The Iron Hound

by Tim Akers

  “Where is Roard?” Lucas asked.

  “Saying good-bye to the sweet stable girl,” LaGaere said. “We wouldn’t have horses if not for that boy’s charm.”

  “Good of him to think ahead with his affections,” Horne said wryly. “If he was thinking ahead at all.”

  “You’re besmirching me, I assume,” Martin said, leading his horse into the alley. He tossed a bag over his saddle, then mounted smoothly. “What are we doing, my frair? This doesn’t seem as if you have secured our safe passage…”

  “Well, we are going to pass through that gate,” Lucas answered as he settled into his saddle. Horne settled into hers. “Gods know if it will be done safely.”

  The six riders stamped around the stables and toward the main gate. A cluster of guards, talking nervously near the sally gate, peeled free from the wall and spread out, cutting off Lucas’s escape. There were more spears along the catwalk than usual, and archers watched from the parapets.

  “We are expected,” Horne said quietly.

  “We are,” Lucas agreed. He raised his voice, addressing the guards. “I demand to speak to Lady Sophie! Go fetch your master!”

  “You will have to wait,” came the response, from a woman. “The young duchess is otherwise involved.” The speaker stepped out of the guardhouse. Lady Bassion was attended by a trio of knights, her dining room finery traded for simpler garb. She gestured to the walls, and the archers bristled to attention.

  “What have you done with her, Galleydeep?” Lucas asked.

  “I have made a deal. Her loyalty, and my support in the Circle, when she claims her father’s throne.”

  “She would not have negotiated for what she could rightly claim by blood,” LaGaere said. “What else have you given her?”

  “Sacombre’s blood,” Lucas muttered before she could answer. “That’s it, isn’t it, Galleydeep? You hold us here while she avenges her father’s death?”

  Bassion didn’t answer, merely inclined her head.

  “He is under my protection, Galleydeep!” Lucas cried. “You have no right to judge him, much less offer out his execution as a favor to an angry child!”

  “The high inquisitor will not meet his end this way,” LaGaere agreed. He drew his sword, followed seconds later by his two knights. Roard and Horne looked nervously to Frair Lucas before unsheathing their own steel. The duke of Warhome continued. “This is not a worthy death for that man.”

  “I am only doing Cinder’s business, Warhome,” Bassion said. “Let’s not be fools. Sacombre was only going to Heartsbridge to die. Death there, death here.” She shrugged elaborately. “He will still be dead—whereas if you try to cross this gate, you will precede him.”

  “Cinder’s business is not yours to attend, duchess!” Lucas said stiffly. He started forward at a slow trot, gathering the heavy shadows of the courtyard around his shoulders. “Winter does not hold court in the Circle of Lords, nor does the god of judges attend to the will of a petty duchess!”

  His form swelled, the torches that lined the yard flickering away from him, the shadows gathered at his shoulders and twisted into his cloak, billowing into a larger and larger storm cloud of black lightning. Lucas proceeded toward the gate. Tendrils of shadow dragged behind him, dancing closer to the increasingly nervous guards.

  “In the name of Cinder, you will stand aside! By the writ of the celestial church, by the vows you have sworn and the prayers you have offered to the twin gods of heaven, you will stand aside! You have threatened us with death, Lady Bassion, but I threaten you with death unending, a death unquiet and eternal!”

  The Lady Bassion was unbowed, but her men were broken by Lucas’s display. The gate began to creak open. She whirled around.

  “Stand your guard, fools! He’s nothing but show and shiver!” She grabbed a sword from her attendant guard and waved it at the gates. “Stand your ground!”

  “Let’s not test the inquisitor’s power, my lady,” Sir Horne said. She appeared beside Lady Bassion, and struck the duchess on the temple with the pommel of her dagger. The woman flopped to the stones like a fish. “Open the gates!” Horne yelled.

  The gates opened, and Lucas rode through, followed by LaGaere and his knights. Martin waited for Horne before rushing through himself.

  Horne hurried up to Lucas’s side.

