by David Keck
But, over all this, he heard the tock of the Traveler’s staff, and knew with a chill that it was, none of it, over.
The sudden clench of a small cold hand reminded Durand of the king. The little boy lived still. There was blood here and there, but the worst of it seemed to be where a long wedge of a stone stair had landed on the writhing boy’s knee; there wouldn’t be much left of the thing.
Durand flipped the stone away. “It is done, Highness,” he said, but the Traveler’s staff rapped again beyond Creation: Tock. And Durand knew that he was lying.
Durand got to his knees, sure that something must come.
His glance searched the shore. He saw Almora cradling her father’s broken sword, with Ailric watching over her. He saw Coensar with the last of the Host of Hesperand. There were three or four men of Leovere’s host still mounted—even Leovere, himself. Deorwen, looking aghast, was tottering over the rubble toward him. From her face, he wasn’t sure if she meant to embrace him or slap him witless.
He might have smiled, but the staff rapped once more—tock—and Durand turned back to the broad expanse of water behind him. From the tower to the black smudge of the far shore, he could see nothing alive. “There is something more to be seen, or the Traveler would have left us,” Durand muttered.
Then the stones lurched beneath his elbows.
“Ah,” said Durand. “Here we are.” He had the king by the wrist.
A great brown hand like a wheel clacked down upon the rubble only a pace from Durand’s chin, then the giant Hornbearer was hauling himself from the waves and stone.
Durand hoisted the broken boy as the Hornbearer drew itself up. Water streamed from the giant, raining down all around Durand as the knight twisted onto his feet.
Durand resolved that he would not die staring. He tried to run, the boy on his back, but the stones flung them down. He could not get free. And the Hornbearer loomed.
For an instant, he could only hope that Deorwen would get clear.
Then something flashed overhead. Durand covered the king and twisted as four knights crashed into the thrall.
There were only a few men still mounted, and Durand saw, with amazement, his old captain and the accursed Duke of Hesperand. They had charged, on their Lost horses, over the shallows and struck the great brute with force enough to knock it flat. One knight crashed in the snap-boned tangle of his warhorse. He touched Creation at Durand’s elbow and burst into wet clots of dust.
The others met the lashing savagery of the capsized giant: a riot of catapults and windmills. In that moment, Durand saw Duke Eorcan of Lost Hesperand, after an age of Lost wandering, dashed from Creation. And only Coensar fought on.
Durand got hold of the king, hauling him desperately toward the walls. Coensar’s heirloom blade darted, flashing scratches over the giant devil’s face and warding limbs. But, finally, the monster righted itself and turned a power that had wasted armies upon a solitary man of Errest. One blow smacked the jaw of Coen’s horse to the stones. The rider followed.
Already, Leovere was stilting past.
“Go!” he said. “Get the boy from here!” and he struck at the Hornbearer with a clattering mortal sword. It was hopeless. As Leovere of Yrlac made to wind the Horn of Uluric one last time, the Hornbearer swatted both man and horn, and he flew in a boneless cartwheel to land, dead, in rocks at Durand’s left hand. The blood and breath of the Duke of Yrlac spattered Durand and the boy as he landed with a clang of the old horn.
It rang, just a little, like the Traveler’s staff.
Now, Durand alone stood between the thrall and the king. There were no more Lost horses. No one could dart across forty paces of jagged rock to yank him away. Deorwen was stealing forward, trying to reach the king. And three fathoms over Durand’s head was a crown among the horns and tusks, like a ring in a hog’s ear. The dripping saddle face tilted and Durand saw himself, very small, in the flint-glass bowls of the monster’s eyes. He saw the great blackened curl of the horn around the thrall’s neck, for all the world like a horse collar around the neck of a fool.
And he heard the rap of the Traveler’s staff a last time.
He glanced to the horn in dead Leovere’s fist. It had been dashed half-flat by the fall. The Hornbearer was raising one massive fist, but Durand could not look from Leovere’s horn. He saw a hunting scene—a stag of branching antlers, a squadron of riders in pursuit. He saw the very same scene, black and bulging, in the arc of the great horn.
