by Leo Carew
Shadows consumed the courtyard outside. The slow moon rose. The snow-bones were burnished silver. The steel points of stars pricked the dark.
“You may begin, Hagen,” said Keturah, nodding at their captive. “Leon? Please go downstairs now.” Leon crept out of the room, and Keturah passed Hagen a tinder-box and a torch that reeked of pitch. The torch sputtered into life and Hagen kept it carefully low, proceeding to the window, which faced out towards the lake. “If he comes,” whispered Keturah, causing Hagen to pause, “you will be rewarded.”
Hagen hesitated, torch in hand. He glanced back at Keturah and then out at the mountains once more. He bounced the torch six times over the windowsill. He waited a moment, then repeated it five times. Then four and finally three. He held the torch away from the window, putting it head down in an iron brazier to puff and sputter.
“So what did you tell him?” asked Keturah.
“That was the signal,” said Hagen, hoarsely, “that the Master said I was to give above the spot where the boy slept unguarded. I will repeat it through the night, and if the assassin still trusts it, he will come in below us.”
“The Master?” whispered Keturah, not having genuinely credited his involvement in this. She began to understand that it was less her powers of persuasion, and more the death of Hagen’s chief tormentor that had gained his help at last.
They waited. Keturah stayed back from the window, watching the moonlit courtyard from her shadowed corner. All was still, and just as the torch resting in the brazier was beginning to fade, Hagen repeated his signal.
The room stayed silent, the courtyard stayed empty, and the five of them waited. At what she supposed was about midnight, Keturah finally detected movement outside. She put a finger to her lips and crept a little closer to the window, looking out into the pearly courtyard. There was a creature staring right back at her, fairly irradiated by the moon.
A wolf.
It shone as though steel-plated and looked directly into her hiding place with gilded eyes. Then it passed on, moving through the courtyard like a wisp of smoke. Keturah felt herself smiling and crept back to her corner.
Some time later, she suggested to Gero that he should go and check that Leon was awake. Gero nodded and crept downstairs. Presently, there came the sound of a thump. Gero reappeared soon after, looking ruffled. “He’s awake,” he muttered.
Hagen lit a second torch and signalled again. The mountains yielded no reply. “He isn’t watching tonight,” whispered Hagen.
“Keep trying,” Keturah decreed. But the torch burnt out and still, there came no sign. They must have been only a couple of hours from dawn when she felt Hagen’s eyes turn to her. “Light the final torch,” she said.
“He suspects,” Hagen whispered, “or he’s dead himself.”
“Then it will do no harm,” said Keturah. “Light the torch.”
Hagen did, and signalled for the fifth time that night.
And then the sixth.
The moon had gone and there was a smoky tinge to the east. Keturah let out a long breath. “Damn,” she said, very softly. She stood and stretched. Ormur, who seemed to have been snoozing in the corner, stirred suddenly, glancing about the room, before settling back against the wall.
There came a soft clatter from the courtyard. Gero, still standing over Hagen, blinked. “Did you hear that?”
“It’s nearly dawn,” said Keturah, with a shrug. “Some of the tutors will be getting up.” She wondered what to do now, and whether Salbjorn really might have killed the assassin. Perhaps they would try again the following night. Or perhaps Hagen had been too fearful to give him the right signal. She glanced at him once more, and screamed.
Crouched on the windowsill behind him was a dark, stocky figure. The assassin, silhouetted against the first light of dawn, a knife clamped between his teeth. Keturah could just make out his eyes, searching this room, which he had clearly not expected to be so full. The figure leapt from the windowsill, lunging with his knife at Gero, who was just able to parry with his staff.
“Leon!” Keturah howled.
Hagen scrambled back and into a corner, eyes bulging as Gero and the assassin grappled, Gero conceding one step after another until he had been forced back onto the low sill of another window. The assassin drove him back further until he was on the verge of toppling over and tumbling into the courtyard. Gero clutched onto the frame, but to do so he had to release his staff, which had been holding back that wicked knife. The blade was suddenly free and the assassin drew it back to strike his opponent.
