The Black Prince: Part II (7 page)

Hart sat down behind his desk. The news the scout had brought was encouraging—if it was true. But this wouldn’t be the first time a scout had been paid to act as herald, shepherding an unwitting army straight into a battle for which they were unprepared. He’d wait until the other scouts came back, and listen to their reports, before making a final decision.

If they came back. They might not. And that would tell him something, too.

“Regardless, brother. He’s tougher than he looks.”

“Most Southrons are.”

“Yes.” Arvid examined his blade with a critical eye. “Even Rudolph.”

Hart didn’t know about that.

Arvid looked up. “Before I met you, brother—and even after. You weren’t weak, although you were strange. But you were also a Northman. First in heart and then in fact. So, to me, clearly you’d left the South. Yah? No room there for a man who doesn’t need a codpiece to give himself cods there.” He went back to sharpening his blade, the steel making a
whisk
,
whisk
against the whetstone.

“But these men, they are not so soft.”
Whisk
,
whisk
. He stopped, inspected the steel again, and began again. “Not Northmen, no. But not an embarrassment to their swords, either.”

Hart thought about dinner.

“If the little sap is right, then our swords will all bathe in blood tomorrow.”

“I don’t understand,” Hart said, “how they can be so close and not know that we are.”

Arvid shrugged.

“I
don’t see why it matters,” Rudolph said.

Hart had had about enough of the little twit. “It matters,” he grated, “because men’s lives depend on it.” Everything, literally everything, from the provision of stores to the tactics that Hart might use, depended on accurate fucking information. On knowing where the fuck they were. It might seem romantic to Rudolph, noncing about in the woods, but that was only because Rudolph was an idiot who hadn’t yet figured out that war involved pain. He thought pain was getting a pull in one of his fancy embroidered bugs or, on an especially bad day, fucking stubbing his toe.

Hart was half tempted to turn around, haul him back to the canyon, and throw him in.

He had plans for whatever mapmakers were responsible for this farce to share the same fate.

“But the scout was right.”

That he was. The other scouts had eventually returned and they’d reported the same news: that nothing in the maps matched the actual world around them and that they were, in fact, all but on the castle’s doorstep. Which would have been fabulous news, had Hart had time to prepare.

He had to attack. The longer he waited, the greater the likelihood that a relief force would arrive. That his own stores would run out. He didn’t know if a few days more to plan would have made a difference. Maybe not. Probably not. But he hated the feeling that, once again, he was was going in blind. That, this time, even the very earth had turned on him.

“Rudolph?”

“Yes?”

Please, drop dead.
“Please find Dunkirk and ask him to fill out a chit for that horse.”

“Which one’s Dunkirk?”

But Hart didn’t respond. He had better things to do. Rudolph could figure it the fuck out.

Or not.

He knew he was being irrational. He also couldn’t help himself. When he thought about the coming conflict he thought about Bjorn. He thought about not returning to Lissa. About what her life would be, without him. He thought, too, about the moments they’d never share: the birth of their first child, watching as that child learned to place one block atop another. To walk. To talk. To be betrothed, or to take orders as a knight.

He didn’t want to lose that. As Bjorn had done. Didn’t want to imagine Lissa growing old, alone, as Bjorn’s wife would.

He’d decided to remain at the same campsite for another night, beneath the rise. It would give them some protection, at least. Whatever scouts the castle sent out—and none had still been spotted—would have to crest the rise to count the number of fires. Hart would want to know, if he were in the castle; he’d want to know the size of the force arrayed against him.

He couldn’t shake the feeling, though, that he was preparing to attack a dead place.

He reached the center of the camp.

The time had come to address the men.

A few saw him, and stilled.

He began to speak. He didn’t shout; he didn’t have to. Those closest to him stared, swords and whetstones ignored on laps. Dinners sat forgotten while those from further off crept closer. This was their lord, their commander. He held their survival in his hands.

He described the troubles they’d face, on the morrow. What would be expected of them. What might befall them, even the best of them.

Soon no sounds competed at all, save the pattering of the rain and the snuffles and snorts of the horses in their lines.

“Many of you worship the Mediator, who teaches that the mutant bears his heresy on the outside. But the traitor hides it in his soul. This is true for all men, regardless of their creed. True also is the fact that while a man’s flesh can only corrupt so much and he still live, there are no limits to the evil that might grow within.

“Many of you have been tempted. Perhaps still are.” A scattering of shouts at this. “To put down your weapons. To go home and rebuild, and have an end to this ceaseless war. Or to join, as so many of your brothers have done, the usurper Maeve. But I tell you this: the Opposing One has never appeared in a ring of fire, gnashing his teeth and calling out for men to abandon reason.

“Greed. Pride. Lust. Your church calls these things sins. And it seems obvious that they are so; until it becomes greed to feed one’s children. Pride in seeing their accomplishments. Lust for protecting one’s own soil, they might some day till it. Maeve has come to you, and will come to you again, promising all of this and more. Because she believes that, like your brothers who’ve fallen into darkness, you don’t know your own worth. Believes that—nay, depends on this. On your subsequent willingness to sell your souls cheaply. Not for your good but for hers.”

A cry went up, wishing death to Maeve.

“Maeve promises the world, because her promises are as the hissing of snakes. How many good men lie beneath the ground, for having believed her? How many of your brothers, your friends, even your sons?”

More shouts.

