Deathknight

by Andrew J Offutt

  As to events here in Lango; well, those had yet to happen. A ferg was not a meal until it was in the pot.

  He looked at Jinnery. She sat hunched forward, staring at him from large eyes.

  “Falc? It’s... it’s begun.”

  He nodded. He saw no reason to say anything, but did. “We’ve begun.”

  3

  Daviloran of Cragview and his slender young nephew Daviloran arrived in style and panoply. Ten weapon-men rode before and six more behind them and their drovers, with the several dargs bearing supplies and gifts for Kinneven. The Cragview colours of grass-blue and yellow with brown trim were much in evidence. Helmets with cheek-protectors like stylized battle-axes and broad nasals gleamed in the late afternoon sunlight, along with the overdone harness on every darg. Only the heads of the two Davilorans were bare, with the hoods of their cloaks thrown back. Of the palest yellow, the cloaks of uncle and nephew spread out behind them over the rumps of their mounts, which were caparisoned in yellow trimmed with blue.

  Because Holder Kinneven’s man had long since apprised the gatemen of this arrival and bidden them open after the briefest of challenges, the glittering procession was swiftly passed into the city.

  The entire party rode erect, gazing straight ahead without seeming to note the stares of the people of Lock and their shouts to others to come and have a look. These foreign helms were fascinating! They were so covering with their ferocious barga-head visors that not a man of the escort had a face save for mouth and chin and, in most cases, moustache.

  Kinneven had dressed for the occasion hours ago, in his own colours and best dress cloak. Word reached him well ahead of the visitors, for Lockman citizens of both sexes and all ages flocked to see the procession and gain glimpse of one of those country holders they had never seen. The foreigners must be careful of their dargs with the Lockmen crowding them close. Thus Kinneven in his white-lined scarlet cloak was waiting just outside his open gates when they reached his Holding.

  Daviloran dismounted at once and in the view of many watchers unbuckled his melt-studded weapons belt. He proffered it and its sheathed blades to Kinneven. That Holder accepted the symbolic presentation and used all his voice to say loudly, “Be welcome in this House.” Then he handed back the visitor’s weapons. Daviloran passed them up to one of his armed escort in another gesture of trust and amicability.

  Kinneven stepped back, mindful of the extra long hem of his cloak, and gestured broadly. Furling the cloak over one arm, Holder Daviloran remained afoot and led his mount. The visitors entered the courtyard. Servants and slaves took the animals away for food, water, and stabling. The drovers unloaded the pack-dargs. With the aid of the fiercely hel-meted escort, they bore the packages into the House of Kinneven.

  “My lord of Cragview,” Kinneven said as he watched all those guest-gifts pass, “you travel with a goodly escort.”

  The round-faced man smiled. “Nor will I ever know whether it was worth the trouble, my lord. We were not molested — but might not have been had we left ten or so behind! One is not used to traveling, and I am sure those of you in cities hear tales of the countryside just as we do of cities! We had heard of some trouble in Lango, and I admit it made me overly cautious. Do you travel much, my lord?”

  “No. What need has a man to leave his Holding’s city, save to go to the occasional fair? I too am nervous when I go out into the world we know so little about.”

  “Indeed. Lord Holder Kinneven, may I present the son of my brother, who named him for me. We have ever called him Davilo, to avoid confusion.”

  “My lord Daviloran, Holder Daviloran: be welcome in my House. But what’s this of trouble in Lango?”

  Daviloran shrugged. “I’ve really little idea. Some passages at arms between Holdings, as I have it. Lord Faradox was involved, but I forget the other name. An omo brought the news; he was on his way somewhere else, as they usually are. Does my lord have friends in Lango?”

  “Not really. Do come inside.”

  They went inside, all of them. Three of the supply bundles were borne by Daviloran’s weapon-men to the quarters assigned them. There they took care to pile them in a comer beyond the pallets, making sure that the other two were atop the one containing crossbows, quarrels, and uniforms. Next they unhelmeted themselves. Only six of the escort were of Crag view. Four were Langomen: Holder Faradox’s very best. Of the others, three were superbly skilled fighters his nephew had employed years ago. The proper uniforms of the other three were packed away. Under their helms, they wore the black skullcaps of the Order.