Then Ormur charged out of nowhere, screaming in his high boy’s voice and seizing the assassin’s knife-hand. Keturah jumped after him, grabbing the hand with Ormur and wrenching at it, trying to prise the fingers open and free the knife. The assassin was immensely strong, and even the two of them combined were pulled this way and that by his right hand. His left had clamped about Gero’s throat and was forcing him back, back, so that he leaned further out of the window, nearly overbalancing.
There were footsteps thumping up the stairs behind Keturah, whose grip on the assassin’s knife-hand was weakening. “Hagen, help us!” she called, but Hagen had huddled into the corner, hands covering his mouth as his nightmare appeared in this room. The assassin gave a brutal heave which threw Keturah back, her grip torn loose. Ormur still clutched onto the assassin’s wrist, teeth bared, as he was lifted bodily from the ground by the strength of his brother’s murderer. He too must lose his grip soon, and Gero, purple in the face and choking, teetered on the window ledge.
Crash.
Something smashed so hard into the assassin that Keturah felt the impact reverberate through the floorboards. The assassin was bowled over, Ormur spinning aside, the knife dislodged to land on a goatskin, and Gero just snatching the frame of the window before he tumbled backwards.
The assassin had been flattened and now lay yowling and hissing like a trapped animal as Leon bore down on him, a shining blade thrust through his leg, pinning him to the floor. The skewered figure was spitting, swearing and aiming wild kicks at Leon with his free leg, but the guardsman was indomitable. He kept him there, and kept him there, and kept him there.
And suddenly, the assassin fell still. He lay panting and grunting, that sword still through his leg and black blood flooding the floor beneath him.
“You bastards.” He spoke in a hiss like quenched steel. “You poisonous bastards. Release me.” He twisted slightly onto one side to alleviate the pain of Leon’s sword in his thigh.
“I promise you,” said Leon, “you will never move under your own power again.”
The assassin’s appearance had been so sudden that only now did Keturah wonder what had brought him to this room. He must have been suspicious of Hagen’s signal coming after such a delay, and so had avoided the main entrance, somehow swarming up the outer wall and bypassing their ambush altogether.
Now he coughed and gasped, glaring at the sword through his thigh. “Months,” he rasped. If Keturah had to imagine the voice of a snake, it would sound like this man. “Freezing, insect-bitten months in those bloody mountains, and I didn’t even get the boy. Knew it was too good to be true. Stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid.”
“So you murdered Numa?” demanded Keturah, stepping forward. “And Guardsman Salbjorn? Well done, Leon,” she added to the guardsman.
“Of course.” The assassin gasped suddenly as Leon twisted his sword. Another surge of black blood pumped out beneath the shadow.
“I think you’ve hit an artery,” said Keturah to Leon.
“I’m sure of it,” replied the guardsman.
“We need him alive! Take out the sword, I will bind the wound.” She prepared to tear strips from her cloak but Leon was shaking his head.
“He’s done for.”
“I am,” agreed the assassin, gritted teeth shining from the floor. “What a stupid way to spend your final months.” His gaze strayed to Ormur, and Keturah saw the hunger there. “And so close,” he
said wistfully, smiling at the boy. Ormur was pale, but stared back defiantly.
“Who are you?” asked Keturah, imploring Leon to keep his sword still with a hand on his elbow. She felt terrible fear and responsibility that this man might die without yielding the information they needed. If her interference destroyed the only lead they had, she was not sure she would be able to look Roper in the eye again. Though he would be generous, she knew. He would not blame her.
“Endre,” replied the man.
“And who sent you here, Endre?”
Endre just grunted. It might have been a sound of amusement. It certainly indicated that he planned to say no more.
“I know you work for Ellengaest,” said Keturah. “Why would you show loyalty to a man who sent you here to die?”
“Ellengaest freed me from prison,” said Endre. “I’d have been rotting on one of those hulks without him. Mountain-time has been better than that. Anything is better than that. So yes, I have more loyalty to him than the bastards who have me pinned to the floor.”
“Ellengaest is working to bring down the Black Kingdom,” said Keturah. “Did you know that?”
