The king is coming 2

Shortly after this we arrived at a pass, and I looked over it into a second valley, also covered with cloud.

Here, I was told, was the second trail through the mountains, but it was much more difficult and dangerous than the first, even in summer, let alone the depths of winter.

We travelled faster that day, though still slower than they would go without me. By the middle of the day we had arrived back at the point of the hot water springs.

Both the captain and I were sure that there was no one around, so we indulged, and all went swimming naked in the hot water springs.

I loved that. If hadn't been so cold, I might've got carried away and made love to them all there, an idea I stored away for future use.

So we came at last to the depths of winter. Travelling off our standard paths was getting slower and harder, and we scaled our patrols back, increasingly dependent on the falcon.

It spent any fine day in the air over the mountains, but there was nothing to be seen now, no one else was stupid enough to be on the mountains.

My range of vision gradually extended into the first pass and beyond, so we scaled back the patrols to one a day, which gave the men more time to care for the horses and dogs and practice their skills.

I worked to my schedule, looking after each of the men, watching as their health slowly deteriorated through winter.

I was finding it difficult, myself. At least there were no colds or other sicknesses. I had been very worried about that, but Ferret, who had been born in the mountains, told me that when it got this cold the diseases died too.

And when I was with Scar, I wondered, did he love me? Could I ask him? If he did, why didn't he say something?

Our talk around the fire turned away from the conduct of little pitched fights to the subject of wars, why they started, and how to win them.

Or lose them. The captain said that sometimes it was hard to tell winning and losing apart, but you had to know when and how to finish them. One story sticks in my mind.

Digger told the story. King Woody was king of a great and powerful people called Freeland. Why Free-land, the rest wanted to know.

He explained that the people believed that they were free, because they chose the king. They all gathered in a main town square, and the barons put a man or two forward, and the one that got the loudest cheers became king.

The squad was pretty amused by that. Digger shrugged, and said that it didn't sound like freedom to him either, but that the king's men were not allowed to actually kill the people of Freeland, at least not if they had money.

Money, that was the key, the people of Freeland had the best ships and merchants, and so they were all rich and nothing mattered much and the poor people went into the army, and so nearly everyone who counted was happy. Well, at least, richer and happier than in many other kingdoms.

But there were other kings who were jealous — of course - and one day some foreign looking thugs had barricaded the doors of the main trading house, and burnt it down, killing everyone inside it.

King Woody had blamed it on a far distant country called Stonia which had a notoriously evil and bloodthirsty King Butch, and immediately attacked it with a grand army.

The captain interrupted and asked whether that was the right thing to do. The squad tossed it around for a while — they were pretty confused

About why King Woody chose this particular country, no one was quite sure whether King Butch had anything to do with it, but they all agreed that he sounded worth attacking. Generally they thought that King Woody had to do something.

So King Woody invaded. They'd expected some sort of fight, King Butch had made all sorts of threats, but he ran away and the army just folded.

So then King Woody had said that the system that worked in Freeland would work well in Stonia, and as soon as they had shouted for a new king, he would pull his army out.

But instead, law and order collapsed, and suddenly thugs appeared from everywhere stealing, raping and killing the Stonians, and any of the Freelandian soldiers they could get their hands on. They threatened to do this until the Freelandian army left.

Hold on, Drowsy wanted to know, how did any of this make sense? Why not just have the shouting match, and then the army would leave?

The squad argued about this for ages, trying to make sense of it.

About the only thing I could see was that Stonians didn't think that the whole shouting system would give them any freedom, since they didn't have any money, like me, so nothing could make things better.

Eventually the captain interrupted again. He said we'd argued about that enough. Wars were like that he said, once you've started them, you have to finish them, whatever happens, even if the things that happen don't make sense.

He pointed out that King Woody's real failure was that when the war didn't go how he expected, he didn't have any other plan to finish it, other than to keep waiting for his original plan to work.

What happened eventually? Digger laughed. Well, eventually the rich people in Freeland started to notice that the poor soldiers were dying and they had to start paying more tax, so they had an impromptu shouting match and picked another king.

King Woody disappeared to live in the wilderness, and ever after he was known as King Woody the Dunce. And King Butch turned up again in Stonia, but he was so busy fighting the thugs there that Freeland didn't notice him anymore.

Of course, it was all bad for the people of Stonia, but the squad shrugged, and said that it always worked that way for the poor.

One day, the captain and I were sitting by the fire practicing our skills, when he asked me whether I could send messages to people.

I'd never tried. Intrigued, we tried sending words to each other. I tried to think of a word, and while thinking of it, imagine myself throwing the word at him.

But it didn't work, in either direction. We tried all sorts of things for the whole night, but it didn't work.

Eventually I thought of how I couldn't see inside the captain, how he was closed to me — maybe I was trying the wrong person?

I glanced around the room, saw Sock, and imagined him naked, with his massive erection, and me riding him with abandon. I cast the picture at him.

Wow, what a reaction I got! He turned to me, with a stunned look on his face. I smiled at him and called him over.

He had seen exactly what I imagined, and he knew exactly where the thought came from. We had to wait to later to discuss that, I had to take Sock aside and finish what I'd started.