Kings Rising (Captive Prince 3)

* * *

Damen’s experience with a divided troop meant he already knew what to look for: food going astray; weapons destined for one or other faction rerouted; essentials for daily tasks within the camp missing. He had dealt with it all on the ride from Arles to Ravenel.

He had not dealt with Makedon. Round one came when Makedon refused to accept the extra rations available to his troops from Fortaine. Akielons didn’t need pampering. If Veretians wished to indulge in all this extra food, they could do so.

Before Damen could open his mouth to respond, Laurent announced that he would likewise change the provisions among his own troops, so that there would not be a disparity. In fact, everyone from soldiers to captains to kings across both troops would receive the same portion, and that portion would be determined by Makedon. Would Makedon inform them now what that portion was to be?

Round two was the skirmish that broke out in the Akielon encampment: an Akielon with a bleeding nose, a Veretian with a broken arm, and Makedon smiling and saying that it had been no more than a friendly competition. Only a coward feared competition.

He said it to Laurent. Laurent said that from this moment on, any Veretian who struck an Akielon would be executed. He trusted the honour of the Akielons, he said. Only a coward hit a man who wasn’t allowed to hit back.

It was like watching a boar try to take on the endless blue of the sky. Damen remembered how it felt to be coerced to Laurent’s will. Laurent had never needed to use force to make men obey him, just as he had never needed men to like him in order to get his way. Laurent got his way because when men tried t

o resist him, they found, sweetly outmanoeuvred, that they couldn’t.

And indeed, it was only the Akielons who murmured in dissent. Laurent’s men had swallowed the alliance. In fact, the way Laurent’s men talked about their Prince now was not substantially different to the way that they had talked about him before: cold, ice-cold, except now he was cold enough to have fucked his brother’s killer.

‘The pledge should be made in the traditional manner,’ said Nikandros. ‘A night feast for the bannermen, and the ceremonial sports, the display fighting, and the okton. We gather at Marlas.’ Nikandros stuck another token into the sand tray.

‘A strong location,’ Makedon was saying. ‘The fort itself is all but impregnable. Its walls have never been breached, only surrendered.’

No one was looking at Laurent. It wouldn’t have mattered if they had been. His face showed nothing.

‘Marlas is a large-scale defensive fort, not dissimilar to Fortaine,’ Nikandros said to Laurent, later. ‘Big enough to house both our men and yours, with substantial interior barracks. You’ll see its potential when we get there.’

‘I’ve been there before,’ said Laurent.

‘Then you’re familiar with the area,’ said Nikandros. ‘That makes it easier.’

‘Yes,’ said Laurent.

After, Damen took his sword out to the edges of the camp to practise, finding the clearing that he preferred in a thicket of trees, and beginning the series of exercises that he performed every night.

Here there were no barriers to his skill. He could drive himself hard, strike, turn, force himself faster. In the warm night, his skin quickly pricked with sweat. He pushed himself harder to the ceaseless movements, action and reaction that anchored everything to the flesh.

He poured all he felt into the physical, the emulation of fighting. He couldn’t shake it off. He felt it like an unceasing pressure. The closer they came to it, the stronger it grew.

Would they stay at Marlas, in adjoining apartments, receiving Akielon bannermen during the evening from twin thrones?

He wanted . . . he didn’t know what he wanted. For Laurent to have looked at him when Nikandros had announced that they would travel to the place where, six years ago, Damen had killed his brother.

He heard a sound to the west.

Panting, he stopped. Sweat-covered, he heard it again, the slight smothered laughter, and then the whistle and thunk, the jeers, a low moan. Instantly he recognised the danger: a spear thrown. Yet the laughter was too incautious, too loud for an enemy scout. Not an attack. A small party breaking army discipline, who had snuck out at night to hunt or tryst in the woods. He had thought his troops more disciplined than that.

He went to investigate, quietly, watchfully, past a series of dark tree trunks. A rueful flicker of guilt: he knew that these men breaking curfew would not expect their King to appear and admonish them personally. His presence was ludicrously disproportionate to their crime, he thought.

Until he reached the clearing.

A group of five Akielon soldiers had indeed left the camp to practise spear throwing. They had brought a bundle of spears and a wooden target from the camp. The spears lay on the ground in easy reach. The target was set against the trunk of a tree. They were taking turns throwing from a mark toed into the earth. One of them was taking his place at the mark and hefting a spear.

Pale, rigid with fear beyond terror, there was a boy spread-eagled on the wooden target board, tied at the wrists and ankles. From his torn, half-unlaced shirt, the boy was clearly a Veretian, and young—eighteen or nineteen—his light-brown hair a matted tangle, his skin mottled with a bruise that covered one eye.

A few spears had already been thrown at him. They stuck from the target like pins. One protruded from the space between his arm and side. One to the left of his head. The boy’s eyes were glassy, and he held himself motionless. It was clear from the number of spears—and their position—that the aim of this contest was to throw as close to the boy as possible, without hitting him. The thrower drew back his arm.

Damen could only stand and watch as the thrower’s arm whirled, the spear loosing and beginning its clear pure arc—unable to intervene in case it caused a misthrow that killed the boy. The spear sheared through the air, and hit exactly where it had been intended, between the boy’s legs, just shy of his flesh. It stuck out from the target, grotesquely lewd. The laughter was ribald.

‘And who will throw next?’ said Damen.