by Dave Duncan
Bolts slid. Inquisitors had ways of
entering anywhere.
The statues required a surprising effort, but
they toppled, one after the other, setting echoes
rolling and spraying fragments of stone across the
tiled floor. That would make the footing a little
trickier for the opposition, while Durendal could
stand on the steps. Moreover, the noise would bring
fifty or so servants running, which might delay
the invaders a little.
The inquisitor led in the Watch. His black
robes should have made him an ominous figure, but
he had a comical in-toed strut like a rooster
crossing a farmyard. He hesitated when he
reached the scattered debris. His men came to a
halt behind him.
His fishy gaze fixed itself on Durendal.
"You are under arrest."
Durendal smiled. "Talk is cheap."
Sounds of voices and running feet overhead
meant that the back stairs would be full of
servants, at least for a few moments. If the
Marquis had reacted fast enough he might be down
in the kitchens now, or even the cellar, which had an
exit to the alley.
"Your cause is hopeless."
"Of course."
The glassy eyes did not change expression.
"We know everything you have been up to: how you
pawned your sword breaker, how you went to Werten
House--"
"Was that its name?" Durendal itched with
eagerness for the action to start, but delay was the game.
He admired his opponent's unwinking sharklike
stare, wishing he could keep his face impassive
like that. "I needs must defend my ward, you know."
"You have already betrayed him. It was you our sniffer
was following."
Ouch! He must not let himself be rattled, although
he was trained in swords, not words. "Then my
obligation is all the greater."
Startled faces were appearing at doors and
balustrades as the servants flocked to witness this
confrontation.
"Sergeant, arrest that man."
The sergeant looked at the inquisitor in
disbelief. "He's a Blade! Can't
you enchant him, like you did that door?"
"No. Try to take him alive."
The men-at-arms exchanged worried glances.
None of them moved.
"I won't be taking prisoners," Durendal
said, feeling sorry for them. They were only doing
their duty, like him; and he would certainly fell some
of them before they overpowered him. "Inquisitor, I
regret this. I hope you catch them all and chop
off their heads, but I will do everything I can to stop
you."
"You are being illogical. Why throw away your
life on a hopeless cause?"
"You can't understand, pettifogger. The only
cause a Blade knows is the defense of his
ward. What he's up to doesn't matter--I will
die here and write my name in the Litany of
Heroes. My sword will hang in the place of
honor at Ironhall forever."
"You fool, Kromman!" Montpurse
shouted. With Chefney at his side, he came
striding around the Watch to accost the inquisitor.
"How dare you start before we got here?"
Durendal had not seen them come in the door, and
his heart dropped solidly into his boots, for
he had absolutely no chance against those two
together. But at least now it would be quick and he would not
be butchering secular men-at-arms. Harvest leaped
from her scabbard in a flash and hiss of beautiful
steel. He laughed joyously. "Come on, then!
Let's get it over with. Both of you!"
No one paid any attention to him.
"Normal rules for dealing with Blades do not
apply in this instance," said the inquisitor's
hoarse voice. He dragged a scroll from somewhere
inside his robes. "The warrant names this one as a
conspirator, not just as witness. Our readings
register him as a danger to His Majesty."
"You can take your reading and stuff it down your
throat. The King will pardon him."
"He is not pardoned yet. He goes to the
Bastion with the others."
"Come on!" Durendal shouted from the stair.
"What are you waiting for? Are you scared?" The
talk of pardons was terrifying. Far better
to die quickly doing his duty than languish as a
failure, an emotional wreck, an outcast
unable to hold up his head among men. If the
Marquis wasn't safely out of the house by now,
he never would be. Time to die.
He was ignored. The others continued to discuss
him like a troublesome damp patch in the plaster.
"Don't be a fool, Kromman!" That was
Chefney. "You can't lock up a ward and then
expect to treat his Blade like any other
prisoner. He'll go mad."
Montpurse spared Durendal an appraising
glance. "He's gone already."
The inquisitor shrugged blandly. "We can put
madmen to the Question, Commander. They often seem saner
afterward. And we shall see how he behaves now we have
his ward under restraint. Stand aside, up there!
Let them through."
Durendal heard muttering and whispers above and
behind him, up among the servants at the top of the
stair, but he was too close to Chefney and
Montpurse to take his eyes off them. He
backed up a couple of steps. It was probably
a trick. It must be a trick. The
alternative was that all the time he had been thinking
he was distracting the inquisitor, the inquisitor
had been distracting him. No! No!
