Stormed Fortress

by Janny Wurts

  Sulfin Evend burst from his quarters. Beyond, the broad trestles loomed as they should, spread over with markers and tactical maps. The rowed chairs stood empty, beneath the staked hooks with their darkened horn lanterns. Reduced light burned, at night: a paned sconce with a flickering candle stub. The page boys who had neglected the wick snoozed in a sprawl beside the swagged dais. A third, younger child had dozed off while blacking the Divine Prince’s boots. The grimed rag he had dropped puddled over his feet, as he stirred in bleary confusion.

  ‘Fetch the Sunwheel guardsmen on watch at the entry!’ Sulfin Evend thundered in passing. ‘Move! Get them now!’ Still packing the mail shirt, he vaulted a stool, kicked a felt hassock tumbling, then charged straight on over a chest and two tables. Counters scattered. A chart of the estuary flapped in his wake, blizzarding white paper galleys. A glass ink-well overset with a tinkle. While the puffing valet dodged his trail of debris, the Lord Commander crashed through the emblazoned curtains into the avatar’s suite.

  The taint warned him first: not quite a smell, but a lingering suggestion of shadow, half-seen. Always, when steered by his latent clan lineage, Sulfin Evend recognized the presence of Koriani conjury. Now the order’s target was Lysaer, already driven awake by the shock of another invasive nightmare.

  This one seeded terror. Sulfin Evend met those unseeing, blue eyes, enamel hard, and vicious with the madness of Desh-thiere’s curse. All finesse was forfeit. He hurled the mail shirt.

  The steel links sailed, ringing, unfurled like a net that scythed a whistling course through the air. The mass struck the avatar full in the face. Lysaer staggered backwards. The edge of his camp mattress tripped him. He crashed, flailing, into the coverlet.

  Sulfin Evend’s tigerish spring pounced on top. He fisted both hands in the miring steel links. Ruthless under panic, he pressed the weight down, while the fit body he straddled, then pinned, thrashed with manic strength underneath him.

  The candle kept blazing nearby had a solid bronze stand, twined with dragons. Bucked off balance, Sulfin Evend snatched for the base. He swung the flanged edge like a bludgeon, hit Lysaer through the mail shirt, and dropped him on the quilts like felled meat. Now two crises faced him: the flung candle that spattered hot wax and fire in a rolling spray on the carpet; and the chance his crazed liege might arouse and fight back with a light strike.

  The Lord Commander moved on the exigent threat first. Ripped the belt from his waist and noosed Lysaer’s wrists. Then he snatched the filled pitcher from the washstand. Sulfin Evend threw the vessel and its sloshing contents, still athwart the mattress, with one knee gouged into the chest of the Blessed Prince. The burgeoning flames became doused in a splash of smashed porcelain and water.

  The valet arrived, panting. ‘Merciful Light!’ He snapped the flap shut, too late for decorum. The staring page boy outside was already riveted. Sulfin Evend dared not respond, or take time to amend the disastrous appearances. He tugged away the dead weight of the mail and exposed Lysaer’s slackened face. Then swore aloud for the blood, vividly welling through the golden hair nested in the rumpled bed-clothes.

  ‘Let me, please, my lord.’ The valet clutched a towel, prepared to minister to the fallen. His gaunt form leaned in and fussed with the sheets, while Sulfin Evend dropped the offensive armour and inspected the damage at speed.

  Lysaer suffered a split scalp, but no worse. The moment the copious bleeding was stemmed, the wound could be treated by stitching.

  ‘Send for crushed ice and tincture of iodine,’ the Lord Commander snapped, gruff. Relief became fury. ‘Ath above! Did nobody hear my straight warning? Koriathain will dare to waylay any pawn for use on their infernal chessboard! Your master’s nightmares weren’t caused by the Spinner of Darkness, but witchcraft, fashioned for suborning influence. Don’t be complacent. This fit was provoked. Selidie Prime surely wants to manipulate an attack on the s’Brydion citadel.’

  More bodies entered: fighting men, by their heavy-set tramp. Were they not the hoped-for, trustworthy honour guard, the damage spread beyond remedy.

  ‘I want a fresh light!’ snapped Sulfin Evend. ‘Then dispatch the faster of those two pages to roust out the camp physician.’

