by David Keck
And the smeared men glanced up: twins—Durand knew them though he could not remember how or where. Each had a fistful of smeared white twigs in his hands. “Yet it is necessary,” said one. “You have told us so, yourself, or we would never risk it.”
The other smiled, his face spattered. “No, never.”
“They did not deserve this,” said the warrior.
Each twin smiled—spasmodic expressions.
But the shadows surged near, slavering over the dark flecks that dotted the men’s skin and clothing. The lashing shapes tugged at the bundles in each man’s hands. Durand saw their pale skin flatten under the pressure of lapping tongues.
“Back!” spat one of the smeared ghouls. The twin shook his head, rocked. “Back, by the Eye, by the Lance, by the Coat of Nails. Back, by the Calends Hag and the dark of moons.” Each word shot a twitch through the crowding shadows.
Durand could not even struggle; even a hanged man could lash against the rope.
And the two ghouls leered.
The twigs might have been birch rods or candlesticks, splattered with tar—but understanding dawned: they were bones and midnight blood. One had been pried from each opened grave.
The smeared twins found slim knives, and set to work on the bones like scribes. “You have told us that your army must take the city before the garrison is relieved.” A pale, glutinous blob splattered one face. Both smiled.
“Even against so few,” growled the bent warrior, “hundreds would fall before we could make a breach.”
One of the twins spread his hands. “And who has chosen this but the old duke? What are we but instruments in his hands?”
“But these men you exhume were not felons hung at crossroads.”
“But murderers all they must be, Lord. Or they could not be bound to do murder again.” The ghoul’s grin might have been conciliatory had it not been quite so splattered; he raised a fan of fretted bones. “It is done already.” He bowed toward his brother.
The twin lifted an ewer from the turf, and raised it high. Upturned, the vessel disgorged its contents over the blade of his jaw, his lips, the dark cloth of his tunic, and down his gullet. Durand could not blink; he could not turn. It was far too thick for dark wine. Wiping his chin, the ghoul set the vessel down and grinned.
To the night, he said, “Come.” His back straightened as he breathed deep.
The hanging souls swayed while the sorcerer-ghoul’s bloody lips twitched through the words of an inverted incantation—every word a drawn breath. And, one at a time, the fiend dragged the dead into his swelling chest.
When it was over, his face twisted with the simple effort of containing all he had consumed.
His brother licked his lips, lifting one of the greasy bones. With a grin like a market-day conjurer, he twisted the thing in his fingertips, saying, “Now, each soul to its house of bone once more: murderers for murder.”
He held the bone to his brother’s lips, and the twin breathed once more, the bottled soul blooming round the bone like a dark flame blossoming round a pale wick.
Soul after soul, the two repopulated the waste with spirits.
As he strangled on the periphery of this mad ritual, Durand became aware that he was not the only anonymous bystander in the wasteland. Shadows flickered among the tussocks, and behind the legs of the standing men. Was he like them? Was he dead? He felt the bands tight around his chest, and gagged on a tongue he could not move.
“Go now,” the ghoul was purring. “Go where sleeps the family of the duke. And we shall see how long the limbs struggle when the head tumbles.” He raised his crabbed hands, and the tenuous black things turned for the firelit city, swinging into the clouded Heavens.
It could not be.
Durand’s lungs ached as though the hunger for air would wrench him in two. They were leaving him behind. He tried to master his thoughts. He heard grumbles from Radomor and soothing words from the Rooks. He could not let the things run from him.
Spurred by this one solid thought, he moved over the tussocks and over the grisly work site. Bodies had been tumbled from their shrouds, each bearing the signs of mortal violence. Worse, each body had been torn again. Purple wounds gaped in white flesh. He saw the marks of axes, knives, and pliers, and broken ends of bone.
Then he saw a face lolling above a ruin of meat and splintered bone. The hairs of the beard stood pale as ivory around a wink of gold teeth. A bull medallion gleamed.
“No.”
And Durand felt the cold air round him—through him.
“No.”
He was a thousand yards away, breathing the word into a space of darkness.
