Brolli flashed Farley a feral grin, displaying thick, pointed canines. “I only save him so I can eat him later.”
Farley let out a laugh. He looked at Brolli out of the side of his eye.
“He’s kidding,” Harric said.
“I know,” said Farley.
“What is that word, kidding?” said Brolli. “You mean kids are my favorite food? Yes.”
The echo of Gygon’s hooves grew still, and Captain Gren called for silence on the parapet. All up and down the line, men finished reaming their spitfires and laid them across the parapet, awaiting orders. Brolli’s hand slipped into his satchel and partly emerged with what looked like an apple-sized globe of glittering witch-silver.
Farley’s eyes widened and all color drained from his cheeks, but he was not looking at Brolli’s magical hurler—he was looking at the rubble. “Gods leave us,” he whispered, as Sir Bannus rose up on the massive slab at its summit—the same slab, Harric realized, where the vulture spirits had fed the night before.
The immortal stood at a level with the parapet, a colossus in wine-black armor bearing in one hand a Phyros sword too heavy for any mortal.
Violet eyes burned across the gap, and Harric’s heart jolted in his chest. His breaths grew short and rapid. Too close. Too close.
Even from sixty paces, it was clear Sir Bannus would tower over the men on the wall. He had to be four hands taller and three times heavier than the biggest mortal men. But any similarity stopped there. His youthful skin, colored deep blue by the Blood of the Phyros in his veins, had been disfigured by madness, ritual, and the wounds of many lifetimes of battle. Ropy scars so distorted his face that it seemed less visage and more a nest of violet serpents.
But what so jolted Harric’s heart was the aura of intensity to the immortal—a bunched and coiled power, spring-tight, held on the brink of explosion in every fiber of nerve and muscle. This was the force that sent axes blurring across gulfs with deadly accuracy. What mortal could stop such a creature, half god, half monster? If Bannus could leap the gap between rubble and parapet, he’d slaughter them all before anyone blinked.
Harric knew from the ballads that nothing short of decapitation or intense fire could kill an immortal, but if an immortal could move with such speed, it was equally clear that nothing short of another immortal could kill one. And the small fires of their spitfires—though capable of bringing lasting pain—could only give an Old One pause, or drive him into a rage.
Harric’s weapon shook horribly. His hand seemed paralyzed. He could not bring himself to lay his finger on the lever to spark the flint wheel.
“We’re dead men,” someone murmured.
Lane’s black eyes bored into Harric. “The bastard’s work. First he brings Bannus to our door step, next he lights up a spitfire. Gonna save us again, bastard?”
Bannus raised his iron horn and let loose with a resounding blast, then another, and another until the crags echoed with discord. Slowly, he lowered the horn and scanned the battlements, as if memorizing every face there. It felt to Harric like the monster stared first at him, and while he held Harric’s gaze, Harric’s heart fluttered like a bird in a cage.
To Harric, it seemed he heard the immortal’s voice at his ear. Thou, bastard, art mine. I shall make of you an immortal toy. I shall prepare a special place for you.
Henceforth, let there be no Blood Color but red in Arkendia, for that is the color in the veins of all true subjects. Likewise, let my people wear what colors they will and be no longer chained to the birth hues of their fathers.
—Royal Proclamation, sporadically adopted on the East Isle, suppressed on the West Isle
6
Bastard Blame
Harric tore his gaze from the immortal and gulped at the air, unaware his breath had stopped. Sweat slicked his forehead. One by one, men looked away from Bannus. Those who met his eyes grew pale and trembled.
A hundred heartbeats passed. Two hundred.
When the immortal’s voice boomed, Harric jumped. When he peered from behind the battlement, the immortal stood exactly as he had before.
“Listen carefully, men of the fort,” Bannus bellowed. His voice was the rattle of gravel in a bass drum. “This I promise—that none of you shall die.”
Murmurs and glances among the guardsmen. Hope flickered in a few naïve eyes.
