Miles Cameron - The Dread Wyrm

“Oh,” said Sauce. She felt foolish. Mag was as well armoured as the captain, in her own way. She never gave out much of her feelings, which Sauce rather liked.

Sauce tried to change the subject. “Have you noticed the captain’s got his household in the imperial colours?” she asked.

Mag laughed. “Noticed? I cut the cloth, Sauce.” She smiled. “Cloth of gold. Sometimes I find all this a little hard to believe.”

“Me, too,” Sauce allowed.

They rattled along for half a league. For all their late start, it was a beautiful day. Behind them, the Green Hills rolled away to the north, with Mons Draconis rising to the north-east, its volcanic cone appearing soft in the middle distance and out of proportion to the rolling downs on either hand.

But ahead, like a wall across their path, stood the forest. It didn’t mark the edge of the Wyrm’s circle, which was a good deal farther on, but it did mark the border of the Wild. Morea was old, and settled, and the hand of man lay heavily there, but to the west of the vales of the Green Hills the woods grew tall and old, and despite the royal roads, a squirrel could leap from tree to tree from the wood line ahead all the way to the northern end of the Adnacrags or west to well past the wall where it came south of the inner sea.

“Hard to think that all this was ours once,” Sauce said.

Mag was coming home to her own country, but she nodded. “Certes,” she said. “When I was a girl, we used to play knights and monsters in the old shielings behind our house. A travelling friar told me they were part of a town-a really big town. All this was farms, once. Men lived here.”

The trees ahead were as tall as church spires. “That was a long time ago,” Sauce said.

“Aye,” Mag admitted. “Two hundred years and more before Chevin was fought.”

“There’s now as much Wild inside the wall as outside,” Sauce went on.

Mag nodded. “I heard there’s as many folk living in the Wild as in the civilized lands,” she said. “The Wyrm-Master Smythe as is-said something to the point.” She smiled at Sauce. “So what’s the Wild? If’n folk live there? And what’s civilized?”

Sauce, who’d grown up as a whore, didn’t need that comment explained at all.

Because it was early spring, many of the trees were still bare, although there was a sort of green haze over the distant woods that suggested growth and budding. And there was no dust. The royal road under their hooves and wheels was stone. Sometimes it washed out and had to be repaired, and some of the patches could crumble but mostly it was hundreds of leagues of flat, straight road, wide enough for two wagons abreast.

Behind them on the road came the Drover’s household, a dozen mounted carls with heavy axes on their shoulders. Thanks to Tom, they rode instead of walked. They wore full mail and gleaming helmets, some of apparently eldritch design with tall peaks and long bills and scallops and whorls. Hillmen were much given to display. Gold glinted from their belts and harnesses.

Bad Tom made no move to ride up and join either Sauce or Mag.

“You going to speak to Tom about your Sukey?” Sauce asked.

“No,” Mag said, in a tone that suggested that no further discussion needed to be had on that subject.

Sauce considered riding out and inspecting her outriders.

She tried a different approach. “You ever consider what the captain’s actually after?” she asked Mag.

Mag smiled. It was her warmest smile of the day so far. “Yes,” she said softly. “All the time.”

Sauce shook her head ruefully. “I just want it to go on and on. Adventure after adventure. But he’s after somewhat, ain’t he?”

Mag nodded. “Yes, dear.”

Sauce turned and looked at the older woman. “Don’t patronize me,” she spat.

Mag rolled her eyes. “No. Sorry, sweet. But none of you think about it much. You just swing your swords and ride on, don’t you?” She looked north. “He’s made himself the Duke of Thrake.”

“But that’s not for real.” Sauce looked up at the older woman. “He’s not going to sit at Lonika and administer justice and be a great lord, is he?” In fact, she realized, she’d watched him do so for five days after the battle at the crossroads. As if he’d been born to it.

Which, of course, he had.

“Shit,” she said aloud.

“I think it is for real,” Mag said. “I think he’s made two fortunes in three years, and then he’s added a great principality which will, at least for a few years, pay his taxes-a steady income so great I can’t really imagine how much money he’ll have. And he sank his claws into the fur trade. He’s getting a tithe on the imperial tax on furs. He and his father now-literally-own the entire border with the Wild.”

“He hates his father,” Sauce said.

Mag looked interested. Everyone in the company knew that Sauce went way back with the captain, but few had the spirit to question her.

“Hate’s too strong,” Sauce admitted. “But his father and mother did something-awful. Rotten. An’ he ran away.” She looked at Mag. “He’s not just going to share the wall with them.”

Mag looked ahead at the line of trees. “Never is a long time,” she said slowly. “And power is even thicker than blood. Ser Gavin is in contact with Gabriel’s mother. I know. ” She smiled fastidiously. “Gabriel’s mother is the most powerful of her kind I’ve ever encountered.” She frowned. “Except the former Richard Plangere. As great as Harmodius, but all green.”

Sauce frowned. “You mean all this-riding on errantry and rescuing princesses and getting contracts-it’s all just another play at power?” She spat. “Fuck. I don’t believe it.”

Mag laughed. “For the life you’ve led, child, you can be naive. What else is it all for, to the likes of them?”

“He’s not one of them!” Sauce said.

Mag sighed. “I suspect I like him as much as you do, sweet,” she said, as she might to a child who’d just had her first courses. “But this is what they do. They are not like you and me. They’re like animals in the Wild. They play for power.”

Towards evening, the pace picked up, and they moved quickly. Sauce knew from her outriders that they were passing through the battlefield where the drove had been massacred by Outwallers last year, and that no one wanted to camp among the bones and the ghosts. The column began to string out, and a mist rose out of the deep valley of the stream.

Sauce left the column to check her outriders. Many of her Moreans had never seen woods like this-great beeches and oaks seventy feet high, with a few birches interspersed, the boles so big that two men couldn’t pass their hands around them and the undergrowth almost non-existent, especially under the oaks, although there could be tangles of blown-down limbs or even whole trees uprooted. Maple trees like green cathedrals rose above the beeches. It was beautiful, if you let yourself look.

Besides the woods, she was still grimly pleased with what she found. The Morean stradiotes knew their business, and their pages were mostly tenants and what an Alban would have called sergeants and what they lacked in experience they made up for in caution. Sauce moved along their line, pleased that each man-no women-kept his partners in sight. Evening made the woods noisy, and there were enough large animals moving to keep the vedettes awake.

Sauce wished for Gelfred, but the green-clad huntsmen were away. On another mission. Not to be discussed.

He was playing for power. She saw it now, and it pissed her off. He was doing something he knew the rest of them wouldn’t approve of-which was why he’d split the company. She knew that Ranald and Gelfred and the loathsome Kronmir had all gone somewhere. She had her suspicions that they’d gone south to Harndon.