Sadness, because his brother Esmond no longer participated in that ancient and treasured ritual of Emerald daily life. Since Esmond had recovered from the wounds Adrian inflicted on him during their duel, his brother had restricted himself exclusively to the company of the Southron tribesmen who had adopted him as one of their champions. (Esmond’s defeat in the duel had not been held against him. All tribesmen except Reedbottoms considered slings a fundamentally sneaky weapon.) He exchanged fewer than twenty words a week to any Emerald, even the soldiers who had once been his own troops.
On the other hand, Esmond’s self-imposed exile had been a blessing for Adrian, from a tactical point of view. At one time, when they served under King Casull of the Isles, Esmond had been the commander of the so-called “Sea Striker regiment of Emerald Free Companions.” Hired killers would have been a more accurate term. Although most of the five hundred Strikers were Emerald in origin, they had taken service as mercenaries with the islanders.
All of them, with only a few exceptions, had accompanied Esmond and Adrian to Marange—as had every single member of Adrian’s own unit of two hundred arquebusiers, the “Lightning Band.” Counting the small horde of camp followers who had attached themselves to the two mercenary units, Adrian and Esmond had brought well over two thousand people with them to Marange.
The loyalties of the Lightning Band had never been in doubt, given a rupture between Adrian and Esmond. Adrian’s brother had been quite willing to use the Band’s special skills in battle. But he’d never shown any particular fondness or interest in their newfangled gunpowder gadgetry, other than for the effects they could produce. They were Adrian’s men, pure and simple.
With the Strikers, the situation was more complicated. They were lightly armored infantrymen, using traditional weapons—basically, javelins and slings for missiles and short swords for close-in work. Once Esmond had established his authority among them, the Strikers had taken to him quite warmly. Esmond really was a superb battlefield commander, even leaving aside his charismatic personality. Under his command, the Strikers had won much booty and suffered relatively few casualties in the doing.
Under normal circumstances, they would surely have sided with Esmond against Adrian. But Esmond’s increasing madness had driven them away. Not his cruelties, so much as his rapid adoption of Southron manners. Mercenaries or not, most of the Strikers were Emeralds—and Emeralds, in their own way, were the world’s most notorious cultural conservatives. Whether or not any individual Emerald mercenary soldier had ever read any of the Emerald philosophers, he respected those who had. The fact that Esmond was a cultured man from a good Emerald family had counted for much with them. As much, truth to tell, as the fact that Esmond had been a winner in the Pan-Emerald Games.
After the duel, however, Esmond’s break from Emerald customs had been rapid and extreme. As soon as he had recovered sufficiently from his wounds, Esmond had even insisted on undergoing the scarification ritual in order to become officially adopted into the Grayhills, the largest tribe of the barbarians and the one whose chief, Norrys, had just been elected as Chief of Chiefs of the loose Southron confederation. He had begun growing his hair to the length needed for the elaborate hairstyles favored by Southron warriors, and had stopped coming to the public baths altogether. Those who had spoken with him in recent weeks said he was beginning to smell as ripe as any barbarian.
That had been too much for the Strikers. Some of the Strikers were themselves Southron in origin—the Strikers, like all mercenary outfits, had people from all over the world. But even most of them had decided to give their allegiance to Adrian. Having spent some years in a largely Emerald cultural environment, most of the former barbarians had no desire to go back to a Southron lifestyle. As one of them put it to Adrian: “It’s hard to give up the habit of being clean, once you’ve learned the trick. Dirt and grease itch, dammit.”
So, in the end, not more than thirty Strikers had broken ranks with the others and gone with Esmond. And then all of them except Southrons came scampering back the next day, after discovering that Esmond expected them to undergo the same bloody rituals. The rest of the unit, at a formal vote, had decided to give their allegiance to Adrian.