Hand of the King's Evil - Outremer 04 by Chaz Brenchley Page B

entirely true, though she'd like to know you think it. Come, this is not so much to ask, where there are so few of us caught in such a turmoil.'
    'Well, I will try. Must I call the King also by his name, to make you answer my question?'
    That barb drew a quiet chuckle in response. 'No, I'll not ask that much of you. I don't ask it of myself, though I used to once. Long ago, when we were two adventurers together. I used to call him Marc, and quarrel with him for the sheer love of losing in a fight. These days, not — though one would, still lose. Assuredly, one would lose.'
    'Tell me about him.'
    'What would you have me say?'
    'Is he a man?'
    'Oh, yes.' The question didn't draw a laugh, though, as it surely must have done if it were as stupid as it sounded. 'Trust me in this, Marron, he is most certainly a man. I've seen him bleed; I've made him bleed, more than once. I've seen him eat and sleep, defecate and fornicate, which are the four prime motivations of mankind. If that's been worrying you, rest easy. He may be King of Outremer, with all that that implies, but he's human yet.'
    'I don't understand, then. All the stories I've heard, from you and others - how can he do what you say he does, if he's just a man like any other?'
    'I didn't say that. He was never very much like other men. He's ten years older than I, so I never really knew him as a boy; even as a youth, though, he had talents that singled him out. His father was a powerful man, but he was the youngest son of five, so had n o hope of inheriting land or titl e. He spent his early manhood in a monastery, but was, ah, persuaded out of it; then he discovered an interest in travel and soldiery, making war against pirates and bandit lords. He took me with him, me and others; we hung at his tail like daglocks from a sheep, we little boys, we worshipped him. But so did older men, all those who followed him.
    'When the cry went up for an army to reclaim the Sanctuary Land for the God, he was the obvious man to lead it. He was created Due de Charelles for that purpose, because the lords and churchmen who declared themselves for the venture would yield to no lesser rank. It's a courtesy tide, Charelles is a lump of rock in the ocean which offers no better harvest than gull-droppings, but a duke is a duke regardless.
    'So he went to war again, this time with thousands in his train, but I was closest. It was a hard journe y, and a harder fight: many battl es, many deaths, a great deal of evil on both sides. But he held the army together, lords and church, until we had won Outremer. The Ekhed had governed the land for centuries but they couldn't stand against us, they retreated to their kingdom in the south; the Sharai fought us tribe by tribe, and tribe by tribe we drove them back into the desert.
    'Then there would have been trouble, as all those ambitious men fell to quarrelling over the spoils; but my lord and friend summoned the Conclave. He called the nobles and prelates into one building, the Dir'al Shahan that had been the greatest temple in Ascariel; he made them leave their weapons in the porch, he locked the doors with his own hands and pocketed the key, and he made his own divisions of the land. He told them who would govern where, he showed them on maps, he drew the boundaries himself. In the course of one day he created the five states that you know and gave them to the most powerful of the lords. To the Church he gave nothing. He knew what trouble that would bring, and so he allowed the Ransomers their castles, and he made his own son Duke of Ascariel; that boy was always the Church's man, more than his father's.
    'Himself he declared King of Outremer and demanded oaths of allegiance and fealty from all, would let no one leave till they had sworn. Then he sent them out, and locked the doors again behind them. All that year, while the Kingdom settled into its new name, he was seen seldom outside the Dir'al Shahan; since then, never. For forty years he has ruled