A moment later, a man Frost could not help but recognise, strode onto the porch and gestured for the guards to wait inside.
They retreated through the door, but conspicuously remained just inside the threshold, watching.
In spite of his sour mood, Frost wondered if he should drop to one knee.
Instead, he pushed off from the railing and faced the man, inclining his head. “Your Highness.”
The Prince extended a hand. “Mr Frost. It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance at last.”
Frost hesitated before he accepted the handclasp.
He was a soldier, and soldiers didn’t shake hands with their superiors, but neither did they refuse direct orders from them. “Thank you for seeing me, sir.”
“How could I refuse? I’ve heard all about what happened—or to be more precise what you went through. And I know that in a way, I’m partly responsible for it all. More than partially, I suspect. This was the very least I could do.”
“Right. Well ...” He stopped, the words deserting him. He was a man of action. He let others do the talking. He shrugged the duffel bag off his shoulders.
The guards tensed. The Prince scowled at them and turned back to Frost. “Is that it? The sword is in there? The Crocea Mors?”
“Tony always meant for you to have it. But you do realise that it’s not really what he thought it was. It was never the sword of Arthur.”
The Prince seemed unperturbed by the distinction. “Perhaps not in a literal sense, but in legend the Crocea Mors—the sword of Julius Caesar—and Caliburn—the sword in the stone—are all one and the same. In this business, perception is far more important than reality.”
Ain’t that the fucking truth, Frost thought bitterly.
He set the bag on the ground and knelt to unzip it, but then stopped himself. “You know everything that happened? The Four Evangelists and what they had planned?” He knew for a fact that the man did; Konstantin had confirmed as much. “You know,” he continued, “that this was part of that plan. The sword and everything it represents...the authority to rule.”
“I know of it now.” A corner of the Prince’s mouth twitched into a nervous smile. “I was never involved, of course, and I certainly had no prior knowledge of their intentions.”
“All the same, you do realise that by giving you the sword, we will be accomplishing one of their primary objectives. They’ll have their white horseman.”
This had troubled Frost greatly over the past two days.
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse were synonymous with calamity, but the identity of the first—the rider of the white horse—had always been unclear. Those who believed that Revelation was a prophecy of the End Times, were split on whether the white rider represented Christ, the King of Kings—which was decidedly at odds with the malign nature of the other three horsemen—or if he instead represented something that only had the appearance of good. The latter camp often identified the white horseman as the embodiment of conquest.
In the philosophy of the Four Evangelists, the distinction was irrelevant: the white horseman was both king and conqueror. Their scheme had never rested on a foundation of opposing Manichean extremes; it didn’t matter if the king was good or bad, only that he was in a position of power when the other three horsemen were unleashed.
In stopping Lili, Frost had thwarted the ride of the red horse.
They had meant for her to emerge as martial figure—a modern day Joan of Arc—avenging the death of her father at the hand of Islamic radicals, leading a sympathetic army of her countrymen in a new wave of ethnic and religious violence that would, from one small spark witnessed live on national television, become a wildfire burning across Europe and the Middle East. Lorenzo Martedi had groomed her for that role for more than a decade, training her in the secret traditions of the priesthood of Mars, even making her one of the Salial Virgins, who according to some sources, had assisted the Flamen Martialis—the high priest—in offering sacrifices to the war god.
Lili had certainly done that.
But Frost also recalled his conversation with her in Saint Albans, how she had expressed utter contempt for her father’s support of the NATO intervention in Kosovo. He suspected that, in her own twisted way, Lili was trying to redeem her father. If their ruse had succeeded, if the world had blamed Albanian radicals for the man’s murder, then Kristijan Pavic would have died a martyr’s death, and at last become someone for whom Lili could feel both pride and love.
Frost almost felt pity for Lili, though ultimately her motives didn’t matter. She had been permanently subtracted from the equation, but there were other variables, other ways for the remaining members of the Four Evangelists to make their mad vision a reality.
Lorenzo Martedi was still at large, and there was no way of knowing if he had other acolytes ready to step in and take Lili’s place. The identity of the other two remaining Evangelists—assuming of course that their chosen name was to be taken literally—was also unknown.
David Habersham had reportedly swallowed his own tongue—bloated from cyanide—before interrogators could loosen it.
All of which meant that the Apocalypse Plan—as Sir Charles had taken to calling it—might still be extant.
If Frost handed over the sword as Denison had intended, would he be loosing the first seal on the scroll?
Could he take that risk?
And yet, how could he not? He owed as much to Tony. Moreover, he was a subject of the Crown; if nothing else, duty required it of him. The man before him had the blood of kings flowing through his veins.