  While Kinneven showed the Davilorans around his household, their escort waited opportunity for Falc to apprise them of the situation here and what he had learned of the traitor’s men. Jinnery meanwhile slipped out to take a roundabout route to the Holding of Stavishen, to advise that the invasion force had been taken into the traitor’s House.

  *

  Most privately indeed, Falc of Risskor, O.M.O., was gazing dourly at a pale Prefect Jorgen.

  “It is all true, Jorgen. Both the other two are dead. I know it is a blow, man; it was to me. Would you like me to swear?”

  Slowly, shaking his head, the big peacekeeper sank into a chair.

  4

  After last night’s sumptuous feasting and the first meeting of Davilo and Kinneven’s daughter Kinnemil, host and guests held a meeting in Kinneven’s lovely rear garden. Also present were Falc, three of the escorts, several household peacekeepers and their prefect, and at Kinneven’s whim, Jinnery. Indeed he held her arm as he ambled deep into his sprawling garden, all in white with a sash of his colours girding his waist and a short blue cape almost exactly the colour of his eyes. About the backs of her ankles fluttered the yellow cloak that was his personal gift. A good colour for her, the charming man had said.

  They came to pause where several chairs and two large tables of white-painted stone rested in the sun-dappled shade beneath an enormous say tree of great age, garlanded with ghostvine like blue-grey strings of pearls and giant cobwebs. Just beyond was a prettily painted summerhouse. Kinneven paused, one hand resting on a stone sun-clock. He took his hand from the so-thin arm of Jinnery, who tarried there near him in his yellow gift-cloak, not knowing what to do.

  “So, my lord,” he said, smiling that handsome and so-open smile, “it would seem that your nephew and my daughter do not dislike each other. She is eighteen, the daughter of my second wife. I would know the lord Davilo’s age.”

  “I am twenty-six and have been wed, Holder. I lost my wife two years ago to childbed fever.”

  “But their ages don’t matter,” Daviloran said. His usually open and ingenuous expression had become serious and boyish eyes were suddenly mannish indeed. Their stare pierced like crossbow quarrels. “He does not need my blessing, and may marry the orphan of a murderous traitor if he so desires.”

  Kinneven’s reply was barely controlled: “What?”

  “My lord,” Falc said quietly, “I know who tried to have me killed, and who employed those men who murdered my brother omos and would have murdered more; and I know fully the meaning of your message to the late Holder Chasmal, including the identity of the ‘main stem’ you referred to when you sent me there to be slain.”

  “What? Falc, Falc! — what ever are you talking about?”

  “About you, and the Emperor’s plan, and the plot of his barons-to-be, you and Chasmal and the late Barakor of Missentia. Chasmal was so misadvised as to entrust the matter of my slaying to his Housechief Alazhar, who thought the order came from Holder Faradox. At any rate, he and Chasmal’s prefect felt that the prefect and three others were enough to take me. They were mistaken.”

  Jinnery took a step back from the staring Kinneven. Accused and accusers, household peacekeepers and escort-guards stood in frozen tableau in the lovely garden of Kinneven, their faces and colorful clothing dappled in sun and shade filtered through the huge old say tree and its ornamental burden of ghostvine. All stared at Kinneven except Kinneven.
His stare roved among them and he trembled.

  Abruptly he smiled. “Now, treacherous swine, learn that I am none so trusting as you supposed. All of you are watched and menaced from my walls and that lovely little summerhouse just behind me. Best surrender your arms. Jorgen! Take them!”

  “Take them yourself, my lord. I’ll have no part of your stinking plot.”

  “What?” Holder Kinneven stared hard at his prefect. He let Jorgen see the curl of his lip before he turned his head partway to one side. “Garsh! Come out the summerhouse and show yourself! You on the walls — show yourselves and your crossbows.”

