At that point, somehow, it was collectively decided by everyone in Dunnmayre that Lady Hool, the Beast of Freegate, was in charge.
Hool’s entire knowledge of the water was limited to fishing, which she was not very good at but the basic principles of which she understood. The only difference between fishing people out of the water as opposed to fish, was that the people were on the top of the water and the fish were under it. So, she reckoned that she needed fishing lines that went on top of the water.
One of the things Dunnmayre manufactured was long, strong ropes—a Roper’s Guild existed, somehow taking the fibers of various trees deep in the forest and braiding them. Rope, therefore, was available in great abundance. Men also appeared with a variety of barrels, jugs, washbasins, bottles, and other things that could be said to float. Collecting all this took almost no time—the Defenders and the natives of Dunnmayre worked with frantic haste, as their friends and countrymen were drowning with every passing minute.
Hool tied a rope around a barrel and then assigned a man to a barrel. “Can you swim?”
The riverman nodded.
Hool pointed at the river. “Swim out there, tell people to grab the rope. When they grab it, we pull it in. There—fishing for people.”
The man smiled. “Right. Fishing. I get it.”
His smile spread across the tired faces of Saldorians and Dellorans laboring in the muddy shallows of the river. They got it—they all did.
They got to work. Saldorians clinging to capsized boats, Dellorans floundering in their armor, injured men nearly drowning—all of them were put on the rope and hauled in. They had twenty such ropes operating, the swimmers trading off with others when they were too tired or too cold to continue. Any man who could make it within two hundred yards of shore had a decent chance of being plucked from the water. Hool and teams of broad-shouldered lumberjacks heaved on the ropes, bringing coughing, sputtering, pale soldiers onto the banks.
“Hurry up!” Hool yelled, looking out across the river. “There are still more!”
Somehow, the men found the strength to hurry up, as their Lady commanded.
The rescue efforts continued for over an hour. In that time, the battle on the far shore seemed to have ended. Trumpets were sounding.
They were not the trumpets of Saldor.
Hool stood amid piles of exhausted, filthy men—men covered in blood and ash and mud. She could barely tell who was a Saldorian and who was a Delloran; she didn’t think they could, either. While the ropes went out and the soldiers were dragged in, it scarcely seemed to matter. Now, it became clear that it was going to matter again.
Hool turned at the sound of hoofbeats. Sahand’s cavalry was retaking the town. They formed a ring around the huddled survivors, their lances red with blood, arrows nocked in their bows. An officer was shouting orders. “Lay down your arms or die!”
His face pale, the Sergeant Defender gave the order. Firepikes fell to the muddy ground.
Hool stepped forward. The officer pointed a sword at her. “Stop! One more step and you’re dead!”
Silence fell. A cold wind, bearing the smell of fire and death from the far side of the river, swept over the town. Hool drew the Fist of Veroth; its head blazed to life. The horses beneath the soldiers shifted uneasily. “I just saved hundreds of your friends,” Hool said. “And you think you can just kill me for it?”
The Delloran officer gave her a mean grin. “They ain’t my friends.”
“Sergeant!” a man gasped from the crowd of survivors. He staggered to his feet. “Stand—” he coughed roughly, then recovered himself. “Stand down!”
The cavalry sergeant squinted at the man. “Captain Orten?”
“You know me,” Orten said, his throat hoarse, “and so you know I have the ear of the Prince. And I say let this creature pass.”
“But Captain, the Prince has orders—”
“Let her pass, damn you! She saved a hundred of our own men today. Let her go!”
The other Dellorans present nodded, muttering agreement.
“Captain, if the Prince finds out, it’ll be my balls!”
Orten was shivering. “Then he doesn’t find out, does he?” He looked around at the other survivors. “Does he? This was our idea, wasn’t it, men? We did it. There was no beast, was there?”
Hool remained on the balls of her feet. She had five bows trained on her right now, but the men were tired. Perhaps they’d miss.
The sergeant put up his sword. “It’s on your head, Orten.” With a jerk of his chin, his horsemen parted. He looked at Hool. “You get a day’s head start, beast.”
