The Queen of Thieves: The Line of Kings Trilogy Book Three Page 7

  Like it or not, this was his army.

  And what an army it was. Ragtag, some no more than boys and yet some veterans of squabbles along the borderlands in the west. Old and young, all hale enough, but for the wind and snow setting chills into bones. Armour was patchy at best. This army did not look like anything much. The might of the north. The four largest Thanedoms had fielded this army at great sufferance, and Roskel was under the distinct impression that all the Thanedoms bar Naeth had sent their scallywags and scoundrels in the place of real soldiers.

  Fights among the men were common, though not often to the death. Even poor soldiers knew better than to draw blades over simple disagreements.

  But damn, thought Roskel, it was a mean, sad excuse for an army.

  Roskel rode his horse around the camp each day. This day, he watched the men with renewed interest, trying to learn some of his commanders names, trying to get a feel for the men...would they stand, would they flee? Could any of them actually swing a sword better than he?

  At one tent, a good fire burning, few men trained in slow movements with the blade while an old grizzly captain looked on. He looked amused at the display. Now there was a man, thought Roskel, that looked like he could head up an army.

  But of course, Roskel couldn't ask anyone to take this burden from him.

  He was the Lord Protector, wasn't he? This debacle was his, and his alone.

  For his part, Roskel had heeded the words of the Queen of Thieves - his Queen? He had, perhaps in folly, brought the entirety of the northern armies to the bitter coast to wait for an enemy to attempt to breach Sturma's shores.

  The Queen. Her hand, it seemed, was in everything. From Tarn's ascension to the throne, Roskel's long incarceration...how many more catastrophic events had she presided over?

  And while he was thinking of the Queen, he wondered, not for the first time, just how old she was. He wondered sometimes, too, if she had chosen him, and if she was inescapable.

  Sometimes he felt like a man at the top of a long flight of stairs, beginning a tumble and seeing nothing but hard flagstones to break his fall. Yet for all his reservations, still he followed her word. So here he was, at the head of a camp of hard, cold men, striding or riding around the poorly tended camp of thousands of warriors, exchanging a word here, a word there, just to be seen.

  Waiting like a fool beside the sea for a force that might never come while a larger force headed for the north of his lands. Waiting here, with this ridiculous army of braggarts and men with no morals. Not mere brigands or bandit, no, but soldiers.

  At least his own soldiers, those under the banner of Naeth, would stand firm. They were a professional force. He knew this.

  Hadn't he once fought at their head? He could have laughed. Now, that truly was ridiculous.

  Despite it all, his lack of confidence in his army, not knowing when or even if the enemy would come, he knew what was necessary. And what was necessary was that he look the part.

  He rode, sometimes, to seem a taller man, to look like an imposing figure. He wore the finest armour he could find. He wore, too, a great fur cloak died bright red so that everyone, even those in the distance would know that the Lord Protector of Sturma was at their head and would be fighting alongside them. The man who...

  The man who had killed Orvane Wense in open battle.

  Roskel did laugh, then. A small burp of a laugh that he tried to keep in. If only the men had known that the spirit of the dead Outlaw King had swung his arm for him in that battle.

  But these men would never know.

  Roskel knew what was needed. His friends, Rohir and Wexel, also travelled the camp, but he was under no illusions. He was the figurehead of this show.

  He was the troubadour, once more.

  *

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  With the Northern Thanes assembled behind him and Rohir and Wexel beside him, Roskel stared out to sea. Same as every day, he looked for the great ships of the enemy, coming to Sturman shores, bringing with them nothing but death and pain. And for what?

  For one babe, nothing more than a child. The last of the line of kings. The deaths of many to secure the death of one.

  And still, could he, Roskel would never give up the child of his best friend, nor any child, to save them from this war. Once, he remembered, he and Tarn had discussed this - whether each would sacrifice a child to save the world...Roskel had said that he would. And now, faced with the stark reality, he realised he would not. Could not. He would die before giving up the babe to the Hierarchs.

