by Ian Irvine
“So how do we get up?”
“According to the letter my great-aunt wrote me before she died, there’s a secret way up the western end. But we’ll have to set the horses free. It’s too steep for them.”
“What’s up there?”
“A volcanic plateau, four thousand feet high.”
“Sounds miserably cold,” said Glynnie.
“It has hard winters, to be sure,” said Rix, “but fertile soil and plenty of rain. There’s a good living to be had. More importantly, with mountains on three sides and this escarpment on the fourth, it’s easily defended.”
They dismounted, set the horses free and turned to the slope. “It’s as high as a mountain,” muttered Glynnie. “This is going to take a week.”
“At least half a day, I’m told, so we’d better get going.”
“It’s desolate,” said Glynnie, when they reached the top in the early afternoon and scaled a rocky hilltop to get a better view.
The plateau was about four miles long by two wide, undulating farmland covered in snow. She made out several manors and half a dozen villages. Black, ice-sheathed mountains defended the far sides.
“Pretty country though,” said Rix. “And the most beautiful fortress I’ve ever seen. One of the strongest, too,” he added approvingly.
Fortress Garramide was only a few hundred yards away. It had been built on a rocky hill at the edge of the plateau, an outcrop cliffed on two sides and surrounded by a thirty-foot-high wall that must have enclosed forty acres. Every fifty yards along the wall was a watchtower.
“The wall is eight feet thick at the top, and solid stone all the way through,” he recalled.
“It’s enormous,” said Glynnie.
The inner fortress arose from the highest point of the hill and contained a great, stepped castle built from golden stone and topped with five towers, four at the corners and a larger one in the centre, surmounted by copper-clad domes tarnished to a rusty green. A tall, narrow tower behind the others had no dome, and neither did a separate tower immediately behind the gates. It ended in a flat war platform a hundred feet up, surrounded by walls with arrow slits through them.
He studied the defences, assessing the fortress’s strengths and weaknesses. “Water should never be a problem with all the rain here. If they’ve got enough cisterns, they could store enough for a thousand people, for a year.”
“Food might be.”
“There’s a lot of land inside the walls, and as long as they keep the barns well stacked with hay, they could feed their stock through a month’s long siege. There’s only one problem I see —”
“The walls are too long,” said Glynnie. “It’d take an army to defend them.”
She constantly surprised him. “Precisely.” He studied the sky, which was a billowing black in the south. “Looks like snow, and lots of it. We’d better move.”
It was heavily overcast by the time they reached the gates of Garramide, and snow was falling, though not thickly enough to disguise the stench, nor the mess of blood and rotting entrails protruding through the crust of last night’s snow.
“What the blazes is going on?” said Rix, covering his nose. “Has the enemy beaten us here as well?”
“Hooves,” said Glynnie, who had ventured closer. “And horns. Looks like they do their butchering here.”
“Outside the main gates of my fortress?” cried Rix.
Striding to the gates, he hammered on them with the hilt of his sword. “Garramide, open to your lord.”
A filthy, bewhiskered fellow opened a viewing flap. “Who the hell are you?”
“I’m Rixium Ricinus and I’ve come to claim my estate. Open the gates.”
“The boy lordling,” sneered the guard. He turned away, saying, “Get Arkyz.” He turned back, grinning, to reveal a mouth full of rotten teeth. “Garramide ain’t yours any more, kid. Clear out.”
Rix did not look prepossessing. In his dirty, ragged coat and mud-caked pants, he could have been any miserable vagabond on the road, though he was bigger than most. “Who’s in charge here?” he said evenly.
When the guard’s gaze fell upon Rix’s grey hand, he snorted mucus from his nose and grey slime from his mouth. “Arkyz Leatherhead, and he chops trespassers up into little bits and dumps them in the ditch.”
“Not any more,” said Rix.
He reached in, caught the guard by the throat and dragged him through the flap, tearing the shirt off his back. Hauling him one-handed to the rotting remains, Rix dumped him in a half-frozen heap of entrails.
“Run for your life. If you’re still on the plateau in an hour, I’ll cut you into little pieces and feed you to the crows.”
