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A well-placed catapult shot leveled the enemy’s last redoubt. Actually, it was a hastily-erected barricade of charred boat planks on the riverbank. A child could probably have kicked it over. Broderick rode slowly forward with a squad of his knights—there was no need to hurry—and skewered two of the dazed survivors before the rest shouted for mercy. Broderick waved a hand, sparing their lives, and turned away, leaving Rath to deal with the formalities.
His men cheered him—an exhausted, ragged cheer from dry throats hoarse from battle cries. But it was a cheer, all the same, and he waved to acknowledge them.
For more than a mile south of the city wall, on all sides of Morwyn Hill and even into the streets of Osricksburg, the ground had been churned into a muddy gray mire by the rain and the fighting. An endless dead swamp, dotted with the bodies of fallen men. Trees were broken, fences were smashed, and the river road was now indistinguishable from the fields around it. A few of the houses in the hilltop town had been set on fire, too, and their pathetic ruins were still smoking even now.
Tents were already springing up, spotless white and red and blue amid the mud. Off to his right, there was a little pavilion, open on three sides, where two of his heralds had set up shop with their ledgers. Before them, a long, double line stretched, advancing in matched pairs to the table. The men in the right-hand line were exhausted and disconsolate, looking dead on their feet. Their partners on the left were grinning and slapping each other on the back. When each pair reached the table, Broderick knew, the heralds would record the name of the knight who had been captured, as well as the name of the man who had captured him. It was a serious business, with thousands of Sovereigns in ransoms at stake, and no one wanted any mistakes to be made.
A little farther north, he passed a field where hundreds of men sat in the mud together, under the guard of Lukas’s pikemen. The captives here were ordinary soldiers—farmers or mercenaries, most of them. Lukas had half a dozen scribes—monks from the Leofine order—walking around taking names and statements from them all. The prisoners they spoke with might be ransomed, too, but only if their lords had money left over after freeing themselves. Or they might be released as part of a coronation amnesty. Broderick hadn’t quite decided yet.
Technically their captors had the right to sell them west to the Odelandic slave merchants. But Broderick wasn’t going to do that. Longstanding tradition held that Myrcians didn’t do that to other Myrcians.
At last, at the foot of Morwyn Hill, near where the battle had started, he came to the hospital tents, and here he finally dismounted. His shoulder ached where the arrow had hit it, but he wasn’t there to have it looked at. His own injury was relatively minor, and he knew from long experience that he had to grit his teeth and bear it for a while. No, he had come because one of a commander’s most basic duties was to visit the wounded after a battle, to dispense words of praise and thanks and comfort. Broderick hardly even thought of it as an obligation—he did it because it was the proper thing to do.
Among the men in the first tent, he found Baron Strudwick. Broderick and Lukas had been to the twentieth birthday party of his son, and the baron was anxious that if he was dying, his son, away serving in the Immani army, should be informed as quickly as possible. Broderick promised he would see to it. And indeed, before he’d even left that tent, he called over Squire Kevin with a writing set and made a note to summon young Strudwick home immediately. The baron was putting on a good show of it, but he’d taken a pike to the abdomen, and he knew as well as Broderick did that he wouldn’t make it to sundown.
In the next tent, he found Lady Jorunn Unset and her apprentice hillichmagnar, Evika Videle, tending to the wounded. Broderick was impressed with the younger sorceress’s fortitude in the face of it all. He didn’t know many other 17-year-old girls who could have stood the sight of so much blood, let alone calmly carried off severed limbs to the burn pile after amputations.
When she saw Broderick watching, Lady Jorunn waved him over and introduced him to a handsome young knight with his forehead and shoulder bandaged. Luckily, the fellow seemed to still have all his limbs.
“My Lord Gramiren,” she said, “let me present my cousin. Well, my cousin many times removed, of course. This is Oskar Unset, the Earl of Levanger. He is here in command of the Annenstruker troops.”
Broderick shook the young man’s hand and thanked him profusely in Annensprak. He wondered if it had been Lukas’s idea to send Jorunn’s cousin as the commander, or King Galt’s. But no matter whose idea it had been, it was truly inspired.
