Chapter 1: Frederico – The Bridge
Prince Frederico of Patire prepared for his first battle. He was twelve, and his armor was too big for him. It had been made for Felipe, the brother who’d died in battle three years earlier, then passed on to Fernando, killed the previous year. Now Frederico only had one living brother: the eldest, strongest, most magnificent Prince Faust of Patire.
It was Faust who hauled the little brother, armor and all, onto the horse when they raised camp on that dry, autumn morning. Faust was scowling under his helmet, and Frederico knew it had to do with their father. Last night Frederico heard his brother walking with their father to their own tents. As they passed beside Frederico’s tent, Faust said:
‘They aren’t ready for battle. Let me train them at least for a month.’
Frederico had barely managed to sit on his saddle when King Fulbert of Patire approached. He had brown beard, a square nose, and fingers shaped to the use of a sword. He rode a dark brown warhorse and was picking at his right ear with his little finger. To the soldiers he said:
‘Today you learn how to kill or you learn how to die.’
Frederico folded in two and poured the contents of his breakfast on the morning grass. King Fulbert of Patire came toward the youngest son, slow as torture.
‘You don’t deserve the F of your name,’ said the father.
‘But it would be too strange to be called Rederico,’ said the son, checking if any sick had fallen inside the helmet.
When King Fulbert was angry, even the pores on his neck became red. Behind the king, Prince Faust laughed so hard that he nearly fell from his horse.
‘Rederico,’ he said. ‘Too good! Rederico.’
The king ground his teeth at his eldest son, then pulled strongly on his horse’s reins and got away from the youngest. Fulbert wasn’t wearing his armor. He carried only sword and shield. It was his way of showing that he despised the enemy.
‘I suppose my name is still Frederico,’ murmured the little prince as they began to march.
When the road reached the Loefern River, Fulbert and Faust guided the soldiers to the south, which was very strange, for all battles took place to the north of where they were, in the Mouth of War. Maybe there would be no battle after all, Frederico hoped. Faust must have convinced Father to train us, he thought. Today is just an exercise.
He might have felt safer had he been among experienced soldiers, but apart from Fulbert and Faust, all the others were more or less Frederico’s age, most of them orphans, a red haired who nervously bit his lower lip, a black boy with a running nose, a brown boy with a trembling chin; all of them untrained. Fulbert of Patire believed that throwing his men (or children) into danger was the best training they could ever get.
‘Put them face to face with death and watch them learn how to kill,’ he said.
The small contingent of little soldiers went south toward Lencon, following an old railway track alongside the Loefern. Frederico had never seen a railway track before. Most of them had been dismantled and their parts recycled after the trains disappeared. This one by the Loefern was still relatively whole, though it was drowned, from time to time, by waves of bush and weed.
The landscape grew wilder, the undergrowth more thorny, the plains more hilly. Frederico couldn’t see the road anymore, as it hid behind small hills that looked like giant sleeping cats with green fur. He could hear the blue whisper of the Loefern, now far below the road, as they climbed farther up. It wasn’t pleasant, that sound, not when filtered by metal and smothered by the heavy helmet whose visor kept on falling, cutting the prince’s vision.
The road turned slightly west, climbing even higher, like a serpent swimming to the top of the sky, but a sharp turn took it back to the east, toward the river, and Fulbert’s little soldiers turned their backs to the Oltien Mountain Range, which bit off a chunk of the sky with serrated, icy teeth. Frederico held tight to the saddle and bent to the side to look at the Loefern’s waters, twenty meters below. His horse neighed and kicked.
Frederico’s horse’s kick nearly caught the horse to the right, which snorted. The horse next to it nearly reared, and so on, in a ripple effect of outraged warhorses.
‘They think we’re children,’ muttered the soldier behind Frederico.
‘We are children,’ said the prince. ‘And our horses are too close to one another.’
At the front, Faust signaled for them to be quiet. Frederico steered his horse forth and reached his brother.
‘We are far away from the Mouth of War,’ said Frederico. ‘Why are we wearing armor if we are not going to the battlefield?’
‘We have been informed that Baynard is building a bridge to invade Patire.’
‘Outside the Mouth of War?’
‘We are going to take that bridge and use it to invade Baynard instead.’
