"I would have come out to greet you at the gate, Lord Hansen," the king said in concern at the silent anger on Hansen's visage. "But I'd summoned another advisor when I received the first reports of the battle, and he just arrived. No disrespect was meant."
Hansen blinked. "Excuse me?" he said.
Why was the king apologizing?
Formal functions were held in the House of Audience. The houses of two of the Syndics who ruled Frekka in past times had been knocked together to form a royal residence across the square from it.
The entrance hall into which Prandia strode with a bustle of nervous menials was decorated for comfort rather than show. Clerks with parchment scrolls and tablets of wood peered from side corridors, whispering among themselves.
"Ah, I'm sorry about the delay, sir," Hansen resumed "I . . . wanted to be sure all the baggage train got in. It—"
He shrugged to loosen the words which tension held back. "We'll need the armor, even the suits that really got chopped up. We'll—that is, you'll want to get all the smiths in the kingdom working on repairs immediately. You'll need to gather warriors—and raise new ones or, or . . ."
Hansen's face twisted. "Or else the next defeat will be a lot worse than this one."
Two professionals in battlesuits guarded the door to the residence. Half the Royal Household had remained in Frekka when Maharg marched, a necessary reserve.
Between the surviving portion of the Royal Household and the much larger number of warriors available in an emergency from the kingdom's individual landholders, King Prandia had the makings of a very impressive army.
"You weren't defeated," said Prandia. "You won. The army won because of you, Lord Hansen."
Hansen's mind went white. "Balls," he said.
"Sir!" Culbreth hissed desperately as he gripped his leader's shoulder.
"Duke Ontell holds Colimore," Hansen continued harshly. "Our campaign objective was to remove him. We failed."
"But Lord Hansen—" the king said with a look of pained uncertainty.
"Look," Hansen said. "I don't mind giving things their right names! It makes it easier to change them."
"Lord Hansen?" said Arnor. "We killed Ontell. Me and Culbreth."
"And Tapper from the Household," Culbreth put in. "Ontell had silver armor."
"Why—" Hansen shouted in amazement. "—didn't you tell me?" died in his throat.
Because you didn't bloody ask, his mind sneered. Because you were too deep in doom and guilt to behave like a commander and learn the facts.
Hansen started to laugh. Prandia's jaw dropped. Culbreth thought his leader was going into hysterics and grabbed Hansen in a bear hug.
"No, no, it's all right," Hansen said. "I'm fine, Culbreth, I'm not going to go berserk."
Culbreth stepped back uncertainly.
"Your Excellency?" Hansen said to the king. "Could I trouble you for the loan of something dry to wear? My clothes're somewhere back at my billet. I'd like to discuss your future operations now—but without catching pneumonia."
Prandia snapped his fingers.
"See to it," he ordered. He didn't bother to look around at his train of servants, several of whom were already scrambling to obey. "For all three of the lords. Do forgive me, Lord Hansen. I'm not myself with, with the press of events."
Arnor reached behind Hansen to nudge Culbreth. "We don't need to stick around," he murmured.
"And I did indeed hope that you would join me and my new marshal immediately," King Prandia continued. "It was an emergency appointment, of course . . . but I think the right one. He just arrived."
Hansen reached out and hugged Arnor and Culbreth. "Thanks, troops," he said quietly. "There's worse things than a battlefield, sometimes."
He released his team and met the king's eyes. "Yes sir," he said. "I think that's just what we need to do. There isn't a lot of time."
Servants sprang away like startled quail as the king turned with Hansen beside him. Prandia strode into a large chamber behind the hall. He held a whispered conversation with a gorgeously-dressed usher.
A servant carrying a set of clothes pranced up to Hansen, who tossed his sodden cloak toward the floor to get rid of it. Another servant snatched it out of the air and disappeared down a side corridor.
Hansen began to change. He took clothing from the servant's pile every time he stripped off one of his present garments.
"We'll go to him, if that's acceptable with you, Lord Hansen," the king said. "He's very tired from his journey to Frekka."
"What?" Hansen said. "Hell, of course."
The servant held out soft slippers with pointed toes, velvet rather than fur. Hansen accepted them with a smile and patted her hand. She was only about eighteen, pretty in a frightened sort of way.
Hansen padded behind the king barefoot rather than spend the time to pull the slippers on.
The usher threw open the door to a luxuriously appointed chamber. There was a separate hearth; a curtained bed in place of the bed closet normal in communities less sophisticated than Frekka; and a high-backed armchair in which huddled a shrunken, aged figure swathed in quilts.
"Foster father," the king said, "Lord Hansen has arrived. Lord Hansen, this is Malcolm, Duke of Thrasey and marshal of my armies in place of his son."
Hansen froze.
"Ex-duke," said the man in the chair. "Glad of that, too."
His vote was cracked, but his brown eyes were as bright as they had been two generations before, when Hansen first met the man.
"And as for marshal, we'll talk about—"
"You agreed, foster father!"
Malcolm looked straight at the king. "Another outburst, Your Royal Majesty," the old man said, "and I'll tell you to leave the room while the grown men speak."
