Paladin's Prize

by Gaelen Foley

  Does Eudo actually trust them? he wondered. Or has he perhaps made a deal of his own with the beasts? One the king doesn’t even know about?

  The possibility made his stomach clench.

  Pulling off his gambeson, he crossed his chamber to hang it up neatly on its peg, but as he did so, his glance happened upon the figurine of Xoltheus atop the chest of drawers nearby.

  He drifted over to the idol and stared at it. Why don’t you ever help me like Ilios helps him? Why do you always leave me on my own?

  But then again, cruelty was part of his religion. It was a part of life, so it only made sense that his god was cruel, too.

  He picked up the black stone statue, its simple humanoid shape polished smooth in the primitive style. The carving represented Xoltheus as a powerful warrior with a ram’s head, ready to charge into any battle. He carried a shield and a spear, and his wide, staring eyes were painted red.

  One did not expect kindness from such a god. But then again, kindness made men weak. If only he could understand…

  I follow my orders, no matter how they nauseate me. I fight even when I know I’ll probably lose. I’ve been a model knight adhering to your laws, just as Thaydor is to his. I’ve done all you’ve asked of me. So why am I constantly in pain?

  He called himself a choice epithet, then shut his eyes and tried to embrace the suffering. But he just felt empty, and if he dwelled on it too long, the emptiness deepened to despair.

  Are you even real?

  At that moment, he heard a coy little scratching at his door. Instantly on alert, he turned. “Who’s there?”

  The door creaked open, and a beautiful face peered through the crack. “May I come in?”

  “Oh. It’s you.” He nodded, his tension easing for the most part, but not entirely.

  Sana, the king’s mistress, slipped into his room and closed the door behind her with a quiet click. Dressed in the same gauzy nothings and spiked heels as the temple girls, she was Fonja’s finest, luscious from head to toe, and she knew it.

  How Thaydor had resisted, Reynulf could not contemplate. Why His Majesty let her walk around naked like that, he could not guess. Unless the old goat wanted the world to envy him for his prize.

  Reynulf had done more than envy. He wondered what method of execution they would choose for him if anyone found out.

  “I heard you had a little spat with Thaydor,” she said in amusement as she sauntered across the chamber toward him, wine goblet dangling from her hand. “The news is everywhere.”

  “And with Lord Eudo,” he said with a smirk. “And with the king. And with nearly every knight of Veraidel. And with the world, more or less. Nothing new in that, pet.”

  “Ah, but not with me.” She pushed her way between him and the chest of drawers, and draped her lithe bare arms around his neck. “Hullo, Reynulf.” She started to kiss him, but he winced at the contact after taking a couple of Thaydor’s punches to the face.

  Annoyed, he brushed her off. “I’m not in the mood.”

  “Humph.” Preening, she smiled and leaned her perfect naked derriere against the chest of drawers. “Very well, my naughty boy, I forgive you. To be honest, any mention of Lord Eudo has the same effect on me.”

  “You…!” Reynulf suddenly had an idea. “Sana! You’re the answer!”

  She arched a well-shaped brow and offered him her cup. He shook his head. “What’s the question?” she asked.

  He took hold of her arms and stared into her eyes. “I want you to do something for me.”

  “Oh, goody. Then you’ll be in my debt. How delicious.”

  “I need you to talk to Baynard. Sana, they’re talking about bringing Urms into the city to help defend the palace from Thaydor’s knights.”

  She wrinkled her nose prettily in disgust. “Urms?”

  “Nearly all our knights have run off after Thaydor. Eudo says we need a contingent of mercenaries as reinforcements.”

  “Darling, if Eudo says it’s all right, then it’s probably fine. He knows what he’s doing. You worry too much. Everything will be well. Here. Take a drink. You look like you could use it.”

  “Will you help me or not?” he demanded, ignoring the offered goblet.

  She tilted her head and gave him a melting look. “As if I could deny you anything.” She ran her hand down his chest. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Convince His Majesty, as only you can, that this is a terrible idea and will lead to disaster.”

  “How sweet. You’re worried about the people.”

