Not Really the Prisoner of Zenda (28 page)

No need to waste.

The peasants weren’t the only ones that felt that way. Already the buzzards were circling overhead, and occasionally a particularly brave one would swoop down toward one of the bodies of the men or horses, only to flee, its wings flapping madly as it lumbered back up into the air, when one of the soldiers raised a stick.

Let them eat later.

Kethol straightened.

You got used to this after a while, particularly with a stiffening breeze carrying the smells away. It wasn’t really that bad.

Kethol smelled rain coming. Between the rain and the buzzards, and the ants that were already picking their way through the offal, the road would be cleaned in a few days at most, leaving behind only some bones that would bleach white in the sun, if they didn’t rot first.

He tried to remember how it all was, how it all really was. That was important to him, although he couldn’t have said why he cared. The Battle of the Black Rope would quickly be forgotten, most likely, or else it would grow in the telling and become a legend of how Forinel, Baron Keranahan, waded single-handedly through dozens of giant bandits on huge warhorses, killing right and left with every step.

That was the way it was with battles, even tiny ones like this one. They were forgotten, or they became legends. The reality never was as large or as small — and certainly never as heroic — and the details were always painfully ordinary, and easy to forget.

A peasant archer’s arrow had caught one of the bandits in the right eye, penetrating through the skull on the other side before stopping. The dead bandit lay on the ground in a pool of his own blood and piss and shit.

Kethol stooped and tried to pull the arrow loose, but he only succeeded in bringing the dead man to a half-sitting position.

He gave another jerk, and the arrow came free, bringing along bits of congealing blood and little gray morsels of brain with it.

The shaft was plain, without any markings. There should have been markings on the shaft, so that the archer could claim the bounty for his successful shot. Luck or skill, a reward for arrows that reached their mark was important.

But he shouldn’t have been surprised at the naked shaft. Peasant archers, after all. Poachers didn’t mark their arrows.

“Six,” Kethol said, not because nobody else could count that high, but because he thought that he ought to say something. “Only six.”

“Only?” Pirojil chuckled as he shook his head. “You are thinking like a noble, Baron Keranahan,” he added, quietly. “Besides, one of those who got away did it on a horse that’s wounded — look at the blood trail. I don’t think he’ll get very far, and if any of the others is generous enough to let him ride double, that just means that there’ll be two on foot before the morning is over. And the others? Let them escape, and let them talk about how the easy pickings in Keranahan are no longer quite so easy, eh?”

“Yes.”

Kethol looked up at Tarnell, who was sitting atop his own horse, the fist that gripped the hilt of his sword economically resting on his thigh, while the flat of the blade rested on his saddle. “Do you think you can track any of them down before they get over the hills?” Pirojil asked.

“Maybe.” Tarnell grunted. “No. I don’t think so. Not if they’re smart enough to just head right out over the hills. On the other hand, if they stuck to the roads to try to put as much distance between them and us as quick as they could, Fetheren and Arnistead will have had at least some of them hammered to the ground, and there’ll be more bodies.”

He shrugged. Bodies didn’t bother the old soldier any more than they did Pirojil.

“I was wondering where those two had gotten to.” Pirojil scowled. “I thought I told you to bring your men.
All
of your men.”

“Yeah.” Tarnell shrugged. “You did tell me that, as I recall. But my old captain always taught me to keep a reserve, and I wouldn’t think you’re much of a better soldier than he is, or than I am.” Tarnell started to gesture with his sword, but visibly thought better of it and just sheathed it, even though he had to stand up in the stirrups to do so.

“Captain, Baron, Emperor,” Tarnell said, “it doesn’t matter to me. Doesn’t even matter that I was right and you were wrong, not to me. I work for Captain Treseen.”

Kethol took the knife from his belt, and walked over to one of the bodies.

Pirojil hurried after him.

“What are you doing, Baron?” Pirojil asked, not gently.

“The heads. We promised to bring the heads. At least six of them, and that’s what we have here.”

Pirojil nodded. “Yes, we did, and it’s not at all inappropriate that the heads should be taken with the baron’s own knife.” He held out his palm. “But you don’t need to be doing that for yourself — Baron Keranahan — do you?”

