CHAPTER 17
Hand hard on Enguerran’s arm, Damen dragged the injured Captain of Ravenel’s troops into one of the round Patran tents on the edge of the battlefield, where they waited for Laurent.
If Damen was rougher than he needed to be, it was because he didn’t approve of this plan. Hearing it described, he’d felt as though his body was under a weight, a hard pressure. Now he released Enguerran in the tent and watched him get to his feet without helping him. Enguerran had a wound in his side that still leaked blood.
Laurent, entering the tent, pulled off his helm, and Damen saw what Enguerran saw: a golden prince with his armour covered in blood, his hair sweat-dampened, his eyes unsparing. The wound in Enguerran’s side had come from Laurent’s blade; the blood on Laurent’s armour was Enguerran’s.
Laurent said, ‘Get on your knees.’
Enguerran fell to his knees in a clank of armour.
‘Your Highness,’ he said.
‘You address me as your Prince?’ said Laurent.
Nothing had changed. Laurent was no different than he’d always been. The mildest comments were the most dangerous. Enguerran seemed to realise it. He stayed on his knees, his cape pooling around him; a muscle moved in his jaw, but he didn’t lift his eyes.
‘My loyalty was to Lord Touars. I served him for ten years. And Guion had the authority of his office, and of your uncle.’
‘Guion does not have the authority to remove me from the succession. Nor, it transpires, does he have the means.’ Laurent’s eyes passed over Enguerran, his bowed head, his injury, his Veretian armour with its ornate shoulderpiece. ‘We are riding for Ravenel. You are alive because I want your loyalty. When the scales fall from your eyes about my uncle, I will expect it.’
Enguerran looked up at Damen. The last time they had faced one another, Enguerran had been trying to bar Damen from Touars’s hall. An Akielon has no place in the company of men.
He felt himself harden. He wanted no part of what was about to unfold. Enguerran returned a hostile gaze.
Laurent said, ‘I remember. You don’t like him. And, of course, he out-captained you on the field. I imagine you like that even less.’
‘You’ll never get inside Ravenel,’ Enguerran said, flatly. ‘Guion made it through your lines with his retinue. He’s riding for Ravenel right now, to warn them you are coming.’
‘I don’t think he is. I think he’s riding to Fortaine, so he can lick his wounds in private, without my uncle and I forcing him to make any uncomfortable choices.’
‘You’re lying. Why would he withdraw to Fortaine, when he has a chance to defeat you here?’
‘Because I have his son,’ said Laurent.
Enguerran’s eyes flew to Laurent’s face.
‘Yes. Aimeric. Trussed and tied and spewing pretty venom.’
‘I see. So you need me to get inside Ravenel. That is the real reason I am alive. You expect me to betray the people I have served for ten years.’
‘To get inside Ravenel? My dear Enguerran, I’m afraid you are quite mistaken.’
Laurent’s gaze travelled over Enguerran again, his blue eyes cold.
‘I don’t need you,’ said Laurent. ‘I just need your clothes.’
* * *
That was how they would get into Ravenel: disguised, in foreign clothing.
From the beginning, there was a sense of unreality about it, hefting Enguerran’s shoulderpiece, flexing his hand in Enguerran’s gauntlet. Damen stood, and the cape swirled.
Not everyone got armour that fit, but they had rescued Touars’s banners and righted them, and the red cloth and helms were straight, and they could be mistaken for Touars’s troop from a distance of forty-six feet, which was the height of Ravenel’s walls.
Rochert got a helmet with a feather in it. Lazar got the standard-bearer’s silks and gaudy tunic. As well as his red cape and his armour, Damen got Enguerran’s sword and his helm, which turned the world into a slit. Enguerran had the dubious honour of riding with them not (as he might have been) stripped to his undergarments like a plucked chicken, but bound to a horse and dressed in unobtrusive Veretian clothing.
The men had just fought an action, but exhaustion had transformed into the kind of high spirits that came from the heady mix of victory, fatigue and adrenalin. This wayward adventure appealed to them. Or perhaps it was the idea of a new victory, satisfying because it would be of a different kind. First smash the Regent, then pull the wool over his eyes.