  “I’m not a monster, Sana,” he said in annoyance. “I know full well it’s Thaydor they love, but just because I don’t go around making grandiose speeches like he does doesn’t mean I don’t care.”

  “You’re getting me hot. So noble!” She giggled and reached out to stroke his face, but he knocked her hand away.

  “Would you stop it? This is serious! Those creatures will tear the city apart.”

  “Yes, sir!” She gave him a teasing salute.

  He stared at her. “Are you drunk?”

  She flashed a pout in answer to his question and walked away with her nose in the air. “Goodbye, Reynulf.”

  “Will you talk to the king as I asked or not?”

  She propped a hand on her slim waist, stopped strutting toward the door, and turned. “What will you do for me in return?”

  Reynulf gave her a knowing look and asked softly, “What would like me to do?”

  She bit her lip. “I should think you remember what I like quite vividly.”

  “Indeed.” He glanced at his bed in speculation and then at her again. “Talk to the king first and then we’ll see about that.”

  She turned to him with a seductive little smile, trailing her hand down her creamy chest and midriff. His heated gaze followed as she sauntered back toward him.

  “A kiss to seal our bargain, Bloodletter?”

  “Very well,” he conceded in a husky tone.

  She sidled up to him again, her stare locked on his. She pressed the wineglass to his chest. “Wet your lips so you can kiss me properly.”

  He took the goblet from her hand, raised it to his mouth, and took a sip, then frowned at the odd, faint sizzle on his tongue. He looked into the cup. “What is this?”

  “A new vintage. An import from Lyragon, I think.”

  His mouth tingled with a bitter aftertaste. He looked at her warily. “Did you put something in it? One of your little happy powders?”

  “No. Don’t you like it?”

  He seized her by her throat, his eyes aflame. “What did you just give me?”

  “Reynulf!” She clutched his wrist as he lifted her onto her toes. “Let go of me!”

  “What’s in the wine, Sana? Some new drug of yours, or did you just bloody poison me, you bitch?”

  She choked.

  “Answer me!” He squeezed harder.

  She looked shocked, but the harlot should’ve remembered whom she was dealing with.

  “It’s not…poison,” she forced out, clawing at his arm as he slowly cut off her air.

  “What is it, then?” he demanded.

  “A potion. To make you…obey.”

  “Eudo put you up to this?”

  Eyes wide with terror, she managed to nod despite his grip around her neck. But he wasn’t quite done with her yet.

  “Has he had you slipping it into the king’s wine, as well?”

  “No.”

  “You’d better be telling the truth.”

  “I make the king obey, you fool!”

  “How?”

  “How do you think?” she rasped, then she kicked him in the balls and he dropped her.

  The instant she landed, she threw her head back and let out a shrill scream. “Help!”

  The door burst open immediately, and Reynulf, still bent over his groin, could not believe his eyes as her help arrived.

  Urms.

  Three huge Urmugoth warriors flooded through the doorway into his ro
om. In the fleeting second before they attacked him, Reynulf’s jaw dropped as he realized that what Lord Eudo had posited to the king as a possibility awaiting his permission was, in fact, already a fait accompli. Eudo had somehow smuggled his Urm allies into Pleiburg behind the king’s back. And behind his.

  While Sana slid out of the way, still on the ground, and withdrew to the wall to watch, a sneer on her face, they spread out and approached, intent on surrounding him.

  Bloody hell. He straightened up, his heart pounding. He glanced around at them and braced himself, battle readiness flooding into his veins.

  These boys weren’t Thaydor. The funny thing about the paladin was that he never fought dirty. Reynulf did. And, to be sure, so did Urmugoths.

  The fight exploded—a whirlwind of chaos and pain.

  Reynulf was quicker and more agile than his towering opponents, but he had to admit the barbarians were stronger than he was. At least they were stronger than Thaydor, too, which he could attest to, having been punched by both within the hour. It allowed for a convenient comparison.

  He doubled over from an Urm knee like a tree trunk to the gut. His gaze shifted to a nearby chair. He grabbed it, arced up, and backed the brute off by smashing it across its ugly head.

