Styke fetched his jacket from Deshnar’s saddle horn and swung it over his shoulders, taking care to adjust the lapel where a single silver lance designated him as a major. Technically, he outranked the both of them. But Kez of any rank were always more important than a colonial.
Gracely bit her lip, then blurted out, “You’re Ben Styke?”
“Major Ben Styke,” the captain corrected gently. “He may be a colonial, sergeant, but this man has killed more enemy combatants than you can count. He’s broken grenadiers, infantry lines, and even Privileged sorcerers. Fort Kurlin, and much of the northeast of Fatrasta, belongs to the crown because of his heroics.”
Gracely paled, then snapped a salute. “Major Styke, sir. My apologies.”
Styke rolled his eyes and bent over, wrapping the canvas around the body at his feet and then hefting the package, single-handed, and tossing it over Deshnar’s hindquarters. He began tying the body in place, pausing occasionally to wave the flies away. “No apologies needed, Sergeant,” he said. “You can’t help being an asshole. You’ve the double curse of being both a sergeant and a Kez.” He gave her a toothy grin.
The captain responded with a disapproving, if wry, smile. “Major Styke, my name is Cardin. I’m a great admirer of yours.” He bent from his horse and offered his hand.
It wasn’t a salute, but Styke rarely managed to wring a salute out of Kez officers. A handshake, he decided, would have to do.
“Good to meet you, Cardin.” He wiped some body fluid from the rotting corpse off on his pants and shook Cardin’s hand, then swung up into the saddle, urging Deshnar back up to the road. Cardin and Gracely followed him, rejoining their companions, and the five made their way toward Fernhollow at a walk.
Styke gave Cardin a sidelong glance as the Kez captain fell in beside him. “Major Styke,” Cardin said in the slow, thoughtful manner of a man with something on his mind, “you’re the commander of the Fernhollow Garrison, are you not?”
“I am,” Styke said.
“Could I trust you to tell me, soldier to soldier, whether there is any trouble in Fernhollow?”
Styke let his next sidelong glance linger. Cardin’s own eyes were on the wrapped corpse draped over Deshnar’s hindquarters, and he looked uneasy. Styke didn’t have to ask him what he meant. Trouble was word of the year across the whole of Fatrasta. There were riots over taxes and grain, bubbling conflict along the frontier, and a general undercurrent of discontent from the humblest salons to the biggest city newspapers.
He wondered after the reasoning for Cardin’s line of questioning. Was he here to raise taxes? Inspect the town? Institute some kind of conscription? Styke tried to think of a positive reason that a Kez officer would be asking after such an out-of-the-way town and couldn’t come up with one.
“Fernhollow’s not a big town,” Styke said, rubbing his chin. “Just a thousand people, if you include the Palo. I know most of ’em by name, and there aren’t more than a handful of troublemakers in the lot. Most of them just want to keep their heads down.”
Cardin nodded thoughtfully. “I’m glad to hear that. Major, I’m with the Eighth Cuirassiers. My squadron has spent the last year out on assignment in the Ironstead Territory and is on our way back to Landfall. If it’s not too much trouble, I’d like a place to billet the men for the night. They need real food and beds, and they haven’t had much chance at either for quite some time.”
“I see,” Styke said. He almost felt relief at the idea. Putting up a few hundred Kez cuirassiers would be a pain in the ass – Kez soldiers rarely paid their bills, and they tended to drink too much – but as long as it wasn’t taxes or a new conscription, this sounded like something Styke could deal with. “Fernhollow is a bit out of the way for coming back from the Ironstead Territory, isn’t it?”
“It is,” Cardin agreed. He glanced over his shoulder at his companions, then said in a low voice, “My commanding officer has a mistress in Beggar’s Wood.”
Beggar’s Wood was about fifty miles south of Fernhollow. A long way out of the way. Styke snorted. “How long do you plan on staying here?”
“Just tonight. We’ll have the men moving again early tomorrow morning.”
Styke gave it a moment’s consideration. “Right. I’ll send word around. We have two inns and seven pubs. Between them and a couple dozen of the families in town, none of your men should have to sleep on the ground.” Styke didn’t like Kez soldiers, but he wasn’t an asshole. A year on the frontier, with all the rumors of violence that must have reached them, was hard on any group of soldiers – even if, by the look of their cuirasses, they hadn’t actually seen combat.
Cardin seemed relieved. “Thank you, Major Styke. I am in your debt.” He snapped his fingers, and Gracely brought her horse up next to his. “Sergeant, report back to the squadron and let them know we’ll be staying in Fernhollow tonight. Everyone is to be on their best behavior. Tell Major Prost that I’ll reserve the best room in the city for him tonight. That should please him.”
Gracely snapped a salute and peeled off from the group, riding back the way they came, and Cardin gave Styke a grateful smile. “With all the trouble going around, I was worried about bringing the men so far out of the way on our return from assignment. But,” he sighed, “Major Prost insisted. At least he’s given me leave to choose our camps with care. The last thing I need to do is get the men involved in any of the violence.”
Styke nodded along, but his mind was already far away. He was thinking about the corpse tied to his saddle, and wondering who was going to hang for the tax collector’s death. He was thinking about the logistics of a few hundred extra soldiers in town.
And he was thinking about the name Major Prost. It sounded vaguely familiar, a tickle at the back of his memory, and he didn’t like it.
He showed Cardin to The Rumbling Sow, the bigger of the two inns in town, then pointed him toward the mayor’s house before dropping the tax collector’s body off at the undertaker’s. The name Prost bothered him the whole way to the small stone fort on the edge of town, and the much larger barracks and stable that housed his garrison of colonial lancers.
He left Deshnar with one of the stable boys and found his second-in-command, Captain Blye, smoking his pipe down in the reeds by the river. Blye was stout and heavyset, with square shoulders and a pencil-thin, carefully-groomed beard that he claimed was all the style in Gurla right now. It made him look like an idiot, and Styke liked to remind him about that at any opportunity.
“Blye,” Styke said by way of greeting.
“Major. Where have you been all morning? Rezi was looking all over the place for you. Said you left without eating breakfast and it had her worried.”
Mention of Rezi brought a half smile to Styke’s face, but he forced it away. “Somebody killed Kros,” Styke replied.
Blye took his pipe out of his mouth and stood up. “Shit,” he said. “You’re joking.”
“Nope. Brend Hillness found the body when he went to check on his cows this morning. Kros was strung up on the old ironwood west of town. He was kicked to death and left for the crows.”
Blye made a disgusted sound in the back of his throat. “Poor bastard. Any idea who did it?”
“I’m gonna spend the rest of the week trying to find out.”
“Need any help?”
“No, I’ve got more important shit for you to deal with. There’s a company of Kez cuirassiers on their way into town and looking for a place to sleep tonight. I told ’em we’d put ’em up.”
“Of course you did,” Blye grumbled. “I take it you want me to make arrangements.”