He was a living man.
This was a dream.
And he woke.
For a moment, all he could think and feel and see was blackness. But then the dream was upon him—the faces, the rushing specters—and he pitched himself to his feet. The Rooks! Were their sendings passing the wall? Were they flowing down into the streets of the citadel? He must reach the Gunderic’s Tower first.
He scrambled through darkness. Hard corners battered him, but he soon tore free of the tower and ran into the streets.
The city guard had set watch fires against the night. Durand ran blindly between these islands of light, flying past sentries. He stopped for no one, and gave no explanation. One guard tried to block his way, but Durand laid him out with a mailed shoulder. One sounded a horn.
He could almost hear guards at a hundred crossroads shaking themselves into vigilance and readying crossbows or rusting blades. With clenched teeth, he pelted for the next confluence of alleys.
And stumbled into a guardsman leading a horse. Durand skidded to a halt, and the guardsman rounded on him.
“Your horse,” Durand said, already yanking the reins from the man’s fist.
“What in the name of—”
Durand rammed his knee into the man’s groin, and vaulted into the saddle, riding a trail of sparks. A crossbow clanked, but steel and feathers hissed past in the dark.
Durand looked up between the rooftops. Inky shapes flickered against the vault of Heaven—not crows now but ragged grasping shadows. He leaned over the horse’s neck.
The castle gates pitched into sight. But the marketplace before the gates was suddenly crowded: heaped with sacks and packs and mounds of cloth. The horse screamed, and Durand flew into the air.
He crashed hard enough to ram flashes behind his eyelids. Watchmen on the walls lifted torches, darting and raising bows. Horns sounded. Then the market bundles all around him came to life—they were refugees.
Durand scrabbled to his feet, spinning. His head was full of the unburied dead and racing spirits.
He stumbled into a woman: a creature of flesh and blood, shaking with cold.
“What are you doing, boy?”
Durand stumbled back. Here were a thousand mortal refugees of the lower city. With a blink, he was off again, ducking past the curious and the sleepy.
Beyond the great gate, he saw gatekeepers.
“I must get in.”
“There’s some kind of trouble in the city,” said one man. A small man, he wore a mustache like the tails of two foxes.
“Hells, Kieren! It’s me,” said Durand.
“What?”
“They’re after the duke.”
The moment the gate’s long teeth left their sockets in the roadbed, Durand was under and running.
He sprinted the passages of Gunderic’s Tower, blind except where light slipped through cracks and windows. He passed shadows colder than the wells in Hesperand. The Painted Hall came to life in his wake.
Finally, he vaulted the stairs to the duke’s landing, skidding in front of Coensar and a guard—two crossbows trained on his heart.
But a ragged shadow loomed.
Behind Coensar, the duke took half a bleary step from his door. And the shadow darted. Durand ripped his dagger free of its sheath—a crossbow snapped—but he was throwing.
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nbsp; The sending wailed, its mouth wrenched wide—and froze. Silent, the thing hung like a still image in smoke, already lifeless and drifting. The dagger clattered to the floor, transfixing a white fragment of bone.
By Durand’s ear, a bolt had splintered against the wall. Coensar’s hand was on the guardsman’s bow.
Lamoric was downstairs.
As Durand bounded into the Painted Hall, he found the room motionless. Already, a living shadow stood over a place of sprawled knights like a dark blaze reaching nearly to the ceiling. At Durand’s blundering arrival, the thing twitched toward him. Lamoric lay prone at its mercy. He saw, high in the figure, what looked like a wild hillman’s beard floating about a dark face.
The black flames of the sending’s hands swung toward Lamoric.
“Ouen,” Durand said.
And the sending froze.
The rushes crackled on the floor—vermin pouring from their hiding places. The thing reared to the painted vaults. Its hands hovered at Lamoric’s throat, a ring of black fire not quite closing.
“Ouen, no!” Durand slid Ouen’s sword of war free of its scabbard. The hearth fire sputtered green against the stones.