  “You’re an angry little storm front, my frair,” she joked as they clambered down the wide road into Verdton. The windows on either side of the road filled with startled faces. Horne looked over at Lucas. Her eyes went wide.

  “Frair Lucas?”

  The frair hung onto his reins with white knuckled fists, his face pale, his eyes fluttering shut. When Horne reached for him, the priest nearly fell from his saddle.

  “I may have over… extended.” He swallowed loudly, grimacing. “Overextended myself.”

  “Warhome!” Horne hissed. “Get back here! We need to stop somewhere!”

  “No,” Lucas said. “No, we must continue. Torvald has moved Sacombre out of the camp, hopefully before Sophie got there.” The frair pulled himself upright, staring grimly ahead. “We will meet them along the river, but only if we hurry.”

  The knights exchanged worried looks, then closed ranks around the priest and rode hard for the city walls.

  2

  MAD GODS

  22

  MARCEL SAT OVERLOOKING the tumbled down ruin of the keep. The stables were alive with light that glimmered off the clouds of incense smoke wafting from inside. The prayers of his brother and sister priests mingled with the light. They would notice he was missing, but Marcel didn’t care. Something had to be done. Something apparently only he was willing to do.

  The sound of steel and the smell of blood was still sharp in his mind. Marcel could hear the horrible, wet cough of Sir Xander as the man sank to his knees, a Tenerran blade in his gut. And that foul-mouthed savage, Halfpenny, the one who had been calling them all names and fingering his blade, curled up and dying in the corner. Then the arrest of men who had only been protecting themselves.

  The trip north had come with fear, fear that only grew worse with each step. Frair Gilliam warned them to say their prayers at night, lest the gheist take them, and their blessings in the morning, lest the pagan witches steal the light from their eyes. But it was the men who were supposed to be guarding them that terrified Marcel. The Blakleys, and the Adairs, and the Rudaines, with their rough clothes and crude manners, their false faith and pagan hearts. Gilliam preached patience and the love of Strife, but Marcel was sworn to Cinder, and the time for judgment had come.

  He wrapped his cloak tightly around his shoulders and eased his way to the base of the curtain wall. This section of the defenses suffered worse then most during the gheist’s attack, and the stone barrier lay in ruins. The Tenerran occupiers had set up a thicket of wooden palisades to compensate, but there were gaps in the defenses. Gaps Marcel started looking for the day he arrived at the Fen Gate, just in case he and his fellow priests needed to get out in a hurry.

  Or in case someone else needed to come inside without being seen.

  It wasn’t a wide path, no more than a shoulder’s width between looming boulders, but enough for a man to pass. A trick of the light, and it had missed the attention of the defenders, the entrance blinded by a boulder that looked massive but had splintered into a thin sliver that screened the way.

  The first few steps were difficult to manage, with rubble threatening to turn an ankle, but once he was past Marcel was able to walk easily through to the outside. Minutes later he was in the thick woods that surrounded the northern side of the castle. In Suhdra, this brush would have been cleared to protect the approach. Apparently the Adairs couldn’t be bothered, or perhaps they trusted the spirits of the forest to guard them.

  Muttering prayers of protection, Marcel trudged in the direction he hoped was east, toward the godsroad. The way was difficult, choked with ironwood and rotten leaves, and clouds hid Cinder’s guiding light. He didn’t dar
e light a torch, but after a while his eyes adapted somewhat to the gloom. The wind that whispered through the trees sounded like a song, sinister and dark. Marcel was sure he saw faces in the bark of passing trees, and eyes blinking from the shelter of low hanging boughs.

  A fretful hour passed before he stumbled onto the smooth stones of the road. He was farther north than he hoped. He would have to hurry if he meant to be home before dawn. Frair Gilliam might forgive his absence at the evening prayer, but if Marcel wasn’t back in the stable for the dawnsong, alarms would be raised.

  He was so tired, so wrung out from his trip through the haunted forest, and so relieved to be safely on the sanctified stones of the godsroad, that he didn’t notice the shadows peel away from the forest. They loped behind him for several minutes before a boot struck stone and drew his attention.