In the last tent, where the lightly-wounded were kept, he found his squire, Stanley Ostensen, Lukas’s second son. The boy had fought very well, but he’d gotten an arrow to the arm late in the night. Jorunn told him Stanley would be fine with a bit of rest. He’d have quite a scar to show the girls, whenever he started getting interested in girls. Which, if he took after his father at all, would be any day now.
“I’m sorry to say you’re going to survive,” Broderick told the young man.
“Thank you, sir. But why are you sorry?”
Broderick grinned and leaned closer. “Because if you’d been dying, I would have knighted you on the spot. As it is, I think I’ll be able to get a couple more years’ service out of you.”
Then he shook the boy’s good hand and went off to the command tent, where Squire Kevin helped him out of his armor, and he joined Lukas and several of the other captains for a drink. Broderick gave Lukas the news about his son, but of course Lukas had already been to see the boy.
His reaction to Stanley’s injury was much the same as Broderick’s had been, though more pungently expressed: “If that arrow wound doesn’t get him laid, I may have to disown him.”
Colonel Rath came in, having visited all the captains and colonels, and made his report. First came the bad news: the Dukes of Leornian and Keelshire had escaped, along with the Earl of Hyrne and at least three thousand men. Plus, the woods and fields of the Crown Lands were full of refugees and deserters, at least some of whom would make their way to rendezvous with the enemy army at Leornian.
“So, the war continues,” said Broderick.
“Except that we’ve got Edwin up at the castle,” said Lukas happily, raising his glass.
Sometimes Lukas was brilliant. But other times Broderick wanted to smack him. It wasn’t politic to mention Edwin quite yet. There would be weeks, possibly months, of negotiations to settle what happened to the boy and the others. Or at least to their remains. But this wasn’t the time to talk about it.
Rath continued on to the good news: the list of all the nobles and high officers of the Sigor party who had been captured or killed. Notable among the departed was Lord Baldric Stansted, younger brother of the Earl of Stansted, and a former Gentleman of the Bedchamber to old King Edgar. Broderick had known him quite well, and had always liked him much better than his older brother.
Among the captured, two names stood out above all the others: Aldrick Sigor, Earl of Wellenham, and Cedric, Earl of Stansted. Aldrick was the son and heir of the Duke of Newshire, of course. The duke himself, old Jeffrey Sigor, had stayed on the west side of the river, and scouts said he had been carried safely away by his household knights when he saw the battle had been lost. But Aldrick had been unhorsed soon after the storm had started, and he’d been captured by a Haydonshire farm boy.
As for Cedric Stansted, he’d fought a battle worthy of a song. He and his knights had gotten all the way over Morwyn Hill in the early hours and had started climbing the city wall with grappling hooks before the guards at the southern gate had spotted them and shot them down. He’d been captured by a young archer who was a butcher in Fleshmanger Street in civilian life. The earl had a number of broken bones, but according to Rath, he still refused to consider himself beaten.
“Now what do you suppose I should do with them?” Broderick asked the tent in general.
“Send them to Sahasra Deva to be court eunuchs,” said Lukas.
“Their estates are vast,” said Rath. “My lord, I’ve had my clerks calculate the expected ransom, and of course, as king you could claim a quarter share.”
“Or...,” said Broderick, swirling the wine in his cup. “I could kill them and confiscate every damn acre they own.”
The idea appealed to him a lot. Wellenham and Stansted, along with the Earl of Hyrne, had been the first instigators of this armed rebellion. He had every right to have them hanged, drawn, and quartered, with their severed bodies displayed in bits on all the gates of the city. He didn’t care about land or estates—he had enough of those for any man. He cared about loyalty and trust.
“Bring them here,” he said to Rath, “and I will take their damned heads off myself.”
“Oh, Broderick, darling, don’t be so stupid.” He turned and saw Duchess Flora come strutting into the tent. She had on a long, mud-splattered riding dress, along with a gilded breastplate and pauldrons, all covered in scratches and dents to prove she hadn’t been content to sit back and let the menfolk do the fighting. Behind her came her son, massive in his own gilded armor, which was battered almost as much as his mother’s.
