“I’m a lord,” I replied, matching his stare and unable to keep the disgusted curl from my lips. “And the Lady is merciful in her forgiveness.”

  I saw a twitch in his face and a flex to his gauntleted hands that put an itch in mine. Rarely do I find myself detesting a man with such alacrity, but the Duke of Rhianvel had managed to win my hatred with just a scant few words. Not only words, I corrected myself, seeing the devotion blossoming in the duke’s gaze when Evadine spoke. What man does not hate his rival?

  “My lord Scribe speaks truth,” she told Viruhlis, though without any note of admonition. “Please, my lord, there has been enough conflict this night. Calm your people, for I wish to speak to them.”

  “As my lady commands.” Viruhlis bowed again and rose, turning to bark out a command to one of his banner men. “Sound the muster. Tell them that the Anointed Lady is safe. They will gather to hear her word.”

  “What of the captives, my lord?” the fellow asked, wheeling his horse about.

  “Bind them to await the Lady’s justice. But if that wretch Shelvane is among them, bring him to me.”

  Lord Shelvane, to my considerable surprise, had died fighting. Quite bravely too, by all accounts. When the Althiene line broke he spurred his horse into the gap, laying about with a mace until a Rhianvelan pikeman brought him down. The faithful mob that had followed their duke to the Lady’s side hadn’t stinted in mutilating Shelvane’s body, hacking off his head and limbs, which were then hung from the bridge. A squint of displeasure from Evadine had sufficed for Duke Viruhlis to order the gory decorations removed.

  The other foe to distinguish himself that night had been Lord Altheric Courlain, though not by dint of courage. Rather, it was the speed with which he had fled the field that aroused most comment, not least because he had left all but a handful of his soldiers dead or captive in his wake. While this led many in the Covenant Host to dub him the Craven Marshal, personally, I couldn’t fault his choice. When a fight is lost, why loiter in acceptance of your own demise? Better to run and hatch a plan for revenge. There was a crumb of comfort to be had in the fact that Altheric’s flight had spared his daughter the embarrassment of capturing her own father.

  There were three discrete contingents to the crowd that gathered to hear the Anointed Lady’s sermon that morning. The Covenant Host under Captain Swain were arranged in neat ranks to Evadine’s right. On the left stood Duke Viruhlis and his five companies of Rhianvelan ducal levies, two of horse and three of foot. In the centre were a yet greater number of common folk, and a decidedly unappealing spectacle they made. These were the accumulated mass of devoted faithful drawn from all corners of Rhianvel and beyond, for the Covenant has many outposts in the wild lands to the east. As with the crusaders of the Sacrifice March and the advance on Athiltor, there was little uniformity in their appearance, their garb ranging from ragged to rich. What marked them as different from other common crusaders was their wealth in weaponry and armour. It was mismatched and ill-organised, pike-wielders standing alongside bill-men and those with bows or crossbows scattered among the throng rather than clustered into companies. However, there were none without arms and, judging by the stains and scars that proliferated throughout this crowd, all had put them to use the night before.

  Before delivering perhaps her most famed address, Evadine rode Ulstan to the apex of the stone bridge’s arch. I must say that this event is one the painters and illuminators tend to get right. The sun was bright that morning but partially hidden behind a blanket of cloud driven by the northern winds. The way the sunlight shafted across the landscape made for a dramatically arresting backdrop as the Anointed Lady’s mount reared then settled. I heard a collective gasp from the crowd, flushed with anticipation. I fancy all present knew this moment to be the precipice. Here the final line would be crossed, and they did not fear it. Why would they, with the Risen Martyr, whose divine insight could not now be doubted, here to lead them to the ultimate glory of the Covenant?

  As was typical, her voice carried when she began to speak, yet I feel there was a new timbre to it that morning. Her sermons had never lacked for conviction, but always she allowed for nuance, for an acknowledgement of human frailty. The Anointed Lady’s words the morning after the Battle of Stonebridge held no such subtlety, nor would any of her subsequent proclamations.