"You idiot, Kromman!" Montpurse said.
"Oh, you flaming moron!"
Durendal backed up another step, still not daring
to turn his head.
"Look up, Sir Blade!" the inquisitor
shouted. "Your cause is hopeless. Throw down
your sword."
"Death and fire!" said Montpurse.
"Hoare, bring the net! Quickly!"
Durendal risked a quick glance above and behind
him. The goggling servants had been cleared away
from the top of the stair. Now the Marquis was
stumbling down between two men-at-arms, barefoot and
pathetic, his red woollen nightcap askew, his
creamy silk nightshirt torn and spattered with
blood, although apparently only from a nosebleed.
A length of chain connected his ankles, his hands were
tied behind his back, and the left-hand guard held a
sword under his chin. There were six more men-at-arms in
the squad, but they were all coming behind the prisoner.
That was foolish of them.
Durendal went up the pink granite
staircase much faster than he would normally have
dared go down it. He cut the left-hand guard's
throat before the man could even pull his sword
away from the Marquis's chin. The man on the other
side tried to draw and died. Durendal pushed his
ward aside so that he could get at the
three on the next step. He promptly
hamstrung two of them, but either his shove or the
falling bodies caused the bound prisoner to lose
his balance. The superhuman reflexes of his
Blade might have saved him even then, had not
Montpurse and Hoare at that moment enveloped
Durendal in the net. With a thin shriek of
terror, the Marquis tripped on his ankle
chains and fell headlong. He rolled all the
way down his pink granite staircase and arrived
at the inquisitor's feet with a broken neck.
Durendal screamed. He went on screaming.
The Guard bundled him in enough stout hemp to rig
a galleon. He still held his sword, of
course, and they did not try to remove it, knowing
what that would mean to a Blade, but they slid
Hoare's scabbard over it so he would not cut either
himself or the mesh in his struggles.
Chefney took his feet and Montpurse his
shoulders. They carried him out like a roll of
carpet and loaded him into the coach. They took the
west road, to Starkmoor. He still screamed.
Being both ward and suzerain, the King could
release his own Blades from their binding just by dubbing
them knights in the Order--that was how the conjuration
worked. For private Blades, with their divided
loyalty, the only way out was a reversion
ritual, which rarely succeeded. When the ward was
already dead, and possibly by the Blade's own hand,
there was no ready answer at all.
The group that assembled in the Forge that night
included no candidates. The innocent slept in
their dormitories, unaware that a Blade who was
already one of their heroes had been returned in a
seriously damaged condition. A couple of the
smiths had been recruited to help with the dirty
work, but many of the masters and other knights refused
to attend. Knowing the odds against a reversion
succeeding, they were unwilling to endure the ordeal of
watching this one.
After a whole day of screaming, Durendal had
at last fallen silent, unable to force another
sound through his battered throat. He lay on the
floor in his rope cocoon, unresponsive
to all queries or entreaties, although some
gibbering corner of his mind registered the horrible
things happening. He was knotted with cramps; he
had fouled himself. He cared for nothing except the
fact that his ward had died by violence and he had
done that terrible thing himself.
"I don't suppose we can do it without untying
him?" Grand Master mumbled. He walked with a
cane now and was seriously deaf. He was well
over eighty.
Master of Rituals ran fingers through hair that
resembled a field of seeding dandelions. "No.
We need his sword first." He had brought a
bundle of scrolls from the library, but he knew
the ritual by heart. He had always been aware that
one day he might need it and the need would be urgent.
"He must be chained. That is essential. Even
if he were in his right mind, he would have to be chained."
Montpurse said, "How could he be in his right
mind? Let's get started."
"Wait a moment," suggested Master of
Archives. "Can we get his sword out first? I
don't like the idea of him loose with his sword."
"That's a good idea."
"Let's try that. ..."
No, they discovered, they could not free the hilt
from Durendal's grip while he and the sword were
all wrapped up together. There was a delay while
Master of Arms went off to the armory and returned
with some steel gauntlets and a couple of shields.
Then Montpurse cut the knots. As the ropes
fell away, Durendal began to draw Harvest
free of the scabbard. Chefney and Master of
Horse managed to grasp the blade with the
gauntlets before the madman could wield it. Four
men pried his fingers off the hilt. The shields were
not needed. It took eight men to hold him down
while the smiths fettered his wrists and ankles;
then Montpurse and Hoare cut away his clothes
and dunked him bodily in one of the troughs, then
toweled him dry. He was trying to scream again.
