by Peter David
My next action was entirely instinctive. With my right leg useless, I pushed off with my left, driving my body weight forward. As I did so, I swung the cudgel, keeping my eye on the crystal ball.
I was nothing but fortunate that Granite had thrown the crystal ball fast and hard. If he had put any sort of spin onto the thing, causing it to move in, say, a curve, I never would have hit it. As it was, it was nothing short of miraculous that I made contact at all.
When the cudgel struck it, I felt a shudder that ran all the way down to my elbows. The cudgel shattered when it hit the crystal ball, and the sphere rocketed right back at Granite. It struck him soundly in the forehead and bridge of the nose, before falling to the floor and rolling serenely away. I’m not sure what that damned thing was made of, but Rosalie had certainly gotten her money’s worth. It seemed indestructible.
Granite stood there with an utterly stunned expression. His eyes crossed, his hands went slack …
… and his sword clattered to the ground.
“Sir Granite!” The shouting increased from the other side of the door. There was now concerted pounding against it. Perhaps those on the other side had become even more alarmed at the sudden cessation of noise.
I threw myself across the floor, skidding on my stomach, and grabbed the fallen pigsticker. If I could keep the bastard at sword-point, I might just be able to reason with him somehow. I angled the sword upward, and was about to issue a warning to him to stay right where he was. I then realized just how profound an effect the crystal ball had had upon Granite, for the knight chose that moment to fall forward like a great tree.
Naturally he fell on the sword.
Rosalie emitted a shriek, as her husband’s fine, teeth-bladed weapon suddenly appeared protruding from his back. Granite, for his own part, hadn’t said anything especially useful in the past few minutes, and his record didn’t change. He gave off a confused-sounding grunt. He slid down the length of his blade without having any true awareness that he had just managed to kill himself. There seemed to be a sort of blubbery surprise in his face. Having slightly broken his fall by catching himself on his elbows, he saw that I was clutching the sword’s hilt. He batted me away, as if annoyed that I was handling his beloved weapon. He clutched the hilt himself then, pulled slightly, and it was at that point that he truly understood, I think, that his entire upper torso was serving as the blade’s new scabbard. He managed to spit out a profanity, which is not the most noble of last words, but probably among the more common, and then he slumped over, unmoving.
There was now a repeated thud against the chamber door. Several of the knights were obviously putting their shoulders into it in an organized fashion.
“This is not going to look good,” I observed. Considering the circumstances, I sounded remarkably sanguine. The truth was that I was terrified, and it was all I could do not to vomit.
Rosalie made small whimpering noises, not appearing to be of much help. I was going to have to do the thinking for both of us. Unfortunately, my brain somewhat locked up at that moment, but I forced it to unfreeze as I whispered sharply, “My tunic! Quick!” Rosalie grabbed my fallen clothing and tossed it to me. I threw it on so that I would have the appearance, at least, of propriety.
“Hide! Hide!” she urged.
“No time! Just yell what I’m yelling, and do it as loudly as you can!”
“But they’ll hear you!”
“That’s the point!” And without further explanation, I began bellowing, “Don’t do it, milord! You have so much to live for!” Bless the old fool, he’d had the grace to die with his cold, dead fingers wrapped firmly around the hilt. All the more convincing for my needs as I wrapped my own fingers around his dead ones (a nauseating sensation, that) and kept calling out, “Please don’t! Don’t do it! They’re not worth it! We need you! This isn’t the way!”
Rosalie appeared clueless as to what I was about, but she went along with it. At first she spoke with clear hesitation and uncertainty, but within moments she yowled as well, “No, my darling! Don’t do it! Listen to Apropos! Don’t do it!” Obviously she wasn’t quite clear on what it was he wasn’t supposed to do, but that didn’t stop her from participating with considerable gusto.
