The King's Man
(other sequel to Queen's Man, finish last half - some parts were in desktop notes?)
Raike paused outside his liege's tent, realising as soon as he saw the crumpled sentry on the ground that he could well die today.
He stopped short of the tent-flap, scrabbling for the soldier's nerve that had come to him so easily and naturally, once upon a time. The sentry lay face-down, his spear a few inches from his slack fingers and his fallen bronze helm collecting the light drizzle that had begun to fall. The smell was of meat and wet mud.
He wasn't a young man. Raike had long since stopped stationing young men at the King's tent. But even the sight of the grey hair slowly soaking in the rain made him start to rub his hands together, trying to clean, clean, clean.
It was pointless to try to still his hands once they got started, and besides, he couldn't be late. Late could mean the dirt in one of these royal moods. Raike set his teeth, dropping his wash-wash-washing hands down to waist-level, and shrugged under the King's tent-flap.
King Yuka sat at his desk with his boots propped up on one corner, his long, auburn hair pulled back in a horse-tail rather than under a crown. It took Raike aback for a moment. The first thing his lord ever grabbed for when in a temper was his crown. Was he even in a mood now?
"Raike!" grinned the King, waving to one of the stools along the wall. "You got here fast! Sit. Have an orange."
I'm not going to die today. Raike went over to the stools and tried a few times to grab at one. Finally his churning hands obeyed him, though when he went and sat back down, they went right back to their busy work.
"I've been keeping these oranges for well over a year," said the Bronze King with the same, broad grin. "Look at them! Taste one!"
King Yuka tossed one over to Raike. It bounced off his chest, but luckily the king seemed to find it more amusing than irritating to watch him scrabble after it.
Raike duly twisted the recovered fruit in half and put some of the flesh to his lips, concentrating on the sweetness of the juice rather than the keen eyes on his face. The orange had grown on a tree in a faraway place - Moscos, perhaps, the hilly Orchard Isle - and still tasted like sunshine.
"Amazing," he murmured.
"I still don't know half of what I can do," replied the King, looking pleased by the response. "I don't care if the Bitch keeps making her little snowmen. If she keeps it up at this rate, the Divines'll be making me their own equal to balance it all out!"
The Bitch never needed naming. It was wiser not to, in fact. "Perhaps so, your Majesty."
"That was a joke, Raike," King Yuka rebuked, wiping juice on his sleeve and taking another near-luminous orange. "I wouldn't blaspheme. Oh, and about the snowmen ..."
Raike paused, lowering the other ripped half of his orange. He felt oddly calm after the taste of the fruit - his hands were still again. "We've confirmed that Scadamain is in Fort Purun, your Majesty. We're not quite so sure whether Tintauri has joined him, but it would seem safer to assume so."
"I suppose." The King leaned awkwardly to one side to spit orange pips into what usually served as a spitoon. Bronze, of course. Plink-pling. "Little freak made a proper fool of me at that nowhere farmer's castle. It would've been nice to send his giggling head back to the Bitch. Gilded box and all. Would've been in time for our anniversary, too."
"She would probably prefer the oranges, your Majesty."
King Yuka looked up with another grin and a short chuckle, his strong, over-boned face softening. Young-looking, not young. "You're a wit, Raike. So what are your thoughts on Fort Purun?"
"Fort Purun?" Raike blinked. "I thought your Majesty still had designs on Nascaridge after ... what transpired."
"Love the phrasing," remarked the King dryly. "No, Nascaridge is nothing. It's beneath me to go back and crush some farmer's castle full of corpses. It'll make that defeat look like it meant something. I'll deal with Lady Whoever-She-Was later, or not at all ... I really don't care, to be honest. I only wanted to send an object lesson to other Bitch-switchers, and I've already lost that chance, haven't I?"
"I'm afraid it would appear so, yes. Though the recent nature of the winterknights' assistance to their allies thus far is probably better than any object lesson your Majesty might make."
"I know! Idiot snow-dogs!" The King spat another derisive string of orange-pips into the bowl, pling-pling-plink. "It's because they don't understand humans like us, Raike. And nor does she."
Raike went very quiet. Outside the tent, the fallen helmet must be at least a quarter-full by now. Basic survival instincts prodded at him to mouth his agreement with the King, but he knew it would have set his hands off again.
"Anyway, Fort Purun." Creaking in his leathers, the King had reached both arms back to start tugging all his hair back tighter in its tie. Raike was glad that his liege's bronze breastplate lay on the bed in the corner - he didn't much want to see his face in it at the moment. "Give me your thoughts."