“The king knows your worth. I know your worth. And I know that when you give yourself to a cause that doesn’t respect you, you surrender. Only the smallest fragments of your soul, at first. Until so many fragments litter this trail of tears that none more are left to scatter. And for what?

“So Maeve can live in comfort?”

Almost the whole camp was shouting now.

“I bring you here, now, because only in death does duty end! And because the reward for treachery isn’t a throne, but retribution! Do you want your sons to grow old, tilling their fields? To die in their beds, beside their wives? To see their own sons, and daughters, grow, and prosper? Then we must eradicate this threat. Inside this castle are the people who would steal this from you.”

More shouts. Assurances to him, mixed with assurances to each other. But there was still something missing.

Hart brought them to it.

“I am not one of you. I know this. I wear different clothes, and worship different Gods. But I fight. I fight, because I left behind a family in Barghast. Just like you left behind families in Eamont and Cornuba and Tamar and Dover. I fight against a tyrant who, using honeyed words, would trick us all. I fight because I, too, have a brother moldering within the bowels of the earth. I fight, because I would be a free man.

“If you, too, would be free men, then we must band together. Not North or South, not Barghast or Tamar, but
free men
. Brothers. Who, on the morrow, will fight and die at each others’ sides because we know the value of freedom! Of brotherhood! Because brotherhood, and the duty it teaches, is the true essence of manhood.”

Rioting now.

“Brotherhood is our courage; brotherhood is our rampart.” He paused. Waiting. And then, “brotherhood is our victory, which none can overcome. Which we will prove, on the morrow!”

Rioting became something that almost had a life of its own.

Hart had done his job. The mood in the camp had changed, at least for the time being. He could only pray that whatever the men felt now would remain with them. War was never a question of forever, but only long enough. Long enough to see each march through, and each battle. Long enough to survive, to risk death again.

Let these men huddle together under what bare cover the trees provided, and snatch sleep where they could. Let them think of each other as brothers, truly, so they could die as brothers on the morrow. Hart hoped to see every man survive, but he was a realist. He knew, as some of them must also, that most of them would perish. The lucky ones from direct wounds and the others from infection. And, as the siege dragged on, worse.

Only in the bards’ tales was a siege a glorious thing. In real life it was something that all true soldiers avoided. Better to dwell on ephemeral concepts like courage and glory, which could be molded to suit their dreams, than on the certain pain before them.

And so he toured the camp. Reminding them again, this time silently, of their duty. Indeed the camp as a whole was silent. Hart had, early on, forbidden the kind of carousing that marked most camps. And marked them, too, for every hostile ear within miles. There was nothing, as he walked, save the sounds of smiths repairing armor and the
tisk
,
tisk
,
tisk
of blades on wood as those who had the skill shaped arrow shafts. Arrows were dear, in battle. A thousand thousand more than one thought one needed never seemed, in the end, to be even half enough.

Conversation was held in muted tones. Hart had threatened talkative knights with the loss of both horse and armor and their lesser counterparts with the loss of an ear. Yeoman and serf alike; a man’s ancestors didn’t hold the blade for him.

But somehow, eventually, he found himself back where he’d stood before. Staring down into the same canyon. Staring, and thinking.

There was a squelching step. And then, “I’m frightened.”

“Good,” Hart said, without looking up.

“I’m…not brave.”

Hart didn’t need to see Rudolph’s face to know what he’d read there. “If bravery is being without fear,” Hart said, “then I have never seen a brave man.” He turned. “Only a fool feels no fear, in the face of something fearful. Because he’s not living in the same world as other men. If you truly felt no fear, Rudolph, then you wouldn’t be brave. Any more than you’re brave, now, or I am, for getting dressed in the morning or using the garderobes.”

“But I
am
a coward.” Rudolph stood with his arms crossed, much as that scout had the night before. An unconscious gesture of protection. Only it wasn’t Hart that Rudolph was afraid of. “I’m here, facing certain death—because, face it, men like me never survive battles—because I’m too much of a wretch to face public opinion. I ran here, into this, rather than stand my ground and admit that I’d made a mistake. I
got married
rather than admit that I’d made a mistake.”

Hart couldn’t disagree. Even a dead fish could go with the flow. But Rudolph was fighting now.

“Your choice to be here, now, is brave. Forget the past.”

Rudolph shook his head. “The church forbids killing. The king’s writ forbids killing. So all murderers are punished, by the church and by the king, unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.”

“You might be growing up, after all. But both church—at least, some in the church—and king support us now because we’re fighting on the side of right. Maeve is a usurper, and one who would stop at nothing to achieve her own ends. Nothing. She hurts children, Rudolph. This is not a woman who can be allowed to live, much less to thrive. Putting her down should be regarded by you, and by all rational men, as no different than putting down a rabid dog. Otherwise, as long as she roams this earth, she will spread pestilence.”

But Rudolph only shook his head again. “But we aren’t proposing hand to hand combat with Maeve. Only those weak, or perhaps desperate enough to suffer in her stead. Fighting not for her honor but for whatever inducements she’s promised.” There was a long pause, filled only with the noises of the night. Hart waited. How, in a few short weeks, Rudolph had changed. Even though he was still a child, in so many ways. As Hart had thought earlier. He was no longer the child he’d once been, but a child on the cusp of something greater.

Or lesser.

“War doesn’t determine who is right, Hart. Only who is left.”