A Crown for Assassins

by Morgan Rice

  “We need to make it to the forest,” Ulf said.

  “You do have a way of stating the obvious, little brother,” Frig said.

  “I thought I was the elder twin,” Ulf shot back.

  Frig shook her head. “I’m the elder. It’s why I’m the clever one.”

  Ulf snorted at that. “If either of us is so clever, why are we running from half an army?”

  The answer ran alongside them, in the form of men, women, and children who would be dead otherwise. The sensible thing, when the Master of Crows’ army had started moving south, might have been to abandon the Monthys estate they were supposed to be rebuilding on two fast horses and run for Ashton.

  “But when did we ever do the sensible thing?” Frig muttered to herself.

  “If you wanted to do the sensible thing, we could still run ahead for the forest,” Ulf pointed out. He must have caught her expression. “What? I’m not saying that I’d ever do it. Just that if you wanted to, you could.”

  Frig pointed to the small gorge that ran through the moor toward the forest. “Get yourselves in there,” she yelled to the refugees. “At least they won’t be able to run us down on horses that way!”

  Yelling didn’t get the column to move any faster, but the sight of specks on the horizon did, and the thunder of hooves behind it.

  “They’re coming,” Ulf said. He had his axe out now.

  “We’ll not need that,” Frig said, and she didn’t know if she was trying to convince him or herself. “We’ll make it.”

  She could see the speed with which the enemy was getting closer. The horses were at a full gallop, and there was no way now that the people with them were going to be able to make it into the forest in time. If Frig had possessed a few dozen hardened men, she might have set an ambush, but the only real fighters here were her and her brother.

  They scrabbled into the gorge, helping down the weakest and the slowest. Frig lifted a child down into her mother’s arms, and that was enough of a reminder of why she and Ulf couldn’t just hurry to safety.

  “Someone needs to slow those soldiers,” Frig said to her brother.

  “I’ll do it,” he shot back. “You lead the others to safety.”

  “I’m the eldest. I’ll do it.”

  “I’m still not convinced that you’re the eldest,” Ulf said. “And if you think I’m leaving you behind, you’re more cracked than Kate got with that witch inside her.”

  “Well, I’m not leaving you behind,” Frig insisted. She sighed and pointed to what looked like the narrowest part of the gorge, where rocks had fallen in on either side to produce a kind of passageway. “I reckon if two people can hold anywhere in this, it’s there.”

  Ulf nodded, and the two of them moved to the far side of it, waiting while the refugees kept running.

  “What I wouldn’t give for about fifty snares right now,” her brother said.

  “That would still leave fifty of them to fight,” Frig pointed out as she counted the approaching foes. They were almost to the gorge now. “Can’t you even count?”

  “A man has to have some fun,” Ulf said with a grin.

  “True enough,” Frig said. The soldiers were dismounting now, forming up to march into the gorge. She could see the tall figure standing in amongst them, giving the orders, and she knew who it had to be. “It might almost be worth dying to kill that one.”

  “Who said anything about dying?” Ulf said. “We’re going to stand here and chop them all down like trees, then go back to Ashton to boast about how we won the war by ourselves.”

  Frig smiled, even though there was little enough to smile about then. “You know that I know when you don’t really believe what you’re saying, right?”

  “Yes, well…” Ulf shrugged. “Just don’t go around dying before me, sister.”

  “I was about to say the same thing,” Frig replied.

  “Maybe if neither of us dies first, we’ll get through this after all,” Ulf said with another wolfish grin.

  Frig hugged him then. “I love you, you big oaf.”

  “I love you too, little sister.”

  “I keep telling you that I’m older than you. A full fifteen minutes it was!”

  The soldiers were in the gorge now. Without hesitating, Frig stepped out and sent an arrow flying toward the Master of Crows. He moved out of the way as if he’d been expecting it, and the arrow took a man behind him. Ulf fired a pistol, which brought down another man, then started sending arrows from his hunting bow.

  Frig kept up her own fire, focusing her aim on the New Army’s leader, continuing to hit those around him when he dodged with inhuman speed. She ducked back as a volley of musket fire came, ricocheting off of the rocks and sending stone chips flying.

  Man after man fell with arrows in him. Frig dared a glance back and saw that the refugees were further along the gorge now, but they weren’t clear. The two of them couldn’t run. Not that this had ever been about running.

  “That’s the last of the arrows,” Frig said, sending the last one shooting forward, then drawing her sword.

  “I’m out as well,” Ulf said.

  The soldiers came at them then, forced to come no more than a couple at a time in the confined space. Ulf had been right, it was a little like chopping down trees. The first man came at Frig and she hacked his head off, while Ulf buried his axe in another’s ribs. Frig kicked away the body for him, then parried a blow aimed at her head.

  They kept coming at her, and Frig kept fighting, hacking and slashing, never leaving her blade still long enough for there to be a gap into which another man could step. She and her brother worked like two halves of a whole, fitting together with the kind of precision that only total trust could bring. Ulf caught a blow aimed at her head and she stabbed the soldier responsible. She tripped a man and Ulf finished him.

