The Sword Saint

by C. F. Iggulden

  ‘I’ll kill you!’ Bosin said, reaching for him.

  Deeds shuddered at the rage in the big man’s eyes. He could see how hard it was for Hondo to hang on to him and edged away.

  ‘Is this what you wanted?’ Deeds said to Hondo.

  ‘Yes,’ Hondo said through clenched teeth, grunting with effort. He was having trouble holding Bosin, though he had the man’s wrist joint locked and his own legs braced against Bosin’s so that the big man could not rise. Even so, Hondo was losing.

  ‘Deeds?’ Hondo grated.

  ‘Yes, Master Hondo?’

  ‘Please run. I cannot hold …’

  With a roar, Bosin broke free. Deeds was off at a sprint, going as if all his demons were after him.

  11

  Fall

  Prince Louis was drunk. He had not quite realised the potency of the liquid that lapped like clear oil against glass, cold and deadly with its little twist of lemon. The first one had made him feel like a hero, but the second had taken some of his balance – and the third, well, he wondered if he might see the third again at any moment.

  It had been a wondrous evening, recalled in splendid flashes. The door hung open behind them as he and the blonde tumbled onto an enormous bed. He could hear cheering as some new match or bout began on the floor below. It made him grin, as if the merchants and lords of Darien were judging his technique. What an extraordinary aphrodisiac violence could be! Harkness had warned him about it, in his sour, old-man way. There were women and men who came to the gambling houses, not for the tables or the wagering, but the arousal they felt on seeing one man beat another half to death, or some private contest between enemies, where they touched burning brands to their flesh. The rooms up on the third floor were always filled at the end of the evening, so Harkness said.

  The thought was matched by a laughing pair rushing by on the landing. Louis was struggling to undo a catch on her dress from underneath and caught a glimpse of a key held upright in a pale hand and a flash of eyes before they were gone. The door was too far from the end of the bed for him to kick it shut, he realised. He would have to ask her to stop for him to get up. That turned out to be a rare challenge all by itself.

  Her eyes were dark with kohl and devilment as he began to raise himself on an elbow. A shadow blocked the doorway and Louis looked up sharply, instantly embarrassed.

  ‘The room is taken, sir,’ he snapped. It was his own fault, of course, leaving the door open and inviting gawkers by doing so.

  To his astonishment, the man continued into the room, with others behind him. Louis was half-undressed, on his back and held down by the weight of the woman he had entered with. Even then, he might have thrown her off and gained his feet if not for the drinks that still swam in his system, refusing to drown.

  With no warning, the first man lunged, punching him in the face. The blonde went flying in a heap and Louis saw one of the others raise some sort of black cosh over her, bringing it down hard. Her shriek was cut short and then Louis was fending off a wild attack, though more and more weakly as the dark figure batted away his hands and punched his head into the pillow, over and over. Blood spattered across the coverlet and Prince Louis had his own cry cut off as he tried to yell for help. Where were Harkness and his guards? He’d have the old bastard strung up for letting thieves into one of the rooms!

  Louis was young, fit and strong, but all the fight was battered out of him in a distressingly short time. There was no sound from the blonde sprawled on the floor. A second man took hold of his left arm and held it steady, despite all his wrenching. The one who had beaten him with such precision then twisted his right arm, rotating the elbow so that it locked. He sat on the bed in horrible intimacy as he leaned on it, looking down at him. Louis felt both helpless and terrified. His lips were broken and he could feel his face beginning to swell. He had a sense of sick dread as a third man shut the door to the room. The noises and light were suddenly gone. Louis was alone, with three men and a woman, dead or unconscious. His heart beat hard enough for him to notice it and see lights flashing across his vision. He thought again that he might vomit.

  ‘Get out,’ Prince Louis croaked at them. He tried to pull himself free with the last of his strength and when that failed, just lay and panted.

  ‘In a moment, son,’ the one with his right arm said, adding to the pressure on his elbow so that it began to ache.

  Louis could smell sweat and onions on his breath, as well as something else out of place, something he could not quite recognise. The man had hammered his head with a fist like a club and it was hard not to flinch whenever he shifted position. Louis glared back, but it was a poor show of defiance and they both knew it.

