‘There isn’t time,’ said Laurent.
The words pushed themselves with sheer force out of whatever wordless state Laurent had been shocked into.
‘There isn’t time,’ Laurent said again. ‘I have two weeks until we reach the border. Don’t pretend that I can woo these men with hard work and a winning smile in that time. I am not the green colt my uncle pretends. I fought at Marlas and I fought at Sanpelier. I am not here for niceties. I don’t intend to see the men I lead cut down because they will not obey orders, or because they cannot hold a line. I intend to survive, I intend to beat my uncle, and I will fight with every weapon that I have.’
‘You mean that.’
‘I mean to win. Did you think I was here altruistically to throw myself on the sword?’
Damen made himself face the problem, stripping away the impossible, looking only at what, realistically, could be done.
‘Two weeks isn’t long enough,’ said Damen. ‘You will need closer to a month to get anywhere at all with men like these, and even then, the worst of them will need to be weeded out.’
‘All right,’ said Laurent. ‘Anything else?’
‘Yes,’ said Damen.
‘Then speak your mind,’ said Laurent. ‘Not that you have ever done anything else.’
Damen said, ‘I will help you in whatever way I can, but there will be no time for anything but hard work, and you will have to do everything right.’
Laurent lifted his chin and replied with every bit of cool, galling arrogance he had ever shown.
‘Watch me,’ he said.
CHAPTER 4
Laurent, just turned twenty, and possessing an elaborate mind with a gift for planning, detached it from the petty intrigues of the court and set it loose on the broader canvas of this, his first command.
Damen watched it happen. It began when, after their long night of tactical discussion, Laurent addressed the troop with a portrait of their shortcomings. He did it from horseback, in a clear voice that carried to the farthest of the gathered men. He had listened to everything Damen had said last night. He had listened to a great deal more than that. As he spoke, there emerged nuggets that he could only have obtained from the servants and armourers and soldiers to whom, over the last three days, he had also been listening.
Laurent regurgitated the information in a manner that was as scintillant as it was scathing. When he was done, he threw the men a bone: perhaps they had been hampered by poor captaincy. They would therefore stop here in Nesson for a fortnight to accustom themselves to their new Captain. Laurent would personally lead them in a regime that would tax them, trim them and turn them into something approximating a company that could fight. If they could keep up with him.
But first, Laurent appended silkily, they would unpack and make camp here again, from kitchens to tents to horse enclosure. In under two hours.
The men swallowed it. They would not have, had Laurent not taken on their leader and beaten him, point for point, the day before. Even then, they might have baulked had the order come from an indolent superior, but from the first day, Laurent had worked hard without comment or complaint. That, too, had been calculated to within a hair.
And so they got to work. They hauled out tents and hammered in posts and pegs and unsaddled all the horses. Jord gave crisp, pragmatic orders. The tent lines looked straight for the first time since they had ridden out.
And then it was done. Two hours. It was still too long, but it was better by far than the sprawling chaos of the last few evenings.
Re-saddle, was the first order, and there followed a series of mounted drills that were designed to be easy on the horses and brutal on the men. Damen and Laurent had planned the drills out together last night, with some input from Jord, who had joined them in the grey hours of the morning. Truthfully, Damen had not expected Laurent to take part in the drills himself, but he did, setting the pace.
Reining his horse alongside Damen’s, Laurent said, ‘You have your two extra weeks. Let’s see what we can do with them.’
In the afternoon they switched to line work: lines that broke again, and again, and again, until finally they didn’t, if only because everyone was too weary to do anything but mindlessly follow commands. The day’s drills had pushed even Damen, and when they were done, he felt, for the first time in a long time, as though something had been accomplished.
The men returned to camp boneless and exhausted with no energy to complain that their leader was a blond, blue-eyed fiend, curse him. Damen saw Aimeric sprawled by one of the campfires with his eyes closed, like a man collapsed after a foot race. The stubbornness of character that had had Aimeric picking fights with men twice his size had also had him keeping up with the drills, no matter the barriers of pain and fatigue that he had had to push through physically. At least he would not be able to cause trouble in this state. No one would be picking fights: they were too tired.
As Damen watched, Aimeric opened his eyes and gave an empty-eyed stare at the fire.
Despite the complications Aimeric presented to the troop, Damen felt a stirring of sympathy. Aimeric was only nineteen, and this was obviously his first campaign. He looked out of place and alone. Damen detoured.
‘It’s your first time in a company?’ he said.
‘I can keep up,’ said Aimeric.
‘I’ve seen that,’ said Damen. ‘I’m sure your Captain has seen it. You did a good day’s work.’