by Anthony Ryan
“Castle Duhbos is a stout fortress,” Danick pointed out. “And its owner a renowned soldier. Besieging it is out of the question.”
“Nor will we do so,” Deckin assured him. “I know Castle Duhbos. As a boy I worked the stables there and learned well its secrets. There’s a way in, hidden and difficult, but with the revels of the High Moon feast to mask our entry, we’ll be in and about our business before they hear the first alarm.”
“We’ll need a list,” Shilva said. “Who to kill, who to spare.”
“No list.” Deckin’s features took on a grim certainty, his voice soft but implacable. “No sparing. They all fall, every noble, soldier and servant within the walls, else this enterprise will be doomed before it’s begun.”
“Lord Duhbos is well liked in the duchy,” Danick said. “By both commons and nobles. And his bride is not yet eighteen summers old.”
“With a womb that may already be quickened with the old man’s seed.” Deckin’s voice grew softer still, but no less commanding. “The Ambris bloodline has to end. They all have to fall. No sparing.”
“Something to tell me, young Alwyn?”
For a large man, Deckin had a disconcerting facility for appearing at one’s back without warning. I’m sure it was something he took great delight in, almost as much as he did in voicing unexpected and unwelcome questions.
One glance at his placid but insistent expression told me obfuscation or bluster would be pointless, also dangerous. We had begun the march to the Lake Marsh the day after his palaver with the other leaders, the four groups heading for the rally point in Moss Mill village, moving separately for fear of attracting too much notice. Even so, such a large if disconnected migration of villainy was sure to attract attention and scouts had orders to ensure the silence of any forest wardens or other duchy servants they might encounter. Leave was also given to deal with any churls who seemed either overly inquisitive or likely to run off to the nearest sheriff with a valuable tale to tell. In effect, this meant Deckin had granted permission for almost all the outlaws in the Shavine Forest to murder and rob their way north. For a fabled champion of the churls, he seemed remarkably unperturbed by what he had unleashed upon them, for his ability to read my moods remained as sharp as ever.
“You’ve guts aplenty when the fists and the blades start flying,” he added, moving to stride alongside me, “but in between times that brain of yours starts to working up all manner of fears, especially when you’ve got reason to worry. Out with it, then.”
In point of fact, there were two nagging worries bothering my brain and I opted to voice what I reasoned to be the least dangerous. “The duke’s chest full of sovereigns,” I said, voice stripped of inflection save faint curiosity.
“What of it?”
“It strikes me that, if we’re to be soldiers rather than outlaws, seizing this duchy is likely to be an expensive business. If we give all those sovereigns away to the other bands, what’s left for us? Outlaws can always go off and do some more stealing if they have to, but soldiers need paying if they’re to stay on the march.”
Deckin’s eye twinkled as he gave me a sidelong glance, his beard bunching in the manner that told of amused satisfaction. “Only a day since my grand address and already you’re no longer thinking like a thief.” He laughed, delivering a good-natured shove to my shoulder. “And it’s a point worth pondering, to be sure. One of the reasons I held off on commencing this scheme for so long was the question of how to pay for it. Because you’re right, young Alwyn, soldiers need to be paid. Suffice to say, the matter is well in hand.” He paused, his humour fading as he added in a mutter, “Or it will be shortly, now I know where the Hound laid his head.”
“Hound?” I asked, the unfamiliarity of the name overcoming my usual caution. It was never a good idea to ask questions of Deckin, not without leave to do so.
“Best if you don’t bother your busy head about that,” he told me, the twinkle in his eye hardening into a warning gleam.
I was quick to lower my head to a suitably contrite angle. “Sorry, Deckin.”
He let out a soft grunt, but I felt his gaze lingering. “What else, Alwyn? I’ve a sense it’s more than just a decent share of loot that’s got you fretting.”
I should have known he would ferret out both sources of worry, the second being by far the most perilous to voice. However, once he’d fixed that steely, demanding gaze on you, silence was not an option. Taking a deep breath, I glanced around to ensure there were no others within earshot. “Lorine—” I began, only for him to cut me off with a loud laugh.
