The Iron Hound

by Tim Akers

  “I am well finished with your bullshit,” Gwen said. “My family has borne the burden of our heresy for generations, while you hid in the woods and fucked trees. If you think for one second that that makes you holier than me, or wiser, I swear to the gods old and new that I’ll cut the holiness right out of you.”

  “Gods forbid that I have to live in a castle while pretending to pray to the old gods,” Judoc said. “What a tragedy that must have been! What a trial! Surely, you are blessed of the spirits.” Murmurs of agreement spread through the room.

  “Enough, the both of you,” Folam snapped. “I will not have this conclave split open by a Suhdrin whelp!” The murmurs died down, and he continued. “There is the vernal spirit,” he said. “Or what remains of him.”

  “The vernal…” Gwen began, then she fell silent. The others continued on, forgetting all about her.

  “His shrine was destroyed, and his body broken,” Cahl said. “Surely the church couldn’t raise him, much less bind him?”

  “They went after autumn,” Noel said. “Perhaps they know of both, and know that spring would be harder to bend to their will. But having failed at the witches’ hallow…”

  “Autumn’s twin remains?” Gwen asked, pushing into the conversation. “My family was told that the god of the Fen was the last of the great spirits hidden during the crusades. If Spring is still alive, we should protect it at all costs.”

  “The vernal god went mad, long before Suhdra waged war against us. Gave birth to a season of storms that threatened to tear the earth apart. Spring is still the most unsettled of the seasons,” Cahl said. “Though in this case, it was the followers who drove their god insane, and not the other way around.”

  “The tribe of flowers was… enthusiastic in their worship,” Folam said delicately. “They tried to conquer winter, and summer as well. They wanted to end the rites of death.”

  “And what’s wrong with that?” Gwen asked.

  “Imbalance,” Folam answered. “Ultimately, the vernal spirit’s core aspect had to be fragmented, his shrine profaned, and his lesser spirits bound.”

  “And his tribe?”

  “They realized their mistake, and fought to keep their god from fulfilling its mission. It cost them their lives, and their place in the afterlife, as well,” Judoc said.

  “Their souls rest in the emptiness,” Folam said, his fingers brushing the stone around his neck.

  “Very well. So that is our plan,” Noel said. “We go to the profaned shrine of the vernal god. Hopefully before the inquisition finds it.”

  “And what of the vow knight who follows this one?” Judoc asked, gesturing to Gwen. “Will we lead the church to this shrine as well?”

  “We could leave her behind,” Morcant said. “Give her to Cahl and send them south.”

  “I won’t be left behind…” Gwen started.

  “We can’t risk compromising this shrine, as well,” Judoc said. “You have proven trouble enough.”

  “I agree,” Noel said. “Send them away, or kill her and be done with it.”

  Cahl stepped between Gwen and the elders, his eyes glittering angrily.

  “You would oppose the will of the conclave?” Noel asked. “Has this child touched your heart, Cahl of stones?”

  Folam stood, grimacing at the assembly.

  “That is not the will of the conclave,” he said.

  “We haven’t voted,” Noel said. “Who are you to say—”

  “That is not the will of the conclave,” Folam repeated. “She comes with us. It is necessary.”

  The conclave sat quietly, no one objecting, no one agreeing. Folam nodded.

  “It is necessary,” he repeated.

  21

  THE MEAL ENDED quite suddenly.

  Duchess Helenne Bassion drank wine and mostly pretended she wasn’t in command of an army camped just down the road. LaGaere and his flustered attendant made sortie after conversational sortie against the duchess, trying to determine what her plans were, whether she was going to take the fight to Tener or simply secure the border.

  Again and again they tried. Did she mean to cross the Tallow at White Lake or lay siege to the Reaveholt? What sort of ranks did she have with her, and were they equipped with the tools necessary to build the trebuchets, towers, and rams that would be necessary.

  Bassion dodged all of these questions with ease, giving only enough information to maintain the upper hand. She had an army. It was marching north. That was all they needed to know.