  “To those of you who have marched with me this far,” she began, “I thank you. To those who have come to me now in this most dreaded hour, I thank you. But also, I must warn you. The path before us will be bloody. The task set to us by the Seraphile demands every ounce of strength we can muster, for our enemy is cunning, and vile in their cunning. Here, they tried to trap me, setting my own father as my captor. Measure their vileness in the way in which they set father against daughter, as they set brother against brother, for the soil of this land is seeded by the graves that are the harvest of the Algathinets’ endless wars. But this is merely a minor facet of their evil.”

  She paused, stiffening in the saddle as if reluctant to impart ugly but necessary truths. “Know that it has been revealed to me that the one who terms herself princess regent has been a servant of the Malecite since childhood. She it was who steered her father into tyranny. She it was who whispered poison into the ear of her own brother so that he might sink this realm into the mire of war. She it was who murdered her own husband with poison. Yes, friends, it is true. The one who would govern this land is a murderous servant of the Malecite and her blighted blood also runs in the veins of the child she would set upon the throne. Henceforth, as Risen Martyr and the voice of the Covenant Resurgent, I decree that we have no king. The Algathinet dynasty has been judged by the Seraphile as unfit to rule.”

  She paused, closing her eyes as if to gather strength, a woman compelled to accept the most burdensome task. When she spoke again, her voice held the faintest catch, but all still heard this signal of profound sorrow. From this moment, all who followed her would understand that the Anointed Lady’s subsequent actions were not her fault. Every death that marked the line of our march from now on could be laid at the Algathinets’ door alone, for they had driven the Risen Martyr to these inevitable, inescapable extremes.

  “Friends,” she said, opening her eyes to let the love she held for her adherents shine forth, “I have been commanded to bear a weight I never asked for. I have never wanted power. I have never wanted to rule, but the Seraphile have seen fit to place this task upon my shoulders and I’ll not shirk it. Let this day mark the dawn of a new age, for I stand before you not just the Risen Martyr, but also the Ascendant Queen!”

  The crowd’s roar was unnerving in its immediacy. Every soul, with the exception of myself, the Widow, and Lilat, let out a wordless shout of affirmation. Weapons rose in a waving forest of blades. The faces of the common crusaders radiated a pitch of manic adulation that even Evadine’s most captive audiences hadn’t yet matched.

  She let the roar continue for only a short time before raising her hand for silence. Usually, it would take a moment or two for the shouts to dwindle, but now the hush descended with the swiftness of an axe blade. I have pinpointed several contenders for the precise genesis of what I term the wrenching; the shift of sentiment and thought that would cause my path to veer in so wild a course. Now I come to write these words, I believe it truly began that morning. It wasn’t just that I heard her lie where before she spoke truth, albeit her version of truth. It wasn’t just this new certainty that seemed to exude from her every pore. No, it was the people. The way they fell so absolutely silent at this woman’s mere gesture. All of them, from the Covenant Host to the Rhianvelan levies and the mass of common faithful, wore the same tense, expectant, hungry expression. Evadine’s facility for compelling others to her will had disturbed me before. Now I found it stirred what I can only call terror. It was a deep, pulse-pounding, sweat-inducing realisation that no soul should ever wield such power. I still loved her, of course. I still rushed to cloak my fear in comforting lies, but I know now this was the moment. I also know myself a coward for not walking away at that very instant.

  “As your Ascendant Queen,” Evadine continued, “I require that your service be consecrated by an oath made in the sight of the Seraphile. Will you kneel and swear yourselves to me now?”

  They knelt as one. Duke Viruhlis and his levies, all the captains and soldiers of the Covenant Host and the great horde of adoring crusaders, dropped to one knee and lowered their heads in supplication. And I. I knelt too. As I did so, I saw both the Widow and Lilat failing to follow suit. Juhlina’s face was set with hard suspicion while Lilat’s expression was one of puzzled amusement at the whole bizarre episode.

