The Queen spread her arms. ‘You have it precisely backwards, dear heart. If the king dies,
The silence was punctuated only by the barking of dogs outside. Diota quailed. Lady Mary pretended to be somewhere else, and Becca opened her book.
But finally, Diota straightened her spine. ‘All I’m saying is let the king look to his own war horses. Tell the squires where they can buy them and let them squeeze their rich parents for the money. When you sell your jewels, sweeting, you will have
The Queen stood very still. Then she smiled her invulnerable smile at her nurse. ‘I am what I am,’ she said. ‘Sell the jewels.’
Chapter Ten
Otter Creek Valley, East of Albinkirk – Peter
Peter lay on the ground behind a tree as big as a small house, unable to see anything, and waited for battle.
More than anything, he wanted to piss. From a tiny irritant at the base of his penis, the feeling gradually grew to envelope his every thought. After the first of several eternities, the need to void himself overtook his fear and terror.
From time to time, he drifted off on other thoughts – the possibility of moving to a better hiding space; finding a view of the oncoming enemy; finding some actual cover. He had no experience of war in the west, and couldn’t imagine what it might be like to face a man in steel armour.
He had a knife, a bow, and nine arrows.
And he had to piss.
It began to seem possible that he should just let go, and lie in his own urine for however long they lay there.
He wondered if he was the only one. He wondered if Ota Qwan had meant to tell him to relieve himself before the ambush was set. Or if he had not told him deliberately. The black painted man had some cruelty in him – Peter was already sensing that Ota Qwan had few followers because he enjoyed twisting the knife too much. And he thought that the honeymoon between them was ending – in the beginning, Ota Qwan had been as desperate for his company as Peter had been desperate for an ally amidst the alien Outwallers, but now, with a war-group forming around him, Ota Qwan was undergoing a subtle metamorphosis. And not a pretty one.
And he really had to piss.
There was no way to measure the time. An ant crawled the length of his body, from moccasined left foot to right shoulder. Something larger crossed one of his knees. A pair of hummingbirds came and visited a flower by his head, and he was so still in the agony of his need to relieve himself that the male, bright red in spring plumage, all but landed on his painted face.
There were three hundred men – more, perhaps five hundred – lying on either side of the road as it led downhill to a ford over a deep running stream. They were somewhere east of Albinkirk. No one made a noise.
He had to piss.
He heard the metallic scrape of an iron-shod hoof on stone, and a shriek – a cry, and then a scream that seemed to come from the other side of his tree.
No one was moving.
The scream was repeated and suddenly cut off, and its sudden removal left another sound – the sound of shod hooves galloping away.
Suddenly Skadai was on the trail, just a few arm’s lengths away, calling softly. ‘Dodak-geer-lonh!’ he said. ‘Gots onah!’
All around Peter, warriors rose from their ambush spots, rubbing themselves, or scraping bark off their skin. Half of them immediately began to relieve themselves. Peter followed suit, previously unaware that urination could be such a great pleasure.
But Skadai was moving. Ota Qwan swatted Peter on the shoulder. ‘Move!’ he said, as if Peter was a child.
Peter gathered his bow and followed.
They ran east on the trail for twenty horse lengths, and there was a horse, dead, across the trail, and a man pinned beneath it with his face and hair cut away and his throat slit. His blood pooled between the rocks and ran in a sticky rivulet headed downhill to the stream.
After running for what seemed a long time, they began to spread out amid big trees. The stream was well behind them, and Peter was terrified – they were running at the enemy, or so it seemed.
Skahas Gaho must have felt the same, because when they stopped running he got in front of Ota Qwan and said something that was clearly remonstration.
Ota Qwan struck him – not a hard blow, but a fast one, and the younger warrior bent over with the pain.
Ota Qwan spoke quickly, spittle flying from his mouth.
Skadai ran up silently, listened to Ota Qwan, and nodded, running off down the loose line of warriors that extended as far as the eye could see into the great trees on either flank. The trees here – mostly Adnacrag maples and beeches, tall old trees with magnificent tops – were big enough that two men couldn’t get their arms around them. But there was little undergrowth because of the high canopy, and despite the sun-dappled forest floor, little grew amidst the carpet of old leaves except the most magnificent irises that Peter had ever seen.
Skahas Gaho got to his feet, glared resentfully at Skadai and spat at Ota Qwan. He said something to the other warriors, and ran off down the line. Brant turned to follow him, and Ota Qwan raised his bow.
Peter acted without thought. He pushed Ota Qwan’s bow arm, hard.
The warrior tried to hit him in the ear with the tip of the bow but Peter caught it and, in a single turn of his arm, he had Ota Qwan’s right arm in an elbow lock that threatened to dislocate the man’s shoulder.
‘I wasn’t
‘They are deserting me!’ Ota Qwan watched the two men running off.
‘You hit Skahas Gaho when you needed to reason with him.’ Peter wanted to laugh to hear himself explaining basic leadership to Ota Qwan. But he had the arm lock, and he wasn’t letting go.
The other man stiffened, and then went limp. ‘He was about to disobey. To disobey Skadai!’
Peter let the black painted man go. ‘I’ve only been Sossag for three days, but it seems to me that’s Skadai’s problem, not yours. I think you thought like an Alban, not a Sossag.’ Peter shrugged.
The other three – Pal Kut, Barbface, and Mullet, watched them warily.
‘You will be loyal to me!’ Ota Qwan hissed at Peter. ‘Will you?’
Peter nodded. ‘I will,’ he said, finding that the words made him feel queasy.
Pal Kut called something. The line, well-spread, was moving rapidly forward, almost at a run. Most men had an arrow on their bows.
Peter sprinted to make his place in the line, fumbled an arrow and dropped it, and turned back to get it – he had too few to lose one. He bent, and in that moment, the world exploded.
To the front of the line, off amidst the drover’s herd, a bull gave a long, low growl. And suddenly the air was full of arrows flying both ways. And the Sossag gave a great cry, almost like a scream . . .
. . . and charged.
Peter had his arrow on his bow. He ran forward, saw Pal Kut take an arrow in the gut, an arrow so big and so powerful that it emerged from his back in a gout of blood, and the head was shaped like a swallow and gleamed with a horrible red-blue malevolence.
Peter ran forward, following Ota Qwan.
He saw his first enemy – a tall blond boy in ring mail who coolly rose from behind a bush and loosed an arrow
