Kingmaker (8 page)

She put the kabash on that right away. These soldiers might not recognize the Glock as a weapon, but they would certainly recognize the sound of a gunshot. Nobody was going to believe the old thunderbolt miracle gimmick. Besides, shooting up Sergius's army wasn't going to help anyone.

She bowed to the swordsman who returned the favor. “One touch?"

"If you wish."

"The army is small enough as it is. I don't wish to hurt you and I certainly don't want to get hurt myself."

He laughed. “Perhaps you should be a soldier, then, princess. None of us wants to get hurt either."

She didn't think much of the idea of an army career. She hadn't seen any women in the army that had marched past them and Lubica was supposed to be relatively liberated for this world.

"At your pleasure, then,” she said.

The tough-looking soldier advanced slowly. Unlike Arnold and the King who fought with fencing sabers more suitable for duels and scars than for warfare and death, this soldier carried a shortsword similar to the Roman gladius but with a substantial cross-guard. It wasn't a pretty weapon but it looked effective. So much so that Ellie wasn't sure she would survive a first touch.

She drew her own blade and went on guard. She needed to take full advantage of her weapon's greater length.

"You may attack first,” the swordsmaster said.

As if attacking would give her an advantage. In fact, her attack would tell him about her technique, close the distance between the two of them, and let him take advantage of his years of training recruits.

She simply smiled. Her blade was slightly heavier than his, and he was stronger than she, but she'd trained in holding her stance for hours at a time and swinging thousands of cuts each day. She wasn't in any hurry.

"I'd think a princess like you would want to give the men a show."

He put an emphasis on the word princess. As if he doubted her claim. She wasn't sure she believed it either so she wasn't much offended. Besides, whatever her parents had been, she'd been raised in a democracy. She didn't have a lot of use for titles and royalty although she, like most of her friends, had occasionally lusted over the cute British princes.

Instead of talking, she shifted her stance. With the katana, as with all martial arts, offense and defense are closely linked. A good defensive stance is one that you can attack from. An effective offense is one that allows you to control your opponent and defends you from his counter.

She moved slowly, brushing her katana against his shortsword but putting no muscle into it, letting the weight of her sword rest on his arm.

He flicked her blade away.

She let his energy give her sword speed, not fighting it, but directing it into a cut.

He batted that away as well, this time keeping contact with her sword and twisting as he extended her reach.

It would have been a nice disarm, but her father had taught her that technique. She relaxed through it, then flipped her wrist to free her sword and bring the edge back into play.

He parried, then backed away, a wolfish grin on his face. “Okay, you know something about the sword."

And so did he. Against most opponents she'd faced, her counter would have landed. He was so strong that he moved his heavy shortsword like a fencing foil, using his fingers rather than his entire wrist and arm to change its orientation.

"Let's put on a show, then,” she suggested.

He glared at her. She didn't need magic to follow his thoughts. And they flowed quickly. He needed to figure her angle before he could respond. Finally he smiled. “You want to show them that you're not just a figurehead, right princess?"

"Right now I'm worth more to the bishop as a dead saint than as a living soldier. I'd like to change that."

"We can use good soldiers so I'll play along. If you try anything, though, first blood is going to be bloody. And it won't be mine."

She could get to like this guy. “Agreed. I'm Ellie."

"Dafed."

She launched a series of attacks.

To most of the viewers, they would appear genuine. To less well-trained soldiers, they would have been fatal. To Dafed or another serious martial artist, they were just slow enough to be easy. Opportunities to show off his skill or demonstrate techniques that he might only really use in an emergency.

He parried and riposted each, but he also dropped into the slightly exaggerated style of the teacher rather than the killer she knew him to be. Giving her the same chances, letting her make moves that she wouldn't make in a real fight because they were a little too complicated, a little too cute. In a real fight, the rule is to kill and keep moving.

