The Pariah

by Anthony Ryan

  “A fellow who knows the law, apparently,” Arnabus replied mildly before calling out to me. “And, being such, will also know that he is required to state his name when making a formal challenge contesting the verdict of our court.”

  “My name is Alwyn Scribe,” I called back, raising my voice and half turning to the now rapt throng as I spoke on. “Soldier in the Covenant Company and servant of the Risen Martyr Evadine Courlain, blessed is she by the Grace of the Seraphile!”

  “Lies!” The duke flapped his hand at me. “Lies and heresy! You!” His fluttering hand shifted to the cordon of ducal soldiers. “Bind this man! He too will face justice—”

  “HOLD!”

  Sir Althus’s voice had lost none of its facility for command over the years. Although they weren’t under his banner, the duke’s soldiers came to a rigid halt. The knight commander moved to the scaffold steps with a slow, measured stride, his helm under his arm and hand resting on his sword’s pommel. His eyes stayed on me as he walked, not shifting when Duke Elbyn reached for his arm, muttering fierce words I couldn’t hear. However, I did hear Sir Althus’s reply: “Shut your prattle, you feckless turd.”

  He descended the steps with the same unhurried stride, barking out a series of orders that had a score of kingsmen hurrying to push the crowd back. After creating a decent gap, they established a cordon around us, poleaxes held level to keep the now keenly interested assemblage at bay.

  “Nice plate,” Sir Althus commented, coming to a halt a dozen paces from me. “Where’d you steal it?”

  He wore a humourless smile which I returned in full. “It was a gift.”

  “Then I’ll be sorry to besmirch it.” He donned his helm and began to fasten the straps. “So, revenge is it?” he asked. “For the pillory and the Pits, I assume.”

  “I’m not here for you.” I donned my own helm, the only part of my armour not provided by Wilhum. His helm had proven to be too small for my skull so I had been obliged to make do with a less fine replacement scavenged from the Traitors’ Field by Swain. It was sturdy enough but lacked a full visor, facial protection being afforded by a grate of four iron tines.

  “Her then?” Sir Althus nodded to Evadine as he unbuckled his sword, drawing the blade free of the scabbard. “You really imagine she is what she claims?”

  “I imagine her to be worth saving.” I levelled my sword at him, not troubling myself with the customary salute. I knew it wouldn’t be returned. Besides, I felt no inclination towards honouring this man. “As I know you are worth killing.”

  A tic of amusement passed across his features, but his eyes grew hard. “There’ll be no sparing you this time, boy. My obligation to Deckin is paid, and I owe nothing to you.”

  “On the contrary, my lord.” I gripped my sword in two hands, adopting the half-crouch Wilhum had taught me. “You owe blood, and not just to me.”

  “Well,” Sir Althus sighed as he tossed his empty scabbard away and lowered his visor, “that gets it said.”

  He attacked with no further preamble, or any careful circling as he searched for an opening, just raised his sword level with his shoulders and charged. Thanks to Wilhum’s lessons, I knew this as a tactic often employed against novice knights on the tourney field. The natural instinct was to parry the thrust of the sword, thereby laying oneself open to a knee to the groin or a hard kick to the shin. Wilhum had felled me several times with this trick before I learned the lesson so, instead of sweeping the knight commander’s sword aside, I stepped to the left and thrust my own at his visor.

  He ducked before the tip could find the slit, the steel leaving a scratch on his plate. I brought my sword up and down in a swift chop at his shoulder, but he was too quick, swaying back and keeping me at bay with an arcing slash at my legs.

  “Had a little education, eh?” he said, voice emerging as a metallic taunt from behind his visor. “In a dozen years or so you might actually make a decent knight, lad. As of now, though, you’re still just a child in a man’s armour.”

  He attacked again, wielding his sword two-handed to deliver a series of blows at my head. I managed to parry them all but had to back away in the process, my feet not quite matching the rapid light step Wilhum performed so easily. I tripped after the first few paces, just a small stumble but enough for Sir Althus to get a blow past my guard. I turned my head as the blade hit, but not enough to avoid the sting of sparks and flecked metal as it sundered one of my helm’s tines.

