by Dave Duncan
“No! No! No! You were lucky, that’s all. Chance playing absurd tricks! Tell her how lucky she was, Kuri.”
Cantor Kuritsyn stood up. “We should leave, Your Highness. We promised to be back before dawn and we don’t want men coming to look for you, do we?”
“It isn’t close to dawn yet! Where are the shadowmen? You said the shadowmen would follow her.”
“They will, don’t worry.”
“Are you so certain?” Johanna yelled. “You tried to kill me with shadowmen before, didn’t you? Twice you tried. Once at Blanburg, but we had Harald with us and he knew what to do. What an incompetent, brainless way to try to kill someone!”
“They came close,” Kuritsyn said. He had a harsh, unpleasant voice. “And even closer in Grandon.”
“Never! You think I was fool enough to sleep in the dark? They killed a bunch of innocent men, is all, and if King Athelgar had listened when the Baron and I warned him, they would have done no damage at all.” Then Queen Tasha would not have talked Athelgar into sending her to Ironhall, so she would never have met Bellman, and where was he, now? Dead or captive in Vamky? No Bellman and no Blades. Ranter dead. Ringwood…
The silence of the night was broken by the ring of swords in the darkness below.
The moment Ringwood decided that the fat man over there by the fire was the real Grand Duke Rubin, his binding sent him plunging headlong down the stair. On the face of it, he was abandoning his ward in the face of danger, but if Rubin was the spider in the web, the cause of all the trouble, then he was responsible for all the deaths, even tonight’s, and should pay the penalty. More important, putting a sword at Rubin’s throat was the most likely way to extract the Duchess from this trap. At least, that was what Ringwood assumed was happening. Bindings worked like instincts and had no need of logic.
Anyone with lesser reflexes than a Blade would have fallen off those greasy, irregular treads by the third or four stride, but Ringwood hurtled down them about ten times faster than he would normally have dared in daylight and dry weather. He even managed to draw his sword, which was no easy matter when the curtain wall was flying by him on his right-hand side. He had barely done so when he come to the first shadowman pursuer.
The figure loomed out of the night below, climbing doggedly and carrying a halberd in both hands. Even in the darkness Ringwood recognized the short-legged waddle of János. Trudy still had the Count’s sword, but a halberd would be just as deadly in these impossible fighting conditions.
Sir Tancred had said that Shadowmen seemed to have superhuman strength but sluggish reflexes. Gambling on that and using his velocity, Ringwood leaped over the halberd and rammed the János corpse with both feet. He hit the wall with his shoulder, slid down it, and landed on his seat with a crack that seemed to lift his skull off his neck, but the shadowman pitched backward and impacted another behind him. Together they toppled, rolled outward, and were gone. The corpses themselves fell with no sound. He heard their weapons clang on rocks and could tell that the drop was still too far to risk a jump. It would be like jumping onto iron spikes, anyway.
The jolt of agony as he stood up made him wonder if he’d broken his pelvis, but he was more worried by the broadsword coming straight down at him. He parried it outward with all his strength, clutching Bad News two-handed. Engagement with the massive weapon gave him leverage to push himself safely back against the wall. Clang! But the corpse’s strength shocked him. Again and again it chopped at him and he parried. Clang! Clang! Clang! Then at last he found enough leverage to force the broadsword outward; the corpse lost its balance and went over the edge. Third man down, this time with a crashing of small timber.
He started downstairs again. He’d known since the night he was bound that the binding had improved his night vision. Ironhall had several legends of Blades fighting in pitch darkness, although few were well documented. He wasn’t aware of seeing at all in this battle. He was just behaving as if he could see. He knew where and what things were.
Like that fourth shadowman ahead, a great hulking carcass that could not possibly have come through from the tunnel by any normal means. How many of the monsters were there? Was he going to have to fight the entire corpse population of the keep before he could get off this accursed stair? And what good was he doing anyway? The monsters could fight on after their heads were cut off, Tancred had said, so broken bones wouldn’t stop them. Only dawn. Until then they would just keep coming back for more.