  Marcel whirled around, drawing a thin knife from his belt.

  “I’m not carrying money,” he hissed. The shadows paused. There were two of them, large men carrying swords. Probably armored, though it was difficult to tell in the shadows. “I’m a man of the gods. The true gods!”

  “True gods, eh?” the nearest shadow said. A woman’s voice, to Marcel’s surprise. “And which would those be?”

  “Cinder is watching you!” Marcel said. “He will judge your actions, and see justice done to your souls.”

  “Stow it, man of the gods,” the woman said. She sheathed her blade and signaled to the forest. Another dozen shadows appeared. One of them unhooded a lantern, flooding the road in light. The shadows resolved into soldiers. They looked rough, like they’d been sleeping on the ground. The woman’s eyes were creased with worry. She looked Marcel up and down.

  “You must be part of the lot come to save the Fen Gate.”

  “Are you with the Suhdrin camp?” he asked anxiously. “Matters in the castle have gotten out of hand. One of my guards was killed trying to defend himself from those savages, and the rest have been put in chains! The inquisitor’s life is at risk.”

  “One of your guards? Savages?” The big man somehow drew himself up taller, his shoulders stiffening. “What do you mean by that?”

  “The Tenerrans, of course!” Marcel snapped. “Come with me. There’s a secret way into the castle, unknown to the guards and beneath the sentinel’s eye. A small force could make their way inside and secure the gates, I’m sure of it. Quickly, before my absence is noted!”

  “Oh,” the woman said, shaking her head. “The mistakes we make in our youth.”

  “Good thing is, we usually only make them once,” the big man said. He loomed closer, the light from the lantern splashing across his face. Tattoos ringed his eyes, as crude and profane as a pagan’s prayer. Marcel drew a sharp breath and stumbled away, only to fall into the arms of another member of their company.

  “You’re pagans!” he hissed.

  “No, lad, we are not,” the woman said. “I am Sir Caris Doone of Maebrook, sworn to Houndhallow, as well as to the celestriarch and all the frairs of Heartsbridge. But I take a sour view of you trying to lead a Suhdrin force into the castle I’m meant to be protecting.”

  “Please, don’t kill me! You can’t kill a priest of Cinder. There will be repercussions…”

  “Gods, stop your burbling. I won’t kill a priest, not without better reason than this,” Doone said. “Now let’s try again on what you were planning, and why.”

  “Does it matter?” a voice asked from the woods. The trees were lined with silver in that direction, as though a false dawn had broken among their boughs. The cadre of soldiers looked around nervously.

  “My lady, it would be best…” Doone started.

  “Do not tell me what is best,” the voice answered. A woman emerged from the forest. She was wrong. Her hair twisted sinuously in the air, her skin shone like dulled pewter, and her eyes looked at Marcel with a piteous, almost unearthly glare. “This man threatens my husband.”

  “Lady… Lady Blakley?” Marcel stuttered. He had never met the duchess of Houndhallow, but the woman wore the colors of the hound, and fit descriptions that he had heard. Other than the glowing skin, of course. “What has happened to you?”

  “I have lost my trepidation,” Sorcha Blakley answered. She raised a hand in Marcel’s direction. “And you have lost my patience.”

  “My lady, no!” Doone yelled, but it was too late.

  The ground beneath Marcel’s feet grew muddy. He tried to take a step back, but his foot broke through the muck, revealing a hidden spring that welled up. Marcel stared down in horror as the water crawled up his leg, cold as steel. The weight of it started crushing his chest.

  He looked up at Sorcha. “In the name of Cinder and the holy inquisition, I cast you out, demon of old, god of the broken—”

  “Hush,” Sorcha whispered. The water gheist enveloped Marcel’s head like a cowl, icy strands of living water filling his mouth and pressing hard against his eyes. The pressure in his skull grew and grew and grew, until it became impossible.

  * * *

  The column of swirling, steely water clouded into red. The boy’s face pressed against the surface of the gheist, mouth hung raggedly open, eyes wide with terror. His skull was misshapen.

