The Two of Swords: Part 10

  “I didn’t know you properly then,” Oida said, gathering the reins. “And anyway, by that stage I was fairly sure I wasn’t going to have to do it myself. Nothing personal.”

  “Indeed. While I think of it, I don’t like your music very much. All froth and no substance.” Frontizo looked at him for a moment. “Giving your life for the Cause,” he said. “I guess it depends on the quality of the life. In your case, I can see how you’d be prepared to do it. Not sure I could. Have a good trip.”

  Oida hesitated. The camp gate was open, and the sentries on the gate said there was nothing on the road as far as the eye could see. “My brother.”

  “What? Oh, yes. What about him?”

  “When you saw him, was he all right?”

  Frontizo shrugged. “Seemed to be. Nice chap, under all the swagger and bluster. I guess they run in the family.”

  “On my mother’s side,” Oida said, nudging the horse with his heels. “Thanks for everything you’ve done for me.”

  “It wasn’t for you,” Frontizo said. “Safe journey.”

  When Oida was out of sight, Frontizo went back to his tent, sat down at the low pile of boxes he used as a writing desk, pushed aside a mound of paperwork until he found a return-of-requisitions form he’d neglected for so long that it no longer mattered. He trimmed off the lower margin, the width of his thumb, then put an impossibly fine nib on his pen. Next he picked up a leather satchel off the floor; on the flap it had the insignia of the military mail, in thick paint just beginning to crack. He studied the strap for a moment; whoever had made the satchels for the mail had thoughtfully inserted a bit of cotton waste between the two halves of the strap before they were stitched together, as padding for the despatch rider’s neck. With the tip of his penknife, he slit the stitches and prised the seam open, just enough so that he could tease out the cotton. Then he went back to his scrap of salvaged parchment, and began to write.

  Read on in The Two of Swords: Part 11.

  K. J. Parker is the pseudonym of Tom Holt, a full-time writer living in the south-west of England. When not writing, Holt is a barely competent stockman, carpenter and metalworker, a two-left-footed fencer, an accomplished textile worker and a crack shot. He is married to a professional cake decorator and has one daughter.

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