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The first test had been getting through the Gramiren lines, and Robert had nearly failed. He had spent his first night under a pine tree at the northern edge of the Bishop’s Forest, just off the Stretton road and roughly eleven miles from Leornian. He’d been spotted by a Gramiren patrol before dawn and rousted from his slumbers. Fortunately, the men were Annenstruker mercenaries who knew almost nothing about Myrcia, and he easily convinced them he was a simple woodsman gathering fuel for his fire at home.
After that, he was a lot more careful, sticking to back lanes and cow paths as he worked his way north and west, over the rising ranks of hills to the edge of the great, misty Wislicbeorgs. Even in the blistering days of mid-August, the tops of the huge gray mountains were locked in snow and ice. Glaciers ran down their flanks, pure white and sapphire blue. Snowstorms and clouds swirled around their peaks, and sometimes came rushing down into the valleys to drop buckets of rain. That was a wonder to behold from a distance, but rather less inspiring to ride through.
For nearly a week, the rain dogged Robert’s steps, no matter which path or trail he chose. He felt damp to the bone, and nearly everything in his saddlebags got wet, including all his dry socks. There was nothing quite so demoralizing, he thought, than the realization that he might as well keep his wet clothes on, because there was no point in changing one sodden outfit for another. The only thing he managed to keep dry was the queen’s message.
Then he got into the truly high passes of the Wislicbeorgs, and he had to contend with snow and bitter winds and waking up to find the wet clothes in his pack had frozen solid in the night.
It wasn’t quite the worst journey Robert had ever taken, but it was definitely near the top of the list. What kept him going was the thought that he was doing something truly important to help win the war. And more than that, he was doing it on the personal orders of Queen Rohesia herself.
Long ago, when he was a very young man, he had decided he would do anything the queen ever asked of him, even if it meant giving up his life. These days, he had to consider the effect this might have on his wife and children. But he assumed they would understand, if it came to that.
Finally, in the waning days of August, he came down from the mountains into the rich green farmland of the Colwinn Valley. The great fortress of Keaton Fastenn, which marked the extreme western end of the mountain range, stood only a few miles away. It remained in Sigor hands, commanded by the Earl of Garthdin, Margaret Llamu’s husband. But a lot of Gramiren scouts and raiding parties were in the area, keeping watch on the castle and its garrison. So Robert elected to steer well clear of it, even though he would have loved to stop and dry out for a day or two.
But there was no point. His goal was almost in sight, across the river in the unpretentious little village of Aglaca Town. Aldrick Sigor, cousin of the royal family (and himself for that matter, not that he liked to wax poetical on his notorious birth) and heir to the Duchy of Newshire, had gathered his army there. The Newshire troops included some of the best regiments in the army, rested and fresh, well trained and expensively equipped. The twin threat of these regiments and the huge fortress across the river had so far prevented Broderick Gramiren from attacking the traditional Sigor strongholds of Newshire and western Wislicshire.
In all of Myrcia, only the Duchy of Newshire still had the power to seriously threaten Broderick. From the last foothills of the Wislicbeorgs, on a little hill overlooking the Colwinn, Robert could see thousands of tents and pavilions set out in the fields around Aglaca Town. In the hazy distance, he could see groups of tents around other little villages and hamlets in the area. And there were probably others around Brawley, the next major town to the north.
He rode down to the river and paid a boatman to take him across. Even though this was Sigor-friendly territory, he didn’t divulge his mission, but claimed to be an apprentice looking to join his master in Rawdon.
Once on the western bank, it wasn’t hard to find army headquarters. A massive blue and white pavilion stood outside town in the backyard of a small but handsome manor house. Robert presented himself at the front door of the house, and then had to work his way through a veritable maze of knights, secretaries, colonels, and retainers before finally being allowed to see the commander himself.
