by David Keck
Durand watched Deorwen, knowing how tired she was, watching her indulge the little girl. He thought he should get up and help with the bucket.
But, among the old gang, Berchard gripped his sleeve. “I don’t like seeing the girl out there. It’s like watching her skip through a pack of dogs. I mean, there’s loyal and there’s hungry. With the duke knocking outside, this is no game anymore, and these folk aren’t belted knights bred to bloodshed.”
“This is my father’s city,” said Lamoric, “and remember it’s heroes and belted knights who’ve turned traitor out there. They’re the ones riding against the king.”
Durand didn’t like to hear words like “traitor.”
Heremund Skald was rubbing his mouth. “There are many siege stories. Hunger does strange things. Sickness comes. You hear of debauchery—and piety. Madness among the desperate. Some folk stand firm beyond reason and others turn on each other like wild cats.”
Coensar was nodding. “Radomor’s shrewd. We might be wise to look for a room with a strong door, Lordship. One of the mural towers, if we could—”
Lamoric shot to his feet. “Enough!” he said, drawing the attention of half the old hall. He swung his hand to the west. “Our enemy is out there! It’s Radomor who’s put the knife to our throats. It’s he who’s burned and slain our friends and countrymen. Who could put his faith in such a man? A kinslayer! An oathbreaker! We’ve seen these things he’s conjured into his service. This squabbling is what he wants! He’s planted this poisoned hope in our hearts. But what mercy can a man hope for at the hands of such a fiend?
“If I cannot trust my people, what is my life worth?” He got Durand’s shoulder and gave it a shake. “I am leaving this nest of whispers to look my real enemy in the eye!”
Lamoric pushed past their guards and into the Painted Hall, ready to keep his word. And Kieren caught Durand’s sleeve. “A couple of you’d better go with him; he’s likely to hurdle the walls and go meet the old bugger!”
Durand nodded, slipping through the huddled crowds to mount the stairs to the outer battlements—and wondering all along whether he should be trusted. He was surprised to find Badan on his heels. “I’ve sworn the same oaths you have,” the man snarled—and he might have done a better job keeping them.
A wind slapped grit into Durand’s eyes as he topped the battlements and spotted Lamoric. Durand wished he hated the man. They passed guardsmen crouched as the stones of small engines cracked against the battlements. Even in this mood, Lamoric kept his head low.
He smiled at Durand. “ ‘Look him in the eye.’ I’d be bloody lucky to see him at all, this enemy of mine. He’ll be in some great tent with a cask of wine and those creatures of his crouched on either hand like some chieftain’s dogs. This is no way to fight. There is nothing but fear and squalor.”
“And the crowds are a pig,” Badan said. “They’ll be washing that stink out of this old fort for a hundred years, whoever wins.”
“You’ve got a gentle heart, Sir Badan. No one could say otherwise.”
Beyond Badan’s grunted reply, Durand heard a groan and swish as one of Radomor’s monstrous engines lobbed some great block of masonry into the heavens.
Lamoric turned to the yard: a heaving morass under black walls. “It’s more crowded now than the festival day . . . with no hawkers to come peddling pies and—”
A great stone smacked the inner wall, rebounding into the tiltyard. Between two men, it bit deep into the muck, narrowly missing both. Dead shapes sprawled under many others.
“These bastards will hammer your castle to dust,” said Badan, swiping a lank ribbon of red hair from his face.
Another trebuchet groaned.
“It’s like wrestling in some backstreet gutter—all blood and twisting bones,” said Lamoric. “He is killing Sons of Atthi!”
“Lordship, he is—” Durand began, when the battlements exploded between them. The walkway was dropping from under their feet. For an instant, as Lamoric skipped clear, his head crested the battlements. Durand saw whole units of Radomor’s bowmen rise in the streets. “Lordship!” Durand leapt for his master while a storm of shafts dashed itself against the battlements. Durand’s drive knocked Badan sprawling—but tackled a living Lamoric to the walkway.
Durand closed his eyes, saying, “I’d wager there’s a fat reward for the first man who puts an arrow through a man like you.”
