Honor among thieves

Chapter Eighty

Morget tramped up the frost-crackling hill, naked axe in hand, and flourished it in the air. An arrow arced through the wind, tumbling as it came, and landed on its side on the hard ground next to him. He ignored it. “Come closer, you cowards! Come and fight me!” he shouted, his voice booming down to the frozen fields below.

An army stood there, watching him. The Army of Free Men, they called themselves, though they took their orders directly from a man on a horse wearing a crown. Morget pointed his axe at the front ranks of the army and it fell back, some of its individual members tripping over those behind.

“Fear belies you! Fear makes you her slaves. Free men, ha! Fight me!” Morget howled.

Another arrow came toward him. At this range he had time to bat it out of the air before it reached him. Morget turned around and looked back down the hill, toward where Balint hid in the shelter of a lightning-blasted tree. The few leaves still clinging to its branches were clotted with ice.

“You’re good with taunts,” Morget told the dwarf. “Tell me what to say to them. Tell me how to make them angry!”

Balint looked around as if afraid the men of Skrae were sneaking up on her, as if he had given away her position. Hardly likely, Morget knew. The barbarians had caught a few pickets of this Army of Free Men. They had tortured them to learn what they could, then given them proper deaths. Now even the most daring scouts of the Burgrave’s army wouldn’t come within arrow flight of Morget or his clans. Every time the two armies got close and Morget thought they would at last come to blows, the cowards of Skrae would disengage and withdraw with all possible speed.

Even now, with Morget well in range, they were pulling away. The man with the crown signaled to his serjeants, whirling a flanged mace over his head and repeatedly pointing north. The serjeants got the men moving. They couldn’t seem to keep proper formations, but they were glad enough to move away, and it didn’t take long before the entire army was marching away in retreat.

“Tell me how to insult them. I’m no scold. What will offend them most?” Morget demanded.

Balint shivered but she found her voice. “Drop your breeks. Show them your arse and spread your buttocks so they can see your little ring. That’ll give them a bull’s-eye to target,” she said.

Morget shook his head and came stamping back down the hill toward her. He grabbed her up under his arm and carried her back to the road, two low hills away, where the barbarian horde was marching west. The clans were tired and foot-sore, and on short rations, but they gave Morget a hearty cheer when he appeared above them.

He hurried toward the van where his father and sister rode before their standards. He jogged alongside Morg’s horse and called up to him, “They’re retreating again. They’re demoralized. If we gave chase, we could take them easily.”

“Aye,” Morg said, as if he was seriously considering it. “We could break their main force in an afternoon. But only if we spend two weeks chasing them down. They want us to follow. They want to lead us as far from Ness as they can.” He shook his head. “No, Mountainslayer. If there’s no fight in them, why bother?”

Morget was stunned. The clans had spoken for war. They had already questioned Morg’s judgment once, when they forced him to march west from Helstrow. Now he would defy them by refusing to let them fight?

It was Morg’s right to make decisions for the entire horde, of course. That was his function as Great Chieftain. Yet to so openly deny his people what they wanted most…

Wheels began to turn inside Morget’s mind. “Father,” he said, intentionally addressing Morg in the most familiar and therefore least respectful way possible, “a warrior does not show mercy to his enemies when he meets them on the field.”

If Morg understood the subtext of what his son said-that the name Morg the Merciful was not an honorific-he chose to ignore the challenge. “I have every intention of destroying that army. Just not yet. When we take Ness, they’ll have to come to us-and we’ll be in a far better position to crush them. We’ll be well-fed, well-rested, and behind strong walls. The key to Skrae is to hold the three cities, Helstrow, Redweir, and Ness. Once we’re properly invested, they’ll never loosen our grip. You wanted to conquer this land. Let’s do it properly.”

Morget fumed but he resisted the urge to call his father a coward. That could only end one way, with one of them dead. Instead he tried to think strategically. It was not his forte. “We’ll be leaving an army behind us. Astraddle our supply lines,” he countered.

Morg turned and looked at him with something akin to pride. Morget could not remember the last time that had happened. “Good thinking. But we’ll also leave them with no base to operate from. Strand them out here in these empty fields all winter-they’ll freeze so solid when we emerge in the spring, we’ll have to chip them out of the ice just to make them thralls.”

Morget fell back and fetched his own horse. He rode among the chieftains of his clans-dark men, grim as he was. There was much muttering, some of which he joined. When they stopped to camp for the night, one of the chieftains took him aside behind a tent. “Your father’s making a mistake,” the man said. “He’s made a lot of mistakes already.”

Morget eyed the man critically. His name was Thurbalt, and his beard was shot with white, but his arms were near as thick as Morget’s own and he’d never lost a wrestling match. He commanded two hundred men and thralls, most of whom he was related to either by marriage or bastardry, and he had a right to speak his mind. Morget couldn’t remember the last time he’d done so, however.

Now, he had chosen to break his silence. With a dire accusation indeed. Chieftains who made mistakes did not remain chieftains for long.

Not when they could so easily be replaced.

“Who do you speak for?” Morget asked.

“Myself alone,” Thurbalt said, which was cautious but proper.

“When you speak for all, you tell me.” Morget had to be cautious himself. Questioning Morg’s decisions wasn’t sedition, not among the clans. But gathering men of like opinion, muttering in darkness, spreading mistrust-these things had a way of quickly moving from speech to action. “I obey the will of my clans,” Morget finished. It was an old formulation, a figure of speech. It could also be a promise.

In the morning, the file marched through a plain of frost-hard fields that extended to the horizon in every direction, where birds circled endlessly looking for one last forgotten seed or bit of fallen grain. Morget, lost in his thoughts, saw little of it, and was only brought up from his reverie when a messenger came back from the van to tell him Morg wanted him.

Jogging forward, Morget wondered idly if Morg had heard the whispers in the night. This might be a chastisement-or a challenge to his honor. Perhaps things would come to a head far sooner than he’d expected.

Yet when he reached the van, he saw Morgain dancing with arms raised high, giving thanks to Mother Death. Some of the berserkers had joined her. Morg stood high up in the crotch of a dead tree, one hand shading his eyes.

“I thought you’d like to see this, Mountainslayer. Come up, to me.”

Morget clambered up the creaking branches to perch next to his father. “What is it?” he demanded. “I haven’t broken my fast yet.”

“No time for surly words, my boy,” Morg said. He could not hide the excitement in his voice. “There! Look! Surely your young eyes see it better than mine.”

Morg looked. And there it was. Across the plain, no more than four hours’ march away, stood a strangely regular shape, a form of straight lines and shining brick that circled a cloven hill. A wall. A city wall.

The wall of Ness.