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Rolling slowly over, he tried opening one eye, to see if it worked. It did, and all too well. The afternoon sun, shining straight through Anne’s windows, sliced into his brain like a barbed arrow. Wincing, he wiped the cold sweat from his forehead and stubbly jaw.
The last thing he remembered was sitting at a table in the Palm Court. Anne had been there, and Lukas and the new girl Lukas had found after his last one had gone to the countryside to have her baby. No, wait. They had left the table, and they had been sitting in the fountain at the end. And Anne had said he should come up to her apartment for more wine. Finster’s balls. Why had he let Anne talk him into that last pitcher of wine? Or the one before that, come to think of it?
In their youth, he and Lukas had gone out and gotten themselves so drunk they could barely stand. And yet they’d still been able to get up the next morning and do sword drills or go riding. That had been a very long time ago, though. Part of him wanted to warn Anne to slow down a bit. But another part of him wanted to advise her to enjoy it while she still could.
At the edge of his hearing, he caught Anne’s voice, talking to someone and sounding rather annoyed. After a few moments, separate and distinct words penetrated the fog in his skull: “No, it’s like I told William. He needs his rest.”
It took him three tries, but he managed to sit up. “Anne,” he called out, “who’s there?”
“Father, it’s me,” came the voice of his son. “We need to talk, please.”
“Let him in, Anne.”
His boy came in and sniffed the air, a trifle judgmentally, Broderick thought. Then he said, “Father, Sir William Aitken wanted me to tell you he’s heard some disturbing news down at the market.”
Apparently the Sigor supporters were regrouping. Troops of the Duke of Newshire were marching to Stansted, and the thought of that sobered him up better than dipping his head in the fountain would have. Gleade Hill hadn’t been the end of this. It was only the beginning. He had been afraid of that.
At least the enemy wasn’t marching on Formacaster yet. He still had time to prepare. First things first. He called in Anne and asked her to send her maid for hot water and a razor. Then he told his son, “Go have Rath send some scouts to Newshire. I want to know exactly how large a force we’ll be dealing with.”
“Father, if the Duke of Newshire moves all his men against us—”
“Yes, I know,” Broderick said, with a wave of his hand.
The duke could put ten thousand men in the field in less than a month. No other Myrcian commander could do that. Even Broderick, as captain general of the nation, couldn’t deploy so large a force so quickly. Ten thousand men would completely overwhelm the defenses of Formacaster and Wealdan Castle. They’d barely even need weapons—with that many men, they could carry clubs and pitchforks.
Young Broderick left, and Anne returned with some housemaids and the water. As she often did, she volunteered to shave him, but he had a different job for her.
“If you’re feeling up to it,” he said, “I wonder if you could run down to Hafoc Street for me and invite the Duke and Duchess of Newshire up here for supper.”
Anne looked askance at him. “Can’t you send one of your squires?”
He chuckled. “No, dear. I’d like you to go yourself.”
An hour later, after he had shaved and bathed and was beginning to feel somewhat human again, she was back, shaking her head and pouting. “I don’t know why you sent me. They’re not even around.”
“Oh?” He couldn’t conceal his proud grin. “How could you tell?”
“Well, the housemaid said they were ‘out visiting,’ but the liquor cabinet had been emptied, and all the inkwells were dry in the desk in their library.”
He kissed her forehead and said, “Now that, my dear, is why I sent you, of all people. They are indeed out of town, and I suspect they’ve gone back to their home shire.” Reaching into a bureau drawer, he pulled out a small money purse and gave it to her. “Have yourself a little party in town tonight. Invite all your friends, but expand your guest list a bit, if you could.” He started ticking off names on his hands. “The Dryhtens, the Sigors, the Stansteds, the Swithins....”
Anne, clever girl that she was, instantly saw where this was going. “Ah. Then the Shepherds, too, of course. The Cuthings, possibly. The Gallens and the Colwinns. All the people on the queen’s side. You want to see if they’ve skipped town.” She gave him a hopeful look. “Will you be coming to this party?”
“I regret to say I have had enough partying for a month. But I do appreciate this a great deal.”
He said farewell to her in the stairwell on the way down, and then he walked through his own rooms to pay a visit to his wife. Muriel was dancing about her room with her eyes closed and a glass of wine in her hand, humming an Annenstruker ballad. It had been a while, but he still recognized her post-coital mood.
“You’re having a good day, apparently,” he said.
“Yes, I just sent Pedr away. Did you know that neither he nor our son had ever read De Bello Civili? What do they teach boys at these schools these days? Anyway, I set out to rectify the situation, but William took our son away as Pedr and I were getting to the part about the Battle of Erliana in the Cheruscian campaign. So we were alone, and there was this one line, ‘Quibus fortiter excute tergo fissi,’ and of course then one thing led to another.”
“‘They were split by a vigorous thrust in the rear,’” Broderick translated, shaking his head. “Again and again, darling, you completely fulfill my expectations.”
“You’re one to talk. I think everyone in the palace heard you and Lukas reliving your youth down in the Palm Court last night.”
They stared at each other for a good ten seconds or more before they both started laughing. Muriel poured him a glass of wine and, when he refused, shuddering, she insisted. “Come on. Ein Haar des Kamels, as the Odelanders say. A hair of the camel that spit on you.”