  It was tiring work, because all battles were. No matter how strong you were, after the first few moments, battles became about who could keep swinging their weapon, who could push forward.

  It was almost a shock when the New Army’s men pulled back.

  They didn’t go far, just to the far end of the narrowed section, but Frig was more than grateful for the pause. She took out a water skin, taking a long swig. She offered it to Ulf, who shook his head.

  “Not unless it’s whiskey.”

  “Do you think it would be full if it were?” Frig countered, checking herself over. She had wounds on both arms, and she couldn’t even remember how she’d gotten them. None of that mattered now, because the refugees were starting to climb out of the gorge, heading into the forest.

  “It occurs to me that once they’re clear, we can actually try pulling back,” Ulf pointed out.

  Frig wished that it were that simple. “Once we pull back from here, they can come through in force and they’ll have a clear shot at our retreating backs.”

  “So we have to hold here and hope that we kill them all?” Ulf said.

  “Or that they pull back far enough that we can run,” Frig said.

  Neither seemed likely. Worse, some of the Master of Crows’ soldiers seemed to be pulling out of the gorge and starting to circle around it.

  “You have seen what my men are doing,” the Master of Crows called out. “Soon, they will have blocked you in, and they will also be in a position to fire down upon you from above. Leave it much longer, and you are going to die.”

  He made it sound inevitable. The worst part was that he was probably right.

  “You wouldn’t be talking to us if you didn’t have another suggestion,” Frig said.

  “Come out and surrender yourselves. You have fought well. I respect that. You are more valuable to me as hostages than you are dead. Perhaps when this is done, I will even permit you to join my army.”

  “A generous offer,” Frig said. “Why should we believe it?”

  The answer to that came back swiftly. “Because I do not have to make it.”

  Frig looked across to Ulf, lowering
her voice. “The trouble is, he has a point. We’re probably dead if we stay here, and we probably are worth something as hostages.”

  “You think Sophia would open the gates to Ashton because he has us?” Ulf said.

  Frig shrugged. She didn’t know about that. “I bet Kate and Jan and even Hans would mount some stupid rescue mission though. Probably get themselves killed.”

  “They might succeed,” Ulf pointed out.

  “They might,” Frig agreed, “but if I were the enemy, I’d stick everything I had around us and make it impossible.

  Ulf was silent for a minute. He looked over at her, and Frig knew instinctively that he was thinking what she was. “I don’t see that we have much choice.”

  Frig nodded, agreeing with him. “We have to do what we have to do.”

  They stood, weapons kept carefully down as they moved forward. Frig hung her head in shame, her sword trailing on the ground as they approached. Ulf was the picture of a broken man, blood on his face, hair hanging lankly in front of it.

  Frig waited until she was within a dozen yards of the New Army before she looked up at Ulf and smiled.

  “Ready?”

  “Ready,” he said, and bellowed a challenge.

  They charged.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Henry d’Angelica paused at the gate to the Duke of Axshire’s estate, gathering himself for what was to come even while he took in the view of the country house that some fine landscaper had probably carefully contrived.

  To Henry, it looked contrived, the trees that had stood before it when he’d last visited cut down to stumps to improve the view, some of the old defenses of what had once been a mighty castle improved to modern standards of aesthetics. Henry couldn’t understand this constant need to improve things. Until the events of the last few months, the kingdom had functioned well enough. Maybe not perfectly, but that was a matter to bring up at the Assembly of Nobles, not a reason to tear it all apart.

  He rode down toward the duke’s home, hoping that others would be there. It was one thing sending off messages at every stop along the way, quite another for those to actually gather people here. Even so, as Henry approached, he could see signs of plenty of people gathered: horses, extra servants rushing to attend to errands, the sound of people within. He hopped down from his horse, handing his reins to a servant and taking his bag down before heading inside.

  “Henry, it’s good to see you,” Sir Archibald Hemsworth said as Henry walked in. Predictably enough, the man was drunk. “I must say, it was a good idea, gathering everyone for a party like this.”

  “It’s not a party,” Henry said. “Where are the Duke and Duchess?”

  “The dining room, I think. If it’s not a party, what is it?”

  “You’ll see.”

  Henry went through to the dining room. On another day, he would have taken the time to dress for dinner, and it was only the courteous thing to do under most circumstances. Today, though, he wanted to impress upon people the urgency of his task. Of their task.

  There were nobles waiting in the dining room. Nobles, a couple of priests, a man or two who looked as though they were from the Free Companies. There weren’t as many people there as Henry had hoped, but there were more than he’d feared there might be.

  Duke Loris of Axshire strode over to him, a man only a few years Henry’s senior, made duke thanks to the death of his father. His wife, Imogen, was with him, as lovely as ever. They’d always been the perfect couple, even back in the brief days before Henry’s father had bought him out of his commission in the army.

  Neither of them looked pleased.

  “Now see here, Henry,” Loris said. “I know that we’re old friends, but you can’t just dump half the nobles of the kingdom in a man’s home without even asking him first.”

  “It’s not half,” Henry said, and he couldn’t help a note of disappointment there. “I was hoping for more.”

