"Well, Lord Golsingh," said the warrior named Audemar, "if you pass your right to Thrasey's armor, then the suit should properly go to me."
"We've been over this, Audemar," Golsingh said. His voice was so quiet that Hansen barely heard it over the scrunch of his spade.
"He shouldn't be doing that," Taddeusz grumbled. "It isn't a warrior's business to work with his hands."
"He did a warrior's business this day, foster father."
Hansen freed another block of turf. A pair of slaves set it on a tarpaulin with three others. They lifted the edges of the cloth to carry the lot to the growing mound.
Hansen positioned the spade, then slid it down through the sod. He wriggled the T-handle to clear pebbles caught among the grassroots.
"But when Lamullo fell," Audemar said, "I was the senior warrior in the left division. Therefore I should have the leader's share of booty taken by the—"
"Shut up, Audemar," Taddeusz said.
"Lord Malcolm sits at my left now in banquet, Audemar," Golsingh said. His tone was growing sharper and thinner, like a blade being drawn from a cane scabbard.
There weren't any proper stones with which to raise a mound here, but turf would last as long. More fitting for Shill, besides. Shill hadn't had the harshness of rock; but he'd endured nonetheless.
"Ah, sir?" said Maharg. He looked older now, but that might be only exhaustion. "Would it be all right if I, ah . . . if I dug one myself?"
Hansen straightened, leaving the spade upright in the cut. He gestured toward the handle. "Keep the corners square," he said, massaging his lower back with both hands.
He looked around critically. "We've probably got enough by now."
There were thirty slaves lifting sod for the mound, but the straggling rectangle Hansen had cut in the prairie was twice the area of what any of the others had managed. Well, the slaves were working because it was their life to work—and their lives if they didn't. Hansen cut sod because—
The mound was two meters high, an oval proportioned eight to three across the axes, much like the proportions of a sleeping man.
"Hope he likes it," Hansen said.
Maharg levered the strip of turf loose and stepped back so that the slaves could remove it. "Shill?" he said. "I dunno."
The young warrior knuckled his forehead. The fine hairs on the back of his right hand had crinkled when the surge of an opponent's arc overloaded his battlesuit. "I never figured North's Searchers'd, you know, be interested in Shill."
He looked at Hansen. It wasn't just exhaustion: Maharg had aged. "Nor me neither," he added. "Though with the new armor, that might change. Thanks to you."
"You earned it," Hansen said. "Shill did too."
He looked toward the sky. It was cold, and the wind made his vision blur.
"I recognize your right to appoint whomsoever you please to positions of honor, your majesty," Audemar said, his voice hoarse with suppressed anger.
"If you choose to make a warrior of limited status your left wing commander—and your new Lord of Thrasey!" Audemar bit the words out "—then that is your option, and I only hope you don't regret it soon. But—"
The sun was low. Because there was a thin slice of clear sky near the horizon, the landscape was brighter than it had been this day before.
Malcolm turned from the battlesuit which stood upright at the head of the mound and walked toward the group around the king.
"—that's for the future," Audemar continued. He was about fifty years old, of middle height, and soft rather than precisely fat. "At the time the booty was taken, I was in charge—"
Hansen watched with no expression for a moment, then jerked the spade from the soil and also walked toward the king. Maharg was beside him.
"—and that means that the Lord of Thrasey's armor is mine by right unless you claim it yourself. It's a royal suit and even after repairs it will be superior to mine. Theref—"
Malcolm gripped Audemar by the shoulder with his left hand and spun the older man so that his cheek was in position for Malcolm's broad right palm. The slap sounded like a treelimb breaking.
Audemar would have fallen, but Malcolm continued to hold him. The backhand bloodied Audemar's nose.
Taddeusz started to move. Golsingh stopped him with a raised hand. "Wait," the king said.
Hansen let the spade lie down along his right leg again.
"Listen, you bastard," Malcolm said. He and the man he held were about of a weight, but Malcolm's fury gave bulk to his greater height. "If you'd been worth shit yourself, we wouldn't've had to bury Shill today, would we?"
"That old man was noth—" and the rest of the word vanished in a spray of blood from Audemar's lips as Malcolm slapped him again.
Golsingh stepped between them. "That's enough," he said mildly.
His head turned to Audemar. "Audemar," he went on in a tone of thin steel. "You have been informed of my decision. Further objection to it will be treason. Do you understand?"
Audemar spun and walked off. His steps were uncertain.
"Very good," said Golsingh. The king's eyes met Hansen's. "Then we'll return to last night's encampment and set off for Peace Rock in the morning. There's no point in trying to travel any distance now."
Hansen nodded. "Yes, milord," he said.
His throat was dry. He set the edge of the spade on the ground and drove it in a hand's breadth, so that a slave could easily find it.
"Let's go find somebody with a skin of beer," Malcolm said to Hansen and Maharg. His voice had odd breaks and catches in it, as if he had crumbs in his throat.
At the head of the mound over Shill's dead body, the late sunlight winked on the blue and silver majesty of the Lord of Thrasey's battlesuit.