The fourth one took him with the same ploy he’d used successfully against the third. It lunged to his right and he was forced to parry toward the wall. The shadowman flipped him out like a pancake.
He turned a complete somersault on the way down. He wondered how the shadowman conjuration worked and whether the fall cancelled out the contact in some way, or if he was now doomed to haunt the keep through all eternity. He even had time to hope he would land on his head and smash his brains out, not just lie there broken and suffering for hours or days until he died. Then someone caught him.
• 7 •
Three men in stained white robes strode through the Vamky labyrinth. Bellman supported Radu, who was in even worse shape than he was, and both struggled to keep up with the impatient Volpe. The Provost knew exactly where he was going, but it involved a long, circuitous trek. He threw open cell doors and marched in, snarling orders. Startled brethren jerked awake and hastened to obey, grabbing up sword and robe, but he had to rouse his most trusted subordinates first, and there was no system in the locations of their cells. Only when he had set his counterrevolution in motion could he spare a moment for his two rescuers.
“Cantor Isidor!”
A white-haired, scrawny man opened his eyes in bewilderment, blinked up at the Provost’s lantern. “Sir!”
“Brother, I am suppressing a mutiny. Call only on men you can trust absolutely and beware of betrayal. The password is ‘Morning light’ and the rejoinder ‘Justice and retribution.’ Got that?”
“Sir.” The old man sat up. “Morning light. Justice and retribution.”
“You may arrest or kill anyone who does not know this. We urgently require a healing. Senior Knight-brother Radu, here, has been injured. This man is a valuable ally and the finest swordsman I have ever seen, Sir Bellman of Chivial. Both men need anklets. Then feed them, dress them in highway informals, and have them ready to ride at first light.”
“Sir.”
The door closed with a bang. Cantor Isidor just sat and stared after the Provost for a moment, then looked to his two guests. His scraggy mouth folded into a smile. “I hope you two can remember all that better than I can. Pass me my gown and sword, brother. Repeat what the Provost just said.”
In seconds the old man was ready to leave. A cantor’s belt was green. “Have you ever used anklets?”
“Sir,” Radu said.
“There’s some on the shelf there. Wait here until I send for you.”
“Sir.”
The door closed.
Radu tried to raise an arm and winced, for his gown had adhered to the wounds on his back. “Give me one and take one for yourself. Wear it next to the skin. Either foot will do.”
The anklets were strips of leather with thongs at one end. Bellman wrapped one around his left ankle, above his sandal, and at once felt a pleasurable tingle spreading up his leg. He knelt to help Radu.
“Fatigue relief,” Radu said. “They’re good for about a day. Try to eat often, or you may need weeks to recover your strength. When the anklet starts to hurt, you must remove it. It should be destroyed then, because the power has gone out of it. And after that you must sleep. You will have no choice. That can happen suddenly, and a second inspiration before you have recovered from this one could kill you.”
“I feel better already!” Also hungry. Reeeeeeeally hungry. Tingling all over now, Bellman began to pace restlessly. He sneezed.
The door was opened by a hooded figure wearing a blue sword belt. “Morning light.”
&nb
sp; “Justice and retribution,” Radu responded. “Sir.”
“Brother, I am to take you and your companion to the octogram.”
The dark corridors of Vamky were busier now, with brethren running in twos and fours. Somewhere bells were tolling. Bellman waited impatiently on the sidelines while eight men chanted to heal Radu of a beating for the second time in less than two days.
After that it was Radu who set the pace. He led Bellman at a trot to the quartermaster’s, where they were outfitted in fresh traveling clothes of white leather, simple in style and of exceptional quality. The breeches were supple, the jerkins hard as armor. Bellman was given a sword belt checkered in blue and white, a blue cloak of soft wool, and a shiny steel helmet. Novices and squires fussed around, brushing, polishing, checking the fit.
Then—at last!—Radu led him to a huge refectory and let him eat. He gorged, mostly on meat: beef, goose, sheep liver, washed down with pitchers of buttery milk. He could have eaten even Ringwood under the table. Radu not only kept up but surpassed him. Other men were hurrying in, eating hastily.
