The Doomfarers of Coramonde

by Brian Daley

  Gil was enticed into jumping Jeb Stuart through a flaming hoop, finding it easier than he’d expected but no less belly-clenching. There were pony-lifting contests, barrel-lifting contests, wagon-lifting contests and tugs-of-war. Springbuck was hazed into a drinking sport, of which the Horseblooded had many, wherein he and his opponent hopped from foot to foot on a table, draining their flagons while crowing Riders periodically cut at their legs with scimitars. Amazingly, he won. Thereafter his status with the Horseblooded was high.

  The two learned the uninhibited jigs and frenzied flings danced by the steppesmen. They also tried their hand at some of the unsuual weapons they saw: the atlatl, boomerang and war quoit—a razor-edged device which, in expert hands, could kill an unarmored man at eighty paces—and smaller throwing disks that reminded Gil of shuriken.

  The American felt completely alive. He saw new sights every day; his nostrils were filled with exotic scents and his ears with novel sounds and conversation. He and the Prince tried the noropianics and other intoxicants popular with the Horseblooded. Some brought bizarre dreams and hallucinations, and others simple euphoria.

  One Rider in particular they noticed, a tall, bony subchieftain named Dunstan, whose eyes were sunken in dark sockets and made them uneasy. Though his fellows didn’t actually shun him, they avoided him, despite the fact that he was an excellent warrior, if melancholy.

  It happened that he was at their side when Gil and Springbuck decided to end a day spent in hard rehearsal and, bypassing the usual palace fete, try an evening at a public house that came highly recommended. It struck Gil as impolite to ignore Dunstan, who’d been listening and contributing to their critiques, so he extended an invitation and Dunstan accepted. The American was instantly sorry, for reasons he couldn’t clearly identify, that he’d obeyed his impulse.

  They went to The Excellent Board where, according to information, “the provender’s good and plentiful and the proprietor’s not as concerned with rank and apparel as with your wherewithal.”

  It was an auditorium-sized pavilion in the parkland, not yet filled, since many people were still at their work or some entertainment, of which Freegate offered many. In various corners trained animals, acrobats and mummers performed; musicians, jugglers and prestidigitators circulated among the tables. For the first time the Prince saw a creature called, as Gil told him, a monkey, a sad-faced little beast with a forlornly human look to its whimsical features. It fascinated him.

  No one recognized them; Springbuck had left his cock-plumed war mask with his horse. The three spoke slightly, the food deserving their full attention. There were stuffed fowl, venison and mutton, brook trout and snails, all set off by thick ale.

  Dunstan became more amiable to the extent that he smiled at one of Gil’s dry remarks. Late in the meal, when they were doing more drinking than eating, a boisterous party of twenty or so came in and filled the tables nearest them. The group was composed mostly of young members of the upper classes, slumming with hangers-on mixed in. It wasn’t long before a handsome, arrogant boy in gold-trimmed blue silk noticed them.

  “Ho, manager,” he called out, “perfumes here! Scatter them about that the smell of those vagabonds yonder will not offend the noses of myself and these, my good friends, people of quality.” He touched a pomander to his nose theatrically and the girl next to him sniggered. The others traded conspiratorial grins.

  “Do you think,” another chimed in, “that there are enough scents in all Freegate to expunge their odor?”

  “Hopefully,” continued the first. “Isn’t it enough that they fill our city with malodorous foreigners without letting them run unwatched through the streets? Damnation, they eat our provisions, skulk through our lands and now they spend our own money crowding us out of our own eating establishments. Is it not infamous? Is it not absurd? We pay to support shiftless ne’er-do-wells for the sake of a fugitive sproutling Prince’s lust for a Crown.”

  The manager was bustling in their direction with several husky porters, alerted to trouble by one of the serving girls. Gil knew from experience who, in a row between civilians and off-duty troops, usually wound up on the fuzzy end of the lollipop. Not that he, Springbuck and Dunstan would be ejected; when the Prince’s identity was known, there’d doubtless be grudging apologies all around. He didn’t feel like letting this presumptuous jerk get off that lightly.