Aldrick Sigor, Earl of Wellenham, was a tall, lanky man with graying brown hair and a strong, chiseled jaw. He was in the middling-sized ballroom of the manor house, lounging on a gold silk settee behind a little blond wood writing desk, staring up with pen in hand, as if searching for literary inspiration in the coffered ceiling.
“Ah, Robert,” he said, without looking down. “I hear you’ve brought a message from Leornian.”
Robert dutifully handed over the queen’s letter. Aldrick took a few moments, then finally deigned to examine it. He had a broad, placid smile on his face, which rapidly turned into a scowl as he recognized the handwriting.
“This is from the queen,” he snapped. “Not from the lord chancellor. Not from the council as a whole.”
“Her majesty is the queen regent,” Robert gently reminded him. “She speaks with the voice of—”
“I know how she fucking well speaks,” said the earl. “I need to read this in private.” He shouted for one of his staff officers, and when the harried-looking young lieutenant entered, he said, “Find Sir Robert a place to stay somewhere, will you? Oh, and Robert? I trust you’ll join me and my wife for supper tonight. But please clean yourself up first. You smell like you fell in a pigsty.”
Robert did join the earl for supper, but there was no sign of Countess Rachel, who was said to be “indisposed.” Nor did he see her the next night, or the night after that.
Robert had assumed that Earl Aldrick would see the message, write out an immediate reply, and then start gathering his army for the march east. But to his shock, the earl did nothing of the kind. On Robert’s fifth day in camp, he finally broke down and asked Aldrick to his face, “Have you finished your reply, my lord?”
“Finished?” Aldrick sneered. “I haven’t even started writing it yet. I’d explain, but it’s all very secret, I’m afraid.”
Another two days passed, and Robert had been at Aglaca Town for a week. The queen had warned him that the earl could work at a “deliberative pace,” but he hadn’t expected it to take nearly this long. He approached Aldrick while the earl was inspecting one of his crack light cavalry regiments on maneuvers.
While the lancers dashed up and down, wheeling and galloping, Robert said, “This is very impressive, my lord. Her majesty would be pleased to know that well-trained men like this would be coming to her aid soon.”
“Don’t spoil this for me, Robert,” said Aldrick. “Go have a drink or something, will you?”
That evening, Countess Rachel decided to join them for supper at last. People called her a strikingly beautiful woman, and she was. But what had always struck Robert most about her looks, was how much she resembled Queen Rohesia. No one else ever remarked on this fact, and he sometimes wondered if he was the only person who saw it. The hair, the jawline, the eyes, the way she carried herself all seemed eerily similar. It was as if she was the queen’s long-lost sister, or maybe an actress hired to play her on stage.
Robert didn’t know Countess Rachel very well, but she spent nearly the entire meal glaring at him. He didn’t want to be rude, so he didn’t mention it. But it seemed as if she thought he had done something deliberately to wound her.
After supper, as Aldrick was passing around drinks to his staff officers, the countess finally approached Robert.
“You’re here on behalf of the queen, are you?” she asked.
“Yes, my lady.” He bowed.
“Do you know, Sir Robert, that I grew up with a cousin of mine in the same household? She’s dead now, but she was a thoroughly unpleasant girl. She had a bad habit of breaking her toys and then crying until our nurse gave her one of mine. And then she would break that one and cry for more.”
“Is...is that so, my lady?” asked Robert, confused.
“Yes. I think of my cousin whenever I think of the queen. They’re very much the same kind of person, deep down. Don’t you think?”
“I think the queen is a remarkable woman,” said Robert.
“Oh, dear. Then she has you in her clutches. Poor man.” The countess shook her head and drifted away to talk to someone else.
After that, Robert didn’t see either the earl or the countess for several days. The servants said the couple had gone to one of their estates in the area for “some privacy.” Robert tried to find out exactly where they had gone, but the servants refused to tell him, as did the earl’s staff officers. He got the distinct impression that they were all hiding some awkward family secret, and he didn’t want to pry. He didn’t care in the slightest about Aldrick and Rachel Sigor’s married life. He wanted the earl to get off his ass and start gathering his regiments, and to finally write the queen a letter indicating when to expect the Newshire army.
