by Dave Duncan
“By beating you to death with my fists, I suppose? While standing on my tippy toes?”
“During the fight in Eagle Room. I made Prince Athelgar look like a stuffed seagull, but he actually is a superb swordsman by layman standards. When he said a Blade trained him, he put his finger on the problem: one trainer is never enough. Whenever bound Blades visit Ironhall, the candidates, especially the seniors, mob them, all wanting to practice against somebody new. A man’s fighting style is as distinctive as his handwriting.”
Fizz tossed her head so fiercely that he almost lost her hat. “All I did was grab your arm and shout that you were fighting the Queen’s son! If you’d as much as nicked him, you’d have signed up for a traitor’s death, and Malinda would have punished my father, too.”
“Woman,” Niall said sadly, “you came off the bed on my left, but you dodged around me to grab my sword arm. Luckily, I was able to change hands fast enough. If I weren’t super-fast and two-handed, he’d have nailed me then. Even so, he very nearly did.”
Fizz’s tongue was as fast as his sword, so her silence this time was as good as a confession.
“Last night at supper,” he said quietly, “I asked around. Marquis Neville is your father, but your mother was a Wyld.” Fizz herself had Wyldish black hair and her skin was paler than most Chivians’.
No answer.
“Whose side are you on, Maid Fizz?’
“Look! Did you see that fish jump? The salmon run must be starting. That’s early.”
“Tell me about your mother.”
She flashed a frown at him. “Why? What’s she to you?”
“Because you are a much nicer person than your father, so your mother must be nicer still.”
“My mother happens to be dead, so you can’t use your smarmy Blade wiles on her.”
“I wasn’t planning to, but I’m seriously considering trying them on you, Fizz Fitzambrose.”
“Thanks for the warning. How soon do you plan to begin?”
“As soon as we can find some privacy.” She could not know he lacked the magical Blade binding and his seductive skills were clumsy and amateurish without it. “Confess, if I took you in my arms and kissed you seriously and told you how much I wanted you, you wouldn’t try to stop me touching your breasts, would you?”
“A few moments ago, you were accusing me of trying to murder you, and now you’re trying to seduce me?”
“You dived into the middle of a sword fight! Crazy but wonderful. No Blade could resist a woman with such courage.”
“Stop it!” Her face wasn’t pale any more. She was blushing scarlet, like a smoky sunset.
And he might be doing the same. How by Death had he come this far? He prided himself on never telling lies. He wasn’t sure he had been lying. The words had just spilled out of him.
“Now you know why I never go to the Rabbit Hutch, Fizz.”
That might be partly true, too.
Some sensitives could detect lies as well as Inquisitors could. But not all.
They rode in silence after that.
The sun was climbing high by the time the Thencaster forces arrived at the noble metropolis of Zos’parn, but it was not shining there yet. The dozen or so dingy hovels were crowded around a small, marshy lake in a bowl-shaped valley, shadowed by cliffs and steep hills. Paddocks for the cattle were enclosed by dry-stone dykes, not fences, and the cottages looked like heaps of field stone and turfs. Niall could see no barns, but the location must be sheltered from the worst weather by its topography. He noted dogs, geese, and also many small children, which the womenfolk were hastily trying to round up and hustle to safety.
The previous evening, he had reviewed the past year’s reports from Zos’parn. Depending on the season, it paid Thencaster tribute of dairy produce, beef, horses, young oxen, and leather. It also contributed the services of two kitchen maids and one stableman. As lord of the manor, Neville was within his rights in making a surprise inspection visit, but this armed invasion seemed more like a threat than the act of a benign owner.
Having grown up in Grandon, Niall was familiar with poverty. He had seen people sleeping in doorways often enough. Yet he felt nauseated by the contrast between the Marquis’s grandiose palace and the bare-bones destitution of this hamlet.
