Hero Grown

by Andy Livingstone

‘Embrace it,’ Cannick said. ‘There will always be the unexpected, good or bad. It is how you take advantage of the good and how you deal with the bad that matters.’

  Hakon had grabbed the key and was at the door, his eagerness causing him to fumble at the lock. Breta snatched the key with a snort of annoyance and had the door open only shortly, Brann guessed, before the large boy would have resorted to crashing bodily through the wood. He did burst through as soon as the key was turned, however, followed closely by the others, leaving the slave at the door to keep watch.

  Einarr and Konall had been standing at the window, trying to determine the cause of the uproar outside. They wheeled around at the bodies bursting through the door, instinct moving their hands to reach for non-existent swords.

  Einarr’s tone was frosty. ‘What this time?’

  Hakon’s armoured bulk raced across the room and enveloped Konall in a massive hug.

  The blond boy disentangled himself and pushed the crazy Imperial soldier away. ‘What in hell’s name are you doing? Are you mad?’ If a helmet ever looked crestfallen, this was that moment.

  Einarr’s eyes narrowed as he looked at the build of the large boy, then at Brann. He frowned. As his gaze fell upon Cannick, the old warrior spoke urgently. ‘How fare you? Can you come now? Right now?’

  Shock and hope swept across Einarr’s face in equal measure. ‘Surely it is not,’ he whispered. Then tentatively, awkwardly, as if expecting to be embarrassed by a negative answer: ‘Cannick?’

  The group looked at each other, realising as each saw the others that they had become so accustomed to wearing the helmets that they had forgotten they were hiding their faces. They removed the helms, the Northern three ripping them off while Breta and Marlo, as the unknowns, moved at a more normal speed.

  Cannick grinned. ‘How are you? In health?’

  Einarr nodded. ‘We have not been mistreated. A little soft from lack of exercise, but mainly just frustrated, furious and bored, as you would expect. And more than ready to leave this luxury.’

  That Einarr and Konall were family was demonstrated in an instant. The elation of the meeting was quickly replaced with practicality.

  ‘What is the plan?’ Einarr pulled a hooded cloak around him and threw another to his nephew.

  Every head that faced him turned to look at Brann. Einarr groaned. ‘I might have known.’

  Brann grinned, and told them. As he did so, he gestured to Marlo and the boy unwound a rope from around his slender waist and passed it to him. He affixed it to a heavy statue of a lion by the window and dropped it outside to dangle next to a balcony only one level above the terrace inhabited now by only the body of the Emperor’s hapless erstwhile companion, the spear shaft like an empty flagpole. ‘It never does any harm to direct attention in a different direction,’ he finished.

  Moments later they were out of the room and escorting the hostages, rope looped around their wrists in a semblance of being bound. The slave led them a different route from the one they had come. ‘We will take stairs that lead closer to the entrance to the Sanctuary. And which will be further from the area they will search should they discover the rope.’

  They approached the entrance to the stairwell but as Cannick started through, a rumble of heavy feet gave a moment’s notice before soldiers almost collided with him. He stopped and an officer faced him, then strode forward, forcing Cannick and then the rest of his group to back up into the wide corridor. A dozen soldiers followed, forming up behind him with grim efficiency, two of them being archers who moved, one to each side, to train drawn arrows on the group. And behind them all stood Myrana and Persione.

  The officer stared at them, then focused his piercing eyes on Cannick, whose own gaze settled on the insignia on the front of his breastplate, the same symbol as they had seen on the officer at the gatehouse.

  ‘Is there a problem, captain?’ Cannick said.

  ‘You tell me.’ It was a harsh voice: not in itself, but in tone. ‘A time of crisis, of danger, yet a squad of Imperial soldiers is running about partly dressed?’

  Brann’s heart jerked. In their haste, every one of them had forgotten that their helmets were still dangled by their chin straps from their shield hands.

  Cannick’s expression didn’t even flicker. ‘I might ask you the same. The Fourth Millen guards the citadel at this time, yet you wear plumes of black and not our blue.’

