Kings Rising (9 page)

‘I never fucked my brother,’ said Laurent, with a strange edge to the words. ‘That is incest.’

They were standing in the place where his brother had
died. With a disorientating sensation Damen realised they weren’t going to talk about that. They were going to talk about this.

‘You’re right,’ said Damen. ‘I’ve been thinking about it since Ravenel. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it.’

‘Why?’ said Laurent. ‘Was I that good?’

‘No. You fucked like a virgin,’ said Damen, ‘half the time. The rest of the time—’

‘Like I knew what to do?’

‘Like you knew what you were used to.’

He saw the words impact. Laurent swayed, like he’d been dealt a blow.

Laurent said, ‘I’m not certain I can take your particular brand of honesty just at the moment.’

Damen said, ‘I don’t prefer sophistication in bed, if you were wondering.’

‘That’s right,’ said Laurent. ‘You like it simple.’

All the breath left his throat. He stood, stripped, unready for it.
Will you use even that against me?
he wanted to say, and didn’t. Laurent’s breathing was shallow too, holding his ground.

‘He died well,’ Damen made himself say. ‘He fought better than any man I’ve known. It was a fair fight, and he felt no pain. The end was quick.’

‘Like gutting a pig?’

Damen felt like he was reeling. He barely heard the rumbling of sound. Laurent jerked around to look into the
dark, where the sound was growing louder—hoof beats, thundering closer.

‘You sent your men out to look for me too?’ said Laurent, his mouth twisting.

‘No,’ said Damen, and pushed Laurent hard out of sight, into the shelter of one of the huge, crumbling blocks of stone.

In the next second, the troop was on them, at least two hundred men, so that the air was thick with the passage of horses. Damen pressed Laurent firmly into the rock, and held him in place with his body. The riders didn’t slow, even on this uncertain ground in the dark, and any man in their path would be trampled, tumbled, kicked from hoof to hoof. Discovery was a real threat, the rock cool under his palms, the dark shuddering with the pounding of hooves and heavy lethal horseflesh.

He could feel Laurent against him, the barely contained tension, adrenalin mixed with his dislike of the proximity, the urge in him to prise himself out and away, stifled by necessity.

He had a sudden thought for Laurent’s jacket, lying exposed on the outcrop, and for their horses, tied up a little way off. If they were discovered, it might mean capture or worse. They couldn’t know who these men were. His fingers bit into the stone, feeling the moss and the crumbled pieces beneath. Horses plunged all around them like the rushing of a stream.

And then they were gone, passing them as quickly as they had arrived, disappearing across the fields towards a
destination in the west. The hoof beats receded. Damen didn’t move, their chests pressed to each other, Laurent’s shallow breath against his shoulder.

He felt himself shoved back as Laurent pushed himself out to stand with his back to him, breathing hard.

Damen stood with his hand against the stone, and looked after him across the landscape of strange shapes. Laurent didn’t turn back to him, just stood holding himself still. Damen could see him once again as a pale outline in a thin shirt.

‘I know you’re not cold,’ said Damen. ‘You weren’t cold when you ordered me tied to the post. You weren’t cold when you pushed me down on your bed.’

‘We need to leave.’ Laurent spoke without looking at him. ‘We don’t know who those riders were, or how they got past our scouts.’

‘Laurent—’

‘A fair fight?’ said Laurent, turning back to him. ‘No fight’s ever fair. Someone’s always stronger.’

And then the bells from the fort began to ring, the sound of a warning, their sentries belatedly reacting to the presence of unknown riders. Laurent reached down to snag up his jacket, shrugging into it, laces hanging loose. Damen brought over their horses, unhooking his reins from the stone column. Laurent swung up wordlessly into his saddle and put his heels into his horse, both of them riding hard back to Marlas.

I
T MIGHT HAVE
been nothing, simply an incursion. It was Damen’s decision to follow the riders, which meant dragging men up to ride out in the dim light of pre-dawn. They streamed out of Marlas and rode west, out through the long fields. But they found nothing, until they came to the first village.

