Saevus Corax Captures the Castle by K. J. Parker

Author:K. J. Parker [K. J. PARKER]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Orbit
Published: 2023-11-21T00:00:00+00:00

Negativity. I seem to run into more than my fair share of it, maybe because I’m always asking people to do stupid, dangerous things they didn’t sign up for. I tell myself that this isn’t through my choice. Life delights in loading me down with stupid, dangerous things I didn’t sign up for, and I’m simply passing them on. The way I see it, misery is like caviar or plovers’ eggs. It isn’t something you greedily keep to yourself. It’s something you share with those you love.

I made various excuses for hanging round a mile or so from the castle; we had a long journey coming up, so it’d be a good idea to overhaul the carts – which was true, incidentally; every now and again life tricks me into telling the truth and doing the sensible thing. So we jacked the carts up on piles of stones, pulled off all the wheels, took the tyres off, cut them, shrank them and put them back on again; we repacked the hubs and fettled the axles and cut new planks to replace the split or perished boards, all the sensible things you’re supposed to do but never get around to doing. We were patching the canopies, for crying out loud – when did you last patch a canopy before it started letting in water? – when one of the scouts came bustling up and told me there was a column of horsemen coming up the valley. A couple of hundred, he reckoned, armed but not military. I played it cool. Fine, I said. That’ll be the relief column for the castle. We won’t bother them and they won’t bother us.

Another thing about Eudo: he’s an idiot, but also a natural leader of men. It’s like the old soldier’s joke: his men would follow him anywhere, if only out of curiosity. In his department he’d got a hardcore of a couple of dozen men who were clearly into playing soldiers; he barked military-type orders at them and they snapped to it, almost but not quite saluting. This gave a certain degree of harmless amusement to everybody else, and I let him carry on, just in case it might be useful. It was now useful. “Eudo,” I said. “Get your private army fell in. Job I want you to do for me.”

Eudo likes to do things properly. He’d been through the stock and picked out twenty matching sets of everything and dressed his pet soldiers up in them. They were practically in uniform. “What’s the plan?” he asked me. Note: not, what are we doing or what the hell do you think you’re playing at? No. Just, what’s the plan?

“We lie up in that small copse on the left of the road,” I said. “Sooner or later, there’ll be either a covered chaise with outriders or a small group of horsemen. We intercept them and rescue someone, trying not to kill anybody or get killed in the process.”

He nodded. “Got you,” he said.

Mind you, Eudo is an idiot but he’s not stupid.

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