The Jack of Ruin

by Stephen Merlino

  5

  Blood & Fire

  Harric lay on his back and stared at the beams above his bed. Predawn light paled the arrow slit high on the north wall of his chamber. It wasn’t enough to see by, but it lent a ghostly pallor to the mineral streaks on the ceiling, which looked like toothy mouths or racks of spikes.

  Nightmares had awoken him and he could not return to sleep. In them, the empty-eyed vulture spirit had pinned him to the stone slab atop the rubble, while others opened his belly and tried to divine the future from his entrails.

  “What have you done?” they’d asked him, while Fink watched with milk-white eyes and a permanent grin.

  Not for the first time since he’d left Abellia’s tower, Harric missed the comfort of Spook’s purr, and wished he’d thought to bring the little moon cat with him when they had rushed to the pass. He hoped the cat had found enough mice around the tower to stick around until Harric returned.

  A sound roused him from his thoughts: a distant buzz or hum that just tickled the edge of his senses. His gaze drifted to the dim gray line of the arrow slit through which it had come, and he held his breath, listening. He’d just released the breath, wondering if he’d imagined the sound, when he heard it again, more clearly: the sustained note of a distant horn.

  Leaping from his covers, he fumbled to light a candle. The horn could signal their rescue.

  More than a week had passed since he’d sent message doves to the Queen, calling for the aid of the Blue Order. Arrival of the Blue Order would virtually guarantee Ambassador Brolli’s return to his people, putting an end to their danger and their flight from Sir Bannus. Brolli would be safe in his homelands within a week.

  Harric threw on his clothes, cinched up his bastard belt, and climbed the ledge below the arrow slit to peer out. The bloody light of the Mad Moon colored the pale mist in the valley. In it, he could just make out the shapes of the boulders in the rock moat below the slit. Nothing moved but faint waves of red-lit mist from the waterfall below. Beyond the moat lay sixty paces of stony road and then the mountain of rubble he’d buried it with. The rockfall loomed in the darkness like a second fortress, facing the outposts across a barren no-man’s land.

  Nothing stirred. No enemy. No Blue Order. Only the lonely roar of the waterfall.

  Judging from the silence of the barracks, the watchmen were either still sleeping, or they were listening for another note. Then it sounded again, and this time, it was louder and clear enough to jar his memory and turn his blood to ice.

  Harsh, guttural, unmistakable. It was Bannus’s horn. The immortal returned.

  The blast suddenly doubled in volume, as if Bannus blew it as he rounded the last bend in the road below the pass.

  Harric slammed and latched the view port, then bolted from the room, grabbing his sword on the way out.

  “Bannus! Sir Bannus returns!” he cried, as he sprinted through the barrack hall. “Wake up! Sir Bannus!”

  He skidded to a halt at the doors to Willard’s and Caris’s quarters. Caris’s door opened before he could pound on it. She met his look, eyes blinking back sleep. “Bannus?”

  “Impossible…” someone mumbled behind them. A face peered from a bunk room Harric had passed.

  “Listen!” said Harric. “His horn!”

  Willard’s door jerked opened. Red-shot eyes greeted them from behind rumpled mustachio, and a wave of stale alcohol and ragleaf wafted forth. “I heard you,” he said. The knight pointed decisively at Caris. “You—bring your armor in here. We’ll arm each other. You”—he pointed to Harric—“get on the wall and be my eyes. I want a report when I arrive.”

  Harric spun and rushed for the stairs, almost bowling over a half-dressed guardsman who was crossing the hall on his way to the privy. Already, the rattle of arrows in quivers echoed from the open door of the armory. A call for spitfires and resin chests rang through the hall.

  Harric sprinted up the stairs. Mounting the top stair, he belted on his sword and pushed open the door to the parapet. The Mad Moon glowered down, turning the battlements to blood. The guards from the night watch appeared to have just risen to their feet, blinking sleep from their eyes. Like Willard, they stank of the previous night’s celebrations, and Harric had to avoid a spot where vomit splattered the parapet.