They smelled it first. The thick, acrid smell of smoke, blown in from the south. The outer farms were deserted and blackened with fire, which still smouldered in places. There were large patches of scorched earth that spooked the horses with their startling heat when they passed.

It was worse when they rode into the clustered village itself. An experienced commander, Damen knew what happened when soldiers rode through populated lands.
Given warning, the old and the young, the women and the men would make for the surrounding countryside, taking shelter in the hills with their best cow, or provisions. If not given warning, they were at the mercy of the troop’s leader, the most benevolent of whom would make his men pay for the provisions they took, and the daughters and sons they enjoyed. At first.

But that was different to the vibration of hooves at night, to rousing in confusion with no chance to escape, only time to bar the doors. Barricading themselves inside would have been instinctive but not useful. When the soldiers set fire to the houses, they would have had to come out.

Damen swung down off his horse, his heels crunching on the blackened earth, and looked at what was left of the village. Laurent was reining in behind him, a pale, slender shape beside Makedon and the Akielon men riding with him in the thin dawn light.

There was grim familiarity on both Veretian and Akielon faces. Breteau had looked like this. And Tarasis. This was not the only unprotected village ruined as a salvo in this fight.

‘Send a party to follow the riders. We stop here to bury the dead.’

As he spoke, Damen saw a soldier let a dog loose from the chain it strained at. Frowning, he watched it streak across the village, stopping at one of the far outbuildings, scrabbling at the door.

His frown deepened. The outbuilding was set away from
the cluster of homes. It stood intact. Curiosity drew him closer, boots turning grey with ash. The dog was whining, a high, tinny sound. He put his hand on the door of the outbuilding and found it unyielding. It was latched, from the inside.

Behind him, a girl’s unsteady voice said, ‘There’s nothing there. Don’t go inside.’

He turned. It was a child of about nine, of indeterminate gender, only maybe a girl. White-faced, she had pushed herself out of the pile of firewood stacked against the building wall.

‘If there’s nothing there, why not go inside?’ Laurent’s voice. Laurent’s calm, invariably infuriating logic, as he arrived, also on foot. With him were three Veretian soldiers.

She said, ‘It’s just an outbuilding.’

‘Look.’ Laurent dropped to one knee in front of the girl, and showed her the starburst on his ring. ‘We are friends.’

She said, ‘My friends are dead.’

Damen said, ‘Break it in.’

Laurent held back the girl. It took two impacts of a soldier’s shoulder before the door splintered. Damen transferred his hand from sword hilt to knife hilt, and led the way into the confined space.

The dog rushed in beside him. Inside, there was a man lying on the straw-strewn dirt floor, with the broken end of a spear protruding from his stomach, and a woman, standing between him and the door, armed with nothing but the other end of the spear.

The room smelt of blood. It had soaked into the straw, where, ashen, the man’s face was transforming with shock.

‘My Liege,’ he said, and with a spear in his stomach, he was trying to push himself up on one arm to rise for his Prince.

He wasn’t looking at Damen. He was looking past him, at Laurent, who was standing in the doorway.

Laurent said without looking around, ‘Call for Paschal.’ He stepped into the crude space, moving past the woman, simply putting his hand on the spear shaft she held and drawing it out of the way. Then he dropped to his knees on the dirt floor, where the man had collapsed back onto the straw. He was gazing up at Laurent with recognition.

‘I couldn’t hold them off,’ the man said.

‘Lie back,’ said Laurent. ‘The physician comes.’

The man’s breath rattled. He was trying to say that he was some old retainer from Marlas. Damen looked around the small, mean room. This old man had fought for these villagers against young, mounted soldiers. Perhaps he had been the only one here with any training, though any training that he’d had would have been from his past; he was old. Still, he had fought. This woman and her daughter had tried to help him, then to hide him. It didn’t matter. He was going to die from that spear.

All of this was in Damen’s mind as he turned. He could see the trail of blood. The woman and the girl had dragged the old man in here from outside. He stepped over the blood and knelt as Laurent had in front of the girl.