  ‘My purse is in my jacket pocket,’ the prince said. ‘Take that and go.’

  ‘All right then,’ the man replied. He rootled around and fished out the pouch, putting it into a pocket of his own without breaking eye contact.

  ‘Jones,’ the one at the door grumbled in warning. ‘You were told.’

  The man on the bed just shrugged.

  ‘Perks,’ he said. ‘No harm in it.’

  Louis didn’t want to ask them to leave again. He didn’t want to hear himself plead, so he lay still, but then no one else moved either. He thought the pair holding him down seemed to be enjoying his helplessness. The one gripping his left arm was wiry and incredibly strong. He was grinning too, though there was only cruelty in it.

  It was clear that they would not go on until Louis spoke once more. They had sensed somehow that he didn’t want to, so they would make him. He thought of the blade hidden in his sleeve, a nasty little razor with one edge coated in his favourite paralytic. If he could bring that into play, it wouldn’t take more than a stripe or two for him to be master once more of that room. The prospect was delicious. He would invent new types of savagery then for all three of them.

  ‘You weren’t meant to make a trade deal, my lord,’ the man at the door said suddenly.

  Louis blinked up at him.

  ‘What?’ he said weakly, though his mind was racing. Where was Harkness, or his guards? Was the old fool blind and deaf? Gambling establishments always had armed men to keep the peace. Did they not come up to the third floor?

  ‘Your father was furious,’ the man went on.

  He was, Louis noted, rather better dressed than the pair holding his arms. They were all in long jackets, trousers and boots. The smell of shop-fresh cloth and polish was strong in the room. That was what it was, the scent that had seemed odd to him. He realised it was the sort of thing men might do if they wished to enter the Darien Lion without being hauled straight back out again as vagabonds. Now that he had a chance to think, he saw shaving cuts on both of the men sitting on his bed. They were more used to bristles. As he had the thought, one of them eased an itchy new collar, running a finger around it. The two on the bed wore pomade on their hair, Louis saw, as if they had taken a thick handful of the stuff from the same pot. Everything they wore was cheap but new-bought, a disguise for who they were.

  In comparison, the man at the door wore a well-fitting coat that had seen better days. The elbows were a little shiny with wear, but the man’s boots gleamed blackly and two gold bands glinted on his right hand, on the fourth and smallest fingers. Louis tried to see if one of them was marked with a crest, but when his nose had been struck, his eyes had filled with tears. They spilled down his cheek then and humiliated him – and he could see nothing with perfect clarity. The smile on the grinning one grew wider at the sight of the prince crying and yet Louis could not move his arms to dash the tears away.

  ‘What do you want?’ he said, choked.

  ‘Why, nothing at all,’ the man at the door said, leaning back against it as if he was utterly relaxed. ‘Your father, though, he wanted you to blunder in and throw his weight and name and money around as you’ve always done before. He wanted you to be rebuffed by these people, in their pride and their arrogance. He wanted you insulted. Do you understand now? A
little better?’

  ‘You have no idea what my father wants,’ Louis said. ‘And if you are men of Féal, you know very well who I am – and who he is. He told me I’d done enough in borrowing money from Lord Aeris. Did you know that? He did. So if you want to live, you’ll let me go now and disappear. I don’t know your names.’

  They all heard the desperation in his voice at the last, the way bluster turned to fear. His tormentors chuckled or glanced at one another in amusement, making his heart sink. They had seen all this before, perhaps many times. He would not get away with threats and he knew then that he could not bribe them. They were professionals, so it would turn out however it turned out, regardless of anything he might say. He felt himself relax in the face of an inevitable fate, though the little knife in his sleeve remained as a prickling awareness.

  ‘I like you, Louis,’ the man at the door said. ‘Your father does as well. I told His Majesty that the best thing would be to kill you and outrage the body. To leave signs of Darien all around and maybe some local lad with a knife in his neck as one of the escaped murderers.’

  Louis began to speak and the man leaned in closer, his voice rising.

  ‘I said, we should leave you with your guts around your neck and a peacock feather up your arse – and the whole world crying out that it was them nasty Darien men what did it. And that would be that, Louis. Your father would have the war he wanted, at hardly any cost to himself. That was my advice.’

