He remembered Nikandros’s words. Kastor has always believed that he deserved the throne. That you took it from him. And his own reply, He wouldn’t hurt me. We are family.
‘Then heed them now,’ said Nikandros.
‘I do. I know,’ said Damen, ‘who he is, and that it means I cannot have him.’
‘No. Listen Damianos. You trust blindly. You see the world in absolutes—if you believe someone a foe, nothing will dissuade you from arming up to fight. But when you give your affections . . . When you give a man your loyalty, your faith in him is unswerving. You would fight for him with your last breath, you would hear no word spoken against him, and you would go to the grave with his spear in your side.’
‘And are you so different?’ said Damen. ‘I know what it means that you are riding with me. I know that if I am wrong you will lose everything.’
Nikandros held his gaze, then let out a breath and passed his hand over his face, massaging it briefly. He said, ‘The Prince of Vere.’ When he looked at Damen again, it was a sidelong glance under his raised brows, and for a moment they were boys again, on the sawdust, throwing spears that fell six feet short of the men’s hide targets.
‘Can you imagine,’ said Nikandros, ‘what your father would say if he knew?’
‘Yes,’ said Damen. ‘Which girl from the village was called Kyra?’
‘They all were. Damianos. You can’t trust him.’
‘I know that.’ He finished the wine. Outside, there were hours of daylight left, and work to be done. ‘You’ve spent a morning with him and you’re warning me off. Just wait,’ said Damen, ‘until you’ve spent a full day with him.’
‘You mean that he improves with time?’
‘Not exactly,’ said Damen.
CHAPTER SIX
THE DIFFICULTY WAS that they could not ride out straight away.
Damen ought to have been used to working with a divided troop, having had, by now, a great deal of practice. But thi
s was not a small band of mercenaries, this was two powerful forces that were traditional enemies, headed by volatile generals on both sides.
Makedon rode into Fortaine for their first official meeting with his mouth turned down. In the audience room Damen found himself waiting, tense, for Laurent’s arrival. Damen watched Laurent enter with his first adviser Vannes and his Captain Enguerran. He was frankly uncertain whether it was going to be a morning of invisible needling, or a series of unbelievable remarks that left everyone’s jaw on the floor.
In fact, it was impersonal and professional. Laurent was exacting, focused, and spoke entirely in Akielon. Vannes and Enguerran had less of the language and Laurent took the lead in discussion, using Akielon words like phalanx as though he had not learned them from Damen only two weeks earlier, and giving the calm overall impression of fluency. The little brow furrows as he searched for vocabulary, the ‘How do you say—?’ and ‘What is it called when—?’ were gone.
‘It’s lucky for him he speaks our language so well,’ said Nikandros, as they returned to the Akielon camp.
‘Nothing involving him has anything to do with luck,’ said Damen.
When he was alone, he looked out of his tent. The spreading fields looked peaceful but soon the armies would move. The red outline of the horizon would grow nearer, the rising ground that contained all that he had ever known. He tracked it with his eyes and when he was done he turned from the view. He did not look at the burgeoning new Veretian encampment, where coloured silks lifted on the breeze, and the occasional sound of laughter or lilting carried across the springy grass of the field.
Their camps, they agreed, would be kept separate. Akielons, seeing the Veretian tents begin to spring up in the fields, with their pennants and silks and multicoloured panels, were scornful. They did not want to fight alongside these new, silky allies. In that respect, Laurent’s absence at Charcy had been a disaster. His first true tactical misstep, from which they were all still trying to recover.
The Veretians were scornful too, in a different way. Akielons were barbarians who kept company with bastards and walked around half naked. He heard the snatches of what was said on the edges of their camp, the ribald calls, the jeers and taunts. When Pallas walked past, Lazar wolf-whistled.
And that was before the more specific rumours, the murmurings among the men, the sidelong speculation that had Nikandros in the warm summer evening, saying, ‘Take a slave.’
Damen said, ‘No.’
He buried himself in work, and in physical exercise. During the day he threw himself into the logistics and planning, the tactical groundwork that would facilitate a campaign. He plotted routes. He set up supply lines. He commanded drills. At night he went alone from the camp, and when there was no one around him, he took out his sword and practised until he was dripping with sweat, until he could no longer raise his sword but only stand, his muscles trembling, the tip of his blade pointed to the ground.
He went to bed alone. He undressed and sluiced himself down, and only used squires to perform those menial tasks without intimacy.
He told himself that this was what he had wanted. There was a working relationship between himself and Laurent. There was no longer—friendship—but that had never been possible. He had known it would not be some stupid fantasy of showing Laurent his country; of Laurent leaning against the marble balcony at Ios, turning to greet him in the cool air overlooking the sea, his eyes bright with the splendour of the view.
So he worked. There were tasks to do. He sent out a stream of correspondence to the kyroi of his homeland to announce his return. Soon he would know the initial extent of his support in his own country, and he could begin to settle the routes and advances that would secure him a victory.
He came to his tent after three hours of solitary weapons practice, his body damp with sweat that would be wiped down by body squires, since he had dismissed all his slaves. He sat down to write letters instead. The candles flickered low around him, but it was enough light for what must be done. He wrote by his own hand the personal missives to those he knew. He didn’t tell any of them the details of what had happened to him.