Tomorrow's Kingdom (31 page)

“You don't mean to tell me that you brought
another
avalanche down on her head,” said Persephone in dismay as she reached up to adjust her crown.

“It was only a little one, triggered before the lookout realized who she was,” said Barka defensively, plunging his fingers into his beard to give his chin a vigorous scratch. “The important thing is that other than the handful of women we left behind to watch over the sheep and the children—may the mother goddess keep them safe in their secret hideout—the mighty Khan are here in full force and just
itching
for the chance to bash in the heads of our hated enemies!”

“You left only a handful of women behind?” said Robert in a puzzled voice as he looked through the open tent flap at the hulking, hairy Khan. “But I don't see any—”

“Reason to worry about those you've left behind,” interjected Persephone smoothly, wishing she'd thought to warn Robert and the others that the beardless Khan men were actually women. “We've received reports that Mordecai is taking his army west, not north. Moreover, now that you and your warriors have arrived, I intend to
do something that will make Mordecai forget all about his plan to slaughter your tribe or any other.”

“And what is that, Your Majesty?” asked Barka, cracking his hairy knuckles in anticipation.

“I intend to march upon the imperial capital and claim the throne he so badly desires,” she said, hoping that her words didn't sound as fantastical to the rest of them as they did to her.

“And after that?” asked Barka.

“My wife the queen shall raise such an army of loyal subjects that Mordecai will never again be able to threaten to slaughter
anyone
,” said Azriel firmly.

“Because his army will be outnumbered?” said Fayla, raising an eyebrow.

“Because his army will be destroyed,” said Persephone flatly. “And because he will be dead.”

THIRTY-EIGHT

D
EEP BENEATH
the imperial palace that Persephone hoped to shortly claim as her own, Mordecai's most favoured General moved not a muscle as he watched the rat creep forward out of the darkness.

Though he believed he'd been a prisoner in the dungeon for about a month now, General Murdock could not say for certain because he had no way of accurately marking the passage of time. In his close, sweltering cell, the sun did not rise or set; minutes could be minutes or they could be hours. He never knew how long he'd slept, and he suspected that his guards purposely checked on him at random intervals to keep him thusly disoriented.

It was what
he'd
always done back when
he'd
been the one holding the dungeon keys.

He'd been in the dungeon for long enough, at any rate, that the injuries he'd sustained on the night of his capture had mostly healed. He'd gotten filthy, but not nearly as filthy as one might have expected, for whenever he'd been given his ration of tepid water, he'd used a small amount
to clean himself as best he could. Lord Bartok's men had jeered him each time they'd seen him dip the torn hem of his rags into the water and carefully wipe his face and hands, but General Murdock had paid them no mind at all. He was a military man, and a military man knew that surviving captivity was as much about mental strength as it was about physical strength—and that nothing leeched mental strength faster than failure to perform those small, inconsequential tasks that allowed one to continue to feel like a human being.

Since his arrival in the dungeon General Murdock had also lost weight, though not nearly as much as one might have expected, for he'd supplemented his meagre diet of mouldy bread with daily rations of raw rat meat. Another man might have been revolted by the prospect of snatching up a wriggling rodent and ripping it apart with his hands and teeth, but a military man did what he had to in order to survive. Catching the first rat had been a simple matter of sitting still enough to entice the creature to investigate. After that, it had been an even simpler matter of setting the bloody remains of his most recent meal on the floor beside him, because not even the most wary rat could resist creeping forward to investigate
that
. And when it did, dinner was served.

His mouth watering, General Murdock watched this day's dinner draw closer and closer. Just as he was about to grab it, however, he heard the sound of a key in the padlock of the cell door. Hastily slumping on his bed of filthy straw, the General donned what he hoped was an expression of bleakest despair. Though he was neither physically weakened
nor
filled with despair, the last dozen or so times his gaolers had entered the cell to check on him, he'd pretended to be both in hope of lulling them into a false sense of security.

When the heavy door opened to reveal a single guard— and a young, nervous-looking guard at that—General Murdock knew that his ruse had worked. Up until now, whenever Lord Bartok's men had come to check on him and feed the fire, they'd always come in pairs, or even threes and fours. One man—even one highly skilled military man—who was weakened, weaponless and chained to a wall could not reasonably hope to be able to overcome multiple guards.

Overcoming a single inexperienced guard was a different matter altogether.

General Murdock waited until the boy had closed the door and taken three steps toward the fireplace to throw his fit. Thrashing and kicking so violently that dinner gave a startled squeak and fled back into the darkness, the General bit his tongue so hard that blood joined froth upon his thin lips. Gagging wretchedly, he arched his back and slammed his head against the wall several times before abruptly letting his entire body go limp.

After a moment of stunned silence, the lone guard muttered something under his breath before drawing his sword and tentatively starting forward to check on his prisoner.

