Beneath Ceaseless Skies #167

by Bruce McAllister

  The Red King waded through needles of marsh grass to his side. “Southerners,” he said. “Farmers, most likely. The blight has driven most of them out of their homes. Since your great and noble master has been turning back any refugees on the North Road, most of them try the old paths through the hills in the hope of better fortune.”

  “Do you expect to make me pity these people?” the knight demanded. “To turn my back on Gwyn?”

  “No.” The Red King stood. “I don’t.”

  They worked in silence after that, laying out whatever they could find around the courser. Somewhere far away a peal of thunder trembled in the mountains. When they had done all that they could, the Red King put his palms to the mare’s hindquarters and the knight took up her bridle. She was tired now, and without her help they were soon sweating and breathless.

  “You never answered my question.” The Red King stood back and rubbed his watering eyes.

  The knight gave one last pull, raised both hands in defeat, and sank down to his haunches. “What do you want now, Goch?”

  “Where are you from?” the Red King asked. “Who were you, before you became a bloody bane in my side and set my brother back upon the north?”

  “I was no one,” the knight said. “Just another unwanted bastard weaned in an orphanage in the wildwood. A farmer paid them for me when I was ten.” The courser slumped down defeated, stretching her neck out until her nostrils were barely above the water.

  “Old enough to work,” the Red King said.

  The knight made a soft sound of agreement. He put his hand under the courser’s jaw, lifting her head enough to breathe. “He wasn’t a cruel man,” he said. “But he wanted his money’s worth from me. Worked me like a draught horse for six years before I managed to slip away and enlist with your guard. Six summers of the sun on my back and the breath of the wind in me. Six winters digging in those blasted, frozen fields.”

  “Do you miss it?”

  The knight looked towards the southern horizon. “Sometimes.”

  “Let’s try again. Come here, maybe you can push better than I can. Use those shoulders of yours, plough boy.”

  The knight put the flats of his hands to her hindquarters and pushed until his muscles shook. The courser shrieked and thrashed at the pulled grass until she finally found footing. Then she heaved forwards, screaming and kicking out with her powerful back legs. As she came free, one of her shod hooves slammed into the knight’s chest like cannonshot.

  Concussion rang in his ears, and the marsh reached out to catch him as he fell. He found that he was looking down on his own body—his chest imploded, ribs dashed into the hollow space of his lungs, and the whole marsh shifting and surging underneath him like a wave.

  An explosion of coughing pain brought him back into himself. He strained for a breath that wouldn’t come, but the front of his shirt was drenched with marshwater instead of blood, and when he put his hand to the ache in his chest his ribs did not feel broken. The Red King offered down his hand, and the knight took it, pulling himself back up.

  He followed the grim look on the Red King’s face to where his courser stood, three-footed. One of her hind legs was snapped at an impossible angle below the knee, bone puncturing bay fur and blood dripping from her hoof.

  A deep calm drove down into the knight’s fingertips, and he forced his voice to soften as he took her head up in both his hands. He let the steadiness of his body pass into hers and bowed his head until it touched her muzzle.

  “Gwyn gave her to me,” he said softly, his voice twisted out of shape. “I had her from a yearling.”

  “Mercher....”

  “Be quiet.”

  The knight drew his sword slowly so as not to startle her. A murmur of metal against leather, a few more gentle words, and one sharp, deep thrust that drove the blade up to the hilt in her chest. Her howl filled up the whole valley as she wrenched away, overbalanced, and fell hard onto her side. A huge flower of dark blood blossomed out into the grey water. The knight knelt and put his hand on her neck. Her eyes rolled white. She sucked down a lungful of mashwater, spasmed, and fell still.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, catching his tongue between his teeth. “I’m so sorry.”

  He grasped the bloody hilt of his sword and worked the blade out of her body.

  “Come here,” he told the Red King. “I’ll need your help to butcher her.”