"Probably very dangerous, your Majesty. By all accounts it's not manned to capacity, but we've not yet fully replaced the numbers we lost last autumn at Nascaridge, either - though we're close." Raike ran a hand through his hair and was shocked when his fingers pulled long strands free, silver strands multiplying hungrily amongst the brown. "Ah ... and although a fortress defended by Scadamain might be a feasible target with summer to strip down his power, the fact that Tintauri may be present as well ..."
"They'll be relying heavily on the little corpse-worm, yes." The King rolled his tongue under one cheek, tapping thoughtful, juice-sticky fingers on his desk. "Unlike Nascaridge, though, we're fairly confident this time that he's going to be there, yes? And we can adjust our tactics accordingly. Perhaps this could work to our favour. Feasible, you think? Not just foolhardy?"
Raike nodded. "With due care, your Majesty, an attack is still feasible. A more passive blockade of the fortress would provide Tintauri with no corpses and starve the fort into surrender - Lord Purun wouldn't just sit tight to the point of starvation waiting for assistance. Besides, word is spreading in this region about what it is the younger winterknight actually does. They'll cede to us long before they accept that."
Apart from the obvious dent it put in morale, Raike did prefer battles with the winterknight Tintauri. It made the King as cautious about casualties as he'd been in the old days. It also made the men look at him in silent gratitude, which was always better than silent appeal.
He looked down. His damned hands had begun to wring again.
"Hmm," said King Yuka, nodding. "I'm a bit worried about the reinforcements actually coming to Fort Purun - that witch Hanalia isn't too far away at the moment either, remember - but it could work. We'll think this out, anyway. Call the lieutenants together later tonight, would you?"
"Of course, your Majesty."
"Excellent. You can go, Raike. Thank you. -Oh, and just throw your orange peel in the bowl. That's fine."
Raike rose from his stool, juggling the peel nervously in his fidgeting hands, and finally manipulated it into the gleaming bowl as directed. The King looked up at him as it dropped from his fingers, an almost affectionate little smile on his face for his general's 'quirk'.
"I'll need another sentry, by the way," he said, wiping at his mouth as Raike turned to leave. "Just make sure he's a quiet thinker this time, would you? You keep choosing the loud-thinking ones."
"Your Majesty," Raike whispered.
The first sentry was still outside. His helmet wasn't full of rain, though. Someone had righted it and laid it by his soaking, silver head.
* * * * *
Fort Purun wasn’t a hard citadel to choke - it stood high up in the mountains, its back to the peaks, and its only approaches came east from the pass and south from the lowland road. King Yuka strangled the pass with witchfire, leaving it to roar and dance yellow-green up in the distant foothills, while the Bronzes ringed the fort walls just out of enemy bowshot and settled in for the long wait.
There were a few sorties from the gates early on in the first and second days - the defenders didn’t want the Bronzes too firmly entrenched, of course - but both the Bronze archers and King Yuka made sure the fights stayed long-ranged and brief. There were casualties, but not many, and the corpses were quickly burned afterwards, whether by real fire or the King’s eerie-bright magic.
The Bronzes ate well, too. They always did. Their King had a fascination with experiments like his oranges.
“I wish Scadamain would come out,” the King muttered over dinner on the third day, flicking a grape from one side of his plate to the other. The plate had formerly been full of incredibly fresh fruit. “You’d think he’d try a bit harder to break the siege.”
“No doubt he’s waiting a few extra days beyond midsummer to regain a little more of his power, your Majesty,” Raike replied. “Or just waiting in hope of timely reinforcements. If he does choose to ride out, it will be the largest sortie yet.”
“Makes no difference. We won’t risk engagements. Not hand-to-hand, in any case.”
Raike stored away even more good news for his lieutenants later.
* * * * *
Another day passed. One of Raike’s outer patrol caught an enemy group stealing out of Fort Purun in the dead of night, teleporters in hand, headed for the lowland Sakare River - which could only mean that the enemy’s wells had been successfully poisoned. It was excellent news, though the fact that Raike’s agents in the fort had not delivered it themselves suggested they had probably met their end by now.
King Yuka - like most of the Bronzes - was in tremendous good spirits the following morning. Halfway through an amiable morning muster of the troops, he suddenly grinned and raised his jug of curuti as if in a toast towards the walls of Fort Purun.
“Scadamain!” he roared, his voice rolling out in a near-thunderclap of power. The name rolled around the distant mountaintops - Scadamain! “If you’re thirsty this morning, come drink what I’ve got for you!”
