The Charnel Prince

by Greg Keyes

  “No,” Anne whispered. “Like all men, he fears the dark of the moon.” She took another breath and felt it turn as black and thick as oil in her lungs.

  “Hang her,” Dunmrogh said.

  She let the breath out—and out, feeling the Worm pull up through her feet and flow through her. Dunmrogh screamed like an hysterical infant, but she did not stop with him.

  She sent it on—through the monks, through the men in armor, shuddering, hearing herself laugh as if she were mad.

  Dunmrogh bent double and vomited blood. Some of the monks started toward her, but it was as if they were moving against a wind too hard to overcome. She spared Cazio and the fading z’Acatto, but every other man was her slave, bowing to her power.

  Except one. One man was still coming for her; the knight, the one who had cut Sir Neil. Her will sleeted through him as if he wasn’t there, and the Worm would not know him. He quickened his pace, drawing his sword. She was dimly aware of Cazio trying to stand, raising his own weapon.

  Then something in her twisted and diminished, and she felt as if she were falling. The last thing she saw was the knight, charging to take her head.

  Cazio saw Anne fall, even as the knight came into striking range. He wasn’t sure what had happened, wasn’t sure he wanted to know. The only thing he knew was that he was free, and Caspator was in his hand, and there was an enemy in front of him.

  Unfortunately, this one had his helm on, and his sword was the weird, flickering, glowing one he’d seen shear through plate armor in z’Espino.

  Cazio thrust into the knight’s downward cut, parrying and attacking with the same movement, but his blade scratched only the steel of a breastplate. The knight reversed, slicing back up from the downswing, trying to split Cazio from crotch to shoulder, but Cazio was already moving aside and punching his hilt into the knight’s visor, trying to knock it off.

  His adversary whirled and his weapon soughed a third time, and though Cazio managed to get Caspator up to meet it, the force was square on, right on the strong part of his blade, and his knees buckled from the strength of it. The knight’s mailed foot came up and kicked him under the chin, and the bright smell of blood exploded in his nostrils as he flopped onto his back.

  The knight turned away, ignoring him, moving back toward the prostrate figure of Anne. Cazio struggled to his feet, knowing he would never make it in time.

  Then two arrows spanged into the armored man, and he staggered. Cazio looked in the direction the shots had come from and saw a man on a horse charging toward them. The arrows hadn’t come from him—he carried a sword in one hand and a wooden shield in the other. They came from another pair—a slight, hooded figure and a rangy-looking man in a leather cuirass.

  Cazio tried to use Caspator to push himself up and noticed, with a shock, that the strong part of his blade had been notched halfway through by the weird knight’s weapon. Caspator was made from Belbaina steel, the strongest in the world.

  The nauschalk was stooping toward Anne’s motionless body when Aspar’s and Leshya’s arrows found him. The pause gave Neil just the time he needed to reach him. He cut hard with Cuenslec, and felt the solid, satisfying shock run up his arm. He didn’t understand why the rest of the men in the clearing weren’t fighting, or even on their feet, but he wasn’t going to question it. Some of them were starting to get up, anyway, and when they did, he and his newfound companions would be very much outnumbered.

  His horse reared and shied, so Neil quickly dismounted, facing the knight as he rose back up, wielding the arcane blade.

  “They say Virgenya Dare’s warriors had weapons like that,” Neil said. “Feyswords. Weapons for heroes, weapons to fight evil. I don’t know where you got that, but I do know you aren’t fit to carry it.”

  The nauschalk pushed up his visor. His face was pale and pink-cheeked, and his eyes were as gray as sea waves.

  “You,” he murmured, almost as if in a dream. “I’ve killed you once, haven’t I?”

  “Only almost,” Neil replied. He lifted his shield. “But by Saint Fren and Saint Fendve, this time I will die or you will.”

  “I cannot die,” the man said. “Do you understand? I can’t.”

  “Forgive me if I’ll not take your word for that,” Neil replied. All along he’d been shuffling forward, finding his distance. Now he slowly began to circle, his gaze fixed on the eyes of the nauschalk, a red fire kindling in his belly as the rage began.

