Iona
The armorers buckle black plate over his chest.
I know the scar beneath the left strap. I kissed it last night before we slept.
Now iron covers it.
Four men work around him without speaking. One fastens the shoulder guard. Another ties the leather below his ribs. Ghenn checks every buckle after them.
Torgan watches me from across the chamber.
His claws are hidden. His fangs are not.
The ache is worse this morning. I can see it in the set of his jaw.
When the last plate is fixed, the armorers step back.
He crosses the room, blood on his armor and the green ribbon still at his wrist.
I hold out a second strip of green ribbon, cut from the final treaty packet.
He already wears the hunt ribbon around his wrist. I tie the treaty strip beneath the guard at his upper arm, where it cannot catch a blade.
“For luck,” I say.
“I have your contracts.”
“You may have both.”
His thumb brushes the cut beneath my jaw.
The room is full of soldiers and servants. He does not care.
He bends and puts his mouth against the mark on my shoulder.
His fangs stay clear.
A murmur moves through the corridor outside. The hold sees.
He lifts his head.
“West wall,” he says. “Ghenn’s second stays with you. When the first hired company withdraws, raise the black pennant.”
“And if none withdraw?”
“Then keep it down.”
“You attack without closing the slopes.”
“Yes.”
“More expensive.”
“Yes.”
I touch the edge of his breastplate.
“Come back.”
The gray retreats behind his pupils.
“I will.”
The southern delegation prepares to leave while Torgan’s army forms beyond the gate.
Callas rides in the first carriage. His confession is sealed inside the treaty case with copies sent by separate riders. The six Serathi guards split between the two carriages and the gift wagons, all of them going south with him.
Perr stands beside the second carriage holding the final manifest.
“You should go,” I tell him.
“No.”
“Perr.”
“The treaty is signed, not ratified. Someone has to keep the original ledgers here.” He looks toward Callas’s carriage. “And the minister may be arrested before supper.”
Callas leans out. “A fair assessment.”
Perr gives me the manifest.
“The gifts are accounted for. The treaty copies are dry. The silks still balance.”
“Good.”
He glances at the black pennant under my arm.
“Will you be safe?”
“No.”
He swallows.
“Will you stay anyway?”
“Yes.”
“Then so will I.”
He steps away from the carriage and takes his place beside me.
Callas waits until the driver gathers the reins.
“The council will call this desertion.”
“They can call it what they like.”
“They may strip your office.”
“They already tried to trade it with the rest of me.”
His face tightens.
“I am sorry.”
The words are plain this time.
“Read your confession aloud before anyone can bury it,” I say.
Callas nods.
The last carriage clears the gate. Perr remains beside me as the bars fall into place.
By midmorning, Osk’s army covers the north road. The southern road is barred behind Callas’s delegation except to crown relay riders.
A little over four thousand men look smaller on a map.
From the west wall they fill the valley. Spears move through frost. Horse breath hangs above the front ranks. Osk’s black-and-red banner stands at the center.
The four hired-company banners wait behind his own levies.
Blue Gull.
Red Pikes.
Split Sun.
White Horse.
Below the pass mouth, Torgan’s line forms three ranks deep.
It looks too small.
I know the rest are hidden under moor cloaks along the slopes. Knowing does not make the open ground less empty.
Ghenn’s second, Marrek, stands at my right.
Two shield guards stand behind us. Vess is somewhere above. I have not seen her since dawn.
“White cloth,” Marrek says.
A rider moves beneath the Blue Gull banner.
The strip tied to his spear is small at this distance, but bright against the dark men.
He rides to the front of his company.
Osk sends two men toward him.
The gull captain does not wait.
His banner turns east.
The entire company follows.
Nearly eight hundred hired spears march out of Osk’s line with their weapons shouldered.
The sound on the wall is not a cheer. Nobody trusts the field enough for that yet.
I unroll the black pennant.
“Not yet,” Marrek says.
“I know.”
The Red Pikes remain still.
Osk’s messengers ride between the companies. One reaches the pike captain. They argue. The captain points to the withdrawing gulls, then holds up one of our copied notes.
The messenger reaches for it.
The captain knocks him from the saddle.
White cloth rises.
The Red Pikes turn.
“Now,” Marrek says.
I raise the black pennant.
Below us, Ghenn sees.
A horn sounds from the black-country center.
The slopes move.
Men who have lain beneath gray cloaks since before dawn stand in two long lines. Black shields rise. Spears lower.
The pass begins to close around Osk.
Not completely.
The east lane remains open, exactly as written.
The Blue Gulls and Red Pikes move through it. Nobody attacks them.
The Split Sun hesitates.
Osk sends cavalry to block their withdrawal.
That decides them.
White cloth rises over the split sun. Their spears turn outward against Osk’s riders long enough to clear the lane. Then they leave too.
