Wolf in the Fold, page 40
Prince Hadrian nodded. “Yes, Your Majesty,” he said. “I have a proposal to put before you.”
Of course you do, Louis thought. He knew most of the details already, though he knew better than to assume he knew everything. The spies in the prince’s camp might have been spotted and fed false information, or they might have simply missed something important. And can you make it any more appealing than the last one?
“You may continue,” he said, calmly.
Prince Hadrian flushed, but controlled himself. “Your Majesty, the time is ripe for a return to Kentigern,” he said. “The necromancers have been broken. Their power lies in ruins. Their armies are scattering, now that gunpowder weapons are entering the field. There is no longer any reason to delay the reconquest of my lands.”
“Your father’s lands,” Louis pointed out. He had no idea what he was going to do when Prince Hadrian’s father died. Recognising his son as king would cause problems, refusing to do so would be equally problematic. “Not yours.”
“Not yet,” Prince Hadrian agreed. “But they are my birthright.”
He went on before Louis could muster a response. “There will never be a better chance to recover our ancestral homelands,” he said. “If we act now, we will likely be able to defeat what little resistance can be offered and reclaim the lost cities without a fight. The longer we delay, however, the greater the chance someone else will slip in and take our place. If that happens ...”
Louis acknowledged the point. Legally, King Hadrian was the monarch of Kentigern. Practically speaking, possession was nine-tenths of the law, and the kingdom had been in the hands of a necromancer for the last sixteen years. There were already roving bands of adventurers, dissidents, younger aristocratic sons and others trying to stake a claim to the Blighted Lands, now the necromancers were gone. If someone managed to land in Kentigern and take possession, it would be very hard to dislodge them without a major war. And with the Allied Lands in such a state, it was unlikely anyone would try. Louis himself certainly had no intention of committing troops to such a gesture when he had far too many problems back home.
“On paper, your plan is sound,” he said. “In practice, regaining your kingdom will be very difficult.”
“But we can do it,” Prince Hadrian said. “I have a proposal.”
He leaned forward. “I have enough funds to hire mercenaries to bulk out my private forces. We will sail to the kingdom, regain the lost cities, and start resettling our lands. If you help us now, we will be allies for the rest of time, giving you an ally on the far side of the Inner Sea. We will also continue to provide troops and other military support to your kingdom, which will strengthen your own position. As our kingdom is rebuilt, your traders and merchants will have access to our markets, ensuring economic growth on both sides of the sea. And I will serve as your loyal friend in monarchical councils.”
Louis said nothing for a long moment. Prince Hadrian’s plans went further than he’d expected ... he wondered, idly, who had drawn up the concept. It wasn’t easy to keep track of men in the prince’s inner circle, if only because he had a habit of discarding anyone who failed to show the proper respect or tried to give him laws. Whoever had helped him was no slouch, Louis conceded ruefully. There were few grounds for saying no, or even for saying yes in public while slow-walking in private. On paper, Prince Hadrian’s proposal was extremely good. And yet it would likely cause problems in the future.
He sighed, inwardly. He had no illusions about how long the permanent alliance would last. There was nothing so temporary as a permanent agreement. Tidebank and Kentigern would drift apart as they confronted problems on their respective sides of the Inner Sea, their ability to support each other grossly limited by a dangerously rough body of water. Prince Hadrian was too prideful to accept being Louis’s subordinate for long, once he had a kingdom of his own. They needed something a little more solid to bind them together before it was too late.
And if we say no, there will be riots, he reflected. It had been easy to say no when the necromancers had been invincible. Now ... they weren’t. There could be an uprising in the heart of my kingdom.
“There will be conditions,” he said, finally. If nothing else, it would be an excellent chance to get rid of Prince Hadrian. “First, you will not draw troops from my army. Second, you will bankroll the mercenaries yourself – and you will be responsible for their behaviour within my kingdom.”
“They won’t cause trouble,” Prince Hadrian assured him. “Their payment will only be forthcoming if they behave themselves.”
Louis snorted. Mercenaries never behaved themselves. And keeping them under control was impossible even for the strongest of kings.
He leaned forward. “And you will marry my daughter,” he finished. “Her children will be the heirs to your throne.”
Prince Hadrian’s eyes went wide. He had asked for Princess Mary’s hand in marriage years ago, practically begged for a betrothal well before the young woman reached marriageable age, only to be denied. King Philip had thought it would only fuel the young man’s ambitions, and give his in-laws additional obligations to support him, and Louis tended to agree. Mary’s opinion didn’t matter. Like all royal children, her marriage was a bargaining chip in the endless game of thrones. She would marry whom she was told to marry, and that was the end of it.
Not that she’ll let him treat her as a brood mare and little else, Louis reflected. Mary was smart enough to be an excellent queen, if the prince was clever enough to listen to her. And as long as our bloodlines are linked, it will be hard for us to fall out completely.
“I accept,” Prince Hadrian said. He couldn’t hide his eagerness. “I shall call upon Her Highness this very evening and ...”
“I shall discuss the matter with her first,” Louis said, firmly. “If you are prepared to go ahead under these conditions, I see no reason why you shouldn’t.”