The ritual was long and complex, for all the
elements that had been invoked in the binding must be
invoked again. Through it all, Durendal lay chained
on the anvil, mostly in silence now, although he
cried out when his sword was plunged into the coals.
Two masters worked the bellows.
Prolonged roasting on charcoal will ruin a
blade, making the iron brittle.
At the end of the invocation and revocation, when the
sword had been quenched, the
participants sang the dedication song, for that was
what the texts demanded, although it seemed
incongruous to include part of a ritual in its own
reversal. Then Master Armorer, a bull of a
man, took the sword Harvest and swung her,
bringing her down with all his might across the
subject's heart. As he saw the blow coming,
Durendal screamed one last time.
The blade shattered, the body did not. The
ritual had apparently succeeded.
"Can't even see a mark on his skin," Grand
Master said cheerfully, leaning forward on his cane
to peer. "Sir Durendal?"
"He's unconscious!" Montpurse said.
"Wouldn't you be? Let's get those flaming chains
off the poor beggar and put him to bed."
When the need for a privy became unendurable,
Durendal opened his eyes to admit that he was
conscious. Montpurse closed his book
instantly; he had been lounging on the window seat
for the last three hours or longer, apparently
reading. Perhaps he had been faking, too.
"How do you feel, brother?"
Whisper: "Sore throat."
"I'm surprised you have any throat left."
The room was large and well furnished, finely
paneled. The bed alone would have stabled two oxen,
the draperies were of rich velvet--faded in
places, originally good stuff. The scenery beyond the
window resembled the useless, rocky hills of
Starkmoor, but there was no chamber like this in
Ironhall.
"Where?"
The Commander rose, his smile becoming visible as
he moved away from the light. "Back home in the
Hall. This is the royal suite. The kiddies
never get to see it. Is this what's on your
mind?" He reached under the bed and produced the necessary
receptacle.
The ensuing procedure took all of
Durendal's strength--Montpurse had to help
him stand up and steady him. He flopped back on
the bed again like a landed fish. Montpurse offered a
water flask so he could drink.
"Roast venison? Pease pudding? Chicken
broth?"
Durendal closed his eyes in
silence. It was almost three years since he'd had
a good sleep.
The battle of the Royal Guard versus Sir
days. They never left him alone--Montpurse,
Hoare, Chefney, and others, taking turns.
They brought trays of steaming dishes. They
lectured. They bullied. They pleaded. Hoare
even wept. They sent in Grand Master and other
knights. They showed him the royal pardon, and his
sword breaker, and eventually even Harvest
reforged to prove to him that she was as good as new again,
and now she had her name engraved on the blade in
these neat little letters near the top, see? Nothing
worked.
He would not speak. He would not eat. He
drank water and passed it and slept. That was
all. His face grew ever thinner under its stubble.
As another night was falling, the door flew
open and the King marched in. He barked, "Out!" and
Montpurse departed like a hare. The King
slammed the door behind him, shaking the building to its
roots.
His Majesty strode to the bedside, put his
hands on his hips, and said, "Well?" He
seemed to fill the room.
Durendal whispered, "No."
The King swelled like a bullfrog, filling the
room with his amber glare. "I don't accept that
word from any man. So Tab Nillway is dead?
He would have died anyway on the block.
Perverting a Blade is a capital offense in
itself. Utter trash!"
His Blade had killed him. Nothing else
mattered, or ever would.
The royal glowering darkened. "Why should you care
now what happened to that traitor? You're free of
your binding now."
He did not feel free.
"Well?" Ambrose boomed. "Where's your
loyalty to me, mm?"
"Long live the King," Durendal whispered.
"You think that pus-face Nutting defeated you?
No, you defeated him! He thought I gave him a
Blade because he was important, but I was marking
him as dangerous. Mold like him creeps under the
furniture and rots things unseen, but he couldn't
be unseen when he had you at his heels. You
blazed. The whole court noticed you
wherever you went. And I always remembered that I had
marked Master Tab Nillway as dangerous."
That was a lie. Durendal had been assigned
to the Marquis because a sniffer could follow a
Blade in the dark. He had been a double
traitor, betraying both ward and sovereign.
The King waited for a response that never came.
Seeing that loudness wouldn't work, he tried louder,
like a rising thunderstorm. He kicked the table beside the