  No one moved for a lamp. Instead, the crowding footfalls advanced into a cordoning presence behind him. Sulfin Evend hedged a glance at the valet, who looked rabbit scared, but still moved to salvage the upset candle. The fact that the servant left the bedside by one step reassured Sulfin Evend that the men at close quarters were his own, hand-picked to hold true under knowledge of Lysaer’s afflicted madness. Ranne and Fennick guarding his back meant that others, who were disastrously ignorant, had crowded into the entry. These posed an outraged knot of obstruction, muttering in surprise, then exchanging veiled accusations regarding their commander’s untoward activity.

  If the valet’s timely foresight had spread the blanket overtop of Lysaer’s lashed wrists, Sulfin Evend’s abrasive explosion upset any politic story that the avatar might have fallen by accident.

  Already, the first incensed outcry arose. ‘Have you taken leave of your wits, Lord Commander?’

  More zealots joined the declaiming chorus. ‘Or are you possessed?’

  ‘What blasphemous folly could make you suggest that our heaven-sent avatar might be vulnerable to Koriathain?’

  Sulfin Evend locked his offended teeth. He dared not admit to his outbred clan lineage. The least whiff of suspicion that he owned wild talent, and Lysaer’s rabid following would fetch in a priest to put him on trial, if not arraign him for burning.

  The valet shuffled back, the lit candle in hand. No help, that the damning tableau now looked worse: Sulfin Evend placed ruthless priorities first and attended the head wound’s necessities. At least the towel compress caught most of the blood. Perhaps a mixed blessing: Lysaer s’Ilessid stirred back to consciousness under the fluttering flame. His blue eyes flickered open, confused. Healthy reflex contracted his pupils. He was not concussed, or insane, only hurting, and stung to his aristocrat’s bones by the public assault on his dignity.

  ‘Get out!’ he demanded, succinct as flung ice. ‘If my first commander has lost his aplomb and stooped to a brawling fight, don’t expect me to welcome the dumbfounded audience!’

  But the bullheaded captain on loan from Kalesh was quite beyond shame. ‘Has his Lordship, Sulfin Evend, just dared to suggest that mere witches might set your Divine Grace under a spell of compulsion?’

  Lysaer’s flattened frame stiffened. Peeled raw himself by that surgical stare, Sulfin Evend stood off, while the valet, inured to all blistering pressure, fluttered in with a robe for his master’s bare shoulders.

  ‘I heard what your senior officer claimed!’ the Blessed Prince demurred, angry. Assisted to sit upright, but ignoring the garment, Lysaer sat cloaked in blankets and surveyed the gawkers until every man had flushed red. ‘In fact, Sulfin Evend lost his temper first. He made his insolent point well enough, as you see by the marks on my person. His gaffe excuses nobody else’s bad manners! I serve my own reprimands. This one shall stay private. Get out!’

  They went. At a stumbling run, clashing armoured elbows and swords in a crowding rush through the tent-flap. Which left the impervious valet, still hopefully clutching the dressing-robe; and Sulfin Evend, shivering unarmed in his halfway-laced gambeson. The blast of divine censure fell with swift fury, since the servant could not regale glittering finery on a man perched upright with his wrists bound.

  ‘I have an errand I need run to the Mayor of Tirans.’ Despite snarled hair, Lysaer’s royal breeding somehow had regained peerless majesty. ‘The instant I have my hands freed for the writ, I charge you to ride post and place the delivery before his closed council.’

  Which curt dismissal saddled his foremost commander of armies with a courier’s ride to shatter the sternest endurance. Sulfin Evend dropped to his knees, swiped off the crumpled silk coverlet, and loosed the cinched belt that clamped his liege’s now-bloodless limbs. ‘Y
ou were attacked,’ he said under his urgent breath. ‘Koriathain will strike at you again. My absence does nothing but weaken you.’

  ‘I was assaulted,’ Lysaer corrected, imperious. ‘A pity.’ He rubbed his grooved skin, then unexpectedly smiled. His sunny humour was all too collected and sane, with his gashed scalp streaking ribbons across his fair skin. ‘You’ll accomplish my bidding at diligent speed, if only to make your hot-foot return to bolster my threadbare precautions.’

  ‘I tell you, the Prime Matriarch weaves a new plot. She will not stay her hand!’ Neck muscles bunched, all but choked by fear, Sulfin Evend shuddered under the tug of his instincts. ‘Your uneasy dreams are not sown by your nemesis!’ Before the insidious threat of the curse, he reasoned his point with more tact. ‘You’ve reviewed my patrols. Crack troops and priest sensitives have done their exemplary work. No skulking sorcerer has slipped past our guard and entered the s’Brydion citadel.’

