The Sword Saint

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by C. F. Iggulden


  These are assassins, Jean, come to kill you. You have stirred them up and then gone to sleep like a good boy. Did you think your Black Guards would save you? I can feel them burning.

  ‘Then fight for me!’ King Jean roared to the shadow. He could not see her in the darkness, but he could always hear the hissing voice, wherever she placed herself. Ever since the day when he had killed the priest and found his Black Guards, set against the tomb of some ancient king.

  He felt the difference when the swordsman keeping him down twitched suddenly, as if he had been stung. King Jean grinned in the darkness, though he tasted blood in his teeth. The man was extraordinary. Only the belt had kept him alive. Slowly, King Jean rose to his feet to watch him die.

  Hondo felt something bite him, low down on his ankle. It stung, and whatever it was, it seemed to spread rapidly upwards, for all the world as if something climbed his leg. He tried to continue his attack, battering at whatever magical defence had saved the king. He thought he might break through, or find some spot where the man could be cut. Armour fell away in pieces and he brought the edge of his blade against every joint and major vein, looking for blood. It was like thumping a corpse that would not bleed, or a piece of wood. Yet Elias, Bosin and Taeshin had taken up station around them, giving him time to find a way to kill this man. There was no sign of Vic Deeds. For one of his character, perhaps it was not too surprising that he had left them to die.

  The spreading pain from his leg made Hondo gasp. With the king flat on his back, Hondo took a step clear and tried to brush off whatever it was. Instead, it seemed to transfer to his arm. The pain was worse and he felt fear uncoil in him. He could not see whatever it was, but on the edge of his hearing he thought he could hear whispering.

  The king’s guards were still charging in, responding to the clash of arms. That was their mistake against Elias, Bosin and Taeshin. Blood spattered from all three men as they killed anyone who came in range. Soldiers of Féal were already stumbling in the dark over the bodies of those who’d gone before. Elias waited only for Hondo to signal it was done, but every passing second was a blur and he could feel he was slowing down. He had already been cut twice and he felt light-headed as he risked a glance over his shoulder.

  Elias knew time played tricks, especially in darkness, when blades sang and clashed. It had probably been just moments since the king had come out of his tent. The chaos and darkness were still as good as a hundred men, more. None of those who had ridden out of Darien shouted orders or identified themselves. While others in the camp ran with torches and drew steel on their own people, the ones who had actually entered the camp to kill Jean Brieland were silent and almost invisible. Anyone who came close enough to make out their faces was killed.

  It could not last, but it did not have to. Elias had seen enough of Hondo’s skill – and the respect shown to him by Bosin and Taeshin – to expect the job to be done quickly. His mind was flashing back to another assassination and yet he felt only anger still. This King Jean Brieland was no innocent, but a man who would happily see Darien burn, with all the villages around it. It surprised him with its force, but Elias discovered he could still hate and he could still desire to defend his own people from an invader. Perhaps he was not just a simple village hunter, no matter what he told himself to get out of bed on a winter morning. Perhaps he was a stone-cold killer and a man of Darien.

  In the quiet calm of reaching, he worked, feeling the spatter of blood whip across him as he murdered with his little knife. At his back, Hondo had stopped his own attack and was jerking and writhing in silence, as if something burned him.

  ‘I’m out. Hold fast,’ Elias said to Taeshin and Bosin.

  They had not trained together, but their shared knowledge allowed them to work in near-perfect unison. They accepted his authority and edged closer to one another as Elias darted in.

  The king was on his feet and Elias didn’t hesitate. Jean Brieland was no swordsman, not like any of the Shiang men who faced him. He was enraged and strong, however. The king attacked the one who appeared between him and Hondo as if he chopped wood. As he struck only air and recovered, the man faded aside and sliced a wicked little knife across his throat.

