The Hollow March

by Chris Galford

  She felt the movement behind her, but her injury did not allow her to deal with it in time. The other man had risen, and was coming at her. The club smacked her across the face before she could react. She sank down, tried to rise, only to be struck again on the top of the head. She sank in a sea of blinding red. She felt something hack up through her lungs, a hot, sticky mass. When she could open her eyes against the pain, she saw her own blood spat into the snow.

  Fallit was shouting. She saw him slice through one man’s throat, both of them increasingly blurry masses. Blood scattered, but he was already moving through it, attempting to carve through another. Fallit was being circled, flanked. He twisted on one; another lunged. A heavy body struck him and both toppled into the snow, a grappling mass of curses and indecipherable grunts.

  Something smacked, sloppy and wet. Again and again. Fists falling. She wanted to reach out for him. Tried to will her legs to move, but they would not respond. Everything ached, and numbed, in turn. Nothing listened. The note. I have to get…She tried to scream. Wanted to shout to the heavens that she was there, that she was alive, that both of them were nigh untouchable. Messengers. It was sacrilege to kill a messenger.

  Then the sky was falling as a bald man loomed over her, brandishing his club. She heard Kasimir saying, “All men are dogs,” and she thought she heard the dog howling in the distance. She watched the bald man raise it one more time, and then she felt as though she were diving into a lake. First the chill, the soundless fury of the descent. Then the weightlessness, as everything but the darkness faded away. She drifted into the deep.

  * *

  Nothing is sweeter than the laughter of a child, nor so blissfully ignorant.

  “You’ll never take me alive, ye scallywag!”

  Sounds of laughter rang from the room—and not entirely the youth’s. Pirates danced through the mind’s eye as stick and child darted back and lunged forward, with all manner of grace the knight had to offer. Beyond, somewhere in that great expanse of pillows and sheets, lay the princess and her dreaded captor, the Dread Pirate Burkel.

  It was his servants who danced around the boy now, slashing at arm and leg with razored cutlasses, howling out drunken jests as the knight warded them off and struck them down by the dozens. They would never take him, nor even wound him, for he was the equally legendary Ser Gerold, master of House Cullick, savior of virginity—though he knew not quite what the term meant as yet—and defender of virtue. None had ever taken him in a fight. None ever would.

  At least in that fantasy land, where children often lost themselves, and parents were but monsters come to snatch them all away.

  Charlotte faintly giggled, hand pressed daintily to her lips, as the boy made another lunge, caught himself on one of the many pilfered pillows, and toppled headlong into the carpet. Many children might have cried from the blow. But not Ser Gerold. Gerold might have, but Ser Gerold simply rolled to his side and clambered to his feet, and struck madly down all those that had caused such an offense. He gleamed in moments like this. Charlotte loved it so.

  “I’ll have at ye for that, ye dogsniffer!”

  It was good to have an imagination. Especially in a place like this. Hers had long since gone the way of her elders—useful in terms of scrambling higher on the food chain, violently resistant to the fairies and drakkons and fairy tale fancies of the child’s mind. If she had ever had such visions. She could remember when she was very young…yes, she must have been very young. She aged far too quickly, perhaps, but some needed to.

  Gerold Cullick did not.

  She envied him that. It would be sweet to forget the dirty deeds of men. Not to concern oneself. To lose it all in a haze of euphoric fancy. Less interesting, but also less messy.

  Their father was finally getting what he had wanted for a long time. Justice, or some semblance thereof. His daughter’s virginity was a precious thing, precious apparently beyond her reckoning, for its loss put a fire in her father the likes of which she had never seen. He crushed men. Trampled lords. Treated the Church as some wayward child that he could twist to his own ends. So he did. He moved where advantage led.

  Crushing the Matairs was of the moment not only possible, but also desirable. Witold and he had argued over land rights for decades. Any scheming little opportunity was hastily scrambled over by one or the other.

