“Lad…” Sir Alaric looked like shit, haggard, even worse than usual. “King Eckhardt’s dead.”
“What?”
“Murdered,” Sir Alaric swallowed, gasped, clutching his side. “He was murdered. Stabbed.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“Heard what happened at the leper-house,” Sir Alaric huffed. “Best get moving. Ain’t safe for you here.”
“Ain’t safe anywhere, old man.”
“But even so,” Sir Alaric pointed past me, “best you be heading back on out.”
I glanced over my shoulder at the open gate. I won’t lie. We could have kept moving, hiding, til the Kriegbad Pass opened. Or the Ulysses was hale. It was tempting. Fair tempting. But if I’m famous for one thing, it’s always making the worst choice. “Me and mine are still within these walls, yeah?”
“Aye and for sure, lad, but—”
“They still alive?”
“For the now, but—” Sir Alaric turned as the Schloss’s front door burst open.
Sir Gustav and Von Madbury marched out, armed to the teeth, clomping strong. Brother Miles and Prince Eventine and the others filed alongside, the whole retinue phalanxed at their back. Von Madbury’s mouth was flapping the whole while, spouting hate through rictus and jeer.
“You know about any of this?” I spat.
“Lord.” Sir Alaric latched onto my shoulder, his hand quivering. “No. I heard about it just now, I swear. I — I been…”
I could smell the booze hard on his breath, emanating from his body, his pores, his soul. “No worries, old man,” I said. “And I’m sorry about before. About leaving you behind. About…”
“Forget it, lad,” Sir Alaric groaned. “And I’m sorry for—”
“Forget it.” I drew Yolanda singing free and clear as an angel song on summer morn. “There’s work to be done.”
“Jesus, now ain’t the time—”
“I’d beg to differ.” I shrugged free from his grasp. “Hold!” I held up a hand to the encroaching phalanx, “or your man here’s fucked.” I muttered down to Taran, sprawled in the muck, a point of Karl’s steel contention caressing his precious neck. “They fond of you, boy?”
Taran gulped, closed his eyes, started praying.
“That’d be a no.”
Prince Eventine and Brother Miles gave pause. The rest? Not even a little. Von Madbury waved them on, and they fell in like automatons while Sir Gustav kept marching at the fore. He wasn’t the pausing type. The thinking type. The living type.
“Don’t kill him just yet,” I hissed at Karl.
“Yar.”
Sir Gustav, veins on his bull-neck bulging, was nigh upon me, eyes blazing as he cast his scabbard aside and took up his naked war-blade. “Blackguard!”
“Krait, please,” Sir Alaric groaned, “there’s too many. Y-You can’t afford this.”
“Never been much good with money, old man,” I deadpanned, the numb whisper of impending doom settling like a leaden shroud across my soul.
“Sir Gustav!” Sir Alaric croaked. “Put up your blade! Men. Dietrick. Prince! Stop this! We none of us can afford it!”
Sir Gustav didn’t hear, and if he did, he didn’t listen.
No one did.
“You challenged me before, yeah?” I strode toward him. “To the death?”
“Aye!” Sir Gustav bellowed.
“Then I bloody-well accept!”
Neither of us stopped.
“Sanction it!” I yelled.
“It’s sanctioned,” Sir Gustav bellowed.
There were no more words after that.
He wasn’t the words type.
My throat was raw as fuck. Coated in scales of smoke and char and leper ash. I hacked and spat. Kept on walking.
Thirty feet…
Twenty…
Fifteen…
Clomping through the muck, kicking aside tent poles and clutter, before the breaking-wheel, Sir Gustav drew his war-blade back mid-stride as I entered range. His teeth ground together, lips curling back in an animal snarl as we came together swift as two rams clashing.
Overhead, he swung, a great galloping arc that might’ve felled an oak.
“Fucking die!” he roared, his blade careening at my face.
Sliding forth and pivoting just so, I caught his blade crashing, biting at an angle into mine, my point riding in, wedging his aside a whisker wide of my face, his power flowing past, over, steel rasping against steel, sparks ripping ragged. My feet were rooted, unmoving. And Yolanda? Steadfast and steady as true north, she caught the fucker through the eye on point, gliding in and through, soft as a lover’s whisper before jagging matter out the back of his skull.