  He returned their grim nods and pressed himself flat behind the cover of a crenellation to look east down the valley. Since the fort stood atop the cliffs at the head of the narrow pass, it commanded an expansive view. A mile down the valley, on the road cutting across its northern wall, rode Sir Bannus on the immortal Phyros, Gygon. The beast churned up the road at full gallop, massive hooves pounding sparks from the stone. Sir Bannus held a horn to his lips and blew until the harsh notes multiplied in the crags like the horns of twenty Old Ones.

  Answering horns erupted from the head of the valley, so loud and clear it seemed the blowers must stand at the very gates of the fort.

  Harric whirled to look at the road outside the gates. There the rubble rose as high as the wall itself—seven fathoms, at least—but Harric could see enough over its top to spy a few new tents on the road beyond the rubble, just outside of bow range. The new tents had sprung up during the night—some of Bannus’s men, come late to the battle, and their tardiness had spared them the disastrous fate of the others. Now a lord in green armor stood at the foot of the camp blowing a silver horn to welcome the return of his master, while a half-dozen servants moved in and out of tents and wagons.

  As Bannus neared the camp, he stopped blowing and began to roar. Snatches of unintelligible howling reached Harric. Vengeance was a word he caught. Abominator, his pet name for Willard, was another.

  One of the night guards puked, and this time, Harric made it to the edge of the parapet.

  Bannus appeared to be raging without pause, alternately howling and then blasting his horn. Even at a distance, he looked huge. As he thundered up to the lord and servants in the camp, he dwarfed them—a giant among men, and Gygon a giant among horses.

  Captain Gren emerged from the stairwell behind Harric with a few other men, and stood between the guardsmen to look out over the rubble. A thin, rangy gray-hair, Gren was probably nearing his pension, wondering how his soft duty had turned to nightmare. “Gods leave us,” he muttered. “We celebrated too soon.”

  “No, sir,” said Farley, a boy of no more than twelve and by far the youngest in the garrison. “Harric sent messages to the Queen, sir. The Blue Order will be here before Bannus can clear the rubble. They’ll ride up his tail any day. Maybe today.”

  “Maybe today.” Harric gave the boy a reassuring nod, and hoped he was right.

  Bannus did not stop at the green lord’s camp. He cornered Gygon sharply toward the mountain of rubble that buried his army before the fort.

  As he neared, Harric spied clear evidence of damage the immortal had sustained when he leapt from the cliff to avoid the rockfall: half the horns had been sheared from the crown on his great helm, his left pauldron had been torn away completely, and his breastplate and parts of the armor of one arm and leg had been smashed and raked of paint to leave bright stripes of raw steel. Whether Gygon had acquired any new scars from the fall was impossible to tell. Many lifetimes of Bannus cutting and drinking from the beast’s veins had left his wine-black coat more a tangle of violet scars than original hide.

  Sir Bannus disappeared from view behind the intervening rubble, but the thunder of Gygon’s hooves grew louder.

  Harric’s heart raced. Could Gygon simply gallop over the rubble without breaking his pace? Could he leap from the summit through sixty paces of air to land on the parapet?

  A clatter of boots and equipment rose from the stairs behind them, and Harric turned to see three guards in their leathers bringing armloads of spitfires to the parapet. Harric took one of the sturdy weapons as they passed them down the wall, and checked to see it had been freshly loaded. Some men looked at the weapons with horror in their eyes.

  “Use fire aga
inst an immortal?” someone muttered.

  “Moons, yes,” said Harric, examining his weapon with appreciation. “What have we got to lose?” Each of the spitfires was as long as his arm, with a heavy, trumpeted pipe. They had thick stocks carved with the image of a fire-cone tree loaded with cones of explosive resin. He swung the pipe over the parapet and rested it there. Sighting down the pipe, he laid his finger on the lever of the flint wheel and aimed at the top of the rubble pile. He held his breath, trying not to let the long pipe shake.

  “What’s happening?” said a new arrival.

  “Watch and see,” said Captain Gren. “Ready the spitfires, and if Bannus tops that rubble, let fly.”

  “Are you crazy?” It was Lane, a beefy-faced guard that Harric had noted on the previous night seemed to regard himself the true captain of the fort. “You don’t use fire against an immortal. We need bows.”

  “I said spitfires, didn’t I?” Gren snapped. “Fire is the only thing an immortal respects. Grab one and point it, and that’s an order. I aim to show him we aren’t afraid to use our resin.”

