have a gambit ready in case I do balk.”
Cutbill glanced down at the blade. “Are you sure of that?”
Malden drew the sword an inch out of its scabbard. Acid dripped on the rushes and sizzled.
Cutbill didn’t flinch. “You could kill me now, of course,” he said. “We’ve already established that. Think of what you’d lose, though.”
“A job I never wanted? A master who treats me like a raw apprentice?”
“Malden,” Cutbill said, very slowly. “I’ve heard how well you fared against Sir Hew at Helstrow. How you showed that a man with a sword is no match whatsoever for a man with a sword who also knows how to use it.”
“I don’t see you holding a sword,” Malden said.
“When I was half your age, I led a gang of beggar children. We fought on the streets every day for a few rotten peelings of a turnip or enough coin to let us sleep in a stable on a cold night,” Cutbill said, again very softly. “I haven’t forgotten what I learned back then. I know more dirty tricks than you do.”
Malden stood his ground.
“All right,” Cutbill said with a sigh. “You’ve threatened me. I’ll even do you the honor of believing this is no bluff. But fighting you now would help no one, and hurt a great number of plans I’ve been working on for years. Put that sword away. I’ll buy my life from you.”
“I don’t need gold. I have plenty of my own,” Malden said.
“I wasn’t going to pay you in coin. I possess something far more dear than money. Through that door,” he said, pointing across the room, “is a store of foodstuffs. I knew this would be a bad winter, so I laid in provisions for a very long wait.”
“You’re going to buy your life with a cask or two of salt pork?”
“I have a hundred barrels of flour back there. I bought them at the peak of harvest time, when the price was quite low. They’re yours, Malden.”
A hundred barrels of flour would feed the entire city for a week. He needed that flour. He considered killing Cutbill and taking the flour anyway.
But in the end he shoved the sword home and lifted his hands in a gesture of peace. “I’ll take what you offer. The flour, and the advice. But I want you to know one thing-I don’t work for you anymore,” he said. “You work for me. As a counselor. I will make my own decisions, and if they align well with your advice, that’s well to the good. If they deviate from your plans, I will not apologize.”
Cutbill smiled. “I wouldn’t have it any other way,” he said.
Malden wondered then whether he had won a small victory-or if the confrontation had played out exactly as Cutbill had hoped from the start.
Chapter Eighty
Morget tramped up the frost-crackling hill, naked axe in hand, and flourished it in the air. An arrow arced through the wind, tumbling as it came, and landed on its side on the hard ground next to him. He ignored it. “Come closer, you cowards! Come and fight me!” he shouted, his voice booming down to the frozen fields below.
An army stood there, watching him. The Army of Free Men, they called themselves, though they took their orders directly from a man on a horse wearing a crown. Morget pointed his axe at the front ranks of the army and it fell back, some of its individual members tripping over those behind.
“Fear belies you! Fear makes you her slaves. Free men, ha! Fight me!” Morget howled.
Another arrow came toward him. At this range he had time to bat it out of the air before it reached him. Morget turned around and looked back down the hill, toward where Balint hid in the shelter of a lightning-blasted tree. The few leaves still clinging to its branches were clotted with ice.
“You’re good with taunts,” Morget told the dwarf. “Tell me what to say to them. Tell me how to make them angry!”
Balint looked around as if afraid the men of Skrae were sneaking up on her, as if he had given away her position. Hardly likely, Morget knew. The barbarians had caught a few pickets of this Army of Free Men. They had tortured them to learn what they could, then given them proper deaths. Now even the most daring scouts of the Burgrave’s army wouldn’t come within arrow flight of Morget or his clans. Every time the two armies got close and Morget thought they would at last come to blows, the cowards of Skrae would disengage and withdraw with all possible speed.
Even now, with Morget well in range, they were pulling away. The man with the crown signaled to his serjeants, whirling a flanged mace over his head and repeatedly pointing north. The serjeants got the men moving. They couldn’t seem to keep proper formations, but they were glad enough to move away, and it didn’t take long before the entire army was marching away in retreat.
“Tell me how to insult them. I’m no scold. What will offend them most?” Morget demanded.
Balint shivered but she found her voice. “Drop your breeks. Show them your arse and spread your buttocks so they can see your little ring. That’ll give them a bull’s-eye to target,” she said.
Morget shook his head and came stamping back down the hill toward her. He grabbed her up under his arm and carried her back to the road, two low hills away, where the barbarian horde was marching west. The clans were tired and foot-sore, and on short rations, but they gave Morget a hearty cheer when he appeared above them.
He hurried toward the van where his father and sister rode before their standards. He jogged alongside Morg’s horse and called up to him, “They’re retreating again. They’re demoralized. If we gave chase, we could take them easily.”
“Aye,” Morg said, as if he was seriously considering it. “We could break their main force in an afternoon. But only if we spend two weeks chasing them down. They want us to follow. They want to lead us as far from Ness as they can.” He shook his head. “No, Mountainslayer. If there’s no fight in them, why bother?”
Morget was stunned. The clans had spoken for war. They had already questioned Morg’s judgment once, when they forced him to march west from Helstrow. Now he would defy them by refusing to let them fight?
It was Morg’s right to make decisions for the entire horde, of course. That was his function as Great Chieftain. Yet to so openly deny his people what they wanted most…
Wheels began to turn inside Morget’s mind. “Father,” he said, intentionally addressing Morg in the most familiar and therefore least respectful way possible, “a warrior does not show mercy to his enemies when he meets them on the field.”
If Morg understood the subtext of what his son said-that the name Morg the Merciful was not an honorific-he chose to ignore the challenge. “I have every intention of destroying that army. Just not yet. When we take Ness, they’ll have to come to us-and we’ll be in a far better position to crush them. We’ll be well-fed, well-rested, and behind strong walls. The key to Skrae is to hold the three cities, Helstrow, Redweir, and Ness. Once we’re properly invested, they’ll never loosen our grip. You wanted to conquer this land. Let’s do it properly.”
Morget fumed but he resisted the urge to call his father a coward. That could only end one way, with one of them dead. Instead he tried to think strategically. It was not his forte. “We’ll be leaving an army behind us. Astraddle our supply lines,” he countered.
Morg turned and looked at him with something akin to pride. Morget could not remember the last time that had happened. “Good thinking. But we’ll also leave them with no base to operate from. Strand them out here in these empty fields all winter-they’ll freeze so solid when we emerge in the spring, we’ll have to chip them out of the ice just to make them thralls.”
Morget fell back and fetched his own horse. He rode among the chieftains of his clans-dark men, grim as he was. There was much muttering, some of which he joined. When they stopped to camp for the night, one of the chieftains took him aside behind a tent. “Your father’s making a mistake,” the man said. “He’s made a lot of mistakes already.”
Morget eyed the man critically. His name was Thurbalt, and his beard was shot with white, but his arms were near as thick as Morget’s own and he’d never lost a wrestling match. He commanded two hundred men and thralls, most of whom he was related to either by marriage or bastardry, and he had a right to speak his mind. Morget
