“I cannot say. Wholesale slaughter? Simply kill the nobility and force the people into serfdom? Maybe just raze the city and sow the earth with salt. We cannot have them here: Suthdal would not survive. We must fight them in the north. If we take the war back to them as soon as the roads reopen, they will not be prepared and we can subdue them. Then you can come north and tour their conquered kingdom.” He took her hand, interlinking their fingers. “I cannot rest from that place. It is haunting me. Since I came back, I have felt like I am in a dream. It is as though I am living in a faint reflection of the world beyond the Abus. Everything is so soft, so easy. So flat. Up there, I felt awake for the first time in my life. Every tree; every hill and stream and word and footstep seemed more significant. I have to go back.” Bellamus stopped abruptly and glanced at Aramilla, taking a moment to compose himself. “And you must see. It’s worth subduing them simply to explore that land unopposed.”
“So not only do you propose to keep your head tomorrow, you want him to give you another army?” She raised an eyebrow at him.
“Why not? You have him on your leash. He must believe I am the only man who can stop them.”
“And are you?”
For a heartbeat, his smile slipped, and she was confronted with the upstart’s face at rest. “You tell me.” She feasted on him for a moment and then looked down at his hand, beginning to play with his fingers.
“I will struggle to convince him. He doesn’t trust you because you’re lowborn. He doesn’t believe you should command an army of nobles.”
“Look what happened when I was only an advisor.” He beamed at her and she exhaled with a slight hum, leaning into him.
“There will be concessions, my upstart.”
“If I survive and I have the army, that’s more than I need.”
“Perhaps more than a man with no name has ever had before,” she said. She gave his cheek a light smack. “Do your ambitions have no limits?”
Bellamus let out a slow breath. “I am always hungry.”
“Even if you vanquish the Anakim? If you become protector of the north?”
“Why just the north?” asked Bellamus. “You are a queen, are you not? You have no children with the king. You can rule if your husband dies.” She had gone quite still in his arms. “We could have Albion.” He had never before revealed that monstrous objective, and waited to see whether he would regret it.
She was silent a long time. “Some day.” Her tone made Bellamus think it was not the first time that thought had occurred to her. “I’ll do my best for you, but I don’t know what he’ll say and we must not arouse his suspicion. You will have to play your part well.”
“I trust you.”
The next morning, Bellamus rode for the court of King Osbert. The king’s hall was by the river, which had solidified into a vast white highway, stretching hundreds of miles inland. Dark figures walked upon the river and a few souls were fishing through the ice. Bellamus wondered if they were having any success; there were precious few sources of food in a winter like this.
If the river was a giant’s roadway, King Osbert’s hall could have been the giant’s house. The king had constructed it himself after burning down his father’s hall when he took the throne. A plinth of stone raised it above the flooding, with broad stone steps leading up to the door. Its thatched roof, as mangy and ragged as any of the others in Lundenceaster, was meadow-like in its scale. Enormous wooden pillars of hornbeam, so broad that three men linking hands would have struggled to encircle them, supported the overhang of the roof. The dark, weather-battered wood of the front was carved and patterned: sunken patches and engravings coloured in reds, blues and golds, and a great yellow sun engraved above the doors.
Bellamus paused briefly at the bottom of the steps that led to the hall’s doors, but, seeing no one to take his horse and only four weary retainers standing by the door above, clicked his tongue to encourage the horse to climb to the hall. The retainers, armed with halberds and their faces exposed by open helmets, stared stunned as Bellamus rode right up to the door before dismounting. “Would you take care of that for me?” he asked one, proffering the reins. Bellamus was shaved and had trimmed his long hair. He had no more gold but wore fresh, well-made clothes and his easy, confident manner was that of a man born to high status, rather than an upstart. Most remarkable of all, however, was the immense war-blade strapped to his back, the handle of which protruded above his shoulder. So one of the retainers took the reins of his horse with a little bow and a muttered, “Lord.”
“What are you doing here, lord?” asked another.
“No need to call me lord,” said Bellamus. “I am here to see the king. Please tell His Majesty that Bellamus of Safinim has arrived.”
The guard complied, turning to the door behind him, lifting the latch and sliding through. It did not take long for him to return.
“His Majesty will see you at once, lord.”
“You’re most kind,” said Bellamus. The door was held open for him and he advanced into the hall.
The interior was dark and cavernous. Shadows flickered on the walls, cast from a large central hearth in which a fire squirmed and wriggled; the smoke it gave off escaping through a hole in the roof above.