“Here,” said Durand. “Who were you?” Who had they decked with the blasted trophies of Aubairn of the Forest?
The fiend held its fist poised, straightening itself to its full impossible height.
This Hornbearer had been someone out of the ordinary before the Beldame Weavers got their hands on him. “A great man to make so great a thrall,” concluded Durand.
The giant brought its fist down, while Durand tried a tumbler’s leap over the ragged rock. He caught Leovere’s horn—the horn of Uluric, the horn that summoned the King of Aubairn, the horn that had cried for aid and got no answer of the king who had sworn to help.
Durand took the horn in his fist, and the fiend checked its next blow.
Again, Durand saw himself in the glistening bowls of the fiend’s eyes. He got his feet under him, raising the horn, holding it before the brute like a talisman.
“A great man. A great shame. That horn round your neck, it was never meant to mock the men of Aubairn. It is your horn, and your crown. All this time. It is you they are meant to shame.”
Durand stood no higher than the knees of this ancient thing, the horn held high. He still had Ouen’s sword.
He hoped to Heaven that Deorwen had got the king out of the rubble.
“They were there at Pennons Gate, the Beldame Weavers, when the Enemy overran the Host of Aubairn.” Durand’s head swam at the thought of the thousand winters and countless battles seen by the wretch before him. He remembered the name: Aidmar, last King of Aubairn of the Forests. And here he stood, bound five centuries by a shame older than half the kingdoms in Creation. Aidmar had sworn to ride at Uluric’s call, but he had let Uluric die betrayed rather than turning back with his people in tow.
Mightiest of Atthians in the west, yet caught by shame in that hopeless time as the Iron Knights held their Gates and he—with all of his people—died, Uluric and all the rest dead and betrayed for nothing.
“You could do nothing else. Aidmar, king. You could not know.” Durand held the horn between them. “And now they’ve called you here, but your wars are long ended. You are Lost. I wonder. Can you remember what caught you?” The thing clutched its head. The horns. “Free yourself,” said Durand. “The man you wronged? He’ll have been walking the Halls of Heaven these hundreds of years. Where is the shame in such a thing? How can you be bound by such a knot?”
The giant was still. Durand threw the horn to the stones. He did not blow the note which sounded through Aubairn of the Forests when Uluric held the horn and so many died.
The giant swayed there like a hanged man, and then it lapped its hands on its narrow breast in such a way that one spot no larger than a man’s heart was laid bare between thumbs and long fingers.
With this, the Hornbearer reared up, throwing arms wide as a mainsail yard, tipping its hideous face toward the Vault of Heaven. And Durand knew that there was a moment. The great chest was a fathom over his head, but there were stumps of the old tower still standing and Durand vaulted these, Ouen’s blade like a spear in his fists. The point bit and he drove it home. He could feel the greasy squeeze of his own blood where his chain gauntlet gapped, but the blow shivered through the giant.
Durand remembered the pale ogre of Benewith and the meager scrap of jaw bone. He fell. But he saw the blackness blazing up from the point of Ouen’s blade. It shot like a torn seam, opening a canker in the thing’s hide—a mouth spilling roots like gnarled hair, bursting with gravel and stones. Living things pattered down. Scorpions flipped and twisted. Beetl
es. Worms and writhing centipedes rained upon Durand’s face.
Aidmar the King struggled to keep his face full upon the Heavens, his arms still wide while the vermin and the worst horrors tumbled from the giant’s breast.
Finally, then, the blade came free, and the Hornbearer folded over the crater of its heart. The vast saddle face crashed on the stones with the horse collar of the mocking horn, and the Hornbearer was no more.
A few dozen of the maragrim had reached shore and now shrieked and fought alone, surrounded by the men of Errest.
Durand got to his feet, seeing Leovere sprawled on the rocks. He spotted Almora with Ailric at her side. The Hornbearer was gone. Biedin was dead. And the Whisperer, the Prince—his tongue was still from now till the world ended.
32
The Mount of Eagles
“Durand…” It was Deorwen speaking. She had the young king in her lap. She sat in the rubble, the boy’s head cradled in her arms.
