Stillbright

by Daniel M Ford

  Shaking his head, Allystaire took a step forward, though he kept his mace-hand below his hip. He took another step; one spear point shifted in his direction. “I do not seek your death,” the paladin said, addressing the guard. “Yet if you stand in my way I will have no choice.” He took another step forward, and reached down to one of the limp, cold bodies on the floor, its throat a ruined gash. He reached up, fumbling at the steel pot helm, with nose and cheek guards that sat loosely atop the dead guard’s head. He left his borrowed mace sitting on the floor when he stood.

  Pointedly staring at the three sweating, spear-brandishing guards, he pressed the helmet between his two hands and crumpled it into ball, then turned his hands and let it fall to the stone floor with a heavy thump.

  The two guardsmen got the message. Their spears clattered from hands that suddenly shot up in surrender, even as Chaddin fumed. “I’ll see both of you hung,” the sergeant spat, before suddenly lunging at Allystaire with his spear.

  The man was well trained; the spear was level, held properly with hands spread for power and control. He pushed off his back foot and led with strong, straight steps. The point was aimed straight at the center of Allystaire’s mass, and would certainly have driven through his unarmored flesh.

  The paladin did not move. He thought, simply and pointedly, Try not to kill him.

  No training, no form, was a match for the Shadow of a Goddess. Idgen Marte barreled into Chaddin from the side while her sword described an arc in the air so fast it appeared as a blur, driving his spearpoint into the stones at his feet. The shaft splintered and buckled and the weapon was torn from his hands, and he collapsed in a heap. She was upon him instantly, sword laid against his neck.

  “I don’t think he wants me t’kill you,” she said, her face grim, “but I’m not too keen on doing just what he wants right now. So go ahead and move for your sword.”

  “We have no time for this,” Allystaire said, even as he bent to one of the moaning hamstrung men Idgen Marte had toppled. He laid his left hand against the man’s pale cheek, and poured some of the Goddess’s power into him. Not much, just enough to keep him from bleeding to death on the stones. He did the same to a second. Then he confronted Chaddin.

  “Sergeant, I have escaped your Baron’s torture, killed his sorcerer, and together with this…” He looked to Idgen Marte, then back to Chaddin, and said, “Demon, was it? With this demon, we have routed your men. Remember these two things: I did not come here meaning to fight, and I could have let those two men die. Instead, they will live because the Goddess I serve gave me leave to save them. I think loyalty matters to you, sergeant, but it is time to decide if you are loyal to your Baron, or to your people. Because you can no longer serve both.”

  Allystaire paused to let that sink in, then said, “Where are my arms? Where is the Baron? In that order.”

  “Compel him,” Idgen Marte spat, through gritted teeth.

  “If I must,” Allystaire growled back. “What will it be, sergeant? Do you tell me what I need to know of your own will or do I tear it from you?”

  He could read the back and forth of duty and uncertainty, of fear and courage, in the soldier’s face. I could bring him to my side, Allystaire thought, if I had time. He knelt, reached out for Chaddin’s neck. The man flinched, started to back away, but Idgen Marte’s sword-edge came to rest on his throat again. He stilled.

  Allystaire seized Chaddin’s chin and throat, pushed against the soldier’s mind with a sense he still didn’t quite understand, and asked, “Where are my arms and armor?”

  “The Baron meant them for a trophy. Probably the great hall.”

  “Where does he sleep?”

  “Northwest Tower.”

  “Allystaire, we haven’t the time for this.”

  “Fine,” he said, adjusting his grip on the now wide-eyed and pale-cheeked man’s jaw. “My last question. What did you know about the prisoners?”

  “What prisoners?”

  “Her,” Allystaire said, gesturing with a jerk of his chin towards the woman he’d freed. “And there were others. Slaves, taken on your own barony’s land with your Baron’s knowledge and consent. Some, like she was meant to, met their death at the hands of a sorcerer, feeding his divinations with their blood.”