Frederico had heard that hundreds of years ago there had been bridges all over the Loefern and that they had all been destroyed during the War.
‘We’re here,’ said Faust.
Frederico raised his visor, which kept on falling in front of his eyes. A turn in the road revealed a rustic, wooden structure over the Loefern. Seven men were working hard to destroy it with axes.
‘They heard us coming,’ said Faust.
Fulbert of Patire unsheathed his sword and Frederico heard someone asking:
‘A battle? Outside the Mouth of War?’
The boys’ alarm drowned in the sound of the horses’ hooves, which got mixed with the beat of the enemies’ axes tearing down the bridge. Faust unsheathed his sword, and the blade against the sky was strange to Frederico. Normally, the blade shone almost white when naked. Today, in contrast with the Summer sky, it looked heaby as lead. Faust raised his sword and gave the battle cry. The twenty boys lashed at their horses, which avalanched down the road.
Seven men without armor against twenty-two soldiers was not a battle, thought Frederico, it was a massacre. Those seven men from Baynard were as good as dead. Then he saw the Baynardian captain. The man moved away from the other six and positioned himself between the bridge and Fulbert of Patire. He bent his knees, raised his sword, and glared at the king from over his shield. It took Frederico a moment to understand what that captain was doing. Standing there alone meant only that he would be the first to die.
The other Baynardians worked fast. The bridge was nearly destroyed. They had built a clever contraption that was strong enough for a few men to cross at a time but easy enough to destroy if anything went awry. The captain was giving his men time, Frederico understood. He would die, but his men would be saved and the bridge, destroyed.
At that moment, Frederico understood the meaning of courage and inside his ribcage, blood streamed through a valve never before explored. The prince didn’t want that captain to die. In fact, he decided he didn’t want anybody to die. He leaned forward, loosened his horse’s reins, and overtook Faust’s horse.
‘Go, Frederico,’ cried Faust. ‘Go, brother!’
Frederico reached his father’s dark brown horse, let the visor fall, and pulled the reins suddenly to the left.
‘What the bloody dragons!’ shouted Fulbert.
The dark brown horse reared and nearly threw the king out of the saddle. The other horses, too close together, couldn’t stop in time, and the small contingent became one huge neighing centipede. Untrained soldiers fell on the ground, others lost control of their mounts, which turned away and went back up the road.
‘To me,’ called Faust, ‘Regroup.’
‘To the bridge! Attack,’ cried Fulbert. His horse was still rearing, with no space to move backward because of the other horses, and unable to land its front hooves again, because Frederico’s horse was still in the way.
The bridge nearly destroyed, the Baynardians were ready to flee. Fulbert landed the flat of his sword on Frederico’s horse’s haunch. It leaped forward so suddenly that Frederico’s neck almost snapped.
Fulbert kicked his horse. He had blood in his eyes, he had death in his heart. He had suddenly no horse. The Baynardian captain had advanced and cut off the animal’s front legs. The horse fell down with a shriek, and Fulbert was tossed over the horse’s head, falling facedown on the road. He immediately turned, his sword drawing an arch in the air and hitting the Baynardian’s leg. The captain, too, was wearing no armor. He shouted and fell, the king’s sword stuck in his bone.
The Baynardian held on to Fulbert’s arm, forcing the king to stay down. From that angle, the captain couldn’t use his sword, so he took up his dagger instead, which he stuck into Fulbert’s shoulder, inches away from his heart.
Faust gave up reorganizing his men and dismounted to help his father. At the same time, the other six Baynardians put fire to what was left of the bridge. Two of them ran to help their captain. Faust arrived first, thrust his sword through the Baynardian’s good leg, and pulled his father away from the bridge. All the while, Fulbert shouted:
‘Attack! Don’t let them run!’
The King of Patire’s shouts of anger mixed with the Baynardian captain’s shouts of pain and merged with Fulbert’s warhorse’s agonizing shrieks. Frederico wanted to cover his ears, but the helmet stood in the way. The Baynardians carried their captain to the other side of the burning bridge, which nearly collapsed under their feet.
Frederico, eyes shut inside his metal prison, wished only that someone would end the king’s horse’s suffering. It kicked ever slower until its shrieking died in red.
