"What's he up to?" Monza stared up at the mass of horsemen ranged across the crest of the hill, beside the olive grove. "What's that old bastard about?"
Colonel Rigrat whipped his well-lathered horse between the tents, sending idle mercenaries scattering, and reined the beast in savagely not far away. He slid from the saddle, nearly fell, tore his boot from the stirrup and stormed up, ripping off his gloves, face flushed with sweaty fury. "Cosca! Nicomo Cosca, damn you!"
"Colonel Rigrat! A fine morning, my young friend! I hope all is well?"
"Well? Why are you not attacking?" He stabbed one finger down towards the river, evidently having misplaced his baton. "We are engaged in the valley! Most hotly engaged!"
"Why, so you are." Cosca rocked forwards and rose smoothly from the captain general's chair. "Perhaps it would be better if we were to discuss this away from the men. Not good form, to bicker. Besides, you're scaring my goat."
"What?"
Cosca patted the animal gently on the back as he passed. "She's the only one who truly understands me. Come to my tent. I have fruit there! Andiche! Come join us!"
He strode off, Rigrat blustering after, Andiche falling into puzzled step behind. Past Nocau, on guard before the flap with his great scimitar drawn, and into the cool, dim interior of the tent, draped all around with the victories of the past. Cosca ran the back of his hand affectionately down one swathe of threadbare cloth, edges blackened by fire. "The flag that hung upon the walls of Muris, during the siege… was it truly a dozen years ago?" He turned to see Friendly sidle through the flap after the others and lurk near the entrance. "I brought it down from the highest parapet with my own hand, you know."
"After you tore it from the hand of the dead hero who was up there first," said Andiche.
"Whatever is the purpose of dead heroes, if not to pass on stolen flags to more prudent fellows in the rank behind?" He snatched the bowl of fruit from the table and shoved it under Rigrat's nose. "You look ill, Colonel. Have a grape."
The man's trembling face was rapidly approaching grape colour. "Grape? Grape?" He lashed at the flap with his gloves. "I demand that you attack at once! I flatly demand it!"
"Attack." Cosca winced. "Across the upper ford?"
"Yes!"
"According to the excellent plan you laid out to me last night?"
"Yes, damn it! Yes!"
"In all honesty, nothing would please me more. I love a good attack, ask anyone, but the problem is… you see…" Pregnant silence stretched out as he spread his hands wide. "I took such an enormous sum of money from Duke Rogont's Gurkish friend not to."
Ishri came from nowhere. Solidified from the shadows at the edges of the tent, slid from the folds in the ancient flags and strutted into being. "Greetings," she said. Rigrat and Andiche both stared at her, equally stunned.
Cosca peered up at the gently flapping roof of the tent, tapping at his pursed lips with one finger. "A dilemma. A moral quandary. I want so badly to attack, but I cannot attack Rogont. And I can scarcely attack Foscar, when his father has also paid me so handsomely. In my youth I jerked this way and that just as the wind blew me, but I am trying earnestly to change, Colonel, as I explained to you the other evening. Really, in all good conscience, the only thing I can do is sit here." He popped a grape into his mouth. "And do nothing."
Rigrat gave a splutter and made a belated grab for his sword, but Friendly's big fist was already around the hilt, knife gleaming in his other hand. "No, no, no." The colonel froze as Friendly slid his sword carefully from its sheath and tossed it across the tent.
Cosca snatched it from the air and took a couple of practice swipes. "Fine steel, Colonel, I congratulate you on your choice of blades, if not of strategy."
"You were paid by both? To fight neither?" Andiche was smiling ear to ear as he draped one arm around Cosca's shoulders. "My old friend! Why didn't you tell me? Damn, but it's good to have you back!"
"Are you sure?" Cosca ran him smoothly through the chest with Rigrat's sword, right to the polished hilt. Andiche's eyes bulged, his mouth dropped open and he dragged in a great long wheeze, his pockmarked face twisted, trying to scream. But all that came out was a gentle cough.
Cosca leaned close. "You think a man can turn on me? Betray me? Give my chair to another for a few pieces of silver, then smile and be my friend? You mistake me, Andiche. Fatally. I may make men laugh, but I'm no clown."
The mercenary's coat glistened with dark blood, his trembling face had turned bright red, veins bulging in his neck. He clawed weakly at Cosca's breastplate, bloody bubbles forming on his lips. Cosca let go the hilt, wiped his hand on Andiche's sleeve and shoved him over. He fell on his side, spitted, gave a gentle groan and stopped moving.
"Interesting." Ishri squatted over him. "I am rarely surprised. Surely Murcatto is the one who stole your chair. You let her go free, no?"
"On reflection, I doubt the facts of my betrayal quite match the story. But in any case, a man can forgive all manner of faults in beautiful women that in ugly men he finds entirely beyond sufferance. And if there's one thing I absolutely cannot abide, it's disloyalty. You have to stick at something in your life."
"Disloyalty?" screeched Rigrat, finally finding his voice. "You'll pay for this, Cosca, you treacherous—"
Friendly's knife thumped into his neck and out, blood showered across the floor of the tent and spattered the Musselian flag that Sazine had taken the day the Thousand Swords were formed.
Rigrat fell to his knees, one hand clutched to his throat, blood pouring down the sleeve of his jacket. He flopped forwards onto his face, trembled for a moment, then was still. A dark circle bloomed out through the material of the groundsheet and merged with the one already creeping from Andiche's corpse.
"Ah," said Cosca. He had been planning to ransom Rigrat back to his family. It did not seem likely now. "That was… ungracious of you, Friendly."
"Oh." The convict frowned at his bloody knife. "I thought… you know. Follow your lead. I was being first sergeant."
"Of course you were. I take all the blame myself. I should have been more specific. I have ever suffered from… unspecificity? Is that a word?"
Friendly shrugged. So did Ishri.
"Well." Cosca scratched gently at his neck as he looked down at Rigrat's body. "An annoying, pompous, swollen-headed man, from what I saw. But if those were capital crimes I daresay half the world would hang, and myself first to the gallows. Perhaps he had many fine qualities of which I was unaware. I'm sure his mother would say so. But this is a battle. Corpses are a sad inevitability." He crossed to the tent flap, took a moment to compose himself, then clawed it desperately aside. "Some help here! For pity's sake, some help!"
He hurried back to Andiche's body and squatted beside it, knelt one way and then another, found what he judged to be the most dramatic pose just as Sesaria burst into the tent.
"God's breath!" as he saw the two corpses, Victus bundling in behind, eyes wide.
"Andiche!" Cosca gestured at Rigrat's sword, still where he had left it. "Run through!" He had observed that people often state the obvious when distressed.
"Someone get a surgeon!" roared Victus.
"Or better yet a priest." Ishri swaggered across the tent towards them. "He's dead."
"What happened?"
"Colonel Rigrat stabbed him."
"Who the hell are you?"
"Ishri."
"He was a great heart!" Cosca gently touched Andiche's staring-eyed, gape-mouthed, blood-spattered face. "A true friend. He stepped before the thrust."
"Andiche did?" Sesaria did not look convinced.
"He gave his life… to save mine." Cosca's voice almost croaked away to nothing at the end, and he dashed a tear from the corner of his eye. "Thank the Fates Sergeant Friendly moved as quickly as he did or I'd have been done for too." He beat at Andiche's chest, fist squelching on his warm, blood-soaked coat. "My fault! My fault! I blame myself!"