  A scent of fresh urine wafted to Harric. Farley had flattened himself against the parapet beside him, and the boy was pale as a snow hen, eyes wide as eggs. He’d leaned his spitfire leaned on the parapet.

  “If you’re not going to fire that,” Harric said, “you can hand it to me when I’ve fired.”

  Farley nodded and swallowed.

  Pale as ghosts, the men spread along the wall, muttering about the immortal commandment against fire. Two more men arrived with bows and quivers, and Harric noted that when Captain Gren wasn’t looking, Lane and one or two others set their spitfires aside to take up bows.

  Harric counted ten men, the full garrison. Such a small force was never intended for siege; they were simply the Queen’s doormen for the pass, their role to keep petty thieves from Her Majesty’s fire-cone groves. Ten men couldn’t hold the place against a band of seasoned warriors, much less immortal ones. And though Harric could use the witch-stone to enter the Unseen and outflank the enemy again, it would do little good, for there were no more resin charges set in the crags above the road, and no suitable cracks to host a new resin charge. That had been a one-time trick.

  Movement at the summit of the rubble caught Harric’s attention. He looked down the pipe of the spitfire, expecting Bannus to bound over the top of the rubble. But it was Bannus’s back in the distance, beyond the rock. The immortal was riding back to the green lord’s camp.

  Harric relaxed and let out his held breath.

  In a motion almost too quick to see, Gygon whirled and Bannus flung a flashing weapon over the rockfall. Harric barely had time to duck before it hissed over his head and crashed in the courtyard behind him. A new hole yawned in the cookhouse roof, from which fragments of slate shingles skittered and clattered to the yard.

  “Gods leave us,” Farley said. He crouched further down, eyes white with fear.

  Harric’s heart thumped in his ears. Very carefully, he peeked over the wall to see Bannus riding back to the green lord’s camp. Well. It appeared Gygon could not fly up mountains. That was a blessing. And it appeared Bannus had not forgotten his favorite bastard.

  Lucky me.

  When Bannus reached the green knight’s camp, he lifted the shattered great helm from his head and handed it down to a servant. The sound of his booming voice drifted to them across the rubble, words lost in the distance. Servants scurried. The green lord mounted his warhorse, and four of the servants scrambled to load a donkey with packs.

  “What’s he up to?” Captain Gren muttered.

  Several men on the wall called out and pointed at something moving at the top of the rubble pile. A pair of servants peeped over top and ducked back down. From behind the cover of a huge slab at the crest of the rubble, the servants erected a tall white pole. The pole was as long as a lance and supported at its top what looked like a round white tray of wicker, about the size of a warrior’s shield. When fully erect, the tray would face the sky, as if to catch rain. The captain cursed. When the pole stood upright, contents of the tray became visible: three blackheart dove decoys, variously roosting, head under wing, or feeding with head down.

  “A dove trap,” the captain muttered. “They aim to intercept any messages meant for us.”

  Harric chewed his lip. Could such a trap catch the doves he had sent to the Queen? If his doves had been intercepted, then the Blue Order knew nothing of their danger, and there would be no rescue. A pit of doubt opened beneath his stomach as he glanced back at the ruined dove tower beside the gatehouse. Wisps of white smoke still rose from parts of its blackened skeleton. All the doves had perished in that fire, so they could send no more messages to the Queen.

  Harric brought his spitfire to his shoulder, sighted the dove trap, and squeezed the lever.

  The flint wheel sparked and the spitfire bucked, coughing out a resin wad that screamed across the air like a comet. The fireball corkscrewed wildly and missed the dove trap to disappear behind the rubble pile.

  Several of the fort guards cried out in dismay, despite the captain’s orders.

  “You know what immortals do to those who use fire against them?” Farley said. “The—they say—”

  Harric handed the smoking spitfire to Farley and picked up the boy’s unused weapon. “Load that, will you?” A glance at Captain Gren confirmed the old guard merely watched, his face unreadable.

  “You damn us all, bastard!” Lane said.

  “We smashed his army last night,” Harric said. “You think we aren’t damned already? Every one of us witnessed it. You think he’ll let anyone live who witnessed his defeat?” Harric sighted the dove trap again and squeezed the lever. The spitfire bucked like a mule, but its wad sped truer than the first, only dipping right before it hit. The wad clipped the underside of the tray, splashing it with fire and showering burning resin below.