  Feeling the first wet kiss of blood on my skin, I staggered, apparently stunned, sword drooping in my grasp. I reasoned the knight commander’s overconfidence would make him careless, and so it proved. He lunged too soon and too quick, trying to drive his swordpoint into my part-exposed face, but putting himself off balance as he did so. Lowering my head to let his blade slide over the top of my helm, I drove a shoulder into the centre of his chest, denting the plate and sending him careering back. He recovered quickly, bringing his sword back to guard, but not in time to stop the blow I delivered to his right leg.

  I had hoped to break it, but Sir Althus contrived to deflect enough of the force to prevent that. However, I did succeed in two important respects. First, the blow was strong enough to dislodge the cuisse protecting his thigh and leave behind a livid and no doubt painful bruise. Second, I had made him angry.

  “You shit-grubbing churlish fuck!” his tinny, enraged voice sputtered behind the visor.

  Anger makes a man incautious, but it also makes him fast. Wilhum might have been able to dodge his next swipe at my head, but not I. A flash of lightning blinded me as the earth tipped beneath my feet, a myriad of colours swimming before my eyes. A strange, sudden weariness filled me from head to foot as I fell, the soft, dew-kissed ground feeling very much like the blankets of a warmed bed.

  It was the jarring impact of my helm on the earth that saved me, the flash of pain and choke of my throat as the straps bit into my flesh banishing the weariness in an instant. Reaching for the straps, I tore the helm free, gasping for air and trying to rise.

  “No,” Sir Althus advised, planting an armoured foot on my chest and forcing me back down. “I think I’d rather you stay there.”

  I slashed at him with the sword that I’d somehow contrived to keep hold of, but he simply raised an arm, allowing the weak blow to land, then trapping the blade. “Seems a fitting end for you,” Sir Althus grunted, drawing his foot back and aiming the pointed tip at my face. “Being kicked to death in the mud.”

  Realising I still had my helm in hand, I swiftly brought it down into the path of his foot. The pointed toe stabbed through the metal but failed to find my flesh. Snarling, I twisted, abandoning the grip on my sword and snatching the dagger from my belt. Seeing the danger, Sir Althus attempted to draw his foot back, but I pressed the helm harder, keeping it entangled just long enough to drive the dagger into the unarmoured gap behind his knee. The dagger didn’t do the damage I wanted, Sir Althus having worn thick quilted trews beneath his armour, but I had the satisfaction of feeling the hot rush of fresh blood as I drove it in.

  Roaring, he drove a gauntleted fist at my head. Another flash of lightning behind the eyes, more swirling colours, but no accompanying weariness this time. I was fully in this scrap now, for scrap it was. All knightly pretensions were forgotten. Now we were two outlaws fighting to the death, something I had done before.

  Keeping hold of the knife, I twisted it deeper to increase his pain, forcing him to reach for it and thereby freeing my sword. By sheer good fortune it fell smack into my hand and I lost no time in swinging it with all the energy I could muster. The blade connected with his helm at the visor’s weak point, sending it spinning away along with a spray of blood and spit.

  I drove a kick at the knight commander’s groin, causing him to reel back and allow me to regain my feet. I wanted very badly to rush him and finish it, but now the immediate threat had gone, my body forced a delay. I leaned on my sword, chest heaving while Sir Althus recovered a few paces off. This time
, when he raised his sword, he began to circle, albeit with a notable limp. His face had become the narrow-eyed mask of a craftsman setting himself to a difficult task.

  “Not so much of a child, eh?” I asked him.

  “I’m always happy to kill a man too,” he spat back, forcing me to raise my sword as he thrust at my midriff. One of the taces protecting my gut had come loose in the struggle, providing a tempting opening. Steel rang as I parried the thrust, replying with a side swipe at his injured leg which he avoided with ease.

  “And a woman?” I enquired as we continued to circle one another.

  “She’s fucking mad, boy.” Blood seeped from Althus’s split lips as he sneered. “And this realm doesn’t need another Martyr.”

  “Not her,” I said, coming to a halt, fixing his gaze with mine. “Sihlda.”

  I saw the name strike home with the force of a punch, the sneer vanishing from the knight commander’s face as he blinked in shock.

