The Sylvalla Chronicles

by A. J. Ponder

  Dirk inclined his head. The idea of people traps piqued his professional curiosity.

  A Time for All Things under the Sun

  A time to…

  “At last—a time to die,” Tishke thought, watching in horrified fascination as Zed turned from the poker in the fire and began organising his other instruments of torture.

  Fight or flight?

  Now that she faced the torturer, Tishke did not feel so glib as to trade insults. The petite man’s intensity scared her too much.

  A last infinitesimal adjustment of a razor and the pale-faced torturer looked up at her. His smile was no less frightening for all that it engaged his eyes.

  He motioned for the soldiers to release her. “Right now, you are free,” he said, his voice deep and soft as a feather duvet. “Free to change your mind.”

  Flight—

  There was nowhere to run.

  “You should tell me everything.” His tone lay flat as any lie, despite the sympathetic tilt of his head.

  “Surely there’s no need for me to engage my little–toys?” His immaculate fingers caressed a hacksaw.

  Tishke might be resigned to death, but death with dignity was for the queens in stories–where all they faced was a comparatively smooth and easy beheading.

  Fight or flight?

  Tishke swallowed, her gaze flitting from the torturer’s toys, to the two leering soldiers. She smiled back at them and waved her hand toward the fire.

  One of the soldiers glanced that way. It was a mistake. And he knew it—but only after Tishke dropped to the floor.

  Fight!

  The briefcase bounced off Tishke’s back as she rolled under the table, sending its utensils clattering to the ground.

  Hands clutched at her.

  Tishke’s dress tore, the lace serving as an expensive decoy.

  They would catch her soon. She had to do something. She stood, grabbing the side of the table and pushing it with all her might toward the guards.

  A clang. The table had fallen on top of one of the armoured guards. The other had scrambled away in time.

  There was no time for celebration. The pale-faced torturer approached, a wickedly curved knife in his left hand. He waved the remaining guard back with his free hand, and lunged at her.

  Tishke braced for the death-blow, except he didn’t use the wickedly-curved knife. He tripped her.

  She fell, hard.

  He kicked her gut.

  Pain lanced through her ribs.

  Together the guards righted the table. Tishke barely noticed, she was focussed on the torturer.

  He kicked at her again.

  This time she was ready, grabbing his foot and using the momentum of his kick to pull him off balance.

  He windmilled, arms snatching at the air, and fell back with a satisfying crunch on the flagstone floor. The knife skidded out from his hand and disappeared under some shelving.

  The guards looked at each other, and stepped backward to interpose themselves between Tishke and the door.

  Tishke ignored them and cast about for a weapon. Sitting in the fire was the poker—its tip glowing red-hot with the promise of excruciating pain.

  She grabbed it, and screamed, releasing her rage as she rushed the guards.

  The guards swore. One met her attack. The other sidestepped, circling to attack from a position of safety.

  Without guessing at her peril, Tishke swung wildly at the guard in front of her—missed him and hit the guard sneaking up on her from behind.

  Eye sizzling in its socket, the guard collapsed, screaming, and clutching his face.

  Tishke backed away, wheeling toward the door.

  Face beyond pale, the torturer closed in and pulled another blade from his case.

  Tishke swung the poker. It smashed into the torturer’s face and his nose exploded in a bloody, snotted mess. Heartened, she attacked again, sending the once-immaculate torturer sprawling. Whereupon the remaining guard whacked her around the head with the flat of his blade.

  Ears ringing, Tishke staggered sideways.

  “Stand down, my lady,” the guard grated through clenched teeth, “or this will get worse.”

  Her trembling hands clutching the cooling poker, Tishke wondered how things could possibly get better from here.

  His sword swung in a deft ellipse intended to knock the poker from her hand.

  Instinctively, Tishke stepped back.

  The guard lunged, and the two weapons clanged, sword and poker.

  Hands still buzzing in pain from the shock, Tishke sprang forward bringing the poker down on his wrist in a clumsy blow.

  He yelped.

  Hatred boiling, Tishke attacked again.