  * * *

  Y Brenin rose out of the valley like the arched back of a fish: a high ridge of bare jagged granite sculpted by time and weather into a host of peaks, buttresses, and gulleys. More a wall than a mountain, dividing the southern high places from rich northern lowlands with a serrated ridge of bare granite. They approached it swathed in the fog of a grey morning, rounding a scree slope that sank down into a high valley filled with a crooked finger of black lake. A heron raised its head on the far shore, poised between the worlds of fog and water, looking more a spirit than any living thing.

  The knight raised his eyes, tracing line from the quiet of the water to the mountain looming in the cloud. His breath tangled in his throat and a shiver of recognition cut through him as an indistinct figure all but crawled over the ridge behind him. Until he saw the colour of the hair and the blackness of the eyes, the knight was certain that it was not the Red King that walked towards him out of the mist but his lord.

  “He looks fierce from down here, doesn’t he?” the Red King said, the fog smothering the sound of his voice. “From the north, Y Brenin’s as smooth as glazed ceramic and blue-grey as a thundercloud. But the sun never touches the south face, and so it’s gouged by ice and wind and water. Nothing more than an accident of circumstance, when you think on it.”

  “You talk too much, Goch,” the knight said, his voice harsh with dehydration and his tongue so swollen that he could barely speak.

  He shrugged the Red King’s hand away and glissaded through the scree to the waterside, boots sliding in great strides through loose sharp stones.

  The water was smooth as jet, and when his fingers broke the surface it was cold enough to hurt. He knelt and drank his fill, until his stomach and his throat burned with cold and his hands were white-numb.

  The Red King slid down behind him, favouring his good leg. “We shall have to go over the eastern slope,” he said. “There’s a shepherd’s track that cuts down into the valley on the other side. It’s steep, yes, but passable.”

  The knight splashed the dark water into his face and stood. “Do you not understand what it means to be a man’s prisoner, Goch?”

  “Someone may have tried to explain it to me once,” the Red King said. “But I’m not sure I listened. I tend to forget these things rather quickly when my captor seems determined to lead us both into a certain, painful death. Or would you rather ignore me and die the same way as your horse?”

  The knight turned around too quickly and grabbed the Red King’s shoulder. “I’ve had my fill of you,” he growled, clenching his jaw to stop his teeth from shivering.

  “Why?” the Red King asked. “Because I am right and you cannot bear to admit it? Or because I sound too much like my brother, and you are afraid that you might fall pathetically in love with me?”

  The knight’s grip tightened until his arm shook.

  “Tell me,” the Red King said. “When all of this is over and I am returned to my throne, do you think that Gwyn will give up his lands and his riches to live out his days with some ignorant little plough boy? Until he is old and bitter and you must nurse him to his death? Or do you think that he will continue ordering you around like a kicked dog? Sending you off into every pointless battle that he wages against me in the hopes that one day you just don’t come back?”

  “You think that I care?” the knight spat. “So long as I get to stand at his side on the morning that they hang you?”

  The Red King shrugged. “If you wanted me dead, then you should have killed me on the battlefield and had your fill of it. My brother might even have been
grateful enough to let you up into his lap for the night.” He frowned for a moment and made a small, amused sound. “Only you don’t really care if I hang, do you, Mercher? It isn’t me that you are in a rage with, it’s yourself. My brother might forgive you if you beg and grovel at his feet for long enough, but it will all taste like ashes in your mouth. You know that you’ve failed him by refusing to carry out his order on that battlefield, and you shall always know it. It will haunt you in the dark quiet of the night between now and the day that you die.”

  The knight seized the Red King’s shirt and found his lord looking back at him accusingly.

  His curled fist slammed into the Red King’s jaw. It would have thrown the Red King from his feet if the knight hadn’t gripped him by the hair and kissed him hard and full on the mouth.

  The Red King tensed in response. His body curling like a windless flag, and his fingers running over the clinging thinness of the knight’s shirt to the hilt of the knight’s sword. Metal rasped on leather, and he broke away to draw the blade into his hand. His laughter sang off of the south face of Y Brenin.

  A surge of humiliation snarled through the knight, bleeding into the love and hate, loyalty, and the fury at his own stupidity.