Ouen’s bound soul shivered above them, lashing from its grip like a bonfire in a gale as mortal will fought sorcerous compulsion. Lamoric’s life was poised between them.
Then the shadow surged.
Durand shot the tip of the dead man’s sword through the bone at the shadow’s heart. He felt the contact, ice and lightning leaping his arm. Ouen’s howl rent Creation, a shriek that loosened the teeth in Durand’s jaws. But it was already an echo. The shadow had frozen. Tied by the long blade, Durand watched the shadow come apart, rags and ribbons of it slipping into the thousand crevices of stone vaults and stars.
“What have I done?” Durand said.
For a heartbeat he saw the wide eyes of Acconel’s knights staring up at him, then he collapsed into darkness.
DURAND OPENED HIS eyes to see a pair of dark orbs glistening a few inches from his nose.
He reared up. Almora looked down on him, all alone. He saw the criss-crossed vaults of the castle’s shrine. And people were turning.
“The King of Heaven smiles upon us,” said a quavering voice.
Coensar’s voice said: “The boy’s lucky we didn’t shoot him.”
“That knife! Right at my door.”
Coensar stepped close, as did the Duke of Gireth, draped in his coverlet. Durand subsided onto whatever bench they had laid him on.
“Lamoric? The others?”
“Lamoric’s just come round,” said Coensar. “We rushed everyone into the sanctuary after we understood what was happening. The sendings carry the grave’s own chill with them, but they aren’t much interested in anyone but those they’ve been sent against.”
Coensar looked around as if the threat was not long gone. There was a railing between the shrine and the Painted Hall. Rows of armored men watched.
Abravanal leaned in with his flat blue eyes, faltering. “They are of an old line in the Col. They had that land of my many-times great-grandfather when the forests rang with the shouts of the Banished and wild men.” The duke fumbled at Durand’s shoulder, then turned without another word to be at his son’s side.
“Kieren asked after you. Bolted into the hall on your heels. You’d better try that arm.”
It took Durand a moment to realize that he was meant to perform. The arm was stiff, as though he had spent a long day in sword practice. He held his hand before his eyes and watched it tremble.
“The thing was blue-white when you dropped that sword,” said Coensar. “Most of the guards fell at a passing touch from the thing. No one managed to bring a blade to bear.” He sniffed a quick laugh. “You’d be little use with just one arm.”
“No,” Durand agreed.
Coensar leaned close. “Durand, how did you know they were coming?”
Durand frowned. “Another dream.”
Now Coensar nodded. He had Durand’s good shoulder. “Like the Lost in the courtyard. There’s something about being so close to death so often. It opens a man’s eyes to—”
Coensar let go. “Durand!” Beyond the wall of people around Lamoric’s sickbed, the young lord was on his feet, hands restraining and supporting him. Through a rent in the crowd, Durand saw Deorwen—and met her eyes. “It was Ouen,” declared Lamoric. “It was Ouen, but you stopped him, Durand. I could see him, fighting.” He waved a hand. “I—He is free now, in any case.”
Durand thought of the dead man’s howl and the rags of shadow after the blade struck home, but said only, “Yes, Lordship.”
Lamoric was pale, his lips bloodless.
Deorwen looked on. Durand saw clenched teeth and tears. He wondered what it must be like for the girl, her husband and her lover right there.
Lamoric took spasmodic hold of Durand’s surcoat. “It doesn’t matter what abomination Rado throws at us. He hasn’t got us yet! He and his—”
A great boom shook dust into the candlelight. It could have been thunder. Durand felt the shock conducted through the bones of old Gunderic’s Tower: a great weight of stone dropping from the Heavens onto high walls and cobbled streets. There were screams from the marketplace beyond the castle gates.
Coensar grunted from the back of the chamber, his eyes glinting like steel. “He comes,” the captain said.
20. Sunset Falling
Through the night and all the next day, the army of Yrlac surged against the walls. Arrows hissed and sprang from the battlements. Five hundred hooked ladders flew up in the west, only to be followed by five hundred more in the north and south. Defenders swung gaffs and garden bills. Battering rams and siege towers rolled. The espringals with their twisted skeins of maidens’ hair flashed their “tongue”-spears at the heads of guardsmen. And all the while great trebuchets cartwheeled boulders against the walls, carrying ancient halls into their cellars under the weight of stone.
