“You didn’t trust me?”
“I didn’t know you. But I didn’t believe it when I heard you’d been defeated.”
“You knew I’d win?” said Roper hopefully. She laughed raucously at that, placing a hand on his arm.
“I knew my father wouldn’t have let you lose.”
Roper scowled. “Next time, I’ll leave your daddy at home and you’ll see I don’t need him.”
She rolled her eyes. “Please don’t: he’d be unbearable.”
“My lord!” boomed Uvoren over Keturah’s shoulder. Lord. “I trust you aren’t going to spend this entire night talking to a woman!”
Roper looked frostily at Uvoren but it was Keturah who spoke next. “Don’t worry, Husband,” she said, switching her hand on Roper’s arm so that she could turn to face Uvoren. “This is rather a new attitude from the captain. He was so keen to keep me company while you were away.”
“Is that so?” said Roper, leaning forward to look at Uvoren, who regarded Keturah with that familiar curl on his lips.
“Just making certain I didn’t feel your absence too keenly, I’m sure,” said Keturah sweetly. For the first time that Roper could remember, Uvoren had nothing to say. He looked away with a sneer, refilled his horn with ale and then changed the topic.
“I note that the Lieutenant of the Guard is not among us. Quite a departure from tradition.”
“He’s here,” said Roper, gesturing to Gray sitting at his right. “Oh, what? You didn’t hear? Asger fell at Githru. Gosta too.”
Uvoren froze, evidently considering Roper’s words, but before he could reply, Pryce had started speaking. “And Guardsman Hilmar, and Guardsman Skapti. They were all friends of yours, I believe.”
“What a shame that one battle claimed so many fine men,” said Uvoren carefully.
Pryce shrugged. “It was actually a little before Githru, Uvoren: those four were dead before the battle had begun.”
“Pryce,” said Roper, warningly. He was trying to make peace with Uvoren. He had learned that this did not mean letting him say whatever he pleased, but neither did it mean antagonising him unnecessarily.
Pryce seemed deaf to Roper’s warning. “That’s right,” he said as Uvoren turned to look at him with his eyes unnaturally wide. Pryce leaned a little closer to the captain and met his gaze unblinkingly. “They tried to attack my Lord Roper, so I killed them all. First, I tore out Asger’s neck. He was no guardsman; he died easily. Then, when I’d knocked Gosta to the ground, I rammed my sword into Skapti’s armpit. It sounded painful; his screaming was rather extravagant. He got me though,” Pryce added, indicating a deep, stitched cut on his forearm below his freshly minted arm-ring.
Uvoren was entirely tensed. It looked as though he was shrinking in his seat as his muscles contracted and rage pulsed from him almost as a physical aura.
“Unfortunately, I couldn’t kill Gosta right away. He was tough and my Lord Roper needed help with Hilmar, so I cut some tendons to immobilise him before I nicked a vein in his neck to bleed him out. I didn’t do it very well; he was still breathing when they collected the bodies half an hour later. But he got me a couple of times too.” Pryce held back his black hair to indicate his missing ear and several more slashes on his arms. Roper was watching in horrified fascination. It was fortunate that there were no weapons allowed in the Honour Hall, otherwise he was certain Uvoren and Pryce would be hacking each other to pieces. “I put down Hilmar last. I confess his back was turned; the Black Lord was keeping him busy so I went for his armpit again to see if it hurt as much as it had Skapti. He didn’t make any noise at all: just crumpled. I must’ve got him in the heart.”
Uvoren was breathing deeply, staring back into Pryce’s eyes and neither one was moving away from the other. Uvoren’s right hand twitched a little.
“Cousin, you do exaggerate,” said Keturah waspishly. “And your ear is horrible. What will the women of the Hindrunn say when they see? You may have to find a wife.”
That made Pryce blink and glance at Keturah. “What?” He felt the ear again. The tension began to dissipate as he and Uvoren broke eye contact. “Marks of combat. They don’t matter to a female.”
“They do if you want a human female.”
Roper thought that was masterful from Keturah. Her assault on Pryce’s pride had distracted him enough to prevent what would almost certainly have been a fight between two of the foremost warriors of the realm. At any rate, Pryce no longer seemed intent on winding up Uvoren, his hand flying frequently to his savaged ear and a frown on his face.
After a month on campaign rations, the boar was exquisite. The legionaries had been dreaming of this feast throughout the endless mornings of boiled oats and evenings of boiled salt-mutton and, now that it had arrived, they attacked the food with savage pleasure. The mood was jubilant, with the enormous tension that had been built on their bold march to the Great Gate dissipated without bloodshed.
As they had approached, Roper had no way of knowing whether his ruse had worked. He simply had to trust that his concealed soldiers had made it inside undetected and stayed loyal to him. He had been waiting for the clunk that would have meant the fire-throwers had been unleashed, and for the jet of sticky-fire that would have consumed the entire Sacred Guard.
It was the berserkers who took fullest advantage of the feast. Ordinarily, they lived entirely separate lives from the rest of society. Nobody outside their ranks was quite sure what their training involved, that flipped them from normal men into individuals of disproportionate and frightening violence. Some were spat out of the training system, apparently unsuited to be berserkers. Some died. Those who survived the ordeal were tattooed with the angel of madness and carried around phials of vinegar that
