Fallowblade by Cecilia Dart-Thornton Read Free Book Online Page B

made an awesome spectacle as they sashayed forth, resplendent, beneath regimental banners.
    King Uabhar himself rode with his troops amidst his retinue of bodyguards, their fleet-footed horses having caught up with the slow-moving columns. King Chohrab, too, travelled at the head of his own army, although initially he had lagged somewhat behind the King of Slievmordhu. In fact, he had not intended to venture from the safety of the city walls at all, until Uabhar suddenly took his leave, declaring that he was heading for the battle front.
    ‘But why?’ Chohrab had cried, rousing from his waking nightmares. ‘Surely your commanders are competent enough to make decisions on the spot. Why risk your own person?’
    ‘My wife nagged me until I could endure it no longer,’ Uabhar replied ruefully. ‘Pity me, for she can be a tyrant behind closed doors. Go and prove your courage , she harped. People will laugh at me if I have a craven husband! Chide me not, Chohrab, fool that I am, for being ruled by womanhood.’
    Chohrab did not question that this was so, for he had never taken much note of the reticent Queen Saibh and knew next to nothing of her true character. Try as he might, he could not visualise Uabhar enthusiastically charging head-first into battle at risk of life and limb, so he supposed that his ally’s motive for his proposed heroics was valid.
    ‘I must go to the front also,’ declared Chohrab, ‘otherwise I will be named a coward.’
    ‘Not at all!’ Uabhar protested. ‘Everyone knows you suffer from ill health and are too delicate to fare abroad. No one will blame you, brother. Ádh be with you!’ And he departed precipitately.
    Chohrab, however, seethed with discontent and a smattering of suspicion. ‘Uabhar will recite words of inspiration to his men,’ he said to his brother-in-law, Rahim. ‘He will appear to be a better leader than I. To him will go the glory and the power when we triumph. I wonder whether he truly has my interests at heart, for he takes precious little note of my opinions. In future I shall stand up to him!’ He had his apothecaries mix a strong stimulant, which he quaffed without delay, then girded himself for war and followed after.
    Day by day, rumour proliferated that Uabhar was openly in league with Marauders; that he had sealed a peace agreement with several large comswarms, promising to cease harassing them in return for their cooperation against his enemies. Uabhar’s paid gossip-mongers made certain to conceal the truth about the exact date this treaty had been ratified, asserting that, if such a compact existed, it would have been a recent development forced upon the king by the exigencies of war.
    Despite the false rumours being put about, some of the Knights of the Brand and a small proportion of the civilian populace guessed the truth: that the alliance had been struck in secret, long ago. Uabhar had been allowing the Marauders to persecute his own subjects in order to terrorise them into paying higher taxes, purportedly for protection. Though their outrage knew no limits, no one had the courage to speak out. Those who had deduced the facts began—in private—to question their sovereign’s methods.
    Many Slievmordhuan subjects believed that if the tales of alliance were true their king ought to be feted for such a cunning move, as it would guarantee their security. Others, mistrusting the comswarms, dreaded the ultimate outcome of a league so incongruous. Those citizens of Slievmordhu who did not applaud their sovereign, and in fact cursed him and all his schemes, chiefly resided in the villages that lined the war machine’s northward route, for Uabhar and Chohrab supplemented the provisions of their forces by allowing the soldiers to strip the countryside bare of victuals and fodder as they travelled. Nor were the troops gentle with those from whom they pillaged, despite that they were fellow countrymen.
    By the time the foremost newly mobilised battalions of