“You’re Royce?” the blacksmith called back. “You’re the one claiming to be the son of the old king?”
“No, no,” Raymond explained quickly. “I’m his brother.”
“So you’re the son of the old king too?” the smith demanded.
“No, I’m not,” Raymond said. “I’m the son of a villager, but Royce is—”
“Well, make up your mind,” the old woman who’d embarrassed him said. “If this Royce is your brother, then he can’t be the son of the old king. It stands to reason.”
“No, you’ve got it all wrong,” Raymond said. “Please, just listen to me, give me a chance to explain it all, and—”
“And what?” the blacksmith said. “You’ll tell us how this Royce is worth us following him? You’ll tell us how we should go out and die in someone else’s war?”
“Yes!” Raymond said, and then realized how that must sound. “No, I mean… it isn’t someone else’s war. It’s a war for everyone.”
The smith didn’t seem very convinced by that. He strode up to lean against the well, no longer a part of the crowd, but the one addressing it.
“Really?” he said, looking out to the others there. “You all know me, and I know you, and we all know what it’s like when nobles fight. They come and they take us for their armies, and they promise us all kinds of things, but when it’s all done, it’s us who’re dead, and they go back to doing what they want.”
“Royce is different!” Raymond insisted.
“Why is he different?” the smith shot back.
“Because he’s one of us,” Raymond said. “He was raised in a village. He knows what it’s like. He cares.”
The smith sneered at that. “If he cares so much, then where is he? Why is he not here, rather than some boy saying he’s his brother?”
Raymond knew then that there was no point in continuing. The people here weren’t going to listen to him, no matter what he said. They’d heard too many promises from too many other people, back in the days before King Carris had forbidden his nobles from fighting. Only the thought that Royce might actually care for them would be enough to persuade people, and the smith was right: they had no reason to believe that when he wasn’t even there.
Raymond turned his horse, riding out of the village with as much dignity as he could find right then. It wasn’t much.
He rode out on the path in the direction of the next village, trying to think as he went, and ignoring the steady rain that started to fall around him.
He loved his brother, but he also wished that Royce hadn’t felt the need to leave to find his father. Objectively, Raymond could understand how much finding the old king would help their cause, but it was Royce people would follow, Royce they needed to see in order to rise up. Without him there, Raymond wasn’t sure if he would be able to pull together any kind of army for his brother.
That meant that when King Carris struck back, it would just be Earl Undine’s forces against the full might of the royal army. Raymond didn’t know how big that army would be, but since it would be composed of forces from every lord in the land… they would have no chance.
If only there were some way that Royce could be here, Raymond had no doubt he would be able to raise the army they needed. As it was, though, he found himself hoping that Lofen and Garet would have better luck.
“We can’t leave it to luck though,” Raymond said to himself. “Not when there are so many people who will die.”
He’d seen firsthand what the nobles could do to those who crossed them. There were the gibbets, the tortures on the healing stone, and worse. At the very least, every village that stood would find itself ravaged, which only gave those that remained more reasons not to join in the revolt.
Raymond sighed. There was no way to square the circle: they needed Royce, but they couldn’t have him while he went to find his father. Unless…
“No, that couldn’t work,” Raymond said to himself.
Except that maybe it could. It wasn’t as though anyone here actually knew what Royce looked like. They might have heard of him, might even have heard a general description, but everyone knew how stories exaggerated.
“This is a stupid idea,” Raymond said.
The trouble was that it was the only idea he could think of right then. Yes, it would be dangerous, because Royce was a hunted man. Yes, it would store up trouble for later: people would feel betrayed when they found out, some might even desert. More wouldn’t though. More would feel too connected to the cause once they were a part of the army, or would be too busy fighting to think about it.
“They might not even see Royce close up,” Raymond mused.
He realized that he had made a decision without exactly making it, and continued on his route toward another village. He chose one a couple of villages over, because he didn’t want stories spreading from Byesby and spoiling what he was about to do. This village was larger, with an inn and a great barn that served as a general store. It was large enough that the sight of one man riding into the village didn’t bring people out of their houses with the sheer strangeness of it all. It meant that Raymond had to sit on horseback in the village square, calling out again and again until people came out to him.
“Everyone, listen. Listen to me! I have news!”
He waited until people gathered around before he started to speak.
“War is coming!” he said. “You’ve heard the stories: that the son of the true king has come back, and overthrown a duke who ravaged his own people! Well, it’s true, and I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that this is just another squabble between nobles that you have no part of, but I’m here to tell you that you do have a part in it. That this is something different.”
“Oh, and why’s that?” a man demanded from the back of the growing crowd. Raymond had the feeling of things building up in the same way they had before.
“Because this is a chance to actually change things. Because this is not a squabble among nobles, but a chance to make a world that isn’t about a few nobles holding us all down. Because this is one fight where the people involved actually care about people like you, people like all of us.”
“Is that so?” the man asked. “Well then, stranger, who are you, that you know so much about it all?”
Raymond took a breath, knowing this was the moment when he had to either do it or not do it, and once it was done, it couldn’t be undone.
“Come on,” the man demanded. “Who are you, to say that some far off noble actually cares about any of the likes of us?”
“It’s simple,” Raymond said, and this time, his voice did boom out over the village for everyone to hear. “My name is Royce, and I am the son of King Philip, the true and rightful king of this land!”
CHAPTER FIVE
Royce was padding through a forest, the trees blending into one another until it became impossible to know the path. He was lost, and somehow he knew that this was a place where to be lost was to die.
He continued onward, not knowing what else to do. Around him now, the trees closed in, and their branches whipped around in an unseen wind, buffeting Royce and lashing him. Their branches tore at his skin, and now there were brambles to go with the branches, ripping into him and holding him back. It took everything he had to keep going.
Why keep going, though? He didn’t know where he was, so why press forward like this, through the darkness and the uncertainty of the forest? His energy was fading, so why not sit down on the stump of a tree, waiting until he got his breath back, and—
“To stop is to die, my son.” The voice came through the trees, and even though he had only heard it in dreams, Royce instantly recognized it as that of his father. He turned toward the sound, starting forward.
“Father, where are you?” he called out, pushing in the direction the voice seemed to have come from.
The way was, if anything, even harder here. There were fallen trees to contend with, and Royce found it harder to leap over them each time. There were rocks protruding from the forest floor, and now it seemed that Royce had to climb as much as run just to get around them. The route ahead was still indistinguishable from the rest of the forest, and Royce could feel the despair of not knowing pressing down on him.