“You earned it,” Hansen said. “Shill did too.”
He looked toward the sky. It was cold, and the wind made his vision blur.
“I recognize your right to appoint whomsoever you please to positions of honor, your majesty,” Audemar said, his voice hoarse with suppressed anger.
“If you choose to make a warrior of limited status your left wing commander—and your new Lord of Thrasey!” Audemar bit the words out “—then that is your option, and I only hope you don’t regret it soon. But—”
The sun was low. Because there was a thin slice of clear sky near the horizon, the landscape was brighter than it had been this day before.
Malcolm turned from the battlesuit which stood upright at the head of the mound and walked toward the group around the king.
“—that’s for the future,” Audemar continued. He was about fifty years old, of middle height, and soft rather than precisely fat. “At the time the booty was taken, I was in charge—”
Hansen watched with no expression for a moment, then jerked the spade from the soil and also walked toward the king. Maharg was beside him.
“—and that means that the Lord of Thrasey’s armor is mine by right unless you claim it yourself. It’s a royal suit and even after repairs it will be superior to mine. Theref—”
Malcolm gripped Audemar by the shoulder with his left hand and spun the older man so that his cheek was in position for Malcolm’s broad right palm. The slap sounded like a treelimb breaking.
Audemar would have fallen, but Malcolm continued to hold him. The backhand bloodied Audemar’s nose.
Taddeusz started to move. Golsingh stopped him with a raised hand. “Wait,” the king said.
Hansen let the spade lie down along his right leg again.
“Listen, you bastard,” Malcolm said. He and the man he held were about of a weight, but Malcolm’s fury gave bulk to his greater height. “If you’d been worth shit yourself, we wouldn’t’ve had to bury Shill today, would we?”
“That old man was noth—” and the rest of the word vanished in a spray of blood from Audemar’s lips as Malcolm slapped him again.
Golsingh stepped between them. “That’s enough,” he said mildly.
His head turned to Audemar. “Audemar,” he went on in a tone of thin steel. “You have been informed of my decision. Further objection to it will be treason. Do you understand?”
Audemar spun and walked off. His steps were uncertain.
“Very good,” said Golsingh. The king’s eyes met Hansen’s. “Then we’ll return to last night’s encampment and set off for Peace Rock in the morning. There’s no point in trying to travel any distance now.”
Hansen nodded. “Yes, milord,” he said.
His throat was dry. He set the edge of the spade on the ground and drove it in a hand’s breadth, so that a slave could easily find it.
“Let’s go find somebody with a skin of beer,” Malcolm said to Hansen and Maharg. His voice had odd breaks and catches in it, as if he had crumbs in his throat.
At the head of the mound over Shill’s dead body, the late sunlight winked on the blue and silver majesty of the Lord of Thrasey’s battlesuit.
Chapter Twenty-one
“It’s customary after a battle, Lord Hansen . . . ,” said Krita as she leaned forward to fill his cup.
The breasts wobbling beneath the scooped neckline of her blouse were fuller than the taut planes of her face and her muscular limbs had led him to expect.
“. . . for a warrior to describe his own exploits. Not those of a—friend?”
“Shill was my friend, yes,” Hansen said coldly.
“Maybe he didn’t have any exploits to describe,” suggested Unn. “Is that it, Lord Hansen?”
“Krita, girl,” said Taddeusz from the opposite corner of the cross-table, “stop chattering while we’re trying to plan. And leave him alone anyway.”
Krita looked at Unn, balancing the beer pitcher on her hip. She was wearing red again, while Unn’s dress was of linen dyed the same rich blue as Shill’s eyes.
“I hear,” said Krita, as though she hadn’t heard her father speak, “that Hansen was one of Lord Malcolm’s greatest champions. And we know what a hero Malcolm was—”