“Durand, Host of Heaven. I think he needs the priests.”
“Oredgar. Where is Oredgar?” he said.
Deorwen’s hollow glance told him everything. The terrible Patriarch of Acconel lay across the stones, one attendant at his hip. And Durand thought of the long body of the Herald. Oredgar was very still. He would be no help to Reilan.
“Semborin!” Durand said. “The high sanctuary.”
He plucked the boy from Deorwen’s lap and staggered from the wreckage of the Hornbearer.
He saw the face of his onetime captain. The man was broken a few steps from Leovere. He had ridden with the Host of Hesperand. He had bullied the Lost Duke to take his host into Errest once more. Durand saw not a single rider of the duke’s company now alive—none save Coensar, whose chest still rose and fell.
“Durand…” pressed Deorwen.
The old knight was fading now. Death had drained his color, but he met Durand’s stare. Once, Durand had hated the man, but now he knew a little of the fear that had moved the man all those years ago.
“It must be now, Durand,” Deorwen pressed. There were Ailric and Almora, looking on.
Coensar gave Durand a curt nod and, with an answer, Durand gathered up the young and broken king.
Heremund had found them. “Old Semborin will know what can be done, if anyone does. He has been priest and Patriarch since the days of Ragnal’s father.” They set off, a ragged crowd pulling itself together to follow.
The boy bobbled limply in Durand’s arms. The collapse of the tower had done no good. There would be bones smashed, organs ruptured, or blood pumping free somewhere within. Durand had seen any number of men broken this way.
“The boy will be well,” Heremund was saying.
“Enough, Heremund,” Berchard said.
Durand might have thought that Reilan’s injuries were their greatest threat, but events had made him forgetful. Long before the Host of Fellwood ever marched upon the city, there had been evil within the walls.
Durand entered a square, and, from the inky gloom of an alley, there poured a dozen black-clad men, their heads bobbing like bladders. The monkish starlings padded out on splayed feet with a tittering show of ingratiating sympathy. First among them was Hod—the man who’d slipped them through the tunnels from the Mount of Eagles. Or his ghost.
“No further!” said Durand. He had the boy in both arms.
“Hod,” said Heremund grimly.
“What is it?” Berchard demanded. “Who is there?” The man had his broadsword bare.
Hod bowed a step or two closer. “No, Lordship. No,” he said. “No, of course.” And, in that instant, the devils darted.
Though there were seventy men behind Durand, for a mortal few heartbeats he was very nearly alone with two dozen fiends. Needle claws snagged at his arms and jaw. Mannish faces twisted into ghastly masks of teeth.
Only a desperate wrenching twist pulled the boy away.
“Ailric!” Durand called. Durand thrust the king at Ailric even as two hundredweight of fiend crashed down on Durand’s back. Its teeth and talons seared and spattered fresh blood before Durand could throw it down and wrest Ouen’s sword from his scabbard.
Though they wore the shapes of swag-bellied scribes and courtiers, the starlings now sprang with feline lethality. Talons snatched red spray from Durand’s face. Awful mouths gaped a foot wide, baring jaws crammed with slim teeth, longer than fingers.
Durand came up with Ouen’s sword, striking off a head and warding hand, and whipping the razor blade through another distorted face before three more of the devils leapt upon him, beating him to the ground as he twisted and clawed.
Hod’s wild, distorted visage stretched jaw-breakingly in Durand’s face. The teeth, row on row, trembled with blood already. The jaws clapped and the Hod-thing smiled—then they were both struck.
The crowd behind Durand had come alive at last.
Durand felt one fiend torn from his back. Men from ten dukedoms fell upon the starlings, hacking like a butchers.
The Hod-thing pulled Durand’s head down toward its mouth like some fiendish mockery of lovemaking. It was too mad to flee, and too strong to resist. Durand had an elbow jammed in the thing’s chin, but his arm was breaking. In an instant, the thing must have him—even if the king was saved.
The devil smiled.
Then a blow fell.
Ailric had broken free. He must have seen and understood—and left the boy. The youth’s sword flashed like a whaler’s lance past Durand’s cheek to shiver against the cobbles at the back of Hod’s head.