‘Who did this?’ She said nothing at first. ‘I swear to you, I will find them and make them pay.’

She met his eyes. He thought he’d hear fear-darkened flashes, a truncated description, that he’d learn, at best, the colour of a cloak. But the girl said the name clearly, like she’d carved it into her heart.

‘Damianos,’ she said. ‘Damianos did this. He said it was his message to Kastor.’

*   *   *

Outside, when he pushed outside, the landscape lost colour, greying out.

He had his hand braced against the trunk of a tree when he came back to himself, and his body shook with anger. Soldiers shouting his name had ridden in here in the dark. They had cut down villagers with swords, burned them in their houses, a planned move meant to injure him politically. His stomach had heaved as though he had been sick. He felt in himself something dark and unnamed at the tactics of those he fought.

A breeze rustled the leaves. Looking around, half blindly, he saw that he had come to a small cluster of trees, as if seeking to escape the village. It was far enough removed from the ruined outbuildings that he had not directed any of his own men here, so that he was the first to see it. He saw it before his head really cleared.

There was a corpse near the tree line.

It wasn’t the corpse of a villager. Face down, it was a man, sprawled at an unnatural angle, in armour. Damen shoved away from the tree and approached, his heart pounding with anger. Here was the answer, a perpetrator. Here was one of the men who had attacked this village, who had crawled out here to die, unnoticed by his fellows. Damen rolled the stiffened corpse with the toe of his boot, so that it lay face up, exposing itself to the sky.

The soldier had the features of an Akielon, and around his waist was a notched belt.

Damianos did this. He said it was his message to Kastor.

He moved before he was aware of it. He went past the outbuildings, past his men digging pits for the dead, the charred ground underfoot still surprisingly warm. He saw a man wiping his ash-streaked, sweating face with his sleeve. He saw a man dragging something lifeless towards the first of the open pits. He had his fist in the fabric at Makedon’s neck and was flinging him backwards before he thought.

‘I will give you the honour of trial by combat that you do not deserve,’ said Damen, ‘before I kill you for what you have done here.’

‘You would fight me?’

Damen drew his sword. Akielon soldiers were gathering, half of them Makedon’s men, all wearing the belt.

As the corpse had done. As every soldier who had killed in this village had done.

‘Draw,’ said Damen.

‘For what?’ Makedon gave a scornful look at his surroundings. ‘Dead Veretians?’

‘Draw,’ said Damen.

‘This is the Prince’s doing. He has turned you against your own people.’

‘Don’t speak,’ said Damen, ‘unless it’s in contrition, before I kill you.’

‘I won’t pretend remorse for Veretian dead.’

Makedon drew.

Damen knew that Makedon was a champion, the undefeated warrior of the north. Older than Damen by more than fifteen years, it was said that Makedon only notched his belt once for every hundred kills. Men from all over the village were dropping shovels and buckets and gathering.

Some of them—Makedon’s men—knew their general’s skill. Makedon’s face was that of the elder about to school the upstart. It changed as their swords met.

Makedon favoured the brutal style popular in the north, but Damen was strong enough to meet his massive two-handed attacks and match them, not even needing to draw on his superior speed or technique. He met Makedon strength against strength.

The first clash sent Makedon staggering back. The second ripped his sword out of his hands.

The third came, death in steel shearing through Makedon’s neck.

‘Stop!’

Laurent’s voice cut across the fight, ringing with unmistakable command.

Makedon was gone. Laurent was there instead. Laurent had wrenched Makedon backwards to hit the dirt, and Damen’s sword was driving towards Laurent’s exposed neck.

If Damen had not obeyed, his whole body reacting to that ringing command, he would have severed Laurent’s head from his body.

But the instant that he heard Laurent’s order, instinct reacted, wrenching every sinew. His sword stopped a hair’s breadth from Laurent’s neck.

Damen was breathing hard. Laurent had pushed his way alone onto the makeshift battleground. His men, racing after him, had stopped on the perimeter of onlookers. The steel slid against the fine skin of Laurent’s neck.