He sneezed several times.
Radu frowned across at him. “You caught a cold!”
“Hardly surprising after yesterday.”
“Yes, but the anklet will make it worse. You have the choice of fatigue or a bad attack of sniffles.”
“Restored, I see? Do not rise.” Volpe stood at their side, shaven, shorn, and clad in much the same costume as they. He was a big man, conscious of his power and authority, although his only symbols of rank were a silver sword belt and a horn hung on a baldric. “You have only a few minutes, and you will need that food. Remember you are borrowing strength from future days. No matter how sprightly you feel, you must try not to overdo it.”
“Sir,” Radu said with his mouth full of pheasant, “my experience has been that consorting with Bellman leaves a man no choice but to overdo it or be utterly shamed.”
“Baldertwaddle!” Bellman exclaimed. “You were the one who got me into trouble. I am ready whenever you are, my lord. Vamky is secure?”
An eagle glare warned him of his impudence, but he was still in favor. “It is,” the Provost said. “Thanks to you. And justice is about to be done. The boy is safe until we need him. Where is Her Highness?”
So Johanna was now Her Highness, was she? That title boded well.
“She went on to Donehof with Count János, my lord.” Bellman’s euphoria faltered under the Provost’s scowl. “Not good?”
“Probably not. János is a deferred brother.” The Provost smiled thinly at Bellman’s alarm. “He asked to be relieved of his duties for family reasons. That is known hereabouts as ‘breeding leave,’ but only the obligation of celibacy is withdrawn, and he may be recalled to duty at any time until the hour of his death. There are thousands of men in and around Krupina similarly bound. When the Fadrenschloss refugees took shelter at Brikov, we looked for János’s file and could not find it. I sent Radu to retrieve the boy. If Minhea’s men have located János’s records since then, he is theirs.”
Bellman wondered again how much free will the brethren had, whether their oaths were spiritually implanted, like the Blades’, but he dared not ask.
“Sir?” Radu said.
“Speak.”
“Sir. János knew I had been behind the child’s disappearance. I hadn’t told him, obviously. He questioned me very severely about that.”
“Almost killed him,” Bellman said.
“But he also asked why I had come to Brikov and he would not accept my father’s funeral as my reason. Eventually I told him I was apostatizing, my lord, because of what I had seen…or thought I had seen. He…he redoubled his efforts after that.”
Volpe shrugged. “Of course the board will ask what you revealed under torture, but expect it to be lenient about that.”
“Sir? Board?” Radu lost color.
“You should have reported your suspicions of treason to your commanding officer, of course. The fact that you returned voluntarily will offset anything you said about apostatizing. Expect to be demoted and given a chance to reaffirm your oath. The Duchess may be in very grave peril, but our mission cannot become any more urgent than it is already. You ride well, Herr Bellman?”
“Yes, my lord.” He wasn’t as good as Radu, but he would uphold the honor of Ironhall if it killed him. He had more motive than any of them.
Lord Volpe’s smile was disbelief and challenge. “You will ride on my left. I want to hear your story in detail. Knight-brother Radu, Banneret Dusburg will assign you your place. Dawn approaches!” The Provost put the horn to his lips and made the hall ring.
Ranter was not breathing. At the moment of death his eyes had rolled up and the lids were partly closed, revealing only slits of white. He stank of death and the indignities of death. He was cold. He…it…no, he was making no aggressive move. He was not moving at all. Not breathing.
Ringwood was breathing, gasping for breath, heart drumming like all the world’s woodpeckers. He was not dead, not yet, but he was helpless as a baby in the shadowman’s arms.
“Put me down, brother?”
Ranter set him down. Now it was clear that he had been stabbed and slashed half to pieces. He had several black-crusted wounds in his chest, and his throat had been cut. Blades never died easily. His hips and shoulders were abraded to the bone, cloth and flesh torn away where he had come through the hole from the tunnel, but those wounds had not bled. Invincible hung at his side.
