The Charnel Prince

by Greg Keyes

  Her ship, he recalled, was unmarked.

  “Lady,” he said, reluctantly, “please forgive me, but I can tell you nothing of why I fought.”

  “Ah,” Swanmay said, and this time her smile seemed stronger. “You’re not stupid, then. You’ve no reason to believe anything I say, do you?”

  “No, milady,” Neil allowed, “none whatsoever.”

  “Never mind, then. I just wondered if your battle was a matter of love or duty. I see now that it is somehow both. But your love isn’t for the girl on the boat.”

  He could see her eyes again, and this time they did not seem blind at all.

  “I’m tired,” he said.

  She nodded. “You need time to think. I’ll leave you for now, but please don’t try to move. My physician says you will start to leak like a broken boat if you do, and you interest me. I’d rather you lived long enough to find a little trust in me.”

  “May I ask where we are bound?”

  She clasped her hands on her knees. “You may, and I will answer, but how will you know I do not lie?”

  “I suppose I don’t.”

  “We’re sailing west, at the moment, to the Straits of Rusimi, and from there to Safnia. After that, I cannot say.”

  She stood. “Fair rest, for now,” she said. “If you need anything, pull that rope on the other side of the bed.”

  Neil remembered Hurricane then.

  “Lady? What of my horse?”

  Her face saddened. “I last saw him watching us depart. We have no berth or provisions for beasts aboard. I am sorry. I am certain so fine a beast will find a good master.”

  That was just another dull ache for Neil. Crow was destroyed, his armor damaged probably beyond repair, and Hurricane was lost. What more could he lose, except his life?

  “Thank you, lady,” he murmured.

  He watched her leave. For a moment, before she closed the door behind her, he caught a glimpse of a ship’s deck in moonlight.

  He tried to pull his thoughts back together. He still had his duty.

  Swanmay had said they were sailing west. Anne was supposed to be sailing east, toward Paldh.

  If she was sailing anywhere.

  Neil inspected his wounds as best he could, and discovered that Swanmay had told the truth about them, at least. The glowing sword had cut through his armor and two of his ribs. It hadn’t gone into his vitals, but it had been a near thing.

  So he wouldn’t be walking, much less fighting, for a while. For the time being, whether she was lying or telling the truth, he was at Swanmay’s mercy.

  In fact, he was already worn-out, and though he tried to remain awake to ponder the situation, the sea—the one familiar thing around him—soon lulled him back to sleep.

  When he woke again, it was to the soft strains of music. Swanmay sat nearby on a stool, strumming a small cherrywood harp with golden tuning pegs. The cabin window was draped, but daylight leaked through, and without the glow of fire she was like a creature from a children’s story, a woman made from snow.

  “Lady,” he murmured.

  “Ah. I did not mean to wake you.”

  “The sound of a harp is not the worst thing to wake to, especially one played so beautifully.”

  To his surprise she seemed to color a bit at that. “I was only passing the time,” she said. “How do you feel?”

  “Better, I think. Milady—I wonder if it is proper that you watch over me, so. I promise you, I will lie quiet. I have little choice.”

  She cast her eyes down a bit. “Well, it is my cabin,” she said. “And I tire sometimes of being on deck. When it’s bright like this, the sun hurts my eyes and burns my skin.”

  “You aren’t Sefry, are you?” he joked.

  “No. Just unused to daylight.” She looked back at him. “But you’ve met Sefry, haven’t you?”

  “I have. It’s not difficult to do.”

  “I’ve not seen one yet. I hope to, soon.”

  “I should not be in your cabin, lady,” Neil persisted. “Surely there are more suitable quarters for me.”

  “There are none more suitable to someone in your condition,” she replied.

  “But this is not appropriate. Your men—”

  She lifted her chin. “My men wished you left to the sharks. My men do not command here. I do. And I think I am in no danger from you. Do you disagree?”

  “No, milady, but still—”

  “I can change my clothes there, behind that screen, and wash, as well. There is a cot for me to sleep on.”

  “I should sleep on the cot.”

  “When you are better, you will. When you are better yet, you will sleep with the men.”

  “I wish—”

  “What is your name?” she asked suddenly. “You have not told me your name.”

  “I—” He fumbled for a moment. “My name is Neil,” he said finally. He was sick of lying.

  “Neil,” she repeated. “That’s a good name. A Lierish name. Or perhaps you are from Skern. Do you—do you know the game of fiedchese?”

  Neil raised his brow in surprise. “I know it, lady. My father taught me how to play when I was a boy.”

  “I wonder—would you like to play it? No one on the ship knows how, and they’re too busy to learn. But you . . .”

  “Well, it’s something I can do from my back,” Neil said. “If you have a board.”

  Swanmay smiled a little shyly and crossed to a small cupboard built into the cabin. From it she produced a fiedchese board and a leather bag full of playing pieces. The board was beautiful, its squares made of inlaid wood, one set red-brown and the other bone white. The throne in the center of the board was black.

  The pieces were of matching beauty. The king was carved of the dark wood, and he wore a sharply peaked helm for his crown. His men were figured with shield and sword, and they were tall and slender like their king.