  Lucas watched this exchange nervously. Warhome’s departure from the Fen Gate had been bitter, and the loss of friends and honor stung the man. It wasn’t the frair’s job to keep the peace in the north, but the more he saw of LaGaere’s enthusiasm for the Suhdrin army, the less he trusted it.

  “Surely the Reaveholt cannot be left standing,” LaGaere said. “Not just conquered, nor merely occupied. It must be uprooted from the earth like a weed!” He held his cup out for more wine, never looking away from the Lady as he drained it. “The border has festered long enough. The infection needs to be purged, before it can spread.”

  “You speak of infections and uprootings, but what is the infection?” Bassion countered. “Is it the Reaveholt? Or is it the scant collection of men you have left behind at the Fen Gate, irritating the host and gathering pus around them?” She turned ever so slightly toward Sophie. “It was Halverdt’s lie that created this wound. It will take Halverdt’s blood to correct it.”

  “My blood, you mean,” Sophie responded. “Am I to be sacrificed, to forge a peace with Tener?”

  “Your family has given enough,” Bassion said. “It is time to see your debt settled. This is a dangerous situation, Sophie, and I—”

  “Greenhall,” Sophie said. Bassion and LaGaere paused their argument, peering at the young girl. Sophie continued. “I am Greenhall, now, Duchess of my father’s throne and heir to this title. You will address me as such.”

  “You are remarkably young to be sitting a duchess’s seat,” Bassion said carefully. “Not impossibly so, of course, but you may want to consider the options that are available to you.” The woman smiled delicately, jewelry glinting, wine extended like a blessing. “A soft bride, encumbered by a throne not of her choosing. And if Adair’s territories become available, there is a case to be made for folding it into your demesne. A tempting package.”

  “Package?” Sophie asked. “You would offer me up as a gift, to whichever prince is most in need of a bride? Is that why you’re here, Roard?” she demanded, staring daggers at the young heir. Martin choked on his lamb, hurriedly clearing his throat. “I will not be a piece in your game of marriages, Bassion.”

  “You may address me as Galleydeep,” Lady Bassion answered. “If you’re going to play at nobility, child, and hope to claim a title for yourself, learn to respect those who have come before. I hoped to keep this friendly.” She pressed a napkin against her lips, folding it small before laying it in her lap. “But perhaps that was a mistake.

  “All I am saying, Sophie Halverdt, is that you have a lot of options laid before you. Consider them all before you go charging into destruction. It’s advice that your father could have used.”

  Sophie stood. She wasn’t a tall girl, and even on her feet she barely looked down on LaGaere beside her, or Lady Bassion across the table.

  “I hope it won’t offend your sensibilities,” she said curtly, “if I attend to my father now. He has rested in the doma long enough. There are prayers to be said, and the blessings of the gods to seek.” She threw her napkin down on her plate, glaring at Helenne Bassion. “That is a lesson you could use, my lady.”

  She stormed out, leaving the servants to awkwardly clear the dishes while the remaining guests watched. Helenne snorted angrily.

  “A child,” she said. “A child is running the most powerful Suhdrin throne in the north. No wonder the place is overrun with savages.”

  “Cut their hair and wash the ink from their skin, and you would
never know the difference,” Lucas said quietly, remembering the guards who had greeted them at the Reaveholt. Bassion turned her glittering eyes toward him.

  “Oh, I think I would—my nose still works, after all,” she said, then she laughed lightly and finished her wine. “What of you, Frair Lucas? What do you hope to achieve here? Justice? A reasonable war? Aren’t those the sorts of things Cinder demands?”

  “Winter is a harsh season, my lady, and Cinder a harsh god.” Lucas stood slowly, unbending tired bones, wincing when pain shot up his legs. “He gives disease, and war, and death, to every living soul. Then he gives us the judgment to overcome those things.”

  “And what is your judgment?” LaGaere asked. “What should young Sophie do?”

  “My judgment rests on Tomas Sacombre, and the heresy he committed to start this war. Its ending is none of my business. Not yet, at least.”

  He left them there, talking and arguing about what should or could be done with a dead man’s house, and with his daughter, and with the war they had created around them.