  It had been a long day, and he was angry that the evening was ruined. So just as the wit was composing his next gag, the American decided to be undiplomatic and waggled a finger to get his attention.

  Securing it, he asked, “Didn’t I hear a poem about you in the marketplace today?”

  The humorist’s brows shot up. As he fumbled, nonplussed, for a response, Gil continued blithely, snapping his fingers in positive recognition. “Sure, I’ve got it now. Let’s see, it went:

  “He’s the half-blooded son of a seagoing whore whose mother’s feet seldom touched aught but the shore; For while on the deeps, of employ she’d no lack relieving all hands on the flat of her back.’”

  The boy screamed in wrath and the party, now a mob, surged to its feet to punish this impudence, women hollering insults and men clapping hands to sword hilts at this affront to their friend. The humorist’s blade, a long rapier, was half drawn when Gil caught his hand, immobilizing it, and drove a hard right up to the solar plexus. Sword forgotten, the other doubled up, giving Gil all the time in the world to step back and measure off a roundhouse kick. The wit went down like a Murphy bed and Springbuck leaped up to face the onrushing crowd as they advanced vengefully toward the American.

  The fighting forms the two used confused the gentry and the porters, who’d joined the scuffle in an attempt to throw them out. Springbuck and Gil had no wish to draw swords, but the insults had stung, and if these people wanted to bait strangers and were messed up in the doing, that was their lookout. Hands and feet, elbows and knees, the two had their way of the fight at first. In close quarters the opposition kept crowding and interfering with each other. For a few moments it was satisfying to pay back the unprovoked abuse and dish out a lesson.

  But soon they were too hampered to move effectively and were borne backward, crashing down on collapsing tables and held fast by sheer weight of numbers. Through the tangle of limbs and bodies, Gil saw the jokester being helped unsteadily to his feet by the manager; the man pulled a dirk from his sash and handed the manager a bulging purse.

  Fear froze the American as he saw that he and his companions were to be murdered right here and now with the purchased complicity of the manager. He redoubled his efforts to escape, without success, and wondered in disgust if he’d made his final miscalculation.

  Then Springbuck, in the same predicament, saw that two of his captors had disappeared, followed a moment later by the other two. He squinted up to see Dunstan hurl them, one in either direction, as if they were empty suits of clothes.

  Insane light burned in Dunstan’s eyes, that thing that made his own people avoid him come to full life now. His face was covered with perspiration and his breath came with extreme rapidity. All the lean muscles of his body stood forth like cables and his lips were flecked with white tendrils of spittle. So completely different was this terrifying apparition from the morose man who’d been drinking with them moments before that the Prince wondered in horror if this weren’t some Doppelgänger.

  The Rider moved with blurring speed, bellowing at the top of his lungs and striking adversaries this way and that with single blows of his fists or swings of his arms. He eluded a sword thrust, seizing the blade and breaking it in his hands. The slashes this left in his palms closed as soon as they’d opened. He ripped away the three men who held Gil, then turned and caught the young wit’s knife hand, twisting and breaking the wrist and popping the shoulder ball from its joint in one motion. The youth went to his knees with an ear-piercing shriek, and his female companion, with courage born of sheltered ignorance, struck Dunstan from behind with her reticule. The Berse
rker didn’t even look around but swung a backhanded blow in her direction almost as an afterthought. She was knocked across a bench in a flurry of skirts, her mouth a red ruin.

  Dunstan was smashing two more foes together as a muscular porter took the luckless girl’s place and broke a stool over his head. The gaunt Rider spun angrily with an openhanded clout that broke the porter’s jaw.

  Gil and Springbuck had gotten to their feet through a press of flying bodies when the attacking throng drew back in fear and amazement at the savagery of the lanky Rider. Gil could see Dunstan’s shoulders heaving as his breathing became more rapid in preparation for another exchange. In an effort to halt the carnage, Gil grabbed the Berserker by the arm.

