“What fine manners,” said Rikke, sitting up long enough for him to slip it behind her then wriggling back into it.
“Best not get carried away with yourself,” said Shivers, nudging at the drooping lid of his metal eye with a knuckle. “Black Calder’s still out there.”
Isern nodded. “He spent a lot of effort winkling his son onto that chair, d’you see? Won’t be overjoyed to hear you’ve wedged your skinny arse into his place.”
“He’ll be ready, the moment you trip up.”
“And he’s got friends all over,” said the Nail, “and debts owed, and favours to call on. King Orso won’t be ridding us of him, no matter what letters you write.”
“No,” said Rikke. “Black Calder we’ll have to deal with ourselves. And unlike his son, he’s a man who earned his name.”
“Earned it with cleverness and treachery and ruthlessness,” said Isern. “All qualities much loved by the moon.”
Shivers had his eye on Skarling’s Chair. “Trouble with being a strong man or a clever man with a big, bad name,” he said, and he ought to know, after all, “is that folk always have their best fight ready for you.”
The Nail nodded along in sympathy. “There are times I wish folk had never heard o’ me. Look small, look foolish, got no name, well… that’s when you’re given chances.”
“Mmmm.” Rikke tapped at the arm of Skarling’s Chair with her fingernail. Picked at the scratched and faded layers of paint that centuries of rulers had picked at before her. That Skarling Hoodless himself picked at, for all she knew. “No strength like looking weak, eh?”
“What you thinking?” asked Shivers.
“What my father would’ve said, once he got over the shock of seeing me here.” And Rikke looked up. “Sitting in it’s nothing special. It’s staying in it that’s the trick.”
The New Harvest
It was a surprise, in a way, to hear that birds still sang.
To see the sun still rose and the wind still blew. But things go on. Orso took a long breath that had a faint, sickening tang of battle about it. “Things always go on,” he murmured.
Not for everyone, mind you. The dead were everywhere. Sparsely dotted, away to the north, then more liberally sprinkled where the fighting had been fiercest, clogged up in knots. Heaps, almost. Perhaps men had felt the need to crawl towards other men while they still had the breath. Perhaps even the dead love company.
The corpse-gatherers had been labouring from before first light. Whole companies of them, dragging cadavers by hand, by stretcher and by cart into orderly piles at the corners of fields. There prisoners made unwilling gravediggers chopped away with pick and shovel in an effort to make holes big enough to hold them all. Flies, crows and human scavengers had meanwhile appeared from nowhere, flitting busily among the bumper crop of bodies while there were still pickings to be had.
The disposal of men made an industry, on the impersonal scale of the new age.
“All that work,” said Orso. “All that effort. All that ingenuity, and courage, and struggle, to make what? Corpses.”
“Few things indeed,” mused Pike, “seem to have so much appeal before, and so little after, as a battle.”
The fires in Stoffenbeck were out but smoke still crept from the embers to smudge the chalky sky. The picturesque town square was a ruin, several of its fine old houses blackened shells, its covered marketplace ripped open to the sky, the clock tower mangled beyond repair by cannon-stones. No bunting now in honour of Orso’s visit.
Rucksted frowned towards the rocky bluff, where yesterday’s cannons still poked from the hill like the prongs of an iron crown. “The world’s changing, that’s for damn sure. Now a man can put a spark to some powder and a thousand strides away another man’s blown limb from limb. There was a time you had to look in his eyes, at least.”
“That was better?” asked Vick.
“Victories always come with a cost,” said Sulfur, calmly. “When my master returns from his business in the West, I do not doubt he will be satisfied with the outcome.”
“Marvellous,” murmured Orso. “I have engineered a quantity of death to satisfy even the First of the Magi.” His eyes could hardly comprehend the carnage. He kept looking to one side, then scanning across, in an effort to take it all in. “How many people do you think died here?”
“Hundreds,” murmured Hoff, eyes wide.
“Perhaps thousands,” said Pike, listlessly. “But mostly on the rebel side.”
Orso took scant comfort from that. Most on the rebel side had been citizens of the Union, too. His subjects. They had fought bravely, loyally, for good reasons. But being right is of little value in war. A great deal less than being lucky, certainly. If the cavalry had not arrived when they did, it might have been Leo dan Brock shaking his head over the carnage. Except Orso doubted the Young Lion had the imagination for it.
“Can it really have been worth it?” he found he had said.
“Can what, Your Majesty?” asked Pike.
“Anything.” Orso waved a limp hand at the spectacle. “Can anything be worth this?”
“They gave us no choice,” grumbled Rucksted. “You were hardly the aggressor, Your Majesty.”
“I played my part,” muttered Orso, gloomily. “If they wanted the crown so bloody badly, I could just have given it away. It’s not as if I enjoy wearing the damn thing…” He glanced across the unhappy faces of his retainers. Probably not the victory speech they had been hoping for. Sulfur, in particular, was frowning thoughtfully. “But I suppose your master takes a dim view of unauthorised abdications.”
The magus bowed his head. “Were he to lose Your Majesty, I can only imagine his regret.”
They would have to imagine it, since Orso rather doubted Bayaz was capable of displaying any.
“There are many practical considerations,” said Hoff, hurrying to change the subject. “Large numbers of prisoners to consider.”
“Many from the Open Council’s forces.” Rucksted gave a disdainful sniff. “I hesitate to call them soldiers. Anglanders, too.”
“When it comes to the rank and file, I tend towards mercy,” said Orso. “We have enough Union men to bury.”
Pike inclined his head. “Fines, parole and forced labour may be of more value than mass executions.”
“Provided mercy does not extend to the ringleaders,” said Sulfur. “Justice must fall on the guilty like lightning. As it did at Valbeck.”
Orso gave a grimace at that memory, but he did not disagree. “What about the Northmen?”
“Pulling back towards their ships in disarray,” said Rucksted. “Harried by our cavalry.”
“Let them go. I don’t want to waste one more Union life on the bastards.” In truth, Orso had no appetite for any further waste of life at all: Union, Northman, dog or flea.
“We’ll see every one of those swine herded from our land or buried in it.”
“Stour Nightfall himself is unaccounted for,” said Pike. “I fear we may not have heard his name for the last time.”