It was said for the benefit of his own men, of course; the King was a true mover of men, whether in joy or fear. But after the second shouted mock-toast, and the cheers of the troops, an answer came bounding back from the grey fortress walls - an unaugmented voice, not near so fearsome and godlike as King Yuka’s, but strong of itself.
“King Bronze!” came the winterknight’s roar. “I don’t want your sugar-water when it’s made you such a woman!”
“And yet you’ve not poked your head out of the gates all this time, Scadamain!” the King bellowed back. “Did your skirts catch on the portcullis?”
The laughter of the Bronzes reminded Raike again of how it had felt to be a soldier - early on, back when the enemy had been the invader. He wasn’t altogether sure what he was now, but nothing felt like at war. It was something less distinct, and far less finite.
He stood on the sidelines with all the cheering, echoing them at the King’s side, which was where he had been from the start. The fingers of one hand started to fidget and drum on his burnished chestplate, but that was all.
“Be patient,” Scadamain’s heavy voice advised as the laughter and jeers went on. “I’ll be along shortly.”
“And dead shortly!” King Yuka returned. “Lord Purun, are you listening? Surrender, give me the winter-hounds, and I’ll only kill one man in ten. That’s a better deal than they’ll offer you, in case you haven’t heard. The little corpse-maggot is there as well, isn’t he? You know what he’s waiting for, don’t you?”
Silence from the battlements.
“Tintauri! You are there, aren’t you? Come talk to me a while! They get very boring, all these sieges!”
Silence.
“I was only joking, of course,” King Yuka said casually when no reply came, turning away from the silent walls and back towards the men. “We love sieges, don’t we?”
Raike shaded his eyes and looked towards Fort Purun, and the witchfire still dancing higher up in the mountain pass, as the men’s roars rolled out again. It was an oddly beautiful sight, if thick with omen.
“I wonder how much time we have,” he murmured.
“Three days to a week,” the King murmured back. “Even for a dawdler like Hanalia. It’ll be close - we’ll just have to be ready to cut and run at short notice.”
Taking another swig from the thick curuti, King Yuka toasted the silent walls again, and then proceeded to describe for Fort Purun’s defenders all the grisly particulars of the revenant battle in Nascaridge.
( the siege - Hanalia)
Raike paused outside his liege's tent, realising as soon as he saw the crumpled sentry on the ground that he could well die today.
He stopped short of the tent-flap, scrabbling for the soldier's nerve that had come to him so easily and naturally, once upon a time. The sentry lay face-down, his spear a few inches from his slack fingers and his fallen bronze helm collecting the light drizzle that had begun to fall. The smell was of meat and wet mud.
He wasn't a young man. Raike had long since stopped stationing young men at the King's tent. But even the sight of the grey hair slowly soaking in the rain made him start to rub his hands together, trying to clean, clean, clean.
It was pointless to try to still his hands once they got started, and besides, he couldn't be late. Late could mean the dirt in one of these royal moods. Raike set his teeth, dropping his wash-wash-washing hands down to waist-level, and shrugged under the King's tent-flap.
King Yuka sat at his desk with his boots propped up on one corner, his long, auburn hair pulled back in a horse-tail rather than under a crown. It took Raike aback for a moment. The first thing his lord ever grabbed for when in a temper was his crown. Was he even in a mood now?
"Raike!" grinned the King, waving to one of the stools along the wall. "You got here fast! Sit. Have an orange."
I'm not going to die today. Raike went over to the stools and tried a few times to grab at one. Finally his churning hands obeyed him, though when he went and sat back down, they went right back to their busy work.
"I've been keeping these oranges for well over a year," said the Bronze King with the same, broad grin. "Look at them! Taste one!"
King Yuka tossed one over to Raike. It bounced off his chest, but luckily the king seemed to find it more amusing than irritating to watch him scrabble after it.
Raike duly twisted the recovered fruit in half and put some of the flesh to his lips, concentrating on the sweetness of the juice rather than the keen eyes on his face. The orange had grown on a tree in a faraway place - Moscos, perhaps, the hilly Orchard Isle - and still tasted like sunshine.
"Amazing," he murmured.
"I still don't know half of what I can do," replied the King, looking pleased by the response. "I don't care if the Bitch keeps making her little snowmen. If she keeps it up at this rate, the Divines'll be making me their own equal to balance it all out!"
The Bitch never needed naming. It was wiser not to, in fact. "Perhaps so, your Majesty."