“I guess not.”

“Then leave it to me, and let’s get back to the — let’s get back home.”

Kethol nodded.

12

J
ASON
C
ULLINANE

The bad thing about inherited titles is that virtue isn’t hereditary. The good thing is that stupidity isn’t, either.

— Walter Slovotsky

W
HAT
WOULD
YOU
say,” Andrea Cullinane asked, “about taking a quick trip into Biemestren?”

“Biemestren?”

“You have heard of the city, haven’t you?”

He eyed her skeptically. Mother wasn’t usually much for sarcasm.

She didn’t look directly at him as she finished loading the rifle — not quickly enough, in Jason’s opinion, but nobody was asking Jason’s opinion, which was typical — and cocked it before raising it to her shoulder.

Despite the heavy barrel, the front sight wavered only a little. She took in a deep breath, let some of it out, and then pulled the trigger.

Bang.

There was another hole in the target, just at the edge of the bull’s-eye. “Not bad for an old woman, eh?”

Well, Mother
was
old — she was well into her forties — but she was well preserved for all of that. There was no trace of gray in her dark brown hair, and while her riding leathers fit too tightly, at least in her son’s opinion, that was a matter of her choice, after all. Jason didn’t particularly like the way that some of the troops tended to watch her out of the corners of their eyes as she walked away, like she was some sort of peasant girl, or something, but it was a bad subject to bring up. The last time he had done that, she had just smiled, and sighed, and looked at him like he was a little child, which he absolutely hated.

Jason Cullinane shook his head. “Mother, I don’t understand you. You’re always telling me that it’s best if I stay out of Biemestren. Then, when Parliament convenes, you hurry me over to Biemestren — and
then
, the very moment that Parliament lets out, you hurry me out of Biemestren. Now, now you want me to go back to Biemestren? In, out, in, out — why don’t I just take a room at Biemestren Castle?”

She laughed. One thing you had to say for Mother was that she had a good laugh.

“Well, you could do that — but don’t blame me if Beralyn poisons you.”

“She wouldn’t.”

“Don’t bet on it.”

He gestured toward the target. “Nice shot, Mother. I’ll give you that.”

“Your father was better at changing the subject.”

“My father, so I hear all the time, was better at a lot of things.”

He had seen it, more than once: Father sparring with two, sometimes three opponents — always with a brass flask of healing draughts nearby for their benefit, not his — and it was almost magical the way that he could anticipate a blow, distract one with a feint while kicking out at another, moving and spinning about much faster than any man that large had any right to, and always controlling his touches so that he didn’t injure his opponents, save on a few occasions where he decided that one of the soldiers wasn’t really trying to score on the Emperor, in which case he would thoroughly work that man over, and hold off letting him use the healing draughts until everybody got the point that the Emperor expected each and every one of his sparring partners to try the best he could.

Jason wasn’t nearly that good, and Jason had always had to work at it.

It didn’t matter whether it was a sword — and he had spent more time than he cared to think about with a sword in his hand — or with a staff, although why his father and his teachers had insisted that he become so familiar with a peasant weapon still escaped him, or with a rifle.

Father had used to say something about how it was important that a ruler needed to be, if it was at all possible, sudden death in all directions. It was clear from his tone of voice that it was a quote from somebody, although he never did say who that somebody was. A ruler’s only other choice, Father had said, was to remain behind his walls all the time, which would only last until somebody brought those walls down around him.

Jason had always worked very hard on his lessons, and considered himself better than most. It would be nice to be right, for once.

She rested the butt of the rifle on her hip, and pointed to the other rifle on the shooting table.

“Your shot. Then we can discuss your upcoming trip, and how you’d better watch what you eat.”

She was being ridiculous. The Dowager Empress — well, actually, the
other
Dowager Empress; Mother still qualified for that title, as the mother of the previous claimant, Jason, and the widow of the previous emperor — always looked at Jason as though she wished he would break out into flame, or something, but Beralyn surely couldn’t hate him that much, and while she didn’t show it, deep down, she probably was grateful to him. After all, he had abdicated the crown and the throne in Thomen’s favor.

