by Ian Creasey
Galorn put hand to hilt, and watched them come. Dardrand and Hulburt, fellow bodyguards, both looking grim. Trouble.
“I’m relieving you, Russark,” Hulburt announced flatly.
“Why?”
“So you can accompany me to the gardens,” Dardrand said grimly. “Now.”
“The gardens? Why?”
“The British ambassador.”
“He’s in the gardens? What’s he doing there?”
“Lying dead.”
“Dead?”
Dardrand shrugged. “Unless a man can continue to live with his throat torn out.”
Galorn found himself entirely unsurprised to see, among the guards clustered in the bower under a lantern – and over a sprawled body – an all-too-familiar figure with a jauntily perched monocle, calmly smoking a long, slender cheroot.
“Your rooms, as I recall,” he observed calmly, “lie inside the castle, Lord of Oporlto.”
The Count smiled his sneering smile. “So they do. Perhaps you wonder why I stand here, instead?”
“I do,” Galorn replied flatly, challenging him with a silent stare.
The Count shrugged. “Halditch and I arranged to meet this evening, in my rooms, to discuss … certain sensitive matters that are no concern of yours. When he failed to appear, I had a drink or two to grant him more time, but eventually concluded he wasn’t coming. So I set out for a stroll to ponder … some things. Accompanied, the moment I set foot outside my doors, by an attentive escort; two of your fellow … ah, vigilant guardsmen. My feet – pursuing an entirely aimless course, I assure you – led me here. Where I discovered the man, just as you see him.”
A wave of the cheroot indicated Sir Richard Halditch, His Imperial Majesty’s Imperial Ambassador to Tarkania, sprawled with eyes wide in horror and mouth agape.
His throat gaped far wider, just beneath that blood-spattered jaw. A great yawning wound, half the neck bitten out and gone. Carried off or eaten, by something large and powerful with sharp fangs; a large dog or a wolf. The Briton hadn’t even drawn his sword.
Hmph. A dainty ornamental blade that suggested Halditch hadn’t been a trained warrior anyway. The turf around the dead man was awash in blood, but Galorn could see no trail – and with all the booted feet even now crowding around, not even a superb forester would be able to find tracks to follow. The bower was perhaps twenty paces from the nearest gardenside castle door …
Galorn swallowed a sigh and started walking and peering about. It wasn’t as if he was likely to find a wild dog obligingly grinning at him with a British throat in his jaws …
He didn’t, and soon enough found himself back at the lantern, meeting the mockingly quizzical gaze of the Count once more. He’d found nothing.
The corpse hadn’t moved. Of course.
Galorn stared down at it again, angrily. This Englishman had come here for the secrets of Sterncastle’s flying ship, like all the other foreigners. One of them must have killed him. This was foreigner killing foreigner, nothing – aside from the hammershale – to do with Tarkania at all.
Galorn knew what would be said, up and down the valley and clear across Europe. Smirked at in courts near and far as a convenient cloak for a murder, but believed by Tarkanese.
He was one, after all. He’d grown up hearing all the old tales of packs of wild dogs. They’d be blamed for this, to be sure – but if it had been dogs, where were they? Here at Tark Castle, inside grounds manned by alert guards, steps away from hundreds of servants and guards who’d seen and heard no dogs at all? It was beyond belief!
Yet these were teeth-marks on Halditch’s throat, not blade-work, and the throat was gone. None of the foreigners had brought dogs with them, and the Markgrafina’s hunting dogs were halfway across Tarkania in Hult Castle and the Wuldenburg hunting lodge. The Grand Duke’s were kenneled even farther away.
So who – or what – had done this?
A sudden shout made everyone whirl. To see one of Galorn’s fellow guards pointing into the night. The lantern was hastily shuttered, and they could all see it: pairs of little golden lights that moved. And blinked. Eyes! Several yellow-eyed beasts, watching from the darkness!
Swords flashed out, men bellowed for lanterns, and in a shouting, hurrying trice, there was a rush into the gardens, the castle guards bellowing to each other to spread their search.
