In a Time of Treason

by David Keck

  A few hundred paces down the wall, he skirted one tower and threw his back against the next. Behind him, two separate torch parties struggled after him.

  He lurched onward, rounding the tower.

  Where another knot of torchlight shivered ahead. In desperation, he looked down. On a city side, there were roofs—far enough to break his back. On the sea side stretched a waveless blackness: low tide, he realized. Wet shapes of mud and stone glinted on the flats.

  He resolved to try his luck with the weaker gang of guards, but as he made to move, an accident of torchlight threw a fan of yellow out over the flank of the fortress, right through the wall.

  The light wavered out once more, and then there was blackness. But Durand had seen what he must see: the belly of the next tower had slumped into the gulf. A great, arched mouth was all that remained of its seaward wall.

  The guards ahead had nearly hit it, and in a moment they would cut him off forever.

  He sprinted, charging for a tower he could scarcely see down a path no broader than his shoulders. His cloak lashed behind him. He made out helmets—faces—in the torchlight.

  Durand dove through a blackness in the tower’s flank and plunged down a stair until the great stink of weeds and muck filled his head and the shattered belly of the tower opened onto the Gulf of Eldinor.

  He watched where the torchlight on the battlements draped long shadows down the stone.

  He clung to rubble and fought for silence, trying not to breathe.

  Overhead, two of the guard parties met, surely wondering how they had missed. He could hear snatches of their talk.

  In silence, Durand picked his way down the grassy slope of stones below the tower. He tried not to think of when the next block might drop out of the stone gape high above him.

  When the slope pitched away to a sheer drop, he threw himself off the brink—and struck the frigid mud with force enough to spit new stars into his heavens.

  SKULKING THROUGH THE stones and muck, Durand found no sign of his friends—or of the provost’s boat. Above him, the Heavens were full of stars, and the first sliver of the Sowing Moon glinted like a needle.

  Once, a party from the walls raised torches over the flats, sending Durand to hide among the ribs of a wrecked boat. Peering out through its swollen planks, he watched the guardsmen stagger in their pool of torchlight. He saw the long trail of pockmarks he’d left in the slime, and swam a winding rivulet when the guards looked away.

  At a safe distance, Durand hunkered out of sight and considered his position. If Lamoric and Deorwen had found the provost’s boat, they would be in Scrivensands. If they were caught, they would be locked in the Mount of Eagles.

  He resolved to reach the wharfs at Scrivensands and see what he could.

  Choosing a likely smudge on the horizon, he struck off across the gulf, leaving his searchers behind. At every step, the muck fought him for his boots. From the northern darkness, he could hear a thousand leagues of black water alive and breathing in its restive sleep. He tore a foot from the mud and planted it again.

  After all of this, surely, the spark of greed that had sent him trailing Lamoric to court was thoroughly doused. He could not see Ragnal smiling on him soon.

  The chill of mountain ice and the northern deeps clenched in the ooze, close to freezing. Around him, the masts and tall hulls of ships stood black against the black night. Stiff ropes snaked the flats, while the ships dozed like hogs in a cold wallow. He pulled the slimy, dragging weight of his cloak from the mud and knotted the thing around his waist.

  Hauling and planting his left foot—now without a boot—he weighed the ties that bound him to Lamoric. There was loyalty: he had sworn oaths to the man. But, more than that, Durand had betrayed his lord—and then been forgiven. Thus were true bonds forged. Durand’s service was half restitution—payment in sweat or blood—for a betrayal he could not confess.

  A faint sound.

  Thinking of king’s men, Durand twisted in his tracks, but the torches now flickered three hundred paces back.

  The sound whispered again, not from behind—from the north. He searched the flats, cursing the feeble stars and sliver moon. And the sound was larger—as though the whole dark sea was quietly waking out there beyond the Gates of Eldinor. Heartbeat after heartbeat, it swelled. He made out a glint as wide as the gulf, rippling silver in the gloom. The whisper roared from shore to shore. The waves of the Broken Crown had crested some clay shelf out there, bulling through the Gates of Eldinor and spilling wide across the gulf: the tide had turned.