A dozen other corpses stood around in the darkness, watching, motionless. Was this sudden loss of aggression a sign that dawn was near? Or…like Sir Bernard and Sir Richey? They became shadowmen, too, Sir Tancred had said, and we found their bodies with the others in the morning. But they did not attack the living, the way the dead Yeomen did. Perhaps they didn’t get the chance, but Grand Wizard thinks their binding may have given them some immunity, at least for a while.
Ringwood forced some spit into his mouth and pointed up at the fire. “The man up there wants to kill our ward, brother. I must go up there and kill him. Will you help me?”
Ranter turned and stepped out into space. His foot landed unerringly on a jagged boulder a long pace away and lower. The other swung over to a foothold on a jagged spike of stone, and his hand reached for a grip…he was doing all that in the dark, and Ringwood was seeing it in the dark. The moment Ranter’s boot cleared the first stepping-stone Ringwood put his own there in a long half-stride, half-fall. There was no way to do this slowly. He must keep up his momentum just to remember the moves. He followed his dead guide across the deadly labyrinth, up and down, over six-foot gaps, under overhangs. Ranter plowed through stands of shoulder-high thistles and jumped down eight-foot drops without a care. Yet he did seem to know what his companion was doing, because once Ringwood found himself dangling by one hand and unable to find a second grip or haul himself up by the one he had. An icy fist closed on his wrist and lifted him like a trout in a net.
“Thanks, brother,” he gasped, but Ranter was already on the move.
Ranter never spoke. Ranter’s throat had been ripped open, after all. Ranter, face it, was very dead. Perhaps his corpse would play foul and turn on Ringwood without warning, but until then Ringwood could not refuse its help. Some of the other shadowmen were following, making just enough noise that he knew they were there.
Crossbow kept niggling at him. Even leaping out into blackness to find a toehold that he knew was there only by some sort of spiritualist faith, he kept thinking crossbow. He had seen no crossbows, smelled no crossbows, tasted no crossbows. No one had mentioned crossbows. His binding was sending him hunches. The way Johanna had described her husband, Rubin should not be here in person. To stay in character he should have stayed home and read about it tomorrow in the comfort of his study. No, he had come to see with his own eyes that this time she died right and died real, and he would keep her there on that staircase until there was light enough for Knight-brother Kuritsyn to use a crossbo
w. Johanna was at point-blank range, and even a near-miss could kill someone perched on that staircase.
When the nightmare journey ended, there was no doubt that the sky was brightening. The rain had not stopped, but clouds alone could not keep the world dark forever. Voices came drifting down in the wind, the words inaudible, Johanna pleading with Rubin. The ruined chimney block rose from its bed of rubble to tower to the sky. If one thought of the jagged fragments of former floors and walls protruding at all angles as blades, then it became a gigantic mace. The shadowmen didn’t expect Ringwood to climb that, did they? They expected something. There were a lot of them there, standing around like thirsty men outside a tavern.
Ranter climbed a tilted slab, turned his back against the wall at the top, and cupped his hands. Shivering with distaste, Ringwood took hold of his dead friend’s jerkin, placed a boot on the step offered, and climbed. When he was standing on Ranter’s shoulders he was still not quite high enough to reach the doorway above him, so he reluctantly used the top of his former friend’s head as one more step. The corpse did not object.
Ringwood caught hold of the sill and hauled himself up. He was on a stair landing, with one flight going up from there and another down. Straight ahead of him was a tunnel with only darkness beyond it, but he could feel wind on his face and decided it was a passage through the thickness of the curtain wall. At the end of it he found a heavy door propped open by a lump of stone. He peered out, seeing campfires with men standing around on guard. He was about one story above ground level, but there was a ladder at his toes. For the first time in many hours, he felt the siren call of hope. The soldiers were a problem, but there might be a way out of this mess after all.
He retraced his steps to the stairs. Several shadowmen were standing on the downward flight, blocking it—so he wouldn’t go the wrong way, perhaps? How stupid did they think the living could be? The other had to be the route the Duke and his henchman had taken. He drew Bad News.