When Earl Aldrick returned, he summoned Robert to a map tent near the edge of town, where he and some of his officers were working on tactical problems with toy soldiers and a pair of dice.
“I’ve been thinking about it, Robert,” said the earl, “and I don’t know how many men I can spare.”
Robert gaped at him, incredulous. “Sir...you have thousands of men here at Aglaca Town, with more—”
“Yes, yes, I know,” said Aldrick with an impatient wave of his hand. “But I have to defend Newshire in case Broderick happens to come this way. And I have to support the Earl of Stansted with his little desert rebellion out in Dunkelshire.”
“So...you’re going to send these troops west to Dunkelshire, then, sir?”
“Well, not all of them. But maybe a few companies. And I sent Earl Cedric forty Sovereigns last month for supplies. That’s a lot of money, Robert, even for me.”
“That is very generous, sir.”
It wasn’t really. Forty Sovereigns was a fortune in everyday life. But Robert knew how much it cost to keep an army in the field—even a small, irregular band of nomads, cutthroats, and outlaws, like the one Earl Cedric of Stansted was using to fight Broderick the Younger out in the desert. By those standards, forty Sovereigns were barely a drop in the bucket.
“The thing is,” Aldrick went on, “that we need to concentrate our forces. I don’t know if you’ve read Horatius’s De Bello Civili.”
“Yes, I have, sir.”
“You have? Oh, um...well, then you know he talks about the concentration of force. And about...um, how important it is, obviously. Right now we’ve got Earl Cedric’s people out west. And then my people here. And then the Earl of Garthdin’s people at Keaton Fastenn across the river. And finally your people in Leornian. It would be much better if we could gather all our forces in a single, central location.”
Robert rubbed his temples with both hands. Talking to Aldrick was giving him a headache. “Yes, sir, in theory that’s a good idea. Except that the usurper’s army is outside Leornian right now. If we’re going to concentrate our forces, then surely that’s the place to do it.”
The earl smiled and slapped Robert on the back. “That is an interesting perspective, and I shall try to keep it in mind.”
The next day, Aldrick and Countess Rachel disappeared again, supposedly to inspect troops at Brawley. But Robert heard from a knight who had heard from his lover, a housemaid in the earl’s service, that his lordship and her ladyship were at another country estate, hunting and drinking and occasionally having enormous screaming fights.
Robert spent a few days drinking with the knight, whose name was Sir Clarence Boyle. Sir Clarence had been in the service of the Duke of Newshire for almost ten years, and he bemoaned the fact that Duke Jeffrey, Aldrick’s father, was old and sick and couldn’t command his troops personally anymore.
“Trust me,” said Sir Clarence, “if Duke Jeffrey were here, we’d be on the march already and halfway to Leornian.”
The autumnal equinox came and went, and Earl Aldrick still hadn’t decided whether to lift the siege of Leornian or not. Robert attended a party at the manor house, where Countess Rachel spent nearly the entire evening glaring at him, and afterward, he decided the time had come to present the earl with an ultimatum.
That night, over drinks, he told Aldrick that he would have to leave in a week. “With respect, your lordship, I have been here nearly a month. The queen deserves an answer, whether it’s ‘yes’ or ‘no.’”
Six days later, even as Robert was packing for his return journey, Earl Aldrick came to his tent with a sealed letter in his hand.
“If her majesty wants my help, then I have certain demands,” he said. “I think it’s no more than my due, really. If I’m going to be the savior of the nation, I should be able to name my own price, don’t you think?”
Robert managed to conceal his revulsion at this statement and said, “Very good, sir. I’ll be on my way, now.”
He worried what kind of demand Aldrick would make in return for helping. But it wasn’t his place to crack the seal of the letter and find out. The letter was for the queen. All Robert needed to do now was get back to Leornian as fast as he possibly could.