"Why?" snarled Victus, glaring down at Rigrat's corpse. "I mean, why did this bastard do it?"
"My fault!" wailed Cosca. "I took money from Rogont to stay out of the battle!"
Sesaria and Victus exchanged a glance. "You took money… to stay out?"
"A huge amount of money! There will be shares by seniority, of course." Cosca waved his hand as though it was a trifle now. "Danger pay for every man, in Gurkish gold."
"Gold?" rumbled Sesaria, eyebrows going up as though Cosca had pronounced a magic word.
"But I would sink it all in the ocean for one minute longer in my old friend's company! To hear him speak again! To see him smile. But never more. Forever…" Cosca swept off his hat, laid it gently over Andiche's face and hung his head. "Silent."
Victus cleared his throat. "How much gold are we talking about, exactly?"
"A… huge… quantity." Cosca gave a shuddering sniff. "As much again as Orso paid us to fight on his behalf."
"Andiche dead. A heavy price to pay." But Sesaria looked as if he perceived the upside.
"Too heavy a price. Far too heavy." Cosca slowly stood. "My friends… could you bring yourselves to make arrangements for the burial? I must observe the battle. We must stumble on. For him. There is one consolation, I suppose."
"The money?" asked Victus.
Cosca slapped down a hand on each captain's shoulder. "Thanks to my bargain we will not need to fight. Andiche will be the only casualty the Thousand Swords suffer today. You could say he died for all of us. Sergeant Friendly!" And Cosca turned and pushed past into the bright sunlight. Ishri glided silently at his elbow.
"Quite the performance," she murmured. "You really should have been an actor rather than a general."
"There's not so much air between the two as you might imagine." Cosca walked to the captain general's chair and leaned on the back, feeling suddenly tired and irritable. Considering the long years he had dreamed of taking revenge for Afieri, it was a disappointing pay-off. He was in terrible need of a drink, fumbled for Morveer's flask, but it was empty. He frowned down into the valley. The Talinese were engaged in a desperate battle perhaps half a mile wide at the bank of the lower ford, waiting for help from the Thousand Swords. Help that would never come. They had the numbers, but the Osprians were still holding their ground, keeping the battle narrow, choking them up in the shallows. The great mкlйe heaved and glittered, the ford crawling with men, bobbing with bodies.
Cosca gave a long sigh. "You Gurkish think there's a point to it all, don't you? That God has a plan, and so forth?"
"I've heard it said." Ishri's black eyes flicked from the valley to him. "And what do you think God's plan is, General Cosca?"
"I have long suspected that it might be to annoy me."
She smiled. Or at least her mouth curled up to show sharp white teeth. "Fury, paranoia and epic self-centredness in the space of a single sentence."
"All the fine qualities a great military leader requires…" He shaded his eyes, squinting off to the west, towards the ridge behind the Talinese lines. "And here they are. Perfectly on schedule." The first flags were showing there. The first glittering spears. The first of what appeared to be a considerable body of men.
The Fate of Styria
Up there." Monza's gloved forefinger, and her little finger too, of course, pointed towards the ridge.
More soldiers were coming over the crest, a mile or two to the south of where the Talinese had first appeared. A lot more. It seemed Orso had kept a few surprises back. Reinforcements from his Union allies, maybe. Monza worked her sore tongue around her sour mouth and spat. From faint hopes to no hopes. A small step, but one nobody ever enjoys taking. The leading flags caught a gust of wind and unfurled for a moment. She peered at them through her eyeglass, frowned, rubbed her eye and peered again. There was no mistaking the cockleshell of Sipani.
"Sipanese," she muttered. Until a few moments ago, the world's most neutral men. "Why the hell are they fighting for Orso?"
"Who says they are?" When she turned to Rogont, he was smiling like a thief who'd whipped the fattest purse of his career. He spread his arms out wide. "Rejoice, Murcatto! The miracle you asked for!"
She blinked. "They're on our side?"
"Most certainly, and right in Foscar's rear! And the irony is that it's all your doing."
"Mine?"
"Entirely yours! You remember the conference in Sipani, arranged by that preening mope the King of the Union?"
The great procession through the crowded streets, the cheering as Rogont and Salier led the way, the jeering as Ario and Foscar followed. "What of it?"
"I had no more intention of making peace with Ario and Foscar than they had with me. My only care was to talk old Chancellor Sotorius over to my side. I tried to convince him that if the League of Eight lost then Duke Orso's greed would not end at Sipani's borders, however neutral they might be. That once my young head was off, his ancient one would be next on the block."
More than likely true. Neutrality was no better defence against Orso than it was against the pox. His ambitions had never stopped at one river or the next. One reason why, until the moment he'd tried to kill her, he'd made Monza such a fine employer.
"But the old man clung to his cherished neutrality, tight as a captain to the wheel of his sinking ship, and I despaired of dislodging him. I am ashamed to admit I began to despair entirely, and was seriously considering fleeing Styria for happier climes." Rogont closed his eyes and tilted his face towards the sun. "And then, oh, happy day, oh, serendipity…" He opened them and looked straight at her. "You murdered Prince Ario."
Black blood pumping from his pale throat, body tumbling through the open window, fire and smoke as the building burned. Rogont grinned with all the smugness of a magician explaining the workings of his latest trick.
"Sotorius was the host. Ario was under his protection. The old man knew Orso would never forgive him for the death of his son. He knew the doom of Sipani was sounded. Unless Orso could be stopped. We came to an agreement that very night, while Cardotti's House of Leisure was still burning. In secret, Chancellor Sotorius brought Sipani into the League of Nine."
"Nine," muttered Monza, watching the Sipanese host march steadily down the gentle hillside towards the fords, and Foscar's almost undefended rear.
"My long retreat from Puranti, which you thought so ill-advised, was intended to give him time to prepare. I backed willingly into this little trap so I could play the bait in a greater one."
"You're cleverer than you look."
"Not difficult. My aunt always told me I looked a dunce."
She frowned across the valley at the motionless host on top of Menzes Hill. "What about Cosca?"
"Some men never change. He took a very great deal of money from my Gurkish backers to keep out of the battle."
It suddenly seemed she didn't understand the world nearly as well as she'd thought. "I offered him money. He wouldn't take it."
"Imagine that, and negotiation so very much your strong point. He wouldn't take the money from you. Ishri, it seems, talks more sweetly. ‘War is but the pricking point of politics. Blades can kill men, but only words can move them, and good neighbours are the surest shelter in a storm.' I quote from Juvens' Principles of Art. Flim-flam and superstition mostly, but the volume on the exercise of power is quite fascinating. You should read more widely, General Murcatto. Your book-learning is narrow in scope."