by David Keck
“He’ll be like a man with his fist round a wolf’s tongue!” Lamoric had said. Now, Durand and the fiercest men in Acconel crammed the gap as blades flashed from the dust. Green shirts crowded through the howling din. Then they were lashing at each other. The weight of two armies met in a space no broader than a doorway. Durand felt his boots slide and his ribs creak as he gulped—and gouged with Ouen’s great blade. In moments, dead men lolled, caught and standing among the living.
In snatches, Durand saw hundreds of Radomor’s men heaving in the market yard beyond the breech. Durand and a couple of dozen other fools couldn’t hold back a mob like that. Soon, they would push through. And so, somewhere behind—high on the inner walls—Lamoric was watching for the moment.
The longer Durand and his comrades held, the worse it was for Radomor. While the bear-pit struggle knotted in the breech, hundreds would be dying as Lamoric’s archers lashed the back of the battalions under their wall. Far from retreating, every man looked down on the fight, flinging whatever death he could find on his enemy’s heads. Here was vengeance for every soul in Gunderic’s Tower.
But they could not hold. Durand saw a man swatted down. And another. The mob outside was pushing hard. It might already be too late.
With flashes bursting in his eyes, Durand nearly missed the call to retreat. Trumpets rang from Gunderic’s Tower. Lamoric would be shouting his order, and Durand caught threads of it: “Back! Back!”
Above and on all sides, the garrisons of the mural towers and outer walls abandoned the fight. “Radomor can have his wall,” had been the order, “but he won’t get a man of our garrison.” And so, with Durand’s force faltering in the breach, the defenders fled the outer walls.
In front of Durand, the green soldiers were gaining ground. A defender flew from a razor uppercut. Another Acconel man crashed through his fellows with a blade in his throat.
They must hold until the walls were cleared. The garrison couldn’t stand to lose a single man, and, as Durand was pushed back, he could still hear the boots of defenders slapping down the stairs behind him. Hundreds could still be caught.
Desperate, he set his boot on a belt, swinging Ouen’s big sword high. He warred with two hundred men.
Then a howl struck from behind.
Familiar men battered past him, swamping the broken rearguard: knights meant to be at the inner gates charging forward. A hand grabbed his shoulder, and there was Berchard spluttering, “We’ve got archers! Let the first wave catch it! Run!”
And so, with a last wild chop, Durand tumbled free, into the space between the walls. Above the old tiltyard, the garrison was thundering through the hoardings atop the inner walls. Every man from the outer walls had pelted up those stairs, and now their arrows flickered down as Durand reeled into the gatehouse, and—when the rearguard was free—the big portcullis fell behind them.
Beyond the crowded inner yard, Creation boiled with Radomor’s screaming killers—thwarted, trapped, and under a new hail of missiles.
Durand smeared blood from his face, staggering into the clammy shadow of Gunderic’s Tower. They’d pulled a score of horses into the yard. Hundreds of people stared back.
After days of grinding resistance, the garrison had surrendered the outer walls and tiltyard in the space of heartbeats. Creation had locked around them like a fist, but they were still alive and making Radomor bleed. Everywhere he looked, people smiled like savages. They would hold the next wall, and the next if they could.
The keep would be packed now—without a single empty corner for a man and his friend’s wife. No matter what Durand’s honor or his heart demanded, Deorwen would be alone with her dreams.
IN THE AFTERMATH of the retreat, Abravanal’s inner circle made plans. With the throng from the tiltyard now squeezed into Gunderic’s Tower and the narrow courtyard at its foot, people could hardly sit or breathe. Radomor’s engineers shifted their aim, and soon it was the inner walls and Gunderic’s Tower itself shaking with the thunderclap of great stones.
Radomor’s Champion appeared once more, standing on the market cobbles. Abravanal’s household climbed Gunderic’s Tower to stare down upon him. Carrion birds settled all around the battlements in leering heaps too deep to scatter.