“Flora!” said Lukas, raising his glass. “Your timely arrival saved everything, my dear girl.”
“Yes, obviously,” she said. “And in return, you’ll oblige me by not doing anything truly idiotic. You need Cedric and Aldrick, along with all the other barons we’ve captured.”
Broderick shook his head. “And why would I...?” He saw her raised eyebrow, and he instantly understood. Earstien, but she was smart. And he’d almost made an unforgivable blunder of historic proportions. “Ah. Ah, of course. Yes. I spare them...but with conditions.”
Lukas looked from him, to her, and back again, frowning. “What conditions?”
“A quorum,” said Broderick.
“He needs to make sure there are enough nobles at the Gemot,” said Flora. “Even if they abstain from the final vote, it doesn’t matter. They just need to show up.”
“At least for the first meeting,” muttered Broderick.
But Flora came over and tapped his nose with her fan. “Now, now. A deal is a deal, my dear Broderick. Let them live, and I’ll make sure they sit on their hands when the crucial vote comes around.”
Lukas raised his glass again. “I know I’d sit on my hand all day for you, Flora.”
“Earstien, you’re already drunk.” Flora went to the sideboard to pour herself some wine. “Honestly, Lukas, I have no idea how you ever find women who want to sleep with you.”
As always at parties, Flora rapidly became the center of attention, and when things started to get a bit too drunkenly boisterous, Broderick slipped out the side of the tent. He found a horse and rode through the camps, through the mud, up over the hill, and down into the city. Turning left, he rode through the cathedral square, where monks were leading a service of thanksgiving for the victory, and then up the long winding road to the castle.
All the troops up there had heard the news, and more than that, most of them had been able to watch the progress of the battle from the walls. They gave him a massive, reverberating cheer as he rode in, and shouts of, “Hail, King Broderick!” He did his best to look grateful and humble.
Then his son appeared and said, “Father, I need to speak with you. Alone, please.”
Surrounded by cheering soldiers and courtiers, they went up into the Palm Court, and then into one of the side parlors, where Broderick shut the doors.
“What is it?” He winked. “Don’t tell me you thought we were losing and you...did it a little early. If so, then don’t worry about it.”
“Father, they’ve escaped.”
“They? Who, exactly? Rohesia? Edwin?”
“All of them, Father. Rohesia, Edwin, Elwyn, and Alice. They’re all gone.”
Broderick’s jaw dropped, and he looked at his son, shaking his head slowly from one side to the other. Then, in a flash, he stepped forward and seized the stupid young shit by the collar. “You idiot!” he said. “How could you be so damned careless?”
“I can’t kill my family, Father.”
The boy broke his grip with a swipe of his powerful arm and stepped back, hands raised in a defensive posture, like Lukas had taught him. And Broderick knew, as sure as he knew his own name, that his son had let the Sigors go deliberately.
“You stupid little weakling. You little turd.” Broderick drew his sword and threw it clanging to the ground between them. “If you want to kill me, you worthless fuck, then pick that up and try it.”
His son backed away, hands still up. “Father, Father, I...I don’t want to fight you. It’s just that—”
The parlor door slammed open, and they both turned to see a vast flock of clergymen approaching, and at their head, the bishops of Leornian and Formacaster. Their faces were flushed, and their hair was tousled, but they had on all their gilded vestments, and their acolytes were carrying candles and censers.
“My lord,” said the Bishop of Formacaster, “your majesty, we have all heard of your glorious victory. Clearly Earstien’s Light shines upon you, and there can be no doubt that you are his Chosen, in spite of your disadvantageous birth. Therefore, we come to offer you the support of the church as you begin your reign, for surely the Gemot....” His voice faltered as he spotted the sword on the floor.
“Ah, yes!” said Broderick. “You gentlemen are just in time. I wish you to bless my son—my heir.” He picked up the sword, hesitated for a moment, and then tapped it in the direction of the idiot’s shoulders. “As my first official act as king, I name him a Knight of the Order of Finster and a prince of the realm, and I pray that you will all join me in praising the bravery that he has shown this day!”