  A smile crossed the officer’s face. A cruel smile of triumph. ‘And so you are undone.’ He looked at Marlo. ‘You look local enough to be able to enlighten this fool.’

  The boy swallowed, then spoke in a voice broken by despair. ‘The black plumes are worn by the personal force of Taraloku-Bana. They enforce the will of the Master of Information,’ his voice grew in strength as anger infused it, ‘and the black is said to signify the time of day when then do most of their work, though it is said that it better suggests the colour a man’s heart must be before he joins their ranks.’ He spat savagely on the spotless floor.

  The officer looked at him with disdain, before his eyes swept across the rest of the group. They stopped on Brann. ‘A familiar face, is it not?’ Brann stared back in silence. Without turning, the man raised a hand and flicked a perfunctory finger forward. ‘Princess, if you please?’

  Head held regally high, Myrana stepped forward. At the sight of her movement, and as he looked on her face, and despite all that was happening around him, Brann could not help but feel his heart beat harder.

  The officer waited until she was beside him. He pointed at Brann. ‘Would this be the dog who violated you, Princess? The one sent to the pits beneath?’

  She stared at Brann, then spoke calmly. ‘Similar, but no. Whoever this is, Captain, it is not the one of whom you speak. If it were, I would kill him myself.’

  The voice was colder than ever. ‘I admire your efforts, Princess, though I do not understand your motives.’ She paled slightly, and looked at him, but he never removed his stare from Brann. ‘But you need not worry about staining your tender hands with his blood. We shall see to that for you.’

  He gestured to the archer to his right. ‘Kill him.’

  As the bowman adjusted his aim, Brann’s knees bent to dive, but his attention was caught by Myrana as she ran at him, screaming and arms outstretched in command to the archer to hold his shot.

  The arrow was loosed regardless of her instruction. Her movement carried her into the arrow’s path. It struck her under her shoulder blade and at that range the power of the shot saw a third of its length burst from her chest as she fell into Brann’s reaching arms, his helmet and spear dropping, forgotten.

  In the same instant, uproar blasted across the hallway. Men roared and metal crashed on metal as spears were lowered and the two groups crashed together.

  Brann was oblivious. He cradled the girl in his arms and she looked up at him, a smile on her lips.

  ‘I thought I would never see your face again.’ She smiled weakly. ‘In my chamber… I thought I did right. I thought if I played his game I could find a way to help you. But I failed. I could not find a way. I cannot play their game.’ Her voice was a whisper, and she coughed, spraying his face with gentle red drops as he leant closer. ‘I failed. Do you forgive me?’

  He stroked the hair from her brow. ‘There was never anything to forgive. There was nothing to gain and only more pain for both of us, had you acted in any other way.’

  She coughed again, and her voice was fainter. ‘I thought of you every night and every day since. I want you to know that. You are in my heart.’

  ‘And you in mine.’

  She smiled. Her body tensed, then was limp in her arms as his tear dropped on her cheek. He laid her gently on the polished floor and his fingers wrapped around his spear as a coldness settled over him, awakened and familiar.

  With a snarl, he rose and surged with savage speed into the chaos of blood and straining and killing. He drove his spear into the side of a man pressed against Gerens and left it
there, drawing his sword and hacking it into the side of the neck of another, spraying gore over Breta who had just parried the man’s sword.

  The captain pushed through to face him, easy confidence in his movement and disdain in his voice. ‘Time for a lesson in real fighting, boy.’

  Brann’s eyes drank in his frame: more than a head taller than his height and with the added reach to match it.

  He thrust at Brann’s unprotected head, fast but more testing than expecting to draw blood. Brann stepped into it, deflecting the blade slightly and continuing the movement to smash his own sword, pommel first, over the man’s shield and into his eye. The head was knocked back and before the man could even scream, Brann had dragged the edge of his blade across the exposed throat.

  He had already turned to seek imminent danger when the body was hitting the floor. His blood-spattered companions, chests heaving and arms hanging, were standing or crouching among figures twisted in the agony and indignity of death. One black-plumed soldier remained, backing from the scene then turning to run for the stairs. ‘None can tell,’ Cannick yelled but Konall had already ripped a spear from a corpse and he sent it precisely between the man’s shoulder blades. Gerens moved to check for life, but straightened with his knife unused.