  Smiling again, Kinneven confidently watched the men he faced shift their gazes past him, and was sure that armed men were emerging from the summerhouse. Still, he saw no alarm in the faces of his accusers, and heard nothing ... and then he did. A voice called out, from behind him.

  “They’re all secure, my lords. Three of us were enough. I am happy to report that only one was so stupid as to get himself wounded.”

  In his alarm Kinneven forgot the menace before and whirled to face the one behind. Beside the summerhouse, weapons sheathed, stood a man in helm, tunic and leggings of black. From his shoulders hung a long twin-pointed cloak black as the wing of a crawk.

  When Kinneven spun back, one of the three men who had just stepped past Daviloran had removed his helmet, to reveal a skullcap identical to the one Kinneven had seen so many times on the head of his own Contract-omo. For an instant he stared. Then he looked about wildly.

  No one stood on the walls. No one.

  “My lord,” Prefect Jorgen said, “once you had placed the men in the summerhouse, I summoned the rest of your peacekeepers to a special meeting in the barrack-room. Evidently they went. Since the walls are unmanned, they must have decided not to try to force their way past the leveled crossbows held by Sir Ashalc of the Order and four of Holder Daviloran’s men.”

  “I’d say that by now those five are backed up by a number of men from Stavishen-Holding,” Daviloran said.

  “STAVishen!” Pale and unsmiling at last, Kinneven looked about at them. Jinnery backed another pace from him. “So. I have been tried and found guilty. Well, by all the gods, the world were better off with some of that unity you omos mouthe about, Fale, rather than set all apart behind the guarded walls of little sovereign cities! Damn you all! With that malleable boy Shalderanis as a symbol, we could have created true unity, and started Sij again on the road to progress! Look at us! Swords and crossbows, indeed!”

  No one spoke. Every eye gazed at Holder Kinneven of Lock.

  “So. Found guilty and now guilty from my own mouth of the heinous crime of hoping to drag Sij back from this world of mutually mistrustful slaveholders inside mutually mistrustful walled enclaves we pretend are cities! Guilty, by the gods! Even by Ashah, you damned monks who hid under the fierce helmets of peacemen! Then what is the sentence, hmm? Has that too been decided?”

  Yes, he saw that it had. He knew, looking at their implacable eyes. He knew, for he had heard the calm, unstressed words of Falc: “the late Holder Chasmal; the late Barakor of Missentia...” Dead then, both of them. Lost, all lost. Of course he had been sentenced. The sentence was death. Lost: an enormous plan; the promise of extraordinary power. All lost, lost. But Death, by all gods!

  He nodded. “So. And who is to carry out this sentence. Daviloran? Or you, little Daviloran? Jorgen? Are you prepared to slay me as well as betray me, hmm?”

  “You betrayed me, Holder.”

  Kinneven showed him only a sneer. He took a step toward Falc. “My own Contracted omo? You, Falc?”

  “No man must slay a Holder he protects,” Falc said quietly, dark eyes showing pain but meeting his Contract-lord’s all the while. “And yet no man has more right or so much reason to slay the honorless Kinneven of Lock.”

  Kinneven took another step toward him. “You, then! Deathknight indeed, eh?”

  Falc said nothing. Falc gazed at him.

  A frozen tableau, in the lovely and well-tended garden behind the House of Kinneven, under a sky-reaching old say strung with ghostvine.

  But Death, by all gods!

  It was Kinneven who moved, and in a lunge. Jinnery had backed but two paces from him; now he too had taken those two paces, supposedly toward her grim “cousin.” He had to make only a short swift lunge to whirl her with an arm across her breast. His other hand was a fist, holding a dagger across her throat.

  “You will all stand very still while the honourable Falc’s cousin and I depart this boring meeting. If you charge you will have me, but she will have a second mouth. Well, Falc? Do you call yourself her protector still, or do you turn on her as you have me?”

  Falc stood still, his cloak shifting in a gentle breeze that rustled through the dangling strands of ghostvine. He said nothing. The voice came from behind Kinneven:

  “I can put a bolt through his cloak and between his shoulder blades from here, brother.”