Endre raised an apathetic hand. “Yes.” The pool of blood beneath him was expanding and he lay his head on the floor suddenly. “Get this over with,” he breathed.
“Very well,” said Keturah, speaking calmly, though she could feel time slipping away. “As a servant to Ellengaest, once you are finished, we will obliterate your body.”
His gritted teeth flashed once more. “No. Not for this.”
Keturah laughed. She was so practised at it that it came out genuinely delighted. “Of course for this! You lie dying and unrepentant; a murderer and servant of the man trying to destroy our kingdom. Give me his name, his real name, and I will save your body from obliteration.”
The only response was a laboured panting.
“What do you owe him?” said Keturah, mystification in her voice. “He freed you but only to transform you into a slave. Into his dog.”
“I am no man’s dog,” seethed the voice abruptly, words slightly slurred.
“You are fully domesticated,” said Keturah, mercilessly. “But that’s irrelevant. Unless you give us your master’s name, we will destroy your body. The screaming fragments of your soul will travel the world like a cloud of misery. That is all that will survive for eternity.”
Endre’s cheek was lying in the tide of blood. He shook his head. “Vigtyr,” he named. “Vigtyr Forraederson. Vigtyr the Quick.”
Keturah stepped backwards.
At last.
At last they had the name, and her first thought was of Roper, working so closely with that giant, that traitor. He was in terrible danger.
Her attention snapped to Endre once more, and she leaned over him, speaking urgently. “What is his plan? What will he do?”
The assassin’s eyes were closed, and Keturah feared he could say no more. Then he began to speak, words so slurred they were hard to distinguish. “The army is full of his informants,” he mumbled. “People in his debt. He sends their information to the Suthern spymaster, to help him defeat Roper… As Roper’s campaign fails, Vigtyr believes he will be executed by the Kryptea. And that he will win the gratitude of the Sutherners, and earn a place at their royal court.” Endre’s face was deathly pale, and he was panting harder. “That’s what he wants,” he said. “There. I told you. That’s all I know. Save my body.”
Keturah glared down at him. “I thank you for your help, Endre. It has been invaluable. Your body will be blown to smithereens.”
“No!” shouted the figure, eyes flying open.
Leon leaned forward on his sword and glowered down at the assassin. “For Salbjorn,” he said, giving his sword a twist. A fresh black surge flooded out beneath Endre, whose frantic scrabbling faded in a few heartbeats.
“Vigtyr,” breathed Keturah. “Vigtyr.” The white mountaintops through the window were capped in orange light. “Leon, ride. Take my horse and ride now. Warn them. If you arrive before they assault Lundenceaster, you could save thousands. Bellamus is broken. Vigtyr is all that’s left: you must stop him.”
“I have a duty to protect you and the boy,” said Leon, pulling his sword free of Endre’s leg.
Keturah stamped her foot. “Irrelevant! Go! Go! Go! Go, now!” Leon backed towards the stairs, and Keturah pursued him. “Ride now, as fast you that horse will take you! To Lundenceaster! For Vigtyr; kill Vigtyr! Go!”
37
The Walls of Lundenceaster
“We’re ready, my lord,” said Gray.
“Ready?” asked Roper. “We could burn the tunnels?”
“And the wall would come crashing down. Or so the engineers say.”
Another clouded day. Roper, Gray and Pryce lined one of the eastern trenches, surveying the walls. Everything about Roper felt damp. His feet were wet from wading through the water that was now up to his ankles. His fingers were cold and wrinkled, and he felt constantly on the verge of shivering. And gnawing at him as surely as his hunger, was the seemingly insurmountable task which lay before them. “I know I said we would not delay,” he said. “Almighty knows I want this over, one way or another. But I do not think we can take this city, as we are. The defences are too potent. There are too many defenders. We have been too weak, and too heartsick, for too long, and our resolve is too fragile. We need the Unhieru to finish this task.”
“How far away are they?” asked Gray.
“Not far,” said Roper. “I had word that they’ll be here in two days with the Fair Islanders.”
