Chapter 294: Unholy Alliance

Lennis raised his head slowly.

"It loads through the mouth because it loads fast," said Lennis.

"It loads fast until they kill you loading," answered the artilleryman.

Another joined in. Then another.

"Ours takes a double charge without splitting."

"Ours does not need a new carriage every month."

Garik came out of the back with the hammer still in his hand.

"Ours has a name," said Garik. "And an officer did not give it. The shaman gave it. With mine and with Lennis’s."

"A name does not make it better," said the artilleryman.

"Silence," said Kellar from the doorway.

All of them went quiet.

Kellar walked between the two rows of iron. He looked at the Garnis. He looked at the fifty new cannons. Then he turned to the artilleryman.

"Why is yours better?" asked Kellar.

The youth squared up, animated at once.

"It loads from the rear, my lord," said the artilleryman, and stepped over to show the breech. "Without climbing into the barrel. And it is not bronze like that one, look at the color. It is earth stone from top to bottom. It does not stretch, it does not split, and it does not eat the bore in twenty shots."

Kellar ran his hand along the tube. It was cold and dry, and it carried a weight that did not match its size.

He stayed quiet a beat too long.

"You brought earth stone?" asked Kellar.

"Yes, my lord," said Lennis. "There are several tons on the turtle’s back. We shall begin lowering them tonight."

"Good. Speak with Ysolde and with Halvard about improving the cannon," said Kellar. "I want a Garnis two point zero immediately."

He turned to the artillerymen.

"And you, do not insult the pride of my men, or..."

There was no need to finish the threat. Kellar turned on his heel and left the workshop.

He needed to set order. Hierarchy is held from above, and if he let the new devour the old, in a month he would not have an army. He would have two.

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In Aethelgard, the council chamber smelled of iron and wax.

King Eadric had not sat down. He had spent twenty-six days on his feet before the same window, and that morning he did not move when his people came in either.

"Majesty," said Marshal Godwin, and laid the report on the table. "Nothing. Not a body, not a horse, not a seal."

"Where was the last word?" asked King Eadric.

"At Harn ford, majesty," answered Godwin. "They crossed by night and sent a pigeon. After that, silence."

Chancellor Wystan bent over the map, fingers spread across the route inked in red.

"Count Ellington was not a careless man," said Wystan. "He rode with forty. He knew the road by heart."

"He knew the road because we made it," said King Eadric. "Four years cutting it. Four years paying the men who cut it."

No one spoke.

"The savages?" asked an old man from the back, and his voice shook. "The forest is full of them. Perhaps they caught them before the river."

Marshal Godwin shook his head.

"A count of the Black Wolf Order does not fall to savages," said Godwin. "Least of all with forty riders behind him. Savages fight in disorder, with bone spears and no horse. You ride over them."

"And if there were many?"

"If there had been many, there would be sign of many," said Godwin. "There is not one."

King Eadric turned at last. He wore the face of a man doing sums that would not come out.

"Then someone sold the road," said King Eadric.

Chancellor Wystan closed his eyes for an instant.

"Majesty, three of us know that road," said Wystan. "You, I, and the marshal. And the count, who is gone."

"Four men and a map that never leaves this room," said King Eadric. "And still they waited at the one place the route narrows. That was not luck."

He came to the table and set both hands on its edge.

"Consider our plans exposed," said King Eadric. "The routes, the timings, the names. All of it."

"Against whom, majesty?" asked Wystan.

King Eadric looked at him as though the question insulted him.

"Golden Rose," said King Eadric. "They are the only ones with anything to gain. If Valoria and we bleed each other in that forest, they take the border."

He straightened.

"Mobilize the whole army to Harn ford. Reinforce the walls of the cities they tore from us three years ago. I want a garrison in every one and six months of stores."

"Majesty, that is a war," said Wystan.

"That is a war," said King Eadric. "And it began without us."

In Valoria the chamber was longer and warmer, and King Aurelian was twenty-three years old.

He spoke little and listened worse.

"Twenty-eight days," said Prefect Lucian, and let the dispatch fall to the table. "Two envoys, no visible escort, no banner. Dressed as merchants. And nothing."

"Were they searched on leaving?" asked King Aurelian.

"The port searched them, majesty," answered Lucian. "They left with bolts of cloth and a letter for the forest. The cloth reached the customs house at Vescia. The men did not."

The old woman Sabina, seated at the head of the table with both hands on her cane, did not raise her eyes.

"The savages," said old Sabina. "Four merchants cross them and they make a feast."

"It does not fit," said Senator Varro, and struck the table with two fingers. "The envoys went as merchants for exactly that reason. If savages had killed them, they would have opened the bolts. The cloth turns up untouched and the men do not. Someone pulled them off the road and killed them after."

"And who knew the Vescia road?" asked old Sabina.

"We did," said Varro. "And Golden Rose, who watched us make it."

King Aurelian dragged a hand down his face.

"How many knew?" asked King Aurelian.

"Everyone in this room," said Varro. "And everyone here has cousins."

There were short laughs, without appetite.

"Golden Rose has no interest in the forest," said old Sabina. "It has interest in us. It always did."

"And now it has our plans," said King Aurelian, and for the first time raised his voice. "The timings, the names, the routes. Everything we sent those two to prepare."

He stood.

"Let the army mobilize. All of it. To the eastern border and to Vescia. Double garrison in the cities they took from us and not one harvest left outside the granaries."

"Majesty, if we move everything, the coast lies open," said Lucian.

"The coast is not killing my people on the roads," said King Aurelian.

Varro leaned over the map and drew a line with his finger.

"And the forest, majesty?" asked Varro. "Do we send anything else to the forest?"

King Aurelian stared at the green gap between the two frontiers.

"The forest is a shortcut," said King Aurelian. "And shortcuts are taken or burned. We shall see."