  Dunstan whirled, ready to destroy him, but the dim mist of recognition came to his face. His brows knit as if he strove to recall an elusive memory and his breathing began to slow. Irrationality passed from his face and his rage ebbed. His muscles relaxed and he slumped in Gil’s grasp.

  Springbuck, meanwhile, had brought forth Bar and his dagger, but might as well have spared the effort. No one in The Excellent Board would have approached them for any reason. Other diners had come to their feet and witnessed the episode, but none attempted to intervene. The Prince, Dunstan and Gil made their way out of the pavilion in silence. When they’d reached their horses, the steppesman disengaged the American’s supporting hands. “The weakness is past; now there is only the emptiness and the sorrow.”

  Gil nodded, and they mounted just as a cry came from behind, a detachment of the city watch. They galloped away low to their horses’ necks and didn’t look back.

  They eventually made their way to a poorer section of the city where the air was strongly redolent of its many middens and soldiers of different units were spending their pay. The inns and taverns were filled, so many sat at the side of the street swigging beer and ale from drinking jars or buckets of wood or leather, taking turns getting them filled at one of the drinking houses or stalls there.

  Springbuck purchased a bucket for a copper pellet and waited in a jostling line to have it filled. Again, without his war mask and in such a crowd, he went unnoticed. They sat together, passing the bucket without conversation and taking long pulls at it.

  In time, Dunstan said, “You’ve witnessed the curse of my lineage, the Rage that comes on men of my line. But tonight, too, you’ve seen an event as never happened before; I didn’t strike Gil MacDonald, and the Berserkergang left me. Always before the Rage had to burn itself out. I shall have to think about this.”

  They drank some more.

  “By the way,” Gil asked, by way of breaking the silence, “what tribe is that Reacher lived with? Why aren’t they here?”

  Springbuck explained about the Wolf-Brother’s sojourn with the Howlebeau, adding that they had a strict injunction against leaving the High Ranges for any reason, and had accepted a Lowlander among them only out of respect for the King’s father.

  The American meditatively twirled the Browning around his index finger.

  The Prince continued. “There is still a storm of debate about this war and whether we should go to Hightower’s aid, but I don’t take part in it. Van Duyn and Princess Katya are trying to make sure I’m nothing but a figurehead. Andre and Bonesteel object, but the Snow Leopardess has the council of Freegate with her and her brother says nothing one way or the other.

  “The time to put forth my hand is not yet, but soon, when the day is ripe, I’ll make my presence felt.” His eyes hardened. “There’ll be aid for the Hightower, this I vow.”

  “Look, is Hightower the name of the fortress, of the guy in charge or what?”

  “The Keep is called the Hightower, while its ruling Lord, the Duke, is referred to simply as Hightower.”

  “Oh. Uh, how does Gabrielle feel about all this?”

  “Gabrielle!” said the Prince softly, lost for a space in thought. “Yes, she’s made me lust after her—or says she has, though I wonder if it doesn’t come of me, uninfluenced in truth—so she takes no action and says little, watching all that I do and, I think, finding it all amusing. Sometimes I curse the day I first beheld that spellbinder, that wanting, green-eyed plague, but I wouldn’t be without her if I could.”

  He tipped the bucket, drained it. “Whose turn to service our bucket?” he asked. “Nay, mine again already? I think you two conspire against me. My funds are not without limit, you know.”

  Gil burped. “It’s all found money,” he consoled the Prince philosophically. “We left The Excellent Board in such a flap you never settled the tab.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  He hath brought me into the banqueting house, and his banner over me was love.

  —The Song of Songs which is Solomon’s

  The Lady Duskwind quickly grew bored with life at Court. Her royal cousin, Reacher, forbade her to go out into the practice fields to join in military exercises and she respected his wishes; but it was hard when she saw that it wasn’t unknown for women to ride with the Horseblooded. With the notable exception of the Snow Leopardess, women were seldom given to practicing war arts in Freegate, though that was slowly changing. She chafed at this and considered asking to be sent on a deputation to the gyneocracy of Glyffa, but there was no need at hand and there were possibilities here in Freegate.