  Sorcha’s guards stood in horror at the spectacle. Sir Doone approached the lady, a hand at her throat.

  “My lady… Sorcha. You should not have done that,” she whispered.

  “Shouldn’t I? The inquisition seeks to conspire with the Suhdrin army. This man wanted to lead soldiers into my husband’s castle, surely not for a festival.” Sorcha slowly lowered her outstretched arm, watching as the priest’s body settled to the ground, its broken parts arranging themselves awkwardly into the mud. “Sacombre defied us, tricked us, tried to undo us with his lies. Why should I be merciful to one of his followers?”

  “This man… this boy,” Doone said, prodding the broken child with her toe. “He was a fool, and perhaps a dangerous one, but he didn’t deserve to die. Not like this.”

  “No one deserves to die like that,” the big man whispered. Sorcha shot him an angry look, then shook her head.

  “My husband has abandoned me to the forest. The inquisition would hang me in my current state, and my son has left me to chase after some girl. And now you, the very souls meant to guard me, you doubt me when I act only to defend myself.” Sorcha backed away from them. “Are you keeping me here for them? Are you holding me just long enough for the inquisition to find me?”

  “My lady, I will protect you with the last of my blood,” Doone said. “You must believe my loyalty. To you, and to your husband.”

  “Must I?” Sorcha asked, tilting her head. “Very well, but there has been enough hiding. Malcolm thinks me ill, or mad, or both. I will show him otherwise. I will show him my love, if not my mercy.” She stalked off, leaving the cadre to stand around nervously.

  They looked to Sir Doone.

  “Let’s get this cleaned up,” she said, nodding to the dead priest. The mud was quickly drying around his body, the blood and water staining his clothes like rust.

  “Leave the priest,” Sorcha called over her shoulder. “Let them see what is waiting for them. Let them know I am coming.”

  Doone looked around at her men, then shrugged. Together they walked into the forest, disappearing among the trees like smoke in the wind.

  Moments after they were gone, a lone figure appeared. She came from the direction of the castle, following the same halting path that Marcel had taken. The woman, wrapped in tight black leathers and armed with a huntsman’s sword, paused when she saw the priest’s body.

  She went to it, prayed over it, drew patterns in the dirt and on his flesh with her own blood. Then she disappeared the way she had come.

  * * *

  When the sun rose, certain shadows lingered on the corpse, gathering in its eyes, and around its heart.

  23

  “THIS IS WHERE they’re meant to be,” Lucas said. They waited in a copse of trees that overlooked a narrow
cart trail. The first light of dawn crept through the sky, tinting the horizon gold. Lucas turned to the other riders. “We have to go back.”

  “You better have a pretty good explanation of why we ran,” LaGaere said. He and his cadre of knights lurked at the edge of the copse, separated from Sir Horne and young Martin Roard. “Especially after your little display, my frair.”

  “We had to get out,” Lucas said. “Bassion would have let us sit in that courtyard until Sophie returned with Sacombre’s body on a spit.”

  “Sophie Halverdt already fears the power of the inquisition,” Martin said. “When she hears—”

  “Yes, yes,” Lucas snapped. “I’m becoming used to being unpopular.” He peered around in all directions. “Where is that fool Torvald?”

  “Perhaps he didn’t get out in time,” Sir Horne said. “Or perhaps his loyalty is more to Suhdra, rather than a grumpy old man who threatens him with nightmares.”

  Lucas grunted but didn’t answer. The others in the group shifted uncomfortably, waiting and watching the sun slowly rise. Finally LaGaere cleared his throat.

  “We must do something,” the lord of Warhome said. “Bassion will have sent out patrols, and alerted Lady Sophie to our escape. If Sacombre is not already in her hands, he soon will be. I’d rather not stand here while the high inquisitor is murdered by an angry child.”

  “Murdered? To whom are you loyal, Warhome?” Martin asked. “You realize we’re taking the man to Heartsbridge for execution, don’t you?”

  “We are taking him to the celestriarch to be judged,” LaGaere answered. “He may still be innocent.”

  “If that’s the case, it may be best to leave him with Sophie,” Martin said.