  A sharp snap. A dangling finger. The guard leapt back, grunting in pain.

  The door opened.

  Tishke stopped dead in her tracks. She turned to face the newcomers. Phetero and yet more soldiers.

  “No swords!” Phetero shouted. “Take her alive!”

  The soldiers recoiled, closing forefinger and thumb in the same ward against evil that was often used against her wayward daughter. Tishke almost laughed—she’d worked so hard to be respectable, and all for nothing.

  Phetero grappled clumsily at the handle of his sword. Against his own advice, he slipped it from its scabbard and held the blade out. “She is but a devious woman, she cannot stand against the strength of men.”

  Phetero’s soldiers shuffled forward.

  “Do not forget I need her alive. How else can I put the rightful heir on the throne?”

  Tishke approached menacingly, brandishing the poker.

  Taa daah! The sound of horns, and the chants of Avondale soldiers seeped into the room. And Tishke knew she’d lost all sense of time and place. She cursed her imagination for augmenting the squeaking and grating of some fool’s plate-armour into the echo of hope.

  “Hurry!” Phetero exhorted his men.

  Surrounded, Tishke assessed her situation. No one was bursting in the door to save her. No hero was turning up at the last minute, but she still had one option. One last thing to accomplish, one small light in the darkness—she could kill Phetero before she died.

  Oblivious to the hands ripping the remainder of her lace, Tishke held the poker high, and attacked.

  Hands grasped at Tishke. She slowed. Someone tore the poker from her fingers. Empty handed, she half ran, half fell, toward Phetero.

  Phetero tried to pull his sword back.

  Too slow.

  The blade cut into Tishke’s side, and grated against bone.

  Hands extended in talons, Tishke clawed at Phetero’s tunic. It was sprayed red with blood.

  My blood.

  Taa daah! The horns sounded closer. Maybe that is what the Hunter sounded like when he was claiming his dead.

  Pain flooded through Tishke, but she wasn’t about to let go. Not yet. Instead, she imagined her fingers locked around the repulsive Phetero’s neck—but all her wanting could not make it so.

  Furious, Tishke cursed, properly now; not the feeble words she’d offered earlier, but an entreaty to the gods. “On my life; Seven Gods, hear me now. Give Phetero travesty in triumph, and death in dishonour.”

  Phetero laughed. “Witch! You hold no dominion over me. Even as you die, I am victorious!”

  Clasping her abdomen, Tishke let all her pain fade. She hadn’t told Phetero where the young prince was—that was victory enough.

  §

  Still gawping at Tishke’s motionless body, Phetero was almost bowled over by a squadron of his own men.

  The corridor was jammed with soldiers, ineffectually brandishing their swords against a thicket of long, spiked weapons—most little more than sticks of broken furniture with knives bound to the ends.

  One of Phetero’s men fell, metal piercing his neck—then another, and another.

  “Fall back to the entrance hall,” Phetero’s general yelled.

  “The horns, sound the horns,” Phetero cried, hardly
believing Avondale castle was slipping through his fingers faster than a greased pig at a fair.

  He strode into the hallway. “We shall rally here and fight this rabble off! For Sco—”

  “‘Tis the curse. The witch’s curse,” a man cried.

  Phetero’s current military advisor and general, clipped the man around the ear. “Shut up.” He turned to Phetero. “My lord, this is no place to rally. The entrance hall is just yards away.”

  “Damn you! What sort of general are you?” Phetero sneered. “We cannot have our men being pushed back by that rabble. Get at them!”

  Stung, the general waved his sword arm about, careful not to get too close to the fighting.

  Heartened, his men attacked with vigour, knocking the makeshift spears this way and that. Swords sheared through poles.

  Phetero cheered as the first Avondale defender fell.

  The Avondale rabble slowed. It was just a matter of time before the battle turned in his favour. Only it was a Scotch Mist soldier who fell next, his stomach ripped open by a knife-tipped broom handle. As he screamed and clutched at his slippery entrails, the rabble surged forward.

  “By the Seven, get in and fight!” Phetero roared, seeing his soldiers being pushed back by Avondale peasants. “Curse it all, I am surrounded by fools and lack wits. We shall have to retreat. Sound the horns.”