  “More?” Imogen said. She’d always had the loveliest voice, even if it was currently filled with annoyance, and under other circumstances, Henry might have hoped… but that was in the past. Better that it stayed there.

  “I think you’d better tell us what’s going on,” Loris said. “You’re my friend, Henry, but this is not something that friends do.”

  Henry nodded. “I know. I’m sorry, both of you, but I needed to gather people somewhere, and my parents’ house was out of the question after I left.”

  “After you left?” Imogen said, in a tone that suggested she understood.

  “I’m not welcome there any longer,” Henry said. Before either of them could do anything like offer him sympathy, he moved out into the dining room, throwing his bag on the table and raising his hands for quiet. It took a while to come.

  “My friends,” he said, “thank you for coming with so little notice. I know that many of you are wondering what is happening. I know that I have asked a lot by doing this.” He looked out over the crowd of them. “Trust me, I intend to ask more.”

  “Got a gambling debt you can’t pay?” one man called out from the back.

  “I think that’s more your department, my lord,” Henry called back. “But I do have a debt that needs to be paid. A debt of blood and of honor, owed to my family.”

  This silence was more total than the last had been.

  “What are you doing, Henry?” Earl Jalland asked.

  “I’d ask what all of you are doing instead,” Henry countered. “We were invaded just a few short weeks ago by a foreign force. That force put a girl who by her own admission has magic and was one of the Indentured upon the throne. It set a prince beside her who was responsible for the death of his own mother, and between them… between them they killed my cousin!”

  He brought his fist down on the table sharply.

  “There are men and women in this room who claim to stand for every ancient family in this kingdom. Who claim to stand for the values of religion. Who have military forces of their own, and political weight. Yet still, all of this goes unavenged. A man condemned as a traitor sits on the throne, beside a woman who is either a liar or someone come to drag us back to a past where the chaos of magic was normal.” He pointed an accusing finger around the room. “Why do you not act, gentlemen?”

  “To what end?” Earl Jalland replied. “King Sebastian and Queen Sophia have been confirmed by the Assembly—”

  “An Assembly that they have stuffed with their own supporters, using commoners to fill it!” Henry snapped back. It was time to play his best card. “As the closest male relative of Queen Angelica, I claim the right to the crown.”

  People froze then, staring at Henry as if he had gone mad. He had half expected that; he was not a fool.

  “This is—” one man began, but Henry didn’t let him finish.

  “Was Angelica recognized as the queen of this kingdom?” he demanded. The question got a few nods in response. “By the real Assembly of Nobles, not something stuffed with those without the upbringing to truly act in the country’s interests?” More nods followed. “And am I her closest cousin, the eldest male of the line? Then with the Dowager and King Rupert dead, with my cousin dead, and with Sebastian disqualified by dint of being a traitor, I am the only choice left as king.”

  They didn’t roar their approval, but then, Henry had hardly expected them to.

  “So what do you want us to do?” one noble asked.

  “I’d like you to gather up your men and prepare to take back the throne,” Henry said. “I’d like you to aid me in punishing these murderers and these invaders. My cousin’s parents will provide their forces, obviously, and with enough help, we can make the kingdom what it was again. I’d like you to go to your estates and ready yourselves for battle!”

  This time, he’d half hoped for a cry of allegiance, but instead, he got more silence.

  “This is madness,” Earl Jalland declared. “Worse than that, it is the kind of dangerous talk that could see a man hanged. I will have no part of it
.”

  He walked out.

  “You can’t win,” a mercenary captain declared, following him.

  Even the priests edged their way to the door. “We can give them no excuse to do more to our church,” their leader said. “Princess Kate is already vehement in her hatred of us.”

  One by one, they started to drift away. Finally, Henry was left sitting by himself at one of the dining chairs. Imogen and Loris came to sit with him.

  “Henry,” Imogen said, reaching out to take his hand, “are you all right? All of this… it doesn’t seem like you.”

  “Imogen is right,” Loris said. “You were always the one trying to get me to be sensible, and yet now you’re engaged in a scheme that could get you killed?”

  “They murdered my cousin,” Henry said. He shook his head. “They’ve done so much evil… someone has to stop them.”

  “But why you?” Loris said. “And don’t give me all of that about being king. I know that’s just to get people on side.”

  “I am king,” Henry insisted. “Technically. But you’re right. It’s just… if I don’t fight for my family’s honor, what else is there?”

  “You’ll stay, of course,” Imogen said. “If your parents have cast you out, you’ll stay. And maybe when things settle down, you’ll see things differently.”

  Henry shook his head. “Things aren’t going to settle down. Do you know the rumors on the roads? They say that the New Army is back.”

  That made both of their eyes widen.

  “It’s why I didn’t argue harder,” Henry said. “Today wasn’t about winning them over; it was about planting a seed.” He opened his bag, spilling out some of the wealth he’d taken when he left. “This will pay for criers to spread the news of what our new rulers did, and it will buy the companies who don’t like being subsumed into the royal army. It will buy spies to find out what the traitors plan, and messengers to deliver promises to each of the factions.”