  Tarn would have been proud of him, Roskel knew. The thief, it seemed, was discovering nobility within himself that he never knew he had.

  It wouldn't help a damn when the Hierarchy came, but that, it seemed to Roskel, was not the point.

  Wexel disturbed Roskel's train of thought, as the thief was congratulating himself on his change of heart.

  'They are not coming today, Roskel,' said Wexel. The giant bandit wore a grimace on his scarred face.

  Rohir snorted, to Roskel's left. 'If they don't come soon the Thanes will start a war happily on their own. Already there are rumblings around the camp of a feud or two.'

  'That's not my concern,' said Roskel.

  'Perhaps it should be. This is rank stupidity. We have nothing but the word of the Queen of Thieves that a force comes from the sea. We know there is a force in the North, and yet we sit here, pissing into the wind. The longer we wait, the more raucous the men become.'

  'I know, Rohir. I know. But men will be men, and soldiers, it seems, more so. Letting off steam, no doubt. And as to the Queen, she has never steered us wrong.'

  'Don't mean she never will,' argued Rohir.

  Roskel didn't retaliate, because he knew his friend and fellow steward was right. The Queen was not to be trusted, and yet he was drawn to her, still.

  'I don't think she steers us wrong, Rohir. I think she plays her own game, yes, but I think that game happily coincides with our own.'

  'Happily coincides?' said Wexel. It was his turn to snort. But then, as the three men fell silent for a while, Wexel noted a speck out to sea.

  'What's that?' he said, breaking the tension as he pointed one thick finger out to sea.

  Roskel squinted, but could make out nothing on the horizon. Nothing at all.

  'I don't see anything.'

  'There,' Wexel said, jabbing that soiled finger out to sea as though trying to stab the ocean itself.

  Roskel strained his eyes. The sky was gloomy with clouds pregnant with snow. It was hard to see anything but grey.

  And yet, yes, there was something. Something coming across the water at a fair rate, too.

  'A ship?'

  'A ship,' said Wexel, almost sounding proud that he had spotted it first.

  It came on fast, faster than any ship Roskel had ever seen.

  'Call to arms?'

  'It is but one ship.'

  'A scout? Like an outrider?'

  Roskel shrugged. 'I don't know. We have no force to put to sea. If they spy the force here, then they will be well-prepared. We are not a nation of ship builders, though. We cannot chase them down...and look at how fast...it will be here in moments...' Roskel stared at the ship, looming larger and larger all the time.

  A light snow began to fall over them, coming in from out to sea. The light snow settled on Roskel's fine cloak and on his uncovered scalp, but then the wind rose, too. It was soft, at first, and then it set the snowfall swirling around their heads.

  He could feel the taint of something on the back of his neck, the likes of which he had felt a time or two before.

  'Magic,' he said.

  He could hear soldiers near to the beach head rising, their armour and arms clattering. He turned to look. Some were donning armour. There were murmurs among the men closest to the beach at first, then shouts arose.

  'Wexel, go and calm them, would you? It is but one boat. In a panic the men will probably end up trampling each other in their
eagerness for battle. We'll lose more men to idiocy than...'

  But the ship slowed, thirty or forty yards from the shore. Bowmen stepped forward behind Roskel. He held up a hand to stay them, because he could see what they could not.

  It was no hierarch ship, but a Seafarer ship, and sorely used by the look of it.

  *

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  The preternatural wind died down and the boat slowly glided in toward the shore, coming to a halt, finally, around fifty yards from the sand. A man, certainly, but a man like no other Roskel had ever seen, called out.

  'I bring the land of men word from across the wide waters,' the man shouted across the distance. Even from this distance, Roskel could see that the man had bright blonde hair that was almost white. There was some hint of the sea about the man, too - maybe in the flow of his long hair, or the way that fifty yards distant Roskel could still tell the man had bold blue eyes, the colour of shallows, not the deeps.

