My Brother Bet I'd Be Dead by Spring, So I Made My Ruin the Strongest March in the Realm novel · Chapter 3 of 32

Chapter 3: Back Pay

Maela pays the collector's soldiers the wages he stole from his own strongbox and they walk him out on foot, but the bandit captain holds up her brother's letter offering fifty crowns for her head.

The big man looked up at me on my sacks of grain.

"You're sitting on my supper, princess," he said.

"It's Penhal's grain," I said.

"So am I."

The collector had found his voice again.

"These are the bandits of the King's Road," he told the yard. "The crown has a price on every one of them."

He turned to me with his torn ledger held against his chest.

"A lord who shelters bandits forfeits her land," he said. "Order them off, my lady, or I write that you welcomed them."

The big man laughed. "She can't order us to do anything."

"Then my men will," the collector said.

His twenty soldiers raised their spears toward the wall.

Thirty bows on top of it creaked as they drew.

The children in the yard were standing between the two.

I looked at the sergeant with the scarred eyebrow.

"Sergeant," I said, "when were you last paid?"

He blinked at me. "At the end of summer, my lady."

"The crown paid your autumn wages on the first day of autumn," I said.

"Four crowns a man, eighty for twenty," I said. "They went out with the collector's escort money."

The sergeant looked at the collector.

"He signed for them," I said. "I wrote the line in the book myself."

"That's a lie," the collector said.

"Then it won't be in the iron box under the bench of your cart," I said. "Open it, Sergeant."

The collector stepped in front of his cart.

The sergeant moved him aside with one hand, almost gently.

He climbed up, pulled an iron box from under the driver's bench and broke its little lock with the butt of his spear.

It was full of coin.

On top lay a leather purse with the crown's stamp burned into it.

The sergeant held it up in the cold air, and every soldier in the yard looked at it.

"Count it out," I said. "Four crowns to each man. It's yours. It was always yours."

He laid the coins out on the tailboard of the cart.

Twenty soldiers came up one at a time and took their wages, and not one of them looked at the collector.

"You've robbed the crown," the collector said to me.

"No," I said. "You did. And I'm not finished."

I stood up on the sacks so the whole yard could hear me.

"For three years this man wrote Penhal's grain into the crown's book as seized and sent to Kerys," I said.

"Not one sack ever reached Kerys," I said. "He sold it to the boatmen at Aven Ford and kept the price."

The yard went very still.

Gwenn's voice came out of it, thin and sharp.

"Three years?" she said. "We thought it was the king eating it."

"The king never saw it," I said.

The collector backed toward his horse.

A woman stepped in front of the horse.

Then another came, and then a man on a crutch.

Soon the horse had a ring of thin people around it, and the collector was outside the ring.

The sergeant cleared his throat.

"Sir," he said, "that horse belongs to the crown. I think you'll be walking."

The collector looked at his soldiers.

His soldiers looked at the road.

He walked out of Penhal's gate on foot with his torn ledger under his arm.

The sergeant followed him at a distance, carrying his own pay.

The rest of the soldiers mounted and rode after them.

They left the grain.

Nobody cheered.

They watched the road until the last blue coat was gone over the hill.

Then an old man sat down in the mud and started to laugh.

On the wall, the bandits lowered their bows and unwrapped their faces.

A woman screamed a name and ran for the gap in the wall.

A young bandit jumped down and caught her, and she hit him on the chest with both fists and then held on to him.

Then they were all coming down, and the yard was full of women grabbing sons and husbands.

Gwenn came to stand beside my cart.

"They're ours, my lady," she said. "Every one of them."

The big man had his arm around a girl of about ten, who was trying to get into his coat pocket.

"Erwan Prigent," he said to me. "Captain of the King's Road, if you believe the collector."

"How long have you been robbing the crown's carts?" I asked.

"Six years," he said. "Ever since they started taking more than we grew."

He looked at the sacks under my feet.

"The grain stays with us," he said.

"The grain stays in Penhal," I said. "So do you, by the sound of it."

Erwan smiled with his broken tooth.

Then he reached inside his sheepskin and pulled out a folded letter.

The wax was blue and pressed with a stag.

"Your collector's rider came through the woods yesterday," he said. "We took his horse and this."

He held it up so I could read it.

My brother's hand was easy to know.

It always leaned to the right.

"To the captain of the King's Road," it said.

"Fifty crowns for the head of the Lady Maela, delivered to me before the first day of spring."

The yard had gone quiet again.

Erwan folded the letter and put it back in his coat.

"So, princess," he said. "Let's talk about what you're worth."

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