  As he turned to bash the next one with what remained of the chair leg, he briefly wondered why they didn’t draw blades on him.

  They must have needed him alive for some reason.

  Well, hurrah, he thought acidly, irked in the extreme to see the chamber that he always kept in Spartan shipshape becoming a wreckage.

  His furniture turned to rubble as they crashed around the room. Even the window broke when he sent one of the Urms stumbling headfirst into it. Alas, the beast did not fall out into the river, too broad-shouldered to fit through the narrow hole. The bloodied thing merely turned around looking all the more pissed off.

  Shite.

  The Urm strode toward him. Damn, but they were ugly and they smelled like pigs, crowding around him on all sides to press the fight. With their towering size, gray-tinged complexion, and bestial yellow eyes, their appearance was off-putting to say the least. Especially when they tried to look a bit more human—as these ones had done—by sawing down their tusks to the roots.

  As if this could help them blend in.

  You couldn’t punch them in the jaw or you’d split your knuckles open on those things. The jaw was hard to reach anyway. Too high. He hated being smaller than his foes. He usually wasn’t.

  Bugger! He blocked a sledgehammer fist flying at him and wondered if he’d just taken a hairline fracture to his forearm. His breath heaved. He had to get to his rack of weapons on the wall, but there was no way they’d let him near it.

  From the corner of his eye, he saw Sana looking fascinated by the no-doubt big-dicked giants. She slid her back up the wall, rising to her feet, and then she crept to the doorway, where, to his astonishment, Lord Eudo stood looking on.

  The split second’s startle was Reynulf’s undoing.

  Two of the Urms grabbed him on either side.

  He panicked for a second as they seized his arms, thinking they were going to rip them out of their sockets. Tear him apart.

  He’d seen the bodies up north.

  “No! Wait!” He swallowed hard. “Please. I’ll cooperate. Eudo, call them off.”

  “Aw, look at him beg,” Sana taunted. “I thought you only did that for me, darling.”

  The Silver Sage remained at the threshold, his icy stare fixed on Reynulf while the two Urms held him in their viselike grips. “You really shouldn’t question my judgment in the future, Bloodletter. You are an admirable warrior, and you are needed. But in matters of strategy, as I said, wiser heads must prevail. Perhaps now you will remember your place.”

  “I will,” he lied hastily, ready to promise anything so long as they let him keep his arms.

  “Indeed. I will make sure of it.” He handed Sana a small glass vial.

  Reynulf assumed it was the same stuff she had tried to get him to drink in the wine. Whatever Eudo was up to, Reynulf was shocked that the king’s mistress was in on it, too.

  But why the hell was he surprised? The old man had talked him into opening the North Gates, hadn’t he?

  Angry at himself, he couldn’t believe that Thaydor could have been this right once again, son of a bitch.

  Sana toyed with the vial and took off the lid with her long, skillful fingers, then approached at her hip-swaying saunter. “You should have chosen the easy way, sweeting. But somehow you just never do.”

  Heart pounding, he tracked her with his stare.

  Perhaps he was a fool, as she had said. For he had never noticed till now how intelligent—and how cruel—her pretty eyes were. Like most men, he had been too distracted by the beautiful body on display.

  “Pour it down his throat,” said Eudo, nodding to the third Urmugoth while the other two held him captive.

  The largest of the three, the leather-armored Urm, stepped over to Reynulf and unceremoniously grasped his jaw in its big gray hand.

  Reynulf thrashed, the sense of powerlessness enraging him, but it was useless.

  “Wait.” Sana waved the big Urm aside for a moment and stepped closer to Reynulf. When she came to stand right in front of him, she gazed into his eyes for a moment, then slapped him hard across the face. “That’s for choking me.”

  Though it stung, he managed to smirk at her. “You usually like that sort of thing.”

  She sneered back at him, then cupped his cheek. “It’s all a game, Bloodletter. But here’s a little secret. I like winning even more than you do. Last chance now. Be a good boy for once and open your mouth for me. No?”

