‘No.’ Kroy was already sitting at his desk and dipping pen in ink to write orders. ‘Halt them for the night. On these roads, in this weather, haste will do more harm than good.’
‘But, Lord Marshal, if we—’
‘I intend to rush, General, but not headlong into a defeat. We must not push the men too hard. They need to be ready.’
Mitterick jerked up his gloves. ‘Damn these damn roads!’ Gorst stood aside to let him and his staff file from the room, silently wishing he was ushering them through into a bottomless pit.
Kroy raised his brows as he wrote. ‘Sensible men … run away … from battles.’ His pen scratched neatly across the paper. ‘Someone will need to take this order to General Jalenhorm. To move with all haste to the Heroes and secure the hill, the town of Osrung, and any other crossings of the river that—’
Gorst stepped forwards. ‘I will take it.’ If there was to be action, Jalenhorm’s division would be first into it. And I will be at the front of the front rank. I will not bury the ghosts of Sipani in a headquarters.
‘There is no one I would rather entrust it to.’ Gorst grasped the order but the marshal did not release it at once. He remained looking calmly up, the folded paper a bridge between them. ‘Remember, though, that you are the king’s observer, not the king’s champion.’
I am neither. I am a glorified errand boy, here because nowhere else will have me. I am a secretary in a uniform. A filthy uniform, as it happens. I am a dead man still twitching. Ha ha! Look at the big idiot with the silly voice! Make him dance! ‘Yes, sir.’
‘Observe, then, by all means. But no more heroics, if you please. Not like the other day at Barden. A war is no place for heroics. Especially not this one.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Kroy let go of the order and turned back to peer at his map, measuring distances between stretched-out thumb and forefinger. ‘The king would never forgive me if we were to lose you.’
The king has abandoned me here, and no one will care a stray speck of piss if I am hacked apart and my brains splattered across the North. Least of all me. ‘Yes, sir.’ And Gorst strode out, through the front door and back into the rain, where he was struck by lightning.
There she was, picking her way across the boggy front yard towards him. In the midst of all that sullen mud her smiling face burned like the sun, incandescent. Delight crushed him, made his skin sing and his breath catch. The months he had spent away from her had done not the slightest good. He was as desperately, hopelessly, helplessly in love as ever.
‘Finree,’ he whispered, voice full of awe, as in some silly story a wizard might pronounce a word of power. ‘Why are you here?’ Half-expecting she would fade into nothing, a figment of his overwrought imagination.
‘To see my father. Is he in there?’
‘Writing orders.’
‘As always.’ She looked down at Gorst’s uniform and raised one eyebrow, darkened from brown to almost black and spiked to soft points by the rain. ‘Still playing in the mud, I see.’
He could not even bring himself to be embarrassed. He was lost in her eyes. Some strands of hair were stuck across her wet face. He wished he was. I thought nothing could be more beautiful than you used to be, but now you are more beautiful than ever. He dared not look at her and he dared not look away. You are the most beautiful woman in the world – no – in all of history – no – the most beautiful thing in all of history. Kill me, now, so that your face can be the last thing I see. ‘You look well,’ he murmured.
She looked down at her sodden travelling coat, mud-spotted to the waist. ‘I suspect you’re not being entirely honest with me.’
‘I never dissemble.’ I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you …
‘And are you well, Bremer? I may call you Bremer, may I?’
You may crush my eyes out with your heels. Only say my name again. ‘Of course. I am …’ Ill in mind and body, ruined in fortune and reputation, hating of the world and everything in it, but none of that matters, as long as you are with me. ‘Well.’
She held out her hand and he bent to kiss it like a village priest who had been permitted to touch the hem of the Prophet’s robe—
There was a golden ring on her finger with a small, sparkling blue stone.
Gorst’s guts twisted so hard he nearly lost control of them entirely. It was only by a supreme effort that he stayed standing. He could scarcely whisper the words. ‘Is that …’
‘A marriage band, yes!’ Could she know he would rather she had dangled a butchered head in his face?
He gripped to his smile like a drowning man to the last stick of wood. He felt his mouth move, and heard his own squeak. His repugnant, womanly, pathetic little squeak. ‘Who is the gentleman?’
‘Colonel Harod dan Brock.’ A hint of pride in her voice. Of love. What would I give to hear her say my name like that? All I have. Which is nothing but other men’s scorn.
‘Harod dan Brock,’ he whispered, and the name was sand in his mouth. He knew the man, of course. They were distantly related, fourth cousins or some such. They had sometimes spoken years ago, when Gorst had served with the guard of his father, Lord Brock. Then Lord Brock had made his bid for the crown, and failed, and been exiled for the worst of treasons. His eldest son had been granted the king’s mercy, though. Stripped of his many lands, and his lofty titles, but left with his life. How Gorst wished the king was less merciful now.
‘He is serving on Lord Governor Meed’s staff.’
‘Yes.’ Brock was nauseatingly handsome, with an easy smile and a winning manner. The bastard. Well-spoken of and well-liked, in spite of his father’s disgrace. The snake. Had earned his place by bravery and bonhomie. The fucker. He was everything Gorst was not.
He clenched his right fist trembling hard, and imagined it ripping the easy-smiling jaw out of Harod dan Brock’s handsome head. ‘Yes.’
‘We are very happy,’ said Finree.
Good for you. I want to kill myself. She could not have given him sharper pain if she had crushed his cock in a vice. Could she be such a fool as to not see through him? Some part of her must have known, must have delighted in his humiliation. Oh, how I love you. Oh, how I hate you. Oh, how I want you.
‘My congratulations to you both,’ he murmured.
‘I will tell my husband.’
‘Yes.’ Yes, yes, tell him to die, tell him to burn, and soon. Gorst kept the rictus smile clinging to his face while vomit tickled at his throat. ‘Yes.’
‘I must go to my father. Perhaps we will see each other again, soon?’
Oh, yes. Very soon. Tonight, in fact, while I lie awake with my cock in my hand, pretending it’s your mouth …‘I hope so.’
She was already walking past. For her, a forgettable encounter with an old acquaintance. For him, as she turned away it was as if night fell. The soil is heaped upon me, the grit of burial in my mouth. He watched the door rattle shut behind her, and stood there for a long moment, in the rain. He wanted to weep, and weep, and weep for all his ruined hopes. He wanted to kneel in the mud and tear out the hair he still had. He wanted to murder someone, and hardly cared who. Myself, perhaps?