Hool swung the Fist of Veroth over one shoulder and sauntered past the sergeant. “Then enjoy your last day alive, man.”
Damon scurried to her side, his pack already on his back. “Bye, everyone,” he called. “Congratulations on your victory and what-not!”
Hool scowled at him. “Shut up, Damon!”
No one followed as they left—there was too much to do, she guessed. She heard Dellorans barking orders and pushing Saldorians around even before they were beyond the stockade.
“That was a wonderful thing you did back there, Hool,” Damon was saying.
She shushed him. She stopped—there was a scent in the air. A scent she’d not smelled since . . .
“Hello, Hool.” It was Tyvian, still in his big furry cloak, sitting on a rock just outside the town among the tattered remnants of Sahand’s battle to retake Dunnmayre—discarded weapons, dead men and horses, and muddy banners. He was picking his fingernails with a knife.
When Tyvian threw back his hood, Damon’s mouth fell open. “You . . . Your Highness?” He fell to his knees.
“I’ve been thinking about what you said.” Hool yanked Damon back to his feet. “And you’re right. You do owe me.”
Tyvian grinned. “Then it’s time I made it up to you.”
“Explain. Quickly this time.”
He pointed at the river, where Sahand’s war barges were mopping up any stragglers from the battle as they tried to escape downstream. “Where do you suppose Sahand built those things so the magi couldn’t see?”
Hool put her ears back as she thought. “Inside his giant castle?”
Tyvian grinned and clapped her on the shoulder. “Let’s walk. And then let’s you and I have a discussion about architecture.”
Hool’s stomach grumbled at the thought. “That sounds terrible.”
Tyvian winked at her. “Trust me, Hool—you’re going to like this conversation.”
Chapter 39
Prince to Prince
It was becoming increasingly clear that Artus was never going to regain sensation in his legs. He was a cripple—now and forever.
This was not one of his top five problems.
Once the storm had cleared, Rodall’s dogs pulled him out of the mountains on a makeshift sledge fashioned from a shield and a fur cloak. It did very little to protect his head, and so he had regained consciousness as a direct result of his head whacking against a rock. For the remainder of the journey, he did his best to keep his chin tucked to his chest until his neck was screaming with the effort.
It was a company of three that had caught him—Captain Rodall and the two Delloran spies, Hambone and Mort.
Of course it was those two.
Of the pack of hounds that had pursued them in Ayventry, only four remained. Those four were the ones that had found Artus in the river and dragged him out before he drowned. He supposed he ought to be thankful, but waking up to see Rodall’s platinum-capped smile leering over him had put a damper on that.
“Half a prince is better than no prince at all, eh boys?” he chirped in his shrill voice.
Hambone and Mort chuckled dutifully.
“Where are you taking me?” Artus asked.
“Prince Sahand wants a piece of you, boy,” Rodall said. “So, to Dellor we go.”
The other two had nothing to add. Artus was left to imagine what “wanting a piece o
f him” meant when Banric Sahand said it. He assumed it was literal. He looked at the flat gray mountain sky and imagined blood and pain and public spectacle.
Beyond moving his head, any further movement was largely impossible. His legs lay lifeless and, judging by their angle, shattered. His arms he could feel, unfortunately—they, too, were lumps of flesh pierced by jagged shards of bone. It hurt when he breathed, and he frequently lost consciousness.
As a result, the journey out of the Dragonspine came to Artus in pieces, some dreamlike. He felt himself floating in space once, only to realize he was being lowered down a sheer face by rope. He dreamed of Michelle kissing his hand, only to awaken to realize it was one of Rodall’s hounds licking the blood from his fingers. At night, when the cold descended, he shivered beneath a thin blanket laid over him, ironically unable to sleep. Around him, the dogs snored, twitching and grumbling in their dreams.
There was always one of the three Dellorans on watch at any point in the night. According to Rodall, he wanted them keeping an eye out for nurlings or trolls or, worst of all, bandits holed up in the foothills.
One night, when Hambone was on watch, Artus caught him looking at him. “You were one of my knights,” Artus said. “You swore yourself to my service.”