  Yet there was such a thing as going too far. Boyce had said that Rurik had returned. Of course he was gone by the time any of the duke’s guards arrived in Verdan, but it had not stopped them from arresting Lord Matair. What was shocking, however, was the arrest of the entire family. Evidence could be found in any corner men might wish to find it to condemn Kasimir for one thing or another. To condemn them all for the sins of the father, though—madness. Simple madness.

  Could they be so petty?

  Of course they could. It was the nature of politics.

  Destroy not in anger, but destroy wholeheartedly. Leave no blade of grass unscorched, lest vengeance spring from ashes. Kill with thought, but stab without hesitation. So the theorists wrote. Some elation in the thought of how few women could recite that.

  “Ser Gerold. Come here a moment.”

  The boy stopped mid-stroke, twisted back over-extended, and looked to her with overt concern—the terror of a child who thought he was in trouble. She smiled, to ease alarm. Gerold glanced back at his wooden sword, tucked it in his belt, and promptly strode over to her, puffing out his chest to show how manly his frail little five-year-old body was.

  “Have no fear!” he pronounced boldly, hands on his hips.

  She ran a hand through his hair and tussled it up, to a squeal of delight from the boy. He pawed at her fingers, tried to claw them off, but she shook him with one hand as she drew him in with the other. He squirmed like a mouse caught in a cat’s claw, but she held firm and flopped him down in her lap, one arm wrapped around him. Then she began to gently fold the various tufts of hair back into their proper place.

  “His lordship bests men by the hundreds, but his sister is a different creature altogether.”

  Naturally, he did not make it easy for her. Not after a challenge like that. Puffing up his cheeks, he met her scathing stare with stubborn defiance, and even as she warned him not to, he showered her in a spatter of saliva. She reeled back, gagging, and in the momentary fury, promptly cuffed him on the side of the head. Her anger dissolved again as soon as the blow connected.

  Stupid. Stupid girl.

  But what was reaction from her met an even more troublesome reaction from him. Always she had to remind herself: Just a child. Tears burst as his lip quivered, and brave Ser Gerold began to weep.

  “Oh sweetling, you mustn’t do these things,” she said, taking him back into her arms. He did not resist—only continued to cry, unabashedly. “Gerold. Please. If father hears—you don’t want father to hear, do you?” And still the tears came on, louder than ever. Reasoning with a child was not the easiest thing. At times it was not even possible. It wasn’t as though one could follow the lines of logic in its pursuit. “Oh, brave Ser Gerold, come now, surely knights do not cry?”

  They might though. If she was to ask anyone, she might desire to ask it of the Matairs before they went. It was not a question of whether they would go, but when. Duke Rusthöffen hated her father, but he loathed disobedience even more, and Lord Kasimir’s flouting of his own decrees was as mocking the man himself. Kasimir’s head would be forfeit.

  If her father had his way, the rest of the family could very well lose theirs as well.

  It was a queer thing, really. Everyone spoke of the sins of the father. Blood damns blood. History defines. Yet these Matairs had gone beyond. Sins of the son. They damn the father, and the father damns the son in turn. A subtle dance of sin, to be exploited by any with a shred of ambition, in which the Church was all too willing to play a part.

  She had not expected the inquisitors to accompany the duke’s men, but when her father told her, himself elated at the news,
she knew what their fates would be. If Rusthöffen didn’t do them, the Church would see it done. The Inquisition had a fire under their feet known as heresy, and it had driven them into a blood frenzy of accusation and damnation. Nothing kept the people in line like good old-fashioned fear.

  Examples. They wanted examples. The Emperor’s sons had opened the doors to them, and now they found all-too readily imagined threats at every doorstep.

  She touched the back of her brother’s head as he began to calm, and gently smoothed his hair. Her arms wrapped around and drew him in, holding him and cherishing the warmth his little body provided. It was cold outside and it was cold in the castle. No escaping that, except in little shows of affection. Momentary connections, all too quickly lost.

  She kissed the top of his head in apology. He clung to her arms and asked her not to tell their father. Charlotte wanted to smile at that, but she did not. In truth, she could not stand the fury in that man when he looked upon such weakness.