Sir Gustav’s war-blade plopped in the muck, his arms dangling limp, and for a moment, we just stood there, linked by flesh and steel, life and death, a visage of idiotic incredulity contorting the oaf’s dullard mug. Jaw agape, thick lips working like he was trying to say something, form some last testament worth its weight in goat shit.
Mumbling. Drooling. A hollow groan.
Then he dropped.
“Murder!” someone screamed.
“Fuck your murder.” I stepped on Sir Gustav’s face and muscled Yolanda scraping free. I pointed it at Prince Eventine. Shock and awe as he stammered. “Now where’s your bloody father?”
…strigoi along with their guardians were indescribable.
Through surprise and sheer number, we slaughtered them, but our cost was dear. Of the fifty who penetrated into their lair, only eight escaped, and of those, two are crippled in body while three in both mind and spirit.
Sir Elliot, my boon companion, my childhood friend, my brother in arms, lies amongst the fallen.
—War-Journal of Prince Ulrich of Haeskenburg
Chapter 37.
THE BARE-BLADED TRUTH was I didn’t give a fuck about King Eckhardt. And I didn’t give a shit about the princes. The Queen. Any of them. But that, along with the general disbelief of what’d just happened to Sir Gustav’s face and my sword got me in through the Schloss’s front door before the big dope finished twitching. A last glance back at all of them standing round, gawping down, muttering in disbelief, before Karl slammed the door.
Abe and his family’s room was locked. I didn’t have the key, so I made do how I always. Took a couple boots but the door ceded firmly to my vigorous demands.
“Holy Hell…” I gasped.
“Sir Luther—” Lady Mary scrambled forth. “What in heaven’s breadth is going on?”
“Nothing good.” I glared up. “Pack whatever you can carry.”
A halo of ashen faces stared back. Except for Abraham’s. His bore a bluish cast, and each breath he took was a labor. A struggle. A nascent defeat. Imminent, a word that came to mind.
“Get out!” Tears streamed down Ruth’s face as she read my mind. “You have no right — get away from him!”
“Right and wrong’s got no purchase here, Ruth.”
“Leave. Him. Alone.” Her hands balled into fists.
“Ruth…” It came as barely a whisper, the echo of a whisper. “Please…” Abraham’s eyes cracked open, those brown orbs, once so clear, so full of thought and weight and wisdom, now clouded by the shroud of impending doom. “Krait…” He whispered no word, he merely mouthed it through tremulous lips. “Take them.” He pointed. “Go.”
“Ruth won’t.” I knelt, lowered my voice. “Not without you.”
“I know.” He swallowed. “P-Please…”
Fumbling for something to say, something useful, something meaningful, I failed, prodigiously, only nodding at his drowning silence.
His brow furrowed, lips pursed in frustration, a Herculean task considering, and I felt his hand clutching at my belt, fumbling for my dagger. “Trying to do me in, old-timer?”
“No…” He withdrew his hand, dropping it to his chest, “Me. For me.”
“I know. Jesus. I know.”
“Please,” Abraham coughed. It was like a half-dr
owned kitten choking on a thimbleful of milk. Ruth was back, shoving past, clutching his hand, embracing, murmuring vapid platitudes. Grimacing through her hair, his teeth pink with hacked spume, Abraham mouthed, “Please…”
Again, I said nothing, just offered a cool glare, a curt nod, and gripped my blade.
He seemed to settle after that.
“Pack your shit.” I turned to the kids. “Apologies. Stuff. We need to get the hell out of here. Heck.” Jesus.
“No.” Ruth glared.
“Time’s short.”
“Don’t presume to tell me what my husband needs. What my family needs. What I need!” Ruth gripped the bedpost with a harpy claw, the shattered pieces of her self stitched together by something tenuous, something taut, something fixed to burst. “And there is hope. You said so yourself. The man who can heal, the Nazarene, he’s coming.” Lady Mary was at her side, hands to her shoulders, muttering. “He’s coming tonight.”
“Ruth, please,” Lady Mary murmured. “He’s trying to help—”
“He ain’t coming, Ruth,” I said.
“He is!” Ruth shoved Lady Mary off then clutched at my mail shirt. “And … and we’ll convert. Tonight. There’s a priest. The Father — Father Gregorius. We’ll take vows, and the Nazarene—”
“The Nazarene’s dead.” I peeled her hands off my shirt.
