by Dave Duncan
“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.
7
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 an
d 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.”
8
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 Durendal went on for three nights and three 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 bed. He threw a scroll on the covers. “There’s your pardon. I’ll make you a knight in the Order, and you can put all that fencing skill of yours to work teaching, here in Ironhall. Well, what do you say?”
To live out the rest of his days in these barren hills? To be a permanent horrible example of a failed Blade, pointed out to all those youngsters, and helping to trap them as he had been trapped? It was unthinkable. “No.”
“Thought not.” There was a dangerous glint of satisfaction in the King’s cunning stare. “Well, I didn’t ride all day on an empty stomach just to pander to a self-pitying namby-pamby. You’re interfering with the business of the kingdom. You’re an almighty nuisance, but I’m going to try another binding on you.”
“What? Will that work?”
“Probably not. The conjurers say it will kill you. I’m going to find out.” A royal bellow rattled the casement. “His Majesty has need of a Blade. Are you ready to serve?”
Durendal shook his head.
The royal yellow eyes flashed dangerously. “You refuse our command?”
Making a great effort, Durendal said, “Binding is evil. It steals a man’s soul.”
“Steals it? It gives him one, you mean. If your past had had any future in this world, boy, you would never have been brought to Ironhall. A Blade has pride, status, and above all a sense of purpose. He matters. His life matters. His death may matter even more. And you certainly don’t look as if you’ve got any future at the moment. Serve or die!” The King raised a clenched fist. “But I won’t be a laughingstock, even for you. Can you stand on your own feet? Will you say the words?”
To climb up on the anvil or lift a sword in his present state would be an impossible effort. “No.”
“Very well. I take back the pardon.” The King did, crumpling it into a pocket. “Now you have a choice. You can either be put to the Question, stand trial, and then have your head chopped off, or you can get a sword through your heart tonight. Which is it to be?”
Since he couldn’t just will himself to death, the quicker way was the more appealing choice. Besides, it would make fat Ambrose do his own filthy executions.
“All right. I’ll say the words.”
“Then get out of that putrefying bed and bow to your sovereign lord.”
“I haven’t any clothes on.”
“I won’t scream. Up!”
Durendal forced himself upright. The covers were made of lead, but he heaved them aside and put his feet on the floor. He stood, swayed, straightened.
“Go on, man! We are waiting!”
Durendal began to bow and collapsed.
“I didn’t say grovel, I said bow!” The King took him under the
arms and hoisted him to his feet like a doll, big as he was. For a long moment they stared at each other.
Then the King pushed, and he fell back on the bed like a dirty shirt.
“Get dressed. We’ll start as soon as you’re ready. Cold baths come first.” The door slammed behind the monarch. The building trembled again.
9
“For the last time,” the King roared, rousing long-sleeping echoes, “I am not going to meditate. Not five minutes, not one minute. I have meditated all day on a horse to get here. The candidate has meditated in bed for even longer. I am hungry. Begin now!”
Eight hearths flickered in the deep stillness of the hold. More than a hundred men and boys held their breath in the spirit-sanctified gloom.
Master of Rituals cringed. “My liege!”
Candidate? Yes, Durendal was a candidate again. He was as weak as a newborn babe again. Even standing without swaying was an effort, and there were all those shocked young eyes staring at him. Young! It wasn’t even three years since he had been one of those apple-cheeked kids, but they had not looked so innocent then, surely? Could those be seniors? When he’d agreed to go through with this, he had forgotten there would be an audience. He was the celebrated, the famous, the renowned Sir Durendal, who’d taken the King’s Cup away from Montpurse last year and just a few days ago had won a broadsword duel without striking a blow. He must look like a geriatric paralytic to these adolescents, ruining all their dreams. Every one of them was going to have to go through the ordeal in the next few months or years, and seeing their King strike the famous Durendal dead in front of their eyes would give all these kiddies nightmares.
There was Montpurse, shining like a gold figurine in the firelight, going to be Second for him in the ritual. Poor old Grand Master, failing fast—soon another sword would hang in the hall. But Harvest was going there even sooner, because Sir Durendal was going to die tonight, and good riddance to all of them and the whole stinking world.