  But as she held him, she felt a queer moment of pause. Like a fresh mother, baby-in-arms, caught before some terrible, impending horde. Her heart reached out to Lord Matair and she wondered, however fleeting, what it would be like to lose a child. Still worse: what it would be like to have them stricken dead before her failing eyes.

  From her brief time among that family, Charlotte remembered a little girl. Annie, or something of the like. Precious thing. Everything a little girl should be. Unlike her. Not the lioness, constrained to such merely human flesh. No older than twelve, she recalled. How would a father feel to be told the noose would greet such innocence as well, after he himself had gone?

  What is one’s own death before such things? She thought of her own mother, and how she would act if it were Gerold to be led unto the chopping block. The woman would lose herself to madness. In every child, a piece of the heart was invested. A piece of the soul. To lose such a thing would be to snap the delicate balance of the whole.

  Such things were not for tender hearts.

  For a moment, Charlotte envisioned her arms as ropes about her brother’s neck. Even the fairest flowers were not impervious to the marching steps of ambition.

  Thrones held no morality. So neither could the men who sought them.

  Death was on the wind.

  Charlotte slunk back from the wall, straining to sift through smothered words her father had not meant for her ears. Voices prattled amidst the room beyond. She listened from the hall.

  It was dishonest to act in such ways, but if her father had taught her anything, it was that the honest were not long for this world, or at least, to play any part in it. Everyone listened when they could. She was no different from the fly on the wall. The only difference was that she could potentially use what she heard. Boyce would likely be proud of that. If Boyce was proud of anything.

  The only regret she felt was for her shield. The man tried very hard to stay awake, even into the latest hours of the night, so as to protect her. In turn, Dartrek trusted her to sleep through the darkness and entrust herself to him. Yet all men grow weary, and she had waited for his eyes to droop and his head to nod in his chair before her restless body thrust back the sheets and headed for the door. She just hoped he would not realize her deception.

  In the sitting room beyond, she heard her father roar at whomever it was he was talking to. They spoke of death, and more clearly, of the kind only he could deliver. Someone doubted him. He counted on that, but never took it kindly.

  “Who?” a second voice repeated, like a watchful owl. Who. Who. “How far does this go?”

  “To the bottom,” her father said. “All the way to the bottom. We will gut them till there’s nothing left to gut.” Hushed whispers. Then: “Joseph will be next.”

  Joseph Vittore Durvalle. Crown Prince of the Empire. Heir apparent, general of the western marches, and a vigorous fanatic of the Church’s whims, as all the Emperor’s children seemed to be. There were others more fanatical about doctrine, but he had a particular taste for enforcement. Against heretics. Farrens, specifically. He viewed them as a blight. Charlotte feared for his step-mother—her darling second cousin, whom she had never had the honor of meeting—were the day to come when he might sit the throne.

  As it were, that day might never come. The thought both terrified and excited.

  Such death made near anything possible, but it made disaster inevitable.

  Like much of the world, she was still reeling from the news of the Veldharts’ downfall. Old family. Terribly old. Rose to power with the rise of the Durvalles themselves, and kept it due to caution and moderation and little else. As palatines, they were some of the most powerful people in the Empire. One of the electors, the so-called kingmakers, who could determine the course of a nation for years and decades.

  All gone.

  Her father had timed their execution well. He could not touch another palatine himself, but as he had considered who would be first to die, his spider told him of Gerome’s advance. An inspection of Veldhart holdings—an attempt to compel them to war. Everyone already knew they were cowardly. It would only be a gentle push to assure the world that they were traitorous, too.

  Why else would they withhold their forces? Why else would they gather their men together, and shirk the call of their emperor? War was what they sought. Within the boundaries of their own nation, to seize the power for themselves. All the good fortune had gotten to their heads.

  So it was said.

  Murder. Make it look like murder. Poison does as well.