Three companies gone.
More than two thousand men removed by paper, seals, and one promise kept in public.
My hands shake around the pennant pole. Fear is part of it. So is the force of what we have just done.
Torgan’s center moves forward.
The battle begins.
There is no order in it from the wall. Only sections I understand one at a time.
Osk’s levies enter the narrowing road.
Black-country shields hit them from the front.
Hidden spears close from both slopes.
The White Horse company stays with Osk. Their captain must still believe the coast silver will arrive.
Torgan reaches them first.
I know him by his horns and the empty space men try to keep around him.
A spear breaks against his shield. He throws the broken shaft aside and takes the man behind it off his feet.
Another comes from his left.
Torgan’s claws catch the attacker’s sword arm. His blade follows.
He does not rage.
He works.
Step. Strike. Turn. Move.
My body remembers those hands holding my hips in the orchard court. The thought comes at the wrong time and refuses to leave.
I grip the stone wall.
Osk’s household riders form near the center.
Thirty. Perhaps forty. Better horses than the men around them. Heavy armor. They point directly at Torgan.
Marrek sees them too.
“They mean to pull him down.”
Torgan sees them.
He moves away from his thinnest rank.
Draws them after him.
My stomach drops.
The riders hit.
Horses close around black armor. Lances strike. One glances off his horn. Another catches beneath his shoulder plate and drives him sideways.
Men pile over the place where he falls.
I lose sight of him.
One heartbeat.
Two.
Three.
Four.
The world becomes that empty patch of ground.
His true name tears out of me.
“TORGAN!”
The shout carries from the wall. Black-country soldiers nearest the tower flinch at hearing the sacred name aloud, but none repeats it.
Every head near me turns.
On the field, something moves beneath the riders.
Torgan rises.
The name hits him before the next man does. His shoulders lock. His head snaps toward the tower, and both fangs bare with a wet flash. For one fraction of a heartbeat he waits for the words I do not add.
No summons.
A rider reaches him from the side. Torgan catches the man by the breastplate and throws him into the mud.
His claws are red. His sword is gone. For three strides he moves with the same impossible old-blood speed that lets him run prey down on the moor. He does not need the blade yet.
A horse wheels away without its rider.
He turns toward the wall.
Across the pass, through the battle, he finds me.
I know he can hear my heart.
I lift the pennant again.
Finish it.
His head dips once.
Then he turns back.
The White Horse line breaks before midday.
Some run for the withdrawal lane. Torgan lets them go.
Some throw down weapons. Black-country soldiers take the weapons and move past.
Osk’s levies begin kneeling by whole ranks.
The field changes quickly after that. Fighting becomes counting. Wounded are pulled aside. Surrendered men are marked with white cloth and moved south of the road. Weapons are stacked in groups of fifty.
Osk is dragged to the pass mouth in the afternoon.
Even from the wall, I recognize the ruined arm Torgan broke in the council hall. It hangs badly beneath the armor.
Osk shouts loudly enough for the wall to hear.
“You promised the marches to your own lords. Serath closed our road and you chose a southern woman over the men who bled for you.” He points toward the hold. Toward me. “She made you weak.”
Torgan listens without moving.
Then he looks up at the west wall and back to Osk.
“You sold land you did not own,” he says. “You promised revenue four times. You brought four thousand men and could not count which of them were yours.”
Osk spits at his boots.
Ghenn recovered Torgan’s sword from beneath a fallen horse and has carried it cleaned only of mud, not blood. Torgan takes it from his hand.
“Poor arithmetic,” Torgan says.
One stroke ends it.
Osk’s banner comes down.
Marrek reaches the parapet beside me. “Three companies withdrew. White Horse broke.”
“Yes.”
“You should look pleased.”
“I feel sick.”
Vess comes down from the upper walk at last. “That too.”
Below, Torgan mounts for the ride back to the hold. Blood covers one side of his armor. A lance cut has opened the flesh above his shoulder plate.
“Is he hurt badly?” I ask.
“No.”
“You can see from here?”
“I can smell him.”
Of course she can.
The gates open.
The hold roars when he rides through.
He hands Osk’s axe to Ghenn. He refuses the healer’s first attempt to stop him.
His eyes go to the west wall.
To me.
I put one hand over the mark on my shoulder and hold his gaze.
One step falters.
Then he is moving again.
“Hot water in the king’s chamber,” I tell the chamberlain. “Clear the wing.”
“The wing is clear,” he says. “It has been since the pennant rose.”
The household knows.
Before I leave the wall, I write one order on the back of the battle manifest and give it to Vess. “Recall Callas. Fastest horse, every relay station, and an escort for the return.”
“He has half a day’s start,” she says.
“Then your rider had better be faster than his carriage.”
I hand Marrek the black pennant and take the stairs two at a time.