They levered themselves apart, Lamoric dusting the big Gireth bull’s head emblazoned on his surcoat. “Shooting for the bull’s-eye.”
Durand sat back against the wall, laughing as stones sailed by.
Badan’s spittle struck his cheek.
“You son of a whore!” Badan’s fist was on his blade. “I nearly ended up with a broken neck, then.” The sound could have been coughing. “You touch me again and I’ll gut you. You’re not such a riddle as you think. I’ve had my eyes open, and I don’t sleep as sound as some, eh?”
Durand flashed cold, blood like ice.
Badan punctuated his threat with a shove to Durand’s chest as he stood up and left bodyguarding behind. Durand could only stare. He’d killed a man over this in Tern Gyre.
But Lamoric was shaking his head and still chuckling—Durand couldn’t remember why. “A charmer. You watch your back.”
“Aye,” Durand managed.
But Lamoric merely glanced out an embrasure. “These whoresons see me stand for a moment: whack. Watching for weakness. Very eager to jump on it. I’ll have to think about that—maybe we’ll get a last chance.”
Durand glanced out the same gap and saw men heaving at the spokes of a great windlass under one of the towering siege engines, hauling a load of stones to swing above the street. Once they had the weapon’s big arm cocked, the thing would whip another boulder into the castle.
When Durand glanced back, he found Lamoric smearing tears from his face. The man panted a quick laugh. “I shouldn’t have been so hard on Berchard and the rest. The hour’s coming when the crowd will have to turn. This isn’t some holy war. Radomor’s a thug. And Ragnal? He’s a kidnapper. But we’re caught between. I’ve given my word to Ragnal. Five winters back, I put my hands in his hands, and swore with all the lords of Errest that I was his man.” Durand remembered kneeling in the mud before Lamoric, knighted and bound, all by the bank of the River Glass: Lamoric’s sworn man.
“The Patriarchs crowned him,” said Lamoric. “I vowed to defend him—my father and brother beside me.” He managed a twitchy grin. “I stood clear-eyed before him. Who’d trust the man who betrays such a vow?”
Durand kept his mouth shut. He would tell Lamoric—not that the man was a cuckold, but that his wife was alone. He would mention Deorwen’s nightmares.
A crow fluttered over the wall, its wings snapping close. A raven followed.
“Already, we’re starving,” said Lamoric. “I don’t think my lady wife has slept since we shut these gates. People are ill. I’ve had men dropping bodies over the mere wall.”
Another carrion bird flashed past, swinging toward the top of Gunderic’s Tower.
Lamoric winced. “I won’t force them to hold on beyond.”
“My Lord!” cried a voice.
In the tiltyard where the stones were landing stood Deorwen. “Your father’s gone to the rooftop.”
Both men looked heavenward. Gunderic’s Tower loomed twenty fathoms above the yard. Durand could see the tiny form of Abravanal of Gireth picked out against the sky, black shapes spinning around him. He had something—someone—in his arms.
Lamoric stared, but Durand got the man’s shoulder. “Come on!”
They charged from the walls, ducking through gates and vaulting the crowded stairs of the fortress until they stumbled out upon the rooftop among the silent crowd of the duke’s men.
Hanging half above the long fall, Abravanal teetered in the embrasure between two stone merlons. Ravens and jack-daws and rooks and crows churned in a ragged whirlwind around the battlements. The old m
an clutched Almora to his bony chest as if she were an infant child. The crows were laughing.
Kieren met Lamoric as they stepped from the stairs. “Thank Heaven. We have told him that there’s no reason. What Radomor’s done cannot stand.”
Lamoric grimaced.
He opened his arms and stepped out toward the old man. “Father,” he said, “it is too soon.”
“They are dying down there,” said Abravanal. “Dying because of me. My house. My line. I must defend my people.”
Lamoric was stepping closer. “They chose this, Father.”
“I will not cling until my own men must bundle me through the gates of my father’s hall, and roll me at the feet of the man who slew my daughter—and my son.” His blue eyes bulged. “What sort of coward would I be if I forced them to that choice? I must choose my own time.”
“And Almora?” said Lamoric.