  Falc shook his head. “No. In reflex he would gash her throat. I beg you all, lords and men of weapons: let this be. All is lost to this plotsome traitor. What use if he escapes us now?”

  Kinneven chuckled and began to back away. Jinnery staggered. His hand shifted and blood appeared on her throat. She made a noise and he eased off hurriedly. She slammed herself back, then, and whirled as he staggered away. That movement made a further cut in her neck, but her right fist jerked up from low and drove into the plotter’s belly a long and sharp gift from his fellow plotter Chasmal. She let go the dagger’s hilt at once, and leaped away as his arm and indeed his entire body twitched.

  Kinneven looked down at the jeweled hilt standing from his middle.

  “Damn!” he said in a gasp. “Trust a damned woman not to do a thorough job!”

  At the same time as he grasped the hilt and pushed with all his strength, his other hand drove the point of his own dagger into his throat.

  They stared without speaking for many seconds after the fallen Holder’s legs ceased jerking. Daviloran spoke first, and moved.

  “Halllp! Assassins!” the fat man with the face of an angel shouted, and in two swift movements slashed his right forearm and stabbed himself in the left upper arm.

  5

  “In Lock,” the Messenger said again and again and again, to man after man after man, “Holder Kinneven has been murdered and his guest the valiant Holder Daviloran wounded when two of Kinneven’s own peacekeepers broke into the garden and tried to murder them both. Their motive is unknown, as they were slain by the noble Daviloran and Sir Falc of the Order, but the late Holder’s Prefect of Peacekeepers states that he has evidence that both men were paid by the late Barakor of Missentia. The peacekeepers of Holder Vannashah of Lock are maintaining security in Kinneven-Holding, and Vannashah has called Lock’s Council of Holders into an emergency meeting.

  “And now... here is something we all know about the purple shume. It stands not tall, and though it puts forth aerial roots, its main stem is young and thin, and unsupported, and weak.”

  All over the continent, the Sons of Ashah and certain Holders smiled and expelled sighs of relief.

  TWELVE

  In each ending there is a beginning

  — ancient Sijese saying

  In the beginning is the seed of the end.

  — Sath Firedrake’s addition

  *

  The unprecedented Manifestation was shock and enormity throughout the continent, and so was the news it conveyed. Every Holder on the continent was alarmed by the sudden appearance of a strange light, and an image in shimmery silvery grey, and saw the ancient habiliments of the legendary Sath Firedrake. And they heard him speak.

  Each was advised of the prodigious occurrences in Lango and in Lock and in Missentia, and each was told that investigation by the Order Most Old and nearby Holders proved that the assailants were the same as the murderers of no fewer than seven omos in the past two months: agents of Emperor Shalderanis!

  2

&
nbsp; The first time they had made this darg-back trek to the Mountain of God, they had been companions by circumstance, each striving to be tolerant and civil. Their success in that was occasional. Now they came riding again, and they were friends. Once again Falc of Risskor journeyed to confer with his Order’s Master. This time he sought not permission to err terribly, as he had before and had so fortunately been denied; this time he sought to counsel with the Firedrake about which offer of Contract he would accept.

  Jinnery rode where he rode, for now. She was the first woman ever to enter the Mon-Ashah-re, the Order Most Old’s High Temple of Ashah; the first woman ever to have met the Master after he was in that post; the first woman ever to have saved the life of an omo; the woman who had saved a Son of Ashah from breaking the solemn oath of omo and Contract agreement to do that which he knew he must: kill his own Contract-lord. She was also the first woman ever to have killed a Holder and been hailed as hero for it.

  Only a couple of days ago she had learned something else. Until Falc told her, it had never occurred to her that she was the only woman he had ever thought of as friend.

  “I am happy to call you cousin, and I would call you sister,” he said in an extremely low tone, and she would always believe but would never, never say that she thought she had heard the quaver of emotion in that voice.

  As for Jinnery, she had wept. Eventually she had had to explain to him who knew everything that her tears were of joy. Falc had looked thoughtful, and nodded his belief, if not understanding. Predictably, he saw no reason to say anything.