  “Kneel!” I hissed at them both, meeting the Widow’s eye and jerking my head at the crowd. Any glimmer of heresy before the eyes of this worshipful mob might have fatal consequences. Brows heavy and jaw bunching, Juhlina consented to kneel and lower her head. Lilat followed her example, mouth quirking as she smothered a laugh.

  “Will you swear,” Evadine said, voice modulated to one of hard formality, “to serve me in both war and peace?”

  Once again the response was instantaneous. The accumulation of voices spoke with such unity it was as if this had been rehearsed. “I so swear!”

  “Will you swear to follow the Martyrs’ example with your every deed and thought!”

  “I so swear!”

  “Will you swear to staunch no effort nor spare no strength in our cause? Will you swear to fight every foe and triumph over every host brought against us?”

  “I so swear!”

  It became a chant when Evadine raised her arms in an invitation for her adherents to rise, and rise they did. Feet stamping and weapons brandishing with each repeated shout, the sound of it echoing so loud I wondered if Leannor heard it all the way off in Couravel.

  “I so swear! I so swear! I SO SWEAR!”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “Strike now, my queen. Strike with all we have.”

  In the scant few hours since first meeting him, Duke Viruhlis had, wittingly or not, endeavoured to provide me with yet more reasons to dislike him. Not least of which was the implacable, doubt-free manner in which he offered our new monarch advice. The fact that Evadine was so willing to listen irked me even more.

  She frowned in attentive silence as the duke continued to set forth his stratagem. We had taken over the largest domicile in Stonebridge, a two-tiered house positioned near the bridge. The place was probably considered a mansion in this village, but felt like a cramped hovel with so many captains crammed inside to attend the Ascendant Queen’s council of war. The house had been the home of a man known as the Tollmaster, a title that afforded him authority over the village and surrounding lands, as well as a generous share of the coin paid by those traversing the bridge. Whoever this functionary had been, he and most of his villagers had wisely taken to their heels when the Covenant Host appeared on the western horizon two mornings prior. Those few who remained consisted of stubborn or infirm old folk and their brave younger kin.

  The assembled captains clustered around a large rosewood dining table. There were eight in all, including, somewhat to my irritation, the Rhianvelan twins who now rarely strayed more than a few feet from Evadine’s side. Discussion inevitably centred on our next course of action, causing me to express some annoyance at the fact that no one had thought fit to bring a map from Athiltor.

  “The Covenant Library is rich in all the charts we could ever need,” I said, gaze lingering on Swain. Of all Evadine’s captains, I credited him with the most sense. Duke Viruhlis, however, found our want of maps of no concern at all.

  “Here is Couravel,” he said, reaching across the dining table to place a bottle in its centre. “Here is Stonebridge,” he added, setting a goblet down at the other end. “We must march from one to the other with all dispatch, defeating any enemy who seeks to bar our path. I know the way to Couravel well, Lord Scribe. Therefore, a map would seem unnecessary given the simplicity of our task.”

  “Marching immediately for Couravel has the benefit of surprise,” I conceded, “but also invites battle. Leannor was foolish to gamble so much on this trap, but she can still muster substantial numbers.”

  “And a swift march will deny her the time to do so,” the duke insisted, addressing his words to Evadine. “If numbers are a concern, I’ve little doubt the good folk of this realm will rise to the Ascendant Queen’s cause. Have not thousands already done so?”

  And much good it did them, I thought. “We gathered many to our banner on the road to Athiltor,” I said. “But not so many as when we marched north from Alundia. The commons are weary of war and wish only to be left in peace. Our seat of power is in Athiltor, where the most ardent followers of the Risen Martyr continue to gather. My queen, I must counsel a delay while we build our host into something the Algathinets will have no hope of contesting.”

  “It won’t be long before the autumn rains come,” the duke persisted, unblinking gaze still locked on Evadine. “Spelling an end to campaigning until the winter frost, and that brings its own bundle of obstacles to moving an army. The chance to end this war with but one stroke lies before us, my queen. We must take it.”