It was a lot of responsibility for a simple lad from Derry.
As if reading the struggle in his eyes, the Prince spoke again. “What would you have me do, Mr Frost? It’s public knowledge that I have no ambitions for the throne. Possession of the sword won’t change that, and it certainly won’t make me—or anyone else who wears the crown—a sharer in this diabolical conspiracy. The sword is nothing more than a symbol of something that is already our right.”
Frost didn’t buy it. Power wasn’t like that.
But then he’d never been much of a royalist.
He opened the bag wide, exposing the sword to the noonday sun.
The polished steel caught the rays and reflected them back like holy fire. He put his hand in, took the hilt, and felt the sword humming in his grasp.
“Actually, your highness, I’m not exactly here to give you the sword.”
The Prince cocked his head sideways, and then his eyes widened in alarm.
He started to turn back into the house, a cry on his lips, but before he could take a step, Frost lifted the sword from the bag. He held it up in both hands, the tip of blade pointing down, and then stabbed it into the centre of the marble slab.
There was an eruption of sparks.
A cloud of dust and smoke rose up around him, filling his nose with the smell of burning stone, but in his hands, the sword felt no different. There was no shudder of impact as the sword struck. The blade didn’t skitter away, or gouge a furrow in the hard metamorphic rock, or snap in two, or any of the other things that a reasonable person might expect to happen. It simply kept going, as Frost had known it would, and when at last he let go and took a step back, he saw only the hilt and about ten centimetres of the blade; the rest of the Crocea Mors was imbedded in stone.
The Protection Guards rushed forward and surrounded the Prince, their guns drawn and trained on Frost.
Frost let go of the sword.
He raised his hands.
The Prince shouted for his bodyguards to stand down.
They didn’t move.
Not immediately.
They seemed to sense there was still some sort of threat—one that they couldn’t understand. Finally the first of them relented and took a step back. Then, one by one, the men gazed at the sword protruding from the marble slab.
The Prince approached the sword, his eyes bright—alive—with an almost childlike eagerness. He r
eached out a hand and caressed the hilt.
Then he stopped.
Frost saw the man glance nervously over his shoulder, and knew exactly what was going through the his mind. What if I try to pull it out...and can’t?
Not my problem, Frost thought.
He turned and started down the steps toward his waiting motorcycle.
As he reached the Ducati, the Prince’s voice reached out to him. “Mr Frost!”
He stopped, but did not look back.
“I think we’ll just leave it right there, shall we? Very symbolic. I rather like it.”
Frost felt a chuckle building in his chest.
“I think that’s a good idea, Your Highness,” he called back.
Then he climbed onto the bike, gunned the engine, and drove away, the Knight Errant sent off to wander once more.
If you enjoyed WarGod, don’t miss Shining Ones!
For more information on Steven Savile and his work, visit him online at www.stevensavile.com.
THE END
BOOKS BY STEVEN SAVILE
CODENAME: OGMIOS
Silver
Gold
OGMIOS DIRECTIVE
The Devil’s Executioner
Crucible
Solomon’s Seal
Lucifer’s Machine
Wargod
Shining Ones
Argo
DANE MADDOCK ORIGINS
Dead Ice
OTHER TITLES INCLUDE
Glass Town
Coldfall Wood
Sunfail
Parallel Lines
Winter’s Rage
For a complete list of Steven Savile’s catalog, visit his website at www.stevensavile.com.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Steven Savile is a New York Times bestselling author who has written for Doctor Who, Torchwood, Primeval, Stargate, Warhammer, Slaine, Fireborn, Pathfinder, Arkham Horror, Rogue Angel, and other popular game and comic worlds. He won the International Media Association of Tie-In Writers award for his novel, Shadow of the Jaguar, and the inaugural Lifeboat to the Stars award for Tau Ceti (co-authored with International Bestselling novelist Kevin J. Anderson). Writing as Matt Langley his young adult novel Black Flag was a finalist for the People's Book Prize 2015.
SEAN ELLIS HAS authored and co-authored more than two dozen action-adventure novels, including the Nick Kismet adventures, the Jack Sigler/Chess Team series with Jeremy Robinson, and the Jade Ihara adventures with David Wood. He served with the Army National Guard in Afghanistan, and has a Bachelor of Science degree in Natural Resources Policy from Oregon State University. Sean is also a member of the International Thriller Writers organization. He currently resides in Arizona, where he divides his time between writing, adventure sports, and trying to figure out how to save the world. Learn more about Sean at seanellisauthor.com
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