At that point, the door cracked open, the bolt shooting across the room and ricocheting off the far wall, and the knights fairly stumbled over each other to get into the room. Sir Coreolis of the Middle Lands was the first one in, with Sir Justus of the High Born directly behind him. Others were crowding in, and I could even spot my master—my alleged master, in any event—Sir Umbrage trying to get a look. There was gasping and muttering, and suddenly the words “Make way! Make way!”
They parted like priests in a fart factory as the king stepped through them to examine the situation personally. At his right elbow, as was not unusual, crouched the court jester, Odclay. They could not have been a more disparate twosome. The king, for all that I might have held Runcible in contempt, was nonetheless a regal figure with great bearing and presence. He looked somewhat like a hawk, his entire face almost pushed forward as if he was in flight and seeking out prey with his beak. His reputation as a just and fair man, and supernaturally canny opponent, preceded him. Preceded him so much, in fact, that oftentimes he had to run to keep pace with it. His queen was a gentle, doting, and relatively inoffensive thing, and had produced for the king his sole heir (heiress, I suppose), the Princess Entipy, whom I had never met.
Odclay, on the other hand, was bent and misshapen. A few tufts of light brown hair stuck out at odd angles on his equally misshapen head, and his eyes were mismatched colors … and the colors kept changing. He was good for capering about and drooling every now and then. He was screamingly unfunny and therein lay the humor.
Runcible did not speak immediately. That was his way. I was never quite sure whether he did it deliberately so that he would appear great and wise as people waited for him to utter a few words (as was the general perception) or whether he was just so clueless that he never knew what the hell to say and had to strive mightily to manufacture even the most rudimentary of pronouncements.
“What …” he finally asked in slow, measured tones, ” happened?”
Rosalie looked panic-stricken. She had been babbling about how Granite should not do it, whatever it was. But now faced with the question, she had no clue as to how to proceed. Fortunately enough, my mind was already racing. Near-panic tends to focus me.
Letting out a long sigh, clearly not wanting to be the bearer of bad news, I slumped and only at that point released the hilt. I made no endeavor to hide the fact that my hands had been on it. Only a guilty man would feel the need to hide his involvement, and I was anything but guilty. At least, that’s what I had to put across.
“Sir Granitz,” I began, using his more formal name rather than his popular nickname, “was devastated over the outcome of the Pell uprising.”
“Go on,” the king said slowly.
“Well … his presence here makes it obvious, doesn’t it,” I continued. “I mean, you, Highness, sent him on a mission … but yet, he has returned here. He did so because … because he felt that he was not …” I bowed my head. ” … not worthy. Not worthy of the trust that you had put on him.”
I paused then, waiting to get some measure of how this was going down. The king considered the words long and hard.
“Go on.”
Clearly the king was not going to be of much help.
I decided I sounded too calm, considering the circumstances. So the next bit came out all in a rush.
“He was consumed by second-guessing what happened with Pell. Here he was asked to put down a simple uprising, and it resulted in a loss to Your Highness of tax income … and yet, to Granitz, that was not the worst of it. No. No, he had a side that he hid from all of you … hid from everyone except for the Lady Rosalie, of course. A softer side, a side that was … was … was …” I was stuck, and I slammed the floor with my fist to get myself going again. ” …
was distraught, yes … distraught over the loss of life. The women, the children of Pell, crying out, consumed in fire …”
“I thought he set the fire,” said Coreolis in polite confusion.
“Yes! Yes, he did, he set the fire and he ordered the slaughter, but that doesn’t mean that inside him, there wasn’t a … another side, a softer side, that cried out against what he was doing. A softer side that would not let him rest. Call it a conscience if you will, call it a spark of the divine, call it guilt if you must … call it whatever you wish, but understand that it completely undermined and unmanned him.”
“Unmanned him.” The words spread like skin rot throughout the gathering.
“What were you doing here?” That was Sir Justus, and he sounded suspicious.
