The Fell Sword (12 page)

Abblemont had suggested that the merchant mention this. The King was just dipping his folding silver spoon into the honey again – he looked up, and his eyebrows arched. ‘You’ve seen one?’ he asked.

‘That I have, Your Grace. And a gryphon or some such creature of evil omen on the wing – far to the south of me on one of their inland seas, but I swear on my hope of heaven it was no bird. And the beaver—’

The King rubbed the fur with his thumb. It was as soft as plush, and deep, and curiously warm. ‘Superb,’ he said.

De Marche nodded. ‘We could own the trade,’ he said. ‘All these things are a mere curiosity for the Emperor. For us—’

The King’s eyes went to a great roll of hide – a stag or hind, tanned carefully, and with a chart drawn on it. ‘I never really saw the shape of Nova Terra before,’ he said quietly. ‘So the Emperor has Alba to his west and these Outwallers to his north.’

‘Technically, the Kingdom of Alba is a part of the Empire,’ Abblemont said.

‘Technically, the Kingdom of Galle is part of the Empire of Ruhm,’ the King snapped back. ‘And the current Emperor in Liviapolis claims to be my suzerain, by some absurd quibble of history.’

In fact, the quibble was hardly absurd or historical – every man present knew the strength of the Emperor’s claim on paper. And the weakness of his armies to enforce it.

But Abblemont was the only one there who was permitted to directly dispute his word, and that was a chancy business at the best of times. Further, as it happened, Abblemont agreed with his sovereign that it was time for Galle to rule others, and cease to be ruled. So rather than suggest that the Emperor might have a point – that the King’s own father had kissed the Emperor’s red boots and sworn his fealty – Abblemont leaned back in his chair and said, ‘Trade with the tribes north of the Wall would give us new products to tax, increase trade with the south and put us in a position to – hmm – let us say to
influence
the wild impulses of the heathen Outwallers.’

‘Convert them to the true faith?’ asked the Marshal.

If you define the true faith as a willingness to do the bidding of the King of Galle
, thought Abblemont. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Through our priests and our soldiers, and not those of the Patriarch and the Emperor.’

De Ribeaumont smiled like a wolf. ‘Ahh. Yes.’ He shook his head. ‘My lords, I’m old and slow. If de Vrailly is only one half as successful as the bastard claims, and if we could gain any force at all in the northern wild—’ He sucked his teeth. ‘Good Christ, my lords, we could crush the Emperor like a nut. Or the King of Alba.’ He nodded. ‘Take Nova Terra for ourselves.’

‘We might not need to,’ Abblemont said, tossing a scroll tube on the table with a rattle. ‘You gentlemen can read that at your leisure. One of my letter-writing friends.’ He leaned back.

The King extended a long black-clad arm and his delicate fingers snapped up the scroll like the sharp-tipped arm of a spider. ‘Who is he?’ he asked, his eyes darting rapidly over the author’s elegant hand.

‘I do not know myself, and I would not say his name even in this august assembly if I knew it,’ Abblemont said. ‘Remember our little disaster last year in Arles.’

Tancred Guisarme, the Constable, made a face as if he’d swallowed something bitter. ‘Someone talked,’ he said.

‘The fucking herald talked,’ said de Ribeaumont. ‘And he’s dog food now. But that’s not the point.’

Abblemont nodded. ‘Exactly. Do you know that in the Archaic Empire, the Master of Spies referred to every agent by the name of a flower or an animal or some such – never by their own names. Not even their sexes were known.’

‘Sex?’ asked Guisarme. ‘We wouldn’t use women as spies, would we?’

There was the briefest pause, as there always is when a dozen men realise that one of their number is a fool.

‘Unchivalrous,’ muttered Guisarme, in the tone of a man who’s just discovered that his neighbours worship Satan.

De Marche cleared his throat. ‘If Your Grace will admit of the possibilities,’ he began carefully.

The King was mindful that one of his duties was not to leave his best servants blowing in the wind. He smiled and sat up. ‘What do we need to start our horse in this race?’ he asked.

De Marche smiled. ‘Your Grace, it was in my mind to send a trade expedition, well dowered with our goods – swords and armour, which the Outwallers value above all things; wool and linen, flashy, cheap jewels such as peasant women wear, and bronze and copper pots for cooking. I’m told, by our Etruscan source, that these sell well in the north.’ He nodded. ‘Those have to be well made. The Outwallers like shiny things, but they are not children nor yet fools. So the Etruscan tells me.’

The King pulled at his beard and looked at his Horse.