  Then the edge of his own sword was coming for him.

  Instinct pulled his body out of the way of the blow. His feet touched the lake, and a deep quiet smoothed all his thoughts down into nothing. He reached for the shield slung across his back and trusted his feet to keep him out of the way for long enough to fasten the enarmes.

  When another strike came, the knight was prepared. He brought his shield out to block, and the sound of metal-against-metal burst in his ears. The next swing was swift and terrible, and the knight had no choice but to turn away to catch it. He twisted fully, kicking up stones and water and drove the point of his shield hard into the Red King’s belly.

  The Red King laughed and heaved for breath, wiping the blood from his mouth with the back of his hand and leaving a long black streak up the length of his arm. “Do you expect to beat me?” he said, stepping out and forcing the water to the knight’s back.

  “You’re half-crippled with that wound, half-crazed with the infection, and I’ve already beaten you once,” the knight retorted, crouching down to scoop up a handful of small wet stones. “So yes, I rather rate my chances.”

  The Red King feinted left then swung around hard right. The knight brought his shield out to cover his flank, too late. He barely noticed the notched sword tear through his hip but felt the sudden weakness in his leg.

  Quick blood ran down his body into the water, and the Red King touched the black wound on his own thigh. “Evened things out a little, wouldn’t you say?”

  The knight gritted his teeth and rolled his shoulders into a shrug. “Only seemed fair, the way you’re flailing that sword around,” he said. “It was either let you land a blow, or give up my shield and see if you could fare any better against an unarmed man.”

  The Red King laughed, and when the knight thrust forwards he stepped carelessly aside. “You have a quick tongue on you, boy,” he said.

  “And you have the eyes of a cave-dwelling rat. Shall we see how well a rat fights blind?”

  The knight moved to make another blow, but when the Red King brought up his sword, he threw the handful of scree and dirt into his face, then struck him with the shield’s edge. The Red King crumpled down into the lake. His red hair drifted into black water, and when he made to regain his feet the knight straddled him and pressed the top edge of his shield against the Red King’s throat. In response, the tip of the sword pressed into the soft flesh under the knight’s jaw.

  In the sudden quiet, their breath echoed off Y Brenin and came back to them out of the fog.

  “I could lay your throat open,” the Red King said, spitting water. “Leave you here to bleed to death.”

  “The edge on that is as blunt as a tourney sword,” the knight said calmly. “Do you think that I would die before I broke your neck?”

  “You need me,” the Red King insisted. “You’ve nearly killed us both out here. You’ll die from exposure, like those poor bastards in the marsh.”

  “And you will be dead from infection long before you manage to drag yourself back into the south.”

  “I thought you meant to bring me before my brother alive.”

  “Maybe,” the knight said. “Perhaps it would be easier to carry out my lord’s will, rather than allow the disloyalty to... what was it? ‘Haunt me in the dark quiet of the night between now and the day that I die’?”

  The Red King made a short, sharp sound that started as a laugh but which quickly descended into coughs. “What are your terms?”

  The knight relaxed the pressure on the Red King’s throat, although he noticed that point of the sword stayed firmly where it was. “Show me the path around Y Brenin,” he said. “I’ll bring you before Edling Gwyn and vouch for you. Ask him to spare your life so that this war can end. For all of us.”

  “You had better hope that Gwyn has allies to the north with deep grain stores and deeper pockets, little knight,” the Red King said. “Nothing short of the goddess herself will save this land from ruin now.”

  The knight stared down over the silver flex of his shield and pressed a little harder.

  “What faith can I place in the word of a plough boy?” the Red King complained. “Tell me, is my brother in the habit of giving you everything you want, Ser Mercher?”

  “I do not often ask,” the knight said quietly. “But he hasn’t yet refused me.”

  He drew back and offered down his hand. When the Red King let go of the sword, the knight pulled him to his feet. They stood together, shivering and bleeding, waiting for the other to move.

