He’d sent off the half dozen men upon the wall as if for a regular change of watch, and started walking it alone, a shining beacon of a target. His shoulder blades had started itching before he’d made his first turn.
The whistle of a thrown rope, the slight metallic clink as a hook, expertly aimed, clinched into the wood not much more than an arm’s length from him. The rapid, biting thud of boots with climbing studs ascending the wall. These men, he had the time to note, are professionals. Then the crown of a man’s head, hooded in dark green over a thin helm, appeared. He felt Idgen Marte dash into action farther down the wall.
Allystaire darted for the man nearest him, grabbing him by the arm he’d just thrown over the timbers of the parapet. The knife he held—its blade blacked to keep from betraying its wielder—clattered away as Allystaire broke the wrist with a simple squeeze. Then he raised the man high and tossed him over the back railing of the scaffold. The man let out a shout of pain, cut off as he hit the ground with a thud.
Beneath the scaffold, Allystaire heard the men he’d ordered off the wall rush to their fallen enemy, and winced despite himself at the sound of fists and feet thudding into him.
The rest of the interlopers had made the wall by then. Blades were drawn, and the Arm of the Mother moved to meet them with hammer and fist, while at the other end of the scaffold, the Shadow worked towards him with knives and speed.
It did not take them long. By the time the first three lay dead, leaving eight still upon the scaffold, Allystaire simply backhanded the next he came to across the face. He felt the jaw shatter, saw and heard a meaningless babbling moan of pain and blood coming from the ruined mouth, when one in the middle suddenly threw down a short sword.
“Yield,” he said. “We yield! Lay down your arms,” he yelled to his men. “We are beaten!” Knives and swords and a hand axe or two thunked to the scaffold. One man still waved a knife vaguely in the air at a patch of shadow in front of him, till Idgen Marte appeared behind him, twisted the knife out of his grasp, kicked savagely at the back of each of his knees, and threw him down upon the narrow boards.
“Your captain told you to yield. I’d take that order,” she said, bending down and resting the point of a knife against the nape of the man’s neck.
Allystaire pushed his way along the scaffolding towards the leader. He seized him around the collar and lifted him easily off the ground.
The man struggled, to no benefit. He was taller than Allystaire, with broad shoulders and a lean build, a closely cut brown beard, and a finish to his gear that suggested family weight, if not title.
“Your rank, your company, and your mission,” Allystaire said, looking up into the man’s eyes.
“Captain. The Long Knives. And…havoc,” he replied.
“What do you mean, havoc?” Allystaire asked, though he knew full well the answer.
The man swallowed. “I yielded. You may ask me no questions about our plans! It is not done!”
“It is now,” Allystaire roared, lifting the man higher. “Now tell me—what is meant by havoc! You cannot resist my question. Do not try.”
The man twisted feebly in Allystaire’s grasp, kicked out at the paladin’s knee, but without any way to leverage his weight properly, the blow simply glanced off the armor.
“Set fires,” he finally said, his voice thin and strangled. “Slit throats. Kill animals. Note the layout, and then slip back over the wall.”
There was a pause, till Allystaire suddenly lowered the man back to the scaffolding, but did not release him. “Whose throats?”
“Any,” the man said, his voice very thin and harder to hear now.
“Did you have any specific targets?”
There was more struggle, the man twisting in Allystaire’s grasp. Ravens and militiamen had started to filter back to the top of the scaffold, gathering the fallen weapons and taking rough hold of the surrendered warband.
Finally, the captain’s resistance broke again under the assault of Allystaire’s Gift, even as the paladin stood silent and unmoving.
“The girl-priestess,” he finally said, choking on the words. “The boy, too.”
Allystaire stepped back, releasing his hold of the captain, who instantly began massaging his neck.
“You come on a mission to murder children of less than thirteen years,” Allystaire muttered quietly, icily. “And yet you would lecture me on the niceties of battle and the rules of treating prisoners.”
“They’re peasants. I’m a brother of battle, captain of a warband with friends and family who’d ransom me handsomely.”
“Pick up your sword,” Allystaire said, retreating a step and lowering his hammer to the planks of the scaffold, letting it sit upon its head with the handle straight upwards.
“What?”
“Pick. Up. Your. Sword.” Allystaire’s voice was probably quieter than it had been since the battle had been joined the night before, yet the silence around made it deafening. Though the men around him couldn’t have seen his face, many took an unconscious half-step away.
“I yielded,” the man protested, backing away. “You all heard it.”
“Pick it up, or die unarmed. It makes no difference to me. Will it make a difference to you?”
The man hesitated a moment, then fell to his knees, extending his hands away from him.
“You all see this,” he yelled. “Your paladin! Your holy knight of song, prepared to murder a man who has yielded.”
Allystaire. Idgen Marte’s voice was sharp and reproachful in his mind. You cannot.
I shouldn’t. But I can.
No. He could feel Idgen Marte tensing, ready to leap between him and the captain if need be. He turned to her.
The captain saw Allystaire was distracted. The paladin heard only the flit of steel against leather and by the time he looked back to the captain of the Long Knives, the man had slim blades in each hand and was lunging him.