  Durand was locked to the bottom as surely as if he’d been shackled there.

  Casting about, he spotted the nearest of the ships that waited for the tide. The water slid onward, fast and black and gleaming. The boat seemed ten bowshots away. He wrenched one foot from the mud. He set it down. The rush was almost upon him.

  In the mud, he felt the hard curl of an anchor rope hard as a root against his shin.

  And the water struck—ice and lightning.

  Long arms of weed slapped past him.

  But he held on.

  He climbed the anchor rope, feeling it twist as the water seized the ship and wrenched it onto the waves. The boat lurched—suddenly upon him—blundering like a mountainous warhorse.

  He held on, climbing as the boat floated free. Locking his fists on the big cable, catching with his frozen feet and shins, swinging as the boat heeled in the flood.

  Finally, he threw one leg over the rail and, with the boat still swinging like a child’s toy, pulled himself onto the deck. For a time, he sprawled there, motionless while the stars bobbed above the mast.

  Then he heard a sound—tock—hollow and distant above the whisper of the tide.

  Tock.

  It might have been a chain, loose and knocking against some rolling hull out in the gulf, but it sounded like the heel of a staff. The shudder that seized Durand’s bones was only partly about cold mud and water.

  T-tock. The waves brought the sound nearer.

  In an instant, Durand’s mind was back in that Traveler’s Night when he rode for his father’s hall through the knotted woods above Gravenholm. Once again, he heard the iron-shod staff among naked trees.

  Tock.

  Levering himself from the deck, Durand searched the merchantman for any sign of a ship’s boat, but of course, the crew had rowed the thing to some Eldinor alehouse long ago. There was no leaving, so, with the cold choking him, he contented himself with a box of stiff sailcloth. Once the lock was smashed, the mainsail made a serviceable blanket.

  T-tock.

  Durand squeezed his eyes shut.

  Wrapped in his acre of stiff canvas, he resolved that if the Traveler was walking the waves, a Power of Heaven would come plenty soon enough without a man gawking and running in circles.

  He hunkered down and drove his thoughts back to the puzzle of Lamoric. All winter Durand had meant to put Burrstone Walls behind him, but he had never ridden more than a few leagues from the castle door. The weather was bad; there was nowhere to go; but, when the others were leaving him, he did not stay behind. Instead, he had rowed the man halfway across Errest the Old.

  Tock.

  He winced at the cold and the Traveler’s staff beyond the gunnels.

  All of his loyalty and greed and penitence were lies. He stayed for Deorwen. Until he let Deorwen go, he was trapped at Lamoric’s side, faithful in treason. These were the snares the fiends laid before a man, and they had caught him firm and fast. His fist struck the deck.

  “It must end,” he said. “Whoever finds me on this blasted ship can have me. It must end.”

  And there was silence on the waves.

  The marching staff—or swinging chain—had stopped. He smiled around chattering teeth, and breathed. He was alone. And perhaps that was best.

  “There are a thousand knights sworn to the duke. I am one blade in all that. I must put Deorwen—” He corrected himself. “I must put Lamoric and his wife behi
nd me.”

  As he muttered these words, a dry sound—like the crack of a banner—snapped above the masthead. Half expecting to see the Traveler perched on a yardarm, Durand flinched a glance up, but for a moment, he saw nothing. Then, beyond the mast and rigging, a black shape flickered among the stars. It wheeled—or Durand thought it did.

  He stood, squinting into the Heavens, wondering what night birds flew in such darkness.

  Then the shape detached itself from the sky and caught hold of the rigging. He saw brittle claws clutching the ship’s backstay. A beak croaked: ha! A nasal, hag’s laugh: a rook.

  And then there was another black flutter in the Heavens. Another shape descended, catching a second line.

  Two rooks stared down at him, ragged, their beaks black points with naked hilts of bone. These were no natural birds. “Bastards,” Durand said. Here were the henchmen and councilors of Radomor of Yrlac stealing away after the king’s moment of madness. Now they laughed like crows upon tomorrow’s battlefield.

  The sailcloth slid from Durand’s shoulders. “To the Hells with you!” he said.

  Ha! the things answered.