Caves were the reason for this day’s excursion, but at first Niall could see no caves. He knew that the lake—or pond—was drained by a small stream, which eventually emptied directly into the Frail. The Thencaster Army had come in that way. Under the shouted directions of Commander Abrander, it was now spreading out all around the hamlet, as if to envelope it in a bear hug or a hempen noose. Cavalry was going north, and infantry south. The Marquis and Marshal Lonard were heading for a particular building, set apart from the others, farther uphill from the lake. Fizz was urging her palfrey in that direction, and Niall directed Pepper to follow.
Soon he saw the spring that fed the lake. It emerged as a torrent from the isolated building, which probably served to keep livestock from fouling the community’s drinking supply. The building itself was made of the only quality masonry in the valley, backed by an outcrop of grey rock and overlooking a mini-canyon, which the stream had carved on its rush down to the lake.
Lonard and the Marquis had reined in there and were intent on something in that gorge. Fizz rode up and stopped at her father’s side. Niall halted next to her. The object of interest down by the stream was timber, a lot of it, some stacked, but most already assembled into a sort of pier, which extended into the cave, its surface a couple of feet above the water. It was a weird construction, as if someone had set out to build a bridge along a river, instead of across it. Niall glanced around and confirmed that there was not one tree in the valley, no stumps, no fences or woodwork of any kind. Lumber was a novelty in Zos’parn. The Marquis was purple with rage.
Fizz reached over and poked Niall’s arm, then pointed down at the construction. Her expression demanded an explanation.
Nodding to her to follow, Niall urged Pepper a couple of feet nearer the edge, as if seeking a better view but in reality wanting more space between him and the Marquis. Fizz joined him.
“The Owl Room is the exit,” he said, just loud enough to be audible over the noise of the waterfall. “This is the entrance. The tunnel may have nothing to do with old Ciarán Pfari, or it may be undergoing restoration. This part is obviously work in progress.”
The menfolk of Zos’parn, numbering three or four dozen, were being herded up the slope to the spring by the Thencaster cavalry, with much shouting and jabs from lances. They varied in age from beardless adolescents to age-bleached seniors. Most of them were close to naked. All except the oldest had jet black hair, and all had uncannily white skin. Previously Niall had assumed that the Wylds in the castle were pale through lack of sunshine, but these men must spend all their waking hours outdoors. Their colouring explained the common believe that Wylds were especially hairy. They might have no more body hair than Chivians; it was just more obvious.
Order was established, after the Thencaster militia had forced all the locals to kneel to their lord, cracking a few heads with pikestaffs in the process.
The Marquis angrily beckoned Fizz back to his side. He said, “Call out Headman Hebnoth.”
Fizz shouted out three or four words, of which Niall could identify only one. The stream’s racket drowned her out, and nothing happened.
Some of the Thencastrian infantry on the sidelines spoke Wyldish, and they repeated the gibberish, louder and in a lower key.
Still nothing happened. The men of Zos’parn cowered on the ground in silence, staring down at their own knees. Nobody here called Hebnoth.
The Marquis snapped something at Marshall Lonard, who gestured to someone in the cordon of Thencastrian cavalry. Two horses began to move. The first rider was dressed as one of Neville’s lancers, but he held a leash ins
tead of a lance. The other end was attached to the second horse. As they drew closer, Fizz suddenly muttered, “Oh, no!”
Then Niall, too, recognised the prisoner as Traskar, a happy-go-lucky young stable man in the castle—a Wyld, of course, and almost certainly the stableman that Zos’parn was required to supply to Thencaster as part of its regular tribute. For “stableman” read “male hostage”. His hands were bound behind his back and his ankles roped together under the horse’s belly. That must be a fiendishly uncomfortable way to travel, but it was not the worst of his troubles, for he was almost naked, and his normally white skin was a nightmare of bloody welts, red and black.
Surely only Neville himself could have ordered such brutality, but he had not done so while Niall had been present, taking notes.
The newcomers halted, close to Marshall Lonard.
Fizz was choking back sobs.
The Marquis scowled at his victim and waved a hand in the direction of the kneeling peasants. “Which one of these brutes is Hebnoth?”
