The King's Blood

sense to appoint Ternigan, only because he’s got the experience most recently. But I would rather it be you.”
    Dawson sat forward, his head swimming.
    Palliako had betrayed his crown and kingdom, had given the reins of power to a goatherd, begun a war with Asteril-hold that was doomed to slaughter hundreds or thousands on both sides of the border, and now he had come to deliver control of the army into Dawson’s hands. And he was presenting it as asking a favor.
    It took Dawson almost a full minute to find the words.
    “Lord Regent, I would be honored.”

Marcus
     
    S
    ometime, centuries before, someone had built a low wall along the top of the rise. In the moonlight, the scattered rocks reminded Marcus of knucklebones. He knelt, one hand on the dew-slick grass. In the cove below him, three ships rested at anchor. Shallow-bottomed with paired masts. Faster and more maneuverable than the round-bellied trade ships that they hunted. One showed a mark on the side where she’d been struck not too many weeks before, the new timber of the patch bright and unweathered.
    On the sand, a cookfire still burned, its orange glow the only warmth in the spring night. From where they stood, Marcus counted a dozen structures—more than tents, less than huts—scattered just above the tide line. A wellestablished camp, then. That was good. A half dozen stretchedleather boats rested near the water.
    Yardem Hane grunted softly and pointed a wide hand to the east. A tree a hundred feet or so from the water towered up toward the sky. A glimmer, moonlight on metal, less than a third of the way to its tip showed where the sentry perched. Marcus pointed out at the ships. High in the rigging of the one nearest the shore, another dark figure.
    Yardem held up two fingers, wide brows rising in question. Two watchers?
    Marcus shook his head, holding up a third finger. One more.
    The pair sat still in the shadows made darker by the spray of fallen stone. The moon shifted slowly in its arc. The movement was subtle. A single branch on the distant tree that moved in the breeze more slowly. Marcus pointed. Yardem flicked an ear silently; he wore no earrings when they were scouting. Marcus looked over the cove one last time, cataloging it as best he could. They faded back down the rise, into the shadows. They walked north, and then west. They didn’t speak until they’d traveled twice as far as their low voices would carry.
    “How many do you make out?” Marcus asked.
    Yardem spat thoughtfully.
    “Not more than seventy, sir,” he said.
    “That’s my count too.”
    The path was hardly more than a deer trail. Thin spaces in the trees. It wouldn’t be many weeks before the leaves of summer choked the path, but tonight their steps were muffled by well-rotted litter and a spring’s soft moss. The moon was no more than a scattering of pale dapples in the darkness under the leaves.
    “We could go back to the city,” Yardem said. “Raise a hundred men. Maybe a ship.”
    “You think Pyk would pay out the coin?”
    “Could borrow it from someone.”
    In the brush, a small animal skittered, fleeing before them as if they were a fire.
    “The one farthest from shore was riding lower than the others,” Marcus said.
    “Was.”
    “We come in with a ship, they’ll see us. It’ll be empty water by the time we’re there.”
    Yardem was quiet apart from a small grunt when his head bumped against a low branch. Marcus kept his eyes on the darkness, not really seeing. His legs shifted and moved easily. His mind gnawed at the puzzle.
    “If they see us coming on land,” he said, “they haul out boats and wave to us from the sea. We trap them on land in a fair fight with the men we have now, they have numbers and territory on us. We wait to get more sword-and-bows, and they may have moved on.”
    “Difficult, sir.”
    “Ideas?”
    “Hire on for an honest war.”
    Marcus chuckled sourly.
    His company was camped dark, but the sound of their voices and the smells of their food traveled in the darkness. He had fifty men of several races—otterpelted Kurtadam, black-chitined Timzinae, Firstblood. Even half a dozen bronzes-caled Jasuru hired on at the last minute when their contract as house guards fell through. It made for more tension in the camp, but the usual racial slurs were absent. They were Kurtadam and Timzinae and Jasuru, not clickers and roaches and pennies . And no one said a bad word about the Firstblood when it was a Firstblood