  ‘You can’t swear to that claim,’ Lysaer pointed out, serene in his mantle of bed-clothes.

  Sulfin Evend stifled his scathing protest. Clammy sweat soaked his shirt. One wrong word might re-spark the volatile tension. He could never divulge his convincing rebuttal: the memory, stark as a branding in daylight, of Arithon’s promise sworn at Sanpashir. The half-brother cursed as enemy was prodigally gifted, but not murderous by nature, or criminal.

  ‘Lysaer, I beg you! Don’t risk this, alone.’ Against his stiff grain, Sulfin Evend pleaded to turn the cold wind of disaster. ‘Throw me in lock-up. Leave the key in the care of your honourable valet. Dharkaron’s fell vengeance, clap me in irons, but don’t strip yourself of my watch. Not when arcane means might twist a fell snare to make you a Koriani puppet.’

  But the glaring mistake could not be unmade. A subordinate had been caught raising a hand against the divine spirit made flesh. Angry followers would turn on the offending target. Rumour and outcry could raise a deadly recoil, and on that, Lysaer’s ruler’s perception was matchless. ‘You have left me no choice, friend.’ He stood with regret, accepted the valet’s ministrations, and let the gold-and-white mantle settle over his shoulders. ‘I cannot waive the apparent offence. Go, and my bristling dog-pack can be tongue-lashed and leashed, and yanked back to fawning heel. Stay, and you’re asking to get a cur’s stab in the back, by a rival.’

  Late Autumn 5671

  Second Audience

  Mearn’s supposition concerning his brother’s intentions proved to be disastrously wrong. No formal assize was called, for the morning. After spending the night in a windowless cell, trussed and shouting herself hoarse, Jeynsa was hauled into Duke Bransian’s presence with a sack tied over her head. Even bound wrist and ankle, her struggles tested the strength of two muscular guardsmen. After dragging her out of the dungeon, and into the stuffy clerk’s chamber used to take prisoners’ statements, both soldiers had bleeding fingers. The larger one limped from a kicked shin.

  ‘She bites!’ the burly captain exclaimed. Unscorched by Liesse’s horrified censure, he dealt his charge a jarring, hard shake and shoved her before the oak table. ‘Clamps her damned jaws till she’s scored to the bone, fast as a murdering weasel!’

  The girl kept up her crazed scuffling, even then. The men-at-arms had to strap her into a chair before anyone dared to loose the draw-string that fastened the muffling burlap. The cloth was yanked off. Underneath, her flushed face was tear-stained and grazed, and her cropped walnut hair, spiked to cowlicks. The lad’s clothing worn to mix yesterday’s mortar now had dried blood-stains flecked over the lye. If appearance suggested a hysterical child, rumpled after a tantrum, Jeynsa’s opening salvo held wither ing irony. ‘My liege turned his back on this town, once before. Had I the same foresight, I should have trampled your ducal standard into the midden!’

  The same brute whose sword thrust had undone Sidir clouted her with his mailed fist. ‘Mind your tongue, girl! You think you’ve seen trouble? Things could get worse.’

  The blow left her dizzy. Her lip split and one cheekbone skinned, Jeynsa granted his snarling less regard than a yapping lap-dog.

  The room where they held her was still belowground, though the stonewalls were whitewashed. The stout furnishing underneath her had shackle-bolts for felons. Although the claw-footed table confronting her contained a rolled document, quill pen, and ink, no lawful tribunal filled the bench seats. Instead of Alestron’s hound-faced justiciar, Duke Bransian stood with crossed arms in his war-time mail and field surcoat. He looked red in the eyes, even hag-ridden, as he rocked on his toes with feral impatience. Shadowed by his taut bulk, Liesse showed calm distance, perched strait-laced atop the state dais. Her lush hair was pinned, brown coils piled above a cinnamon gown and a necklet of rubies. Beyond the ranked guardsmen, stationed behind, the only other official at hand was Alestron’s high chancellor, hen-pecked and grey, with his knobby, scrubbed hands folded into the lap of his floor-length black robe.

  Jeynsa had only bravado to set against their predacious regard. She protested, though helpless pain and raw grief threatened to drain the heart out of her. ‘You claim to live by the old law sanctions. Then where are my rights?’

  ‘This is not about honour,’ Liesse declared, across Bransian’s bellow for silence. ‘Not justice, or fairness to you, on whatever count of mishandling. You are here only for the direct expediency of keeping Alestron’s citizens alive and defended.’