Abblemont nodded slowly. ‘I would do this thing,’ he said carefully. ‘But I would prime the pump first – with a mailed fist.’

That was the right kind of talk for the war council. De Ribeaumont – obviously bored and ill at ease talking to a merchant, even one who’d fought at sea and earned himself a knighthood – sat up and smiled. ‘A military expedition?’ he asked.

Abblemont smiled his simian smile. ‘Something a trifle subtler than a charge of knights, Marshal.’

‘Of course,’ the Marshal said.

‘Perhaps a sellsword,’ Abblemont said, almost as an afterthought.

It was the King’s turn to straighten up. ‘Not that arrogant boy and his company of thugs,’ he shot. The King had endured an unfortunate encounter with a company of lances the year before, when he tried to take Arles by subterfuge, and failed.

Abblemont smiled.
If I could hire that company then I would
, he thought, but they had apparently left for Nova Terra and vanished into its maw.

De Marche leaned forward. ‘Your Grace, I have a man in mind – a very successful adventurer, one of Your Grace’s own subjects. Ser Hartmut Li Orguelleus.’

‘The slaver knight?’ the King said, and he winced. ‘The Black Knight? The Knight of Ill Renown?’

De Marche shrugged. ‘They are just names, Your Grace. His loyalty is deep and entirely to Your Grace. He has sailed far to the south, landed in Ifriquy’a and come away the conqueror.’

‘In the Middle Sea, he’s served our purposes well,’ Abblemont said. ‘Though I confess I wouldn’t invite him home to dinner. Nor would I allow him to address my daughter, no matter how honourable his intentions.’

‘Tar sticks,’ said the King. ‘He has an evil name. He fought for the
Necromancer
in Ifriqu’ya!’

De Marche sighed. ‘Your Grace, it takes a remarkable man to go to a distant land at the head of a tiny company, and make war for us. To make decisions—’

‘Decisions that would bind us,’ the King said. He looked pensive.

‘The kind of decisions that the Outwallers would respect,’ Abblemont said cautiously.

‘He has been very successful taking slaves in Ifriquy’a,’ de Marche put in.

‘He almost started a war with Dar-as-Salaam that could have broken our Middle Sea trade,’ hissed the King.

Abblemont shrugged. ‘To be fair, he also defeated the Emir’s fleet at Na’dia.’

The men around the table shared a glance. A long one. The King looked from one to another.

‘Great plans require great risks, and I suspect that the employment of this terrible man is not the smallest risk we will incur to take Nova Terra,’ said the King. He swirled the wine in his golden cup and stood. ‘Let it be so,’ he said, and de Marche smiled.

‘Your Grace,’ he agreed, with a bow. ‘I have him waiting below.’

The King paled. He put a hand on his chest. ‘I don’t intend to
meet him
,’ the King snapped. ‘Send him to massacre heathens and bring me what I desire, but do not expect me to suffer his odious spirit in my chambers.’

The merchant recoiled. He bowed with proper ceremony. The King relented and gave him a hand to kiss, and de Marche bowed deeply.

‘I approve of what you are doing,’ the King said in a low voice.

Abblemont smiled very slightly – much as he had when the King had shown his pleasure to the Lady Clarissa.

If only people would simply believe me
, he thought,
this would all be so much easier.
He had a strategy of campaign ready for Ser Hartmut. He had a strategy that would end in the subjugation of Alba and the Empire – and Arles and Etrusca as well. He doubted he’d see it all done in his own lifetime, but the recruitment of the Black Knight was a vital step.

‘He’ll need a siege train,’ Abblemont added.

‘Whatever for?’ asked the King. De Marche was already gone.

‘It would take us years to build a port in Nova Terra,’ Abblemont said. ‘So much easier to seize one instead.’

The King sighed. ‘I sense that you have already chosen your target,’ he said.

Abblemont smiled. ‘One of the foremost castles in the world,’ he said. ‘Ticondaga.’

‘I’ve never heard of it, Abblemont.’ The King shrugged, distancing himself from the idea. He leaned back. ‘May I send for the lady now, my Horse?’

Abblemont pursed his lips.

‘Why target such a powerful castle, then?’ asked the King.

‘It will save money in garrison. And it will send a strong message to Your Grace’s enemies. And rebound all the more to Your Grace’s glory.’ Abblemonte bowed.

‘And if the Black Knight fails, or commits some hideous crime instead?’ the King asked.