After a few minutes, the sounds of conversation vanished and Ellie could feel the concentration of several thousand soldiers. The energy of their concentration filled her with strength. It was exciting, intoxicating and more than a little humbling.

She and Dafed sparred, trained rather, for a good ten minutes before Dafed took a step back, wiped his forehead, which, Ellie noticed, wasn't sweating, and smiled.

"That was fun. Now, though, we go to work."

She didn't think she could beat him. Mark had been right about his skill. Although she had the advantage of generations of Samurai warrior tradition, Dafed had been training with the sword for as long as she'd been alive. And any warrior culture can develop plenty of its own tricks and techniques with the sword. The basic reality of the sword is this: techniques that don't work don't survive to be taught to students.

Still, just because she didn't think she could win didn't mean she intended to roll over for Dafed.

She stepped forward, putting her weight behind her strike, let Dafed's parry beat her blade off target, ducked under his riposte, and then switched hands on her blade, grasping his wrist with her freed right hand and attempting a wrist take-down while, simultaneously striking with the sword in her left hand.

She not only failed at her takedown, Dafed was so strong he tore himself free of her grip and struck. The tip of his blade rested on his throat.

"First touch?"

"Look down,” she said.

His eyes followed her gaze to where her katana brushed against his thigh. Its ultrasharp blade had sliced through the leather of his trousers and brushed against the naked skin underneath.

"With your left hand. Very nice."

"You weren't so bad yourself. Shall we call this a draw, then?"

Dafed laughed. “Why not. Bring your friend and come meet some of my troop. Oh, but leave the bishop. He doesn't know how to party."

The bishop went back to Moray but he left Lawgrave to keep his eyes on Ellie and Mark.

Dafed led the three of them to a group of tents. Unlike most of those in the camp, these were surrounded by a wooden palisade and a small trench lined with caltrops.

"Expecting an attack?” Mark asked. His facility with the language was progressing faster than Ellie could have imagined. Helped, she figured, by the several hours a day he spent with Arnold's sisters.

"Doing our best to make sure there isn't one,” Dafed answered. “With the good bishop in charge of our army, we never have a clue where the enemy is, what they'll do next, or even, half the time, who the next enemy will be."

He called for wine, bread and cheese and introduced Ellie and Mark to the other sergeants in his force.

Once the food had been brought, he put Ellie at the head of an oversized table and took a deep drink from a mug of wine the size of a fire bucket. “So, what's the plan, princess?"

Ellie almost looked around but she was the only female there. “Huh?"

"Come on. Just now you as good as told the bishop to lose himself so you burned that bridge. The bishop's big deal about you being the miracle princess means that the Dukes will be looking for you. And even if you weren't on the King's side, the Rissel will declare you a witch and a heretic once they get word of what happened here today. And they're probably getting word about now, because this camp leaks like a sieve. So, either you're a complete idiot or you have some plan. I'm hoping you're not an idiot."

Ellie hoped that too. “Can I ask you a few questions first?"

"Ask away. That's why I brought the other sergeants in."

"I'm going to be straight with you, Dafed. You may not believe the bishop's story about the once and future princess but I'm from a long ways away. I don't know much about the situation here and I more information before I can figure out what to do next. So let's start with the uncles. How many are there, are their factions among them, and who has the biggest army?"

"You'll have to ask your ex-friend the bishop for the political scoop,” Dafed said. “But in terms of armies and proximity, only two of the four surviving brothers mean anything. Duke Harrison to the north and Duke Sullivan to the south are the keys. Either one of them outnumbers us about four to one. Together they'd roll us up like a cheap scroll. Separately they're afraid to move because we'd do enough damage that whoever attacks first will be easy prey to whichever brother waits. Assuming the Rissel didn't step in first."

"Okay. About the Rissel. Do they have a favorite?"

"For the past hundred years, Lubica soldiers have been marching all over Rissel. I don't think they care who wins as long as we're stomped into the ground and worse off than we ever made them. Of course, they do want to make sure we hew to the orthodox faith."