“You shall not die, fort men, for you dared use fire against me. Know you not the example of Bright Castle, when Lady Bright so dared? Lady Bright did not die, nor did her household, for they live yet in my tower. I say you shall not die, for I shall use the Blood to keep you alive as I remove all bones but your skull. Thus shall you live, a sloven gut bag, begging for death, and I shall display you from high poles across the kingdom. Your boneless toes I raise, and your gibbering heads shall hang low, and thus you shall live as a sign to all who defy the Old Ones.”
Farley whimpered, and someone on the parapet snapped, “Hold your noise or go below.”
Bannus did not speak again until his booming echoes died and the waterfall reasserted its roar. And then one word boomed across the gap.
“Unless…”
“Gods leave us!” Farley said.
“Unless you deliver the Abominator to me. Him you call Willard, and his mewling bastard. Cast them from your walls and I shall spare you.”
A grim laugh from Willard echoed up the stairwell behind them. The old knight climbed the stair with the aid of his great-sword, Belle. His blackened armor—the badge of an outcast—creaked with every step. Caris followed, her cobalt armor looking just as black in the dim light before dawn. She rested a hand on her sword, eyes like a mountain lion’s, confronting each guard as if to say, Touch Willard, and you’ll be dead before you blink.
“He’ll make gut bags of you no matter what you do,” said Willard. “He can’t forgive the humiliation you served him last night. He can’t allow you to live.”
“None here heed you, Sir Bannus,” Gren shouted. Brave as he was for saying it, his voice came out as a kind of treble crowing. “We serve the Queen to the last man. And we have more rock to gift you, should you threaten again.”
“I think not.” Sir Bannus’s laugh was the sound of rocks shaken in a pot helm. “Yet you are not the only ones with resin.” Bannus raised one plated arm, and a moment later, the air behind him flashed. Thunder crashed between the crags, and boulders at the edge of the rubble tumbled into the void. A plume of white smoke swallowed the immortal as the displaced boulders crashed below and the sounds resounded in the valley.
Nervous tension swept the line of guards. With resin charges, Bannus could clear a path along the edge in a matter of days.
When the smoke cleared, Sir Bannus still stood on the slab.
Using his sword as a crutch, Willard climbed the last stair and met the gaze of his ancient nemesis across the gap. He stood taller than everyone else on the parapet. Even taller than Caris. Since he’d stopped taking the Blood, he’d lost the outrageous girth and musculature of an immortal, but his huge frame remained as a mark of previous immortality.
Sir Bannus leveled an armored finger at Willard, and the scars of his ruined face contorted. “The Abominator whispers lies to you. Deliver him, or live a fate worse than death.”
“Blue gods, Bannus,” said Willard. “How many times have I heard that speech? They sing ballads of the last fool who fell for it, and that was two hundred years past. Does it not make you weary? Do you not tire of this life?”
“Ten castles to the man who brings me that tongue!” Bannus roared.
“Please don’t anger him, sir,” Farley whispered. “If he can climb that rubble, he can climb these walls—and I—” Farley swallowed, eyes bright with tears.
Willard did not take his eye off Bannus. He gave a brief smile to show he’d heard the boy. “Bannus won’t attack, son,” he said, loud enough for it to carry across the gap to Bannus. “He is too proud. Could he climb down? Certainly. Could he jump and possibly scale these wall
s? He might. But you give him pause, brave boy. Fire gives him pause. I know it well, for the Blood does not heal burns the way it heals other wounds. It may scar over, but the pain never fades. The fire lives unabated in the flesh. And despite his looks, Bannus is no fool. He knows this fort guards the Queen’s fire-cone groves. He knows it contains more fire-cone resin than anywhere else short of her armory, and that if he attacks alone, he will burn.”
Bannus threw back his head and laughed. “I fear no fire. Already I bear more burns than any mortal could endure. See!” He stooped and, with a gauntleted finger, dabbed up a wad of flickering resin from the stone at his feet. He stood, yellow teeth bared in a grin, and smeared the liquid fire on his mangled cheek.