“Been at you too, has she?” he enquired when his mirth subsided. “Wanting to know the details of our little chats, I assume? What did she offer? A silver sovereign?”
“Two,” I said, which provoked another laugh.
“She only offered Todman one, as if I’d tell him anything worth a rat’s turd.”
“He told you?”
“’Course he did. Not a man to fret over winning favour, Todman. Unlike you, eh?”
A sudden lurch to my heart had me gabbling out a contrite explanation, which he silenced with a shake of his head. “Calm y’self, lad. Not the first time Lorine’s gone squirrelling where she shouldn’t. Won’t be the last either. Scheming is what she does best, next to vexing me with her fretful botheration.” His brow creased into a sombre frown. “When this is done, I’ll confess I’m not sure what’s to be done with her. Making her a duchess could cause all manner of complications down the road.”
“Duchess?” The word escaped my lips before I could staunch it, driven by a mingling of surprise and realisation. I had heard him avow his ambitions but to hear it spoken so plainly was still jarring. So, he really means to do it, I thought, suffering a spasm of worry that he might take offence, but he just laughed again.
“What did you think I was about with this grand design, Alwyn? Can’t have a duchy without a duke now, can you?”
This time I managed not to voice the torrent of baffled questions bubbling up inside, confining my response to a slack-mouthed gape worthy of the lamed beggar I often pretended to be.
“You want to know how a mere bastard could dare to sit the duke’s chair?” Deckin enquired. “You’re thinking that surely the king would never tolerate such an outrage. Let me share with you some lessons I learned from my father. You probably think I hated him, and you’d be right. Why would I not hate a man who refused to legitimise my birth? A man who condemned his son, his eldest son I might add, to a life of hunger and villainy. But hate is not born of indifference, but experience. I hated him because I knew him.
“My mother may not have been his favourite among the several women he kept in various houses and castles, all given the title of housekeeper and paid a reasonable stipend, for he was ever a generous whore-chaser. She had herself a sharp tongue, my mother, one her famed comeliness didn’t always make up for, but it was sharp enough to nag him into making a place for me when I tottered from infanthood to scampering, annoying childhood.
“At first, I turned spits in kitchens, sweating in the fire’s glare for hours on end and wondering if I’d roast along with the meat. Later I shovelled dung from stables, dug weeds from gardens and did all other sundry chores his stewards beat me to. They all knew my blood, of course – it was no particular secret, but also nothing ever to be spoken of, least of all by me. I was spared neither rod nor fist, given the slops to eat and required to bed down among the hounds. My father liked his hounds. Great were his kindnesses to them and he knew all their names. They would flock around him, yelping and fawning as he doled out treats and kind words, words he never once spoke to me. Years under his roof, dragged along as part of his retinue from one castle to another, and not one word spoken to me throughout it all. But that’s not why I hated him, though I’d contend it’s reason enough.
“My mother died when I was a month past my thirteenth birthday. Some sickness born of a swelling in her womb, they told me, or rather they told him a
s I stood by shuffling and trying not to weep. I think it was the sound of my sniffling that drew his eye, the only time I remember receiving his full regard. He looked me up and down, just for a moment. ‘He’s sturdy enough now,’ he told the steward. ‘Take him to the sergeant.’”
Deckin fell to silence, a distance creeping into his gaze as we walked along. From the reluctant recollection I saw in his face I understood this to be a rarely, perhaps never spoken tale.
When he continued it was with the clipped, studied lightness of a lifelong cynic. “Six years under the banner. I had the fortune to become a soldier just as the Duchy Wars sprang back into life. If any fucker ever tells you battle is a glorious thing, you have my leave to cut his lying tongue out. Still, it taught me a whole host of valuable skills. The best way to slit a man’s throat when he lies wounded; you have to clamp a hand on their mouth and hunch over them so others think you’re easing their final moments with kind words. I learned how soldiers will often keep their most valuable trinkets in their boots. Remember that if you ever get chance to scour a battlefield for loot. Most of all, it taught me nobles care nothing for the lives of those they set themselves over. All they truly care about are the twinned lusts of wealth and power. Y’see, I began to learn more about my family by marching around outside my father’s castle than I ever did within its walls. Turns out that not more than twelve decades ago my father’s kin were barely a notch above common churls themselves.