“Happenstance, milord. Pure happenstance. I was passing by the door and I heard what sounded like … sobbing. It was so high-pitched, so womanish, that I naturally assumed it to be a damsel in distress. Even a humble squire must attend to such a situation when it presents itself. That, at least, is what my good lord and master, Sir Umbrage, has taught me.”
He had, in fact, taught me nothing of the kind. Nonetheless, the other knights looked at him and nodded in approval, and he took their acknowledgments with clear pride over having done his job well.
“So I entered, inquiring as to what I could possibly do to render aid … and discovered, to my amazement, Sir Granitz in the midst of the most terrible lamentations.”
“The Granite one? Nonsense!” said a skeptical Justus. I was not ecstatic about the way the burly knight was looking at me. “In all the years, I never heard him utter so much as one lament. Not a one.”
There was murmuring assent from the others. I did not like how this was going, so I raised my voice—a chancy enough proposition, considering the circumstances I was facing—and said, “And in all those years, did ‘the Granite One’ ever once let down his king in the way that he recently had?”
Momentary silence fell over the room as they racked their brains trying to recall such a happenstance. Giving them time to ponder was the last thing I wanted to do, however. I limped in a circle, accentuating my bad leg, to appear all the more pathetic … and also, ideally, all the more helpless in the face of an uncaring and overwhelming fate. “Did it ever occur to any of you that perhaps there were softer aspects of himself that he kept hidden? Hidden deep down so that it would elude your collective notice? A heart that bled when his enemies bled, a heart that felt the pain of every loss. But his head, milords … his head would not allow any of you good knights to see that which he himself found so repulsive: his gentler side. Why do you think he was so formidable at war on the field, eh? Because he was accomplished at being at war with himself! Yes, milords, with himself. But this most recent, crushing indignity, this devastating failure … it was too much. The years of repression burst from him.”
I took a moment to try and compose myself, but only a moment, because as soon as one of them even started to form a sentence, I was off again. “The instant I entered, he bolted the door to make sure that no others would follow. Overwrought and ashamed of himself, he knew he could not face you, my king, after he felt he had failed you. Nor did he feel that he could face you good sirs, knowing that this more tender side was … and there is no delicate way to put it, milords … out of control. He felt the only honor left to him was a respectable death. But I,” and I clenched my fist, “did not agree. I begged him to reconsider, to think of all the carnage and slaughter that he could still inflict. There was so much death left for him to live for. But he wouldn’t attend my words, milords, no, he wouldn’t.” I made a visible effort to keep back the tears. “With those great hands of his, those great hands that have throttled so many, he tried to drive his sword into his mighty chest.” There were gasps now. I was reasonably sure I had them, but I didn’t let up. My voice went up an octave, to properly project my fear and terror. It wasn’t much of an acting chore. If I didn’t get the job done, they’d see through this crap I was hurling at them and have me executed, most likely right on the spot. “I struggled with him, milords. As presumptuous, as doomed to failure as that may sound, I tried to stop him. I’m sorry, Sir Umbrage,” I said to my master as humbly as I could. “You have taught me” (no he hadn’t, see above) “to obey the wishes of a knight, whatever the circumstance. But I could not do so here. I wanted to try and save one of the king’s own greats. I wanted to be … to be a hero, milords. To be like you.” This brought nods of approval. My heart was pounding. “And then … and then—”
“And then … then it was amazing, milords!” Rosalie suddenly cried out. I felt my heart sink into my boots. One false word out of her and the entire thing was done for. But Rosalie rose to the challenge. “My husband’s strength … it’s … it’s legendary. But this young man, this squire, nearly matched him pound for pound, milords! He came so close, so close to saving the life of my noble husband, your noble peer. But … ultimately … he …” She choked on the words. “He … could not. My noble lord threw himself upon the upraised blade of his mighty weapon. ‘With honor’ were the last words he managed to gasp out … and then was cleaved in half the great heart.”