At sixty paces, Harric heard it sizzle.
“Your time is short, fort men,” said Bannus. “Perhaps you believe the Blue Order knows of your plight. Perhaps you believe they are coming. They do not know. Perhaps you believe my army is lost. There again you deceive yourselves, for true men flock to my banner each day. Scores now ride to join me, as do my immortal brothers. I prophesy here and now that in three days, when our resin has cleared this rubble, I shall have my three dozen and they shall overrun your feeble defense. Yet it need not be so, if you deliver the Abominator and his bastard. That is your only rescue. I grant you till midnight.”
The green lord climbed onto the slab behind Bannus, sending rock chips clattering into the rubble. Bannus’s head snapped toward the commotion, and something in his manner suggested to Harric he was displeased with the lord’s unplanned arrival. The lord advanced to stand beside the immortal and, without so much as a nod to acknowledge Sir Bannus, he faced the fort across the gap.
“Sir Willard, I challenge thee to a duel!” the lord yelled. “I throw down my gauntlet!”
The back of Bannus’s armored hand clapped the lord across the face and sent him somersaulting backward from the slab to disappear onto the rubble pile.
A murmur of surprise rippled through the men on the wall. Harric stared after the green lord at first in shock at the man’s folly, and then in chilling recognition: Willard’s night-hex had struck the lord, as it had once struck Harric. What else could account for such fatal folly? He shuddered to recall how it had invaded his mind—and Caris’s, too—in Gallows Ferry with a powerful sense of luck and power and righteous invulnerability. It had been intoxicating. It had driven them to folly beyond measure, as it had this green lord, and it had nearly cost them their lives.
“See, fort men,” Bannus roared. “This is what comes of keeping Sir Willard the Cursed, Sir Willard the Hexed. And his hex touches all. It will touch one of you next. Why else do you suppose the bitch queen banished him? Why else do you suppose he cannot keep a squire? Death and folly follow him like attendant wolves and lay waste to the mortals around him. But it cannot touch me. You will be wise to hand him to me and be rid of it. Midnight!” Two more blasts shook the air behind him and trembled the wall. Boulders as big as horses flew from the rubble into the well of the waterfall. Again, smoke enveloped the rubble, but this time when it cleared, Sir Bannus was gone.
Silence reigned on the parapet as echoes of the blast faded.
Caris glared up and down the line of guards, hand on her sword in case any had the idea of attempting Bannus’s offer. None seemed eager to test a fully armored horse-touched warrior maiden, and Harric felt a flush of pride and admiration for her. Predictably, the moment she turned her back, Lane gave Harric a long stare.
Captain Gren shoved Lane hard against the parapet, knocking his head against the stone. His stare broken, Lane blinked in stunned surprise.
“You are not in charge here,” said Gren, pinning Lane to the wall. “And I won’t let you play your poisonous little games today. Not when our lives are at stake. So I tell you this once: you take orders, or I lock you up. Your choice. And right now, I order you to shut up and do exactly as I say. What is your choice?”
Lane glared at Harric over Gren’s shoulder, hatred in his eyes. Hatred of bastards, Harric judged. He had seen it often enough to recognize it and know it meant sympathy with the Old Ways. Harric flipped him the sign of the cob.
“Follow orders, sir,” said Lane, eyes still on Harric.
Gren gave him another violent shake. “You’d better.”
“We know of your hex, here, Sir Willard,” said Gren, turning away from Lane. “And it makes no difference to us. Your service to the Queen outweighs it.”
“I thank you, captain.” Willard’s eyes lingered on Lane until Lane turned away and left the parapet. “But Bannus is correct: we got lucky today when it struck one of our enemies. It could strike you next, or Harric, or anyone else. That is why I do not intend to burden you with my presence any longer than necessary.”
Gren nodded, and Harric thought he saw a glimmer of relief behind his eyes. The effects of Willard’s hex were well enough documented—and exaggerated—in a hundred Sir Willard ballads to put a healthy doubt in anyone. As if seeking a change of subject, Gren smiled at Harric and laid a warm hand on his shoulder. “Your man here sent a spitfire wad right into their dove trap, Sir Willard. Burned it good.”
