The Trouble with Peace (The Age of Madness #2) - Joe Abercrombie Page 0,183

would delight in a tour, but I hope you will forgive me…” Orso tipped his circlet towards the ladies and gentlemen and kept his horse moving ever so gently northwards. Stop for one moment, and they have you. “Rebellions don’t crush themselves, you know!”

“Of course, Your Majesty!” The mayor took a few shuffling steps after him. “If there is anything you need, you have only to ask. Anything at all!”

“Ten thousand soldiers and an accurate weather forecast?” muttered Orso, under his breath.

“The honour is quite indescribable.” Tunny mimicked the mayor’s delivery with uncanny accuracy.

“Believe it or not, there are still people in the world not yet sick of the sight of me.”

“I wonder if he’ll reckon it such a privilege when his town hosts one of the largest battles ever fought on Union soil.”

“My dear Corporal Tunny, you underestimate the sycophancy of the stout Midderland burgher. My guess is he will still be happily genuflecting when arrows darken the sky…”

Jokes made him feel a little better, especially ones in poor taste, but they seemed rather foolish in light of the spectacle as they emerged from the town. There must have been thousands of men working furiously in the fields to the north. Men of the Crown Prince’s Division, fortifying a great crescent between the gentle hill and the steep bluff, sharpening stakes, shoring up walls, throwing up barricades, digging trenches and pits.

Overseeing the work with the same total lack of emotion with which he had once overseen the hanging of two hundred Breakers, white clothes pristine in the afternoon sun, was Arch Lector Pike.

Orso reined in beside him, surveying the vast building site. “Hard at work, Your Eminence?”

“Indeed, Your Majesty. I find men rarely work with such tireless dedication as when their lives depend on the results.”

On their left, the river drained into boggy shallows and was met by another stream with orchards planted on both banks. Over to the right, fields thick with ripe spring wheat sloped gently away towards woodland. In the centre, straight ahead, the crops had just been harvested, a patchwork of stubbled fields turned rich brown by the recent rains. A great cloud of starlings twisted in the sky, pouring down into the trees around a farm a mile or two away, then whirling up into the haze again.

Orso swallowed. There seemed to be something of a lump in his throat. “So this will be our battlefield.”

“I doubt we’ll find a better,” said Forest.

Orso shaded his eyes, peering north towards a single hill on the far side of the fields, a building jutting from its summit.

“What’s that tower there?”

“An old fortified manor house,” said Pike. “Belongs to a Lord Steebling. Minor nobility.”

“Bad luck for him,” murmured Orso. He thought he caught the twinkle of steel. “We have men there? Watching for the enemy, I suppose.”

“Those are the enemy, Your Majesty.”

“What?”

“Their first scouts.” Forest rubbed at his grizzled jaw. “Even with the roads in the state they are, their main body should be with us before sunset.”

“Bloody hell…” breathed Orso. That brought it all home, somehow. There they were, rebels fixed on his destruction, with only a few miles of flat Midderland earth between them. “When can we expect reinforcements?”

“A detachment just arrived from the Siege School in Ratshoff,” said Tunny. “They brought twenty-four cannon with them.”

“Don’t those things have a nasty habit of blowing up?” The flash as Curnsbick’s engine exploded was unpleasantly fresh in Orso’s mind.

“I’m assured these new ones are more reliable…” Though Forest looked less than convinced. There had not been much to rely on of late.

“Three loyal members of the Open Council are a few miles away to the west.” Pike pointed off beyond the orchards. “Lords Stenner, Crant and Ingenbeck, with perhaps a thousand men between them.”

“And we expect two regiments of King’s Own from the east.” Forest stood in his stirrups and frowned towards the gentle hill, the wind making waves in the long grass on its flanks. “Might get here during the night, maybe the morning. Lord Marshal Rucksted is bringing four more in from the south, mostly cavalry. Forced march from Keln and they’ve a lot of ground to cover. If we’re lucky and the weather holds, they might get here late tomorrow, but… well…”

“You wouldn’t want to bet a kingdom on it?” ventured Orso, turning at the sound of hooves behind. “Ah, Inquisitor Teufel! So glad you could join us.” She did not look very glad to be joining them, but then Orso had never seen