“You’ve seen a fair amount of action, Tunny.”
“I’ve tended more towards inaction, Your Majesty. But yes.”
“How bad is it? And bear in mind I’m a king. You should be honest.”
“Begging your pardon, but I try never to be honest with a superior, and the higher up the chain of command I go, the less honest I try to be. One could hardly be higher up than a king. Unless you’ve got great Euz hiding somewhere.”
“If only,” said Orso. “An all-powerful demigod would be the very thing to balance the odds. How bad is it?”
Tunny ran his tongue around the inside of his mouth, glanced about at the hills, and the fields, and the men digging. “It’s bad.”
“But we have a chance?”
“If Rucksted arrives in time, and the enemy can’t stay together, and we’re lucky with the weather…” Tunny broke out that radiant grin of his, the deep lines crinkling around his eyes. “There’s always a chance. But any delay works in our favour.”
“Hmmm.” Orso narrowed his eyes towards that tower house on the hill, wondering if the Young Lion was at that very moment considering the position through his eyeglass. “Colonel Gorst?”
“Your Majesty?”
“I would like you to conduct Corporal Tunny and his Steadfast Standard across those fields. Seek out the intrepid Lord Governor of Angland! Seek him out with the most pomp, ceremony and military bluster possible. Tunny, I want your bloody salute to take an hour minimum.”
“And once I’ve saluted?”
“Then you invite the Young Lion to dinner. I may not be his equal with a sword, but I flatter myself to believe that I’m more than a match for him with a fork. My father used to say a good king should attend always to the opinions of his subjects. My mother would add that he should then entirely ignore ’em. Let’s hear the bastard out.” And Orso winked. “At great length.”
The men kept digging. Out across the fields, the starlings swarmed back up into the afternoon sky.
Bad Ground
“Bad ground,” said Antaup, thumping a fist worriedly on the ancient parapet.
From the roof of the tower-house, Leo could see the whole valley. Stoffenbeck nestled between two hills—a rocky bluff overlooking the river to the west, a gentle ridge above ripe wheatfields to the east.
“Ground we’ve got to cross to reach Adua,” said Jin.
That would’ve been easy in peacetime. Two paved roads converged on the town from either side of the hill the tower-house stood on, met in Stoffenbeck’s pretty market square and became one, then headed due south towards the capital. Trouble was, the country between swarmed with King Orso’s forces. They’d fortified a wide crescent in the freshly reaped fields north of the town, bristling with stakes and gleaming spear points. There was more metal, along with a few fluttering standards, spread out across the summit of the grassy ridge. Squinting through his eyeglass, Leo could see some men on top of the bluff as well. Wagons, too, maybe. He handed the eyeglass to Antaup. “How many men, do you reckon?”
“Hard to say. In the centre, they look well dug in, but the hills are weaker held. I see some King’s Own standards. Some others I don’t recognise.”
“More than we were expecting,” murmured Leo. Far more than they’d been hoping for. Looked like there might be a fight after all.
“We’ve still got the numbers,” growled Jin, all Northern bravado. “Two to one, maybe.”
“Maybe.” But a good chunk of them Leo didn’t trust. Isher’s men were well drilled, but most of the Open Council’s forces had lovely uniforms but no discipline at all. Barezin had put together what he proudly called a Gurkish Legion, but he’d taken anyone with an exotic look regardless of whether they could even speak to each other, let alone had worn armour before. A good portion of Lady Wetterlant’s beggarly troops had most likely joined for a set of clothes then stolen away during the storm, taking their supplies with them. Then there was the Great Wolf, who every day seemed more likely to fight against Leo than for him.
“Might be we should attack now,” said Jin, squinting up at the sun. “There’s still a few hours o’ daylight.”
Antaup handed Leo the eyeglass. “Our men are nearly ready to go.”
“Good old Anglanders,” said Leo, watching their orderly columns tramp from the road and form neat battle lines at the base of the hill, the flags they’d fought under across the North and back flying overhead. Made him proud to see them. Made him proud to lead them. He scanned the fields they might soon be advancing across and caught sight of another flag, coming fast towards them. A white horse on a golden sun, flashing and twinkling at the head of two dozen armoured men.
“The Steadfast Standard,” murmured Leo.
Antaup raised his brows. “Looks like His Majesty wants to talk.”
Leo couldn’t have asked for a more splendid group around him: Lords Isher and Barezin and a good twenty other members of the Open Council, Lord Mustred and a dozen other noblemen of Angland, as well as Stour’s man Greenway and Rikke’s man Hardbread. And yet he felt very much alone as the king’s standard-bearer reined in his snorting mount on the hillside, the Steadfast Standard snapping majestically with the breeze and two dozen Knights of the Body in full battle armour clattering to a halt behind. He was a grizzled old veteran with a glint in his eye and a relaxed style in the saddle, but he produced the most impeccable salute Leo ever saw. Crisp, elegant, no self-regarding flourish. The lords of the Open Council, festooned with enough braid between them to rig a fleet, could’ve learned a thing or two about what a real soldier looked like.
“Your Grace! My lords of the Open Council! Representatives of the North! I’m Corporal Tunny, standard-bearer to the High King of the Union, His August Majesty King Orso the First. Colonel Gorst, Commander of the Knights of the Body, I believe you all know.”
Being dragged from the Lords’ Round by his boyhood hero had taken away none of Leo’s admiration for the man. Had increased it, if anything. He was slightly hurt that Gorst sat frowning into the distance without even glancing in his direction.
“Corporal… Tunny?” Barezin’s jowls trembled as he scornfully raised his chin. “They’re wasting our time!”
“It’s his message that matters,” grumbled Mustred, “not his rank.” Leo would happily have swapped a few armchair generals for corporals of long experience.
“I’ve dabbled with higher, my lords,” said Tunny, grinning, “but it never suited me. Carrying His Majesty’s standard is as much honour as I can manage.”
“The Steadfast Standard,” Leo found he’d murmured, with not a little awe.
Tunny grinned up fondly at it. “The very one King Casamir rode under when he delivered Angland from the savages. Makes you think about the Union’s proud history. All that the provinces owe to the Crown.”
Leo frowned. “If men like Casamir still wore the crown, I daresay we’d have no quarrel.”
“Fancy that. No quarrel is exactly what His Majesty wants. In the hopes of getting there, he’s invited you to dinner.” Tunny gave Leo’s sprawling collection of allies a faintly amused glance. “Just the two of you, though, he wouldn’t want the conversation to wander too far from the matter.”