"I thought they were extremists."

"That's what the bishop calls them. They call themselves orthodox and say the bishop is a schismatic."

"How big is their army?"

Dafed shrugged. “Nobody knows. Mostly they've sent over engineers to help with sieges and to garrison some of the port cities. But Rissel is about ten times as big as Lubica and they've got money to hire every mercenary from here to Zen."

Okay, Dafed was a font of information, but none of the information could remotely be called good news. If anything, the bishop's reading of the situation had been optimistic.

"One more question, then. What's the situation with our own army? Besides being outnumbered, I mean."

Dafed muttered something but decided not to answer that question himself. Instead, he had each of the sergeants, who, it turned out weren't just from his unit but from all of the significant mercenary companies, and let them run through the arithmetic.

The arithmetic and the situation were both dismal. Between desertion and usual casualties, the army was losing about ten percent of its force every month.

"How does that relate to new soldiers coming in?"

"The ten percent is net, after the new soldiers,” Dafed answered. “Our quality is deteriorating almost as fast as our numbers. Sometimes I think the Rissel think of us as a free training program rather than an enemy, because they hire most of our deserters. The ones worth having, anyway."

"So if we're going to do something,” Ellie concluded, “we'd better do it now."

"Not now. Now we drink. Tomorrow we plan. Thursday we'll have to do something."

A good plan should be simple, have clear milestones, and allow a fallback position if it is unsuccessful.

Their plan had none of these elements.

Dafed and Ellie, along with four of Dafed's fellow sergeants, snuck into Moray an hour after sunset on Wednesday. Mark stayed back in the army camp watching over Lawgrave, who was comfortably sleeping away the effects of a glass of wine spiked with a local drug that seemed identical to opium.

The city gates closed with sunset, but Dafed had trained most of the guards. One of those guards dropped down a line and Ellie and the sergeants swarmed up.

Inside, they split up. Two of the sergeants went to spring Arnold and his sisters. Ellie, Dafed, and the other two headed straight for the keep.

The bishop used a combination of foreign mercenaries and martial monks to guard the keep so Dafed couldn't use any of his contacts to get inside. Instead, they bowled over the guards at the front door, tied them up, and left the two sergeants to guard their way out.

She'd sparred with the King in his personal chambers and she led Dafed straight there.

Two guards at the door saw them coming and took off.

"Not the best security,” Dafed muttered. They were the first words either of them had said since they'd reached the city wall. “If we were assassins, Lubica would have a new king about now."

"As it is, we've got about one minute until we're covered in the guards they'll summon."

Dafed put his shoulder to the door, burst through, and tossed the king over his shoulder. “Mission one accomplished. Ready for mission two?"

Ellie knew they should bolt and run. But they wouldn't get another chance this good. She nodded.

Sergius looked like an oversized baby slung across Dafed's back. “Put me down, idiot"

"Shut up, King.” Dafed's bass rumble would have inspired fear in a much braver man than the King. “We need you, but we don't need you conscious."

"I'll meet you at the front gate,” Ellie said.

"Right."

He jogged off, the King, now silent, still slung over his shoulder.

Ellie veered toward the throne room.

It should have been empty. With the king absent, no one had any reason to be there.

She disarmed the two guards who stood outside, giving each a knock on the head that she hoped wouldn't result in permanent damage, and burst through in time to see the bishop, sitting on the throne, wearing the king's crown.

"Big ambitions, your excellence?"

The man gobbled at her. “What are you doing here?"

"We're going to fight your war for you, but we need something."

"What's that?"

She drew her katana and thrust it toward the bishop's head. At the last minute, she gave her wrist a slight flick, caught the crown off his head, and flipped it to herself. “This."

"A king is crowned with the consent of the church, the nobility, and the army,” Ellie shouted to the gathered troops. They weren't sure what was going on but they looked to be in a lot better spirits than they had the last time they'd been gathered together—three days earlier when the bishop had appeared with his latest miracle.