“What—?” Ruth’s lips contorted. “No! It’s a lie.”
I hesitated, wondering if the Nazarene was yet drawing breath and knowing sure-as-shit if he were, somehow, through grace of God or his empirical opposite, he’d be in no mood to come curing my boon companions, newly converted or not.
Lady Mary’s eyes quivered. “Sir Luther, what has—”
“No.” Ruth clawed up to her feet. “No! It’s a lie!”
“He’s dead.” I pointed at the kids. “And they’re next. You’re next. We’re all next. Soon as those fuckers outside gather their limited wits.”
“No!” Ruth sputtered.
“Quiet—” I barked as though it’d make some difference.
“Please, Ruth.” Lady Mary raised a hand. “They locked us in here like animals—”
“No! Th-there isn’t much time.” Ruth clutched Abraham’s face, leaned in, kissed his cold blue lips. “Oh, my dear. My dear. My love. Don’t fear, don’t fret,” she smoothed back his sparse hair, “he’ll come. I’ve seen him. He said he’d come! We’ll get out of this together—”
“Lady Mary,” I rose from my knee, “take the kids down to the great hall.”
Ruth’s hands balled into fists. “No.”
“Lady Mary—”
“Damn you!” Ruth came at me, launching her frail form, clawing for my eyes.
Abraham lifted a hand, purple lips working, voiceless, eyes pleading.
Ruth was frail. Starving. Hadn’t slept in days. But she possessed a maniac strength born of desperation and hate.
“Jesus Christ!” I caught her by the wrists, ragged nails straining for my eyes as she poured into me, squealing, wailing, gnashing, driving me backward, tripping over a chair and flat on my back. A snap and a squeal as her left wrist broke. I let go, “Ruth, for fuck’s sake—” but she kept on coming, clawing, busted bones and all, with her good hand, her bad hand, her teeth and knees and whatever else she had. I slipped backward on my arse, her nails raking my face, catching her by the elbow on her back-swing, driving a foot into her hip, upending her and ripping her down, smashing face-first into the floor.
The kids wailing…
Blood pounding…
Lady Mary screaming…
I blinked. “Jesus…” I hadn’t meant to slam her, but then, I hadn’t meant not to, either. “Fuck.” I clambered up.
Lady Mary knelt, pawing at her. “Ruth…?”
She might’ve been dead.
“Her wrist’s broken,” I growled.
Abraham lay seething, pink foam eking down his chin, his head craned toward Ruth, eyes roiling in desperation, madness, hate. At the very least.
“Alright.” I drew my dagger.
“Sir Luther!” Lady Mary stopped me cold. “Sheathe it. Put it away! Rose of Sharon. Now!” She pointed toward the door. “Joshua! Sarah! Out in the hall. Go. Now.”
The kids ignored her, pawing at their listless mother.
“You against me, too?” I snarled.
“Judas Priest—” Lady Mary closed her eyes and shook her head. “Look! For the love of God, look.” She pointed. “Look!”
The kids peered up, first Sarah then Joshua.
“F-Father…?”
Then came the waterworks.
“No, he’s…” I stammered, stopped, straightened, lowering the dagger to my side, hiding it behind my back. Then I dropped it, clanging to the floor. Abraham’s face was frozen in a rictus of rage and hate and agony, his body contorted over as his last act in life had been watching me beat the fuck out of his beloved wife.
“I’m sorry, Abe. Sorry for a lot.” I swiped my dagger off the floor and headed out the door. I bigger fish to fry.
…in celebration, the Hochmeister ordered the remainder of the clan-holt prisoners crucified. We had no proper stock, so we made do with the wheels of our wagons.
We supped that eve to the music of hammers falling, bone shattering, of men, women, and children screaming.
It was a tepid celebration.
—War-Journal of Prince Ulrich of Haeskenburg
Chapter 38.
QUEEN ELONA SPANNED the doorway like some black widow slathered across her web, her slender arms gripping the jamb in some piss-poor attempt at denying me access. Her eyes flashed with an animal panic. “Sir Luther. Please. I beg of you. Leave. This—” she swallowed, “this doesn’t concern you.” Past her, King Eckhardt lay in his bed. It was fair clear even from the hallway that he was dead. Dead, and then some. “I-I’ll not have you disturbing him.”