  A voice amongst the ranks called out. “My King! Where to?”

  “Ye Mother Hen!” The general yelled. “If the other soldiers have as little intellect as you, they’ll die at their posts.”

  Phetero ran out of the building to the outer courtyard, hating the way the horns were sounding his retreat. Outside, he stopped and kicked angrily at the flagstones as more and more of his soldiers streamed out from the castle and surrounding buildings to join him.

  Sergeants called out as if they were on some giant parade:

  “Ninety-nine! Right!”

  “Forty-two! Centre front!”

  “Line up. Move, you mongrels. We shall meet them upon this field. Their blood will water the grass, er, pavestones, and their brains and sightless eyes become food for the crows.”

  This is not good.

  Even worse, the front line was already squaring up and he was in the front! “Let me through, you useless scum.” He fought to get as far away from the front line as possible. “General! General! Are you ready for the attack?”

  There was a terrible screech of rusted metal on rusted metal. Someone inside was letting down the old and disused portcullis on the castle door. Wheels grated, and gears screeched before the metal bars crashed into the ground with a loud clang.

  “Um, now what do we do?” a soldier asked his fellow, unaware of the august company nearby. The man shook his head, the muscles of his jaw jutting as his teeth clenched. Under different circumstances the man’s life was forfeit, but the thought, however pleasant, had to be dismissed. “General! We need to put a hole in those walls and attack properly. Some of our men will still be in there.”

  “We’re too crowded in. And we don’t have the equipment.”

  Yet another trumpet squealed. Phetero clutched at his ears. The tune was repeated. “Good news or bad?” he muttered.

  “It’s a scout,” the loud-mouth said, and seeing who he was talking to clamped his hand over his mouth.

  “Go on.” Phetero smiled.

  “One of ours. Sounds like good news but...”

  “My lord,” his general demurred. “I believe our forces have been successful...at least in part.”

  Phetero nodded. “Get those scouts in here,” he hissed, “I should hear some good news today.”

  “Yes my—”

  The grating of steel-on-stone interrupted the general. The portcullis was opening.

  Phetero, teeth jangling, cuffed the man. “The Avondale bastards come to spit in our faces. Wait for my order, we shall take their sorry corpses and put them into the keeping of the gods.”

  The general dabbed blood away from his rapidly swelling lip.

  The portcullis had risen to almost man-height when a figure strode forth. Dirk. He was unmistakable even in the washed-out false dawn, his sword catching rays of pre-dawn light.

  There was a rattle of pikes and Francis slipped under the gate to stand by Dirk. His drawn sword didn’t bother to catch puny rays of light—it shone with a brilliance of its own.

  Phetero swallowed. Was this a trap?

  “Do we attack, my lord?” the general asked.

  Phetero gulped. Dirk was supposed to be dead. His scouts had failed him, after all.

  “Do we attack, my lord?” the general repeated.

  For a moment, Phetero contemplated it.

  If only Dirk had died like he was supposed to. If only we could tear down the walls... No. Not without siege equipment to blast the walls and defenders to a bloody pulp.

  And if he did get back in, the castle walls would be no more than an illusory safety.

  “Do we fight, my lord?” The general asked, more urgent this time.

  If Dirk is back, the rest of Avondale’s army will not be far behind. Phetero didn’t want to be trapped between two fighting forces, sandwiched in this courtyard between the outer gates and the castle.

  Phetero’s head snapped up. This was not a time for strategy; it was a time for statesmanship. He lifted his sword, and yelled, “A fighting retreat. For Scotch Mist! Let us fight another day!!” But, for all his statesmanship, Phetero seethed as he led his men away from a foe that wasn’t even on the field.

  Catching Up with the Old Lies

  The truth is a twenty-sided coin

  But lies are free

  Down in the dungeons, the guards dozed. They’d been here a while. Listening to prisoners moaning and crying and begging to be released was boring work—and hard on the ears.

  Fred’s stomach growled. “Hey, Syd, you think we should check to see if they’ve forgotten us down here?”

