by Dave Duncan
“You are going to be very bad news for somebody, my sweet!” he whispered. He had not taken two steps before a hand like an iron glove closed on his shoulder. He squeaked in alarm, then realized that it belonged to Ranter, who had followed him up. Many other shadowmen were scrambling up after him.
“What’s wrong, brother?” His voice came out more shrill than he had expected. “This is the way up, isn’t it?”
Ranter’s dead face did not change. His grip on Ringwood’s shoulder became unbearable.
“What? What’s wrong? Stop! What are you trying…” He crumpled under that relentless weight. Even alive, Ranter had enjoyed showing off his brawn, and now he folded Ringwood small, crumpling him down on his knees and farther, until his nose was almost on the first tread. There he spied a thin golden thread, spread across from side to side.
“Ah! This is your problem?” He had been brought here just to remove that? “Is this a sort of warding cord?” He was talking to himself. “You can’t cross it?” There was no one there to answer him, only dead people, but the idea was logical, because there must be some sort of conjuration to keep the walking dead from leaving by that door he had found. “I go first, all right?” The hand did not move. He could not even twist around to see Ranter’s face, but it would not tell him anything anyway. “I promise you I’ll let you and your companions have them before daylight.” The chill hand was lifted from his shoulder. He stood up.
He lifted the cord on the tip of his sword and nothing ill happened. Up the stairs he went, bearing it before him, and Ranter led the army of the dead at his heels.
Two flights up Ringwood heard voices and went more cautiously until he found himself looking out at the Duke’s aerie; the Rat’s nest. Nothing had changed. The fire had dwindled but was still a powerful blaze, bright enough to neutralize shadowmen. The two evildoers had their backs to the doorway—paunchy Rubin perched on his stool and the white-robed, sword-bearing brother standing beside him. Both were facing out into the rainy dusk, looking across at Johanna and Trudy, still over there on the stairs, but sitting now, huddling together for warmth. Still talking. The crossbow and a quiver of quarrels stood in a corner behind the fireplace, where they would not be visible from outside.
There was enough light to start shooting now.
“I assure you that I even spoke to you!” the knight-brother said. “I was dressed as an inquisitor and nobody looks very hard at inquisitors, or speaks to them unless they must. Not even other inquisitors!”
If Johanna had noticed that her Blade had just joined her husband’s party, she give no sign. Yet her next question might have been designed for him.
“So that was after you planted the firefly in Quamast House?”
“I have already said so.”
Another golden thread lay across the doorstep. Ringwood slid his sword point under that one, too, and stepped forward to flip both of them into the fire. The other men felt the floor sway and heard his footsteps crunching on the rubbly surface. They turned. The swordsman drew—fast, but not fast enough to be worrisome.
“There he is,” the Duke said. “Oh, the poor thing is hurt. Put him out of his misery, Cantor.”
The two swordsmen eyed each other carefully, and Kuri edged away from the Duke, giving himself more room.
“No,” Ringwood said. “I am a Blade, so I am in charge here now. He slew six of my brothers and another died tonight because of him—and you, too, Duke. You are just as guilty. Now I will do the killing.”
After all those hours of failure and self-blame he ought to be exulting at the smell of vengeance, but he could feel no emotion. He was an execution machine, an insentient instrument of justice. Numb, and implacable as a shadowman.
“Be careful!” True yelled across from the stair. “Kuritsyn’s a conjurer. He may have tricks.”
There was no room to stage a showoff fencing bout. Since Ringwood had promised these two jackals to the shadowmen, just driving them off the edge would be a breach of faith. Duke Rubin jumped to his feet and grabbed up his stool to use as a weapon.
“Don’t be ridiculous!” Ringwood said wearily.
But even a stool could be dangerous. He flashed forward at Kuritsyn, feinted, parried the riposte, and swept Bad News around to strike the Duke’s arm. He had recovered two paces before the stool even hit the floor or the Duke screamed. The platform swayed unnervingly.
“First royal blood to me,” he said. Kuri came for him, saber flickering firelight in a series of fierce cuts. His was a showy technique, not one to impress a Blade. Ringwood played with him for a few passes, then riposted to cut his shoulder. “Bernard!” He parried the next pathetic lunge and opened a gash down his ribs. “Richey!”