  The raiders were of all sorts, no two pieces alike, and they were a bit grotesque. Some had human bodies and the heads of birds, dogs, or pigs. Others had wide bodies and short legs or no legs at all, just long arms that served the function. Neil had never seen a set like it.

  “Which would you like me to play, lady?” Neil asked. “The king or raiders?”

  “I have played the king far too often,” Swanmay mused. “But perhaps I should play it again, to see if there is an omen in it.”

  And with that opaque statement she began setting up the board. The king went in the center, surrounded by his knights in the form of a cross. The raiders—Neil’s men—were placed around the edge of the board. There were four gates, at each corner of the board. If the king reached any of the gates, Swanmay would win. Neil would win if he captured the king.

  She took the first move, sending one of her knights east, but not so far as to strike one of his men. He studied the board a bit and countered by capturing the man.

  “I thought a warrior might take that bait,” she said. She sent another knight across the board, this one to block one of his pieces.

  Five moves later, her king crossed through the north gate and Neil was left wondering what exactly had happened.

  “Well,” he said, “if it was an omen you were seeking, you found a good one.”

  “Yes,” she replied. “In fact, I am nearly to my own gate. I hope to pass through it soon.” She began placing the pieces back on the board.

  “Have you been to Safnia?” she asked.

  “No, milady, I haven’t. I haven’t been much of anywhere.”

  “More than I,” she replied. “The only place I have ever been—besides the place where I was born—is this ship. And you’re the only person . . .” She stopped, turning that faint shade of rose again. “I shouldn’t talk about it. You were right to keep your own secrets. But I wish . . . no, tell me about some place, please.”

  Neil considered what he could tell her without revealing too much, though he was beginning to feel silly for his caution. If she were his enemy—in league with those who
had attacked Anne—then surely she knew who Anne was, and surely she knew that he must be a vassal of Crotheny.

  Well, she had at least guessed where he was from.

  “I can tell you about Skern,” he said.

  “It’s in the Lier Sea, yes? Part of Liery now?”

  “Once it was Hansan,” he said, watching for a reaction and finding none. “But now it is a Lierish protectorate.”

  “I know these things from books,” she said. “But tell me what it is to be there.”

  Neil lay back and mused with his eyes closed, watching the colors of his childhood. “You’re never far from the sea,” he murmured. “You can smell it everywhere you go, even in the Keels.”

  “Keels?”

  “It’s a range of great stony mountains that cuts the island in two, not much more than stone and grass, really. I used to go up there with my fah to see my aunt Nieme. She kept sheep and lived in a sod house. It was nearly always raining, and in the winter the snow fell deep, but on a rare clear day you could see the coast of Saltmark, and the mountains on Skiepey—that’s the next island over. It was like being at the top of the sky.”

  “You lived on the coast?”

  “I was born in a village called Frouc, just on the coast, but I did most of my growing up on boats.”

  “Fishing?”

  “When I was very young. After that, it was mostly fighting.”

  “Oh. How old were you when you became a warrior?”

  “I went with my fah into battle the first time when I was nine, to carry his spears.”

  “Nine?”

  “It’s not an unusual age,” Neil said. “Men are scarce.”

  “I suppose they would be, if they go to war at nine.”

  “Our enemies couldn’t be convinced to wait until we had grown up,” Neil replied.

  “I’m sorry,” Swanmay said. “I didn’t mean to bring bad memories.”

  “Memories and scars tell who we are,” Neil said. “I’m not ashamed or afraid of either.”

  “No, but some of them hurt, don’t they?” she said softly. “I never went to war, but I know that.” She glanced at the board. “You play the king this time.”

  “Are you in trouble, milady?” Neil asked. “Are you running from something?”

  She didn’t answer him right away. She waited until he had made his move, and chosen one of her own.

  “If you could go anywhere you’ve been, or anywhere you’ve never been, where would you go?”

  “At this moment I would go to Paldh,” he said.

  “That’s where she’s going, isn’t it? Paldh?”

  A sort of shock ran up Neil’s spine, and he realized he’d let himself be lulled by the conversation. He’d managed—despite everything—to help Anne escape, to put her back on the road toward home.

  Now he’d helped her enemies follow her again.

  He looked at Swanmay’s lovely white throat and wondered if he had the strength to throttle her before she called out and brought his doom upon him.

  CHAPTER THREE

  LESHYA

  AREN’T MANY WHO CAN sneak up on me,” Aspar muttered to the Sefry behind him. He hadn’t turned, but he knew two things about the Sefry now that he didn’t know before. The first was that it certainly wasn’t Fend. He knew Fend’s voice as well as he knew his own.

  The other was that she was a woman.

  “I wouldn’t guess so,” she answered. “But it’s no matter. I mean you no harm if you mean me none.”

  “That will depend on a few things,” Aspar said, turning slowly. He no longer feared that the monks or the greffyn might have spotted him. Whatever was coming from the east had attracted all of their attention. His immediate problem was the one behind him.

  She was slight, even for a Sefry, with violet eyes and black bangs that dropped almost to her eyelashes. She had loosened her cowl so she could speak unmuffled, and he could just make out the sardonic bow of her lips. She looked young, but he guessed by the set of her eyes she wasn’t. She might be as old as he was, or older, but Sefry aged young in the skin and lived longer than Mannish folk.