  “I just returned from campaign,” Chaddin whispered, all the color now gone out of his face. “I was at the far reaches of the barony, working against Innadan—”

  “I do not need your report, sergeant.” Allystaire stood up, wobbling slightly, the first hint that the incredible strength thrumming in his muscles was waning. “I need you to understand the truth. You heard his words yourself. Rabble, he called you. To men like him, for all his soldier’s affectations, you are just another resource, a tool, a possession.”

  Finally on his feet, Allystaire started to turn away, then whirled back suddenly and dropped a glancing blow from his clubbed first against Chaddin’s temple. He sank to the floor, his eyes rolling up in his head, unconscious. “If he is perfectly healthy when they find him, they will kill him. Better this way,” he explained to Idgen Marte, who was already darting ahead to the end of the corridor and scanning the ways ahead.

  Allystaire turned back to the boy and the rescued woman, whose brown eyes were wide with fear as she clutched the shreds of her dress. “The two of you,” he said, “follow us and nothing here will harm you, if we can prevent it.”

  “Why?” The question came from the boy. “You have repaid me for dispelling my master’s sorcery by defeating him. Why would you do more?”

  “Follow and I will do my best to answer. In the meantime, many angry men with spears are going to show if we do not move, and they will kill you.” Allystaire looked around at the carnage before them, sighing faintly at the waste of it, and pointed to one of the spears that lay nearby. “Pick that up. Do not try to stab anyone with it. Just point it menacingly if I tell you to.”

  The boy shrugged, and did as Allystaire suggested, hefting the weapon uncertainly, with both hands, holding it across his body like a quarterstaff.

  Idgen Marte waved them on. “We don’t have time for all this. We’ve got to find Torvul and clear out.”

  “To the Great Hall. I am not leaving without my arms.”

  “There’s not a shortage of them, you know,” she hissed.

  “Good armor is expensive, and that plate was custom made to my needs by the Master Armorer at Wind’s Jaw. Besides, we may run into the Baron on the way.”

  Idgen Marte shook her head resignedly. “Never rescuing you again.”

  “Agreed,” Allystaire replied. “Now where will Torvul be?”

  “Follow the shouts of ‘fire,’ I suspect,” she replied. “Now, let’s go. There’s a stairway down that hall.” She pointed to a passage and trotted off. Allystaire waved the boy and the woman to go ahead of him and followed.

  As they moved along, Allystaire grew impatient at the slower pace enforced on them by the woman and the boy. Down a passage, up a stairway, another passage, without encountering guards. We’re near the ground floor. All keeps are much the same from the inside, he thought.

  “This is still a terrible idea,” Idgen Marte said.

  “The Great Hall has no tactical value, confers no advantage. They will not expect it. We collect my arms and then we find Torvul.”

  They had just crested another narrow staircase when they heard the sound of tramping feet and the calls of “Fire! Fire in the cellar!”

  Allystaire turned towards the nearest door, took three steps, and threw his shoulder into it. The Goddess’s strength had not left him, and the door flew open, bursting its lock. “Inside. Now!” He stood in the doorway tilll the woman skirted past him, and the boy, the butt of his spear dragging on the ground. Then he and Idgen Marte darted inside.

  It was a closet, the size of a small peasant’s cottage. It held stacks of lin
ens, piles of wood, coal scuttles, buckets and brushes, the kind of things that kept a keep running. He hefted his mace and slid to one side of the door. Idgen Marte bracketed the other, while the student brandished his spear and the farmwife crouched behind a stack of chairs.

  Suddenly a voice sounded from outside the door. “I think you’re clear now. The sight of half the Baron’s precious wine cellar going up in flames ought to keep them occupied for a bit. Come on out and let’s quit this place.”

  Allystaire nudged the door open, and Torvul smirked from where he leaned on his cudgel.

  “How did you find us?”

  Torvul tapped the side of his head with one long finger. “I used Her Ladyship’s Gifts, and my not inconsiderable store of wit and wisdom. Come on now. They’ll get that fire dealt with soon enough. Once they’re organized and start patrolling every floor…”

  “The wine cellars of the Dunes are legendary,” Allystaire noted, a touch of wistfulness in his voice. “Did you really?”

