Best Served Cold

There were men around her still, but none of them fighting. Standing or sitting in their saddles, staring about. Shivers stood watching her, axe hanging from one hand. For some reason he was stripped half-naked, his white skin dashed and spattered with red. The enamel was gone from his eye and the bright metal ball behind it gleamed in the socket with the midday sun, dewy with beads of wet.

“Victory!” She heard someone scream. Blurry, quivering, wet-eyed, she saw a man on a brown horse, in the midst of the river, standing in his stirrups, shining sword held high. “Victory!”

She took a wobbling step towards Shivers and he dropped his scarred axe, caught her as she fell. She clung on to him, right arm around his shoulder, left dangling, still just gripping the mace, if only because she couldn’t make the fingers open.

“We won,” she whispered at him, and she felt herself smiling.

“We won,” he said, squeezing her tight, half-lifting her off her feet.

“We won.”

– 

C osca lowered his eyeglass, blinked and rubbed his eyes, one half-blind from being shut for the best part of the hour, the other half-blind from being jammed into the eyepiece for the same period. “Well, there we are.” He shifted uncomfortably in the captain general’s chair. His trousers had become wedged in the sweaty crack of his arse and he wriggled as he tugged them free. “God smiles on results, do you Gurkish say?”

Silence. Ishri had melted away as swiftly as she had appeared. Cosca swivelled the other way, towards Friendly. “Quite the show, eh, Sergeant?”

The convict looked up from his dice, frowned down into the valley and said nothing. Duke Rogont’s timely charge had plugged the gaping hole in his lines, crushed the Baolish, driven deep into the Talinese ranks and left them broken. Not at all what the Duke of Delay was known for. In fact, Cosca was oddly pleased to perceive the audacious hand, or perhaps the fist, of Monzcarro Murcatto all over it.

The Osprian infantry, the threat on their right wing extinguished, had blocked off the eastern bank of the lower ford entirely. Their new Sipanese allies had well and truly joined the fray, won a brief engagement with Foscar’s surprised rearguard and were close to sealing off the western bank. A good half of Orso’s army-or of those that were not now scattered dead on the slopes, on the banks downstream or floating face down out to sea-were trapped hopelessly in the shallows between the two, and were laying down their arms. The other half were fleeing, dark specks scattered across the green slopes on the valley’s western side. The very slopes down which they had so proudly marched but a few short hours ago, confident of victory. Sipanese cavalry moved in clumps around their edges, armour gleaming in the fierce noon sun, rounding up the survivors.

“All done now, though, eh, Victus?”

“Looks that way.”

“Everyone’s favourite part of a battle. The rout.” Unless you were in it, of course. Cosca watched the tiny figures spilling from the fords, spreading out across the trampled grass, and had to shake off a sweaty shiver at the memory of Afieri. He forced the carefree grin to stay on his face. “Nothing like a good rout, eh, Sesaria?”

“Who’d have thought it?” The big man slowly shook his head. “Rogont won.”

“Grand Duke Rogont would appear to be a most unpredictable and resourceful gentleman.” Cosca yawned, stretched, smacked his lips. “One after my own heart. I look forward to having him as an employer. Probably we should help with the mopping up.” The searching of the dead. “Prisoners to be taken and ransomed.” Or murdered and robbed, depending on social station. “Unguarded baggage that should be confiscated, lest it spoil in the open air.” Lest it be plundered or burned before they could get their gauntlets on it.

Victus split a toothy grin. “I’ll make arrangements to bring it all in from the cold.”

“Do so, brave Captain Victus, do so. I declare the sun is on its way back down and it is past time the men were on the move. I would be ashamed if, in after times, the poets said the Thousand Swords were at the Battle of Ospria… and did nothing.” Cosca smiled wide, and this time with feeling. “Lunch, perhaps?”

To the Victors…

B lack Dow used to say the only thing better’n a battle was a battle then a fuck, and Shivers couldn’t say he disagreed. Seemed she didn’t either. She was waiting there for him, after all, when he stalked into the darkened room, bare as a baby, stretched out on the bed, her hands behind her head and one long, smooth leg pointing out towards him.

“What kept you?” she asked, rocking her hips from one side to the other.

Time was he’d reckoned himself a quick thinker but the only thing moving fast right then was his cock. “I was…” He was having trouble thinking much beyond the patch of dark hair between her legs, his anger all leaked away like beer from a broken jar. “I was… well…” He kicked the door shut and walked slowly to her. “Don’t matter much, does it?”