  Emotion returned to Brann in a rush and his knees almost buckled. He felt tears welling in a surge and pushed them back with his remaining strength. Gerens looked across at him in concern and Brann desperately wanted to talk to the boy, but there was not the time. He did walk to Myrana, though. Whatever happened, there would have to be time for that. Oblivious to the violence all around, Persione had walked through the mayhem to the girl and was kneeling, Myrana’s head cradled in her lap, stroking the brown hair. She looked up, venom in her eyes.

  ‘I hate you, for taking her from me twice. Once her heart, once her life. I will hate you till I die.’

  Gerens stood beside him, his knife still in his hand. ‘We cannot leave any to talk.’

  She never took her eyes from Brann. ‘I will not talk to them.’

  Gerens’s tone was flat. ‘You say that now, but when the fear fades…’

  Her eyes did now swivel to Gerens. ‘Had I been fearful, would I not have run while you were all occupied? I will not talk for she was not the only one I served.’ She looked back at Brann. ‘We share a master.’

  Brann nodded slowly. That explained much. But, ‘He is not my master.’

  She shrugged, as if it were of little consequence. ‘Whatever you call it, our goals are the same. I shall report to him, and no other. Should you release me now, I shall run screaming appropriately below to alert them to an attack on the soldiers escorting the Princess. I can do so at a time of your suggestion, to gain you time. I need not mention that I recognised any of the attackers. You would be helmeted in any case.’

  Cannick walked up behind her, his Imperial shortsword, naked and gore-smeared, in his hand. He looked over her at Brann. ‘What do you think?’

  Brann stared for a long moment, his mind working. ‘It makes sense that she serves… him. If he trusts her, she will do as she says. As for the actions she proposes…’ He paused, weighing his thoughts. He nodded, assuring himself he had thought it through, and looked at the girl. ‘Tell them your party was attacked, but that your escort were guards of the Fourth Millen, and that your attackers were posing as Black Plumes. That will divert them further and if it causes others of these bastards any ill fortune, so much the better. Wait one hundred breaths after we leave, then go, down the steps to the terrace.’

  She nodded.

  ‘And…’ His voice cracked. ‘I am sorry. Truly sorry.’

  She shrugged, and stared down at the Princess.

  Brann turned back to the scene. His companions were cleaning weapons on the tunics of the dead and disentangling themselves from lifeless limbs. Marlo had a deep gash on his left arm, just above the bicep, and on his left thigh, and Cannick had cut strips from a corpse’s tunic to bind the wounds tightly until they could be attended to properly. Breta had bent her sword against a helmet and was selecting a new one and Einarr was sitting, wiping a sword and knife on the tunic of the dead man who lay across his legs, a large pool of blood spreading away from them.

  The Northern lord looked up, and pushed the body from his lap. ‘We should go.’

  Brann nodded. He was uncomfortable already at the delay, but the fact that they were alive and free of capture outweighed it. As Einarr stood, however, his left leg slipped from underneath him and with a scream he fell hard to the floor. Konall was the first to his side, concern clear on his face.

  ‘Uncle, did you slip? The blood?’

  It was then that they saw his leg.

  A blade had cut clean through his ankle, the foot attached only by the skin that the sword had failed to reach at the far end of its cut. Einarr looked at it in surprise. ‘I felt the blow, but thought the flat had hammered it. It felt just like a thump. I never realised…’ He stared in shocked confusion.

  Marlo retched, but Cannick was moving immediately, a strip of tunic still in his hand from tending the boy. He tied it tightly around the leg.

  ‘That will slow the blood until it can be treated as it truly requires.’

  He turned his attention to the foot. ‘Let me see.’ On his last word, and without warning, his knife sliced the small stretch of skin and the foot fell clear. Einarr’s back arched and a groan of pain ground through clenched teeth.

  Cannick grimaced. ‘Apologies, old friend. It could not be saved, and I thought it better to spare you the thought of what was to come.’

