the crossroads. As if he’d been born to it.

Which, of course, he had.

“Shit,” she said aloud.

“I think it is for real,” Mag said. “I think he’s made two fortunes in three years, and then he’s added a great principality which will, at least for a few years, pay his taxes—a steady income so great I can’t really imagine how much money he’ll have. And he sank his claws into the fur trade. He’s getting a tithe on the imperial tax on furs. He and his father now—literally—own the entire border with the Wild.”

“He hates his father,” Sauce said.

Mag looked interested. Everyone in the company knew that Sauce went way back with the captain, but few had the spirit to question her.