Abblemont shrugged. ‘Then we disown him and speak much of the rapaciousness of merchants and mercenaries.’ He rubbed the back of his thumb against a small hermetical instrument that looked like a stud on his sword belt. It would cause a low musical tone to play in Clarissa de Sartres’ ear, summoning her. It was the Horse’s method of ensuring that she always ‘happened’ upon the King.

The King gave his courtier a wry smile. ‘Let it be so,’ he said.

The Long Lakes – Squash Country – Nita Qwan

Peter – Nita Qwan – wouldn’t have gone back to Ifrquy’a if he’d been offered a winged ship and a company of houris.

He had this elaborate thought as he lay on his back under a magnificent maple tree, watching his wife’s round bottom as she hoed their squash, cutting weeds with the bronze-tipped hoe he’d made from a scrap of discarded armour.

She was probably pregnant, and that neither lessened her beauty nor made him feel that he should leap to his feet and hoe the ground for her. It was women’s work.

Behind him three great hides stretched on frames indicated that he had pulled his weight. And the shape of her buttocks and complete lack of any covering beyond a single layer of deerskin – their rhythmic movement—

She turned and looked at him under her lashes. She laughed. ‘I’m a shaman – I can read your mind.’

She went back to hoeing her way down the row. She reaped the weeds like a soldier killing boggles – efficient and ruthless. He had never imagined her to be such a good farmer, but then, when he killed her husband and took her, he’d known nothing about her but the softness between her thighs.

She was working her way back along the edge of the corn now – the head-high, ripe corn. The matrons had already harvested the first ears and all the maidens of the right age had run through the corn with young men chasing them. There had been a great deal of laughter and gallons of good cider, and Ota Qwan had taken a young wife.

His own wife stopped and pulled a ripe ear of corn from a stalk. Slowly she stripped back the husk and the silk. Her eyes met his. Her lips touched the end of the ear of corn—

He leaped to his feet and ran to her.

She stepped into the rows of corn and dropped her wrap skirt. ‘Mind the baby,’ she said. And laughed into his mouth.

Ota Qwan’s new wife was the daughter of the paramount matron, Blue Knife. Her husband was a quiet man – a gifted hunter and a deep thinker, but without apparent interest in the politics of the people.

The girl’s name was Amij’ha. She was very young – just exactly old enough to run through the corn, as the Sossag said. But she laughed well, she was prepared to ridicule her new husband like a proper wife, and she came of strong stock. She was well liked, and her marriage to Ota Qwan marked him for further advancement. And he surprised everyone by hunting deer, trapping, and even working beside his new wife in the fields. Their cabin was covered in drying hides, and when they had been home for a month from the war, he proposed to lead men to find honey – the great ponds of Wild honey that moved every year in the west, but could always be found by a party bold enough to look. When he made the proposition in front of the matrons who ruled the people in times of peace, his mother-in-law saw to it that he sounded appropriately humble, his wife supported him, and the matrons gave him the lead.

Peter had time to replace his breech clout and make tea in a fine copper kettle – almost his only loot from the summer campaign. He was still thinking how enjoyable his life was, and how much better than the fate he had expected when he was taken as a slave – when Ota Qwan’s shadow darkened his door.

‘Hello, the house!’ Ota Qwan said. ‘Hey, brother. May I come in?’

Peter threw back the deer hide and propped it open. ‘My wife says it lets flies in,’ he said. ‘I feel it lets them out.’

Ota Qwan gave him a quick embrace. ‘I suspect the Queen of Alba makes the same argument, and the King leaves the windows open anyway,’ he said, throwing himself on a bundle of furs. ‘You’ve been busy.’

‘I’m happy, and I want to keep it that way,’ he said. ‘We’re going to have a boy.’

Ota Qwan leaped to his feet and threw his arms around Peter. ‘Ah! Well done. Hence all the hunting.’

Peter shrugged. ‘I hear winter is nothing to laugh at,’ he said.

Ota Qwan was briefly sobered. ‘That’s no lie, brother.’ He made a face. ‘I mean to make a run west for some honey.’

Peter laughed. ‘Since I have a wife,’ he said, ‘I know all about it. And you know I’ll go. Not sure I was offered a choice.’

‘Honey trades well when the foreign geese come up the Great River – or even if we just trade it over the Wall.’ Ota Qwan shrugged. ‘But we get a better price from the geese.’

The wild geese, as the Sossag called them, were the great round ships from Etrusca that came into the river most years, in late fall, to trade. Sometimes there were only a few, and sometimes great fleets of them. They stayed to the east for the most part, but for the last decade, so the matrons had noted, the geese had come further and further up the Great River every year.