The Blacktongue Thief

43 The Ispanthian Army

We left Edth on donkeys we bought at great expense; four for us to ride, one for baggage, and a sixth for the mysterious Spanth Galva hoped for us to acquire when we met her army. Even with the beasts, it was a cold, miserable business getting to the western edge of Middlesea. We stayed on the White Road laid by the Kesh, this in the last flat part of the country, where oxen, asses, and, on the poorest farms, packs of muddy children strained at plows to plant the year’s last roots and onions. When the land turned rocky, we were glad for the donkeys, who proved sure-footed if occasionally ill-tempered. I was bitten on the arm by my foul mount in a misunderstanding over a radish, and nobody would trade me donkeys.

We soon found ourselves in the Shorn Hills, through which the pewter-colored Vornd River cut. The best meal of the journey was had in those hills, a merry little goat who was good enough to accept my arrow through both lungs near a patch of wild mint. The worst was a bunch of green apples that puckered our mouths up miserable but didn’t afflict us with the squats, gods bless their Cassine mercy. We all stored some of these away for later.

On the sixth day out of Edth, we saw smoke and banners near the river, just near the Beaten Man, a rocky tor said to have been cursed. It looked cursed. It looked exactly like its name, all hunched shoulders and spilled rocks like an abstraction of tears. Galva brightened when she saw the smoke, then brightened further when she saw the banners bore the bull of Ispanthia, not the cornered eight-point star of Holt.

Tents in scarlet and silver littered the banks, tents of gold at the hilltop, where the largest banner flew. It was very near dusk, and the light of the failing sun was pretty on the river, though not so pretty as the smell of garlic and olive oil coming from the cookfires of the Ispanthian army. A party of scouts sprinted down from the hilltop to meet us, two lads and a lass with black hair and disapproving eyebrows very much like Galva’s, bullnutters at their belts and shields at their backs.

One look at Galva’s seal and they bowed proper, the challenge in their approach traded for camaraderie as they led us toward the tent of the commander. Someone was playing an Ispanthian cornemuse, the pipes high and sweet, and a woman sang with it, though too softly to be heard even had I known her words, which I didn’t.

Glad faces loomed up for a look at Galva, and many a warm embrace slowed her, though she could not have insulted the waiting general by stopping. We three foreigners were suffered to come with her at least to the guarded perimeter. After some negotiation, we ascended to the tent, its flap folded open to show a haven of candlelight alive with the smell of roast meat. A quartet of women who resembled Galva in passing, though far taller and broader through the chest and more stoutly armored, assured the entrance, and two of them followed us in. We were not made to surrender our weapons. Ispanthians were too proud for a practical measure like that—Galva was known, and we were her responsibility, however rough we looked after nine days in the field.

And so, with a brief announcement, I was let into a tent of cloth-of-gold, an opulent tent containing an opulent man, the Count Marevan da Codorezh en Nadan, general of the Fourth Wing, the head of six thousand Spanth light infantry and eight hundred archers. My chief concern upon entering was how to discreetly get a stubborn bit of sheepshyte off my boot, and I think I managed all right by sort of scraping it up against the other boot and tramping a bit on the grass. If anyone noticed, they were too polite to make it obvious.

This wasn’t my first time seeing a general, but it was my first of the Ispanthian sort. The count was a small-boned man with a withering gaze he often shifted forward in his seat to deliver. He was old, too, of an age to have fought in the Knights’ War. That was the first of the three Goblin Wars—the one we were so proud to have won, not knowing how much worse their second go at us would be. Anyway, this geezer will have been one of those still crying in his wine for the feel of a horse between his legs and looking down his nose at the younger bunch who’d damned near lost half the continent. I didn’t know how many battles he’d won, but his tailor and armorer couldn’t be faulted. A steel breastplate etched with lions rearing up to fight each other embraced a slate-gray velvet doublet with a high collar, his sleeves studded with buttons alternating copper and gold.

Though he was cordial to us, he held his conversation with Galva in Ispanthian so formal and rapid I only snared a half dozen words. Giants, mountains, war, honor, quail, and wine. We ate quail and drank wine. Giants, war, and mountains were on their way. If honor decided to attend our adventures, I only hoped I’d recognize her; she’d been pointed out to me a few times, but we’d never really gotten acquainted.

The second tent I followed Galva to was spun of crude hemp, not silk or cloth-of-gold. Dinner here had not been quail but mutton, and the smoke the opening flap released was not incense but taback, a foul but stimulating plant smoked in the south and east. There were no guards here but the lone occupant.

Galva’s swordmaster, or Calar Saram, was a far more interesting person than the count. I had the impression the count and Galva, though bound to civility, were neutral to one another at best, Galva’s father having been the man’s rival for this or that post. Not so with the instructor at sword, who was a short, thick-middled tree trunk of fifty, missing teeth and scarred like the last gourd in the market. She smoked her taback not in a pipe but in a rolled stump that glowed hot at the end when she sucked on it.

“Corme seu dalgatha,” she said when she saw Galva.

