“It’s a weight I can carry,” she replied. “If I had done differently, my kingdom would have done better, and things would be worse.”
“Confusing, but true.”
She favored him with a smile. “I have become more comfortable with contradictions these last few years.”
“I’m still working on it.”
The truth was that commanding a real army again—even if it was at one remove—felt better than he’d expected. It had been a long time since he’d been a general, and his reputation after Wodford and Gradis had been more a burden than a joy. But there was something ineffable about doing a hard job well. Most wars were won or lost long before the battlefield, and getting a force of any size and strength through a winter-closed pass with only a third lost was solid work under the best of circumstances. With this collection of thin sticks and doom, it was a brilliancy. No one who didn’t know to look would see the achievement for what it was but he felt the lift of pride all the same. Except when he remembered whose army he’d just saved.
Spring rose up around them, fragile and pale and new. The trees they passed—the few that hadn’t been burned for wood by the same men going the other direction the year before—didn’t have leaves yet, nor even buds. It was only that the dead-looking bark was taking on a faint green undertone; the mud smelled less of ice and shit and more of water and soil. Little things, but they added up to hope and the mindless animal optimism that the darkness was passing.
Nor was the only change in the landscape.
The soldiers of Antea had been starving shadows in Birancour. The years on campaign hadn’t just hardened the men, they’d scraped them down to bones and madness. Without the priests to goad them on, they would never have kept together so long. Palliako’s army had pushed itself past the breaking point, and then kept pushing, firm in the dream that because it hadn’t all turned sour yet, it never would. Now, on the road home, it was like seeing them wake up.
No, not that far. Seeing them stir in their sleep, maybe. Food stayed scarce, and the day’s march went long, but the men talked more. They joked more. Their homes called them forward like water going downhill. Kit, walking among them as the priests before him had done, was greeted with less solemnity and more joy. Sometimes, Marcus saw it as a good sign. These weren’t bloodthirsty swordsmen anxious to cut a fresh throat. They were farmers and laborers and men of the land pressed into service and kept there too long. Even the noblemen who led them were hungry for home and comfort and an end to the war. Other times, he wondered which of the men he’d helped guide through the pass was the one who’d killed Smit and Pyk, or else recalled that any of them would have been pleased to haul Cithrin along in chains. Or worse. Those times, their laughter grated.
The dragon’s jade of the road snaked a bit to the north, then to the south, curving gently around hills that had worn away centuries before, rising up above the earth in long bridge-like stretches, and disappearing beneath the loam. The passage of the army on its way toward Birancour and Northcoast had churned the land to either side, but the eternal jade remained. At Orsen, it would meet another track headed north into Antea and one that continued east to Elassae. Roads that had been there before the nations they connected, and that would outlast them too. The confluence of them—along with the defensibility of Orsen’s weird single hill in the otherwise flat plains—defined where cities were built and how trade and violence flowed. Odd to think how much the world was defined by where it was easiest to get to.
When the remaining army of Antea made the approach that at last brought Orsen clearly into sight, the free city looked something different than it had. The differences weren’t obvious at first, except in Marcus’s sense that something was off. The air around the city seemed greyer than he’d expected. Huts and small buildings clumped at the base of the lone mountain that looked familiar and out of place at the same time. With the advantage of being on horse, Clara Kalliam saw it better than he could, and Marcus saw his unease echoed in her expression.
Either the burden of the poisoned sword was dulling his mind or the hard passage had left him more compromised than he knew. When he realized what he was seeing, it was obvious.
“We’ll need to get your son, ma’am,” Marcus said. “The halt needs to be called right now, and a scout sent forward under a flag of parley.”
“What is it?” Clara asked, but the tone of her voice told him she’d already guessed.
“Orsen’s not looking to be as hospitable as Bellin was. That darkness at the mountain’s base is a camp.”
“They’re fortified against us?”
“Doubt it. I’ll lay gold that’s a Timzinae army making an early march to the north. Probably the force that broke out of Kiaria.”
“Ah,” Clara Kalliam said. “So we’ve come too late.”
The field of parley sat at the side of the road in a meadow that wasn’t yet entirely churned to mud. It wasn’t quite near enough to Orsen that they could haul a table and chairs out from the city, so the enemy had set up a frame-and-leather tent. Protocol had them withdrawing to just out of crossbow range and letting Jorey’s guard come inspect the place to be sure it wasn’t an ambush. That done, Jorey and his guards would wait in the tent and the enemy commander and his guards would come join them, followed by some more or less heated conversation. After that, tradition was everyone went back to their camps and got on with the business of slaughtering each other. The parley was as much about trying to find some hint of the enemy’s weaknesses as any genuine attempt to avoid battle.
Putting Jorey’s strategy together hadn’t been quick. They’d talked over sending someone else in his place in hopes the enemy might think the Lord Marshal was commanding another—possibly larger—force nearby. They’d talked about abandoning the parley and falling back to Bellin. They’d even talked about trying to ambush the enemy commander and hold him hostage, because that was an idea every inexperienced commander reached for one time or another. Usually, they had an advisor to talk their hands out of the fire on that, and this time it had been Marcus.
The plan instead came to this: Jorey would go, with Marcus in borrowed armor acting as one of his customary three guards. That way Marcus could hear the full parley, possibly pick up on some nuance of strategy or tactic Jorey might have overlooked. Once the parley was ended, Marcus would offer up his best suggestions. After that, the action grew hazy. The idea of taking Kit as another of the guard was considered, but Vincen Coe took his place at the last minute as Marcus deemed the risk too great.
Given how quickly the plan fell to bits, it had been a wise choice.
The guards, when they ducked into the tent, were Timzinae. Knowing now that Inys had created them specifically as warriors against the spiders, Marcus could see the black chitinous scales that covered their bodies as armor. Their double-lidded eyes were empty of everything but hate. The way they stood made it clear that even breathing the same air as a Firstblood was an indignity. Or that was how it seemed until their commander came in and took his seat across from Jorey. He was a Firstblood himself, and more than that.
The years had been kind to Karol Dannien. A bit more softness around the jowls, and his knife-cut hair had gone the white-grey of clouds on the horizon. His eyes were as clear and sharp as when their companies had fought together at Lôdi and against each other in Hallskar. Marcus could only hope that he’d changed enough that the other mercenary didn’t place him.
“Lord Marshal Jorey Kalliam, yeah?” Karol said.
“I am,” Jorey replied. “I take it you’re commander of the Timzinae army?”
“No such thing,” Karol said, his voice buzzing with anger. “Timzinae’s a race of people. This here’s the collected force of the nation of Elassae. Got plenty of Timzinae folks in it. Got plenty that aren’t.”