  Then the nauschalk blinked, and in that instant Neil attacked, leaping forward and cutting over the shield. His enemy replied with a swift thrust from a stiffened arm to Neil’s shield, a good fighter’s instinct, for it should have stopped Neil’s attack by keeping him at sword’s length.

  But the feysword sliced through the shield just above Neil’s arm. He still had to arrest his blow to keep from impaling his face on the glowing weapon, but he twisted the shield down, taking the stuck feysword with it, and chopped a second time. Cuenslec rang against the armored joint of neck and shoulder, and Neil felt the chain links part. The visor clanged down with the force of his blow, and once again Neil’s enemy had no face.

  He dropped the shield before his opponent could carve the deadly blade through his arm and drew back for another blow, but the feysword whirled up too quickly. Neil let the assault come but faded back from it, so the attack missed him by the breadth of a hair. Then he made his own counterattack.

  He had reckoned on the knight having to recover the momentum of his attack before making the backswing, but he’d reckoned wrong. The weapon must have weighed almost nothing, because here it came, shearing up into his attack. Only by scrambling quickly back did he avoid being gut-sawed.

  Neil’s breath was coming raggedly already, for he was still weak from his last fight with the fellow.

  The nauschalk, seemingly not tired at all, advanced.

  “What’s happening here, Stephen?” Aspar asked as he got Ogre still and took aim at a monk. The churchman had been down on the ground when they arrived, and was now rising shakily to his feet. Aspar let fly. The fellow never saw his death coming; an almost motionless target, the arrow took him in the heart and he sank back to his knees.

  Around the clearing, more and more of the formerly motionless figures were rising again. Aspar aimed at the most active.

  “I don’t know,” Stephen replied. “I felt something as we were approaching, something strong, but it’s gone now.”

  “Maybe they never got the instructions from the praifec,” Leshya guessed. “Maybe they did something wrong.”

  “Maybe,” Aspar allowed. “But whatever happened, it seems to be to our advantage. Stephen, you and Winna go get the princess. Hurry.”

  Neil’s battle with the armored knight didn’t seem to be going that well. The knight’s sword flickered like the knife Desmond Spendlove had planned to use to assassinate Winna, the one—he now recalled—the praifec had confiscated for “study.”

  He shot a man and selected another target, but this one saw him in time and dodged the shaft. Then he was running toward them, faster than an antelope. To his left, on the other side of the clearing, Aspar saw another.

  “Leshya, take the left one,” he grunted.

  “Yes,” she said.

  Aspar took careful aim and fired again, but the monk spun aside without stopping, and the dart just grazed him along the arm. He was closing the distance so swiftly, Aspar figured he had only one more shot coming.

  He released it at five yards, and still the man nearly dodged it. It hit him in the belly and he grunted as he took a wild, unbalanced swing at Aspar with his sword. Aspar wheeled Ogre and avoided the blow, then spurred the beast to give him distance to shoot again, but the monk kept coming, much too quickly, leaping through the air. Aspar managed to deflect the sword with his bow. But the force of his antagonist’s leap knocked him out of the saddle.

  Aspar managed to untangle himself from the monk and kick clear to draw his dirk, but even as he regained his feet he found
the sword slashing toward him, a bit slower than Aspar was used to from the warrior-priests, whether due to the belly wound or whatever had gone on just before their arrival, he could not say. He managed to duck the blow and step in, grabbing the swordsman’s wrist and slashing viciously at his inner thigh with the dirk. A spray of blood hit him in the face, and he knew he’d got the knife where he wanted it.

  The monk didn’t know he was dead yet, though. He grabbed Aspar by the hair and kneed him in the face, and as the holter fell back in sudden agony, closed his hands around his throat and began to squeeze. Aspar stabbed the dirk into his ribs and twisted it, but he felt something cracking in his throat, and black stars blotted out the mad green eyes glowering down at him.

  Then the strength went out of the man’s fingers and blood poured from his mouth, and Aspar was able to push him off.