  The touch made the king gasp. Before that day, it had been an age since anyone had actually brought sharp metal against his skin. Yet as Elias dragged it clear, no blood came. Elias blinked. In a moment of surprise and indecision, King Jean pushed him aside, as he might have shoved away a child blocking his path. Elias did not try to avoid it and staggered back into Bosin. He had to duck then as the big swordsman answered with an instinctive blow that nearly took his head off. Elias cursed.

  ‘Save Hondo!’ he called to the other two.

  They turned to see what assailed the sword saint as Hondo began to make a hissing sound, in pain and frustration. He clawed at his throat and yet when Bosin reached past his clutching fingers, there was nothing to pull away.

  Without Elias to go through them like a threshing machine, Féal soldiers began to flood their position. The initial sense of confusion in the camp was fading heartbeat by heartbeat, along with any chance of success. Torches had been sparked alight in every direction, with hundreds more lit and carried in the hands of searchers. Order was being restored through the discipline of forces used to a chain of command – and with every new order and answering shout, their deaths came closer.

  King Jean seemed determined not to retreat. Whether it was because his men surrounded him by tens of thousands in that camp, or because they could not seem to mark him, Elias did not know. He recognised magic when he saw it and he made a decision, though it made him want to spit in the face of the king who stood laughing while Hondo strangled.

  The sword saint made no more sound. His face had gone pale and he tugged weakly at his neck, his fingers tearing the skin.

  ‘Bosin, lift him up,’ Elias snapped. ‘Time to get out.’

  ‘Here! Defend your king!’ Jean Brieland roared into the night. He stood with his arms apart as if he welcomed the forces arrayed against him.

  They all looked up as the night lit, bright as the sun. Nancy had burned her way through the dark heart of the camp and she was still coming, bathed in light. Elias heard Hondo gasp, the first breath he had taken in too long. The sound seemed to reach the ears of the Féal king and he flinched away.

  ‘Leave him then!’ Jean Brieland yelled.

  Elias saw a patch of darkness unwind from Hondo’s arm and throat, dripping like paint to the ground.

  ‘Come on then, witch!’ King Jean roared into the night. ‘See what we have for you!’

  He walked forward in the moment that Hondo attacked once again, with a speed and ferocity that made experienced men cringe. It was like being in the presence of a storm and yet the king remained, uncut. He leaned forward and tried to stab Hondo with his sword, though his blade was knocked aside again and again.

  ‘Move back, Hondo,’ Elias ordered.

  The sword saint disengaged, though he was shaking with suppressed rage and horror. The man’s discipline held, even while Féal guards fell against them like a tide. For a time, Elias and the three swordsmen were hard-pressed and he thought they would all end there, with failure like dust grating between his teeth. He thought of his daughters, though he knew he would wade in blood before he ever gave up. He would come home, if he was the last of them.

  The king was laughing again, though it was a mad sound, as if he had lost his mind completely. Elias heard it choke off and looked round. He almost got himself killed trying to see if someone had marked the king at last.

  He caught a glimpse of the king’s stricken expression as Nancy came close. There was a moment when she made it through the beetle-like creatures that were the heart of the Féal army. She came to within twenty paces of the king and she brought the light.

  As she did so, with all eyes on her, Deeds walked up and shot the king in the centre of his forehead. He’d stayed away from the attack, though the Shiang swordsme
n seemed to be making a meal of a simple task. In the end, Deeds lost patience. He hadn’t come to that place to throw his life away and he’d been eyeing the closest ramp to get out and make a run for the horses when he saw Hondo jerking and stamping, while the king laughed at all of them. It was too perfect a chance to turn down and Deeds had felt like an avenging angel as he’d stalked forward and shot the man in the face. He’d killed a king before. The first one was always the hardest, so they said.

  King Jean’s laughter stopped as his head was rocked back. Elias saw the man reach up in astonishment and peer at a smear of red. Jean Brieland did not fall, but he did not laugh again either. His mouth opened in astonishment and he shook his head back and forth as if to deny the blood.