  “You must have thought she’d died in the Pit Mines years ago.” I said, eyes still fixed on his. “She didn’t. She lived long enough to teach me letters so that I could write her testament. She told me all of it, my lord. Do you think these people would like to hear the tale?”

  “Shut your mouth.” The instruction emerged as a hoarse whisper, Althus’s face pale and quivering now. I had imagined a soul as black as his to be immune to guilt, but it appeared I was wrong.

  “She told me,” I went on, inching closer, “about the two youthful knights who escorted a pregnant noblewoman to her shrine. One was a commoner raised to knighthood, the other destined to become the greatest knight of his day.”

  “Shut up!” Althus lunged, fast but clumsy with rage, the lancing blade easily turned. I made no riposte, speaking on as I continued to circle him.

  “She told me how trust and friendship blossomed between her and this commoner knight, how they would spend hours talking. In time, trust and friendship became love. But, when the noblewoman’s child, a son, was born he followed his sworn duty and left with her and his brother knight, who, it transpired, was the child’s father. And his mother was a queen.”

  Althus swung his sword high, an incoherent howl of rage erupting from his throat as he brought it down. Instead of dodging aside, I crouched and charged closer. As our steel-clad bodies collided, I tried to jam my swordpoint into the gap between his gorget and breastplate. But I judged the angle badly, the blade sliding up to slice across his cheek and ear instead. Luckily, the force of my charge was enough to bring him down, air whooshing from him as I landed on his chest. He swung a punch to dislodge me, but I snapped my forehead into his face before it landed, leaving him stunned beneath me.

  “She loved you.” Bloody spittle flew as I hissed into his face. “She trusted you. When you returned years later she thought it was for her. But you murdered a Supplicant and blamed it on her so you could stick her in that shithole!”

  I raised myself up, reversing the grip on my sword, the point poised to stab down into his mouth. “Tomas Algathinet is a bastard with no more right to sit the throne than I do!” I shouted the words, hoping all ears present could hear them, but fate is ever fickle.

  At that precise moment a great commotion seized the throng, raising a confusion of voices loud enough to drown my words. Hesitating, I turned to see the crowd convulsing beyond the cordon of kingsmen, then surging against it as those behind began a panicked rush. The soldiers attempted to hold them back, first with shoves and threats, then blades. But the weight of numbers was too great to hold the throng despite the blood that began to fly as the halberds rose and fell.

  A second outburst drew my gaze to the scaffold where another disturbance had broken out, but before I could discern its nature, Sir Althus, a man well attuned to grasping an advantage, recovered enough strength to slam his sword pommel into the side of my head.

  Once again the earth greeted me with a welcoming embrace, although it felt a good deal colder this time. A swirling red mist filled my eyes, making crimson shadows of the world as I tried vainly to work suddenly enfeebled limbs. I was aware of being shoved onto my back, of a large shape looming above and might well have met my end in this welter of confusion if Sir Althus hadn’t wanted me to hear his farewell.

  “Hear me, boy!” A hard slap of a mailed palm to my cheek brought enough pain to summon clarity, but sadly not strength. I blinked at the knight commander’s bleeding, besmirched features as he leaned close, eyes lit with the kind of rage-filled hate I knew so well; the hate for one who has hurt you in soul rather than body, cut you deeper than any blade could ever cut. Staring into his wide, maddened eyes, I knew I had pierced the armour he had wrapped around his heart all these many years. Whatever tales he had told himself to justify consigning the woman he once loved to the worst of prisons were now revealed as shameful lies. It’s never an easy thing to hear the truth of what we are, and Sir Althus clearly found it so painful he had to summon more lies.

  “It was for duty I did it,” he grated at me. “For it is duty that binds this realm, Scribe. The duty of men like me is what preserves us, keeps chaos at bay, defeats the schemes and intrigues of scum like you.”

  I regret to record that this was one of the few occasions in life when I found I had nothing to say. Much as I have been tempted to compose a rejoinder of supreme wit and insight to fit this particular occasion, the truth is that the only answer I could conjure in the moment was to spit a thick wad of blood into the face of Sir Althus Levalle, Knight Commander of Crown Company and as disgraced a soul as I ever encountered.

