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For a long time Berren said nothing. ‘And what’s your oath?’ he asked at last.

‘To see, come what may of you, that the child is cared for. Your child, once it is born.’

Slowly Berren rose to his feet. ‘And how much would it cost for a man to buy her? You told me, a week or two before Syannis broke his promise, that she was worth a half-dozen seasons in the company.’

‘For a good bonds-maid, you’ll pay in gold. For one who has waited on a princess, a lot of gold.’

‘How much gold? I’ll sell my sword. Everything I have.’

He watched as Talon winced. ‘You had nothing when I found you and you have nothing now, save that purse I’ve given you. Everything else has been taken by Princess Gelisya to pay for the damage done to her property.’

‘Damage?’ Berren felt the blood running to his head. He shouted up at Talon, ‘What damage?’

‘Her slave is carrying your child. I thought you knew. It affects her duties.’

‘Sun and Moon! She sent Fasha with a warlock’s love potion to help her bed me! What else have I done? Am I to pay for the arrow I used to kill Meridian?’ If Talon had been standing in front of him instead of looming over the top of the pit, there would have been blood. ‘She was promised to me,’ he hissed. ‘A man can break his word as freely and as often as he likes, but he can never once un-break it. That was the payment I sought from Syannis: a word given and a promise kept. Just that.’ He threw the purse back at Talon. ‘And I made a promise too. I promised Fasha that she’d be free. I promised her that because of the flogging you made me give her; and I will keep my word, whatever it costs me now, and Syannis can shrivel up inside as he looks on. If I must now buy what was offered freely, let this be my payment. I have no use for it.’ He started to pace in angry circles.

‘It’s not enough, Berren.’

‘Then what is? How long, Prince Talon? How long should I fight for you and save every coin I earn? How long while I watch the rest of your soldiers go home with fat pockets to their waiting families or buy the land they so crave and start new ones?’

He heard Talon sigh, a long drawn-out sound. ‘A year. Two. Maybe three, maybe four. Things will change here. Now the war is done, the coffers of Tethis will slowly begin to fill again. Syannis will come to his senses and see how poorly he has treated you. Princess Gelisya is already in her years of changing. She will shed her childish ways. All these things will come to pass.’

‘A year, then. I’ll fight for you for one year.’

‘Four and I promise you she will be yours.’

‘Is a promise from you worth more than one from your brother?’

He almost heard Talon wince. ‘You’ll have to decide that for yourself. Now, do I have your oath or do you want to stay down there?’ The Prince of War moved to stand beside the ropes that would lower the cage down into the pit. Berren stared up at him. If he could have grown wings then he would have flown up and hurled Talon down to be in his place and then taken his sword and let the castle run red with blood. One king, two kings, ten kings, what did it matter? They all looked the same when they were dead. But no wings came and slowly the cold truth spoke to him: Talon was the only reason he was still alive, and Talon had done him no wrong. If he refused this oath, if he stayed, then he’d be dead before dawn. When he spoke, his voice was calm.

‘Very well then. You have my oath. I vow on the life of my child that is not yet born that I will never seek revenge for the wrongs that your brother Syannis or any here have done me. Be it one year or four, I will fight and I will kill for you until I can buy back what is mine.’

He watched the cage slowly descend towards him, glad that Talon couldn’t read his thoughts, glad that the gloom hid the bitterness written over his face.

It will not be revenge. It will be justice.

PART FIVE

THE KING-SLAYER AND THE CUCKOO

28

SEASONS AWAY

The Hawks sailed from Tethis. There were fewer of them than had arrived. Some of the men of Forgenver had returned to their homes. Others finally had the money to put their soldiering days behind them and a good few were dead. But though many had taken the king’s coin to serve in the king’s new guard after the war was done, not one of them remained in Tethis when Talon set sail. Syannis had made it clear they were not welcome, not wanted, disqualified by their loyalty to the Prince of War. Instead, he recruited from the soldiers who had fought for Meridian, from the Deephaven lancers, even from the old king’s guard. Berren caught a glimpse of Lucama, decked out in the new colours of the old king. There would be trouble, Tarn warned. Radek and Meridian had allies and families. There would be more fighting, more battles, always more companies falling to the sword. Berren shrugged it away. Whoever sat on the throne, Princess Gelisya would be there with them; and as long as she remained, so would Fasha and so would his son or his daughter, whichever it turned out to be.

The company travelled far to the south, Talon putting as much distance between them and Tethis as possible. They met the Mountain Panther and his men once again; now the Hawks fought side by side with soldiers whom half a year ago they’d faced across a battlefield. Berren found himself among the legions of the sun-king, clad in glittering armour, facing wild horsemen who danced around the clumsy footmen and fired their bows and then wheeled and turned and fired again. He learned to brace a spear against a charging horse, how to advance behind a wall of heavy shields that the horsemen with their bows couldn’t penetrate. He watched as massed ranks of armoured cavalry charged across the field ahead of him, as volleys of crossbow fire darkened the sky, as cohorts of battle-priests called down the sun to scorch the earth and rendered men into ash in the blink of an eye. He saw war machines he could not have imagined existing. The Hawks became nothing but a tiny speck in a vast engine sent by the sun-king to quell the rebellious west of his Dominion once and for all. Now and then Talon would tell them where they were heading or whom they were fighting, or what town or city lay ahead of them. Berren listened with care, but the names meant little. When he marched, he thought only of the battle to come. When he fought, he thought only of the victory that would follow. And when that victory came, he thought only of the dead and the treasures they might carry. Friend or foe, he looted them all, and in the nights when Tarn and the others were out gambling and drinking their plunder away, Berren sat alone in their camp, counting his coins as though they were days.

The season lasted long into the autumn, so long that Talon kept them together in the south for the winter. When spring came, they fought for the sun-king again, but some dispute had caused the battle-priests and many of the officers to leave, and that second year did not go so well. By the end of it, half the men in Tarn’s cohort were dead or gone, their boots filled by olive-skinned men Talon recruited from wherever he could find them. They spoke in a strange sing-song accent that Berren could hardly understand, and they had never heard of Tethis, or of Kalda or Aria. That year homes and tongues and skins all ceased to matter; all that counted was that a soldier fought and fought hard, that he stayed in the line and held his place, and that when the time came to run, they all ran together. They found the remnants of the Deephaven lancers, a score of them, and Berren found some comfort in talking to them of their home. They’d come from the same city and they knew its nooks and crannies and understood its beauty and its ugliness as he did. The lancer from Kalda was there, the man Berren had flattened after the rest of them had tried to kill Talon with their fire-globe. They eyed each other for a while, trying to remember where they’d seen one another, and then they talked and they drank and each apologised for trying to kill the other, but it was war and they’d been soldiers on opposite sides so there were no hard feelings to be taken. The Berren that had landed back then in Kalda, he would never have done such a thing, never even understood it, but that was a Berren who had never seen a real war, not the fields full of slaughter that the sun-king’s armies left behind them, win or lose. The Berren he had become took the lancer to the nearest bottle of wine and drank with him and became his friend. A soldier was a soldier. Kings changed, alliances shifted, but the men who fought for them bore no grudges.