‘You are a mentally defective idiot of a Rhodian, you know.’
An entirely unexpected memory came to Crispin with the words forming slowly, retrieved from some lost corner of childhood. It was amazing, really, what the mind could dredge forth. At the most absurd moments. He had been stunned unconscious when he was about nine years old, playing ‘Siege’ with friends around and on top of a woodshed. He’d failed to repel a ferocious Barbarian assault from two older boys and had pitched from the shed roof, landing on his head among logs.
From that morning until the guardsmen of Queen Gisel had clapped a sack of flour over his head and clubbed him into submission the experience had not been repeated.
It had now, Crispin grasped through the miasma of an excruciating headache, been duplicated twice in the same autumn season. His thoughts were extremely muddled. For a moment he’d attributed the obscene words he’d just heard to Linon. But Lmon was sardonic not profane, she called him imbecile not idiot, spoke Rhodian not Sarantian, and she was gone.
Recklessly, he opened his eyes. The world shifted and heaved, appallingly. He closed them again quickly, near to throwing up.
‘A genuine fool,’ the heavy voice went on implacably. ‘Ought never to be allowed out of doors. What in holy thunder do you expect to happen when a foreigner-a Rhodian at that!-calls a Sarantine cavalry tribune a fart-faced goat-fucker in the presence of his own men?’
It wasn’t Linon. It was the soldier.
Carullus. Of the Fourth Sauradian. That was the swine’s name.
The swine went on, his tone a gross exaggeration of patience now. ‘Have you the least idea of the position you put me in? The Imperial army is entirely dependent on respect for authority . . . and regular payment, of course . . . and you left me next to no choice at all. I couldn’t draw a sword in a chapel. I couldn’t strike you with my fist… giving you far too much dignity. Flattening you with a helm was just about the only possible course. I didn’t even swing hard. Be grateful that I’m known for a kindly man, you snot-faced Rhodian prig, and that you’ve a beard. The bruise won’t show as much before it heals. You’ll be as ugly as you’ve always been, not more than that.’
Carullus of the Fourth chuckled. He actually chuckled.
He’d been slugged with a helmet. It was coming back to him. On the cheekbone and jaw. Crispin had a memory of a swift, heavy arm coming across, then nothing more. He attempted to move his jaw up and down, and then from side to side. A searing pain made him gasp, but movement was possible, it seemed. He continued to try opening his eyes at intervals, but the world insisted upon moving about in a sick-making fashion whenever he did.
‘Nothing’s broken,’ Carullus said easily. ‘Told you, I’m a good-natured man. Bad for discipline, but there it is. There it is. The god made me what I am. You really must not think you can walk the roads of the Sarantine Empire making insults-however clever-to the face of military officers in the presence of their troops, my western friend. I have fellow tribunes and chiliarchs who would have dragged you straight outside and run you through in the graveyard to save lugging your corpse anywhere. I, on the other hand, do not entirely subscribe to the general loathing and contempt for the sanctimonious, cowardly, shit-smeared Rhodian catamites that most soldiers of the Empire profess. I actually find you people amusing at times and, as I said before, I’m a kindly man. Ask my troops.’
Carullus, a tribune of the Sauradian Fourth, liked the cadences of his own voice, it appeared. Crispin wondered how and how soon he could kill this kindly man.
‘Where . .. am I?’ It hurt to talk.
‘In a litter. Travelling east.’
This information brought no inconsiderable relief: it seemed the world was indeed moving, and the perception of a weaving landscape and an up-and-down-bobbing military conversationalist beside him was not merely a product of his braincase having being rearranged again.
There was something urgent to be said. He struggled and then remembered what it was. Forced his eyes open again, finally grasping that