  When he reared, snarling, arm raised for the killing blow, I could only flail ineffectually at his breastplate. As he brought his sword down, a second blade flickered at the edge of my vision, expertly aimed to drive his sword aside before sweeping on to cut deep into his unprotected skull. I watched the knight commander’s eyes roll up and his brows form a curious squint, as if he had been asked a particularly troublesome question. But it was one he would never answer.

  The puzzled frown remained frozen on his face when it slumped to the earth an inch from mine. I was momentarily fascinated by his expression until the sight of the sword blade being jerked from his skull brought me back to a semblance of awareness.

  “Can you walk, Alwyn Scribe?”

  Evadine’s wrists were still bound and she clutched the sword between two hands. Her shift clung to her body where it was dampened by blood, and it was very damp. I gaped at her until the familiar shout of a charging soldier tore my gaze away. One of the kingsmen came at us, halberd levelled at me. Had he been a wiser fellow it would surely have been aimed at Evadine. A swirl of white and red, the scrape of steel on steel and the charging soldier lay dead alongside his knight commander.

  “Alwyn!” Evadine said, voice sharp with impatience. She upended the sword she held and stabbed it into the earth then began sawing the rope binding her wrists along the edge. Beyond her I saw the scaffold was now a chaos of struggling figures, ducal men-at-arms vainly trying to stave off the rush of the crowd. As I expected, many were the congregants who had gathered outside the lord of exchange’s house in Farinsahl. The long march from the port didn’t appear to have tired them for they threw themselves into the fray with animalistic ferocity. Some carried staffs or axes but most lacked any arms at all and simply clawed at the rapidly withering line of soldiers.

  Looking around I saw similar carnage everywhere. Isolated kings-men laid about with their halberds only to be overwhelmed and beaten into the dirt. Not all assailants were congregants; many were townsfolk from Ambriside and churls from the surrounding fields. Despite having only glimpsed the Risen Martyr this very morn, still they had been roused to her defence.

  I saw a few dozen kingsmen form up into a defensive circle and succeed in holding their ranks for a time. However, their attempt to fight their way clear ended when they were set upon by Covenant Company. I took a perverse pride in watching them envelop the veteran kingsmen, the swiftness of their victory
owing much to weight of numbers, but still, it was finely done.

  “Up!” Evadine looped an arm under mine and tried to drag me upright. After a few seconds’ grunting effort, I succeeded in gaining my feet, though the constant sway of the ground and sky meant I had to hold onto her for support.

  “Captain!”

  Swain’s unmistakable rasp cut through the general tumult and I saw him lead a contingent of company soldiers towards us. “The duke has gained the castle and is mustering the full garrison,” he reported. “Folk here say there’s two more companies in the keep.”

  “Then we take it,” Wilhum said, appearing at my side. Looking me over, he winced before putting my arm over his shoulders. “This lot seem fit to take on the whole world.”

  I cast a bleary gaze at Evadine as she surveyed the field. All the kingsmen were slain or had fled while the duke had contrived to escape along with a decent number of retainers and men-at-arms. Many congregants and townsfolk were streaming towards the castle in an untidy mob but I doubted their chances against a barred gate and staunchly held walls, as did Evadine.

  “No,” she said. “There’s been enough blood today. Sergeant, spread the word as best you can. Tell these people Martyr Evadine thanks them for their courage and devotion and asks that they return to their homes.”

  “Then where do we go?” Wilhum asked. “Back to Farinsahl?”

  Evadine shook her head. “I’ll not subject innocents to a siege on my account.”

  “Then where?”

  “Forest,” I muttered, feeling a desire to help. My head lolled as I turned to Evadine. “Lots of places to hide in the forest…”

  “Alwyn?”

  Wilhum’s voice dwindled to a vague, distant murmur as many colours returned to swirl in my eyes. For a time, those twisting hues were all I saw and when they faded I found myself staring up at passing clouds. My heart beat slower than it should, growing slower by the second, and I possessed enough reason to know what that meant. I was dimly aware of being carried, of voices continually speaking my name but it was very far away. Soon the clouds were riven by a dark web of branches and the air took on a familiar coolness.