‘Another inch and you rule two kingdoms,’ said Laurent.

‘Get out of my way, Laurent.’ Damen’s voice ground in his throat.

‘Look around you. This attack is cold-blooded planning, designed to discredit you with your own people. Does Makedon think like that?’

‘He killed at Breteau. He wiped out a whole village at Breteau, just like this.’

‘That was retaliation for my uncle’s attack on Tarasis.’

‘You would defend him?’ said Damen.

Laurent said, ‘Anyone can notch a belt.’

His grip tightened on his sword, and for a moment he
wanted it to cut into Laurent. The feeling rose in him, thick and hot.

He slammed the sword back into its sheath. His eyes raked Makedon, who was breathing unevenly, looking from one to the other of them. They had been speaking quickly, in Veretian.

Damen said, ‘He just saved your life.’

‘I should give him my thanks?’ Makedon said it, sprawled in the dirt.

‘No,’ said Laurent, in Akielon. ‘If it were left to me, you’d be dead. Your blunders play into my uncle’s hands. I saved your life because this alliance needs you, and I need this alliance to overthrow my uncle.’

The air smelled like charcoal. From the deserted patch of high ground that he strode to, Damen could see the whole sweep of the village. A blackened ruin, it looked like a scar on the earth. On the eastern side, smoke was still rising from rubble-strewn dirt.

There was going to be a reckoning for this. He thought of the Regent, safe in the Akielon palace at Ios.
This is cold-blooded planning designed to discredit you with your own people. Does Makedon think like that?
Kastor didn’t think like that either. This was someone else.

He wondered if the Regent felt the same furious determination that he did. He wondered how he could be confident that he could deliver cruelty like this, over and over again, without consequences.

He heard footsteps approaching, and let them draw up beside him. He wanted to say to Laurent,
I always thought I knew what it felt like to fight your uncle. But I didn’t. Until today, it was never me he was fighting.
He turned to say it.

It wasn’t Laurent. It was Nikandros.

Damen said, ‘Whoever did this wanted me to blame Makedon, and lose the support of the north.’

‘You don’t think it was Kastor.’

Damen said, ‘Neither do you.’

‘Two hundred men cannot ride for days in open country without anyone noticing,’ said Nikandros. ‘If they did this without alerting our scouts or our allies, where did they launch from?’

It was not the first time he had seen an attack designed to frame Akielons. It had happened in the palace, when assassins had gone after Laurent with Akielon knives. He remembered with clarity the provenance of the knives.

Damen looked back at the village, and from it to the thin, winding road leading south. He said, ‘Sicyon.’

*   *   *

The indoor training arena at Marlas was a long, wood-panelled room, eerily similar to the training arena at Arles, with packed sawdust floors and a thick wooden post at one end. At night, it was lit by torches that flickered light across walls ringed with benches, and covered over with mounted weaponry: knives sheathed and bare, crossed spears, and swords.

Damen dismissed the soldiers, the squires and the slaves. Then he pulled the heaviest sword from the wall. He liked the weight as he lifted it, and, setting his body to the task, began to wield it, over and over again.

He was in no mood to hear arguments, or to speak to anyone. He had come to the one place where he could give what he felt physical expression.

Sweat soaked into white cotton. He stripped from the waist up, used the garment to wipe off his face, the back of his neck. Then he flung it aside.

It was good to push; hard. To feel exertion in every sinew, to gather every muscle to a single task. He needed the feeling of grounding and certainty amid these repellent tactics, these deceptions, these men who fought with words and shadows and treachery.

He fought, until he was only his body, the burn of flesh, the pounding of blood, the hot slick of sweat, until everything concentrated into one simple focus, the power of heavy steel, that could bring death. In the moment when he paused—stopped—there was only silence and the sound of his own breath. He turned.

Laurent was standing in the doorway, watching him.

He didn’t know how long Laurent had been there. He had been practising now for an hour or longer. Sweat sheened his skin, his muscles oiled with it. He didn’t care. He knew they had unfinished business. As far as he was concerned, it could stay unfinished.