  'Share our camp?' shouted back Roskel. He was determined to be welcoming - he had never seen a Seafarer before. They were almost mythical.

  'Landfall is denied our kind, and we must return to the battle,' shouted the man.

  'Battle?' said Rohir from beside Roskel.

  Roskel nodded. He wasn't sure if he was satisfied that the rumour of a force on its way to Sturma was true, but his bladder suddenly felt tight and uncomfortable. A sensation he knew all too well...an impending brush with death does that to a man. Well, most men. At least that's what Roskel told himself.

  He thought, to his shame, that he might be glad if the Queen had been playing them false all along.

  But if they were to fight, then damn the Hierarchy. They would fight, and fight well.

  'Battle with whom?' he said to the blonde-haired man at the helm of the boat.

  'The creatures from Lianthran lands - the Hierarchs, they are known. They come. The Fee'war hold them at bay out to sea, but we do not have the magic to best them. They burn our ships. Soon they will come. We cannot stop them. You must avenge us.'

  The man cried out in a language that Roskel had never heard before, then thumped his chest three times. Before the Thief King could say more the captain of their ship turned, slowly, and then they were gone in a rising wind, this time from land to sea, where before the wind had blown the ship inward.

  'What the hell was that?' said Rohir, of the strange display.

  Roskel shrugged. He had no idea either. Some kind of curse, some kind of blessing. Something of the sea people, for sure, and he knew next to nothing of them save that they existed, living their entire lives at sea.

  'Settle the men...no...ready the men,' Roskel told Rohir.

  The three Thanes, sitting ahorse at some remove behind Roskel and Rohir, made as though to come forward, but Roskel stalled them with a raised hand. Quietly, he said to Rohir, 'And make sure those idiots do as their told, eh?'

  Rohir grinned.

  'My lord.'

  Roskel thought to forbid his friend calling him such, but the men, the Thanes, even his friend, needed a leader. For good or ill, that was him.

  The men at the fore had heard most of the exchange. Before the day was through everyone in the camp knew that the enemy was coming. Preparations for battle begun in earnest, armour readied and weapons donned, the men waited. They took their evening meal, same as always, though plenty were sick of belly and would not eat. Roskel knew how they felt, as when evening fell, Roskel and his fellow stewards took their evening meal alone, as was their custom.

  Roskel picked at his food. Rohir and Wexel were eating heartily, and Roskel wished just a little that he could have a little of their fortitude for the coming battle.

  'She was right,' said Wexel through a mouthful of food.

  'I know. I wish she wasn't,' said Roskel, truthfully. He did not need to ask of whom Wexel spoke.

  'I hope Durmont's having a better time of it,' said Rohir. 'I'm tired of freezing my damn arse off and smelling of salt. I hope they bloody well get here soon.'

  Roskel laughed despite himself. Sometimes he forgot that his two friends were warriors and bandits born, thrust unwillingly into ruling a nation instead of the rightful king.

  For a moment he was saddened, thinking of the best friend he ever had, the man they called the Outlaw King.

  But he put it to one side. It was time to prepare for war. The northern war can take care of itself, he imagined Selana saying. He turned his mind to the problem of the now, and tried to forget about everything else.

  Wexel and Rohir finished every morsel on the rude table in their shared tent.

  Finally, when he went to bed hungry, Roskel's stomach was roiling. He felt sick to the core. He was, he knew, terrified.

  And tired. So tired. He had time to wonder whatever had become of his Skald, Ruan. Then, too tired to think of anything else, he drifted into a troubled sleep.

  *

  Chapter Thirty

  Ruan's birthright, the sword of his father and fathers before, rested in the dirt before him. The dirt was hard-packed, frozen. His ear, where his head had lain against the cold ground, was numb. He felt blood crusted in his hair...a sound blow to the head, he remembered, had taken him from his horse...

  And the Blade Singers...surrounding him...men and women...