Traskar opened and closed his mouth a few times. His face was badly bruised and swollen. Then he mumbled something that Niall could not make out.
Neville could. “Oh, spirits! Give him some water.”
Lonard held his own canteen to the prisoner’s mouth.
Then Neville tried again. “Never mind Hebnoth. Is Panoleo here? Just point him out and I’ll let you go. I’ll go away. I’ll take Panoleo, and all my men and we’ll leave Zos’parn.”
Traskar continued to study his horse’ ears and said nothing. He had always been helpful in the stable, always cheerful. Niall wanted to draw his sword and chop whoever had treated him thus into slices. If Chivial ever had to choose between Neville Fitzambrose or Athelgar son of Radgar as its king, it would have its work cut out.
Niall heard a strange noise, a sort of thud, some distance away. Not truly familiar... but he had heard it before, when... when... where... in Ironhall? Yes! A demonstration of...
Of longbows!
Then the arrows arrived, coming down at a steep angle. Neville was hit in the back and slumped forward. Traskar was put out of his agony by two strikes in the head. Another shaft went through Marshall Lonard’s thigh, pinning him to his horse, which screamed and stumbled. Niall had a narrow escape from the same fate, when the arrow just missed his leg and struck Pepper’s withers. He leaped free as the poor mare fell. Fizz screamed.
Meanwhile the archers would be drawing for a second volley....
Chapter 21
He would walk a tightrope over a waterfall carrying a leopard.
lady emerald
As his feet hit the turf, Niall again heard the zwak! noise of strings against bows, but he was too busy to try to locate the enemy. He leaped over his horse, writhing in her death agonies, and grabbed Fizz clear as her panicking palfrey threw her. His driving instinct was to take cover. Two long steps took him to the edge of the gully. One more and he was half-sliding, half-leaping down a steep ten feet of rock and mud, unable to see where his feet were going because he was holding Fizz in his arms.
He thought he was about to break every bone in his body and hers also, but he came down ankle-deep in the stream, jarring his feet and his entire back from ankles to scalp, and using her as a fender against the side of the pier. That saved them both from sliding underneath it, into deeper water, which would certainly have drowned or smashed them, for the stream was ravenous, barely past its spring freshet stage. He raised her until she could find handholds and footholds in the substructure, then he did, and in what was probably much less time than it seemed, they had both managed to scramble up on the deck and flop there, bruised and gasping.
He flashed her a smile, and was astonished when she returned it.
The archers had been located farther up the hill, he thought. The Thencaster cavalry seemed to be of the same mind, for he could hear the thunder of hooves and glimpse helmets passing, heading uphill as fast as the wearers could drive their mounts. The gully was deep enough that he couldn’t see their destination, which meant that the killers—magnificent archers though they were—couldn’t shoot at him just now.
So who had been their intended target? The tyrant Marquis, or the wretched Traskar, who must have yielded under torture and admitted knowing the dread name of Panoleo, rumoured to be the new Ciarán? Niall knew it from Neville’s latest report to the Queen’s council.
Niall made an effort to sit up, and winced. If he had broken a rib or two, he might not fence like a Blade for a moon or longer. He grabbed Fizz’s wrist as she tried to leave.
“Daddy! I must go. They killed Daddy.”
“Not necessarily,” he said. “I know he brought the healer team along, and a portable octogram too.” He had written the notes. “He’s got a good chance if they’re quick enough and White Battalion can clobber the archers.”
“I must go!”
“You will only get in the way. I promised your father that I’d be your bodyguard. I can’t defend you from arrows, but I can keep you in a safe place. Let’s go and see where this road leads.”
He struggled himself upright, wincing at protests from his ribs, and then pulled her up beside him, wrapping an arm around her. The day was warm now, and only his feet were wet. He pointed to the source of the stream. What had seemed to be a building was in fact just two mossy walls without a roof. They jutted out from a near-vertical rock face, flanking the mouth of a cave. The pier on which Niall and Fizz were standing provided a floor.