Hambone, his beard shining in the moonlight, did not move. After a moment, he spoke, his voice hoarse. “I said and I done a lotta things I didn’t mean. This ain’t no different.”
“I saved your life, and this is how you repay me?”
Hambone looked away. He was noticeably thinner than he had been in the White Army—the punishing pace of Rodall’s pursuit, Artus guessed. At this angle, the moon showed his cheeks. Once full, they now seemed sunken. “World ain’t like that. We all do what we got to.”
Artus considered that statement—he’d heard it a lot back home. He cleared his throat. “That ain’t true, Hambone.”
Hambone threw a rock. “What ain’t?”
“We all do what we got to—that ain’t true. Some of us don’t.”
“Yeah,” he grunted. “Look at you, eh?”
“That’s not the point.” Artus strained his neck to get a better look at the broad Delloran. “Point is you gotta make that choice. World doesn’t make you do nothing—you choose. It’s the choices that make us.”
“What’re you—a priest?” Hambone turned his back on Artus.
Artus let his head drop. Sleep still did not come.
The Dragonspine gave way to the Ustavar Hills, and after a few days of that rough, rocky terrain, Rodall’s hunting party found themselves in Dellor. They found a small trading post by the edge of a narrow river, and Rodall commandeered a riverboat to bring them the rest of the way to the capital city.
Artus’s overtures to Hambone had earned him a gag, but it didn’t stopper his ears. He lay and he listened as his captors exchanged gossip they’d heard on the river from other boats.
The Grand Army of Saldor was destroyed. A total rout, with Sahand as victor. A few thousand prisoners, Trevard dead, and magi being ransomed. The question now was whether Sahand could attract enough recruits and draw enough mercenaries to invade Galaspin again.
Rodall had laughed at this and kicked Artus in the ribs. “That’s where you come in, boy!”
Those people they happened to meet never asked about Artus, but they looked at him carefully. Once, a girl of about twelve on a passing boat had called her little brother to stare at him for a while before finally passing out of view. Artus found himself wondering what it was like to grow up here, under Sahand’s thumb. It was a thought that stayed with him for the days that followed.
From what he saw, life in Dellor was rustic but . . . normal somehow. He saw lots of armed men and hard faces, but it wasn’t that different from where he grew up. Trade happened on the river, money and pelts and goods were exchanged, and soldiers in black livery took their cuts and bossed people around. The few villages they came across were tiny and the people weren’t exactly welcoming, but he saw no heads on pikes or roads of skulls or any of the evil things he somehow expected. These were Sahand’s people, these were Dellorans—the people who had invaded Galaspin and Eretheria and put towns to the torch and slain children—but they didn’t seem inherently different than any other people Artus had ever seen.
They just seemed poorer.
The houses were stone and thatch with no glass in the windows. The people dressed in rough furs with cheap shoes. Most people were filthy and hungry and looked tired. Much about life here on the frontier was similar to life on the broad fields of Oscillain in Benethor, where Artus grew up.
But that was the North, and this was still technically the West. That was the difference. These people knew that about two hundred miles south across the Wild Territory lay warm lands of unimaginable wealth. Wealth someone had told them they couldn’t ever have. Rage couldn’t be that far behind such thoughts.
For all the good that revelation did him now, crippled and helpless, being carried to Banric Sahand on a platter.
The city of Dellor was smaller than Ayventry, but had walls of rough-hewn stone twice as tall, with iron spikes set along the top at each crenel. From the river and his forced angle, Artus could see nothing of the city inside the walls. The dominant feature, though—even more so than the wall—was the Citadel itself.
Artus had heard accounts of it before, but seeing it in person was something else entirely. A fortress just about as large as the city that surrounded it, it had a monstrously tall curtain wall—seventy feet, perhaps—in a star pattern. Within, a host of broad flat turrets and soaring towers all competed with one another to attain the highest altitude, like weeds growing through a crack in a boulder. It was dark and gray and cold, with loopholes like gaping mouths dotting its blank face. At a glance, it seemed to mirror the reputation of its ruler perfectly—overbearing, heartless, and threatening.