  Finally, the knight knelt for his sword—resting on the black bottom of the lake, looking as though suspended in the dark.

  “Start walking,” the Red King said, turning towards the mountain. “The path is treacherous by day, but deadly on a moonless night. We need to be on the valley floor before the sun sets. With us both limping like old men, it shall not be an easy climb.”

  * * *

  Across the lowland vale spread out beyond the foothills, the city of Dinas Pair yr Arfaeth boiled with smoke and flame. Voices rose from its cauldron and radiated into the morning fog, while behind its curtain wall a dozen thatched roofs oozed ugly smoke. Others were reduced to bones of blackened timber.

  The knight and the Red King stood on a hillside swathed in the yellow flowers of the eithin aur which rolled out into deep folds of low pasture and bleating sheep. At their backs, Y Brenin pierced the blue morning like smoked glass.

  “You are at war, Ser Mercher,” the Red King said.

  “Do you have a second army that you’ve sent north to lay siege?” the knight said, trying to stop some unnamed thread from tightening in his chest. “No. There is no war. The city has fallen in upon itself. There is nothing to eat, and the guards cannot keep order. The situation was bad when we marched south. Now the vassal lords have returned with nothing to show for all their battles. No relief, no salvation. Just the coming winter, and the famine.”

  The Red King tried vainly to keep the rising sun out of his face, his black eyes watering painfully. “You can’t take me down there,” he said. “That city is at war with itself. If you were to bring the Red King into the middle it, you and he would both be dead before we reach the keep.”

  The knight’s shirt clung to him, mottled with sweat and dirt, marshwater, and blood. A low ache radiated out from his hip, and his left leg trembled when he tried to put his weight on it. But now they were out of the mountains, the ground was more solid under his feet than it had been since he stayed his blow on the battlefield. A shadow passed over their heads—was that an eagle, gliding north towards the city?

  The knight watched it go, and realised what he had to do.

  “You must leave,” he said, very quietly.

  The Red King frowned but did no
t turn his head. “Why now? Why listen to me now, when you have spent the last week ignoring every word I’ve said?”

  “Give me your parole,” the knight said. “Return to this place a year and a day from now to parley. Offer your word, Goch, then follow the North Road until you find a village, and take a cart back down into the south where you belong.”

  The Red King rubbed his watering eyes. “And why would I keep my word?” he asked. “Hasn’t Gwyn told you I don’t have a shred of honour? What’s to stop me mustering whatever people I have left and marching back along this road to give my brother what he deserves?”

  The knight studied the Red King. For the first time, he saw the whole of him: the set of the Red King’s jaw that was so much like his lord’s, and the same curl to his hair, but the narrowness of his black and watering eyes and the thinness of his mouth that set him apart as something other.

  The knight smiled. “What happened to your eyes?” he asked.

  The same smile twisted the corner of the Red King’s mouth. He nodded and placed a hand on the knight’s shoulder.

  “You aren’t as stupid as you look. For a plough boy.” The Red King turned away. “A year and a day, then. For what it’s worth, you have my word.”

  * * *

  The knight’s hands were sweating, and he could barely hear the screaming of the crowd or the crack of burning houses over the roaring in his ears as he climbed the stairs of the keep.

  Three years ago, he had freed his lord from a tower much like this one, one cold clear night at the very cusp of winter. The guardsmen had feasted on soulcakes spiced with cinnamon and made as offerings to the dead, while the crows croaked to one another and the knight ascended the stairs of Caer Isel with a key clutched in his gauntlet.

  Now the crows had come to Dinas Pair yr Arfaeth as the city collapsed into a heap of smoking timbers. This time the knight did not hold the key in his hand but felt it in his chest as he climbed. His fingers clenched and crept to the hilt of his sword. All of it evaporated the moment that he opened the door to see his lord standing before the window.

  The white light streamed in through thick glass, catching in the silver strands of his lord’s dark hair and on the golden flower of the eithin aur embroidered onto his surcoat. Unnoticed, the door craned slowly shut, and the whole room seemed to fill with an impenetrable silence.