“No,” she said, holding back. “You don’t know what’s in there.”
He gently urged her forward. “I know that my horse is wounded, very likely dead, and yours is probably a hundred miles away by now. This is the road home. Only a mile or so to the palace, your father told us.”
“But Daddy said, ‘As the crow flies.’ I am neither a crow nor a bat that can see in the dark.”
“I can distinguish between you and either of those, but down-here is a lot safer than up-there at the moment. Come along.” He did not point out that the audience of villagers must have seen the two of them take refuge in the gully. The locals had looked like a pathetic half-starved rabble, but there had been plenty enough of them to overcome a lone Blade.
Even Niall did not need to stoop to enter the cave. He could see that it widened, and the roof rose into darkness. Their progress was soon blocked by a pile of lumber, in the form of sawn planks stacked waist-high across the full width of the decking. He paused to let his eyes adapt to the dim light.
“What do you know about Panoleo?” he asked, amused to hear himself whispering. The stream was babbling, but the ominous amount of darkness around them might be hiding listeners.
“Who?”
“First your father wanted Traskar to point out Hebnoth.”
“He’s the headman of Zos’parn.”
“I know that. He doesn’t write the tribute reports, but he makes his mark beside that name. Then your father changed his mind and wanted someone called Panoleo. Do you know him?”
“How should I know?”
“Because you’re half-Wyld. I think you’re playing on both teams, my darling Fizz. I also know that your father thinks that Panoleo is the current Ciarán.”
“The Wylds are not allowed to have a Ciarán any more. Queen Malinda is their Ciarán.”
“Queen Malinda may think so. Do the Wylds?”
Again Fizz said, “How should I know?” Then, sulkily, “I’m only half-Wyld.”
“Your father may have been murdered here today. Traskar certainly was. I don’t know if his death was a mercy killing, or if it was meant to stop him from betraying more secrets, or if all the arrows were meant for your father. It doesn’t matter—there was murder done. I am a Blade, Fizz, a sworn servant of the Queen. If I can find whoever ordered that attack on us, I will arrest him and send him in for trial—f I can. If I can’t
do that, I will take it upon myself to kill him.”
Silence.
Then he said, “Rebellion is being planned here, Fizz. Whose side are you on? Queen Malinda or Ciarán Panoleo?”
More silence.
“Well?”
She dropped her voice so low that he could barely hear it. “Panoleo is a northerner. He isn’t from anywhere hereabouts. Traskar couldn’t tell them any more, but they kept on whipping him. On and on.”
“You were there?”
“Not for long. Daddy wanted me there to translate, but I ran away, it was so horrible! Traskar started by pretending he didn’t understand Chivian.”
“He spoke it very well. I’ve heard him make jokes in Chivial, clever jokes. What did he say about Tom Twelvish?”
Fizz whimpered and cuddled against Niall, as if seeking comfort. “Traskar said he killed him. I don’t know if he was telling the truth or not. They’d taken half his skin off by then. I ran away. They’d stop every ten lashes and ask more questions. Then more ten more. And more....”
“But Panoleo is Ciarán? They’re rebuilding the secret way into the castle and Panoleo is in charge?”
Fizz nodded, and Niall realized that he could see her better now. They were still not far from the entrance, and faint light was filtering down from a chimney, somewhere deeper inside the hill and much higher. Wanting to give his eyes a little longer to adjust, he said, “Does the tunnel from here to the Owl Room date from Ciarán Pfari’s time or is Ciarán Panoleo starting from scratch?”
“How should I know?” She must realize how much she had compromised herself already.
“You know a lot more than you’ve admitted so far. No,” he added, “don’t bother. Now I can see the answer.” The barricade of planks marked the end of the pier. Beyond it was a drop of a couple of feet to the seething turmoil of the stream, which here made a right-angle bend to exit the cavern. Its source lay somewhere to the east. At one time the pier had continued straight across and made landfall where the cave continued in a more or less straight line southward. Tangled remnants of old woodwork were still visible in the water.