The duke strained his neck, peering up where the black birds flew. “How can I deliver her into that monster’s hands?”
“And your son?”
The old man’s fingers twitched like a crab’s limbs in his daughter’s black hair. “You will do what you must do.”
“Yes . . .” said Lamoric. He had cried upon the wall, marking the despair coming to the multitude. Now, he walked beyond the reach of his comrades, hands falling empty to his sides—drawn on by the brink.
Durand was too slow. No one moved.
“I am so sorry,” Abravanal was saying. “This was never a doom I saw before us.”
Lamoric was very close. “No . . .”
“There has been so much death.”
And with terrible suddenness, Lamoric smashed his father in the mouth.
The old man tottered, high above the yard. But Lamoric was savage, catching hold of his sister’s hair and heaving.
“You bastard!” he snarled. The old man crashed back onto the rooftop, falling in a tangle sure to snap bones in a man his age.
Deorwen bolted forward as Lamoric tore a screaming Almora from his father’s arms. He bent over the old man like he meant to keep up the beating. The crows were storming, shrieking.
“You didn’t think of me at all, did you? You were going to give it all up. Throw my sister to the stones—and you’d forgotten I was alive! There are a thousand people downstairs who would swear that the girl died if Radomor came asking. Before we threw her down! You’d have killed us all! All our sworn men—what do you think Rado would do with them when the gates opened?”
Lamoric’s shoulders heaved with the working of his lungs. “You’ve been asleep too long, Father.”
He stood, looking to the spent faces of friends and family all around him.
LAMORIC’S EYES WERE mad and flashing as he tramped back into the tower stair, marching past Deorwen and Almora without a glance. Ashamed, was Durand’s guess. The little girl looked after him as he vanished.
Durand joined the others in the crowded stone spiral, wondering what would become of Deorwen. He imagined tomorrows where they were all free of the tower. Durand would ride for the farthest corner of Creation. Deorwen would have peace from her spirits. Lamoric would stand still long enough to learn just whom he’d married.
Durand stepped off the bottom stair to find the whole of the Painted Hall looking back at him: every man, woman, and child up and watching.
Lamoric stood before them, alone.
To Durand’s astonishment it was blind Hagon who stepped to the fore, scratching at the white shock of his hair. “Ah,” said the man. “You have returned?”
“What is this?” asked Lamoric. His hand moved toward his blade.
The blind man grimaced. “Well. I have been asked to speak for the rest here. We have come to a decision.”
“Have you . . .”
Durand watched Hagon, wondering how long a few knights could hold a thousand men, even in the well of a winding stair.
“Lord Lamoric, Duke Abravanal. We are hungry. Some of our number are sick. And there is great fear. A deliberation has been forced upon us.”
“I am here,” said Lamoric. His father said nothing.
Hagon hauled a good breath through his nostrils. “I know, Lordship. By the King and Host of Heaven, these are hard days. But the men and women of Acconel trapped here have talked it out. And we’ve sworn to stand by you and yours against whatever comes, no matter what it costs. And that’s an end.”
A real grin was spreading on Lamoric’s face.
“By the Lord of Dooms,” he breathed.
“Just so,” said Hagon. He turned to the crowd and they stared on, fierce and grim. There were nods and scattered smiles.
Eyes flashing, Lamoric stepped forward, clasping a surprised Hagon’s hand. “Here is loyalty that the lords of this realm cannot match, and courage that its knighted warriors might envy.”
Durand stared on. This was where he’d meant to be knighted, to swear his oath in new linen so many leagues ago. He spoke: “We have lords and Patriarchs enough for the taking of an oath, My Lord.”
“Yes!” said Lamoric, and then to the crowd: “You are the equal of any belted knight in the Atthias, and I will not stand by until you have been granted your due. Gather about Father’s throne! Today, I’ll see you all made knights of Errest. And before we’re done, you’ll each have fine halls in the domain of Duke Radomor!”
WHEN THEY HAD finished swearing in the men and women and boys—knights giving each their slap or tap—Duke Abravanal took his son by the arm. The old man had Gunderic’s Isle Kingdom blade: the Sword of Judgment. And, in a shaking moment, he pressed the heirloom into Lamoric’s hands.
