Aliz sighed. ‘War is terrible, isn’t it?’
‘It blights the landscape, throttles commerce and industry, kills the innocent and rewards the guilty, thrusts honest men into poverty and lines the pockets of profiteers, and in the end produces nothing but corpses, monuments and tall tales.’ Finree neglected to mention that it also offered enormous opportunities, however.
‘So many men injured,’ said Aliz. ‘So many dead.’
‘An awful thing.’ Though dead men leave spaces into which the nimble-footed can swiftly step. Or into which nimble wives can swiftly manoeuvre their husbands …
‘And all these people. Losing their homes. Losing everything.’ Aliz was gazing moist-eyed at a miserable procession coming the other way, forced from the track by the soldiers and obliged to toil through their choking dust.
They were mostly women, though it was not easy to tell, they were so ragged. Some old men, and some children along with them. Northern, certainly. Poor, undoubtedly. Beyond poor, for they had virtually nothing, their faces pinched with hunger, jaws dangling with exhaustion, clutching at heartbreakingly meagre possessions. They did not look at the Union soldiers tramping the other way with hatred, or even with fear. They looked too desperate to register emotion of any kind.
Finree did not know who they were running from exactly, or where they were going. What horror had set them in motion or what others they might still face. Shaken from their homes by the blind tremors of war. Looking at them, Finree felt shamefully secure, revoltingly lucky. It is easy to forget how much you have, when your eyes are always fixed on what you have not.
‘Something should be done,’ murmured Aliz, wistfully.
Finree clenched her teeth. ‘You’re right.’ She gave her horse the spurs, possibly flicking a few specks of mud over Aliz’ white dress, covered the ground in no time and slid her mount into the knot of officers that was the frequently misfiring brain of the division.
They spoke the language of war up here. Timing and supply. Weather and morale. Rates of march and orders of battle. It was no foreign tongue to Finree, and even as she slipped her horse between them she noticed mistakes, oversights, inefficiencies. She had been brought up in barracks, and mess halls, and headquarters, had spent longer in the army than most of the officers here and knew as much about strategy, tactics and logistics as any of them. Certainly a great deal more than Lord Governor Meed, who until last year had never presided over anything more dangerous than a formal banquet.
He rode at the very centre of the press, under a standard bearing the crossed hammers of Angland, and wearing a magnificent azure uniform rigged with gold braid, better suited to an actor in a tawdry production than a general on campaign. Despite all that money wasted on tailoring, his splendid collars never seemed quite to fit and his sinewy neck always stuck from them like a turtle’s from its shell.
He had lost his three nephews years ago at the Battle of Black Well and his brother, the previous lord governor, not long after. He had nursed an insurmountable hatred for Northmen ever since and been such a keen advocate of war he had outfitted half his division at his own expense. Hatred of the enemy was no qualification for command, however. Quite the reverse.
‘Lady Brock, how wonderful that you could join us,’ he said, with mild disdain.
‘I was simply taking part in the advance and you all got in my way.’ The officers chuckled with, in Hal’s case, a slightly desperate note. He gave her a pointed look sideways, and she gave him one back. ‘I and some of the other ladies noticed the refugees on our left. We were hoping you could be prevailed upon to spare them some food?’
Meed turned his watery eyes on the miserable file with the scorn one might have for a trail of ants. ‘I am afraid the welfare of my soldiers must come first.’
‘Surely these strapping fellows could afford to miss a meal in a good cause?’ She thumped Colonel Brint’s breastplate and made him give a nervous laugh.
‘I have assured Marshal Kroy that we will be in position outside Osrung by midnight. We cannot stop.’
‘It could be done in—’
Meed turned rudely away from her. ‘Ladies and their charitable projects, mmm?’ he tossed to his officers, provoking a round of sycophantic laughter.
Finree cut through it with a shrill titter of her own. ‘Men and their playing at war, mmm?’ She slapped Captain Hardrick on the shoulder with her gloves, hard enough to make him wince. ‘What silly, womanly nonsense, to try to save a life or two. Now I see it! We should be letting them drop like flies by the roadside, spreading fire and pestilence wherever possible and leaving their country a blasted wasteland. That will teach them the proper respect for the Union and its ways, I am sure! There’s soldiering!’ She looked around at the officers, eyebrows raised. At least they had stopped laughing. Meed, in particular, had never looked more humourless, which took some doing.
‘Colonel Brock,’ he forced through tight lips. ‘I think your wife might be more comfortable riding with the other ladies.’
‘I was about to suggest it,’ said Hal, pulling his horse in front of hers and bringing them both to a sharp halt while Meed’s party carried on up the track. ‘What the hell are you doing?’ he hissed under his breath.
‘The man’s a callous idiot! A farmer playing at soldiers!’
‘We have to work with what we have, Fin! Please, don’t bait him. For me! My bloody nerves won’t stand it!’
‘I’m sorry.’ Impatience back to guilt, yet again. Not for Meed, of course, but for Hal, who had to be twice as good, twice as brave and twice as hardworking as anyone else simply to stay free of his father’s suffocating shadow. ‘But I hate to see things done badly on account of some old fool’s pride when they could just as easily be done well.’
‘Did you consider that it’s bad enough having an amateur general without having one who’s a bloody laughing stock besides? Maybe with some support he’d do better.’
‘Maybe,’ she muttered, unconvinced.
‘Can’t you stay with the other wives?’ he wheedled. ‘Please, just for now?’
‘That prattling coven?’ She screwed up her face. ‘All they talk about is who’s barren, who’s unfaithful, and what the queen’s wearing. They’re idiots.’
‘Have you ever noticed that everyone’s an idiot but you?’
She opened her eyes wide. ‘You see it too?’
Hal took a hard breath. ‘I love you. You know I do. But think about who you’re actually helping. You could have fed those people if you’d trodden softly.’ He rubbed at the bridge of his nose. ‘I’ll talk to the quartermaster, try to arrange something.’
‘Aren’t you a hero.’
‘I try, but bloody hell, you don’t make it easy. Next time, for me, please, think about saying something bland. Talk about the weather, maybe!’ As he rode off back towards the head of the column.
‘Shit on the weather,’ she muttered at his back, ‘and Meed too.’ She had to admit Hal had a point, though. She wasn’t doing herself, or her husband, or the Union cause, or even the refugees any good by irritating Lord Governor Meed.
She had to destroy him.
Give and Take
‘Up you get, old man.’
Craw was half in a dream still. At home, wherever that was. A young man, or retired. Was it Colwen smiling at him from the corner? Turning wood on the lathe, curled shavings scattering, crunching under his feet. He grunted, rolled over, pain flaring up his side, stinging him with panic. He tried to rip back his blanket.