The cantor cried out and recovered perilously close to the edge. Ringwood needed three or four careful lunges to move him away from it and turn him, so he could be driven back to the door: Clang! Clang! Clang! For the first time he glimpsed the face within the hood—fortyish, lean, twisted in a rictus of terror.
Then—“Valiant!” That was a nasty cut on the thigh, spilling blood like a black tide.
The knight-brother threw down his sword and raised his hands. “Stop! Mercy!”
“Mercy? You showed no mercy!” Ringwood put Bad News at the end of the wretch’s nose. He could cut the man to straw now, but there was no joy in this. “Back with you!”
Terror-stricken, Kuritsyn backed away and Bad News followed him, step by step, until he was at the doorway.
“You are judged guilty and sentenced to whatever you did to my brothers,” Ringwood said. “Ranter! You and your friends can take this one now.”
A dozen dead hands reached out and dragged the knight-brother back into darkness. He screamed several times, each cry shriller than the last. Yorick, East, Clovis…Ranter.
It had been obscenely easy! Not even winded by the bout, Ringwood strolled over to the crossbow, carried it to the edge, and hurled it off. He had been expecting the Duke to intervene, perhaps rush him in the hope of overcoming him with his vastly greater weight, but Rubin was clutching his wounded arm, trying to apply pressure with a silken kerchief.
“Take off your cloak!” Ringwood said.
“What?” The Duke looked up in terror. “I’m sorry your friends had to die, young man. It was all my wife’s fault, you see, but husbands should keep their wives under better control than that, so I’m willing to pay some sort of compensation if that—”
“Take off your cloak!” The sky was getting bright. There was little time left. As the shivering Duke obeyed, Ringwood looked across to the audience. The jury, he thought.
“Your Grace, Sister Gertrude? Have you any more questions to put to the accused, or know you any good reason why I should not pass and carry out sentence?”
“No!” It sounded like both of them together.
“NO!” The Duke fell on his knees. “Killing me will solve nothing.”
“It will make the world a better, cleaner place,” Ringwood said, scooping up the cloak. As he walked over to the hearth, he sheathed his sword to leave both hands free. “Ranter! This one’s yours, brother.”
Ranter emerged from the darkness of the doorway, but his feet made no sound on the gritty floor and he cast no shadow in the firelight. The Duke screamed and scrambled to his feet. Wailing, he backed away until it seemed he would pitch off the platform.
“Do you want to do it?” Ringwood asked, just to be certain.
The wraith nodded. Its cut throat made moist noises.
Ringwood draped the great cloak over the fireplace arch and held it there to cut off the light.
Ranter solidified. He shuffled across to the Duke, took him by the neck, and forced him down, first to his knees, then onto his belly. He bent his head back until his neck snapped, then released him and straightened up.
The cloak was smoldering, so Ringwood tossed it into the hearth. The dead Blade became smokily transparent as the light blazed up more brightly. He turned and headed for the door,
blank eyes and frozen features conveying nothing.
“Brother?” Ringwood’s throat was so tight he could barely speak. “That was well done! Wait!” He caught the corpse’s arm. It was flimsy, insubstantial, yet he could feel the chill of death through the sodden, tattered cloth. Ranter detected the contact and stopped.
“Don’t go, brother! Stay here. You’ll die at first light, but you’re already dead. Don’t go down to the cellars, please! Don’t be a shadowman. Get it over with and die properly. I’ll stay with you, I promise. I’ll hold your hand until the sun comes up, if that will help. And afterward we’ll return you to the elements with a proper funeral.”
Ranter resumed his walk, pulling right through Ringwood’s fingers.
“Brother! Invincible? At least send her home! Let me take her so she can hang in the sky of swords.”
The shadowman showed no sign that he heard. Ringwood watched him vanish into the dark of the stairs. Dead Rubin went shuffling after his killer, head hung at an odd angle.
