Себастьян Кастелл - Traitor's Blade

The word was, ‘ Paelis .’

At first the reverberation of her voice was the only sound, but then thunder roared from below us and a cloud of dust rose from the slope.

‘Horses,’ Brasti said. ‘Must be a hundred or more.’

At first all I saw was Monster, her hooves pounding the earth as she raced ahead of a cloud of dust. And then they came through the cloud and the sight I had once dreamed of seeing appeared before me: a hundred Greatcoats on horseback, swords drawn and war cries on their lips.

‘I told you,’ the Tailor said to me, an evil grin on her face, ‘I know where every thread is and I know where every thread’s going.’

‘But how—?’

‘The Dukes were so busy trying to find and kill all the Greatcoats – they knew every name and face – and, while they searched for ways to kill all of you, I found myself some new ones, trained by me and trained right. It’s taken time to assemble them, though, I’ll give you that. That damn fool, Paelis. He had the makings of a great army and what did he do? He scattered them to the four winds. But I’ve made my own Greatcoats, and now we’re going to do this my way.’

The Duke had five times as many men as we did, but few were on horseback and the rest were not exactly what you’d call a battle-ready army. They were conscripted house-guards and he’d dragged them up the Eastern Pass to deal with the Duchess of Hervor. When they saw that first charge of the Magisters, they very nearly scattered then and there.

‘Kill her,’ Shiballe shouted. ‘Kill all of them!’

But my rapier was already in my hand and Kest, Brasti and I knocked the lances away from the Tailor and surrounded her, protecting her from anyone else who might try to fulfil Shiballe’s order.

The captains were screaming at their men to get into formation and, as they did, Shiballe urged the Duke to get to the back lines.

‘I showed you!’ the Tailor was cackling behind us. ‘I showed all of you!’

I looked around and caught a glimpse of her face. It was terrifying to look at, half-joyous and half-enraged, and she was tearing her clothes off and shouting at the sky, ‘You took him away from me! You took every last good thing away from me!

‘This!’ she screamed. ‘ This is my answer! This is my answer! ’ And now she was whirling around, naked and dancing like a madwoman, as the battle began to rage around us.

‘He was my boy,’ she screamed, crying insanely, ‘my own little boy! You took him from me!’

‘Saints, what’s wrong with her?’ Brasti asked.

Something was forming in my mind: a thought, a memory, pieces of things I’d seen and wondered about in passing, starting to come into focus.

‘I think …’ I started. Was it really possible? ‘I think she might be his mother,’ I said as all the sadness in the world unleashed itself inside me. ‘I think she might be the King’s mother.’

‘But how?’ Brasti stared at her. ‘Greggor would never … I mean, look at her.’

Kest interrupted, ‘Yes, look at her: her face – it wasn’t always like this. Someone … perhaps someone beat her, mutilated her—’

‘He sent me away,’ she shouted in response, as dust and horses and death raged around us.

‘When the baby was born, when he didn’t like the signs, he beat me and he locked me away – but I took it, I took it because I still got to see my baby, even when he grew and Greggor called him weak and locked him up too and finally sent me away. Even when he married that stupid cow and had another child, I took it, because I am a woman and it was a man’s world. It was his world.’

She shook her fists in the air. ‘But there had to be an answer for such things, and so I brought him books and I told him stories. I made him think .’

‘The Greatcoats,’ Kest said, awed. ‘It was her, all along: she taught the King, shaped his thinking.’

‘I started all of it,’ she cackled, standing naked and wrinkled and proud in the sunlight. ‘There had to be an answer for what he did, so I made you. I gave the world a great King and I gave it justice.’

Then suddenly she started crying, like a small child discovering the body of a dead bird for the first time. ‘But then they took him away from me. He wanted nothing but to do right in the world and they took my boy. So there must be an answer,’ she growled. ‘When they take the last good thing from your life, there must be an answer.’

‘Go!’ she said, grabbing me by the collar of my coat, her eyes so wide and wild that I could see the bright red of the skin that encircled them. ‘Go, and give them my answer!’

As Kest and Brasti grabbed horses from fallen men and mounted up, Monster came up to me and nudged me with her great head. I needed no other invitation and leapt onto her back.

‘Come, you Dukes, you fools of men,’ the Tailor shouted. ‘Come and witness a woman’s answer—’

My mind was reeling from the knowledge of what she had done, but Kest pulled at me. ‘Let’s go,’ he said. ‘I’m ready to give my answer now too.’

We rode into the heart of the battle. I was exhausted, and I longed to see the faces of those comrades I’d been missing all these years – Dara, Winnow, Parrick and the others – where were they? But these men and women on horseback, they were Greatcoats too: skilled and fearless. I felt excitement building inside me and I brandished my sword as we plunged into the Duke’s army, breaking their lines. We fought like hunting birds, swooping in and out and taking lives with each attack.

Kest and Brasti and I sang: we sang the war song of the Greatcoats. We sang of justice and mercy, and we sang of blood and violence too. We sang until our voices were hoarse and blood and dust mixed into the ground, wedded for ever into the landscape of violence.

The battle lasted only an hour, but it felt much longer before the Duke’s men gave up their arms and knelt before us on the ground.

‘Is it possible?’ Brasti asked absently to Kest and me as we stood together.

‘That we won? It certainly looks so,’ Kest replied.

‘No,’ he said, ‘look around. I see dead men everywhere. There are soldiers and Knights littering the ground. I see a few Greatcoats sporting injuries, but I see none of us dead.’

I looked around, sure that he was wrong, that I would see at least one Greatcoat on the ground.

‘Gods,’ Brasti said at last. ‘What an army we would have been.’

‘Ye were never meant to be an army, fool,’ the Tailor said.

Brasti looked at her. ‘I see you’ve found your clothes again. Thank you for that, at least.’

She grinned at him. ‘Didn’t like the sight of a real woman, eh? Ah well, no mind. Sometimes we all have to go a little mad, don’t we, Falcio?’

I thought about that for a moment. ‘And sometimes we have to return to sanity.’

‘Aye, that’s true enough,’ she said. ‘Now, leave the rest of the playing for them others. Go and deal with the Duchess. This is all for naught if she gets away with those Patents of Lineage and comes back in force with that damned daughter of hers.’

‘How will I find her?’ I asked, grabbing Monster’s reins.

‘She’s gone west,’ the Tailor said. ‘She has a horse, but she’s still an old woman like me and she’ll need to rest. You saw the caves past those hills when you came here from Orison? Go there – that’s the only place out of the open. And with her patron Saint dead, I don’t think she has long.’

Someone pulled at my sleeve. ‘Take me,’ Aline said, ‘and then the Duchess will want to find us.’

‘Why?’ I asked.

The Tailor slapped me. ‘Stop askin’ such fool questions fer once in yer useless life.’ Then she looked down at the girl and smiled. ‘You’re a good girl,’ she said, patting her on the cheek. ‘Go now, Falcio, and do what has to be done.’