  “Nah. Thought I heard some fighting not so long back. Better to wait safely down here, hey? See. There we are,” Syd said, as two men sauntered toward them.

  “It’s about blimmin’ time,” Fred grumped. “We were about to grow...”

  “New heads?” Dirk asked, passing his blade through their necks with thoughtless arrogance.

  Sylvalla winced.

  She winced harder as Dirk rattled the men’s headless bodies, heedless of the blood fountaining from the corpses. Oblivious of the crying and begging of the other prisoners, he muttered, “You seen any keys?”

  “Phetero likely has them in his pocket,” Sylvalla hissed, frustrated at having to stay within her cell a moment longer than the arrival of her rescuers. “Why don’t you check...?”

  Francis coughed, to ensure he hadn’t been forgotten. “Er, that could be difficult. We...”

  Sylvalla sighed. “Fine, just please hurry up, I hardly want to sit here all day watching two headless corpses.”

  “Two people that didn’t need to be killed,” Francis muttered.

  Dirk ignored him. “Don’t worry, princess.” He surreptitiously pulled two thin metal probes, and a stick with short bristles at one end from a pouch on his scabbard.

  Dirk fiddled with the lock for a bit. Nothing. Then he banged the door as though sheer irritation could open the lock. Still nothing.

  Sylvalla sighed, and made herself comfortable for a long wait.

  With a final twist, Dirk opened the door and stepped back.

  Sylvalla covered her surprise with a curt nod. “Thank you, kind sir. A most useful accomplishment.”

  “And one I’d prefer you didn’t mention, my lady. Or you either, Francis.”

  Francis shrugged as if the ability to break open prison locks was no big thing, but Sylvalla’s mind was spinning. “I can see how such a skill might have come in handy in your erstwhile profession as a rescuer of damsels in distress. Luckily I was never in distress, merely discommoded, and in any case, I would also prefer if you didn’t mention this incident. A
t all.”

  “Interesting, my lady,” Dirk said. “What have you been doing then?”

  “Um, directing your actions from a safe vantage?”

  “You know. If you weren’t a threat, Phetero wouldn’t have bothered locking you up here. He’d have kept you in your rooms.”

  “Nevertheless...” Sylvalla liked that word, it gave her time to think. “Nevertheless, I do not think it the right image for a princess—what with no high tower, no comfy chairs, and no stupid tapestry.

  “Are you asking us to lie?” Francis asked, eyebrow raised.

  “It need not be a lie. How about, I was biding my time contemplating the death of Phetero. He is dead isn’t he?”

  Francis and Dirk looked at each other.

  Francis turned a pretty shade of pink. “Well no, actually, he—”

  “—remains at large.” Dirk interjected. For the moment.”

  “I believe the expression is, ‘he ‘igh tailed it out o’ the castle faster’n a rabbit outiva rabbit ‘ole,’” Francis said in an outlandish accent.

  “And my mother, I trust she is well?”

  Francis turned pinker.

  “She...” Dirk’s face contorted as he started to speak, changed his mind, and tried to speak again. “She…”

  Sylvalla paled.

  “…she’s taken a wound. It bled freely and she still has not regained consciousness.”

  “Dirk packed it with salt,” Francis said. “If I took a wound and Dirk packed it with salt, I wouldn’t be waking up, neither.”

  Dirk turned to say, “Shut-up, Francis,” but Sylvalla had beaten him to it. “So my bro...ther?” Sylvalla added, unsure of the right word and then deciding that blood or not, he was family and that trumped all else.

  “Gone. Disappeared into thin air.”

  “Phetero has him?” Sylvalla’s tremulous voice turned the statement into a question.

  “Maybe ... But nobody’s seen him,” Dirk replied, looking for Sylvalla’s reaction.

  “Surely, if he were dead, there’d be a body?” Sylvalla said. She hated her brother. She’d wished him gone a hundred times, but when it came to family, hate and love were a relative thing. “Phetero said he would...” kill him—Sylvalla couldn’t say the words, as if saying them might provoke his death. “Phetero said he would, you know.”