Galorn stood where he was, keeping his eyes on the Count and his hand on his sword. No matter how many lanterns were lit, nothing would be found … and his duty was to see to the safety of Sterncastle and the Markgrafina. This could well be a diversion, to cover some mischief arranged by the Count or someone else. Even villagers’ dogs could easily outrun men blundering after them in the plant-tangled darkness.
“You mistrust me?” The Count’s query was as mocking as his expression.
Galorn wondered anew how the man had lived this long. Oporltans must be the most patient of men.
“You will retire to your rooms, and remain there until the midmorning bell,” he told the nobleman, keeping his voice cold and flat, making the words clear orders. “For your own safety. And the safety of the Tarkanese I am charged to protect.”
“Or else?” the Count replied lightly, as Galorn had known he would.
Yet the only son of Klara and Josef Russark barely heard that insulting challenge. He’d just caught sight of something.
A moving spider – that was far too large to be a spider – on the Castle wall.
One of the Count’s escorting guards spat out a curse as he saw it, and beside Galorn, the nobleman and the other guard were looking up, too.
A man was climbing the Castle wall. Heading for a certain balcony. The one opening into the rooms occupied by the Count of Oporlto.
Galorn peered hard. Was that the scabbard of a curved sword he saw, as the man disappeared over the balcony rail? Or a tail?
They were all out of breath by the time they reached the guarded doors of the Count’s rooms. The startled door guards insisted no one had entered or left since the Count’s departure – and the Count’s own servants said the same thing, excitedly and at length, as the Count of Oporlto’s rooms were swiftly but thoroughly searched. Galorn made very sure the nobleman stayed at his side – and the Oporltan did, spending the time repeatedly polishing and reseating his monocle. Galorn found himself too exasperated to take satisfaction from the disappearance of the Count’s sneers and smirks.
The servants all insisted the balcony doors had stayed closed against the night chill, and that they’d seen no intruder. They sounded credible, and were all too old and small of stature to have been the climber Galorn had seen.
The searchers found nothing, for there was nothing to find. At length Galorn led his fellow guards out into the passage for a swift, low-voiced discussion, wherein they agreed two guards – including Berico, who understood Sicilian cant – should be posted on the balcony until morning, and the guards at the Count’s doors should be doubled.
Galorn left Dardrand to see to that and hurried back to Halditch’s body, wondering what he’d say to the Markgrafina and Sterncastle when they learned of the ambassador’s death.
There were more lanterns in the bower than before. Pounding into their midst, Galorn found himself staring at the Markgrafina, tall and striking in a swirling ankle-length cloak, her bodyguards behind her. She bent and laid her bodice handkerchief over the ambassador’s ravaged throat, calmly snapping orders as she did so: the body to be taken to the Castle chapel to be prepared for a full-honors funeral service, her secretaries to be awakened immediately so she could dictate a letter of regret to be sent to London without delay – then a second letter, to the nearby British embassy in Alsace, to request instructions for disposition of the ambassadorial body.
Rising from what was left of Halditch, she looked up. Into Galorn’s eyes.
Her gaze flashed with recognition. Then approval.
Galorn’s heart leaped.
“Investigate this foul crime,” s
he ordered him. “Tarkania must not be thought of as a lawless country, nor a wilderness roamed by savage beasts. Act swiftly – for I dare not delay my tour of the British Empire that dear unfortunate Sir Halditch invited me upon, for fear of London thinking I spurn the British Lion utterly.”
She started to stride out of the bower. Galorn gave way to let her pass.
“I leave the morning after next, to be Tarkania abroad as our name rises in the world,” she added, tapping him on the shoulder with her gloves. Sun and moon, but she was beautiful!
“In my father’s time of illness, you and your loyal fellows must guard our country here at home. You will report to me early on the morrow, and thereafter whenever I send for you – or when you discover the need to speak to me. To report success, I very much hope.”
Galorn managed – just – not to stammer as he promised to obey, and to succeed.
It was dawn, though a sleepless Galorn barely noticed. Extensive searches of the grounds had turned up nothing, wider searches were ongoing, and he’d spoken with every last guard on duty anywhere in Tark Castle during the night.