Hod’s iron grip gave way and his face sagged. Then the whole hide of the thrall went slack and Durand was sitting upon a boneless, bursting sack of stinking offal. From the staring eyes, the open mouth, erupted a slurry of reeking stuff as dark as claret and thick with indescribable matter.
Sick, Durand rolled free of the mess and sprang away. Almora and Deorwen crouched by the king. The crowd was chasing the last of the devils back into the streets. Ailric got his arm, but Durand waved him off.
“I think it’s only blood.” And, saying so, he saw that his hands were red, and that black blood spread over the green surcoat Deorwen had given him.
“Has any harm come to His Highness?” said Durand.
“He has taken no new hurt,” said Deorwen.
Durand turned to Ailric. “Tell them we’ll have a vanguard and a rear guard this time, with these things loose in the streets. I want armed men on every side, and a few fearless whoresons down the alleys.” He bent, getting his hands under the boy. “They may guess we’re heading for the high sanctuary. We must hurry.”
Durand was bundling the king back into his arms, but the boy was saying something. “No! No. Not the sanctuary.”
“Now, Your Highness,” said Durand, “you needn’t worry. Old Semborin will see you right in no time.…”
The boy was hardly awake. “Eagles…” he managed. “My mother. She is there. She’s there with them.”
And with the last word, Durand understood. The Mount of Eagles had been heaving with starlings when Durand had last set eyes on the place. The boy’s mother would be somewhere in that hive of devils. He thought of the poor woman, so powerless and alone. She would likely be dead already. He could say nothing.
“We must hurry,” said the king.
Heremund tried to speak. “She will want you safe, child.”
“We must find her!”
“We’ll send some men, Highness,” Durand said. “We must get you to the high sanctuary.”
“No. My mother. My mother first.”
“Highness, you’d best hear this: we fear for your life.”
The boy looked solemnly up into Durand’s face. “If I am king, then you will take me to the Mount of Eagles. The Host of Heaven will watch over me if they will, but I can’t leave my mother to those things.”
“Highness…” Durand looked into the boy’s face, wanting to tell him that he must forget his mother, that too many men had died to save him. He could say n
one of these things.
“Am I king?” said the boy.
“All right, boy. You are king.”
“My mother, then. Your word on it.”
“The Mount of Eagles. You have my word.”
A good hundred men were looking at him and the limp boy. Baron Vadir was the foremost. “Take a conroi for the damned Patriarch, Baron. You’ll have to run the old man across the square.”
* * *
THEY JOGGED A new route, listening to the shrieks and clatter ahead as the vanguard and patrols flushed maragrim and turnskin thralls.
Every lurch stabbed a groan from the king.
Durand could not stop to examine the boy, but he’d seen men bleeding into their guts flinch the same way around the pain in their bellies. And it was no good when a young man could not rouse himself. Vadir had better be quick with the Patriarch.
The gates of the Mount of Eagles hung unlocked and unattended. Strong men pushed the doors wide and the company stepped inside. The place stank and hummed with flies beyond counting. Men turned to Durand.
“We will bring the boy to the throne room. Post a squadron at the gate, and send Semborin to us with a strong party. I cannot guess what we will find inside.”
Ailric took Almora’s hand. “Let us see,” she said.
In the first black anteroom, they found mortal serving men by the dozen lying torn and strewn all about the place. The walls dripped like a meat market. Durand slipped and skidded in clotted stuff while Ailric pointed to the smears of splayed toes.
In the gloomy corner of a barrack room, something had heaped a score of dead men. As the newcomers forced themselves closer, they perceived a grinning court toady atop the pile like some mad hen. It blinked and averted its eyes. Without a word from Durand, ten hard men closed with the thing. It flayed the face and throat of one man into bloody white ribbons before his comrades could hack the devil to pieces. The maimed man did not live.
“Throw the shutters wide,” said Durand, hoarse. The garrison of the Mount of Eagles had stacked many hundred pikes and bills in that place. “Break the doors. Pull down the roofs if you must. Lay it bare to the Eye of Heaven.”