  He wondered how he could have ever thought she was Fend, even at a distance.

  “What things would those be?” she asked.

  He could see both her hands, and they were empty. He relaxed slightly.

  “You’ve been leading me around,” he told her. “Playing with me. I don’t like that.”

  “No? You didn’t have to follow.”

  “I thought you were someone else.”

  She nodded thoughtfully. “Ah. You thought I was Fend.”

  The name jabbed him like a prickle. “Who the sceat are you?” Aspar hissed.

  She put a finger to her lips. “I can explain that later,” she said. “You’ll want to watch what’s about to happen.”

  “You know what’s coming? You’ve seen it?”

  She nodded. “It’s the slinders. See—there they are.”

  “Slinders?” He looked back, and at first all he saw was forest. But the trees seemed to be shivering oddly, as if a wind was blowing through them in just one place. Blackbirds swirled up in clouds against the silvery sky. The monks stood like statues, frozen by the moment.

  Then something came from the trees, creatures loping sometimes on four legs, sometimes on two. There were ten of them, and their baying became more frantic as their feet hit the clearing and they saw the monks.

  At first Aspar thought they might be smaller versions of the utin or some other ugly thing from boygshin stories, but when he understood what they actually were, the shock went cold through him.

  They were men and women. Naked, scuffed, dirty, bleeding, utterly mad—but Mannish, just as Ehawk had described.

  As the leaves began to rustle in a strong autumn wind, the main pack of them came behind the leaders—twenty, fifty—more than he could count. He guessed at least a hundred. They moved strangely, and it wasn’t just that they sometimes dropped to their hands. They ran jerkily, frantically—like insects, in a way. A few carried rocks or branches, but most were empty-handed.

  The majority looked to be relatively young, but some were stoop-shouldered and gray-haired. Some were little more than children, but he didn’t see any that looked as if they had seen fewer than fifteen winters.

  They spread to encircle the monks, and their cacophonic yowling settled into a hair-prickling sort of song. The words were slurred and broken, just sounds really, but he knew the tune. It was a children’s song, about the Briar King, sung in Almannish.

  Dillying Dallying

  Farthing go

  The Briar King walks to and fro

  “Those are the slinders?” he asked.

  “It’s what the Oostish have taken to calling them,” the Sefry said. “At least those who haven’t joined them.”

  As she spoke, the slinders began to fall, quilled black by arrows. The monks were firing with inhuman speed and precision. But it hardly slowed the wave of bodies. They poured around the fallen like a river around rocks. The monks drew swords and formed themselves into a ring fortress—only two kept their bows out, and they were in the center.

  Almost without thinking, Aspar reached for his own bow.

  “You’re not that foolish,” she said. “Why would you fight for them? You’ve seen what they do.”

  Aspar nodded. “Werlic.” The monks deserved what they got. But what they were facing was so weird and dread, he’d almost forgotten that.

  What was more, he had forgotten the greffyn. He remembered it now as it let out a low unearthly growl. It stood pawing the ground, the spines on its back stiff. Then, as if reaching a sudden decision, it turned and bounded into the forest.

  Straight toward him.

  “Sceat,” Aspar mouthed, raising his bow. He already felt the sickness burning in the thing’s eyes. He let fly.

  The arrow skipped off the bony scales above its nostrils. The greffyn glanced his way, and with blinding speed changed direction, bounde
d off into the forest and was gone.

  Aspar had tracked one greffyn over half of Crotheny. He’d never seen it run from anything.

  If the greffyn had fought alongside them, the monks might have stood a chance. He had seen how their kind could fight, and even a poor fighter with a sword was more than a match for any number of naked, unarmed attackers.

  But these attackers didn’t care if they died, and that in itself was a potent weapon.

  So he watched as the slinders hurled into the monks glittering blades like meat into a grinder, with much the same results. In instants the clearing was bathed in gore, viscera, severed heads and limbs. But the attackers kept coming without hesitation, without fear, like Grim’s birsirks—though birsirks usually carried at least a spear. He saw one who had lost a leg dragging himself toward the monks. Another impaled himself on a sword, locking his hands around his foe’s throat.

  There was fighting against that, but there was no winning. One by one the monks were dragged down by sheer force of numbers and had their throats bitten out or their bellies clawed open. Then, with his stomach lurching, Aspar watched the slinders feed, tearing into the bodies like wolves.

  He glanced aside at the Sefry, but she wasn’t watching the slinders. Her eye was on the forest edge from which they had emerged. He followed her gaze and saw that the trees were still trembling, swaying even, and he felt as if the sun were rising, but there was no light. Just the feel of radiance on his face and the sense of change.

  Something new stepped from the forest, then, not as tall as the trees but twice the height of a big man. Black antlers branched from its head, but its face was that of a man with birch-bark pale skin and a beard like thick brown moss. He was as naked as the slinders, though thick hair or moss covered much of him. Where his feet struck the ground, black briars spurted up like slow fountains.

  “He didn’t look like that before,” Aspar muttered.