He smiled as Prince Hadrian stood and bowed, then left the chamber. The smile left his face the moment he was alone. It was a gamble, one that could easily cost his daughter her life. She’d have bodyguards and chaperones, of course, but there was a necromancer on the far side of the sea. And if it succeeded ...
No matter what happens, I come out ahead, he told himself. If Prince Hadrian won, they would be linked together by blood. If he was driven from his homeland, or killed, he would never be able to try again. And my son will inherit a kingdom without another set of overmighty subjects.
But he knew, as he called for his inner council to hammer out the agreement, that the price would be terrifyingly high.
Chapter One
“Robin,” Eliza managed. “What have you done?”
Robin barely heard her. He was staring at the body, battered almost to a bloody pulp. The lord’s son ... the lowest of the aristocracy, from what he’d heard, but so far above a common peasant that the gulf between them could never be crossed. An aristo ... he’d murdered an aristo. The bastard had been trying to rape his sister and yet ... he was dead, when the wretched boy’s father found out. The penalty for killing an aristocrat was death by slow torture. He’d be lucky if his sister and the rest of his family were spared. No doubt her near-rape would be her own fault, in the eyes of the aristocracy. A peasant girl who caught the eye of the lord’s son had no right to say no.
He swallowed hard, anger and fear bubbling within his soul. They’d been out picking mushrooms, and they were quite some distance from their home, but ... given time, someone would come looking for the missing boy and discover his corpse. He’d been lucky he’d seen the asshole drag his sister into the bushes and press her against the tree and ... the memories were blurred, obscured behind rage that someone – anyone – would dare put his hands on his little sister. He didn’t regret killing the aristo – some people just needed killing – but there was no way to escape the consequences. For all he knew, the lord’s men were already on the way.
“We need to get out of here,” he said. There was no way to go back home, not without bringing doom on their entire family. His father and stepmother, their conjoined family, his aunts and uncles and cousins and in-laws ... how many would pay the price for what he’d done? “But where can we go?”
He tried to force himself to think. Their village was on the border between Dragora and Tidebank. The closest city-state was tens of miles away, he thought, and there was no way to be sure of reaching it in time. There was also no guarantee the city authorities wouldn’t hand them back to their former lord, not when they were guilty of far more than just leaving the farm and denying their master their labour. They could go into the forest, he supposed, and live off the land, but there was no guarantee they’d be safe there either. They’d be considered bandits and treated accordingly and ...
Eliza took a breath, one hand playing with her blonde hair. “You remember who passed through the village yesterday?”
Robin blinked. “The mercenaries?”
He felt a flicker of disgust. The mercenary band had behaved itself, surprisingly, but the women had still been hidden in the forest while the menfolk prepared for trouble. There hadn’t been any, unless one counted the recruiting officer making his pitch to the young men. The promises of adventure and wealth had sounded attractive, Robin had thought, but anyone who went off to become a mercenary was almost always disowned from his family. They would certainly never be welcome in their village again. And yet ...
“Yes.” Eliza met his eyes. “There’s nowhere else even remotely safe now.”
“Yeah,” Robin conceded. They might be safe, if they could get to the camp in time. Was it even still there? “Are you sure ...?”
His sister looked back at him. They made an odd pair: he’d inherited his father’s short and stocky build, while his sister was taller, with long, blonde hair that fell down her shoulders and covered her tunic. It was easy to believe they weren’t actually related, even though they were full siblings. No doubt the would-be rapist hadn’t realised Eliza wasn’t actually unprotected. He wouldn’t have known Robin was her brother.
“Where else can we go?”
The question hung in the air for a long moment. Robin had no answer. They had to run – and fast. They didn’t dare go back to the village for fear of leading the hunters back there too, they didn’t even dare send a message to their parents. Not yet ... he swallowed hard, wishing he’d stayed close enough to warn off any predators before it was too late. The blood on his fists was a grim reminder his life had changed forever, that they would soon be hunted animals ...
“Nowhere,” he said, finally. He checked the body, removing a handful of coins and pocketing them before dragging the corpse under a bush and leaving it there. There was no time to dig the wretched man a grave. “Let’s go.”
He forced himself to start walking, silently grateful they’d wandered so far from the village. The paths through the forest were rougher here, making life harder for anyone who wanted to give chase. The lord’s men weren’t good woodsmen, he’d been told, and unless they had a magician, they’d have some problems following them through the tangled undergrowth. He paused by a river to wash the blood from his hands, just to be sure, and waded upstream long enough to confuse any dogs that might be trying to catch a whiff of his scent. The peasants had spent years learning how to hide themselves in the forest, poaching deer and other animals reserved for the aristocracy, and they knew all the tricks. It was unlikely they could be tracked down before it was too late.
Unless the mercenaries refuse to take us in, he thought, grimly. Mercenaries had a bad reputation, with reason. They might refuse to accept Robin and Eliza – or, worse, they might refuse him and accept her alone. His imagination provided too many possibilities, each one worse than the last. Perhaps it would be better to make their way to the nearest city instead, changing their names and hoping to hell the lord’s men didn’t have a magician with them. If we make the wrong call ...