After some early evening talking over drinks, all of the other guests had retired to their rooms, where presumably they still slept. None had yet set foot outside their guarded outer doors, or done anything suspicious.
Yet Halditch was dead, and that Scot, too – and Galorn couldn’t shake an expectation that others seeking Sterncastle’s ship would soon die. Which might well mean armies marching, and Tarkania swept away in fire and blood …
He winced, shook his head, and set off wearily down another passage. He must question the ambassador’s aides and servants, and ask the Count of Oporlto some good hard questions, too.
The British were firmly confined to their rooms, so he’d do battle with the Count first. The man was thoroughly unlikable, and by sun and moon, shouldn’t get to sleep in while Tarkania stood in peril! Ha! Perhaps being roused early and abruptly would shatter the man’s habitual sneering superiority.
The Count’s servants were not pleased to see Galorn, but he was in no mood to entertain their objections, and brusquely forced his way past them into the Count’s bedchamber, his fellow guards at his back.
The bed was empty, linens thrown back, and the bedchamber window stood open, letting in the morning chill. The Oporltans raised outcries of horror and disbelief in their own tongue.
Swearing, Galorn peered out the window. No body sprawled below.
He looked over at the balcony, to bark questions at Berico and Klastel – and found it deserted, its doors giving into the Count’s rooms firmly closed. Its rail was drenched in fresh dark blood.
Galorn looked down again, wildly. Nothing amiss down in the shrubbery …
Cursing in earnest, he whirled and rushed for the doors. Halfway there, he espied a smirk on the face of the Count’s dresser. He pounced, shaking the little mincing cockerel – tcha! All dark, curly, oiled hair! – and snapped, “Why do you find this amusing? What do you know?”
“Sir, unhand – ” The man was pawing at his belt.
Galorn dashed away the little knife the Oporltan was trying to get out, took firm hold of the man’s lace-trimmed cravat, and dragged him nose to nose.
“There are branding irons and manacles in the dungeons of this castle,” he announced, aware that a tense silence had fallen in the room, “and in Tarkania they see use when it is needful. Which may, in your case, be very promptly, if you don’t yield up what you know of your master’s whereabouts.”
The man was sweating, eyes large with fear. “Sir, I know nothing!”
Galorn looked around at the other servants. “I cannot believe,” he snarled, “you know nothing of where the Count is, right now – as you were supposed to be guarding him for every moment of his stay in the dangerous backwater of Tarkania!”
He let go of the trembling dresser and advanced on the tallest Oporltan. “You are his personal bodyguard, yes? His bladesman?”
The man’s gaze dropped to Galorn’s own sword, then rose again. He nodded.
“Well?” Galorn asked, fondling his sword hilt as if aching to use to the weapon.
Silence stretched.
Glowering, Galorn took a step forward, drawing his blade with a flourish.
“The – the Count of Oporlto m-might possibly be found in the vicinity of Hargraus Hill,” the man blurted.
Galorn turned for the doors.
“Confine them all!” he called over his shoulder, not slowing.
By the time he reached the nearest way into the grounds, he was running hard.
After one glance at him, the guards there flung the doors wide.
Galorn sped across the gardens like an angry wind. He was panting hard ere flowers and bowers yielded to a line of elms and then tilled fields. Beyond was the boundary hedge with its wagon road and more guards. Peasants’ pastures lay beyond, with Hargraus Hill a dark, tree-cloaked line in the distance.
It was a long, rising ridge, but the young Galorn Russark had spent many happy days at play at a spot midway along the Hill, and without thinking he headed for it now: a hollow just over the crest, that had once been a quarry.
Well before he reached it, his lack of wind had reduced him to a plod, even before the challenges began. There was a soldier of Tarkania, it seemed, behind every tree.
Winning his way past the fourteenth sentry, he was utterly unsurprised to find the Wargallant moored in the hollow, where the trees would hide it from anyone peering from afar.
“How did word reach the castle so quickly?” the fifteenth soldier asked, recognizing Galorn and waving him past.
“Word of what?”
The man stared at him. “You’re not here because of the killings?”
With his sword, he pointed along the ridge.
Biting back a curse, Galorn strode in that direction.