  The sailors had left a long gaff in brackets by the rail. While Durand’s sword wouldn’t reach the rooks, he thought the gaff might. In a single abrupt motion, he snatched the weapon and swept for their reptilian eyes with speed enough to make the iron hook whistle. The birds scattered—but only for a beat or two of their wings.

  A feather spun down.

  Ha!

  And the two rooks turned to each other. As Durand balanced the long gaff in his fists, they lurched into the air. He brandished the pole, but they banked beyond his reach.

  The rooks spun round and round and their flight seemed to churn a Hellish whirlpool from the mortal night—as black and cold as a winter midnight and full of whispers.

  Before Durand knew what he was seeing, frost had locked in his hair. His breath stung behind his ribs, and needles of ice reached from every plank and spar on the deck.

  The rooks shocked the spinning air with their convulsive, one-note laughter. “Where is friendship?” said a whisper—the sound scurried round the maelstrom. “Where is honor?” said a second whisper.

  Durand swung, aimless, but the rooks’ whirlpool snatched at his breath, tugging life from his lips. He gaped as steam spun upward from his lips till he could no longer breathe. His life’s breath gushed from him, coiling into the dark, as he lashed with the gaff.

  “Hostages among the highborn, brother. Such a base policy,” said the first.

  “But not a tool to be discounted.”

  The whispering spiraled round and round, louder than the tide.

  “A man might make enemies of his friends, brother.”

  In an instant, Durand would fall. His heart struggled.

  “While another makes friends of his enemy. . . .”

  But then the churning void collapsed, spinning off into the black Heavens with the rooks. Laughter rang in Durand’s skull. He dropped to the deck. The two fiends flickered, black, against the stars.

  HE HEARD A sound—tock—conducted through the bones of his skull. He was sprawled on the deck.

  “Oh, for Heaven’s sake,” he said. He ached as though he’d slept a hundred winters. There was twilight in the Heavens.

  Clunk . . . Clunk.

  “Durand?” said a voice.

  After another clunk, there was a heavier concussion.

  Though uncountable needles of frost tacked his cloak to the planks, he tore himself free. The Bittern bobbed over the gunnel. Lamoric stood in the prow, craning to see him. Coensar stared down the length of the boat. And there were grins even among Odemar’s oarsmen. As Durand blinked, Ouen reached up, and Durand clambered into the boat.

  “Host of Heaven,” the big man said. “Her Ladyship swore she saw something. I didn’t think you could have reached the ship before the tide hit, but His Lordship wouldn’t hear about turning back until we’d checked.”

  Beyond the near circle, Durand saw Lamoric—like a man reprieved—and Deorwen, her chest heaving and lips clamped tight.

  Ouen sat Durand down on a spare bench. His gold teeth glinted. “The skald’s no oarsman, and we’ll have to pull hard if we’re to make Acconel before the sky falls.”

  12. The Leopard Bares His Claws

  Over Acconel Harbor, gulls screamed against the sunset. Lamoric’s men had rowed and sailed for days, and now the pale city rose like sorcery before the Bittern’s prow. The walls of the citadel soared over Silvermere, and the twin mouths of the River Banderol gaped where high kingdom engineers had parted the waters to moat the old city.

  In most ways that mattered, this was Durand’s home. And it would make as good a place as any to tell Deorwen and Lamoric “farewell” and to get out of the mess he had made.

  As their strokes hauled the Bittern around the jetty tower, Durand heard the thousand-tongued babble of a crowd. He could think of no reason. At a glance, he saw that a mob had gathered in the quayside shadows, though not a soul among them was turned to see the Bittern come. This was no welcome. He wondered what was going on.

  “We’ll take her straight in, Master Odemar,” said Lamoric from his oar. “The whole kingdom’s about to capsize. We’ve no time for signals.” They cut a line across the crowded harbor to swing close beyond the pier ends. Durand stole a glimpse through one mountainous city gate and saw inexplicable mobs lining the road. Red-and-white guardsmen topped the walls and managed the crowd. Durand searched his memory for an explanation while Lamoric scowled and consulted his captain.