  Louis stared at the man in shock. There was a deep malevolence there, he could feel it. The other two might be hired help, but this one … He shuddered. This one was enjoying his own description.

  ‘Let me go,’ he said, suddenly calm. ‘Whatever my father offered, you will need a friend someday, when you or someone you love is facing the rope. If I give you my word now, I will honour it then. Think! Everything you’ve heard of me. Has anyone ever said my word is not good? No, not once. So take what I offer you. More than gold, it will save your life, or the life of a daughter, or a son. When I am king.’

  The one called Jones craned his neck to look back, one eyebrow raised.

  ‘Mr Morris …?’ he said. ‘I wonder …?’

  The one he addressed shook his head.

  ‘Look at the blood! You’ve battered him, Jones. Do you think he’ll just forgive that? Stay the course, now. Hold fast to your duty and don’t give me cause to doubt you.’

  It was enough of a threat to firm the man’s resolve. Louis could see it in his face. He tried to work out whether it mattered that he now knew the names of two of the three, or if it meant they would kill him and so didn’t care.

  ‘I like you, Louis,’ the one called Morris said. ‘You’re sharp enough to be your father’s son. We’re his men, though, Louis. Balls to bones, right through. You’ll understand that, I’m sure. He calls us in for jobs he’d rather weren’t seen by all his pretty lords and ladies.’

  ‘You are making a mistake,’ Louis said.

  The man came away from the door and opened his coat, pulling out a wrap that clinked as he tossed it onto the coverlet.

  ‘No. I’m not. Your father wanted you alive. He has a soft heart, son. Your death is the proper outcome. It gives your old man a reason to go to war – a good one. But I am his man, so if he says you live, you live.’

  Louis breathed out and out, hardly daring to believe. Yet the man kept speaking.

  ‘Though if you are to live and still bring us a war, it has to be with wounds that cry out to the heavens for justice. Nothing that will heal and leave you whole. Hold him.’

  He said the last as Louis began to yell. The pair gripping his arms leaned in even tighter. The man called Mr Morris wrapped a greasy scarf around Louis’ face, stifling his cries.

  ‘I’m going to take an eye and a hand, Louis – and, yes, I think a stab wound in the side, along the ribs. No one would look at those wounds and think it was your own people, do you understand? It’s all agreed, son. Nod if you understand. Stop weeping and nod. There.’

  ‘I’ll make it your left hand and I’ll leave you the thumb. I tell you, if you have the thumb, you’ll have almost full use. The things that matter anyway, like picking up a cup, or holding reins. I’ll throw the fingers around the room and it will all look worse than it is.’

  To Louis’ horror, the man pulled out a small kindling hatchet, almost a child’s toy in size, though it gleamed with wicked sharpness. They would have to let go of him for an instant, to bring it down on his hand, he thought. He imagined the action of drawing the knife from his sleeve, picturing the move so that when the chance came, it would be quick.

  ‘We won’t hit you much more, Louis. We want to make it look like you were left for dead, not tortured, do you see? If you make it easy for me, Jones will knock you out before I even do the eye, all right? We’ll kick over a few chairs on our way out, kill a couple of the table hosts and the guards we bribed before. No witnesses, Louis, except for those who saw Darien men leave a Féal prince for dead. That’s the story that will get out.’ He paused. ‘There’s just one problem with all of it. Your father didn’t have a proper answer when I pointed it out to him.’

  Louis could not speak with the scarf around his face. He could feel it getting damp with tears and saliva, but he could only make a groaning sound. At least he could breathe through it. His nose was blocked with blood and snot, still dripping. The man they called Mr Morris saw his awareness and laughed.

  ‘Yes, you see it. You are a quick one. If I leave you alive, the whole plan can come crashing down, can’t it? Just like it did when you were meant to go into Darien and fail. One word from you about your father’s men making a plan to cause a war – and, well, we’ll still get our war, but they’ll have time to get ready. You’ll be killing hundreds, maybe thousands of your own people. And you won’t be king then, Louis. No, mate. Your father won’t forgive you a second time, the way he did before.’