  She related all she could of information accumulated in Earthfast to the eagerly listening intelligence experts of Reacher’s war ministry. She told what she knew of various Legion-Marshals’ abilities or quirks, their strong suits and weaknesses, what they looked for in a battle and what they avoided, how they treated their troops and how they stood in the favor of Strongblade, Fania and, most important, Yardiff Bey. She checked maps for discrepancies with those at Earthfast as she remembered them, described tactics likely to be encountered and the details of Court Life under Strongblade—who his supporters were, what influence and wealth they had and who might be convinced to plot against him.

  All this she had learned during her masquerade in Earthfast, through intelligent observation and by drawing it patiently and ingeniously, a scrap at a time, from those she’d met there. To be sure, much of it was duplicated by what Springbuck and Bonesteel knew, but hers was valuable corroborative data.

  Like her cousins, she enjoyed intrigue and statecraft and relished being close to their seats of power without envying them. So for a time she partook of the entertainment of Court, but it soon palled without the added excitement of being an agent in the stronghold of a foreign suzerain.

  Still, there were stately dances, crooning minstrels and musicians who sought to amuse, along with actors, poets, acrobats, jesters, conjurers and philosophers. There were ceaseless feasts—the privations of war might come soon enough, the time to live was now—with uncountable courses of honeyed fish, glazed fowl, beef, pork, hotbreads, sweetmeats, mutton, pastries, iced sherbets, confections, jellied fruits, fine cheeses, rivers of wine and liquors, a constant flow of beer and ale, and so on and on.

  And there was gossip and scandal. Which knight wooed the favors of which blushing damsel? Which heroes promised great deeds in the coming war with Coramonde’s Usurper Ku-Mor-Mai?

  Eventually she found all this tedious, and daytime activities were even worse. She was a fair painter and sculptress, but didn’t feel inspired. She was all thumbs at tapestries, couldn’t play the lute, didn’t care to teach birds to speak; she had no wish to weave flower chains or play the tame, simpering games enjoyed by the more moderate, fragile ladies who frequented Court. For reading there were only treatises on war—engrossing, but few in number and soon consumed—insipid romances and ponderous religious tracts. She tried to read the books brought to Freegate by Gil MacDonald, but they were unintelligible.

  She would have spent time with her royal cousins, a pastime in which she always delighted, but both were usually occupied with other matters. This was particularly true of the Snow Leopardess, who now devoted much of her time to Van Duyn. The American, in turn, was having th
e time of his life as the intellectual community of Freegate almost literally fought with each other for the opportunity to hear his discourses; he was also basking in his station as paramour to Princess Katya.

  The Lady Duskwind was frequently pressed for details concerning Gil MacDonald, the outland common-knight who rode at stirrups with King and Prince, and whose opinions were carefully heard and weighed by Bonesteel, the most capable general in modern history. Tales of Chaffinch’s demise were being repeated and enlarged upon, and there were those who called the ex-sergeant Dragonslayer.

  In truth she’d seen him infrequently since arriving at Freegate, and then usually at a distance, but she was loath to admit it at Court and so contented herself with dropping vague hints, and preserving feigned secretiveness. One evening it chanced that he came to Court to fetch Springbuck to hear a courier just in from Boldhaven. Serious and quiet in his green mesh armor, hung about with weapons esoteric and familiar, he waited as the Prince went to change from his festive robes, and his eye roamed to Duskwind and the idler at her side, who was trying to make charming conversation and succeeding only in being boorish. A quick smile came to Gil’s lips, then a frown as he spied her chattering companion, and his gaze flicked away selfconsciously. Hand on hilt, he pivoted on his heel and left the Court so promptly that he almost trampled a door warder standing behind him.

  “Ah, the Prince has left,” the carpet knight at her right hand said, “and his foreign liege man with him, yet I think his sorcerous ladylove does not like it overmuch. They tell me the Pretender spends so much time at fencing practice and military drill that she feels slighted.”