  “Yes!” Harric shouted.

  Behind the trap, the servants scrambled from cover. One of them tore off a burning shirt. Harric noted shock on their faces, and imagined they hadn’t expected anyone to dare use fire in the presence of Sir Bannus. As the servants wrestled the trap from its moorings, a shower of burning resin shook loose and rained upon them, prompting curses and yelps. They could replace the trap, but good decoys would be hard to find. And burning resin sent an important message: We will use our spitfires, immortal prohibitions be damned.

  Several guards on the parapet cheered, but Lane still glowered. The man beside him, a pale-haired sack of bones with sunken eyes, muttered something to Lane.

  “Pass guard!” Gren called down the battlements. “Show Bannus we have plenty more resin where that came from!”

  A handful of spitfires coughed and belched out flaming comets that sizzled across the air and splashed upon the rubble or soared over the trap. Loopy smoke trails hung in the air between the rockfall and the fort. By then, the dove trap blazed like a torch, and the servants lowered it out of sight behind the rubble.

  The captain gave Harric a grim nod. To the guardsmen, he shouted, “Ream your pipes and reload!”

  When Sir Bannus finally mounted Gygon and rode back from the lord’s camp, the top of the rockfall flickered and smoldered with splashes of burning resin. Behind Bannus rode the green lord and several servants with a laden donkey.

  “Kinda small army, ain’t it?” said a soldier to Harric’s left.

  Gallows laughter among some of the guards.

  “What do you think Bannus is doing?” Farley whispered.

  “We’ll know soon enough,” said Gren. “Stand ready.”

  “The bastard’s sealed our doom,” Lane whispered.

  “Don’t be a fool,” Gren snapped. “You’d be dead already if it weren’t for him last night.”

  A warm hand squeezed Harric’s shoulder from behind. “What was that noise?” Ambassador Brolli’s strange accent turned heads up and down the line. The Kwendi looked up at Harric through dark daylids that
covered his nocturnal eyes like bulbous goggles.

  “You missed all the fun,” Harric said.

  Farley, who stood to Harric’s right, took a step back and made the sign of the heart in the air between them. Though the men had seen the ambassador the night before, they evidently hadn’t acclimated to his strange appearance or the fact that his people used magic.

  Captain Gren slapped the back of Farley’s head. “Mind your manners.” He nodded a greeting to Brolli. “Ill winds blow this morning, ambassador.”

  “Very loud winds, Captain Gren,” said Brolli. “Bannus’s horn, yes?”

  Gren nodded.

  “Did you see Willard and Caris down below?” Harric asked Brolli.

  “She almost finish to arm him. He does not wish to come in his bed shirt.”

  Harric noted from the corner of his eye that Farley still stared at Brolli. The boy appeared to struggle with the fact that the Kwendi’s long arms, powerful torso, and dwarfish legs marked him as not only of foreign race, but of entirely inhuman stock. The handlike feet didn’t help. Nor did the bug-eyed “daylids.” Farley probably thought the domed lenses were the Kwendi’s actual eyes, like he was part insect.

  As Brolli knuckle-walked between them to lean against the parapet, Farley flinched away.

  Brolli lay his bandolier of hurling-globes at his feet, and the globes emitted a low rattle like the sound of river stones knocking together.

  “Are those—Is that—?” Farley stared at the bandolier and stumbled back another step.

  “Magic,” said Brolli, his eyes on Sir Bannus as the immortal rode toward them and disappeared from view behind the top of the rubble. Brolli flipped the daylids up, as if for a clearer view, but glanced to the young guard instead. Gold, owlish eyes shone like coins. “Want to touch the magic?”

  Harric suppressed a smile. Leave it to Brolli to tease in a grim situation. But Harric could see there was some real fear in the boy, who shook his head vigorously. Harric leaned closer to Farley. “Brolli saved my life once,” he confided. “Twice, actually. Once with magic. As a good Arkendian, I hate magic just as much as you”—he paused, while Brolli recovered from a fit of spontaneous coughing—“but I have to tell you, I was grateful he used it that day. And his people will be important allies for the Queen. Maybe they can save her, too.”