It was damned near poetic. Even the vaunted Justus himself was becoming choked up.
There was dead silence. I realized that all eyes were turning toward the king. There might have been suspicion, confusion on the parts of the other knights, but ultimately, it all came down to the king. His thinking shaped the reality.
His gaze never waved from me. As withering an opinion as I’d earlier formed of him, I felt myself starting to get nervous. His reputation for incisiveness and canniness had to be based on something. If he’d seen through the nonsense, I was finished.
And finally, he said two words and only two:
“Good work.” And then, with no further comment, he turned and left the room, the jester cavorting and drooling after him.
The relief that flowed through me caused me to sag and almost collapse, but I managed to catch myself before that happened. The other knights came forward, clapping me on the shoulder, clucking over the corpse of their fallen comrade, and offering succor to the lovely Rosalie. Rosalie in turn caught my eye and there seemed to be a slight glittering triumph in there, as if to say, See? I could spout nonsense as well as you. Clearly, she could. And she was in an excellent position as well. As widow, she would acquire all of Granite’s lands and titles, and no doubt have a number of eligible men courting her. She wouldn’t require the attentions of a lowly squire and stablehand, which was fine by me. As entertaining between the sheets as she was, I didn’t need the aggravation. Besides, if anyone caught sight of us together or any whispering began about us, it could utterly shred the tissue of lies that was, at that point, my means of salvation.
Several knights had pushed Granite’s corpse out of the way like so much refuse, and they were talking to me pridefully of honor and bravery. I said nothing in reply, because really, there was no point. They were speaking to hear their own voices, not to elicit comments from me. I bobbed my head, smiled, stated my appreciation for their well wishes, and counted myself damned lucky all in all.
I wasn’t like the others, you see. I had no particular dreams of glory, no desire to do great things, go off on dangerous quests and the like. I simply wanted to survive, get some lands, acquire a title perhaps, avenge myself on my father, and find one particular man and kill him, all in the least hazardous means possible, and then retire in comfort. Until I managed to do that, I intended to keep my head down whenever and wherever I could.
One, however, attains power by being noticed. So I was walking a fine line, drawing attention to myself and casting myself to be as brave as any of the lords of the manor, while at the same time taking care to keep my head on my shoulders. That was my goal: the illusion of danger, as I liked to call it.
“Apropos …”
I turned and saw that the king had reentered. All became silent once more.
“You lucky bastard,” said Coreolis.
“Handpicked by the king for a dangerous job,” Justus said. “I remember the first time I drew such an honor.” He held up his right hand, which was missing three fingers. “Got off lightly for it. Damned lucky to have my opportunity. And now you’ll get yours.”
And as I felt a chill down my spine, I couldn’t help but feel that the ghost of Granite was thinking that exact same thing, and laughing in anticipation of me getting mine.
Chapter 2
I am by trade neither writer nor historian; I am merely a master of fabrication, which I am told is all one requires to take up either of the aforementioned pursuits. I am also told that readers require something of an immediate nature—preferably something involving action—to draw them into a narrative. If nothing else, apparently, it gives the reader an idea of where the story is going to go. I can sympathize with that requirement. I have lived my life with not the faintest clue as to where it was going, walking an extremely angled and treacherous path in order to arrive at no place that I actually started out to get to. I’ve had no choice in doing so since, of course, it was my life and I had to live it. You, the reader, on the other hand, are entering my life voluntarily, and it would be the greatest cruelty to subject you to the same aimless sense of confusion that has permeated my existence. So the preceding chapter existed primarily to give you some footing, some certainty about my life, which is certainly more than I ever had.
Now that, ideally, you have been drawn into what I laughingly refer to as my career, I shall go back and recommence the narrative at the only truly proper place for it: the beginning. This, I assure you, will bring us back to the false beginning—which will actually be somewhere around the middle by the time we rendezvous with it. The ending will arrive in its own time, as it often does. So … let us begin.