Allystaire felt one of the blades slip through his greaves and into his left knee. The other was foiled by his armor when the man tried to slice it up into his armpit.
The paladin reared back and brought the crown of his helm straight down onto the top of the man’s skull.
There was a tremendous and unmistakable crack.
The captain of the Long Knives was dead, Allystaire was sure, before he hit the ground, though he twitched for a long while. He pulled the knives free, the one from his flesh and the other from his steel. He took a moment to heal himself, pressing his left palm to his neck, then raised one knife in his right hand, held it out towards the gathered remnants of the warband, and crushed it by closing his fist.
“If any of you would-be murderers opens your mouths without a question put to him, goes for a weapon, refuses a request, or attempts to hide information from me when I ask it, you will get the same. Who will tell me what they know, be it rumor, order, or speculation, about the rest of your Baron’s plans?”
The top of the scaffold was suddenly abuzz with eager volunteers.
Chapter 37
The Rest of the Message
Bannerman Orin Milfair was not, if he really thought about it, entirely sure he’d made the right decision in agreeing to carry the paladin’s message back to the baron’s camp, but he’d been the highest ranking man left alive after Captain Tierne’s head had been crushed, and it had been his duty.
As the paladin had told him in that bone-rattling chill of a voice, Going over the wall and firing the town and slitting throats had been your duty, and you went to that eagerly enough. Returning to the Baron who holds your contract and speaking the truth of what happened should be far easier.
Sneaking and skulking had been the stock in trade of the Long Knives as long as warbands’d had names. Creeping in darkness, scaling the walls to spread confusion and terror, kill guards as they slept, start fires, poison wells. Once or
twice, memorably, their action alone had been enough to tip a battle one way, but more often they were simply another arrow in the quiver, as the Baron liked to put it.
Milfair felt naked, walking out upon the road with his weapons stripped from him, and the cold biting through his leathers and his heavy cloak. Any moment he expected an arrow in the back from one of the hard-eyed zealots who’d given him a good kicking after he’d been tossed off the scaffold during the fight, by something that flitted in behind him that he hadn’t even seen.
“Unnatural,” he muttered, though he recalled, earlier in the day, as the wounded in the Baron’s camp had been carted up and trundled over to the other camp, the secret camp that only officers were supposed to know about, and tried not to think too hard about what was unnatural on his side of the wall. Orin hadn’t been with the carts, but he’d talked to men who had, who spoke of how the wounded grew frantic and how many had tried to run when they saw their destination, and the screams the men pushing the carts had heard.
The carts had been empty when they came back.
While he was lost in this thought and what it meant he found himself challenged by the pickets. Milfair had to search his mind for the countersign, and by the time he gave it, a man in a green tabard with a freshly painted shield and a new-looking spear had come forward to glare at him. The spear point hovered towards him for a moment, then slid away once he responded. Even so, he held out his hands and spread his cloak wide to show the empty scabbards on his belt.
“I’ve got parole to bring the Baron a message, then I’m t’give myself back up,” Orin told them.
“What’re you, a knight now?” He didn’t recognize the man who’d challenged him, but they shared the general camaraderie of soldiers on campaign, something they fell into as naturally as breathing. Milfair had found that few enough of the men on this expedition were truly veterans. It was easy to recognize those who were.
“Never that,” Orin responded with a nervous chuckle. “Just point me to the watch officer and from there I can get to his Lordship.”
The other soldier gave him directions and he followed them dumbly. Soon enough he was saluting and reporting to a dark shape huddled close to a brazier.
“Bannerman Milfair, sir, of the Long Knives,” he stated. “Returning with a message from the enemy for his Lordship.”
“Well let’s hear it, Bannerman,” the officer snapped.
“With respect, sir, it was laid upon me to speak my message to the Baron himself.”
“The Baron is in conference in the other camp, and unreachable. We are not to send messages for him there,” the officer replied. “He left specific instructions on that score.”
Milfair sighed, “Have you any suggestions then, sir? I am to report back to my captors within two turns of the glass.”
“Nonsense,” the officer said, waving his hand. “They were fools to let you go. I’ll find two other officers to witness and you can make your report to the three of us.”
Once again Milfair felt that tiny prickle in his back, that thought that he was the fool. “As you will, sir,” the Bannerman replied, still standing stiffly, trying not to eye the brazier, or the stand with the carafe upon it that, he was certain, he could smell wine in.
The officer waved a hand and they moved towards the center of the camp, where higher ranks, knights, lords, and officers were camped. There weren’t too many of the former, but eventually the officer, who wore the Tower-and-Spear of the newly formed unit full of half-trained guards, merchants sons, and new volunteers, was able to round up a knight wearing yellow and purple with a crest of a horse rearing upon a wall, and another Salt Spear officer wearing expensive armor, but with no crest of his own.
The knight must’ve been a minor one, for Milfair, having fought all over the baronies for his entire adult life, didn’t know the crest. A sword-at-hire with a sir is still a sword-at-hire, he thought, dismissively. The three officers found an empty tent, complete with seats, braziers, lit lamps, and wine for themselves while once again leaving Milfair standing to in the cold.