“Who’s Arkyz Leatherhead?” Glynnie said quietly.
“A murdering, raping bandit. He’s been terrorising these mountains for years with a gang of cutthroats, preying on the weak and the helpless.”
“What’s he doing here?”
“He must’ve broken in and seized Garramide after the war began. Before House Ricinus fell, he wouldn’t have dared.”
Rix was walking back to the gate when Glynnie shrieked, “Look out!”
The guard was racing towards him, swinging a double-edged knife. Rix swayed out of its way, allowing the man to lumber past. He skidded to a stop outside the gates and came racing back. Rix lazily avoided another couple of killing blows then, without seeming to move, punched the guard’s teeth down his throat. He was driven three yards through the air, landed hard, rolled over and vomited up his shattered teeth onto the boots of the man who had thrust the gates wide.
A man so huge that beside him Rix looked like a pup.
“Rix, no,” whispered Glynnie.
I can’t do this, Rix thought. I’ve met my match and I’m going to die.
Arkyz Leatherhead was a vast slab of beef, near to seven feet tall and a yard across the shoulders, with long, swinging arms that came down past his knees. He might have been forty, and looked as though he had spent every minute of that time outdoors, for his hairless skin was as coarse and leathery as cowhide. The top of his bald head, so flat that it might have been sawn off, was covered in freckles and black moles.
Leatherhead was clad in horsehide – a thick leather jerkin with the hair on, laced together across his boulder chest with leather thongs as thick as Rix’s little finger, and baggy leather knee britches. Behind him, grinning and rubbing their grimy hands together, were twenty of the filthiest and foulest ruffians Rix had ever seen.
“Lord Deadhand!” Leatherhead said in a rumble so deep that loose planks in the gate rattled. “Come forward and die.” His meaty hands dropped onto the hilts of twin swords. “Or run like a dog. I’ll give you five minutes to get to your kennel, hur, hur!”
He grinned at his feeble wit and looked back to his men for approval. They roared, clapped their thighs and stamped their feet.
Rix drew Maloch, but as he raised the sword his dead right hand throbbed. Despite all the practice, he wasn’t sure he could beat this giant left-handed, unless Leatherhead’s great size made him slow.
Leatherhead’s matched swords were the longest Rix had ever seen, a handspan longer than his own. With his enormous height and unusually long arms, Leatherhead’s reach was a good two feet more than Rix’s – with either hand.
Then, as Leatherhead slashed with his twin swords and Rix back-pedalled desperately, he knew he was in diabolical danger. The brute was just as good with his left hand as with the right, capable of using both at once, and fast as well.
Rix wasn’t even sure he could have beaten him with his right hand.
He ducked and the blades howled over his head, intersecting like a pair of scissors and clipping off a lock of his black hair. Glynnie gasped. Rix lunged and hacked at Leatherhead’s left kneecap but it wasn’t there – he’d anticipated the stroke and moved too quickly. Despite his age, he was fast and experienced. By the way he fought, he must have been in hundreds of fights. And won them all.
Leat
herhead drew back, held a sword out to either side, then paused. But he wasn’t watching Rix. He was staring at Glynnie and a slow smile cracked his beefy face.
“Spoils o’ war, girlie.”
Rix’s skin crawled. Why had he brought her here? She would have been better off as a prisoner in Caulderon than in the hands of these scum. And that’s where she was going to end up, for he was losing hope of beating Leatherhead.
“Run, Glynnie.”
Glynnie let out a little, muffled cry, but did not back away. The lesson in courage stiffened Rix’s own. He had to beat Leatherhead so convincingly that none of the followers would dare take him on. And he had to do it soon.
He feinted to the left, then struck at Leatherhead’s left hand. Leatherhead slipped it aside, hacked at Rix’s throat, and he felt his coat collar give as the tip of the blade cut through it.
The men behind Leatherhead clapped and jeered. Rix raised his sword and swung it with all his strength, down at his opponent’s mole-covered skull. Again Leatherhead anticipated the blow and danced away, and Maloch struck a rock in a shower of sparks. Rix needed to be closer, but when his opponent had a longer reach and a sword in each hand, going in close was a sure way to die.