  Einarr smiled weakly. ‘I know.’

  Cannick was as practical as ever. Gerens had been sent into the nearest chamber to find a sheet, and he was binding it to two spears to form a rough stretcher. He looked up at Breta, who was hovering over him. ‘Fetch belts from the dead. We will bind him to this, at his knees, waist and chest. You and Hakon have stairs to carry him down, and it would be best if he doesn’t fall off.’

  Cannick finished binding Einarr’s ankle as best he could. ‘He needs proper treatment in the near future. The very near future.’

  There was a croak of a voice from the side of the wide passage and Gerens shouted, ‘Chief. Another one.’

  Alam’s slave sat propped against the wall. Brann was first at him, and saw a knife embedded through his ribs, his hand pressed to his chest around the wound and his face pale. The man cleared his throat to try again to speak and spat blood onto the floor. ‘There is a surgeon assigned to the Sanctuary. He will have the tools and skills you need.’ Each word seemed an effort, but his determination to speak them was clear in every one.

  Brann nodded. ‘We will have you and Einarr with him immediately.’

  The man shook his head. ‘Not I.’ He flicked his eyes down at the knife in his chest. ‘My time is done. I will last until the girl brings help, so I may confirm her story, but I will manage no more. My apologies.’

  Brann glanced at Cannick, who nodded his agreement with the man’s diagnosis, though it did not take much expertise to do so once the knife had been seen. Brann felt the emotion rise once more. ‘I will ensure he knows what you have done.’

  A hint of a smile twitched at the corner of the man’s mouth. ‘He will know. I always serve his will.’ He grimaced. ‘Descend three levels, turn right into the passage, then left into one that will take you to the centre of the keep. All it leads to is a square portal that will be sealed by a stone slab lowered from the inside. Pray that it has not been dropped before you reach it. When you find the surgeon you will find the entrance to the escape tunnel, for it is behind a hinged set of shelves at the rear of his chamber.’

  Brann smiled and gripped his arm. ‘Thank you. For everything.’

  He started to rise, but the man grasped his arm in return to stop him. ‘Tychon.’ Brann looked at him. ‘You once wondered about my name. It is Tychon.’

  Brann smiled. ‘Thank you, Tychon.’

  The hand rel
eased him. ‘Now go. Should you die by tarrying here too long, I will not have completed my task.’

  Brann nodded and rose. Einarr was strapped to the stretcher and the rest had readied themselves, this time remembering their helmets.

  Gerens held up a hand. ‘Wait.’ He dipped his fingers in the pool of blood where Einarr had sat and, one by one, flicked and smeared it on their helms. ‘Had we been wearing our helmets, the blood would have struck them and not our faces.’ He finished by running his bloodied hand across his own.

  Breta grunted. ‘Had we been wearing our helmets, this fight might never have happened, nor the aftermath.’

  Brann knew it was a fact that would haunt him without end.

  With a final nod to Tychon and a lingering stare at Myrana as Persione pointedly declined to look up, he followed Cannick into the stairwell. They worked their way down the steps, Breta at the rear of the stretcher with her hands at her waist and Hakon at the front with it on his shoulders to keep it as flat as they could manage. Marlo limped quickly and without complaint.

  They reached the level they sought and hurried down the passageways. All was quiet: there had been ample time for the majority of the royal family to have reached the haven. A single pair of guards stood at the portal, staring at the blood-sprayed party who approached with a stretcher.

  Cannick snapped at them. ‘This man requires urgent attention. We are to take him to the royal surgeon at once.’ One look at the missing foot and the guards needed no further explanation.

  ‘Down the stairs, Sergeant, and at the bottom turn right. The left would take you to the Sanctuary proper. The surgeon is there, and will be ready as all he has had to occupy him until now has been hysterical women.’

  Cannick nodded his thanks and led them through the door to wide and shallow steps that turned sharply to the right after a short flight. Footsteps sounded behind them and Brann waited until the stretcher had rounded the corner before running back to the top. He saw four soldiers approaching the door. One of them told the sentries they had been sent to help where they could.