Lachlan was watching the hills the way a man watches his love pull her dress over her head. With both love and lust. ‘My hills ain’t far,’ he said. He looked down at the dead man – stripped naked, and already dead white – on the ground. There were patches of snow.
‘Gelfred caught their outposts asleep,’ Ser Michael said. ‘I heard it this morning in the command meeting.’
‘Blessed Virgin,’ Ranald said, and crossed himself. As a man who had been dead, he took the deaths of others very seriously.
‘Captain – that is, the Duke – says we’ve a clear run until we encounter his scouts,’ Ser Michael said.
‘Sweet Christ,’ Ranald said. ‘Poor Andronicus.’ He laughed aloud, and that particular laughter spread like wildfire as the army raced across the hills, headed north. ‘Tom and I thought the Castellan at Middleburg would hold against us.’
Ser Michael shrugged. ‘He didn’t. I don’t know the story, but the gates were open and the Duke expected it.’ He looked back. ‘I don’t know what he’s doing, but he’s been planning it for months.’
Ranald nodded. ‘Aye. He’s a canny bastard.’ He caught Michael’s glance and put a hand on the younger man’s shoulder. ‘Michael, lad, he’ll plan as carefully for your da.’
Michael spat carefully in a patch of snow. ‘Ran, I don’t know what I want for my pater. I’m not convinced I shouldn’t ride away and leave him to his dungheap.’ He touched the favour he wore at his shoulder. ‘I have other concerns than him.’
Ranald fingered his beard. ‘Aye. As do I.’
It was Michael’s turn. ‘Don’t fret – he’ll knight you. Just give him an excuse. Ranald, I know him. He chancy to cross, he’s the devil when he’s angry, he’s as vain as a popinjay and he loves to show us all how smart he is – but he stands by his friends.’
Ranald nodded, obviously unhappy. ‘Aye, that’s what Tom says.’
‘We’ll have a fight in the next ten days.’
‘Or we’ll all freeze waiting for it,’ Ranald said. ‘But aye.’
There was no break for midday food. The whole column rolled along and took the north fork in the Imperial road without pausing under the walls of Kilkis – and now they were marching along the old legion road. Instead of marching west over the last pass into the Green Hills, they continued north, passing well east of the Dragon’s Mountain and crossing the Meander River at a stone bridge so ancient that Ser Alcaeus dismounted, read the inscription, and laughed aloud. He cantered along the jingling column – men were eating in the saddle, and the Nordikans, who were probably the worst riders, were leaving a trail of uneaten food – dropped sausages and cheese – and they roared with laughter at each other’s riding. Men fell off. They all drank steadily.
Alcaeus reined in by the standard. ‘I know why you left Darkhair and half the Nordikans,’ he said. ‘By our avenging lord – how many wagons of wine do they have with them?’
The Red Knight grinned. ‘A better question would be – what will they be like when we run out of wine?’
Ranald leaned out over his cantle. ‘What did it say? I’ve crossed the Stone Bridge in the Hills a hundred times. I can read, but I can’t read that!’
Alcaeus nodded to the Red Knight. ‘A few of us can still read Old Archaic,’ he said. ‘For such a grand structure – out here in this waste of green grass and rock – you might expect an oration from the Empress Livia-’
All the educated men nodded.
Alcaeus straightened his back where the tug of harness and four days in the saddle grated on his hips. ‘It says “Iskander, Deckarch of Taxis X Nike, and his mess group built this bridge in fourteen days.”’
Tom Lachlan and his cousin turned their horses to look back, and for a moment, the whole command group – Ser Milus, and Nicholas Ganfroy, who was four fingers taller and a much better trumpeter, Bad Tom and Ranald, Toby with his master’s spare warhorse and Nell, who had suddenly started to look more like a woman and less like a skinny irk, Father Arnaud, Ser Alcaeus and Ser Gavin and the Megas Ducas himself by Ser Gerald Random nursing his ankle – all sat in their saddles, munching sausage and contemplating a three-arch stone bridge built by ten soldiers in fourteen days.
‘They conquered the world, or most of it,’ the Duke said.
Bad Tom spat some sausage rind. ‘I would ha’ loved to fight them.’ He nodded at his cousin. ‘They’d hae gi’en us a mickle fight. Kiss the book on that.’
The Duke gave his largest man-at-arms a crooked grin. ‘I don’t know if they were great warriors, Tom,’ he said. ‘They built great roads and bridges and made damn sure they weren’t outnumbered when it came to a fight.’
‘Oh,’ said Tom, losing interest. ‘How do you know that?’
‘They left books behind,’ the Duke said. ‘And I read them.’
Liviapolis – The Princess Irene
‘What!’ The princess lost control of her voice very briefly and shrieked like the girls selling fish on the docks.
Lady Maria stood her ground with the long practice of a wife, a mother, and a courtier. ‘The army has marched away, Majesty.’
Irene put her bare feet into sheepskin slippers – even in the grip of terrified rage, she could not help but notice how unseemly it was that a princess born in the purple birthing room of the Great Palace would wear peasant slippers to keep her feet warm. The ancient floors of the palace had hypocausts, and should have been warmed by furnaces in the lowest cellars. But none of that had worked for many years, and only rats lived in the tunnels that had once funnelled warm air.
‘Do you mean that my barbarian heretic has taken my army and marched away without informing me?’ she spat.
Lady Maria nodded and curtsied deeply. ‘So it would appear, Majesty.’
‘Leaving me naked to the traitor?’ Irene said. She was wearing only a thin linen shift in a very cold room, and the concept of being naked before her enemies was rather real and immediate.
‘Acting Spatharios Darkhair remains with more than half of the Nordikan Guard. There are two maniples of the Scholae in the palace and our walls are manned.’ Lady Maria curtsied again. ‘The new sailors in the Navy Yard have been paid, and are armed. We are not utterly wretched.’
Irene went to the great arched doors that gave on her balcony. There was snow in the air, but she looked north, towards the tall mountains of Thrake. ‘What is he doing?’ she asked.
Lonika, Northern Thrake
A black and white bird the size of a large dog alighted on the arm of a green-clad man. He was sitting on a fretting horse in a field of snow studded with snow-covered pines, and the weight of the bird on his arm threatened his seat, but he managed it. He slipped the message cylinder out of the bird’s harness of wool yarn, fed it most of a chicken, which act left him covered in bloody scraps, and then tossed the bird as high as he could manage into the air for the return journey to the city, more than a hundred leagues to the south.
Jules Kronmir read the message with what passed for panic on his face, which was registered by the very slightest downward twitch of his mouth.
He turned his horse and raced over the first snow of the season for the Palace of Lonika.
Aeskepiles sat across a big oak table from Jules Kronmir, drinking good cider and scowling.
‘We have to kill him,’ he said with a shrug. ‘You need to convince Duke Andronicus.’ He read the message again.
‘Andronicus is convinced that the only way to deal with the usurper is to meet him in the field.’ Kronmir raised his cup and drank. ‘Pray do not delay in taking this to the Duke, Magister. Time is everything.’
‘You are so reserved, Master Kronmir, I can’t decide what you are saying.’ Aeskepiles stretched his booted legs out towards the open hearth. ‘I hadn’t expected to spend a winter in Thrake,’ he admitted. He tossed the small confession on the still water of the spymaster’s face.