“I will not wear it,” said Abravanal. “I will throw it in the mere if you won’t take it. It has been the sword of our fathers since Gunderic.”
There were tears around the hall.
BUOYED UP BY their fresh oaths, the starving Knights of the Painted Hall—men, women, and children—swayed into motion. They picked the yards for spent missiles, they broke down a bake house and sheds to gird the inner walls with hoardings and erect a set of light engines to pitch stones back at Radomor’s lines. Inside, men and women shoveled sliding mountains of filth from castle corners and pitched the reeking stuff into the bay. Almora chased whatever passing crowd caught her eye, lending her heart, while Lamoric darted and climbed from battlement to basement, holding the castle together as Radomor’s engines beat upon the walls.
All the while, Durand felt Deorwen losing her hold. He wanted to grab Lamoric and make him see that his wife was slipping under, drowning. Each night, he told her, “When we are free of this place, these spirits will leave you.” He held her in the secret moments of darkness, but she faded, farther away and farther away. The distance grew in her eyes, until he knew that he could no more cut her off than he could cut her throat. He swallowed honor and shame and betrayal, saying that it would be murder to set her aside. Murder to give up the scent and touch and wonder of her. It was a devil’s argument, and the shame blazed of it on his face whenever Lamoric grinned his way.
IN DAYLIGHT, HE stood in the archway where the hall met the family’s sanctuary, standing in neither one place nor the other. Deorwen and Almora were back among the listless crowds with their pail of water. Durand’s fingers curled in the fluted arch. He resolved to do what he must. He swore to catch Lamoric and make him understand: she was so alone—she had the dreams. He would step back to let her husband in. He had to stop himself. He would tell Deorwen.
Just as he stepped into the hall, the world shifted. He nearly stumbled.
No one else seemed to notice.
Across the hall, Almora was asking, “Why can’t I see him?” while Durand stood, hands spread and frozen lest his next step bring the tower down.
“You wanted to help with the water,” Deorwen answered.
“After, then, Aunty. Star is my horse. He will want water too.”
“Star. He is busy.”
Durand blinked; he felt as though Creation’s heartbeat had caught
a hitch, but he’d be damned if he could say why.
Then another stone struck beyond the hall—and he understood: after countless ringing blows, the old walls spoke a different note. Somewhere, the stone shell that saved them was broken. He looked at Almora and Deorwen—and the whole trapped multitude—then bolted down the stairs and for the flawed sound.
He pitched into the crowded tiltyard between the inner and outer walls, landing up at Lamoric’s side. Every hollow eye in the yard was fixed on the same spot: a great crack that hung like dry lightning in the high outer wall over all their heads. Then a new missile struck, and the courses bulged. Fathoms above the yard, the men on the outer wall ran from twisting battlements. And another stone fell. Durand imagined Radomor’s engineers heaving their engines. The whole siege would bear down on that one flaw. Throughout the city, Radomor’s captains would be lashing their battalions into motion, every man charging for this spot.
Another massive block fell from the Heavens and the crack jagged deeper.
Durand caught his master’s sleeve. “We must throw some props against this. Get the men down.”
“Down? No, Durand! That’s the last thing we want.” He flashed a savage smile and turned to the crowd. “Quick as you can! Listen sharp and no questions!”
Then they were running.
IN A FURY of roaring and running, Durand and Lamoric’s captains packed the outer walls and towers all around the breaking wall—even as Radomor’s stones hammered down. Every soul pushed himself on with sheer will, but they were all spent. As Durand drove men up one open stair, he stole a heartbeat to wonder whether anyone had the wits left to play the game Lamoric had in mind.
Scarcely had Durand formed the thought when Creation filled with stone and thunder. For a moment, it was all he could do to hang on, then a thousand hardened soldiers roared from Radomor’s lines. Everything would be lost if Lamoric’s forces didn’t answer. Durand leapt into the yard and sprinted into the thunder.
Though the battlements were still crashing into the cleft, the men of both armies howled in.