  Evadine’s eyes slipped from the bottle to the goblet and back again, her face showing only calm reflection. “My thanks for your counsel, my lords,” she said. “The choice betwixt caution and risk is ever a fraught one.” She favoured me with a smile. “Yet, we must remember that we act with the Seraphiles’ blessing, something that negates all risk.” She rapped her knuckles to the table and stood back. “We march for Couravel today. Captain Swain, you will return to Athiltor to muster all forces that may be found there. Once mustered, march south and join your strength to ours with all speed.”

  “As you command, my queen,” Swain said, bowing.

  Evadine turned to me, her manner one of a queen addressing a minor functionary. I understood the need for artifice, especially since our secret appeared to be so widely known. But still, it stung. “Lord Alwyn, you will take your company and scout the approaches to the capital. If the false princess is determined upon a battle, it would be best to discover where she intends to meet us, don’t you think?”

  I resisted the urge to glance at Viruhlis, knowing the triumph I saw on his face would transform my chafed pride into anger. Instead, I put a bland half-smile on my lips and bowed low. “Indeed so, my queen.”

  It irked me then, as it irks me now, to admit that Duke Viruhlis was right and I was wrong. For the commons did rise to the Risen Martyr’s cause, not in their dozens as they had during the latter stages of our advance on Athiltor. But in their hundreds, and, as we drew nearer to Couravel, in their thousands.

  I cannot fully account for it. But, by the time the spire of the Couravel cathedral jutted above the southern horizon, the ever-growing multitude had formed a vast, miles-long sprawl in the Ascendant Queen’s wake. I knew some were stirred by old grievances against the Algathinets or their favourites. Others were the simpletons that will join any crowd and chant any creed, drawn by nothing more than the lure of belonging. A smaller number consisted of, I’ve no doubt, those hopeful of a share in the loot that would surely be plentiful in the aftermath of the capital’s fall. But most came for Evadine. She spoke and they believed her. Her sermons were once again regular affairs, sometimes two or three times a day, and never did she fail to rouse them to the same repeated exhortation: “I so swear! I so swear! I so swear!”

  “It’s not just devotion, my lord,” Quintrell opined as we watched another hundred or so villagers abandon their homes to join the thousands on the road. “Nor can it entirely be ascribed to the queen’s oratory, impressive as it is.”

  “Then what is it?” I enquired, watching with dispirited impotence as a young woman with a babe in her arms hurried into the throng and disappeared from sight. She carried no provisions that I could see and her garb was scant protection against the weather. As with the Sacrifice March, many ill-prepared or elderly followers had fallen out of the march. The first bodies had appeared the day before, just a few, but I knew there would be a great deal more before this was over.

  “Change,” the minstrel said. “A great and profound shift in the order of this realm is at hand, and they know it. They sense it, even if they can’t explain how or why. The scales of the world have tilted, and we have the good fortune to be on the weightier side.”

  I said nothing, knowing that the rewards many of these folk would receive amounted to hunger, sickness or, should they have the misfortune to face battle, death. Still, I took some comfort from Quintrell’s judgement.

  “You’ve no doubt as to our victory, then?”

  “None at all. I’ve travelled far and witnessed the fall of kings before. It always starts like this. Kings, queens and emperors often make the mistake of seeing the nobility as the source of all threats. But it is among the commons that the true peril lies. Loyal or cowed nobles will not save them when they can no longer count upon the quietude of their people.”

  The minstrel’s optimism was borne out by the absence of Crown patrols ahead of our line of march. The Scout Company ranged widely, finding only churls at work or hurrying to join the march. Of soldiers, they found none. Leannor must have had word of Altheric’s failure by now. It had probably been delivered by the lord marshal himself, along with an abject apology, if he had any sense. It was my firm expectation that he, or, more likely, Sir Ehlbert, would muster all the forces at their disposal and advance to meet us. I considered the line of low hills ten miles north of the capital to be the most apt spot, as any astute commander will always seek to overlook their foe. But the Ascendant Host, as it was now called, crested this ridge without incident.