He took the wine. It helped a good deal, once he got past the smell. A bit like camels in that regard.
“Now much as I love the pleasure of your company,” she said, “I assume you’re here because you need me to do something.”
“I was thinking about having a formal dinner party here at the palace. Perhaps two days from now, on Saturday. I need you to work your magy on anyone who might be wavering, and convince anyone who’s on the fence to lean in our direction.”
“Happily. It might interest you to know that Pedr thinks his mother is coming around to seeing the virtues of our position.”
“H’m...and I’m sure that, purely as a rhetorical exercise, you showed him a great many positions.”
“More than you can imagine, dear. But he’s a quick learner, and he’ll do anything I ask. Lovely boy. So versatile. Go on, now, darling. I’m sure you need to go see Anne Meriwether and give her some lessons of your own.”
Broderick finished his wine and put the glass back carefully. It belonged to a set Muriel particularly liked. “I was going to see your brother, as it happens.”
Muriel gave a low, throaty laugh. “Ah, you and Lukas. If I had a shilling for every time I wondered about the two of you.... Oh, well. Say hello to him for me, will you?”
He left her apartment and rode down from the castle still laughing to himself. She really was a marvel, his wife. Long, long ago his father had told him to make a choice, and he’d chosen her because she seemed respectable, attractive, and—more importantly—close at hand. She was the vivacious and beautiful younger sister of his best friend, so how could she not be flattered by his attention? He had been so stupid back in those days.
She had a tremendous temper, and he saw all of it when he told her his plans. But after a while—after she’d tried and failed to elope with one of her father’s knights—she had come around to seeing the benefits of the partnership. And what a partnership it had been. In a few weeks, if they played the game right, she would be Queen of Myrcia. And she thoroughly deserved it. What a woman!
And then, as he rode down into Hafoc Street, it was as if a cloud had passed over the sun, and he remembered the Duke of Newshire and all those smart, highly-trained regiments of his.
“If he comes into the war openly,” thought Broderick, “then we are finished.” They would be slaughtered and obliterated. It would be like the Fall of Paradelphia, when Faustinus had used magy to burn the whole city, and the swords of the defenders had melted and run in the gutters with their blood.
Well, perhaps not that bad. And he might well still convince Lady Jorunn to fight on his side. Which would mean he could have the magysk advantage. Assuming Caedmon didn’t fight for the other side. But he also needed an army, and that was where Lukas came in.
Lukas wasn’t at his house on Hafoc Street, but it didn’t take much tracking skill to find him at the Hawk’s Nest. His grace was sitting near the hearth with two giggly blonde girls on his lap, hoisting a tankard of ale and bellowing out some sort of Krigadamite naval song. Broderick took a cup of ale from the proprietor and waited until the song was over before approaching.
“Ah, ha! You live, my lord sovereign!” said Lukas. “I thought we’d finished you off last night with that final bottle of Argitis.”
“You came damned close,” said Broderick. He looked at the two girls, neither of whom could have been half Lukas’s age. “Could I speak with you alone, though?”
The duke jumped to his feet, unceremoniously spilling the two girls off his lap. “Sorry, my dears,” he said, as they walked away. “I have a royal audience now, and you don’t keep the king waiting.”
Broderick took Lukas into a darker corner of the common room and told him what he’d learned from Sir William and Lady Anne.
Lukas had always been his finest commander, and he didn’t need the danger spelled out for him. He hammered one of his huge fists onto the thick oaken table. “Blast it all! If all of Newshire comes in against us, plus the Duke of Leornian, and all the other shires who haven’t answered my letters lately about providing men for the defense of the capital.... Fuck, that’s the whole north, Broderick.”
“Our position here would be untenable,” said Broderick.
“Unless we had more men.” Lukas bowed his head.
“I think you know what I’m going to ask you to do,” said Broderick.
A few, nervous heartbeats passed before Lukas looked up, smiling like he had when they were both young knights without a care in the world. “I know. And all you have to do is ask.”
“Go see your Annenstruker relatives. King Galt, the royal family, all of them. Get them to help. I don’t care if you come back with ten men or ten thousand. Bring all you can.”
Lukas jumped up and shouted for the groom to prepare his horse. “I’ll be back. Give me a month. Maybe six weeks. But hold out; I promise I’ll be back.”
He strode off, like a man who knew he was destined for history. And then, at the door, he turned back to whisper, “Oh, and that girl on my right knee, Amber? I paid her for the whole night. Feel free to take my spot, as it were.”
Thirty years earlier, Broderick might have taken him up on the offer. But now he was far more interested in seeing the grain reserves and finding out how long the capital could hold out. He already had the feeling they could make it four weeks, but six weeks would be pushing it, hard.
There weren’t a lot of good solutions left. But one started to loom rather large in his mind. A complete and irrevocable solution that the people would have to accept, because they would have no other option.
He had promised Elwyn he would take care of her half-brother, the little king, Edwin. And he most certainly would. He just hadn’t specified exactly how he would take care of him.
If the Sigor armies really decided to march on Formacaster, then Broderick would have to call on William Aitken and all his special talents.