"That was a joke, Raike," King Yuka rebuked, wiping juice on his sleeve and taking another near-luminous orange. "I wouldn't blaspheme. Oh, and about the snowmen ..."
Raike paused, lowering the other ripped half of his orange. He felt oddly calm after the taste of the fruit - his hands were still again. "We've confirmed that Scadamain is in Fort Purun, your Majesty. We're not quite so sure whether Tintauri has joined him, but it would seem safer to assume so."
"I suppose." The King leaned awkwardly to one side to spit orange pips into what usually served as a spitoon. Bronze, of course. Plink-pling. "Little freak made a proper fool of me at that nowhere farmer's castle. It would've been nice to send his giggling head back to the Bitch. Gilded box and all. Would've been in time for our anniversary, too."
"She would probably prefer the oranges, your Majesty."
King Yuka looked up with another grin and a short chuckle, his strong, over-boned face softening. Young-looking, not young. "You're a wit, Raike. So what are your thoughts on Fort Purun?"
"Fort Purun?" Raike blinked. "I thought your Majesty still had designs on Nascaridge after ... what transpired."
"Love the phrasing," remarked the King dryly. "No, Nascaridge is nothing. It's beneath me to go back and crush some farmer's castle full of corpses. It'll make that defeat look like it meant something. I'll deal with Lady Whoever-She-Was later, or not at all ... I really don't care, to be honest. I only wanted to send an object lesson to other Bitch-switchers, and I've already lost that chance, haven't I?"
"I'm afraid it would appear so, yes. Though the recent nature of the winterknights' assistance to their allies thus far is probably better than any object lesson your Majesty might make."
"I know! Idiot snow-dogs!" The King spat another derisive string of orange-pips into the bowl, pling-pling-plink. "It's because they don't understand humans like us, Raike. And nor does she."
Raike went very quiet. Outside the tent, the fallen helmet must be at least a quarter-full by now. Basic survival instincts prodded at him to mouth his agreement with the King, but he knew it would have set his hands off again.
"Anyway, Fort Purun." Creaking in his leathers, the King had reached both arms back to start tugging all his hair back tighter in its tie. Raike was glad that his liege's bronze breastplate lay on the bed in the corner - he didn't much want to see his face in it at the moment. "Give me your thoughts."
"Probably very dangerous, your Majesty. By all accounts it's not manned to capacity, but we've not yet fully replaced the numbers we lost last autumn at Nascaridge, either - though we're close." Raike ran a hand through his hair and was shocked when his fingers pulled long strands free, silver strands multiplying hungrily amongst the brown. "Ah ... and although a fortress defended by Scadamain might be a feasible target with summer to strip down his power, the fact that Tintauri may be present as well ..."
"They'll be relying heavily on the little corpse-worm, yes." The King rolled his tongue under one cheek, tapping thoughtful, juice-sticky fingers on his desk. "Unlike Nascaridge, though, we're fairly confident this time that he's going to be there, yes? And we can adjust our tactics accordingly. Perhaps this could work to our favour. Feasible, you think? Not just foolhardy?"
Raike nodded. "With due care, your Majesty, an attack is still feasible. A more passive blockade of the fortress would provide Tintauri with no corpses and starve the fort into surrender - Lord Purun wouldn't just sit tight to the point of starvation waiting for assistance. Besides, word is spreading in this region about what it is the younger winterknight actually does. They'll cede to us long before they accept that."
Apart from the obvious dent it put in morale, Raike did prefer battles with the winterknight Tintauri. It made the King as cautious about casualties as he'd been in the old days. It also made the men look at him in silent gratitude, which was always better than silent appeal.
He looked down. His damned hands had begun to wring again.
"Hmm," said King Yuka, nodding. "I'm a bit worried about the reinforcements actually coming to Fort Purun - that witch Hanalia isn't too far away at the moment either, remember - but it could work. We'll think this out, anyway. Call the lieutenants together later tonight, would you?"
"Of course, your Majesty."
"Excellent. You can go, Raike. Thank you. -Oh, and just throw your orange peel in the bowl. That's fine."
Raike rose from his stool, juggling the peel nervously in his fidgeting hands, and finally manipulated it into the gleaming bowl as directed. The King looked up at him as it dropped from his fingers, an almost affectionate little smile on his face for his general's 'quirk'.
"I'll need another sentry, by the way," he said, wiping at his mouth as Raike turned to leave. "Just make sure he's a quiet thinker this time, would you? You keep choosing the loud-thinking ones."
"Your Majesty," Raike whispered.