He smiled. Which meant that while Thomen was having to engage in endless negotiations with Nyphien, and Enkiar, and the other countries of the Middle Lands, not to mention keeping the various barons from each other’s throats, Jason could spend his time out in the clean country air.

So who had done whom a favor?

Besides, truth to tell, Thomen was a better choice for emperor than Jason was, and everybody knew it. It might well be possible, someday, to come to some sort of accommodation with Pandathaway — the Council as a whole, if not the Slavers Guild — but that would not be possible for the son of Karl Cullinane, who had, as legend had it — wrongly — single-handedly chased the Pandathaway-based Slavers Guild out of much of the Middle Lands and all of Holtun-Bieme.

Let Thomen run the Empire; Jason had other matters to keep in mind. Like those killers that had been sent to get him on his way to the last Parliament, for example. It was certainly the Pandathaway Slavers Guild, and though there was equally certainly no sign of them anywhere in what he couldn’t help still thinking of as Barony Furnael, they would certainly try again.

Unless he cut the snake off at the head.

Give it a couple more years. Two, maybe three more years to settle things in the barony, to hone and polish his skills with a sword, a knife, and a gun, and he would be off to Melawei. He had more than a hunch that the Sword of Arta Myrdhyn would enable him to settle matters with the Guild, even in their stronghold.

He didn’t know what, exactly, the Sword of Arta Myrdhyn had to do with him, but it was something, and Arta Myrdhyn, being Arta Myrdhyn, would not have gone to so much trouble to put it there, waiting for him, if it wasn’t important.

Maybe it was the key to Pandathaway, or maybe to something else, but it was important.

Maybe, he sometimes thought, it was the key to the Gate Between Worlds? It would be interesting, if that was the case. He had spent his life hearing stories about the Other Side, about carriages that traveled without horses, and people who flew through the air much faster than even Ellegon could carry them, about pictures that danced in front of your eyes, and cities that were crowded with not tens of thousands, but literally millions of people, who lived and worked in buildings that scraped the sky.

In the meantime, Mother and Doria Perlstein could do most of the running of the barony, which left time for him and Taren and maybe even Ahira to go out and build a few legends of their own.

It was hard being the son of a legend, but it could have been worse.

After all, it was in part because he was the son of a legend that they were spending the morning out at the practice range behind the stables. Not the worst way to spend a morning.

Jason had set up a pair of targets himself, and the two of them had been taking turns with the new rifles that were just in from Home.

The engineer was having fun, again: these new ones loaded at the breech, not the muzzle, and all it was necessary to do in order to prepare one to fire was to push the bullet in by hand until it stuck, then follow it with the small twist of paper that contained a charge of powder, and then snap the breech closed — which also broke the paper cartridge open — and then all he had to do was push a little primer on the firing nipple hard enough to set it in place before it was ready to fire.

The whole procedure was not nearly as quick as it was with the few cartridge-based guns there were around, but it was not nearly as dependent on the brass for the cartridges — there might have been as many as six revolvers in the Middle Lands, and Jason owned two of them — which was apparently difficult to manufacture in any kind of quantity.

Jason didn’t know much about that — but he did know that he could reload one of these rifles a lot more quickly than he could a muzzle-loader.

Cleaning it after a practice session was still a bitch of a job, but one of the nice things about being the baron was that he could have somebody else do it for him, and right now he didn’t have to listen to endless lectures about how a man was supposed to take care of his own gear, as most of the people who would have given him those lectures were somewhere else. Ahira was playing around in a smithy near New Pittsburgh, and Taren was chasing down orcs in the hills, something that Jason would rather have been doing himself. Jane Slovotsky was off at Home, taking some lessons from Lou Riccetti on the finer points of wootz manufacture, something that he would have enjoyed about as much as he would have enjoyed mucking out a stable. Actually, if you made a point of mucking out the stable regularly, it wasn’t that bad, so he was told. But listening to the engineer drone on for hours about temperatures and carbon content and every boring thing under the sun — yech. It was all important, yes, but it was important to engineers.