Helmuth von Moltke
Storms
The young lieutenant had looked on the point of tears when Savine refused the carriage, but it was far from the first time she had made a man cry. There was no way the damn thing was getting through the chaos on the beach, let alone the chaos getting off the beach, and she was determined to stick close to Leo and make sure her husband suffered no fatal attacks of recklessness in her absence. She had insisted on riding, and that was the end of it.
Then the rain came.
First a drizzle that beaded the weapons with dew as the first columns of Angland’s army marched between the dunes. Then a steady shower that turned the proud standards to sodden rags as they struggled inland. Finally, as if the weather was fanatically loyal to King Orso, a pissing deluge that churned the narrow roads to black glue as the unhappy soldiers toiled southwards.
“Heave!” an officer roared at a set of men trying vainly to haul a wagon from a quagmire, his wet sword raised as if he was ordering a charge, and the men strained at the filth-caked wheels as the premature darkness of the storm closed in.
Savine was so used to proving there was nothing she could not do, she rarely pondered whether there might be things better not attempted. Riding while heavily pregnant at the head of a military campaign mired by foul weather proved to be in that latter category.
Her thighs burned with the effort. Her clothes were soaked through and chafing. Her hands were so swollen, she had split one riding glove and could hardly feel the reins. Her stomach was sending painful washes of acid up her throat with every jolt of her horse. If she hunched over against the rain, her great beer keg of a belly felt like it would make her aching ribs spring open. If she sat up, she got the storm full in her face and every step her horse took stabbed her in the spine. And then, in any and every position into which a heavily pregnant human body could be twisted, there was the endlessly throbbing focus of misery that was her bladder. Probably no one would have noticed had she pissed herself, she could hardly have been wetter. Probably she was pissing herself, an agonising slow leak with every in-breath. When she first became pregnant, she had been pathetically grateful to be free of the menses for a few months. Now it seemed she had traded the monthly agonies for constant ones.
As if to add insult to injury, her husband grinned into the elements, rain coursing down his face, never happier than when he had a simple physical obstacle to manfully wrestle with and heroically overcome. “Can’t let a bit of weather stop us!” he roared over the wind as he slapped a baffled messenger on the back and sent him to find formations that for all they knew had been washed away into the sea. “Used to Northern storms, aren’t we?” he called to a column of bedraggled Anglanders, raising a limp cheer. “We can manage a Midderland drizzle!”
“A drizzle,” snarled Savine over her shoulder at Zuri, wishing she had taken the carriage when it was offered.
“God punished old Sippot’s arrogance with a flood,” called Zuri, soaked to the perfect skin herself but facing the weather with her usual equanimity. “Perhaps He means to do the same to us.”
There was a flash on the horizon, claws of trees caught black against the brightness. A moment later thunder crackled, and a horse reared and dumped one of Leo’s aides face first into a hedge. Savine’s own mount trembled, shuffled fearfully sideways, and she shushed in its ear, patted its neck, stroked her belly, trying to calm her struggling horse and her kicking baby and the rampaging storm all at once and wondering who the hell would calm her.
She flinched as Antaup spurred his horse up from behind in a shower of mud.
“No sign of Rikke?” snapped Leo.
“No sign!”
“What the hell’s happened to her?”
“If her boats were caught in weather like this she could be anywhere.”
“At the bottom of the sea, maybe,” grunted Jin, peering up grimly at the streaming skies.
“If this rain gets any heavier,” growled Savine, trying to unstick her clammy dress from her shoulders under the weight of her waterlogged cloak, “the bottom of the sea will come to us.”
They picked their way around the boggy margins of a vast puddle in the road. One could have described it as a lake without fear of contradiction, men squatting on an upended cart at one side like shipwrecked mariners, all manner of gear floating on the rain-pricked water while others waded past, weapons over their heads, or tried to force their way through the hedges to either side.
“This way!” They were led past a miserable huddle of men under a tarp and out across a darkened field. It felt good for a moment to move faster than a crawl, even if Savine had no idea where they were moving to. Then she saw flickering lights up ahead, dark shapes moving in the twilight.
“Riders!” hissed Antaup, ripping his spear from its case. Panic rippled through the knot of officers. Steel scraped as swords were drawn, shields unslung. Savine’s horse was barged by another and she only just clung on to the saddle, wrenching her arm. She stared, heart in her mouth, one hand gripping the reins like death, the other wrapped protectively around her belly.
“Who goes there?” Jin roared into the night, standing in his stirrups with his great mace ready.
“Lord Isher!” came a strangled shout. “And you?”
There was a collective gasp as men sagged in their saddles. “It’s the Young Lion!” called Leo, reassuring laughter in his voice. “No need to piss yourselves!”
“So you say,” grunted Savine, squirming in her saddle.
“Thank the Fates!” Riders came smiling into the flickering light cast by the torches of Leo’s guards. “We thought you might be the king’s men.”
“Likewise.” Leo grinned hugely as he leaned from his saddle to clasp Isher’s hand.
The sight of their ally gave Savine far less comfort than she might have hoped. He had none of the self-assurance he radiated while stirring trouble in the Open Council, or discussing how they would divide the spoils in Ostenhorm. He looked gaunt and jumpy, his uniform a poor fit under his soaked oilskin, his white hair rain-flattened to a dirty grey but for one absurd tweak which stuck up like a peacock’s crest.
“Barezin is somewhere behind.” Isher waved into the darkness in a way that strongly implied he had no idea where. “I’ve had messages from some of the others.”
“Bloody roads are a bloody shambles,” snapped a lord with an extravagant breastplate. Savine didn’t recognise him and no one seemed in the mood for introductions, least of all her.
“Lady Wetterlant’s with us,” said Isher, eyes narrowed against a sudden gust, “but her troops are strung out along five miles of boggy track and their supplies five miles behind that! Have the Northmen landed?”
“Most of ’em,” called Jin. “Stour’s somewhere to the east but half his boats drifted. In this weather, who knows where they’ll wash up?”
“Bloody beaches are a bloody shambles, too,” grunted Antaup.
“Is Heugen with you?” asked Leo.
Isher’s unhappy horse kept trying to turn around. Savine sympathised. He bad-temperedly jerked it back. “You haven’t heard from him?”
“No, but we can’t wait. We have to push on, whatever the weather. We can’t give Orso any time to gather his forces!”