"Hmmm." Victus tapped his pursed lips with one finger.
"Humph." Andiche puffed out his cheeks.
"Hrrrrrm." Sesaria's unconvinced voice throbbed at a deeper pitch.
Cosca removed his hat, scratched his head and placed it back with a flick at the feather. "Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm—"
"Are we to take it that you disapprove?" asked Foscar.
"I somehow let slip my misgivings? Then I cannot in good conscience suppress them. I am not convinced that the Thousand Swords are well suited to the task you have assigned."
"Not convinced," said Andiche.
"Not well suited," said Victus.
Sesaria was a silent mountain of reluctance.
"Have you not been well paid for your services?" demanded Rigrat.
Cosca chuckled. "Of course, and the Thousand Swords will fight, you may depend on that!"
"They will fight, every man!" asserted Andiche.
"Like devils!" added Victus.
"But it is how they are to be made to fight best that concerns me as their captain general. They have lost two leaders in a brief space." He hung his head as if he regretted the fact, and had in no way benefited hugely himself.
"Murcatto, then Faithful." Sesaria sighed as if he had not been one of the prime agents in the changes of command.
"They have been relegated to support duties."
"Scouting," lamented Andiche.
"Clearing the flanks," growled Victus.
"Their morale is at a terribly low ebb. They have been paid, but money is never the best motivation for a man to risk his life." Especially a mercenary, it needed hardly to be said. "To throw them into a pitched mкlйe against a stubborn and desperate enemy, toe to toe… I'm not saying they might break, but… well…" Cosca winced, scratching slowly at his neck. "They might break."
"I hope this is not an example of your notorious reluctance to fight," sneered Rigrat.
"Reluctance… to fight? Ask anyone, I am a tiger!" Victus snorted snot down his chin but Cosca ignored him. "This is a question of picking the right tool for the task. One does not employ a rapier to cut down a stubborn tree. One employs an axe. Unless one is a complete arse." The young colonel opened his mouth to retort but Cosca spoke smoothly over him. "The plan is sound, in outline. As one military man to another I congratulate you upon it unreservedly." Rigrat paused, unbalanced, not sure if he was being taken for a fool or not, though he most obviously was.
"But it would be wiser counsel for your regular Talinese troops—tried and tested recently in Visserine, then Puranti, committed to their cause, used to victory and with the very firmest of morale—to cross the lower ford and engage the Osprians, supported by your allies of Etrisani and Cesale, and so forth." He waved his flask towards the river, a far more useful implement to his mind than a baton, since a baton makes no man drunk. "The Thousand Swords would be far better deployed concealed upon the high ground. Waiting to seize the moment! To drive across the upper ford, with dash and vigour, and take the enemy in the rear!"
"Best place to take an enemy," muttered Andiche. Victus sniggered.
Cosca finished with a flourish of his flask. "Thus, your earthy courage and our fiery passion are used where they are best suited. Songs will be sung, glory will be seized, history will be made, Orso will be king…" He gave Foscar a gentle bow. "And yourself, your Highness, in due course."
Foscar frowned towards the fords. "Yes. Yes, I see. The thing is, though—"
"Then we are agreed!" Cosca flung an arm around his shoulders and guided him back towards the tent. "Was it Stolicus who said great men march often in the same direction? I believe it was! Let us march now towards dinner, my friends!" He pointed one finger back towards the darkening mountains, where Ospria glimmered in the sunset. "I swear, I am so hungry I could eat a city!" Warm laughter accompanied him back into the tent.
Politics
Shivers sat there frowning, and drank.
Duke Rogont's great dining hall was the grandest room he'd ever got drunk in by quite a stretch. When Vossula told him Styria was packed with wonders it was this type of thing, rather than the rotting docks of Talins, that Shivers had in mind. It must've had four times the floor of Bethod's great hall in Carleon and a ceiling three times as high or more. The walls were pale marble with stripes of blue-black stone through it, all fretted with veins of glitter, all carved with leaves and vines, all grown up and crept over with ivy so the real plants and the sculpted tangled together in the dancing shadows. Warm evening breezes washed in through open windows wide as castle gates, made the orange flames of a thousand hanging lamps flicker and sway, striking a precious gleam from everything.
A place of majesty and magic, built by gods for the use of giants.
Shame the folk gathered there fell a long way short of either. Women in gaudy finery, brushed, jewelled and painted to look younger, or thinner, or richer than they were. Men in bright-coloured jackets who wore lace at their collars and little gilded daggers at their belts. They looked at him first with mild disdain on their powdered faces, like he was made of rotting meat. Then, once he'd turned the left side of his face forwards, with a sick horror that gave him three parts grim satisfaction and one part sick horror of his own.
Always at every feast there's some stupid, ugly, mean bastard got a big score to settle with no one in particular, drinks way too much and makes the night a worry for everyone. Seemed tonight it was him, and he was taking to the part with a will. He hawked up phlegm and spat it noisily across the gleaming floor.
A man at the next table in a yellow coat with long tails to it looked round, the smallest sneer on his puffed-up lips. Shivers leaned towards him, grinding the point of his knife into the polished table-top. "Something to say to me, piss-coat?" The man paled and turned back to his friends without a word. "Bunch o' bastard cowards," Shivers growled into his quickly emptying wine-cup, good and loud enough to be heard three tables away. "Not a single bone in the whole fucking crowd!"
He thought about what the Dogman might've made of this crew of tittering dandies. Or Rudd Threetrees. Or Black Dow. He gave a grim snort to think of it, but his laughter choked off short. If there was a joke, it was on him. Here he was, in the midst of 'em, after all, leaning on their charity without a friend to his name. Or so it seemed.
He scowled towards the high table, up on a raised dais at the head of the room. Rogont sat in the midst of his most favoured guests, grinning around as though he was a star shining from the night sky. Monza sat beside him. Hard to tell from where Shivers was, specially with everything smeared up with anger and too much wine, but he thought he saw her laughing. Enjoying herself, no doubt, without her one-eyed errand boy to drag her down.
He was a fine-looking bastard, the Prince of Prudence. Had both his eyes, anyway. Shivers would've liked to break his smooth, smug face open. With a hammer, like Monza had broken Gobba's head. Or just with his fists. Crush it in his hands. Pound it to red splinters. He gripped his knife trembling tight, spinning out a whole mad story of how he'd go about it. Picking over all the bloody details, shifting them about until they made him look as big a man as possible, Rogont wailing for mercy and pissing himself, twisting it into crazy shapes where Monza wanted him more'n ever at the end of it. And all the while he watched the two of 'em through one twitching, narrowed eye.
He goaded himself with the notion they were laughing at him, but he knew that was foolishness. He didn't matter enough to laugh at, and that made him stew hotter than ever. He was still clinging to his pride, after all, like a drowning man to a twig way too small to keep him afloat. He was a maimed embarrassment, after he'd saved her life how many times? Risked his life how many times? And after all the bloody steps he'd climbed to get to the top of this bastard mountain too. Might've hoped for something better'n scorn at the end of it.