Ringwood fought back sobs. None for Rubin. Most for Ranter. A few for himself. He had won, but he should have done better. Why was victory so hollow? Had the fight, when it came, been too easy? Or was it just that killing off the evil did not restore the good?
When the women started shouting for him, he walked as close to the edge as he dared. He yelled his words to the world. “The shadowmen are gone! The villains are dead!” The keep echoed for him. “There’s a way out of here below me. Go back down the stair and find shelter from this accursed rain. I’ll come and get you.”
“I love you!” True shouted. “You’re my hero always!”
“That goes for both of us!” Johanna said.
He watched them start down, and then surreptitiously went to the fireplace and tried to warm himself, but his clothes were so wet that the heat just seemed to make him shiver harder. After a few minutes he decided that the daylight was now bright enough to banish shadowmen, and he had better leave before the soldiers outside came looking for their lost leaders. At the bottom of the stairs, he stumbled on a sheathed sword lying across his path. It bore a cat’s-eye gem on the pommel.
• 8 •
When the Provost of Vamky rode out, he rode in style. Bellman was astride a black, seventeen-hand stallion that would have turned the King of Chivial emerald with envy, and every man in the company was mounted as well or better. Yet this was not an elaborate turnout as Vamky judged such things—just a standard-bearer in the van, Volpe with his Chivian guest, and fifty steely-eyed young swordsmen churning along the sodden roads like a tidal wave, other traffic be damned. Fortunately there was no other traffic in the cold dawn light. Plate mail would be more impressive, but today Volpe wanted speed, and speed he was getting.
The rain had stopped. The Duke might yet get a fine day for his wedding.
Volpe overwhelmed, irresistible as a landslide. The only man Bellman had ever met to compare with him was Grand Master, but Grand Master was a thrusting sword, with both point and edge. Volpe seemed to be pure broadsword. He began flashing questions when they pounded out the monastery gate, and by the time they crossed Olden Bridge, he knew everything Bellman had seen or done since Johanna arrived at Ironhall.
After that he fell silent, leaving Bellman free to chew on his own worries. Johanna—assuming she had not already been betrayed by János to her odious husband and murdered in the night—Johanna would recover her son, so Bellman could count his expedition a success. Her happiness was what he wanted. But Volpe was obviously determined to nullify Rubin one way or another, which would leave Volpe running the country, so then what happened to Frederik? In a sense his mother would lose him again, for he would be state property. And Bellman? Even if Volpe allowed the Grand Duchess a significant role in rearing the new Grand Duke, Krupina would never tolerate her marrying a penniless lowborn foreign adventurer. If she had to choose between Bellman and Frederik, Bellman would lose.
And that was not even the least of his worries, because he still did not know the true story of how Volpe had landed in a dungeon in his own fortress. Betrayal, was all he had said. But suppose he had been the traitor? Suppose he had tried to kill Rubin, Frederik, Johanna, and even his own wastrel son, and Rubin had imprisoned him because of it? Suppose clever-clever Bellman had intervened on the wrong side and released a monster? Rubin might be remarrying because he genuinely believed his wife and son were dead. The brief mourning might seem callous, but he was fifty and must be impatient for an heir.
“That’s Fadrenschloss,” Volpe said, pointing.
Bellman saw only hills and trees, but nodded wisely.
“As a child,” the Provost went on, changing the subject without warning, “he was always a perfect little gentleman as long as there were adults around. But the kitchen sluts were terrified of him.” Was he about to volunteer his side of the story? That would be a surprising courtesy, but he would have some hidden reasons, no doubt.
“The family married him off as soon as it was half-decent and hoped that would be the end of it. When his first wife died we could not be sure.” The gathering daylight caught a rueful smile that seemed to be directed only to the road ahead. “One lesson I learned early in my military career, Jack Bellman, is that pessimists live longer! Good news is much easier to believe than bad. Give your enemy reason to believe that you are far away and nine times out of ten he will believe it right up to the moment you kick his door in. It is true in ordinary life, too. We all find reasons to accept sugary fables and ignore unwelcome tidings. The family did not want to believe that the girl’s death had been anything but an unfortunate misjudgment.