“The Rouphon claim on this duchy rose when the previous duke got on the wrong side of some king or other regarding disputed water rights or somesuch. It doesn’t matter. What does matter is that it all resulted in a bloody massacre after which the impoverished Ambris family found themselves with a tenuous claim to dukeship, one the king decided to endorse because poor folk are always easier to win over than rich folk. A full belly after a life of hunger buys a great deal of loyalty. What’s more, the first duke of the Ambris line, Sir Miltram, was himself a bastard, just like you and me. It’s all there in the histories if you care to go looking. What’s also there, but not so easily found, is that Sir Miltram, having gained the duke’s seat, spent the next year hunting down and murdering any unfortunate with the slightest drop of the old duke’s blood. A willingness to do the necessary thing, regardless of scruple, has long been one of my family’s traits.
“The first duke, for all his mean ways and meaner origins, understood something very important as regards power: it can be inherited through right of blood, but can only be truly won and held by spilling it. The Pretender is a man without a drop of royal blood, despite his claims, with a whole army at his back and a decent chance of seizing the throne from the Algathinets. Bastards have risen high in this kingdom before, and will do so again.”
“They all have to fall,” I said, voice as faint and bland as I dared. “No sparing.”
“Yes.” His lips formed a grim smile, coming to a halt and obliging me to do the same. “Here,” he said, fishing inside his bearskin cloak. “Reward for your performance back at the glade. Didn’t want you squandering it just yet, is all.”
He took my wrist and extended his spade-sized hand, dropping a silver sovereign into my palm. “I told Gerthe to forgo other customers when we get to Moss Mill,” Deckin said, putting an arm around my shoulders as we resumed our trudge through the snow. “There’ll be a room set aside for you at the inn. When you speak of me in years to come, young Alwyn, regardless of what others might say, be sure to speak well.”
We walked together for much of the remaining day as he spoke of the battles he had seen as a soldier, the sergeant he’d murdered when he deserted the banner and all his many adventures since. I like to think I learned more from Deckin Scarl that day than I did throughout the preceding years of our association. However, the principal lesson he would teach me in very short order would be this: all ambition is folly when it fails to be matched by reason.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Moss Mill was the only settlement of any appreciable size to sprout within the confines of the northern sprawl of the Shavine Forest. There were other hamlets and clusters of mean cottages scattered about the fringes of the great green expanse, but only Moss Mill could be said to be a true village.
Its legal standing remained a permanently unsettled question, for all villages within the duchy were supposed to receive a charter from the duke, mainly to facilitate the collection of taxes. However, since settlement within the forest was expressly forbidden, the village technically didn’t exist as far as the ducal accounts were concerned. Despite this, the Mill’s occupants would hand over a substantial portion of their yearly income to the forest wardens, who could be counted among the most valuable customers for its inns and whorehouses. The wardens would duly ensure the duke got his share and so Moss Mill was permitted to continue its secluded existence as a useful way station for outlaw and forester alike. Although it didn’t enjoy the same traditional immunity from discord as Leffold Glade, it was still generally accepted as neutral ground between the duke’s sheriffs and the villainous fraternity, provided both contrived to avoid appearing at the same time and in overly large numbers.
Many of Shilva Sahken’s folk had already turned up by the time we arrived, along with a dozen or so of the Thessils’ cut-throats. They pitched camp around the village’s borders or along the riverbank close to the mill that gave the place its name, the huge wheel stilled by the ice covering the stream that curved around the settlement from north to south.