As soon as he got close enough, General Murdock struck out with the same speed and ferocity with which he would have struck out at the recently spared rat. In the
case of the boy, however, the chains that fixed General Murdock's iron wrist cuffs to the wall were too short to allow him to properly attack with his hands, so he kicked the boy's feet out from under him instead. The boy somehow managed to keep hold on his sword, but before he got a chance to use it—indeed, probably before he realized how he'd ended up on the floor—General Murdock had caught the boy's neck between his thighs, given one sharp jerk and snapped it cleanly.

Pleased that his plan had worked exactly as he'd intended, General Murdock disentangled himself from the corpse and manoeuvred it closer so that he could reach the ring of keys in the pocket of its doublet. After quickly unlocking his wrist cuffs, he stood and stretched to take the stiffness out of those muscles he'd been unable to properly exercise while he'd been chained to the wall. Then he walked over and opened the trapdoor in the floor through which he used to dispose of the bodies of dead prisoners and the pieces of living ones. He could not see the underground river below, but he could hear the sound of it rushing past.

With the fleeting thought that he hoped Mordecai had not yet found someone to replace him—and a redstreaked vision of the things he would do to once more prove himself a competent and trustworthy servant if he had—General Murdock wrapped his arms around his torso, took a deep breath and stepped through the trapdoor in the dungeon floor.

THIRTY-NINE

I
N THE FOUR WEEKS
since setting out from the training camp north of Syon, Mordecai had learned two important things.

The first was that he disliked leading the march to war.

The second was that he was not very good at it.

“What do you mean
we
have lost another dozen wagons?” he bellowed now, flinging a half-full goblet of wine at the head of the blood-splattered soldier who stood before him. “
I
have lost nothing except for my belief that there is a single man under my command who is not utterly incompetent!”

Infuriatingly, the goblet missed the idiot soldier's head by such a wide margin that he did not even have to duck.

Mordecai glared at the fool, despising him almost as much for not having been struck by the flying goblet as for being the bearer of yet more bad news.

The campaign to crush the great lords had been a disaster from the outset and they'd not even fought a proper battle yet. As Mordecai had commanded, the
New Man army had moved out just six days after he and Lord Atticus had arrived at the training camp. Thereafter, however, it had moved so slowly that it had taken
weeks
to make any progress at all. Supply carts and wagons had continually gotten stuck in the mud created by endless days of rain. Horses had lost shoes and gone lame. Soldiers only recently arrived from the farthest corners of the realm had been so worn out that they'd been unable to maintain a quick march through the mud, and there had been so many of them that instead of being able to execute them all for their infuriating disobedience, Mordecai had been forced to slow the pace considerably.

Their pace had been further slowed by the need to waste time pillaging the land as they went, for although they'd brought along supplies enough to see the men of consequence well fed, they'd not had time to establish a supply train robust enough to feed the entire army. As such, each time they'd passed by a farm or a village they'd emptied the larders and grain silos, slaughtered the animals and stripped the fields and fruit orchards. Farmers and villagers who'd protested the pillaging (or protested the enjoyment the soldiers had taken at the expense of their wives and daughters) had been slaughtered alongside their animals as a warning to their neighbours to keep their displeasure to themselves.

On top of all this, his soldiers had continued to desert at an alarming rate. Many of the deserters were conscripts who'd been forced into the army, and since Mordecai did not have the time or resources to waste hunting them down, he'd elected to mete out punishment to a random selection of those conscripts who yet remained behind. Most unfortunately, the sight of their heads jammed onto pikes carried along by their still-breathing comrades had done nothing whatsoever to prevent further desertions. On the contrary, it had caused the desertion rate to climb higher still.

It had climbed again when the attacks had begun. Nighttime raids had seen sentries' throats slit, men slaughtered in their sleep, tacking sliced to ribbons, horses freed from their tethers and wagons set ablaze. During the day, bands of armed men would appear out of nowhere to hack his soldiers to bits. Or worse, they
wouldn't
appear, their crossbow arrows would simply rain down. Then, as quickly as they had appeared (or not appeared), the virtually unscathed attackers would be gone, leaving nothing but death, confusion and fear in their wake.

As it happened, the route that Mordecai had insisted upon taking had gone a long way toward leaving his army vulnerable to these attacks. For while it was without question the shortest distance to Bartok Estate, where the great lords were reported to be gathering their army, the route ran between rocky outcrops and through small wooded areas that were perfectly suited to ambushes. Moreover, the road itself was so narrow that Mordecai's army often ended up strung out over several miles, rendering it even more vulnerable.

The taller-by-a-head commander who'd earlier ridden back to find out the cause of the latest delay—the commander who'd not
yet
been cut down to size—had not said anything, but Mordecai knew what the bastard
was thinking. He was thinking that if they'd spent a few weeks preparing and then taken the longer route that he'd recommended, they'd almost certainly be farther ahead by now. He was thinking that Mordecai didn't know how to handle the men and that he didn't lead the army half as well as
Murdock
would have done.

The idea that anyone would
dare
to think such blasphemy so enraged Mordecai that he abruptly decided to have the commander flogged to death upon his return to camp. As he opened his mouth to bellow the order, Mordecai noticed that the soldier standing before him appeared to have more to say.