‘Tell your man he’s about to learn secrets only the dead know,’ I said, keeping my left point up and taking two steps back to the ledge with my right-hand blade ready to sweep. Something whizzed by my right leg and skipped off the ledge. It wasn’t an arrow, nor a bolt. Could it have been a sling-stone? I heard a stunned cry from behind me.
‘Boxer, y’fool! I told’ja not to try that again. Get the hells back down and keep watch!’ the leader shouted past me.
‘Can’t! My foothold broke! Somebody help me up!’ said the scared voice. This one was high-pitched too.
‘Look, no point anyone dying who doesn’t have to,’ I called out. ‘How about you don’t shoot at me and I give your little friend a hand up?’
‘Call me “little”, you son-of-a—’
‘Shut it, Boxer!’ The leader came a few feet forward, and the others joined him: kids. They were all bloody kids no older than Aline. There was a dog with them too, a Sharpney, by the look of him, a big, fast breed that made excellent hunting dogs. I hoped I wouldn’t have to kill him.
‘You try anything funny and the girl dies first,’ the leader said. He was about thirteen, and I could make out a shock of straight hair above a dirty face. ‘And if you get advantage on one of us, Mixer here will tear your throat out.’ He motioned to the dog.
‘Typical,’ said one of the others, this one clearly a girl. ‘You always try to hit girls first, Venger.’
‘Shut it,’ he said. ‘No foolin’; you let Boxer up and then y’put down your sword or there’s gonna be trouble.’ The dog let out a low rumble in agreement. ‘Mixer, stay,’ he said firmly.
I smiled, put down my left-hand sword and stepped back. I held my hand over the edge and felt something grab it and tentatively try to pull me over, but I was well-grounded and ready for it.
‘Try that again and I’ll drop you, you little shit-eater,’ I said in as pleasant a tone as I could muster.
‘Boxer! Don’t mess around,’ Venger said angrily.
‘A’right,’ Boxer said.
I hauled him up one-handed – not as hard a task as it might have been if he’d weighed more than air. What I saw when I pulled him in front of me was another scrawny, dirty-faced boy, probably ten years old.
‘Y’gonna try and hold me hostage now, bastard?’ Boxer said, clearly readying an elbow for my groin.
I pushed him forward and off-balance and he fell to his knees a few feet between me and the kids.
‘What now?’ I asked.
Venger looked me up and down. ‘You can go, I s’pose, what with Boxer bein’ such a fool turd. But you leave the money. And if you value any part of your life you take that coat off and leave it too,’ he said.
I shook my head. ‘That won’t do, I’m afraid; I need them all. What would you do with a Greatcoat, anyway? It’s bigger than you are.’
Venger sneered. ‘Burn it,’ he said.
It’s nice to be so widely loved. ‘Don’t like Greatcoats?’
‘Don’t like fools that dress up as ’em,’ he said. ‘Everyone knows there ain’t no Greatcoats no more.’
‘He is, too,’ Aline said, stepping out from behind me and leaping to my defence.
‘Shut up, girl,’ Venger said, ‘you don’t know nothin’ ’bout it.’
That got Venger a slap in the back of the head from one of the girls in his group. ‘Stop pickin’ on girls all the time, Venger,’ she warned.
‘Ow! I’m not. She’d be wrong if she was a boy, too.’
‘Listen,’ I said, ‘my name is Falcio val Mond, First Cantor of the King’s Magisters. I’m trying very hard right now to keep this girl alive, and there are a lot of people after me. So you can either take my word that I’m a Greatcoat and get the hells out of our way, or I can take you over my knee and spank you ’til you can’t see straight. Now take your pick.’
That got a few snickers from his friends, but to his credit, he ignored the jibe and kept to business. ‘If you’re a Greatcoat, then answer me this: how come you let the armies kill the King if you’re all supposed to be such tough fighters? How come every one of you betrayed their old Paelis?’
‘Because the Greatcoats were ordered to stand down and accept the Covenant. It was an order.’
‘Yeah? An’ who gave ’em the order?’
‘I did,’ I said.
I had been working in the library of Castle Aramor, maps strewn across the long table and two-centuries-old books on warfare in my hands. The Ducal Army would be here within hours and we had only a hundred and forty-four Greatcoats and a small troop of Royal Guardsmen, and the staff and residents of the castle. It wasn’t a lot to work with, but I had got a few ideas from the old books. I would have dearly loved weapons for countering sieges right then, but I was ready to make do without.
I heard someone come in and turned to see the King. He was casually dressed, in the gear we wore for practising swordwork.
‘I don’t suppose you’d reconsider?’ I asked him, still looking at the diagram of the castle on the table for a way to block the South Gate so that I wouldn’t have to divert troops there.
‘Kings don’t get to run, Falcio,’ he said.
I looked up at him. ‘Well, if you can’t ride fast, you fight hard.’
‘Not this time. The motto is “judge fair, ride fast, fight hard”, remember? “Fight hard” is the last option. Besides, there’s a reason why no King of Tristia has ever been allowed to maintain a private army. The soldiery has always been the Dukes’ protection against a tyrant taking absolute power.’
‘Then what—?’
‘You’re going to stand the men down, Falcio. I’m ordering you to stand the men down.’
‘But we can fight! I’ve thought it through and the Magisters are ready. If you’ll only go over these plans with me I can show you—’
‘Enough. I’m still King, for the next few hours, at any rate.’
‘But I’m telling you we can fight!’
He started to answer, but a coughing fit overtook him. It was coming on winter and he’d not slept in three days.
‘You can fight, Falcio,’ he said finally, ‘but you can’t win. And even if you could, every one of the Magisters would lose their lives.’
‘What kind of life will we have when the Dukes take us?’ I slammed my fist on one of my maps. ‘Where are the noble families, damn it? How many trips have you taken, “courting the lesser nobles”? Where are they now that we need them?’
‘It isn’t their job to throw their lives away on a war they can’t win, Falcio. Saints know what I’ve asked of them is more than they should have had to give in the first place.’
‘You’re talking in circles again when we should be preparing the Greatcoats!’
The King walked over to me and put a hand on the side of my face. People always seem to do that when they want me to shut up and do something I don’t want to do.
‘I’m going to tell you what to do now, Falcio. I’m going to give you the new plan. I’m your friend, but I’m your King first. You are going to surrender the castle to the Duke’s men, in exchange for safe passage and pardons for the Greatcoats.’
He was right; he was my King and my friend and I loved him, but I swear right then I almost hit him. I felt my fingernails pressing into my palms as I clenched my fists. I would have knocked him down, had it not been for the look in his eyes.
‘This is how I want it, Falcio, and this is how it will be. The Dukes will agree. They know the Magisters are fierce, and they won’t want to pay any more for this adventure than they absolutely have to.’
The thought of turning him over to the Dukes was unconscionable. It would mean the destruction of everything the Greatcoats stood for. We had truly believed we could bring law and justice and honour to the world, and now he was taking that from me. I felt sick, betrayed.