  Torvul sniffed. “Only the barrels of the inferior stuff. And, well, perhaps a few tuns of the better won’t pass muster. Let’s say I merely helped it on its natural course.”

  “Meaning?”

  Torvul tapped one of his many pockets. “I turned it to vinegar.”

  Idgen Marte stepped out of the room and smacked both of them on the back of the head, so fast they grunted simultaneously. “If you two are done, we’ve a castle to escape, and a Baron to kill.”

  “After my—”

  “Yes, after we collect your toys,” she spat, before stalking off to the end of the corridor, ripping her sword from its sheath and swirling the tip in the air in front of her.

  Torvul grunted and retreated a few paces. “And in case you’re wondering, the fire won’t spread out of the cellar, but they’ll have a job of getting it under control.”

  Allystaire motioned for the youth and the woman to emerge. “Stay behind me, in front of the dwarf. He is a friend.”

  “And they are?” Torvul asked, gesturing towards them with his cudgel.

  “Fellow escapees,” Allystaire muttered, as the small column began to move.

  Take the next left, girl, then straight down the corridor. Stairway on the right leads up into the Hall. Bound to be guards. Put them down if you can. Allystaire heard Torvul’s thoughts before the rumble of his voice.

  “I see. And given that you’re escaping, I take it the baron didn’t ask you over for brandy and a pipe?”

  Allystaire snorted. “He turned me over to a sorcerer. Name of Bhimanzir.”

  Torvul coughed discreetly, and his scuffling boot-steps stopped for a moment.” And what’s become of said sorcerer?”

  “I healed him,” Allystaire said, as they walked. “Dragged the magic right out of him, and he aged, oh, three or four scores of years right in front of me.”

  “Five-score at least,” the boy corrected. “Possibly twice that much.”

  The dwarf whistled low. “They aren’t gonna like that, boy,” he said, while turning his eyes at the nameless youth behind him.

  “I said they would learn fear. Now is the time they start,” Allystaire said, trying to edge between the dwarf and the former apprentice. Torvul noticed, he was sure, but said nothing.

  Guards! He heard Idgen Marte’s voice in his head and rushed to her. There were two guards at their post, and Allystaire arrived just in time to see Idgen Marte knocking them both senseless with the hilt of her sword.

  The doors of the Hall were barred from the inside. Torches burning in sconces to either side of the wooden double doors. Idgen Marte stepped under the torches, where the shadows were thickest, and vanished. The bar scraped against wood and iron as she lifted it, and the doors swung open. Inside, all was darkness.

  They hustled inside, Torvul messing with the cylindrical, shuttered lamp hanging from his belt. Soon the lamp was glowing steadily, a brighter, more direct light than that of plain fire. He adjusted some knobs and light pooled in a wide circle around them as they advanced. The columns with their trophies rose up around them like great stone trees.

  “Lot of risk for some steel,” Torvul offered.

  “How can I be a knight in shining armor if I am naked?”

  Torvul harumphed at that, moving his lamp to and fro, fiddling some more with the knobs on it so that it focused into a tight, narrow beam. “Damn if this thing ever worked half so well before.” They’ll probably have found the boat by now. We need another way out.

  I have some thoughts on that score, Allystaire thought. I think we will leave by the front gate.

  Goddess save us from you doing the thinking, Idgen Marte thought.

  There are more ways out of the keep if we need them. Tunnels my Master used. He could Step, as well, but I am afraid he did not teach me. The voice sounding in all three of their heads was unfamiliar, careful, and unusually accented.

  All three swiveled as Torvul’s lantern-beam focused on the former sorcerer’s apprentice. The boy blinked his eyes against the sudden brightness, and readjusted his grip on the spear. “I’m sorry. Was that rude? I thought if I could hear you, then…”

  Allystaire, Torvul, and Idgen Marte stared, first at the boy, then at each other.

  “Later.” Idgen Marte spoke first, cutting off all debate with a single chop of the edge of her hand.

  Allystaire’s narrowed eyes lingered on the unblinking and wide-eyed gaze of the boy before returning to the search.