  As Elias looked back to Nancy, she crashed through a line of the black-armoured guards, like smaller Sallet Greens in their darting movements. Whoever commanded them had seen she could ruin the ones she touched. As Elias looked in vain for her to move up, he saw half a dozen of the things launch themselves at her in great bounds from the side. She had no defence against the weight of them. They were leaping high, to crash down where she stood.

  ‘Go dark!’ Elias roared to her.

  He thanked the Goddess for her trust as Nancy’s firelight winked out, plunging that part of the camp into blackness. There were no torches lit where she had stood. There had been no need for them, where night had been day. Suddenly, there were just shining after-images and a sucking black hole where Nancy had been.

  Elias went to fetch her out. He saw the Féal king had retreated, pulling back with a wall of men forming around him, weapons bristling as they clashed shields and swords together. The message was clear.

  Elias shook his head as he walked in the dark. The king still lived. He and the others had kicked a hornets’ nest and now the nasty little bastards were defending the hive – and he had to go in and get Nancy.

  ‘Hondo – get out now,’ he shouted. ‘The others on you. Deeds! Wake up. Go with them. Now!’

  Elias had seen Deeds stunned at the failure to kill a man he’d shot in the head. Bosin gathered him up as the big man changed direction. They melted away into the dark, and as Elias strode in the other direction, he heard yells and a crackle of gunfire erupting as they went. He wished them luck and closed his eyes. Ahead of him, Nancy walked alone, like beauty in the night.

  Nancy fought against panic as she crept away from where the black-armoured monsters still hunted for her, flipping carcasses right over as they searched. Elias had seen the best defence was in going dark, but they weren’t fools. More and more lights were being lit and everywhere she looked, men ran with torches, peering into tents and piercing sacks of supplies as they searched. She prayed to be invisible, while magic still ran in her like a torrent, drawn from all the Sallet Greens she had touched. No, not Greens, clearly. She’d seen enough in the flashes to have some sense of what they were. Smaller than the massive Sallet Greens, they seemed to be armoured men, in a black and shiny carapace. There were so many! Nancy knew better than anyone how precious Lady Sallet considered her Greens to be. She’d had six and lost three in defence of the city. Even then, she only had two sound ones and the last the men called Patchwork, cobbled together from parts that flashed grey amidst the green.

  Nancy was still unsure if the ones she thought of as black beetles contained men or were somehow, horribly independent. She’d heard no orders called between them, yet they seemed to move in unison and with purpose. She’d certainly seen them learn to attack her, relying on weight and height and speed instead of simply plunging in. There was intelligence there. More than one had leaped high, forcing her to respond with a blast of flame to incinerate them. She’d been spattered with droplets of molten metal. A spot on her cheek had been burned. When she touched it, she felt a splash of something hard and cold that she did not dare try to remove. One of her arms was curled into a crook at her waist and, though she could feel nothing at that moment, she thought it was a bad injury.

  She’d been through hell for what had seemed like hours. She could still not believe there was no sign of the sun – on a spring night where the light would return early as well. Battle was chaotic and terrifying, Nancy knew that. She shuddered at all she had learned that night.

  She made her way in the direction of Elias, heading down a long line of tents rather than crossing an open space. Nancy could hear running men nearby and she crouched as light bloomed along the line, like an eye opening and looking for her. Then she was up again and running. She didn’t want to fight again. Exhaustion lay thick in her blood, like salt in a cask. She just wanted to get out, to get away from thunder and flame and shining black death.

  She didn’t see the three soldiers standing together where one branch of tents met another. They had their heads bent close in muttered conversation and there was no light in that part, which was why she had gone through it, staying away from the lit roads. She almost stumbled into them and one of them reached out and grabbed her by the arm, leaning closer to peer.

  ‘Who are you?’ he said.

  The voice was high and clear and Nancy saw he was a young man, barely out of his childhood. She felt magic uncoiling in her, like acid rising in her throat.

  ‘Please, let me go,’ she said.

  Something moved in the dark then and the men dropped, one by one, their throats cut. Elias was there and she almost wept. She had reached a point where she just wanted someone else to show her the way out, to take charge.

