Queen of the North (Book 3) (Songs of the Scorpion) Read Free Page B

of his neck.
    With their faces now freckled in crimson, the rest of the emissaries gaped at each other, at her, at their dying but still standing leader. By the sudden ripe stench, at least one of them had filled his silken smallclothes.
    Erryn jerked her sword loose, and the emissary’s bones seemed to melt. He hit the ground with a wet slap, his stunned features slathered in a mess of blood and dripping muck. His mouth worked like a landed perch, but no sound came. As her soldiers and those of the Kingsguard began moving, Erryn had time to think that murdering the emissary was not only a heinous breach of etiquette, but an open declaration of war.
    “Hold!” she cried, once and again, before her men obeyed. The three remaining emissaries didn’t heed her in the least. They stumbled in the mud and wet grass, making for their gaudy carriages. The Kingsguard, far outnumbered by Erryn’s arrayed forces, lowered their lances and prepared to charge. One of the curly headed emissaries warned them off with a string of desperate shouts, which grew muffled when he hurled himself into the pillowed gloom of his carriage.
    “We kill them all now, it will save us the effort of killing them later,” Aedran said. “Kill them now, and we can send their heads back to Onareth in baskets.”
    “Why would I do that?” Erryn asked, genuinely curious.
    “To let King Nabar know you’re serious about laying claim to these lands. It will also get an army worth fighting up here before winter sets in. If my brothers don’t get a little blood on their hands before long, they’re like to start killing each other.”
    “What’s starting a war before winter have to do with anything? Fighting is fighting, cold or warm.”
    Aedran gently tapped the tip of her nose with a forefinger, like a father instructing a daughter. The gesture peeved her, but at the same time made her blush. “That’s where you’re wrong, Queen Erryn,” he said, a hint of laughter in his voice when he spoke her title. “And that’s at the heart of the reason you hired me and my men. You need proper guidance in winning this war you’ve now started.” He glanced at the emissary at her feet, who was good and truly dead. “And what a beginning!”
    By now, the drivers of the carriages had turned them off the road and into the field, where they bounced and rattled over rough ground. From inside, Erryn could hear the remaining emissaries shrieking like little girls. After getting turned around, the carriage drivers whipped the horses into a gallop back the way they had come, taking their screeching loads out of earshot. At a word from the commander of the Kingsguard, the soldiers raised their lances in preparation to ride away. Their eyes showed no fear but plenty of hate.
    “You see,” Aedran said urgently, “wise kings don’t make war in winter, especially these thin-blooded, southern wretches. Trust me on this, I have many brothers who’ve sold their swords to the kings of Cerrikoth. Now is the time to strike, before they flee.”
    “Would it not be better to take the time to build up the fortress?”
    “Perhaps,” Aedran admitted. “But what would be the fun in that? Come, you’ve already gone and killed one of these pompous fools, why not kill them all?”
    Erryn looked at the dead emissary. She had laid claim to her title and to Valdar after killing Mitros, and here was yet another dead man. With his death, war was sure to follow. She decided enough blood had been spilled for now. And Despite what Aedran advised, she felt certain that building up Valdar’s fortifications was the highest priority.
    “Let them go,” she ordered, as Nabar’s Kingsguard broke into two columns and wheeled to follow after the fleeing emissaries.
    Aedran shrugged. “I suppose that’ll save us the waste of good baskets.”
    Erryn glanced at the sky, gray and cold as usual. Snow could fall at any time of year north of the Shadow Road, but true winter was still a ways off.