He backpedalled, checking the blade. Maloch was not a heavy weapon, but the titane blade must have been supremely well forged, for it had not been damaged striking the rock – nor previously, when the chancellor’s captain had hacked through Rix’s wrist and deep into a flagstone.
They matched strokes for several minutes, by which time his legs were tiring. Fighting was the hardest work anyone could do and the exhausting climb up the escarpment had taken its toll. The longer they fought, the more the balance would tip.
Yet he could not rely on Maloch to save him. Its protection was against magery, not might…
Wait – if he could not beat the man, could he beat his weapons?
It was a desperate gamble. If he was wrong, if he damaged Maloch, he would die. But it was the only hope he had. He backpedalled again, luring Leatherhead forwards. The man was enormously strong but had no subtlety; he used the same few strokes over and again.
Rix waited until Leatherhead struck another of those scissoring double blows, then swung Maloch into the path of the swords. It missed his opponent’s left-hand blade by a whisker and struck the right blade side-on, near the hilt.
Maloch rang like a tower bell. A hot shock passed up Rix’s arm and for an awful second he thought his own blade was going to shatter. There was a screech of metal and a red-hot spray that spattered Leatherhead’s jerkin and pants, then Maloch sheared through the other blade, which was hurled sideways to embed itself in the muddy snow.
Leatherhead looked down uncomprehendingly at the semi-molten hilt, then dropped it and began to claw at his chest, trying to tear off the smoking jerkin. But the thick leather thongs did not give, and now smoke was issuing from within. The spray of molten metal had burned through the leather, only to be trapped against Leatherhead’s skin.
His guard was down, and Rix was not one to miss an opportunity. He sprang forwards and, with a stroke of surgical accuracy, lifted Leatherhead’s pumpkin-sized head off his stump of a neck and sent it rolling down the slope to the piled offal. His hands were still clawing at his smouldering chest when his blood-drenched body hit the ground.
Rix fixed his gaze on the goggling brutes in the gateway, then put his right boot on Leatherhead’s chest and raised Maloch high.
“I am Rixium Deadhand, heir to Garramide,” he said in a voice that could have been heard at the top of the highest dome of the fortress. He deliberately did not mention the tainted name, Ricinus. “This sword, Maloch, came to me in direct line from my ancestor – the First Hero, Axil Grandys, who built this fortress.”
He paused to allow that to sink in. Grandys was a legend, the Founding Hero, and the connection meant that any challenge to Rix was a challenge to the legitimacy of Grandys himself. At least, Rix hoped so, though with brainless thugs like these, you couldn’t always tell.
“Garramide is mine and I claim my inheritance. If any here challenge my claim, speak now – and die.”
CHAPTER 23
The outlaws shuffled their filthy feet, staring at Maloch, and Rix’s grey right hand, and the body of their fallen leader, as if they could not comprehend it. No one spoke. No one met his eyes.
There were more than forty of them now, and despite that some were clearly drunk, and others barefoot and only armed with knives, they were a formidable force.
Behind them, through the gate, the fortress servants were gathering, at least a hundred of them. Quite a few were armed, and Rix saw a dawning hope in their eyes. Though the fall of House Ricinus had damaged his reputation, the old dame they’d loved had named him her heir and given him the sword, and he could hardly be as bad as these outlaws. Rix saw no uniformed guards, though, and that was a worry. Presumably Leatherhead had killed them when he’d attacked the fortress. Rix had to have guards, and plenty of them. The fortress could not be defended without them.
What would the outlaws do? If they rushed him, he might kill three or four before they overwhelmed and killed him, but kill him they would. But would they attack? They seemed like common thugs to Rix; no one had the look of a leader. It wasn’t surprising – men like Leatherhead kept order with brutish violence and did not encourage rivals.
“What are you going to do?” said Rix quietly, so they had to strain forwards to hear. He raised Maloch. “No one bearing this sword – Axil Grandys’ enchanted sword – has ever been beaten in battle.”