And Artus was headed right into it.
There was a river entrance to the Citadel—the tip of one point of the star jutted into the water and, at its base, a thick, spiked portcullis was being hoisted up. Beyond was a dark tunnel, poorly lit by guttering torches. It looked to Artus like he was being poled into hell.
Once his eyes adjusted to the gloom, he saw a massive artificial harbor—a perfect half circle, a few hundred yards across, above which yawned an incredibly high dome. It was construction the likes of which he hadn’t seen since the Peregrine Palace or the Arcanostrum, which, of course, meant one thing: this place had been built by wizards.
The riverboat pulled up to a dock and Artus was dragged out by his armpits. His broken arms shrieked with pain and he couldn’t help but cry out. The black-mailed soldiers lining the quay laughed at him. Rodall led the way, a tattered red cape thrown over his shoulders. Behind him, Mort and Hambone brought up the rear.
Artus screamed the whole way from the harbor to the feet of Banric Sahand himself.
The throne room was huge and forbidding, like everything else in the Citadel. Artus’s eyes were so blinded by tears by the time he arrived that he could not make out the details—banners hung on the walls, or perhaps tapestries. There were several dozen people here and the floor was bare stone. Artus was thrown down on his face, which split open his chin and clacked his teeth together as he hit.
The hall roared with laughter.
Despite his broken arms, Artus tried to push himself up, but it hurt too much and he fell to the floor again. His useless legs were only dead weight behind him. He gasped into a slowly growing puddle of blood around his mouth.
The laugher died. Heavy boots thumped down a few steps and Artus heard the jingle of mail. Someone was standing over him. He twisted his head to look up.
It was, of course, Banric Sahand. “Well, well, well—look what my dogs finally ran down.”
“Kroth take you, you—”
Sahand interrupted him by pressing the heel of one of his boots on Artus’s shattered forearm. He screamed until, at last, Sahand relieved the pressur
e. “Manners, manners, Your Highness. Rodall tells me that his men saved your life and, therefore, I saved your life. Where is the gratitude, I ask you?”
Artus was panting. “I . . . I don’t . . . owe you . . . anything . . .”
“You have courage—no man here doubts that.” Sahand adjusted his fur cape. “The question, my boy, is whether you possess wisdom.”
“What are you talking about?”
Sahand nodded to his retainers. “Flip him over. I want him to see me while I talk.”
Rough hands rolled him like a log and spun him around. Flat on his back looking up, Artus could see that Sahand had returned to his throne—a giant construction of the bones of many large animals. Human skulls capped the armrests.
“I feel as though my general ambitions have been clear for some time,” Sahand said. “I wish to rule—I wish to usurp the corrupt magi and guild bureaucrats who have dominated this region of the West for centuries too long. I wish to be king of Saldor, of Galaspin, and of Eretheria. In short—I wish to be the most powerful king since the warlock king Spidrahk. Even you, a boy, understand this, yes?”
Artus didn’t nod. It was fairly clear his participation in this conversation was to be discouraged anyway.
“The armies of Saldor and Eretheria are in shambles—two down, one to go. My own forces, however, are weaker than I’d like. I need allies. This is where you come in.”
“You can’t be serious.” Artus coughed.
Sahand grinned at him—a very wolfish look indeed. “You have a choice now, boy. If you were to swear fealty to me, many of the soldiers who followed you to Ayventry—who fight for you even now in the Eastern Basin and along the Eretherian Gap—would change their allegiance. Especially if I were to take up the causes of your late general—no levies, lower taxes, the elimination of the noble houses.”
“You’d lie, in other words?”
“What lie?” Sahand spread his hands, as though giving the world himself. “I would do these things, if it meant victory! I have no need for levies, as my soldiers volunteer themselves as a means to a better life. As for taxes, they would pay the same as any of my vassals—and you will find that is less than you imagine. The noble houses I have little use for and would be putting to the sword in any event. You see? Join me and achieve your aims.”
The Far Far Better Thing Page 38