  ‘Stay close to me,’ Elias whispered. ‘I can lead you out.’

  Nancy nodded, not daring to reply. He set off on a path that would have looked like a child’s game or madness if she hadn’t known what he could do. Nancy rested her hand on his shoulder and lost count of the times they avoided a patrol or searchers by instants. Little by little, they left the charred centre behind them and drew closer to one of the gates. Men swarmed angrily there and Elias was reluctant to bring the whole camp running once more. He guided her away, along the edge of the earthen ramps that had made the men of Féal feel safe as they slept. Nancy doubted they ever would again.

  She waited in silence while Elias slipped up the inner slope. Someone died on the crest and then she went up and over, skidding and leaping down the outer side of the wall. There were riders galloping around the camp by then, throwing torches down and giving a strange howl. Elias hardly hesitated as he made his way through the pools of light. He led her on and on, into the night, until the camp was far behind and all the sounds of murder and rage had faded.

  20

  Dawn

  First light banished fears and alarms, the sense of anarchy and pandemonium. Just the faint grey gleam over the camp brought new purpose and calm. So Jean Brieland told himself.

  The king of Féal sat very still while one of the legion surgeons dabbed at his wound. His wound! Since the age of fourteen, he had never been cut, not once. On a chair of leather and wood, he sat with his hands tucked into his waistband, in part so the surgeon wouldn’t see how they trembled. The leather belt had been cracked and old when he’d found it, all the more so after another thirty years. He’d wound reinforcing thread around it in bands of black, white and red, like decoration. Resin had hardened it all still further. Only the pale stone nubs were still exactly as he had found them.

  ‘There is no point in wrapping such an injury, Your Majesty,’ the surgeon said. The man was in his fifties and as fit as the soldiers he tended. He breathed through his nose as he leaned in close. ‘It will scab on its own by the end of today and be gone in a few weeks. Without a scar, I believe. It must have been the most glancing of blows, Your Majesty. Your luck is still legendary. Still, I tremble to think how close we all came to losing you.’

  King Jean waved off the attempt at flattery. It had not been done well anyway.

  There are dying men in the camp, Jean Brieland. I can feel them slipping. Yet you sit here … while the doctor inspects a scratch? I hurt, Jean. I am burned. What balm does
he have for me in that bag?

  ‘You need no balm,’ Jean said angrily.

  The doctor hesitated until the king lost his tight expression and settled back.

  Jean tried not to hear, but the shadow rested between his legs as he sat, like a beaten dog come to its master for succour. In truth, she seemed lesser. The words came weaker than before, with long pauses. He knew he was staring into space trying to hear the whispering. The doctor looked worried as he tried to peer once more into the king’s eyes, reaching to raise his eyebrow with a thumb.

  King Jean knocked the hand away, startling the man.

  ‘Go tend the wounded, sir. I am clearly well enough.’

  ‘Are you sure, Your Majesty? A blow to the head can be dangerous. You should not be left alone today.’

  ‘I am always alone,’ Jean lied. ‘Go.’

  ‘Very well.’ The doctor bowed deeply over his bag. ‘Though I will be in reach. Please send a runner if there is dizziness or a headache that grows worse.’

  ‘What will it mean if there is?’ the king said suddenly.

  The doctor was caught between wanting to reassure and telling the truth.

  ‘Even a glancing blow could lead to bleeding inside, Your Majesty. I see no signs of it, but as valuable as you are …’

  ‘Yes. All right. Now aid my men,’ the king replied, losing patience.

  The doctor scurried away, unsure how he had given offence. King Jean rose to his feet, searching for signs of poor balance. His legs felt strong, he thought. If it wasn’t for the swollen patch between his eyes, he would not have felt so shaken and furious – and humiliated. Assassins of Darien had dared to assault the very heart of his camp. The arrogance of it was breathtaking. Yet instead of being impaled on the blades and spikes of his legions, they had shown up a host of weaknesses and got away clean. Perhaps they thought they had failed. He hoped so. From where he stood, it did not look like victory.

 

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