All day, Durand ran. There were no ditches to foul the approaches and few bows to hold the storming parties at bay. Each fresh assault triggered sudden, hideous battle on the parapets. Tottering high above the streets, men savaged each other rather than fall, cutting throats and clawing under the lash of Radomor’s crossbows from the rooftops. Bolts hammered mail to bone.
When the horizon bled and blazed, the roaring battle knotted round the Gates of Sunset. Durand and the others fought atop the walls, hurling broken masonry onto shields and howling faces to the beat of an Yrlaci ram swinging in the belly of the tower under their feet. Espringals and mangonels dashed men from the heights while the trebuchets beat the walls—each projectile swatting parapets over the streets of the citadel.
Durand and the Acconel men fought and scrabbled on the high rubble while the foundations shuddered below. They threw everything. Men flashed and burst from Creation all around him. There was blood in his teeth.
He heard his name.
Coensar wove across the pitching tower, cringing low. “Come!” he said. “Lamoric wants you to run an errand.”
Like a pit dog lifted from the fight, Durand swayed a moment. Stones bounded between them, but he followed Coensar down to the crowded yard under the gates.
Lamoric, not daring to look from the fighting beyond the gate, seized Durand’s shoulder. “Durand, we’re done for here. We won’t hold the gate more than another hour, and the citadel falls with this gate.
“But we can’t give in! If we cling to the walls, Radomor will shred us before help can reach the city. If we’re to have any force remaining, we must abandon the walls now and save as many as we can before the bugger knows we’ve run.”
There were stones clattering across shields and cobblestones.
“Acconel will fall,” said Durand. “He will destroy everything.”
“Durand! You must think. We’ll need an army if we’re to survive! Radomor’s thrown his three battalions at this one gate. Everything he has. It’s here he’ll breach the walls and come pour
ing through. Tell my father—or Kieren—whoever will hear you. Tell them to order everyone back to Castle Acconel. Throw the Fey and Harper’s Gates wide for all I care. Let the townspeople out. But I’ll hold the bugger’s eye on the Gate of Sunset. He’ll see my bull banner till the walls are bare and the castle full and laughing. And I’ll make him pay to win through.
“Go!” Lamoric shouted, and Durand ran through the pitching streets of the city to Gunderic’s Tower.
AS DURAND LURCHED toward the Painted Hall, someone caught his sleeve—Deorwen stood in a dark passage. “You’re alive!” she said.
He could hardly believe it was the same world. The nails on his left hand had been torn away. A narrow wall was all that divided peace and madness. “We’re holding them, but it can’t last. I’ve a message for His Grace.”
A crowd surged by, shoving Durand close, and he found himself mashing a kiss against her lips, shutting his eyes.
She curled her fists in his bloody surcoat, her breath hot against his face. But there was iron mail between them.
“Deorwen! I’ve been sent with orders,” Durand said, pulling free. “I cannot stop. Hells, be careful.”
He tumbled into the Painted Hall, blood and desperation winning the argument for him—with one exception.
ORDERS WERE SENT, archers filled the buildings on the road from Sunset, and from every corner of the citadel, soldiers pelted back to the high towers of Castle Acconel.
With his message, Durand wove between pitching buildings, blade and shield in his fists, ready for squads of Radomor’s men to have broken through while his back was turned. Arrows clattered down around him, scattering like straw over the street. A squadron of soldiers ran past, gathering baskets-full.
The memory of Deorwen was still in his hands. Still pounding in his heart.
A great block dropped out of the Heavens, carved with finials and proverbs in High Atthian. It bounded through a wall and a crowd of running soldiers. A second great stone landed in an explosion of white marble, and leapt straight for Durand: a idol’s severed head grinning. As he tumbled, the thing leapt high, slamming the wall of a house behind him. In one jolt, the building shed five hundred years of plaster.