  Just in time to see another of the fratirs, only a yard away, sword raised for the kill.

  The nauschalk came at Neil, and it was all he could do to evade the blows. Fighting in plate armor was less a contest of sword-skill than it was about who had the best armor. Fully armored knights didn’t really parry; they just took blows and gave them. But in this case, Neil knew from experience that even the superior armor he’d worn in z’Espino was no match for the glistering feysword. And though Neil had spent most of his fighting life in mail or leather hauberk—and thus knew full well how to parry—he didn’t really dare do that, either, not when each blow against his weapon of mere steel left it diminished.

  He had to keep the battle rage at bay and think, watch for one more good chance before he was exhausted.

  The knight cried out and drove forward, just as Neil realized he’d been backed up to the mound. He stumbled, and almost lazily saw the radiant weapon descending toward him—then suddenly he knew exactly what to do.

  He lifted his own blade in high, direct parry, taking the entire brunt of the blow on the edge, rather than on the flat, where a parry ought to be made. The force of the cut slammed his weapon down onto his shoulder, and then the feysword sheared through Cuenslec and into his byrnie.

  Ignoring the shattering pain, he released his sword and caught the nauschalk’s weapon hand with both of his, spun so that he had the arm turned over his shoulder, and snapped it down. The articulated harness kept the arm from breaking, but the sword fell glimmering to earth.

  The knight punched Neil in the kidney, and he felt the blow through the chain, but he gritted his teeth, kicked back into the nauschalk’s knee for leverage, and threw him heavily to earth. Then, before taking another breath, he grasped the hilt of the feysword, lifted it, and plunged it into the cut he’d already made at his foe’s shoulder. The nauschalk shrieked, a wholly inhuman sound.

  Gasping, Neil raised the blade once more and in one fierce stroke cut off the head.

  An arrow swifted by Stephen’s face as he reached the unconscious princess, but he ignored it, grimly trusting that Aspar and Leshya could keep any attackers off them until they’d gotten her to safety. Not for the first time, he wished he had more proficiency in arms than his saint-touched memory sometimes freakishly gave him.

  “Cazio!” someone shouted, and Stephen saw that the girl, Austra, was right behind Winna.

  The man trying to stand near the princess glanced up at them. “Austra, Ne! Cuvertudo!” he shouted.

  It was a modern dialect, not the Church language, but Stephen understood it well enough.

  But the warning came too late. What remained of the monks and other fighting men had recovered from whatever torpor had afflicted them. They were rallying behind a man who wore the blue robe of a sacritor. Stephen counted eight bowmen, all monks of Mamres, and ten armed and armored men advancing on them.

  Aspar raised his arm up in pointless defense, then flinched as an arrow hit the monk in the forehead with such force that it kicked his chin up toward the sky. Looking back, he saw that Leshya had made the shot from less then two yards away.

  “Stop, or I’ll shoot,” she said flatly as the monk toppled like a felled poplar.

  “Sceat,” Aspar managed weakly. He scrambled to his feet, reacquainting himself with his bow, only to find the string snapped.

  He saw the men advancing on Stephen and the rest.

  “We can still escape,” Leshya said. “Someone must know of what happened here.”

  “It will take only one of us to tell it,” Aspar said. “And I maunt that’s you.” He swung himself up on Ogre. “Come on, lad,” he muttered.

  Neil used what seemed the last of his strength to sprint to join the little group clustered around Anne. He placed himself with Cazio, squarely between her and their attackers. Cazio shot him a feeble grin and said something that sounded fatalistic.

  “Right you are,” Neil replied, as the bows of the monks trained on them.

  “Wait!” the sacritor called. “We need the princess and one of the swordsmen alive. Leave them, and the rest of you may go.”

  Neil heard horse’s hooves behind him, and turned to see Aspar. The warriors were moving steadily closer.

  Neil didn’t feel the need to dignify the ridiculous suggestion with a response. Apparently, no one else did either. He cut his eyes toward the archers, calculating whether he could get to even one of them before they killed him. Probably not, from what he had seen of their skill.