  Louis blinked slowly and Mr Morris shook his head as if in sadness.

  ‘Maybe this don’t feel much like mercy, son, though it is. The proper thing – well, that would be to kill you right now, on this bed. Only your father’s forgiveness keeps you alive and blinking at me, moment by moment. So don’t you ever doubt him. Or me. If you talk, I’ll do worse than this, I promise. I’ll take my time. Understand?’

  Louis nodded, squeezing his eyes tight so that new tears trickled down. The man patted him on his cheek, then looked to the other two.

  ‘Drag him off the bed. I’ll need a hard surface to do his hand.’

  Louis kicked and struggled at that, but he could not prevent his slide onto the floor.

  Still, he took the chance for freedom when it came. As they struggled with his weight and position, he yanked his left arm from their grip, scrabbling for the knife in his sleeve. Some moments of panting madness followed. Before he could draw it out, his arm had been grappled once more, bent and twisted as one of them knelt on it. Louis gave a muted shriek as a bone in his wrist broke and the pieces ground together. He fell limp and then could only stare in shock as the hatchet rose and came down, cutting away two of his fingers and part of his palm. He could not scream, because he could not breathe.

  ‘That’s no good. I’ll need to make another cut now,’ Morris said irritably, eyeing the wound. The hatchet rose and fell again. When Louis finally pulled in enough air to make a sound, they took him up and smacked him with a cosh behind his ear. He fell limp, blood pooling on the floor in a room that was suddenly silent.

  ‘What about the girl?’ the one called Jones asked.

  Mr Morris shrugged.

  ‘I don’t kill women. You’d better do it. Can’t have a witness who might have heard. Remember now, both of you. You’re Darien men, proud of killing some foreign prince who thought he could come here and take our women. Find someone to beat up on the way out, someone in fine clothes. Tell him it’s what all Féal men will get if they come here. We need word to spread.’

  He looked down at th
e young prince lying senseless.

  ‘I’ll do the eye. Gives me the shivers every time, but it will look good. Has to look like we thought he was dead.’

  ‘Don’t press too deep, or he will be,’ the third man said.

  ‘Yes, thank you, I have done this before,’ Morris replied, kneeling alongside the fallen prince of Féal.

  Deeds ran, with briars whipping past his face and leaving raised lines that stung. There was no road, so he was racing through wilderness and overgrown scrubland. He’d headed into the deep brush from a sort of primal instinct, taking him away from clear spaces and the two men after him. He’d hoped to leave them behind in the first wild rush. Hondo had to be twice his age, yet the sword saint seemed to be loping along at the same distance, just waiting for him to tire or burst his heart. Deeds had lost sight of Bosin, which was pretty much fine with him. There had been something animal and savage in the big man when he’d been red-faced and clawing the air, trying to reach Deeds. It had been unrestrained, like the time Deeds had fought with a bigger boy from the village and only stopped him with an almighty kick to the testicles. To his horror, the boy had been so eaten up with rage he’d begun to rise, staggering to his feet while the young Deeds looked on with eyes like saucers. He had thanked his stars when a teacher had come between them. Bosin’s eyes had looked the same and Deeds ran like the wind.

  He knew the first rule of running away is that you don’t look back. Looking back doesn’t achieve anything. He did it anyway – and felt his footing go from under him in a split second. The wet leaf mulch slipped and one step became a massive lunge before he was skidding down a wet stone. He felt Hondo grab him and though it was hopeless, Deeds fought anyway, kicking and flailing madly. His life was on the line and he hammered punches at the sword saint as the man tried to keep hold. Deeds caught a glimpse of the sword on Hondo’s sash belt and knew that if he let the older man draw, it was the end. He felt his clicking jaw crack as he bit Hondo’s knuckles where they held his collar, wrenching at the same time so that the cloth tore. Deeds had the satisfaction of hearing Hondo swear under his breath, but then both men sensed the shadow that loomed over them. It was instinct or hopelessness, but Deeds sagged as he looked up. Bosin was certainly tall, but it was his width that gave him the appearance of a barn door, or a bullock. The big man didn’t seem out of breath, Deeds saw. A look of murderous rage faded like a fist opening, so that the blankness returned.