“We can write a letter, once we reach the camp,” Eliza said. “Or ask someone to take a message for us.”
Robin shook his head. There were few in the village who would openly admit to being able to read, after the local lords banned the New Learning, and even if they took the risk it was hard to imagine what they could write without incriminating themselves. Hell, the mere act of receiving a letter would raise eyebrows. Their family had friends and relatives in the surrounding villages, but none more than a few hour’s walk from home. Who would send a letter to them?
Guilt gnawed at his heart and soul. His father would never know what had happened to them. Would he suspect the truth? Or would he think they’d wandered into the wrong part of the forest and slipped away from human ken? Or even that they’d fled to the city ... it wasn’t impossible, he told himself. They’d hardly be the first to ensure their families could maintain plausible deniability, while they left in search of a better life elsewhere. He’d go back one day, he promised himself, and make it right. But he had no idea where he could even begin.
The forest parted suddenly, revealing a camp set up next to the border road. Robin sucked in his breath as he saw the wooden stockade, clearly harvested from the surrounding trees, and the trench surrounding a multitude of brightly-coloured tents. The camp hadn’t been there a few days ago, he knew for a fact, which made its rapid construction all the more impressive. It looked alarmingly permanent, for a camp belonging to a mercenary troop passing through the area, and it made him wonder if they were making a terrible mistake. Their lord might have hired the mercenaries to keep his serfs in line.
He gritted his teeth. “This way.”
The air shifted, slightly, as they walked out of the forest and made their way down to the gate. A pair of guards were standing there, wearing tunics and carrying gunpowder weapons slung over their shoulders. Robin had expected ravening monsters, orcs in human form, but they looked surprisingly normal. They stood like men who had nothing to prove, to themselves or anyone else. They were far more manly than the lord’s dead son, who had dressed up as a fighting man and fooled absolutely no one. He certainly hadn’t put up much of a fight when Robin had been pounding him.
“Yes?”
Robin blinked. He’d never heard an accent like that before. The peddlers spoke in a multitude of different accents, and the aristos liked to speak in a manner he found hard to emulate, but the mercenary’s accent was something else again. He had no idea where the man had come from or if he had anywhere to go, if he ever left the band. It was just another reminder he was about to step into a very different world.
“We heard the recruiting sergeant yesterday,” Robin said, grasping helplessly for words. It didn’t seem wise to tell the guard the full truth. “We’d like to sign up.”
The guard studied them for a long moment. “Very well,” he said, simply. “Come with me.”
He turned and led them into the camp as two other guards appeared out of a tent to take his place and several others watched from a safe distance. Robin looked around with interest, noting the dozens of men – all wearing similar tunics – running laps or performing push-ups or practicing with muskets or bladed weapons. They looked back at him, a handful eying Eliza with frank interest. Robin felt his fists clench in a fit of sudden rage and forced himself to unclench them, reminding himself that they couldn’t afford to get into a fight here. It would get them both killed, or worse. The guard stopped outside a larger tent and motioned for them to wait, before stepping in himself. There was a long pause, just long enough for Robin to start worrying in earnest, before the guard returned. His face was split by an odd little smile.
“The Captain-General will see you now.”
Robin glanced at Eliza, then stepped inside the tent. The interior was brighter than he’d expected – a shiver ran down his spine as he saw the floating ball of light hovering overhead – and it took his eyes a moment to adjust to the sudden change. Three people sat in front of a folding table, two men and a woman. They looked at him with cool, appraising eyes. Robin forced himself to look back, suddenly very aware that showing weakness could easily prove fatal. The two men were impressive, more in bearing than dress, while the woman ... Robin was certain, without knowing quite how, that she was a sorceress.
“Greetings,” the first man said. He was older than Robin by at least a decade, with short, dark hair and a neatly-trimmed beard. “I am Captain-General Sir James Hawkwood of the Bloody Hands, This is Sergeant-Major Winter, my right hand, and Lady Sorceress Tancella ...”
“Your wrong one,” Tancella said.
Robin glanced at her. She was surprisingly short, with blonde hair cropped close to her skull and bright blue eyes that were cold and hard, even when she smiled. Her outfit drew the eye to her cleavage in a manner that left Robin unsure where to look, or even if he should look at her at all, and her accent was completely unfamiliar.
“You want to join us,” Sir James said. “Why?”
“Yes ... My Lord,” Robin managed. “I ...”
“Sir will suffice,” Sir James said. His tone was casual, but there was an edge behind it that made Robin flinch. “Why do you want to join us?”
“I’m Robin and this is my sister, Eliza,” Robin said. He didn’t care to tell them the truth. “We want to join you because ...”
He hesitated. “We’re too young to inherit anything,” he continued. It was true enough. Older sons inherited the farm, younger sons worked for their elder brothers or tried to find farms that would welcome another pair of masculine hands. Daughters were generally married off to other farms unless their parents didn’t have sons, in which case they were expected to find a younger son from another farm and bring him home. “If we stay, we’ll be worked to death. Joining you is a chance to see the rest of the world.”
“Is it?” Sir James smiled, rather thinly. “And the truth?”
“Sir?”
