They Counted Me Like Cargo, So I Took the War novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Counted in the Rain
Handed over at the Wend ford and counted between the salt and the wheat, Seren takes the general's knife, cuts open his brother's chaff-filled grain sacks before both armies, and learns in the tent that Corvus never asked for a prince.
"Item," the herald called across the ford. "Twelve wagons of salt."
The rain ran off his hat brim in a thin string, and Seren Caerwen listened to himself being counted.
"Item. One prince, third in line, unarmed."
The herald said it in the same voice as the salt.
Seren stood in the mud between the wagons in his wedding coat, and two armies looked at him.
Caerwen in green on the west bank, under his brother's dripping banners.
Varra in red on the east bank, eight thousand men who had broken three of his kingdom's armies.
"Item," the herald went on. "Forty wagons of wheat."
On the Varran side, a clerk with a tally book under an oiled cloth wrote it all down.
"One prince," he repeated, and made a mark.
Behind Seren, under a canopy that kept him perfectly dry, his brother Aldric laughed.
"Count him twice," Aldric said. "He's worth less than the salt."
His lords laughed with him.
Nobody on the Varran side laughed at all.
The man in front of them didn't move.
General Corvus Vantor sat a black horse at the edge of the water with no hood on.
Rain ran down a white scar through his lower lip.
He was looking at Seren, not at the prince's brother.
Seren had thought about this moment for nine days in a closed carriage.
He had not thought about the wagons.
But he was standing right beside them, and he could see the axles.
Forty wagons of wheat should sit low in mud like this.
These rolled high and easy.
He looked at the ruts behind them.
Shallow.
"Highness," the herald hissed. "Walk forward. It's done."
Seren didn't walk forward.
He walked sideways, to the nearest wheat wagon, and put his hand on the wet sacking.
Aldric's laugh stopped.
"Seren," he said pleasantly. "Get across the river."
Seren looked over the water at the general.
"I need a knife," he said.
Eight thousand Varrans heard a Caerwen prince ask their general for a blade.
Somebody on the Caerwen bank drew a sword.
Corvus Vantor swung down from his horse into water to his knees and waded across.
He pulled a plain black-handled knife from his belt.
He turned it in his scarred hand and held it out to Seren hilt first.
"Don't drop it," Corvus said. His voice was low and very calm. "It was my father's."
The handle was warm from his body.
Seren cut the top sack open.
Good gold wheat spilled over his wrist.
He pushed his arm in up to the elbow, and under the first layer his fingers closed on something light and dry.
He pulled out a fistful and held it up in the rain.
Chaff.
He cut the second sack, low down, and chaff poured out onto the mud.
On the Varran bank, a sound went through the ranks.
"A quartermaster's error," Aldric said behind him. "I'll have him hanged."
"Which one?" Seren asked.
He turned around to face his brother under the canopy.
"You'd have to hang all forty. It's every wagon. Look at the ruts."
Aldric's smile was still on his face, but his eyes had gone flat.
Seren raised his voice so it carried to both banks.
"This is one layer of wheat on forty wagons of husks."
"The general's army would have opened them at midsummer, when the spring stores ran out."
"They'd have starved by harvest, and broken the truce to eat, and blamed Caerwen."
He looked at his brother.
"And the first thing they'd have done was hang the hostage."
The rain was the only sound for a long moment.
"That's how you planned to end the war," Seren said. "With me as the reason it started again."
"You always did talk too much," Aldric said softly.
"Then the count's wrong," Corvus said.
"Count it again with wheat in it, or there's no peace."
Aldric looked at the general, and then at eight thousand men in red.
"The grain will come," he said. "Within the week."
"Seven days," Corvus said. "I'll count it myself."
Aldric turned his horse.
As he went past Seren, he leaned down from the saddle.
"You'll be dead by harvest anyway," he said. "Nobody will even ask."
Then he rode away, and the Caerwen lords followed him, and didn't look back.
Seren crossed the ford on his own feet before anyone could drag him.
The general's tent was big and plain and smelled of wet canvas, oil and horse.
There was no chain.
"Sit," Corvus said, and Seren sat, because his knees had decided for him.
He held out the knife.
Corvus didn't take it.
He went to a chest at the foot of the cot and took out a bundle tied with string.
He dropped it in Seren's lap.
The paper was brown at the edges, curled, burned.
Seren knew the handwriting.
It was his own.
His letter on the levy. His plan for the Wend granaries. Two years of begging his father to listen.
Aldric had burned them in the Highcourt square last spring while Seren watched from a window.
Someone had written in the margins in thick black ink.
"Good." "No, the salt tax first." "Why did nobody do this?"
The spelling was terrible.
"My spy pulled them out of the fire," Corvus said. "I've read every word you ever wrote, Highness."
"Then you asked for me," Seren said. His voice came out rough. "For this."
"No."
Corvus crouched in front of him so their eyes were level.
"I asked for grain and the Wend."
"I never asked for a prince. Your brother wrote you onto the list himself."
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