“He threw the second one out a window. This time there was no doubt. One of the wineglasses reeked of poppy, so much so that he must have had to carry her across the room. He was Grand Duke and I his sworn vassal, but obviously something had to be done. I told him there would be no more marriages. He agreed. He didn’t like what happened, either, he just couldn’t help himself. He promised to stick to the lowborn and pay them off as soon as he tired of them, and that scheme worked for more than thirty years. Even when I was away campaigning, he kept to our agreement. Apart from that one weakness he was a good Duke—frugal, prudent, and too lazy to go looking for trouble as so many rulers do. The girls did well out of it. They had to endure degrading carnal abuse for a couple of weeks, but afterward they went off with enough money to buy a decent husband. A few days’ rest and most of them were as good as new and perfectly happy again.
“Then that idiot von Fader! He knew the game but he wouldn’t play. If she had been any sort of blood relation I could have understood it, but she was nothing to him. By the time I heard of it the marriage was being proclaimed. I tried to frighten the girl out of it, but that didn’t work.”
The Provost turned his intimidating stare on Bellman, who assumed he was expected to comment.
“Her Highness does not scare easily, my lord.”
“Obviously. I underestimated her.” Again that grim smile came and went. “Women are not my forte. I warned Rubin I would tolerate no more violence, but you can’t reason with him when he’s in heat. I arranged for the Court to boycott her and hoped he would quietly put her away when he came to his senses.
“Unfortunately, she behaved perfectly. She did as she was told, caused no trouble, never complained, even when he went back to bedroom minuet again. She dropped a son right on the legal deadline, and after that putting her away was out of the question. The commoners worshiped her because she was one of their own and they dreaded me inheriting. They certainly didn’t want Karl. Frankly, I couldn’t see Karl as a duke, either. Rubin never let her out of the palace. He told her he was concerned for her safety, but he just didn’t want to hear her cheered, because he never got cheered. He is not a cheerable sort of duke.
“This spring the Margrave’s son died and we all realized that his daughter would inherit the March. Even before I broke that news to Rubin I knew what was liable to happen. I tried to mend
a fence or two with the…with Her Highness, but of course she wouldn’t trust me.
“I suspect that Rubin had already decided to dispose of her. He was tired of seeing her around, maybe, or he just can’t stand being married. I don’t understand how his clock ticks, but he knew he would need something more subtle than defenestration to satisfy me.
“He began by bribing Abbot Minhea, which wasn’t difficult. Abbot and Provost never get along. That’s always been the idea behind the joint rule, and we two were no exception. Rubin swore he’d let Minhea arrange a vacancy and name a crony as my successor. The old fool agreed and so Rubin gained the spiritual resources of Vamky. That’s where the locket came from.
“He also enlisted my no-good son, which was probably even easier. I tried to bridle Karl by keeping him on a short purse string, but he had become very skilled at sponging off women. Rubin twisted him like yarn. ‘Seduce Johanna,’ he said. ‘Get her with child, then I’ll pack her off in disgrace and that brat of hers with her, and you’ll be second in line again.’ The young fool accepted the challenge, of course. He didn’t see that getting rid of two heirs might be twice as good as getting rid of one. He also discovered he wasn’t the slick seducer he thought he was when it came to women his own age.”
“You don’t suppose,” Bellman snapped, “that Her Highness might deserve some credit for not being deceived?”
Volpe shot a sour glance at him. “I suppose it’s possible. At any rate, Rubin tired of waiting on Karl. On the way to Trenko, he arranged for the Baron to be told I was plotting a coup. He knew the old man would tell Johanna and she would hare back to Krupa to defend her child. Rubin himself went off to Zolensa that night to establish an alibi. He announced that his wife was at Fadrenschloss and of course everyone believed him. Karl, armed with the locket, did the rest. Spirits know where he was taking her.”
“He told Johanna they were headed for Vamky.”
Volpe grimaced. “Then I’m glad I don’t know what he thought was going to happen when they got there. Minhea sent Cantor Kuritsyn to set up the ambush. The man’s a virtuoso assassin. It worked well, but not perfectly. Perfection would have been all the bodies in view and identified.