The Trouble with Peace (The Age of Madness #2) - Joe Abercrombie Page 0,186

daylight.”

Antaup handed Leo the eyeglass. “Our men are nearly ready to go.”

“Good old Anglanders,” said Leo, watching their orderly columns tramp from the road and form neat battle lines at the base of the hill, the flags they’d fought under across the North and back flying overhead. Made him proud to see them. Made him proud to lead them. He scanned the fields they might soon be advancing across and caught sight of another flag, coming fast towards them. A white horse on a golden sun, flashing and twinkling at the head of two dozen armoured men.

“The Steadfast Standard,” murmured Leo.

Antaup raised his brows. “Looks like His Majesty wants to talk.”

Leo couldn’t have asked for a more splendid group around him: Lords Isher and Barezin and a good twenty other members of the Open Council, Lord Mustred and a dozen other noblemen of Angland, as well as Stour’s man Greenway and Rikke’s man Hardbread. And yet he felt very much alone as the king’s standard-bearer reined in his snorting mount on the hillside, the Steadfast Standard snapping majestically with the breeze and two dozen Knights of the Body in full battle armour clattering to a halt behind. He was a grizzled old veteran with a glint in his eye and a relaxed style in the saddle, but he produced the most impeccable salute Leo ever saw. Crisp, elegant, no self-regarding flourish. The lords of the Open Council, festooned with enough braid between them to rig a fleet, could’ve learned a thing or two about what a real soldier looked like.

“Your Grace! My lords of the Open Council! Representatives of the North! I’m Corporal Tunny, standard-bearer to the High King of the Union, His August Majesty King Orso the First. Colonel Gorst, Commander of the Knights of the Body, I believe you all know.”

Being dragged from the Lords’ Round by his boyhood hero had taken away none of Leo’s admiration for the man. Had increased it, if anything. He was slightly hurt that Gorst sat frowning into the distance without even glancing in his direction.

“Corporal… Tunny?” Barezin’s jowls trembled as he scornfully raised his chin. “They’re wasting our time!”

“It’s his message that matters,” grumbled Mustred, “not his rank.” Leo would happily have swapped a few armchair generals for corporals of long experience.

“I’ve dabbled with higher, my lords,” said Tunny, grinning, “but it never suited me. Carrying His Majesty’s standard is as much honour as I can manage.”

“The Steadfast Standard,” Leo found he’d murmured, with not a little awe.

Tunny grinned up fondly at it. “The very one King Casamir rode under when he delivered Angland from the savages. Makes you think about the Union’s proud history. All that the provinces owe to the Crown.”

Leo frowned. “If men like Casamir still wore the crown, I daresay we’d have no quarrel.”

“Fancy that. No quarrel is exactly what His Majesty wants. In the hopes of getting there, he’s invited you to dinner.” Tunny gave Leo’s sprawling collection of allies a faintly amused glance. “Just the two of you, though, he wouldn’t want the conversation to wander too far from the matter.”

“Which would be?” asked Isher.

“Your demands and his possible concessions to those demands. The king knows men of your quality wouldn’t lead soldiers against him without legitimate grievances. His Majesty is fully prepared to fight, but he wishes at all costs to avoid shedding Union blood on Union soil.”

“He’s playing for time,” burst out Barezin. “I’ve a mind to order my men across those bloody fields and take my dinner in bloody Stoffenbeck without his bloody invitation!”

Steebling, the old lord who owned the ruinous tower-house, sitting nearby with a gouty leg up on a stool, threw in an unhelpful snort of contempt.

“I’ll give the orders,” growled Leo, and Barezin sank grumpily into the roll of fat under his chin. “Please convey my thanks to His Majesty. He’ll have my answer within the hour.”

Tunny drew himself up in the saddle to deliver that exhibition of a salute again, then whisked his horse masterfully about and bore the king’s radiant standard back towards Stoffenbeck. You couldn’t deny it was a hell of a flag. Perhaps when this was over it would have to go back to Angland, where it belonged.

“We should attack at once,” growled Barezin, with a warlike flourish of his fist. “Eh, Isher? We should attack!” Some of the more aggressive lords manfully grumbled their agreement. Easy for them to say, they’d attacked nothing more dangerous than a pork chop in their lives.

Isher fidgeted with