They’d also gathered a scribe, who fussed with his writing-case and produced from it parchment, ink, and pens, though he muttered constantly how it was too dark to do any proper writing.
Once all was finally ready, Milfair stepped smartly to the front of the camp table they’d set up. “I would like the account to show, m’lord, sirs, that I attempted to carry out the charge laid by my captor to deliver my message to the Baron himself.”
The scribe began scratching at the parchment, tsking all the while under his breath. The knight, who had a greasy blond beard and hair, slapped the table lightly with the flat of his hand. “Out with it then, man. The night is cold and we’ve other duties.”
“Very well, m’lord,” Milfair began. “I was told by the pal—”
At this he was cut off by the original officer waving a hand. “Give the man no undue titles. His name is Coldbourne.”
“Yessir. The first part is that I was told by Coldbourne that upon our retreat from Thornhurst he would be willing to release the other captured members of the Long Knives based on certain conditions.”
“How is it that you failed so singularly in your charge?” The officer had a careful way of speaking, an educated polish to his words, that put Milfair off even as he tried to match it.
“They seemed to know we were coming, sir,” Milfair replied. “Killed the first few men over the wall and then Captain Tierne ordered us to yield.”
“If Tierne was alive to order a surrender, then why does he not stand before us?”
“He ordered it, sirs, but then the…then Coldbourne asked questions of him. The answers were, ah, not to his liking.”
“Why did Tierne answer them?” The knight leaned forward, blinking weary, red-lined eyes. “Why was this Coldbourne even asking? That is bad form, to put questions to a man of rank who’s yielded.”
“I don’t think Coldbourne is too concerned with those kinds of form, m’lord,” Milfair said, then swallowed as he felt a droplet of sweat, despite the chill, run down the back of his neck. “And his questions—they must be answered.”
“Torture, then? By a self-proclaimed paladin?” The knight sat back, waving a hand dismissively. “I ought to ride forward and call the upstart out.”
“No, m’lord. No torture. He just asks. And then something bright and hard seizes your mind and the lies and evasions that spring up into it can’t pass your throat. You choke on them, and then you tell him the truth. That’s what Tierne did. And then he died.”
“What? How?”
“The paladin killed him.”
“A yielded foe?”
“Tierne slipped his knives into his hands. Then he sprang at Coldbourne with them, and got a crushed skull for his troubles.” Milfair swallowed again, and said, “There’s more to my message, sirs and m’lord.”
“Go on, go on,” the first officer waved, then poked a finger at the scribe. “Are you recording all of this?”
“Aye,” the man answered, annoyance plain in his voice and features. “Even the nonsense about paladins and truth magic,” he added with a weary sigh.
“You’d not call it nonsense if it’d been done to you, you cowardly scraper,” Milfair spat at the man, who simply ignored him. Then he cleared his throat. “Ah, he also says he will turn the bodies and effects of the men who died over to us upon our retreat,” he said delicately, “provided that it is proven to his satisfaction that benefits are paid to their surviving kin.” He paused. “I think I have that right. Bit longwinded, Coldbourne.”
“And that is all?”
“Not quite.”
Milfair spun around, his hands clenching into fists, because he hadn’t been the one to speak the words. The voice was a woman’s, husky, angry, and a bit terrifying, but there was no one and nothing to be seen.
�
��The rest of the message is this,” the voice went on, sounding as if it came from behind him, behind the gathered officers, who were also scrambling dumbly to their feet, knocking over the table. They nearly upset the scribe’s writing case, but he deftly pulled it into his lap, even as he fell from his stool and tried to gain his feet.
“That if you wish to play a part of this out in shadow, with fear and flame, then know that we also will do this, and not with murderous warband men as our tools.”
Then a woman’s shape, tall and dark and little more than an opaque silhouette, was standing behind the first officer and plunging something into his shoulder. “We will do it with the power of the Mother,” she said as she leaned forward. Though she seemed an insubstantial figure of shadow, the knife point that pressed through the officer’s mail on the right side of his chest seemed very real, and very wet.
Before any of them could react with drawn weapons, the Shadow was a blur among them. The other two men cried out as the knives slashed at them, the form wielding them slipping in and out of sight, then a brazier was kicked over, and the lamps smashed and flames were licking the sides of the tent.
The scribe had run for it and Milfair heard him screaming outside, raising an alarm. He heard more hard wet sounds of knife meeting flesh.
Milfair knew when it was time to run, and so he did, putting the burning tent behind him and emerging into the dark of night. Regular torches lit the camp, as did the campfires, so he could see a clear path, but he made it no more than a few span before something tripped him, and then that same voice was at his ear.
“This message was supposed to be for the Baron himself. Make sure you tell him that if you’ve not got the courage to come back inside the walls of Thornhurst like you said you’d do. Tell him the Shadow of the Mother is longing to meet him again.”
Then the voice was gone and Milfair was briefly alone in the chaos of the camp waking up to an attack in its midst.
Orin Milfair thought of that bright and hard thing that had seized his throat back in the village and made him speak truth when he’d wanted to lie, and of the blurring Shadow that had just wounded, maybe killed, three well-armed and trained men like they were children. They frightened him, and he was no parade-ground soldier.
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