A King of the Isles was theoretically absolute; in practice there were always enough claimants that a monarch who angered enough of the powerful merchants and ship owners would find that the despotism was tempered by assassination and leavened by coup d’etat. He certainly wasn’t going to risk that for this Emerald’s untried notions. The potential payoff was certainly huge, though.
“Ah . . .” Adrian looked uncertain. “My lord King, this work will require considerable funds,” he said. “Even for demonstration purposes. How . . .”
Casull smiled at Enri and Pyhar Lowisson. “Your patrons will, of course—out of patriotic duty as well—loan you the funds at a reasonable rate of interest. No more than fifteen percent, annual, compounded.”
The two Islander merchants winced; that was the rate for a bottomry loan, with no premium for risk.
“If the weapons are satisfactory, I will reward you richly; and they shall have the interest doubled from the royal treasury, as well as my favor, of course.”
He beamed at the Emeralds and the two Islanders as well. Unspoken went the fact that if the weapons failed to satisfy they would get nothing, and the Lowissons could try as best they could to get satisfaction from their penniless guests.
Casull clapped his hands. “This audience is at an end!”
* * *
“By the Dog,” the mercenary officer said. “Has the King sent us a pretty boy for a party?”
“The King has sent me here to command,” Esmond said. “Name and rank.”
The mercenary turned crimson. “I’m Donnuld Grayn, and I command here now that Stenson’s dead, by the Dog!”
Esmond rested his hands on his sword belt and looked the man up and down. By his accent he came from Cable, ancient enemy of the Solingians—not that that mattered much, these days—and by his looks, scars upon scars, he’d been in this profession most of his thirty-odd years. And from the look of his bloodshot eyes . . .
“Are you usually drunk this early?” he said. “Or are you just naturally stupid?”
“Ahhhh,” the man said eagerly, his hand falling towards his sword hilt. “I’ll see your liver and lights for that, you mincing Solingian basta—”
The growl broke into a yelp as Esmond’s thumb and forefinger closed on his nose and gave it a powerful, exactly calculated twist. As he’d expected, the mercenary forgot all about his steel and lashed out with a knobby fist.
Esmond’s own hand slapped it aside, and his right sank its knuckles into his opponent’s gut with the savage precision of the palaestra. As the man doubled over, the Solingian stepped to one side and slammed another blow with the edge of a palm behind his ear. The mercenary dropped to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut and lay wheezing at the victor’s feet.
The victor looked up; there were a crowd of Strikers looking on, together with some of the camp followers and children that crowded the barracks. Some were smiling, some glaring, most wavering between the two.
“You!” Esmond said. “Name and rank, soldier.”
The man stiffened. “Eward, sir—file closer, second company.”
“Eward, get Captain Grayn to his quarters—he needs to sleep it off. Trumpeter,” he went on, “sound fall in.”
That took far too long, and he had to detail some of his own men to push the noncombatants out of the way. When it was finished there were about four hundred men standing on the pounded clay of the parade ground; it was surrounded on three sides by barracks, and on the fourth by a wall. Esmond paced down the ranks of the sweating, bewildered men, pausing now and then.
Not bad, he thought. About half-and-half javelineers and slingers. They all had linen corselets with thin iron plates sewn between the layers of cloth, shortswords, and light open-face bowl helmets. Most of them looked to be in reasonable condition, and King Casull certainly wouldn’t be wasting his silver on deadbeats. From what he’d heard, a lot of them would be men who’d left the Emerald cities for reasons of health, or on their relatives’ urgent advice; but war and the Confederacy had left a lot of broken men in the southern lands.