  He lay in a courtyard - Yemathalan's courtyard, the home of his kind. The home of the Blade Singers. All was silent, for now, though the song waited in the throats of those who stood around the exiled Drayman warrior.

  Ruan alone among them could never sing again, for he had taken his own tongue in his shame. Once, many years ago, he had used his talents to subvert the natural order of things. He had saved a village, only to see them slain by another of his kind for they should have died. They should have died - Ruan knew this. Once, he would have changed the outcome, changed his actions. But his shame ruled him no longer. Roskel Farinder had given him back his honour, and it was for his friend Roskel, and for the Sturman people he fought. But he fought for Rythe herself, too - of this he was in no doubt.

  The Blade Singers arrayed before him meant to take his life for returning, he knew. Each man and woman stared at him, as though weighing the worth of his soul.

  He knew his own worth, whether they could see it or not.

  They would kill him. Rythe would be lost. He could not let that happen.

  Ruan tried the bonds that held him tight against a wooden pole. They did not shift, but burned tighter into his thick wrists. His legs were unbound, but he could not stand...even lying down, as he was, his sight swam.

  The winter's sun beat hard on his aching head. Even the winter sun in Draymar could burn while the ground froze solid.

  His hands bound, he could not touch his sword.

  Before him were the last of the Blade Singers. Ruan was surprised to find their numbers had grown in the years since he had left their order, though not by many. He was surprised, too, to find them all in one place.

  Had they assembled just for the return of an outcast? He did not think so. This amount of power in one place meant something else. They meant to kill him, for sure, but also...

  Did they know of the threat in the north?

  Maybe.

  He let his head rest against the ground for a time. He tried to hold onto consciousness through the pain pounding within his split skull, but it slipped from his grasp when they lifted him up and planted one end of the wooden pole into a hole in the ground. Head slumped against his chest, he was unaware of the sad song of his kind rising, echoing from the ancient walls of Yemathalan.

  There was a song of swords for many eventualities, but this was judgement...this was a prelude to an execution.

  For the Blade Singers were the judges of their people, yes, but they were also Draymar's headsmen.

  *

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Yemathalan was one of the old places.

  It was build atop the only hill for miles in any direction. Visible from miles away across
the lonely Drayman plains, it stood dark against the skyline. A beacon, but also the only truly defensible site for many, many miles. A black tower rose from the centre of the fort, older than the surrounding stone fortifications. Nobody knew how old the fort was, and certainly nobody knew who built the original black tower. Whomever it had been, the builders were not Draymen. This was all anyone could be certain of.

  There were few old places left in the world, and each was built of the same smooth, black stone - the Cathedral on the Plains, Naeth's Underworld...and no longer standing, the ruins at Wraith's Guard, among the few on this continent.

  It was an old place, and the stone remembered. The stone echoed.

  When Ruan awoke to song his head was angled up, leaning against the post. He was looking at the black tower. Groggy though he was, from the blow on the head, he recognised the tower before he recognised the song.

  No Blade Singer had spoken to him. He was surrounded by them, and it seemed that they had no interesting in hearing his own song. They sang out loud and strong in the courtyard, their song echoing around the ancient fort. It seemed the Blade Singers did not wish to wait for him to sing his own case...nor could he, with no tongue.

  He cried as they sang. He had almost forgotten the beauty of the song.

  Among the voices in those swirling, magical words, many called for his death. He could die, he knew. He could die with no regret. Roskel Farinder had given him back his pride. He could die a man. A Blade Singer, still, even if only in his own eyes. Yet he owed that man, didn't he? His debt to the Thief King was not yet paid. Maybe it never would be.

  How could you pay back a man to whom you owed your life?

  The answer, Ruan knew, was that you could not. You could never repay such a debt. It was for life, and to give up and let his brethren and sistren kill him now...that would sell the debt short.

  He could not die. Not yet.

  It's not your time, said a voice called down from the aether by the song.