‘Father!’ Demetrius shouted. ‘Stop and listen!’
Demetrius drew the heavy dagger at his hip. He stared at it a moment, as if confused.
Andronicus froze. ‘Oh, my son!’ he said.
Demetrius was shaking his head. ‘I won’t!’ he cried.
Andronicus had not risen to be the warlord of the Empire by failure to grasp threats. His eyes went to the Grand Chamberlain, already moving to flank him, and to Aeskipiles, who stood silently, by the door, his staff emitting a pair of thick black threads – one to the Grand Chamberlain, and one to Demetrius.
Andonicus didn’t flinch or give a speech. He drew his own belt dagger and threw it – at Aeskipiles.
It struck an invisible shield and vanished in a shower of sparks.
Aeskipiles smiled.
Andronicus’ throw had got him to his feet and now he stepped to the right, still trying to believe that his son was going to protect him.
Demetrius’s dagger went into his left side, under the arm. He felt the blow like a punch – felt the hilt against the silk of his shirt.
Without meaning to, he rotated his son’s body and got a thumb onto his son’s right eye, even as he realised that he was dead. His sight was going. But the urge to fight back – to kill – was strong.
The dagger had struck straight to his heart.
With his last thought, he released his grasp on his son’s head.
‘My-’
He hit the floor.
‘We need to dispose of the body immediately.’ He heard the man-witch say it, as if from a hillside far, far away. He craved to hear something of his son. He willed-
And then he was gone.
A day after the loss of the Emperor to the Red Knight’s men, one of Dariusz’s patrols picked up a pair of peasants who had a report of rape and murder from the hills to the west. Dariusz lost half a day following these reports up and by the time he made it back to report, the Duke was absent and he was reporting to Demetrius. The Prokusatores officer left Despot Demetrius’s tent and approached the khan of Demetrius’s Easterners.
The man shrugged and looked away.
Duke Andronicus apparently no longer rode with the army he’d raised. Captain Dariusz knew many of the retainers. Eventually he asked Ser Chritos’s squire, who shrugged and admitted that the Duke hadn’t left Nemea. Many men were aware that the Duke had vanished, and Dariusz kept his ear to the ground, but heard nothing. He assumed the Duke was sick, and his sickness was being hidden, but he had darker suspicions.
He snatched a few hours sleep in the castle of Ermione and then took a powerful patrol west, following the tracks. To his own satisfaction he found the place where the enemy had waited in ambush.
He showed his two best men the place, like a deer lie writ large – snow trampled flat, a small fire, a lookout post complete with closely woven branches and a wall of snow.
Verki – one of his best – stirred the fire with a stick and made a small magic.
‘Ten hours. Last light, maybe?’ He shrugged, his gesture exaggerated by his long fur coat and heavily padded armour.
Dariusz raised an eyebrow. ‘Let’s see,’ he said.
He followed the tracks left by the enemy horses. They’d done well enough in covering them – swept the snow with branches – but by luck, there hadn’t been a snowfall since, and there were places where shod hoof marks showed clear, and where horse dung lay frozen in the snow. Sixty cavalrymen moving quickly are very difficult to hide in a winter landscape.
It was almost noon when they climbed a long ridge. There were horsemen above them, and they had a brief skirmish – a horse died. A man broke his back when another horse fell, and had to be killed.
They seized the ridge top and looked down into the next valley. The enemy rode away.
‘You know this country?’ Verki asked.
Dariusz shook his head. ‘Not really. I’ve hunted here.’
Verki frowned. ‘Something is wrong,’ he said. He peered down into the valley. The snow reflected the bright sunlight and made everything difficult to see even though, lower in the valley, the snow was melting and the streams were filling.
Dariusz spotted the walled village protected by a switchback in the winding stream. ‘There’s the town,’ he said.
‘With no smoke from the chimneys,’ Verki spat.
They looked at the valley for longer, and saw the patrol of enemy horsemen they’d pushed off the ridge riding along the floor of the valley far below. They crossed the stream.
Dariusz put a wrap on the wound he’d taken in the left hand and began to feel cold.
‘I’ve got the bastards. Follow the line of the ford. Look at the ridge top.’ Verki smiled savagely.
The faintest smudge of smoke was visible.
Dariusz nodded. ‘That must be their camp.’
Verki shook his head. ‘Just covered by the ridge. Someone knows his business.’
‘Leave a post here. Take two men you trust and get a look at their camp.’ Dariusz was breathing easier. The enemy had seemed almost ghostly until now. He still had no idea how they’d got over the mountains. But now he had them fixed in place, and Lord Demetrius would bring up the army.
As he turned his horse and rode east, he had time to consider a number of problems, not the least of which was that he didn’t know where Duke Andronicus was.
‘You have them?’ Demetrius asked. He looked as if he hadn’t slept in days.
‘We brushed a patrol. We saw the smoke from their camp.’ It sounded thin, put that way.
Demetrius glared at the khan of his Easterners. ‘Better than anyone else has done. Christ Pantrokrator, one of these fools proposed they’d come by sea!’
Dariusz leaned over the Count’s rough map. ‘He’s trapped against the mountains, exactly as you suggested, my lord, and he’ll be out of food in a few days. The villages up there won’t feed an army.’ Dariusz shrugged. ‘I think perhaps we will not even need ot fight.’
‘You sound like my father.’ Demetrius spat.
Dariusz flinched – it was such an odd comment and so uncharacteristic.
Demetrius looked at the warlock, Aeskepiles. And the former Grand Chamberlain.
Aeskepiles nodded. Very quietly, he said, ‘As I have said before, we must kill the Emperor. And then we must ensure it appears that the enemy killed him in desperation. I will take care of the latter. But he must be killed, and to achieve that we must attack.’ He shrugged. ‘If the Emperor is spirited away over the mountains-’
Demetrius laughed. ‘Over the Penults? In late winter?’ He shook his head. ‘A bird would die.’
Dariusz, who had hunted the Penults since he was a boy, disagreed. ‘My lord,’ he said.
Demetrius raised a hand. ‘I’m not interested in your carping. I’m not interested in skulking about in the snow waiting for them to starve. Or worse yet, surrender, so that we have a horde of witnesses.’
Aeskepiles smiled. ‘That could be dealt with.’
Demetrius paused. His gaze hardened. ‘Warlock, I realise I need you. But have a care. We need there to be an Empire when this is over. If I massacre the guard, who exactly will protect me when I am Emperor?’
‘Who will guard your father, you mean,’ Dariusz said carefully.
‘My father has – mm – withdrawn from the army,’ Demetrius said. ‘He has no further interest in this contest, and will enter a monastery.’
For some reason, it was Aeskipiles, and not Demetrius, who looked away.
Dariusz pursed his lips and then nodded. ‘I see,’ he said.
Ser Christos led the main cavalry force. Every Thrakian stradiote had two horses, and they made excellent time over the snow now the scouts had cleared the ground. Demetrius came in a second division, with all of his father’s veteran infantry, and Ser Stefanos brought up the rear with a strong force of Thrakian peasants armed with axes, bowmen from the estates around Lonika, and Easterner mercenary cavalry.