Prandia opened his mouth, then turned his head with an expression of frustration and chagrin. After a moment, the king began to smile.
Malcolm grinned also. "Hansen . . ." he said, rolling the name across his tongue. "I knew a man of your name once, Hansen. He was older than you."
The room was illuminated by the hearth and a flaring rushlight, a lighted reed whose pith was soaked in tallow. It made Hansen nervous to watch the rushlight's tongue of pale, tremulous flame; but these walls were stone rather than wattle, and the plastered ceiling was high enough to be out of danger.
Hansen and the king stood in front of the door. Servants huddled in the hall, unable to enter the room with their superiors in the way.
Two of the servants carried extra chairs. Hansen glanced over his shoulder at them, then stepped close to Malcolm and sat cross-legged at the old man's feet.
Malcolm looked down at him. "I can't marshal the kingdom's troops," he said. "You know that, don't you, Hansen? I can't even walk."
"You can be carried, foster father," Prandia said.
The king waved away the servants with their chairs, but he squatted instead of sitting on the rush-strewn floor. "It's your counsel I need, not your legs."
"You, Hansen," Malcolm said as if he had not heard his king speak. "My son put you in charge of the left wing. Why did you leave your post?"
"Our side of the fight was under control," Hansen said. He met the bright brown eyes squarely. He avoided blinking, because blinking looked shifty, and you never wanted to look shifty when you reported to a superior.
God, how old was Malcolm now?
"The right wing was having problems," Hansen went on, "because of the, of the champions from Solfygg."
"Alone though?" Malcolm demanded. "You left your men and went haring off by yourself?"
"My men were levies," Hansen replied deliberately. "I knew what the weak points of the opposition's suits were. All my men could have done was die, a little faster even than the Household troops were doing already."
"Ah, foster father?" Prandia said. "Lord Hansen restored the—"
Hansen gestured at him with a spread left hand. He did not look away from Malcolm.
"—right wing," Prandia continued, ignoring an attempt to silence him in his own residence, "and won the battle for us. All reports agree on that."
"And at the end, then, Hansen?" the old man said in his cracked, piercing voice. "When you decided to charge the Colimore rear guard alone?"
Hansen licked his dry lips. "Yeah," he said. "I screwed up."
The king jumped to his feet. "Marshal Malcolm!" he said hotly "All the men talk about that charge. Lord Hansen is a hero!"
"Do they talk about it—son?" Malcolm said. "The man I knew, Lord Hansen—he would have said that was a fool's act. The sort of trick a warrior pulls, not a trained soldier who wins battles for his liege."
"If—" the king said.
Hansen turned to the king. "If I'd managed to get myself killed," he said harshly, his voice full of the power that Malcolm's had lost with age, "we might have lost the field and all the armor there to salvage. And that would have been our ass."
He chuckled without humor. "Your asses, milords."
Malcolm cackled in delight. "Not mine either, Lord Hansen. I have nothing to lose."
He reached out with the care old bones require. Hansen opened his hand and clasped Malcolm's gently.
"I'm supposed to know things, Malcolm," Hansen whispered. "I should have seen it coming and warned him."
"My son wouldn't have lived forever," Malcolm said. "If the gods were good to him, he wouldn't have lived—" Hansen felt the wizened fingers tighten in senile fury "—as long as I have."
The rushlight beat like a slow pulse, stroke and stroke and stroke, while the two men gripped one another's hand.
"Maharg has a son, you know," Malcolm added. "Named after me, he was. Only ten years old now, but a fine lad . . . and the only immortality that men find, my friend."
"Have you two met before?" Prandia said uncertainly.
"In a matter of speaking, Your Excellency," Malcolm said.
He lifted his hand free and made a peremptory gesture at Hansen. "Get up, get up," he said. "I'm not a god that you should be sitting at my feet."
Malcolm turned to the king. "Make Lord Hansen your marshal, lad," he said. "Your grandfather had a warchief of that name. Perhaps it's an omen."
He cackled until a fit of coughing interrupted his laughter.
"Ah, foster father?" King Prandia said. He was careful not to let his eyes fall on Hansen as his lips formed the words of disapproval.
Malcolm shook his head sharply. "No," he said. "Your Excellency. Son. You said you wanted my counsel. Look at me."
Prandia met the old man's eyes. He nodded.
"Sometimes the gods give men one chance," Malcolm said softly. "The survivors are the ones who are smart enough to take it when it's offered."
The king sighed, then straightened his shoulders and turned to Hansen.
"Lord Hansen," he said formally. "I ask that you accept your duty to your liege and your kingdom by becoming Marshal of the Royal Army."
"If you've got any women around that you feel personally about, lad," Malcolm said to the king, "then you'd better keep them locked away tight." He laughed.
Hansen looked at the old man flat-eyed. "We still may not win," he said. "If they had twelve royal suits to send to Colimore, then they've got a lot more besides."
"Oh, I've got faith in you, Marshal," Malcolm said.
The flame of the rushlight was so pale that the texture of the stone was visible through it. It gave Malcolm's café au lait complexion a patina like that of old ivory.
"And it may be, Marshal," he went on, "that you're not really younger than the Hansen I knew in times past after all."