“And what if they’re delayed by another two days beyond that?” said Gray. “With our rations so meagre, this force may simply disintegrate.”
“I know,” said Roper. “I know. But it’s a chance we have to take, and the scouts are confident they’ll be here.”
“The word of our scouts is worth considerably less these days,” Pryce observed.
“Nevertheless. We wait for them.”
“And at least the Skiritai are no longer being dumped at the edge of the camp,” said Gray. Each night for a week, torches had bobbed at the outskirts of the camp as Hermit-Crabs attempted to feed them Skiritai bodies, and each night they had been driven back by volleys of arrows. From whatever source the infected Skiritai derived, it seemed to have dried up. Roper dared hope they might yet resist that perishing disease, but the risk of it had nevertheless made foraging for food, fetching water and firewood very hard. Every time they ventured away from the safety of their archers and defences, it was the worst fear of every man that they would encounter waiting Hermit-Crabs or infected Skiritai bodies, and be forced to make that lonely and self-sacrifical march into this alien land. The exhaustion of this army was so consuming that even with the Unhieru, Roper was not sure his troops had the morale to take on Lundenceaster.
They talked for a time longer, Gray enquiring after Roper’s lessons with Vigtyr.
“I had another this morning,” said Roper. “It feels as though I’m making a lot of progress.”
“Vigtyr doesn’t enjoy the lessons any more,” said Pryce. “A sure sign that you’re progressing.”
“That is the impression I get,” Roper admitted. “He doesn’t actually like it when I get better.”
“I heard him describe you as exceptional, the other day,” said Gray. “He thinks you could be a master.”
Roper was astonished, and desperately wanted to enquire further, but they were interrupted by a staccato trumpet burst from the north. Soldiers Coming. The three men exchanged glances. “More infected?”
“Let’s find out,” said Roper. They clambered out of the trench, each smearing their front with mud as they wriggled away from the edge. From this distance, Roper could see a large mass of men, moving through the trees beyond them. For an instant, he forgot how small the trees in Suthdal were, and he grossly overestimated the size of these figures and supposed the Unhieru had arrived early. But as he drew closer, he recognised the ba
nner held overhead: a swirl of ragged falcon wings. “I don’t believe it,” he said. “I don’t believe it!”
Before this stream of weary men trudging into the camp, a lone figure rode straight-backed. The rider spotted Roper and curbed his horse towards him, Roper breaking into a run, a grin spreading over his face.
He stopped before the rider and beamed. “Legate Tekoa,” he said. “Come to join us for the last dance?”
“Such as we are,” said Tekoa.
“The plague?”
“Has surrendered. Two weeks since our last case.”
Roper stepped closer and held up a hand to Tekoa. The two shook, and Gray was next in line. Pryce stayed where he was. “You’re back,” he said.
“Yes, Nephew. I’m back.”
“How many Skiritai survived?” asked Pryce artlessly.
Tekoa’s voice was very even as he replied. “There are fifteen hundred of us left.”
“Fifteen hundred more than I’d dared hope,” said Roper. “And that you are among them is even better.”
“There’s no need to start gushing, Lord Roper,” said Tekoa.
“And tell me,” said Pryce, voice still flat. “How is it that the Hermit-Crabs were able to harvest so many of your infected?”
There was a pause, Tekoa examining his nephew. “I had not heard that,” he said, at last.
“That is fortunate for you,” Pryce replied. “Meanwhile, we’ve had to deal with your sick men being dumped—”
“It’s done,” Roper interrupted. “The Skiritai here are healthy. There is no more that—”
“You have had to deal with my sick men?” Tekoa overrode Roper, staring icily at Pryce. “Do tell me what that must have felt like, Nephew. I cannot imagine.”
Pryce narrowed his eyes, starting forward but Roper thumped a hand into his chest. “Enough, both of you! Nothing can be gained from this, it is done. It is the hunger making you argue. We have one thing left to do.” Roper jabbed a finger at Lundenceaster’s towering walls. “And if you do not give it every scrap of energy you possess, then all we have done so far will be for nought. Emotions are contagious and you must both watch yours.”