  Now all they had left to them was a six-by-six cell, and the promise of quick and terrible justice. A blade or an axe, awaiting them beneath the terrible fury of Lord Portir Durvalle, brother to the Emperor and acting regent in his absence. It was a one-way trek to the Tower of Traitors. Yet even there, it was not as though they would be without esteemed company.

  The tower had seen lords and ladies, counts and dukes, empresses, and even one unfortunate emperor executed beneath its battlements. A hundred ghosts or more would linger there to make them company. They were going to the grave unjustly marked, but they would not be the first. Good men often paid the price for the wickeds’ scheming.

  The Veldharts were far from good men, of course, but for some reason that did not make news of their passing any easier to bear. Not for any love born them, or any of the Durvalles, for that matter. For the implications behind the deed.

  Death was the consequence. Magic was both action and inference. This thing of childish fancy. Gone the way of drakkons and krakens, giants tall as mountains. Fancy. Unreal. There was nothing to it. Smoke and mirrors. She had seen magicians perform before. It was all in the hands. It was all in the trick—lead the eyes, and the mind follows. As long as you could sift through the trick, the magic unraveled, and order was secure.

  But this undermined everything. The very pinnings of balance, and order. Logic, even. This bent reality, bound the world to its madness. Magic. Real magic. She did not want to believe it. Usuri was mad after all, as mad as any creature could be.

  Just hours before, as she was leaving her brother’s room, there had come a shriek and a clatter, and one of the maids came barreling white-faced out of the baths. Nearly colliding with her, Charlotte had shouted her down and bid her stay, to tell her what was the matter.

  “Bit herself, she did. Deep, down deep. There’s blood milady.”

  The servant had been ordered to bathe the witch, and for the betterment of all no doubt. She had long since soured.

  Yet as the servant bathed her, the witch simply reached up her hand and bit down on the flesh between thumb and forefinger, gnawing deep enough that the skin had pinkened, reddened, and broke, leaving a thin trail of blood to tumble into the steaming waters.

  “She’s mad,” the woman cried. Charlotte struck her for her insolence, but silently agreed.

  Therein, the terror. This mad woman had power. Not in their logical, visual sense—but untraceable, irrefutable, unstoppable power that
could ease its way into the wind and kill a man a hundred miles away. One could reason with steel. No matter the wickedness of the blade, there was always a face behind it, somewhere. Coin could buy it. Words could stay it. Another sword could compel it.

  Yet what would take armies in the hands of men, she could do in seconds. It was wrath incarnate, a wildfire without equal. It would not stop until all around it had been consumed. All the witch need do was turn her head and Charlotte’s own house could be snuffed as well. A man was nothing before such power, and that terrified her more than anything else. Her father walked a line, and a thin one at that.

  Her sole comfort was that even in this, nature seemed to have its balances. If Gerome’s untimely death had taught her anything, it was that pain stalked the executioner. For a week after, there was a certain heaving lilt in the witch’s gait, a curious paleness to her skin—but she would recover, whilst the corpse could not.

  “Orless will have it.”

  “You cannot know—”

  “I know.”

  “And the Chancellor? You’re mad.”

  “She cannot listen to anyone else. She will not listen to his children. She would listen to him.”

  “I pray you. Stay your hand against the bishop, at least. We cannot afford any more scrutiny from the Church.”

  “He’s earned his place a hundred times over. Let the blade fall where it may. The Emperor…Father Ranmer…”

  “…the girl?”

  “In part I…other means as well. None will come back to us.”

  More than ever, Charlotte wished to compel her father to remove the woman. To end her before she might end them. She was the devil’s own. If man had been meant to have such things, why should it pain them so to use it? But Walthere would not listen. Charlotte already knew that.

  For a minute, she thought of doing it herself. The flesh was weak. It would not be difficult. All she would need is a dagger. One clean cut across the throat would do her. Or a stab through her wretched heart. Twist and pull. Then all she could think of were those terrible eyes watching her, wrapping her up in their endless storm. She shuddered at the prospect.