  * * *

  Frair Lucas felt remarkably like the prisoner he was supposed to be escorting. While Greenhall celebrated a spring that was still a winter away, and young Sophie observed the funereal rites of her betrayed father, Lucas and his small band were confined to the keep, separated from the city proper by a sturdy wall and hundreds of suspicious eyes. They received regular updates from their column, camped outside the city walls, but were otherwise cut off from the world.

  As night began to fall and their third day in captivity ended, Lucas watched as the moon rose, witnessing it from a parapet of the keep. Sir Horne found him there. The knight was dressed in fine chain and silk, not quite battle-ready, but far from unprepared.

  “Frair,” Horne said as she ascended the stairs, as quiet as a breeze. “I trust the night finds you well?”

  “Well enough,” Lucas said. “Though I would like to be on my way. Ever since our disastrous dinner, Lady Bassion won’t see me to arrange an escort south, and Sophie refuses to give audience, either. I don’t know how I’m supposed to negotiate passage if I’m not allowed to talk to anyone.”

  “Those two have been spending a good amount of time together, so I’m told. Arguing, mostly.” Horne laughed, leaning against the parapet stone. Her dark hair was tightly knotted to her head, with strands of dark gems twisted into the braids. When she wasn’t kitted for war, the knight might easily pass for a lady of the court. “Sophie may have rejected her father’s love of the inquisition, but she has more than inherited his paranoia.”

  “Not a bad lesson for a girl joining the Circle of Lords, if that truly is her intent. She will earn more with caution than with trust.”

  Horne didn’t answer, only nodded and looked down at the valley below. The army of Galleydeep nestled among the trees to their south like a meadow of golden gems, their campfires twinkling between leaves and along the road. They watched it in silence for a long time.

  “When you get to Heartsbridge, will they accept you as a hero, or as a traitor?” Horne asked. She shifted on the wall, turning to face Lucas, resting on her elbow. Lucas shrugged.

  “The inquisition? I’m not sure. Tomas Sacombre was popular in the south, especially among those priests who saw the north as little more than a problem to be solved. They won’t like seeing him brought low.”

  “And you? Were you popular in the south?”

  “I never stayed long enough to let them form an opinion,” Lucas said with a smile. “I was born on the road, raised on the road, belonged on the road. One day I will die on the road.”

  “Most men hope to die in their beds, of old age or with their lover. Perhaps both,” Horne said. “While they live, they talk of dying in glory or for honor, but in their hearts they hope for the easy exit.”

  “Few of us get that,” Lucas said. “Especially in my profession.”

  “Death by god, that is your usual fate,” Horne said. “An unpleasant way to go.”

  “The gheists are rarely gentle.”

  “Where is your vow knight? I have seen none of Strife’s faithful in our company.”

  “She hunts,” Lucas said. He stooped lower in his shoulders, his chest nearly to the rough stone of the parapet. The weight of Elsa’s absence pushed him down, but only when he thought about it. “As she is sworn to do.”

  “My mother thought to make a vow knight of me,” Horne said wistfully, only the slightest trace of bitterness in her voice. It surprised him. “It turned out that I wasn’t cut out for that sort of light.”

  “It is not an easy path,” Lucas said, his eyes clouding as he thought of the pain on Elsa’s face every time she manifested Strife’s gifts—the blood that seared through her veins. “I would not…”

  He paused. There was movement in the darkness far below. Without thought he twisted naether through his eyes and drew the night close, spanning the distance. A column of men creeping through the woods. Their armor was blackened. Lucas was only able to see them because of his bond with Cinder and the clear night air.

  “Frair?” Horne asked. She put a gentle hand on his shoulder. “Are you well?”

  Lucas shook his head, snapping out of the naether vision.

  “Galleydeep is moving to surround our camp,” he said. Sir Horne straightened, confusion on her face. “Wake LaGaere and Roard. Tell them we’re riding out of this place, and cutting down anyone who tries to stop us.”

  “But, we can’t…”

  “Go!” Lucas roared. He gathered his robes around him, drawing a silvered blade from his belt and touching it to his forehead as he knelt. “We need to get Sacombre out of there. Now!”

  And then he loosened his soul, and let his spirit flee out into the night.