  Jeynsa raised her bruised chin. Eyes narrowed, she spat. ‘The charge I would broach is criminal murder.’

  Duke Bransian braced his huge fists on the table, which jostled the clerkly contents. ‘You dare say to me that one fallen man is worth all the lives under my seal of office! Wives, craftsfolk, children, and babes? Should your swordsman, who died on his feet in a fight, matter more than a town under threat of invasion?’

  ‘Name Sidir!’ Jeynsa challenged. ‘He was a free-wilds clansman, and nobody’s bondsman assigned for demeaning protection.’ Despite fury and effort, the fear in her showed: she could not stop trembling.

  Liesse tapped the trestle with a censuring finger, dark eyes also beyond regret. ‘Could you hold his life above ten thousand families, doomed to suffer a famine? Does his fate outweigh the rapine and pillage that the heel of a conquering war host will bring us? A sword thrust is quick. Have you ever watched a child die of starvation? A young woman forced till she’s haemorrhaged?’

  ‘Yes!’ Jeynsa shouted. ‘I’ve seen infants perish of starvation and cold, and all manner of forced brutality, done by head-hunters. You forget. I was never brought up in a palace.’ Afraid, not yet panicked, she glowered at the duke, who now paced like an irritable bear. ‘I don’t see what any of this has to do with a breach of guest welcome, or assault and an unprovoked act of butchery.’

  Bransian met her spitting fury with frosty eyes and a curt nod to his chancellor. ‘We are hard, but not foolish.’

  The fussy official stirred out of furled quiet, slipped the ribbon from the scroll, and twitched a state document across the table.

  ‘Read,’ snapped the duke. ‘Then sign your name here, before witnesses. Do that, and you walk out of here, safe. Your crown prince won’t be forced to defend your hysterical story, or answer a case with no witnesses. You can end this, now, quietly. Or have the same verdict dragged out in sordid detail through the shame of a hearing in public ceremony.’

  Jeynsa clamped her jaw. Scanned the offered reprieve, while the last vestige of colour drained out of her freckled face. Before she completed the offensive last lines, she glanced up, breathing quickly. ‘Lies!’ she gasped. ‘Vicious slander on top of vile extortion. Smear Sidir’s faultless service by a false claim that he moved out of hand, and attacked your guardsmen without provocation?’

  ‘A dead man’s good name,’ Liesse stated, prim. ‘The liegeman’s past suffering any dishonour. Give us your word. That’s a painless exchange for Prince Arithon’s debt, that could spare every innocent life in this citadel.’

  Jeynsa shook her head, spee
chless.

  ‘Is your stiff neck worth so much?’ The chancellor leaned forward with overbearing impatience. ‘How can you not act for the greater good? Are you spineless? Why not use the power that’s yours to save others, hand-picked as you are for an office that can bind the will of a sovereign king? The blood of sacrifice here has already been paid! Don’t make Sidir’s loss be in vain. Not when your sensibility, and his reputation, might buy many thousands their future survival.’

  Which pressure threw too harsh a weight upon Jeynsa’s uncertain young shoulders. ‘The choice you place on me is not mine to make!’

  ‘Don’t be a braying ass!’ Bransian hurled his state chair aside. He loomed over the table, the nights of sleepless rage and balked weeks of inaction smoking off his ox frame. ‘None of us can afford to choke over principle! Not with Alestron’s domain being pillaged by Lysaer’s dog-packs of fanatics!’ His flicked gesture summoned.

  One of the paired guardsmen approached Jeynsa’s chair. Steel rasped as he unsheathed his sword and cut the lashed binding, which freed her right hand for the pen.

  ‘Sign, girl!’ the duke snapped. ‘I’m griped from watching you preach on your backside. No one’s got time for your quibbling.’

  Her pale green eyes spilled her furious tears. Still, Jeynsa battled her ebbing composure. Left only the grit of her ancestry, she argued: as Asandir’s choice for Rathain’s caithdein, charged to stand at the right hand of princes with no shield but bare flesh and her conscience. ‘You won’t change his Grace’s stance in this way! Or deliver your people from jeopardy. Not by asking me to endorse your misrule through hiding betrayal and murder.’

  ‘Pretty words. Empty threats. You’ve no leverage to bargain!’ Bransian stared her down, beyond quarter. ‘Realize how little your breathing life means! You and your crown prince together are not worth the horrific burden of suffering, if the unholy Alliance keeps us besieged through the winter.’