  “Yah,” Aspar said, as if hearing his thoughts. “They’re good shots. But they aren’t getting any worse. We might as well go get them.”

  “Wait,” Stephen said. “I hear horses, a lot of them, coming this way.”

  “That’s not likely to be good news for us,” Aspar pointed out.

  Stephen shook his head. “No, I think it might be.”

  Aspar thought he heard horses, too, but he’d just noticed something else—a shadow moving at the tree line. When an arrow suddenly struck one of the archers in the back of the neck, he knew it was Leshya. The remaining monks turned as one and fired into the woods.

  Aspar kicked Ogre into motion, determined to make what use he could of the distraction. He was halfway to them before they started firing. He saw black blurs, and a shaft thumped hard into his cuirass, driving though his shoulder and out the back, leaving him dimly curious as to how many pounds these fellows could pull. It didn’t hurt yet, though.

  Another hit him along the cheek, cutting deep and taking part of his ear with it, and that hurt quite a lot. Then Ogre screamed and reared up, and Aspar floated for an instant before slamming into the ground.

  Stubbornly, he pushed himself up, yanking out his throwing ax, determined to kill at least one of them before becoming porcupined.

  But they weren’t paying attention to him anymore. Some twenty horsemen thundered out of the woods, armed and armored except for the fellow leading them, a young man in a fine-looking red doublet and white hose. He had his sword drawn.

  “Anne!” the lad screamed. “Anne!”

  He only got to shout it twice, for an arrow hit him high in the chest, and he did a backflip off the horse. The archers scattered with saint-touched speed, continuing to shoot at the horsemen. Aspar choose the nearest, threw his ax, and had the vast satisfaction of seeing it buried in the man’s skull before his knees gave way.

  When Aspar went for the archers, Neil and Cazio charged the swords-men. Neil reckoned if he was in close enough combat, the archers would have a harder time making a shot. He wasn’t sure what Cazio reckoned, but it didn’t matter. Within a few breaths they were fighting shoulder to shoulder. The feysword was light and nimble in his hand, and he killed four men before the press bore him down. Then someone struck his head, hard, and for a time he didn’t know anything.

  A man’s voice woke him. Neil opened his eyes and saw a troop of mounted men. The leader had his visor pushed up and was staring down at him.

  He said something Neil didn’t understand and gazed around the clearing, face aghast.

  “I don’t understand you, sir,” Neil said, in the king’s tongue.

>   Behind him, Anne moaned.

  “What in the name of Saint Rooster’s balls is happening here?” the horseman demanded.

  Neil pointed to the man’s tabard. “You’re a vassal of Dunmrogh, sir—you should know better than I.”

  The knight shook his head. “My lord Dunmrogh the younger, Sir Roderick—he brought us here. I thought he was mad, the things he told us, but—sir, you must understand that I knew nothing of these events.” He held up both hands as if somehow to include the mutilated corpses that hung on the stakes and the general carnage scattered about the clearing in a single gesture. His roaming eye settled on the corpse of the Duke of Dunmrogh, and his eyes tightened.

  “Tell me what happened here,” he demanded.

  “I killed Dunmrogh,” a weak female voice said. “I did it.”

  Neil turned to see Anne standing, supported by Stephen and Winna.

  Her gaze touched him, and her mouth parted. “Sir Neil?” she gasped.

  Neil dropped to his knee. “Your Highness.”

  “Highness?” the mounted man echoed.

  “Yes,” Anne said, turning her attention back to him. “I am Anne, daughter of William the Second, and before Dunmrogh or any other lord, you owe your allegiance to me.”

  It sent a chill up Neil’s back, how much she sounded like Queen Muriele in that moment.

  “What is your name, sir?” Anne demanded.

  “My name is Marcac MaypCavar,” he replied. “But I—”

  “Sir Marcac,” one of his men interrupted. “That is Princess Anne. I’ve seen her at court. And this man is Neil MeqVren, who saved the queen from one of her own Craftsmen.”

  Sir Marcac looked about, still plainly confused. “But what is this? These people, what happened to them?”