The corpse-king lay abed, staring at the ceiling, his mouth open in silent scream, limbs contorted out, fingernails black. His own sword had been driven through the right side of his chest, jutting out like some extra appendage, pinning him to the bed like a bug in a collection.
“I’ll try not to wake him,” I deadpanned.
“I didn’t do it.” I could smell on her breath she’d been drinking. A lot.
“Didn’t say you did.” I raised my hands. “Now what the hell’s going on?”
“But that’s what they’ll think. What they’ll all think.” She was starting to make Ruth look calm and reasonable by comparison. “It was Dietrick. It … It had to be.” She wiped slaver from the corner of her mouth.
“Is that what you believe? Or what you want to believe?”
“Does it matter? For the love of God, please, go.”
“I’ve gotta take a look.”
“You say you’re a shit. A scoundrel. Well, prove it.”
“Where’ve you been?”
“I… For the love of God, leave.” She pointed past me down the hall. “If you’ll offer no help. No hope.” She clamped down, nails biting into the jamb. “No anything.”
“Elona. Move. Please,” I said it softly but kept moving forward.
“You,” she sneered. “You’d not lay a hand on a lady.”
“Go tell that to Ruth.” I pushed past her, gently, firmly, inexorably. “Pardon me. Again.”
The Queen recoiled as though to strike me but froze. “You think you’re so smart. You all think you’re so God-damned smart.”
“If I was smart, I wouldn’t be here.”
A smile slid trembling across her face. Gears turning inside. Ragged. Rusty. Sharp. Then she turned and strode off down the hall.
What the hell was that?
I paused a step inside the King’s bedchamber, scanning the floor. Made sure I wasn’t going to spoil the portrait painted. Old rushes covered the flagstones, offering a pallid, forest scent. King Eckhardt’s chambers were spartan and close, a small shuttered window the lone source of light. Dust hung in the air.
Coat-of-plate armor, the King’s empty scabbard, a gold-embossed crossbow, and other accouterments of war were slung over a rack set by the window, a dagger glinting on the sill.
I glanced at the King’s face then didn’t again. A scream of silent anguish was cast onto it. Lips curled back over gums black and shiny as coal. Teeth protruding. A grimace like a cornered rat. The whites of his eyes engorged with blood. Open. Glaring. Accusatory.
Thoughts of Abraham’s face, fresh in my mind, supplanted the King’s. I shook it off. Or tried to, anyway.
“Odin’s eye.” Karl appeared at the door. “Don’t pay to be dead.”
“Not today,” I said. “The Queen just left. She’s in a state. Make sure she doesn’t let our friends in. Hazard the lads might be emboldened to commence our lynching.”
“Lynch…?” Karl’s brow furrowed.
“Jesus Christ.” I looped an imaginary noose round my neck, yanked up, and stuck out my tongue. “Come up here and fucking hang us.”
“Us…?” Karl grinned toothily before disappearing. “I didn’t kill nobody.”
“Yeah,” I muttered, “not lately, anyway.”
From out in the yard came shouting. The Queen. Father Gregorius. Von Madbury. A discussion. Heated. The Queen marched out the front door toward her one-eyed paramour. The Schloss’s full retinue of fighters had gathered below, still huddled round the fallen form of Sir Gustav, laid out in the yard, arms crossed over his chest, sword laid out upon him. It was a vast improvement.
The screaming came again. Harsh. Shrill. Jarring. As one, glares rose from the corpse to the Schloss’s gaping front door then to me. Von Madbury acted first, walking, then jogging, then hauling.
“Hey, fuck-face!” I hollered.
“Eh—?” Von Madbury skidded to a halt, glaring up. “Krait, you bastard! What the hell do you want?!” he roared as Karl’s shaggy head appeared in the front door, slamming shut an instant later.
“Oh, nothing.” I pulled back inside, took a deep breath.
I turned back to the corpse-king. Ran a hand through my hair. It was hard to equate that rictus of pain with the insipid countenance of the man I’d spoken with mere hours past. Always an odd thing. A haunting thing. Seeing someone dead who’d only so recently been otherwise.
The Last Benediction in Steel Page 23