She hit her in the chops with a meaty hand and blew smoke out the side of her mouth. She looked at we three behind her and quickly took our measure. “Holteshi?”

“Galtesi,” I said, but something about the way I said it made her squint and switch to Holtish. Mostly.

“You three are skinny also. You starve with my Galva? Hey? Vosu cravit nourid? You want food?”

“We ate,” I said.

“Then smoke,” she said and stuck her wet stump of taback in my mouth. I’d had it before; I didn’t care for it. But I sucked on it and half retched but wouldn’t let myself cough.

“Good!” she said. “You cough, you are weak testicles.”

“Have,” Galva corrected.

“Ai, os, you cough, you are half-testicles. Now give me this back; it is not for finishing to you.”

I liked her.

I wished I spoke Ispanthian just so I wouldn’t have to hear her Holtish, but I liked her.

We spoke friendly for half an hour. Nadalle Seri-Orbez, called Yorbez, the swordmaster, smoked and laughed and switched between Ispanthian and Holtish, sometimes speaking a mix of the two. She shared around a ball-shaped flask of Braycish liquor made from pears, though it was more burning than sweet, and she asked us about ourselves. She seemed to care about the answers. I saw nothing obvious to indicate she was a fighter, except perhaps a ropiness of the forearms and a way of moving that wasted no motion. At first glance, anyone who did not know that Galva called her master would take her for a sort of cook or innkeeper. A sword belt and sword hung from a hook on a wooden stand, and when she saw me looking at it, she said, “You know how to use that?”

“I’m better with a knife,” I said.

“You have to be much better with the knife if your adversity have the sword.”

“I prefer peaceful negotiations.”

She laughed and slapped me good-naturedly in the jaw in such a way that actually hurt. “Os? This work with the goblin, this talk?”

“I’ve spoken with one,” I said.

“It go well?”

“I lived.”

“Because you stab him while you talk?”

“Actually, I shot him with an arrow.” I thought about this, then corrected. “Two arrows.”

“Good. Is the best talk for them.”

She and Galva exchanged a few sentences in Ispanthian, looking at me and the others in such a way I was sure they were deciding whether to ask us to excuse ourselves. In the end, she settled her eyes on Malk. Galva said to him, “Do not take offense at this please, but she would like you to go outside and away for a short time.”

“Bugger me, then,” he said jovially enough, and got to his feet. “I’ll just find a Towers game to lose my new shirt at.” Out the tent flap he went, whistling so we could hear he was gone.

The woman looked at me and at Norrigal.

Then back at me.

“Right,” I said and got to my feet.

“No,” Galva said, and I sat down again.

“Why?” I said.

“I explained to her that you are married to the witch now.”

“Only for a month.”

“Three weeks left,” Norrigal said.

“And she would tell him, anyway.”

“Depends what it was,” I said.

“That’s right,” Norrigal said, “I can keep a secret from the likes of him.”

“It’s true,” I said. “She doesn’t tell me a damn thing. Should I go?”

“Is true you are with the Grabbers?” Yorbez asked.

“Takers.”

“Yes, I see the hand on your face for the hitting.”

“I more often feel it.”

She took a moment to process this, then went “Ha!” hitting me with her heavy hand-heel again. I’d have to remember to joke with her less.

“No,” she said, “you stay. You stay for this. Soon we will go to Grevitsa to meet with another thief, also once with your Grabbers. She have for us a map we need.”

“After that,” Galva said, “we will see a magicker in the Bittern Mountains. These magickers are with us, not with your Guild, and with the queen.”

And then they planned their treason against King Kalith.

I learned much I hadn’t known about that mustachioed bastard.

For example, nobody was allowed in his inner rooms with their own clothes or jewelry on; they were all given beautiful but light linen gowns or shirts to wear, and they were escorted by gailus du cuth, or knife-boys. These were orphan lads who were utterly loyal to the king in the way only twelve-year-olds can be, trained from toddlerhood in the mysteries of knife-fighting. When you went to see the king, one of these escorted you, walking in your blind spot, steering you by the belt. One look from Kalith, and quick as clapping, you’d be hamstrung or kidneyed by the wee darling behind you.

Galva said she’d heard of a rare Axaene brassworm kept in a labyrinth below the palace, and that’s where servants who failed in their duties would go as Kalith watched their scalding and eating from above. Kalith was a darling of the Guilds, and assassins were at his beckon, as well as magickers. He had a forty-year-old mare these wizards kept alive at great expense, and he rode her out on state occasions, though she clearly suffered and barely held him.

The last conspirators against him had been found out by means no one ever learned. It’s said their bones were liquefied and they were sealed undying in glass amphorae he visits from time to time, reading poetry to.

By the time I heard an evening’s worth about Kalith, I was practically an Ispanthian rebel without benefit of being fucking Ispanthian.

I thought about Mireya, growing up with this villain for an uncle, talking to monkeys and yelling at the sky to stay alive.

Some home life.

After this sort of talk, of course I dreamed dark dreams.