  Odemar sent them past a place in the gatehouse’s deep shadow. “Put her in here,” said Lamoric. Odemar ordered the oars up, and, as they shot in, Durand got ready with the rope to tie off.

  In that tense moment of landing, shouts and horns brayed from the mouth of the gatehouse, roaring with a sound of a market at full cry.

  Durand glanced up. Then, quite suddenly, the whole crowd screamed.

  At that same instant, the Bittern hit the wharf. Durand’s hand went to his blade, and—as though the gate were a portal to another Creation—men and beasts exploded from the city.

  People ran. They fell. Some were carried straight into the harbor.

  As Durand stared, a bull wallowed through bodies. It vaulted up the ramped foot of the city wall, flinging people like rag dolls before its weight heaved it back onto its pursuers. The bull’s flanks ran with blood.

  “Hells,” Durand said. And knew what he saw. Every year it was the same: Driving the Bulls. Even when he lived in the city, he always forgot when it came.

  Tumbling through screams and needle horns, half-naked men lashed the bulls into madness. A tide of wide-eyed brutes scrambled and slashed forward with a flood of citizens around it. Bulls leapt like porpoises, crushing and maiming the citizens in their desperation. At the water—at the quay—the river of flesh split, afraid of drowning.

  The Bittern was shaking already.

  For a blink, Durand saw Heremund’s face behind him, his mouth a hollow loop. Then Coensar was roaring, “Push off! For your lives, boys!”

  Durand took the wharf in both hands, ready to shove, but its timbers came alive in his hands. One monstrous bull was free of the mob with the empty wharf its only channel to liberty. Its muzzle gleamed big as a saddle. Only Coensar’s hand on Durand’s collar pulled Durand free.

  In a hail of spit and blood, the monster roared over their heads, cracking the far gunnel and bowling into the water.

  “Heaven’s King!” Ouen breathed.

  Durand spun.

  Beyond the boat, the bull was stiffly erect, swimming for open water. Wherever it had touched the Bittern, she had burst like a barrel.

  The crowd bayed and whooped, swinging their lashes. They splashed water at the bulls and each other. The animals wallowed and swam, most bound to drown in deep water, but others making their way for the beach beyond the crowd. The frenzy of the mob began to falter, then there came an orde
red blast of trumpets from the city walls. Men in the duke’s red-and-white had appeared at the parapets.

  Durand threw whomever he could get hold of onto the wharf. Ouen, Coen, and Lamoric got Durand’s forearms as the boat sank from under him.

  “What in the Hells?” Berchard demanded. His one eye peered up at the walls.

  In the midst of the guardsmen was a small figure, stooped under the weight of heavy mail. Even squinting up into the red dusk, Durand knew the opaque blue of his eyes. The Duke of Gireth had come.

  Duke Abravanal lifted a too-heavy sword over the mere. On all sides, his guardsmen produced crossbows. And with a downward slash of the sword, bolts leapt from the stuttering clank of a hundred bows. Durand and the others flattened themselves, but the bolts flickered past to bite deep in hock and shoulder of the swimming bulls. A second volley sent every bull to the bottom.

  Silence swelled.

  A small knight set his hands on the parapet. He wore a mustache like fox’s tails, and Durand knew him. “Hear the words of Abravanal, third of that name, Lord of Acconel on Silvermere, Duke of great Gireth, mightiest domain between mere and mountains, bearer of Gunderic’s Sword of Judgment!”

  Sir Kieren Arbourhall, long Durand’s master, paused.

  “To the beast of the water, the duke sends his greetings,” he said. “All hail Acconel!” And the streets roared once more.

  “What was that about?” demanded Berchard.

  “The founding of the city,” said Heremund. “When our famous Duke Gunderic came from Yestreen, they say some old devil dragged itself from the muck at the bottom of the mere. Rose out of the water like a black bull, running slime and flapping its ears.”

  Badan grimaced. “This skald of yours talked a lot of ballocks the last time as well, Durand. You shut him up, or I shall.”

  Durand had his eyes on the parapet. The duke was turning. He thought he saw the rest of the old man’s family with him: Landast, little Almora, all silhouettes. Sir Kieren lingered an instant to peer out over the quay, fingering the mustache.