  Torvul’s beam swept the room, suddenly stopped. “Over here.” The light canted for a moment as the dwarf set his lantern down, and then some clattering as he began gathering up pieces. “Here.”

  He handed Allystaire his belt, with the hammer still snug in its ring. Securing the belt back around his waist made the paladin feel a little less naked. He stuffed the mace through his belt on the other side. Resignedly he added the thick leather strap that held his heavy sword; through the thin fabric of the tabard he wore, it began to chafe his skin as soon as he settled it.

  “No time to get the armor on,” Allystaire said, but Torvul’s hands were already flying among the straps and buckles, long and skilled fingers moving certainly and nimbly despite the faint light. Soon enough he had it tied in convenient bundles, took two for himself, and handed one to Idgen Marte. The dwarf handed Allystaire his shield, the light of his lantern reflecting brightly off the battered blue face and golden sunburst.

  They found the stairway that led straight down to the keep’s main gate, but below them they heard a clatter, raised voices, armor rattling, steel hissing against leather. Idgen Marte halted and the rest of them came to a stop behind her.

  “We should make for the boat,” she said.

  “Long walk,” Torvul offered. “And they’ve surely found it by now.”

  “Will five fit on this boat?” Allystaire asked.

  Idgen Marte fixed him with a hard stare that Allystaire returned. She looked away, shaking her head, eyes narrowed in frustration.

  “We go onward,” Allystaire said. “The front gate.”

  Torvul spat between his boots with pinpoint precision. “Men are already raised. How many between us and safety?”

  “Her strength has not left me yet. We can fight free if we must.”

  They halted as the tumult of raised voices became more distinct. A shout briefly rose above the din.

  “You speak of mutiny! Treason!”

  Similar calls rang out, but the rattling of metal quickly swallowed them.

  At the bottom of the stairs, two groups of men in armor and Delondeur green shoved and yelled at one another. In the very midst of it stood a familiar figure, Chaddin, his blond hair standing out among the crowd of more anonymous men in helmets and coifs.

  “You knew what the sorcerer was doing here,” the sergeant bellowed. To Allystaire, Chaddin seemed young for his rank wit
hout his helm, like a child stripped of a vital part of a costume. “Your entire detachment knew, Sir Leoben.” The sergeant was taller than the knight he stood face to face with. Despite the disadvantage of the steps, he gave the knight a hard shove that sent him reeling backwards, clattering onto the stairs in his green-enameled and silver-chaised mail.

  Sir Leoben was quickly hauled up by his men, his face darkening with rage. “First you talk treason. Now you dare lay hands on your—”

  Chaddin drew his sword in a flash, the point leveling just in front of Leoben’s face. The knight froze. “Say it. Say ‘upon your better’ or ‘upon your lord.’ See how much that matters to me right now, Leoben.”

  There’s hope for this one yet, Allystaire thought, smiling inwardly, even as swords were drawn all around. The men—common soldiers in tabards—who gathered in a knot around Chaddin appeared calm compared to those on the steps above them, who were jittery and shifting from foot to foot, unable to stay still.

  “Your political debate is thrilling, gentlemen,” Torvul hollered, advancing down the stairs. “But alas, it impedes my exit, and so it must end. This is your warning.” They had gone unnoticed by the opposing bands of Delondeur men, but there was no clear way past them now.

  Allystaire was already drawing his hammer free; the weight returned to his arm like a comfortable old shirt sliding over his shoulders.

  Both groups turned to them. Chaddin was suddenly seized with indecision, the point of his sword wavering.

  Cover your eyes, all of you, and get the woman’s, too. Torvul’s hand dove into a pouch and produced a small, cloth wrapped bundle. He began to stroke the back of the bundle with the ball of his thumb, chanting a few low, rumbling words of Dwarfish.

  Allystaire caught a glimpse of a painfully intense brightness and saw Torvul’s arm cocked to throw before closing his eyes. Even with his arm covering his eyes, there was an intense red flash and the sudden screaming of men and a clatter of mail and weapons as they fell about, toppling each other down the stairs.