A Little Hatred (The Age of Madness #1) - Joe Abercrombie Page 0,132

rebels than we killed.’

Orso peered through his eyeglass towards Valbeck again. He could see tiny buildings, towers, pinprick chimneys, dark columns rising from the stricken city that he feared was the smoke of destruction rather than of industry.

How he would have loved to order a glorious charge. To put rebels to the sword, to root through every house until he found Savine. To whisk her off her feet and kiss her fiercely and so on, much to her great delight. To be, for once, the one to rush to her rescue. But Orso knew he had to put the children’s stories to one side and think.

She was tough. A great deal tougher than he was. She was resourceful. A great deal more resourceful than he was. Her best chance – everyone’s best chance – was for him to move slowly, cautiously and very, very boringly. He blew a sigh from puffed cheeks, itchy with the beginnings of a beard he hoped might look military but suspected would prove to be another of his many mistakes.

‘Attacking the city with an army would be like eating peas with a sword,’ he said. ‘Messy, frustrating and you’ve a good chance of stabbing yourself in the face. We need to be measured. Calm. The firm but necessary hand of authority. We need to be the grown-ups.’ For once in his life.

Orso snapped his eyeglass decisively closed. Vital to look decisive, especially when you haven’t a bloody clue what you’re doing. He had been making it up as he went along all his life, of course, but never before had the fates of many thousands of other people depended so directly on his total ignorance. Perhaps that’s what makes a hero, though. The towering self-confidence to dance at the brink of disaster and never consider the drop.

‘Surround the city,’ he said, tapping the eyeglass thoughtfully into his palm and letting his eyes wander across the fields around Valbeck. ‘Deploy our cannons where they can be clearly seen but not used. Block every route in or out, cut off their supply, make it abundantly clear that we are in charge.’

‘Then?’ asked Forest.

‘Then find out who’s leading the rebels and …’ He shrugged. ‘Invite them to parley.’

‘War is only ever a prelude to talk,’ came a voice. A man stood nearby, in neat civilian clothes. A man who Orso had, as far as he was aware, never laid eyes upon before. A nondescript man with curly hair and a length of wood in one hand. He smiled at Orso. ‘My master would thoroughly approve, Your Highness.’

As a crown prince, Orso was used to forgetting nine-tenths of the people he was introduced to, as well as to total strangers sticking their noses into his business, and so he remained scrupulously polite. ‘Pardon me, but I am not sure we have met …?’

‘This is Yoru Sulfur,’ offered Superior Pike. ‘A member of the Order of Magi.’

‘I was just now struggling to put out a fire in the North when the unmistakable tang of the Union in flames reached my nose.’ Sulfur smiled wider. ‘Never any peace, eh? Never the slightest peace.’

‘His Eminence the Arch Lector,’ said Pike, ‘as well as His Majesty your father, were very keen that Master Sulfur should join us.’

‘Merely to observe.’ Sulfur waved it away as if the favour of the Union’s two most powerful men was nothing to comment on. ‘And perhaps offer some trifling advice, if I can. As a representative of my master, Bayaz, First of the Magi. Pressing business detains him in the West, but the stability of the Union has ever been a prime concern of his, even so. Stability, stability, he’s always saying. A stable Union means a stable world. This business …’ And he shook his head sadly as he looked towards the smoke over Valbeck. ‘Is quite the opposite. Why, the very first thing they did was burn the bank.’

‘I … see,’ said Orso. Meaning that he did not see at all. He turned back to Forest, where things made at least a little more sense. ‘What was I saying?’

‘Surround the city, Your Highness.’

‘Ah, yes. Proceed!’

Forest gave a stiff salute and the orders rang out, followed by the tramp and jingle as the latest column of the Crown Prince’s Division left the road and fanned out into the fields to begin the encirclement.

‘Master Tallow?’ said Orso.

The boy crept forward. ‘Yes, sir, I mean, Your … er …’

‘Highness,’ threw in Tunny, grinning ever so slightly.

‘You’ve been in the