“It is a plausible lie,” Remin agreed dryly. “Do it. Pull the men off the Valleth border rather than from Tresingale. They’ll be less noticeable.”
“I’ll see to it,” Tounot offered. “I know a likely spot for a camp on the moors, and we’ll need a waystation for the harbor anyway.”
“I meant you to go with me to the capital, Tounot,” Remin said slowly, recognizing this for the retreat it was.
“It’s better this way,” Tounot replied, and Remin could do nothing but accede.
Going through Darri’s reports consumed many hours. Jinmin was handling the mobilization of supplies and troops on the Andelin side of the Brede, with additional men poised to cross at the Kiel Gorge Bridge. Remin expected the strongest defense from the Emperor at the bridges, and they knew that the Dukes of Firkane and Norgrede had been building defenses nearby, to intercept any forces that tried to go that way. Remin was prepared to give up a small force if it meant the bulk of his army passed unnoticed.
It was a vast improvement over the outlook of even a month ago. But at the end of that journey lay the city of Segoile, the heart of the Empire. With maps of the city laid alongside the map of Argence, Remin surveyed the familiar details of terrain, supply, and defense, a puzzle he had been contemplating for years.
“There is one advantage we did not expect,” he noted with cold amusement, flicking over the painted lead markers that indicated the city gates. “How kind of the Emperor, to invite us in.”
***
There would only ever be thirteen Knights of the Brede.
They won that name one chilly night in March of 819, when thirteen men mounted an insane, suicidal charge across the Gresein Bridge, gambling their lives on a plan that should never have worked, in a cause for which most of them felt ambiguous at best.
Some of them had gone for duty. Others had gone for vengeance. Many of them had gone for bonds of friendship and brotherhood. Bram of Lisle had no earthly reason to go at all.
Miche had gone for Remin.
The youngest of them at eighteen, Rem had already been a giant, still discovering his strategic genius. His was the vision that guided them, and his was the will that led them to the far side of the bridge, dwarfed by the fortress they proposed to conquer. And Remin was first into the charge, spurring his horse with a shout that called them all to follow, this boy who already knew how easy it was to die, and how hard it would be to force the world into a new shape.
Even then, there was something about the sight of Remin’s back that inspired other men to follow.
The Charge of the Gresein made them instantly famous. Their battle in the gatehouse was the stuff of legend, the subject of poetry and song from one end of the Empire to the other. And though those stories always grew in the telling, it was incredible to have witnessed the truth of this one. Remin had gone through the doors of the gatehouse like a battering ram. Victorin with his lance, unstoppable and immortal. And Miche knew too the stories they told of him, the most beautiful of the Knights of the Brede, and the most infamous.
“Shhh, shhh…ahh…”He clenched his teeth to stifle his own groans as he pulled out of Masilie and came, spilling his seed on the laundress’s belly. His orgasm was blinding, like the blazing of a sudden bonfire, but he kept enough of his wits about him to cover her mouth with one hand and finish her with theother, pinning her down and making her writhe through her climax with expert fingers.
It was dangerously close to dawn. They had only a few minutes to recover before he had to get her dressed and push her out the door, dispatched with the careful blend of appreciation and politeness that left no misunderstanding about what this was. Miche had been scrupulous about allowing the laundresses to decide amongst themselves whose turn it was to occupy his bed. He opened his door to all three of them, and did not seek out their company on his own.
The stories they told of Miche of Harnost were absolutely true.
Locking the door of his cottage, he hurried over to Juste’s, his boots crunching in the snow. The stories they told about Juste were likewise true. The Siege of Iverlach, the Coldest Knight. They warned of the wrath of a patient man. Quiet, gentle Juste, slow to anger and difficult to discomfit.
Usually.
“You’ve got one more week in this thing, so quit complaining,” Miche said as he arranged Juste’s right arm in its sling. Every morning, he came over to help the other man dress and—on Gen’s orders—to tie his arm to his side, since Juste could not be trusted to leave it alone and the men’s fashions of the Empire really required two hands to secure adequately.
“I am not complaining,” Juste said so flatly that it was a complaint all by itself. “Only observing that I never asked for your help. You have done enough, please leave. Now.”
“Until Tiffen invents trousers that you can lace shut one-handed, you’ve got me,” Miche replied, without offense. Juste was always surly in the mornings. “Unless you want to risk scandalizing the ladies.”
“No, I believe I can leave that to you.”
“Bold words from a bound man,” Miche observed, tying the knots of Juste’s sling carefully out of his reach. “Anything feel rumpled, other than your temper?”
Juste gave him a baleful stare, then sighed.
“The back of my jerkin,” he admitted, shrugging his good shoulder to indicate the place, and Miche moved silently to adjust it. It would be aggravating, to have rumples and itches that he couldn’t scratch.
It wasn’t that he couldn’t sympathize. Ordinarily, nothing could pierce Juste’s thick hide, so it was fundamentally impossible for Miche not to poke at him a little. But Juste was an intensely private man. Hehatedhaving other people in his space and resented any disruption to his habits and routines. And no man could ever like having to rely on another to get his boots on.
Remin, who knew that Juste would’ve run off every squire in the valley inside an hour, had appointed Miche to be his keeper.
“I’ll go fetch breakfast, try not to snarl at anyone while I’m gone,” said Miche, once he had installed Juste in Ophele’s solar, with stacks of paper to keep him company. So long as the roads were icy, Juste was restricted to his cottage and the manor house, lest he fall and break his other arm. In the morning, Miche made the rounds from kitchen to manor to barracks, fetching food, practicing with the other knights, and looking in on Huber, who was an even more difficult patient than Juste.