  * * *

  Torvald sat facing the fire, listening to the men complain. With Frair Lucas ensconced in the castle and an army looming to their south, there was a lot of tension in the camp, finding its way out in arguments and fistfights. He knew he would never be a great warrior, or a famous general, or a legendary duke, but Torvald liked to think he ran a tight camp.

  So he liked to walk among the campfires, pausing at each one long enough to calm the spirits of those hunched around, listen to a story or two about the battles at White Lake and the Fen, or if the wounds were too recent, older stories of home and lovers and the like. Then he would go to the next fire, and the next, all through the night.

  “It’s time I continue on my rounds,” Torvald said as he rose to move to the next group of men. This had been his first stop of the night, the moon having only just risen. He wished the frair was around to say the prayers and soothe the fears. The men trusted the frair.

  As he approached another campfire, Torvald looked around, smiling through his massive moustache. “Good hunting, tonight?”

  “Bassion’s outriders have flushed the countryside,” one of the men growled. “All the farms are picked, the forests bare, and the women fled to their castles. We’ll be eating jerky and tickling our own stones until Heartsbridge.”

  “Clarence will tickle your stones, Yohn,” a second soldier laughed. “Or Maudette. Hands like hers, though, you may end up a eunuch.”

  “At least we don’t—” Yohn stopped midsentence, staring at the fire. Then he dropped his mug of thin wine and lurched backward.

  At the heart of the fire, a shadow grew. It curled outward, snuffing flame and turning coal to ice. Ribbons of darkness grew upwards in a spinning braid of black light. The ribbons wove themselves into a man, laced with embers from the fire, his features flickering in the dim light of the dying blaze. Flames spun out from the pit like a flock of sparrows startled by the storm. The other men seated around the fire shoved away from the pit, scrabbling on hands and butts, falling over backward in their terror.

  Sir Torvald said a prayer and drew his blade.

  “In Cinder’s name, I defy you!” he shouted, or tried to shout through quivering lips and moustache. The gheist stepped forward
. Behind him, the fire swelled back to life, framing the shadowy figure in amber light.

  “Be sensible, Torvald,” the shadow hissed. “It is your frair.”

  “Lucas?” Torvald asked. “What… how…”

  “Silence,” Lucas said. He looked around the fire. “All of you, keep silent. I am still in the castle, but I need you to act, and quickly.”

  Torvald collected himself as the men stood, shuffling awkwardly before they knelt. Lucas’s shadowform waved them off.

  “No time for that,” he said. “Bassion’s army is moving against us. I think they’re coming for the high inquisitor.”

  “Let ’em have the creepy bastard,” Yohn muttered, then he was silenced when Lucas glared at him.

  “The man is right, my frair,” Torvald said. “You won’t find many souls in this camp willing to die for Sacombre. If the duchess is coming to take him, I say let her have him.”

  “It’s not for Bassion to see Sacombre to justice, nor is it for you to surrender that duty. I am not asking you to die in his defense.” Lucas grew, the ribbons of his shadowform coming loose, drawing the man in broader strokes. “Here is what you must do. And quickly. Time is fleeting.”

  * * *

  Lucas gasped to life, spitting the naether essence from his lungs as his spirit returned to his body, then dragged himself to his feet. Still alone on the wall. He tottered down the stairs, making his way back to the chambers Sophie had set out for them.

  A hand grabbed his shoulder from the shadows. He was reaching for the naether, to drive a spear of ice through his attacker, when Sir Horne’s face loomed out of the darkness. She hissed him into silence.

  “They have guards looking for us. Whatever is happening, Sophie is part of it.”

  “What of Roard and LaGaere?”

  “Waiting behind the stables. The rest of our party will be more difficult to disentangle,” Horne said. “LaGaere’s men are bunking in the barracks, and can not be reached without rousing the guard.”

  “Then we will leave them behind. I don’t think their lives are at risk,” Lucas said. “At least, not yet.” Together the pair snuck down to the stables, where they found LaGaere sitting on his horse impatiently. He was fully armed and armored, as though he had slept in his gear. Two of his knights stood nearby, preparing their saddles. Both were clearly accustomed to a squire’s assistance.