  She sighed and shook her head. “Do it,” she said to the third Urmugoth, moving out of the way.

  The big Urm returned with a grunt and splayed a huge hand across Reynulf’s forehead. While his clammy left palm applied counterpressure, the fingers of his right hand slowly started prying Reynulf’s mouth open.

  Sana waited with the potion at the ready.

  Reynulf fought to no avail, and the Urm pulled harder on his jaw.

  “Don’t break him! We need him,” Sana scolded the brute. “If the royal champion tells the people everything’s all right, they’ll believe it.”

  Well, that explained it, then.

  In one horrifying moment, the ironic truth all came clear.

  The whole time he had been plotting with His Majesty and Lord Eudo to get rid of Thaydor, the Silver Sage had been running another game, plotting with Sana to take power from the king. They had already got rid of the queen.

  As for him, it seemed the only reason he was being spared was to help smooth the transition as the Silver Sage took power. Things had to look reasonably normal, at least for a while, or the people would riot.

  Reynulf now understood that the king’s life was in imminent danger. Indeed, if this potion made people obey, for all he knew, they might be planning to use him to strike Baynard down.

  He had to get to Thaydor. Warn the son of a bitch.

  Reynulf didn’t bother praying to Xoltheus to get him out of this. By now it was abundantly clear that he was on his own and always had been.

  Reaching down into the rage that drove his existence, he drew forth a sudden burst of strength. He wrenched his right arm free of the Urm’s grasp with a low cry, snatched the brute’s knife from its sheath, and stabbed the big one in the throat.

  The crimson blade whipped back and forth almost too fast to see as Reynulf set about doing what he had always done, at any cost.

  Surviving.

  Chapter 14

  Defiance

  The Eldenhold did not look much like a citadel to Wrynne. She saw no castle, no fortress. Just stark, dramatic limestone bluffs looming over the loud, fast-flowing River Drard.

  She, Thaydor, Jonty, and the large company of knights who had joined their cause had only galloped about seven miles northeast of Pleiburg, but this lonely place had th
e feel of wild country.

  The old, forgotten citadel was located in the southernmost approaches to the Bronze Mountains, and the track they currently followed wended its way along the river, barely wide enough for two riders abreast. Thaydor, leading their company, sat astride Avalanche beside her.

  Wrynne lifted her head and scanned the river cliffs. They created a claustrophobic sort of canyon, down which a constant wind whipped. The bent, scraggly pines and scrub brush seemed to have adapted to the steady, sculpting gale, but she, for one, was tired of it blowing dust from her horse’s mane into her eyes. She had long since stopped trying to lift the hood of her cloak because the wind merely whooshed it back to her shoulders again.

  The noisy rushing of the river made conversation difficult. Even Jonty had shut up for once. But not the three young squires, whom they had found posted outside her family home, carrying out their idol’s orders to the letter.

  The three young, would-be heroes chatted merrily, talking over one another, just as before. They had been awed by her beautiful sister, Juliana, and had nearly volunteered for the company of knights assigned to escort her family to Clarenbeld Castle. But in the end, their thirst for valor had won. If there was to be a battle of some sort, they wanted in.

  Wrynne was a little surprised that Thaydor had allowed it, protective as he was, but it seemed they needed every able-bodied soldier with any sort of training they could rally to their aid.

  She was even more surprised that he had let her come. With the oracle’s warning not to be separated from him ringing in her ears, she had pleaded to be allowed to stay by his side—much to her mother’s alarm—and he had finally relented.

  As they rode along side by side, heading for this unknown, unseen citadel, she was dying to ask him what he’d really thought of her family. He had, of course, been polite. She had yet to hear the man utter an unkind word to anyone—unless they were trying to kill him, but even then. It was a testament to his patience that he had not taken up the habit with his new mother-in-law.

  Mother had been rather brutal on the poor man.

  “Darling, how could you do this to me? I’ve been agonizing over you!” she had wailed. She had hugged Wrynne hard, then burst into tears, barely paying any attention to Thaydor, which spoke volumes.