All three men wore brown pants tucked into sturdy boots, dark short-sleeved tunics over thinner shirts, and thick belts. All three were armed. Gort and Gort 2.0, on his father’s right, carried battle-axes on their belts. Gort 2.1, on the left, bucked the trend and went with a sword.
“A human wall is walking toward us,” I murmured.
“That’s why we’re hiring them,” Reynald said next to me.
Gort stopped in front of me. “Right then. I’m Gort. This is Willem.” He pointed to the son on the right. “That’s Lutren.” He pointed to the son on his left.
Will and Lute. Up close, telling the brothers apart wasn’t that difficult. Will, the oldest, was a little taller and had slightly paler, ash-blond hair. Lute had more gold in his hair, and while Will was calmly menacing, Lute seemed like the type to start some shit just to see what would happen.
According to the books, Gort started in the King’s Army at nineteen, did eighteen years, and then he worked for another ten years as a mercenary.
Nineteen plus eighteen, plus ten . . . forty . . . forty-seven.
Gort made sense. He looked around fifty. According to the books, he’d served with Reynald for nine years, before the blademaster was transferred to a different post.
Gort was exactly as described but Reynald wasn’t. Their lives weren’t dissimilar. Even if I took into account the author’s possible biases and assumed Reynald had great genes, he still looked younger and less worn out than he should’ve been. And when he spoke to me, and the way he smiled that one time in the boat and this morning, he acted younger than a harshly lived thirty-eight. It bugged me. If this was wrong, then I could be wrong about the salt as well.
“This is Lady Maggie,” Clover told Gort.
Gort glanced at me but then looked at Reynald. It was exactly as I’d expected.Weweren’t hiring the Magnar family. Reynald was hiring them, and they would listen only to him.
I opened the small box in front of me and placed a stack of silver nomas on the table. “We offer a sign-on bonus of one noma each, room and board, and daily pay of seven dens for you, five dens for each of your sons, and five dens for your wife, if she chooses to work as our cook.”
Gort’s eyebrows crept up. He glanced at Reynald. “Those are war rates. Generous war rates.”
“There is a reason for that,” Reynald said.
“If you’re injured on the job, we will cover the cost of healing your injuries,” I said. “If you are permanently maimed and lose a limb on the job, you will get a one-time payout of two gold grests to compensate you. If you die on the job, your heirs will receive a one-time payout of three gold grests.”
And he better not die, because we couldn’t really afford it.
Gort’s eyebrows rose again. “Death bonus?”
“That’s the way she does things,” Reynald said.
He and I had bickered over the work-compensation clause for over an hour. Reynald maintained that this was foolish, and no army ever paid soldiers money for dying. According to him, the surviving spouse was entitled to the full pay a soldier would’ve received by the end of the campaign and that was that. I finally asked him if he thought Gort might kill himself for three grests or if he was worried the kids would do their father in to get their inheritance, at which point he gave up.
“That’s the first time someone’s offered me money for dying,” Gort said.
I looked at Reynald. “Did you talk to him?”
“No,” he said. “It’s common sense.”
“Taking care of the people who work for you is common sense.” I looked Gort in the eye and gave him my best serious stare. “Did Reynald explain the nature of the job?”
“He said we will be going after Hreban.”
Gort’s face said everything that needed to be said. The hatred in his eyes was burning hot.
“We are,” I told him. “But it’s more complicated than that. We are going to shift the currents of power in the kingdom. We will do dangerous things that will piss off a lot of people. The Eight Families, the three knight orders, the Justice Chamber . . . There may come a time when all of them will be looking for our heads.”
“I want to see Hreban fall,” Gort said.
Same. “Hreban sees himself on the throne in Eagle Roost. Before we are done, all of Rellas will see him for what he is. I promise you, he will never sit on the throne.”
Making promises like that would get me into all sorts of hot water with fate.
“Then I’m in,” Gort said.