“Where’d all these fuckers come from, Deckin?” Izzie the Clutch demanded from the stoop of her inn. “A whole horde of western savages yesterday, and now you lot turn up.”
Izzie was a woman of meaty proportions, standing almost as tall as Deckin and matching his stature ounce for ounce. The item from which she derived her name hung around her neck on a thick leather strap, a heavy satchel said to be filled with coin that was never far from the touch of her hand. The largest inn, the trading post and the mill were all owned by her or her many children. They were a close-knit clan and not people to cross lightly for those who caused trouble in the Mill had a tendency towards quiet vanishment. Normally, I would have expected Deckin to utter some jovial and placatory words but today he met Izzie’s glower with one of his own.
“Got business brewing to the north,” he said, voice hard. “And it’s not for discussion, Iz.” He took a heavy purse from his belt and tossed it to her. “For the inconvenience. We’ll be on our way in two days. Till then we’ll be as quiet as you like. All goods and ale will be paid for, but I’ll need your folk to stay home and not go wandering.”
Izzie’s broad, crease-rich features tensed in resentful frustration and she took her time in examining the purse’s contents. She was certainly a power in the forest but also wise enough to recognise a greater one, especially when he came bearing coin.
“Want no part of it.” She sniffed, drawing the purse strings tight and consigning it to her satchel. “Whatever it is. Sheriffs come looking, I can’t stand surety none of my folk’ll talk.”
“They won’t,” Deckin assured her. “In fact, I reckon it’ll be a good long while before you see a sheriff again.”
Izzie sniffed again, eyes narrowing in a sign of piqued curiosity, but she was a woman for whom caution always won out over greed and asked no more. “S’pose you’ll be wanting the big room,” she said.
“I will.” Deckin’s hand thumped me on the back, drawing a snicker from the others present. “But not for me.”
“Y’know, Alwyn,” Gerthe sighed, the mattress bouncing as she shifted, removing her head from my lap to rest it on my shoulder, “I must say I was expecting a mite more enthusiasm.”
I wiped a finger across my brow to clear the sweat-matted hair from my eyes, voicing a somewhat breathless reply. “Three goes seems fairly enthusiastic to me.”
“It’s not bad, I’ll grant you.” Gerthe’s teeth nibbled at my ear, teasingly delightful but not enough to rouse me to further ardour. “A young f
ellow like y’self, though.” She tutted. “Once got hired to tutor a young lordling in Farinsahl. He managed it five times that first night. I could hardly walk the next day.” She gave a half-nostalgic, half-enticing giggle as her fingers danced across my damp belly, sliding a leg over my thighs. “Got standards, y’see, and a whole sovereign buys a great deal. Don’t want you running off to Deckin with tales of disappointment, do I?”
“I’m not disappointed.” I pressed a conciliatory and very grateful kiss to her forehead. “Just… tired.”
She sighed again, abandoning her teasing to settle against me in companionable entanglement. I felt her eyes on me in the dark, eyes that saw almost as much as mine did when the mood took her. “It’s not that,” she murmured. “You’re thinking again. Poor Alwyn.” She poked a finger to my temple. “Always far too much going on up here. What is it, then? Something you forgot to tell Deckin? Or scheming as to how you’re finally going to settle with Todman?” She giggled again as I tensed. “It’s all right. I don’t like him much either. So—” she bounced the mattress again in insistence “—which is it?”
“You know what Deckin’s planning?”
“I was a little distracted when he gave his big speech but I gathered the gist from the others. He’s going to take the duchy.”
“And how is he going to take it? Did you gather that?”
“The same way we take everything else, I suppose.”
“He’s going to have us kill everyone in that castle. Every noble, every servant. Even…” I trailed off, visions of Lord Duhbos’ pregnant young bride looming large, as they had with irksome clarity during our recent exertions. I had never set eyes on this woman, nor could I know if the old goat had actually managed to get her with child, but this didn’t prevent my ever-busy mind conjuring images of a swollen-bellied, porcelain-faced beauty lying dead amid a mound of slain kin. They all have to fall.