The Queen of the Tearling by Erika Johansen Read Free Book Online Page A

“Lady, I have a friend who went through the Battle of the Crithe. The Red Queen sent three legions of Mort army into the Tearling and gave them free rein en route to New London. The Crithe was wholesale slaughter. Tear villagers armed with wooden clubs fought Mort soldiers armed with iron and steel, and when the men were dead every female between five and eighty—”
    â€œMhurn,” Carroll murmured. “Remember who you’re talk-
ing to.”
    Elston spoke up unexpectedly. “I’ve been watching her all day, sir. Believe me, she’s a tough little thing.”
    Kelsea nearly smiled, but the impulse dried up quickly as Mhurn continued, staring at the fire as though hypnotized. “My friend fled his village with his family as the Mort army approached. He tried to cross the Crithe and make for the villages in the north, but he wasn’t fast enough, and unfortunately for him, he had a young and pretty wife. She died before his eyes, with the tenth Mort soldier still inside her.”
    â€œChrist, Mhurn!” Dyer got up and staggered off toward the edge of the camp.
    â€œWhere are you going?” Carroll called.
    â€œWhere do you think? I’ve got to take a piss.”
    Kelsea suspected that Mhurn had told his tale merely to shock her, and so she kept her face still. But the moment their attention was diverted from her, she swallowed hard, tasting something sour in the back of her throat. Mhurn’s story was very different from reading about unrestricted warfare in a book.
    Mhurn looked around the campfire, his blond head lowered aggressively. “Anyone else think this is information the new queen shouldn’t have?”
    â€œI only question your timing, you ass,” Carroll replied softly. “There’ll be plenty of time for your tales once she gets on the throne.”
    â€œIf she gets there.” Mhurn had located his mug and now he took a great gulp, swallowing convulsively. His eyes were bloodshot, and he looked so tired that Kelsea wondered if he should stop drinking, but could think of no way to suggest it. “Rape and murder went on in every village in their path, Lady, in a straight line through the country, all the way from the Argive to the walls of New London. They even slaughtered the babies. A Mort general named Ducarte went from the Almont Plain to the walls of New London with a Tear baby’s corpse strapped to his shield.”
    Kelsea wanted to ask what had happened at the walls of New London, for that was where Carlin’s tales always stopped. But she agreed with Carroll: Mhurn needed to be reined in. Besides, she wasn’t sure she could handle any more first-person history. “What’s your point?”
    â€œMy point is that soldiers, most soldiers, aren’t born wanting to act that way. They aren’t even trained to act that way. War crimes come from one of two sources, situation or leadership. It wasn’t the situation; the Mort army went through the Tearling like a knife through warm butter. It was a holiday for them. Brutality and massacre happened because that’s what the Red Queen wanted to happen. The last census found over two million people in the Tearling, and I’m not sure they know how precarious their position is. But, Lady, I thought that you should know.”
    Kelsea swallowed, then asked, “What happened to your friend?”
    â€œThey stabbed him in the gut and left him to bleed to death when they moved on. They did a poor job, and he survived. But the Mort army took his ten-year-old daughter in their train. He never saw her alive again.”
    Dyer came sauntering back from the trees and plopped down on his bedroll. Kelsea stared into the fire, remembering one morning at her desk in Carlin’s library. Carlin showed her an old map of the border between the Tearling and New Europe, a ragged line that ran down the eastern end of the Reddick Forest and the Almont Plain. Carlin