Willard grunted his approval but pursed his brow. “They had a dove trap?”
“They did,” said the captain. “Would have caught any message the Queen sent back to us here, but that hardly matters. What matters is the birds Harric sent to the Queen and Blue Order.”
Willard squinted out over the rubble. “It troubles me that Bannus said there would be no Blue Order. Perhaps you think the Blue Order knows of your plight, he said. But we gave him no reason to think we expected the Order.”
“They’ll be here any day now,” said Farley. “Just like captain said.”
As if to counterpoint their conversation, something flew up from behind the rubble and soared toward them like a stone from a catapult. A cry went up from some of the men, and everyone crouched behind the crenellations. The missile was only the size of Harric’s head, but it wasn’t a head, and it wasn’t a stone—or at least it wasn’t all stone—for feathers jutted from the missile at ragged angles. The feathers whistled weakly as it spun past and crashed through the roof of the mess hall behind them.
“Ha! Missed!” Farley said.
As the men rose from their crouches, a feather lifted on a breeze beside the hole in the roof and drifted away. “Don’t think he was trying to hit us, Farley.” Harric caught Willard’s eye, and the old knight cursed under his breath. Someone had lashed a bird or two to a stone in order to give it enough weight for Sir Bannus to throw.
And it didn’t take much imagination to guess which birds they must be.
During the Great Betrayal—which the betrayers call the Cleansing—Sir Gregan led the Blue Order against the Old Ones…to slay or drive them back to the West Isle, whence they came. Yet it was Sir Willard—youngest of the Blue Order, and most fervent in his hatred—who slew more of the Old Ones and their Phyros than the rest of his order combined. More than any other, therefore, merits he the title of “Abominator,” and more deserves eternal suffering when the Old Ones return…
—From The Betrayal of the Old Ones, First Herald Milbred of Pelion
7
The Hunted & The Abandoned
The broken bodies of two doves lay on a mess hall table before Harric. Despite it being a broad, high-ceilinged room, the space felt crowded as Willard, Brolli, Caris, and a half-dozen guards leaned in to watch him search the birds for the anklets that held tiny written messages. Someone had lit tallow candles and set them on the table, but the tallow smoked badly, giving the place an atmosphere like some card dens Harric had known. The birds wore no anklets, of course, for whoever had captured them had removed the messages and read them; he found tiny ends jutting from their beaks like lolling tongues. As he drew them carefully out, it felt like drawing cards in a high-stakes game he knew the dealer had rigged.
Captain Gren spoke, his voice low and reverent of the tension in the room, but his to
ne full of command. “Sir Bannus has resin charges. We’ll pile stones inside the gate and inside the postern door in case his men try to blast them. Tonight we double the watch.”
Farley, who now understood what was at stake in the birds on the table, licked his pale lips, his gaze glued to Harric.
As Harric smoothed the crumpled ribbons of parchment, the men began to fall silent. And when he spread them between his hands and held them flat on the table so all could read them, only the sound of the falls sifted in through the windows. The messages were identical, and he read them aloud. “Willard, Brolli in danger. Sir Bannus. Send Blue Order.” He released the rest of his breath in a falling sigh. “It’s my handwriting.”
A collective murmur, like a groan, rippled through the room.
The previous night’s celebration seemed now hollow and foolish. So much hope had resided in those messages to the Queen. Lane muttered something to his pale-haired companion with the sunken eyes. Harric saw the word “bastard” clearly on his lips. Sunken Eyes glared daggers of blame, as if it were Harric’s fault the doves hadn’t made it, and the dove master, Garon, sent a particularly dark look at Harric. That surprised him. Could the man resent him for sending his doves off without permission, even though it might have saved them all?
The danger sense in every Arkendian bastard prickled up Harric’s spine. Those three would be trouble. From that moment on, he would not to walk alone until he’d left the outpost.
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