Jack Frost: King of Thieves

CHAPTER XLII: King Hans Had Come To Burgess

They were awake with the first faint glimmerings of daylight. Drago's Legionnaires moved about the camp with their usual quiet efficiency, their blue cloaks and tabards blending with the pale grey smoke of cooking fires and the fine, cool mist that lingered in the wood so that they looked like ghosts drifting among the trees.

As the men around him fed themselves and prepared to break camp, Pitch bent over a crude washbasin, splashing cold water on his face and shaved head. They had miles to ride today, as they had the previous day and the one before that. Their campaign had taken on a rhythm of sorts, one that felt comfortable to him. Word of the Barons' rebellion had reached him. He hoped it had reached Abita, as well. The king would see in the alliance between Dingwall and Fergus a threat to his power. And without Phrygians there to guide him, he would meet the threat with the only tools he understood: bows and pikes and swords. By the time Gaston crossed the channel, Southern Isles would be neck-deep in a civil war.

At the sound of his own name, Pitch straightened and turned, drying his face with a towel that he then tossed aside. Kay had returned and approached him now with one of his toughs in tow. Kay looked travel weary, but he wore a self-satisfied smile.

"I found him, m'lord," the man said.

"Where?" Pitch asked, resisting an urge to raise a hand to the fading scar on his cheek.

Drago stood nearby, and Pitch sensed that he was listening closely to their exchange.

Kay smiled, as if sharing some great joke. "In plain sight, living in Dorfeld as Sir Sandy's son."

This was the last thing Pitch had expected him to say. "The temerity of the man." He had to admit, though, that he admired this Overland, or whoever he really was. Living openly in the dead knight's home? It was something Pitch himself might have done.

He crossed to a nearby table, which held a map tracing the path he and Drago had burned across Southern Isles. He looked to the Alsace-Lorraine commander.

"Two men," he said. "Four horses. Ride hard to the coast, and then onto Veridian with a message for the king."

Drago eyed him eagerly. "And the message?" he asked, his accent thick.

Pitch considered, but only briefly. The moment for subtlety had long since passed. "Tell him it is time."

Drago hurried off. Pitch remained by the table, staring down at the map. He traced their path, his finger gliding over Burgess and Thatchsun, Glaiveant and Darlington. At last, his finger came to rest, and he tapped the map lightly, looking up at Kay.

"And we to Dorfeld. No prisoners and not a stone unscorched." He grinned. "By God! I'll make the place famous!"

*  *  *

If not for the great cross that still stood in the centre of the village,  Phrygians might never have known that he was in the right place. Though a modest town,  Burgess had always been clean and welcoming, a pleasant place to visit.

But Pitch and his henchmen had left the village in ruin. Fields and homes and shops had been burned black, and everywhere Pitch turned, he saw fresh graves marked by simple crosses.

Yet, Burgess had been transformed in other ways as well. Throughout the village, bright banners fluttered in the wind, bearing the sigils of baronies from throughout North of the Southern Isles. Small clusters of soldiers milled about in the lanes, if these men—some older than Phrygians and Sir Sandy, some no more than boys—could even be called soldiers. They sharpened blades and axes, turned pitchforks and hoes into makeshift pikes. They talked among themselves, their expressions grim but determined. A few of them watched Phrygians as he made his way through the lanes. Perhaps they knew who he was. Perhaps they saw that he wore the colours of the Plantagenet and assumed that he was the king's man and thus an enemy of their cause."