“Deadhand’s just one man,” said a toothless, brawny thug at the front. “We can take him.” He reached for the sword sheathed at his hip.
Rix leapt forwards and pressed Maloch’s tip against the man’s throat. Blood threaded a path down his dirty neck. “Touch your weapon and you die.”
The thug choked. He couldn’t speak; the tip was pressing into his voicebox. His hand froze in mid-air, inches above the hilt. Rix lowered Maloch, cut the thongs of the man’s sheath and it fell to the ground. He forced him backwards to the gate, then kicked the sheath back to Glynnie, who drew the sword.
“When we escaped from Caulderon,” said Rix, “I killed six men with my bare hands – plus a whole pack of hyena shifters.”
He paused to let that sink in. Every eye was on his dead hand.
“And even if you could beat me, where can you go in mid-winter? The fortress is armed against you now; try to retake it and you will die.”
The thugs turned, saw the great line of armed servants, turned back to Rix. “But we’re at war,” said Rix, “and I need men who can fight, so I’ll make you an offer. Swear to serve and obey me, and I’ll take you on – and any raids we make against the enemy, you get a share of the plunder.”
The servants stared at one another, then there was a furious muttering among them. They weren’t happy. Perhaps they were wondering if Rix would be any better than Leatherhead.
“But be warned!” Rix said in a booming voice. “I intend to run Garramide as my great-aunt ran it. You will live like men, not pigs, and any violence against the people of this household will be punished by exile – or death. There will be no more warnings. Well? Do you swear to serve me and follow the laws of the fortress, on pain of death?”
There was some sullen nodding among Leatherhead’s men, a few quiet affirmations, some whispered oaths.
“Aloud!” cried Rix, brandishing Maloch. “On your knees.”
They went to their knees in the freezing mud and swore.
Rix gestured to them to rise. As he studied the faces, trying to take their measure, it occurred to Rix that Glynnie was still at risk.
He gestured behind him and she came to his side. “Glynnie will be in charge of my household. You will obey her as you do me.”
One of the outlaws, a big lout of a man, round-faced, with a beard as coarse as the bristles of a boar, sniggered and made a vulgar gesture.
Rix leapt
forwards and struck the man down with the flat of his sword. “Get off my land.”
“But Deadhand, this is my home,” whined the lout, struggling to his knees. “I’ve lived here all my life.”
“Liar!” yelled a stocky maid whose yellow hair hung in a single braid to her waist. “You slaughtered your way in last week.”
“No warnings, I said,” said Rix. “You’ve got ten minutes to be gone. After an hour, I’m giving the hunting dogs your scent and setting them loose.”
The man looked vainly for help among his fellows, then trudged in through the gates. Rix studied the faces before him, one by one. None of the outlaws met his gaze.
“Anyone else disagree with my orders?”
No one spoke.
“I asked a question,” Rix said, lowering his voice so they would have to strain to hear. “As the master of Garramide, I expect instant and total obedience. Does anyone disagree with my orders?”
“No, Lord Deadhand,” they said in a ragged chorus.
“Get this muck cleared away.” The sweep of his hand included both the offal and Leatherhead. “Then go to the bathing house and scrub yourselves clean. I’ll have no filth in this house.”
The man Rix had struck down reappeared with a thin, shrew-faced woman who was whacking him with a knobbly walking stick.
“Stupid, useless lump,” she shrilled. “Why I put up with you I’ll never know.” She came up to Rix, put on a sickly smile that did not approach her eyes, curtsied clumsily and said, “He’s a fool, Lord. Never opens his mouth but to vomit out his stupidity, but he don’t mean it. He’s a good man, deep down. And we don’t got nowhere to go, Lord. Please —”
Momentarily, Rix’s heart softened at the appeal, and against his better judgement he was considering relenting when Glynnie spoke.
“He’s rotten all the way through, and you’re no better. Get going.”
“You little bitch,” cried the shrew-faced woman. “I’m not taking orders from a half-grown scrag I could break over my knee.” She launched herself at Glynnie, hissing and spitting.