Soldiers were standing in a ring in the deepening forest. Around an all-too-familiar man, who stood with drawn sword in hand.
Galorn grimly drew his own blade as he approached the Count of Oporlto.
Who was standing not just among the trampled dead and brown last year’s ferns, but over the bodies of two dead men. Englishmen, men of the ambassador’s party – who lay sprawled and silent, with, yes, their throats torn out.
“How’d you manage this?” Galorn asked, more harshly than he’d intended, pointing down at the dead men with his steel and then swinging it up to menace the Count.
That damned monocle gleamed above the Count’s best sneer yet.
“You think I did this, young fool? My, my … the Grand Duke was quite right about the slow wits of younger Tarkanese. Tarkania is doomed if the House of the Blade can’t produce men who can think half as fast as they can draw steel.”
“Speak no ill of the Grand Duke!” Galorn snapped. “Your rudeness is appalling, man of Oporlto!”
The Count shrugged. “We’re famous for it. Blunt truth saves so much time and misunderstanding, we find. For what it’s worth, I think your Grand Duke is a just man, as stern as a ruler must be and more far-sighted than most. His daughter, now, she’s danger on two leg – ”
“Say one more word about the Markgrafina,” Galorn interrupted, in a hiss that came out very close to a whisper, “and it’ll be the last treason you’ll ever speak!”
“Treason, my rash young friend, is a crime Tarkanese may be guilty of when saying such things. Not a man of Oporlto. Yet most of my countrymen, I think, see the ruling family of Tark more clearly than Tarkanese do. Speaking of seeing, regard these teeth.”
The Count opened his mouth wide, displaying jaws that sported some decaying teeth and a few missing ones. “The result of a dissolute life, richly enjoyed. Hardly what would be needed to do that.” He waved at the two bodies, then turned and pointed through the trees at others Galorn hadn’t hitherto noticed.
“More, over there. Carrion of Spain, Prussia, and France, I believe.”
Galorn stared at them, then asked bitterly,
“Are you going to tell me what’s going on? You know, don’t you?”
The Count planted his sword point-first in the ground to free a hand to remove his monocle, and polished it on his sleeve.
“Young idealist,” he replied, “we have a saying, in my country: overloud fools who disturb old troubles are likely to die from biting a dead man’s hand. When I die, it’ll be not because I know far too much – but because I’ve said far too much. Guard yourself accordingly.”
Monocle back in place, he added, “So my answer will be three questions; listen well. Do you think your friend Standish was sent away because they needed him in Harkholt?”
“What?”
“And my second: How many who’ve lost their throats stood against slavery?”
“I – what?”
“And the third: has anyone alive today ever actually seen the infamous wild dogs of Tarkania?”
The Count willingly surrendered his sword, and treated Galorn with more politeness than ever before – almost as an equal – as Galorn grimly escorted him back to Tark Castle.
The missing Berico and Klastel weren’t on Hargraus Hill, and the nobleman denied all knowledge of their fates or whereabouts. His story was that after he’d overheard someone on the next balcony say, “They’ll all be on Hargraus Hill, right now!” he had dressed and bolted from his bed, by way of the window – a difficult climb, but an easy slide down, if one doesn’t mind rough roof slates.
Galorn frowned. That “next balcony” belonged to rooms currently occupied by the envoy from Anhalt.
“What do you intend to do once we’ve returned to the castle?” the Count asked.
“You’re going to tell the tale of your visit to Hargraus Hill to the Markgrafina of Tarkania,” Galorn told him. “You might like to practice your pleading, as we walk.”
They found Tark Castle in an uproar. Seven more men had been found murdered, slain very quietly during the night in their beds. And every one of them had died of having their throats torn out.
An envoy from Württemburg, another from Denmark, the Portuguese plenipotentiary, a wealthy merchant from Savoy, some sort of officer from Baden, a Sardinian, a nephew of the King of Orange … aside from their interest in the Wargallant, no one knew of a connection between them. None had been friends, nor so far as anyone knew, foes – and for five of the seven, the wild dog or wolf that had killed them must have passed through other rooms in which men slept, without awakening or harming those other sleepers.