The first sentry was still outside. His helmet wasn't full of rain, though. Someone had righted it and laid it by his soaking, silver head.
* * * * *
Fort Purun wasn’t a hard citadel to choke - it stood high up in the mountains, its back to the peaks, and its only approaches came east from the pass and south from the lowland road. King Yuka strangled the pass with witchfire, leaving it to roar and dance yellow-green up in the distant foothills, while the Bronzes ringed the fort walls just out of enemy bowshot and settled in for the long wait.
There were a few sorties from the gates early on in the first and second days - the defenders didn’t want the Bronzes too firmly entrenched, of course - but both the Bronze archers and King Yuka made sure the fights stayed long-ranged and brief. There were casualties, but not many, and the corpses were quickly burned afterwards, whether by real fire or the King’s eerie-bright magic.
The Bronzes ate well, too. They always did. Their King had a fascination with experiments like his oranges.
“I wish Scadamain would come out,” the King muttered over dinner on the third day, flicking a grape from one side of his plate to the other. The plate had formerly been full of incredibly fresh fruit. “You’d think he’d try a bit harder to break the siege.”
“No doubt he’s waiting a few extra days beyond midsummer to regain a little more of his power, your Majesty,” Raike replied. “Or just waiting in hope of timely reinforcements. If he does choose to ride out, it will be the largest sortie yet.”
“Makes no difference. We won’t risk engagements. Not hand-to-hand, in any case.”
Raike stored away even more good news for his lieutenants later.
* * * * *
Another day passed. One of Raike’s outer patrol caught an enemy group stealing out of Fort Purun in the dead of night, teleporters in hand, headed for the lowland Sakare River - which could only mean that the enemy’s wells had been successfully poisoned. It was excellent news, though the fact that Raike’s agents in the fort had not delivered it themselves suggested they had probably met their end by now.
King Yuka - like most of the Bronzes - was in tremendous good spirits the following morning. Halfway through an amiable morning muster of the troops, he suddenly grinned and raised his jug of curuti as if in a toast towards the walls of Fort Purun.
“Scadamain!” he roared, his voice rolling out in a near-thunderclap of power. The name rolled around the distant mountaintops - Scadamain! “If you’re thirsty this morning, come drink what I’ve got for you!”
It was said for the benefit of his own men, of course; the King was a true mover of men, whether in joy or fear. But after the second shouted mock-toast, and the cheers of the troops, an answer came bounding back from the grey fortress walls - an unaugmented voice, not near so fearsome and godlike as King Yuka’s, but strong of itself.
“King Bronze!” came the winterknight’s roar. “I don’t want your sugar-water when it’s made you such a woman!”
“And yet you’ve not poked your head out of the gates all this time, Scadamain!” the King bellowed back. “Did your skirts catch on the portcullis?”
The laughter of the Bronzes reminded Raike again of how it had felt to be a soldier - early on, back when the enemy had been the invader. He wasn’t altogether sure what he was now, but nothing felt like at war. It was something less distinct, and far less finite.
He stood on the sidelines with all the cheering, echoing them at the King’s side, which was where he had been from the start. The fingers of one hand started to fidget and drum on his burnished chestplate, but that was all.
“Be patient,” Scadamain’s heavy voice advised as the laughter and jeers went on. “I’ll be along shortly.”
“And dead shortly!” King Yuka returned. “Lord Purun, are you listening? Surrender, give me the winter-hounds, and I’ll only kill one man in ten. That’s a better deal than they’ll offer you, in case you haven’t heard. The little corpse-maggot is there as well, isn’t he? You know what he’s waiting for, don’t you?”
Silence from the battlements.
“Tintauri! You are there, aren’t you? Come talk to me a while! They get very boring, all these sieges!”
Silence.
“I was only joking, of course,” King Yuka said casually when no reply came, turning away from the silent walls and back towards the men. “We love sieges, don’t we?”
Raike shaded his eyes and looked towards Fort Purun, and the witchfire still dancing higher up in the mountain pass, as the men’s roars rolled out again. It was an oddly beautiful sight, if thick with omen.
“I wonder how much time we have,” he murmured.
“Three days to a week,” the King murmured back. “Even for a dawdler like Hanalia. It’ll be close - we’ll just have to be ready to cut and run at short notice.”
Taking another swig from the thick curuti, King Yuka toasted the silent walls again, and then proceeded to describe for Fort Purun’s defenders all the grisly particulars of the revenant battle in Nascaridge.
( the siege - Hanalia)