Best Served Cold

“Andiche!” Cosca gestured at Rigrat’s sword, still where he had left it. “Run through!” He had observed that people often state the obvious when distressed.

“Someone get a surgeon!” roared Victus.

“Or better yet a priest.” Ishri swaggered across the tent towards them. “He’s dead.”

“What happened?”

“Colonel Rigrat stabbed him.”

“Who the hell are you?”

“Ishri.”

“He was a great heart!” Cosca gently touched Andiche’s staring-eyed, gape-mouthed, blood-spattered face. “A true friend. He stepped before the thrust.”

“Andiche did?” Sesaria did not look convinced.

“He gave his life… to save mine.” Cosca’s voice almost croaked away to nothing at the end, and he dashed a tear from the corner of his eye. “Thank the Fates Sergeant Friendly moved as quickly as he did or I’d have been done for too.” He beat at Andiche’s chest, fist squelching on his warm, blood-soaked coat. “My fault! My fault! I blame myself!”

“Why?” snarled Victus, glaring down at Rigrat’s corpse. “I mean, why did this bastard do it?”

“My fault!” wailed Cosca. “I took money from Rogont to stay out of the battle!”

Sesaria and Victus exchanged a glance. “You took money… to stay out?”

“A huge amount of money! There will be shares by seniority, of course.” Cosca waved his hand as though it was a trifle now. “Danger pay for every man, in Gurkish gold.”

“Gold?” rumbled Sesaria, eyebrows going up as though Cosca had pronounced a magic word.

“But I would sink it all in the ocean for one minute longer in my old friend’s company! To hear him speak again! To see him smile. But never more. Forever…” Cosca swept off his hat, laid it gently over Andiche’s face and hung his head. “Silent.”

Victus cleared his throat. “How much gold are we talking about, exactly?”

“A… huge… quantity.” Cosca gave a shuddering sniff. “As much again as Orso paid us to fight on his behalf.”

“Andiche dead. A heavy price to pay.” But Sesaria looked as if he perceived the upside.

“Too heavy a price. Far too heavy.” Cosca slowly stood. “My friends… could you bring yourselves to make arrangements for the burial? I must observe the battle. We must stumble on. For him. There is one consolation, I suppose.”

“The money?” asked Victus.

Cosca slapped down a hand on each captain’s shoulder. “Thanks to my bargain we will not need to fight. Andiche will be the only casualty the Thousand Swords suffer today. You could say he died for all of us. Sergeant Friendly!” And Cosca turned and pushed past into the bright sunlight. Ishri glided silently at his elbow.

“Quite the performance,” she murmured. “You really should have been an actor rather than a general.”

“There’s not so much air between the two as you might imagine.” Cosca walked to the captain general’s chair and leaned on the back, feeling suddenly tired and irritable. Considering the long years he had dreamed of taking revenge for Afieri, it was a disappointing pay-off. He was in terrible need of a drink, fumbled for Morveer’s flask, but it was empty. He frowned down into the valley. The Talinese were engaged in a desperate battle perhaps half a mile wide at the bank of the lower ford, waiting for help from the Thousand Swords. Help that would never come. They had the numbers, but the Osprians were still holding their ground, keeping the battle narrow, choking them up in the shallows. The great melee heaved and glittered, the ford crawling with men, bobbing with bodies.

Cosca gave a long sigh. “You Gurkish think there’s a point to it all, don’t you? That God has a plan, and so forth?”

“I’ve heard it said.” Ishri’s black eyes flicked from the valley to him. “And what do you think God’s plan is, General Cosca?”

“I have long suspected that it might be to annoy me.”

She smiled. Or at least her mouth curled up to show sharp white teeth. “Fury, paranoia and epic self-centredness in the space of a single sentence.”

“All the fine qualities a great military leader requires…” He shaded his eyes, squinting off to the west, towards the ridge behind the Talinese lines. “And here they are. Perfectly on schedule.” The first flags were showing there. The first glittering spears. The first of what appeared to be a considerable body of men.

The Fate of Styria

U p there.” Monza’s gloved forefinger, and her little finger too, of course, pointed towards the ridge.

More soldiers were coming over the crest, a mile or two to the south of where the Talinese had first appeared. A lot more. It seemed Orso had kept a few surprises back. Reinforcements from his Union allies, maybe. Monza worked her sore tongue around her sour mouth and spat. From faint hopes to no hopes. A small step, but one nobody ever enjoys taking. The leading flags caught a gust of wind and unfurled for a moment. She peered at them through her eyeglass, frowned, rubbed her eye and peered again. There was no mistaking the cockleshell of Sipani.

“Sipanese,” she muttered. Until a few moments ago, the world’s most neutral men. “Why the hell are they fighting for Orso?”