Standing guard among the lords of Abravanal’s dwindling domain, Durand expected the brute to roar or unveil another bloody scrawl.
Instead, the sound came from all around the castle, arising among black feathers like the whisper of wind in forest’s leaves. “So alone . . .”
Durand and the men of Abravanal’s household drew blades, Durand, at least, wondering what he could do with one sword.
Abravanal leaned from the battlements like a captain at the prow of his ship. “To the Hells with you!” he shouted, but the whisper pressed on.
“Where is your precious king, do you suppose, in all of this? We have heard there is rebellion in the north. His noble brother, we have heard. There are riders calling loyal men to the banner of Ragnal the fool. They remind Ragnal’s lords of their poor sons, hostage in his Mount of Eagles. Brother tears at brother. The realm collapses. The people—”
A door swung wide at the stairway door, and wild-eyed Patriarch Oredgar stood under Heaven with his arms flung wide.
“Begone, fiends of the Hells!” And the birds were rising, shrieking into the wind. “The Eye of Heaven has not left us yet. It is not yet time to mock in daylight!”
And the things stormed and tumbled all around, battering every man before they swung off over the city, leaving the Patriarch slashed bloody by beak and talon.
THEY DID NOT die in the first hours.
Deorwen played riddling games with Almora. Plaster fell in great white shards, and the Knights of the Painted Hall slipped their dead into the cold water of the mere.
Lamoric moved among the crowd. “Remember,” he said, touching a shoulder, smiling into a gray face, “this is our plan, not Radomor’s. While that madman struggles to beat us down, we are biding our time. The barons of Gireth are on the roads. They are riding. Radomor does not want us to stand. He does not want an armed battalion behind him when the knights of my father’s barons come pouring over the bridges. The traitor has an adder by the throat and wolves at his door.”
But his speech could hardly open their eyes. People nodded. They leaned against each other. “Just wait,” said Lamoric.
There were too many people, and their strength ebbed with every hour that the great stones clubbed the tower.
Duke Abravanal sat near Deorwen and Almora, watching his son—the only moving being in the hall—understanding something of the man now and fearing the knowledge had come too late.
Lamoric returned to the little sanctuary, gray and wavering though he smiled. He found an arrow loop and peered off in the direction of Radomor’s army. As Kieren and Coensar both looked on, Heremund joined the young lord at the window.
“I remember a time up in Highshields,” he said. “I’d carried my mandora to some baron’s hall. One of those forts on a crag. Nothing but goats.” He made a dry sound. “I was teasing the old man’s young wife, and she smiled too much, I guess. Then the old man’s kicking me down a passage to a guardroom, and I see this ugly grate in the floor, and these grinning thugs. And down I went. A prison pit: an oubliette. For a blink, I was sure it was a well, it was that narrow. I couldn’t sit or lie down. Couldn’t reach the grate, couldn’t climb. A couple of days in, I’ve got my knees on one wall with my face above them, crumpled and cold and sore as I’ve ever been. And then they swing the grate open.” He shook his head, remembering relief.
“I tell you,” he said, “strong or weak, brave or craven, it doesn’t matter when you’re in a spot like that.” Kieren and Coensar were still watching.
“Did they send you?” Lamoric asked. “Radomor’s boys? If you meant to take our minds from our sufferings, I’m afraid your tale has not hit the mark.”
Coensar’s eyes glinted in the gloom. “Sickness moves among us,” he s
aid. “The people are weak. There is hardly water. We must think.”
“No,” said Lamoric. “There can be no bargains.”
A stone struck the ancient tower; a great crack flickered across the vault above their heads.
Kieren scrubbed plaster from his hair. “What will Radomor do? He’ll want everyone dead, no matter what he’s written on the walls.”
“Weakness would stiffen his opponent’s necks,” said Coensar.
Kieren glanced Almora’s way, and spoke softly. “He might accept our surrender. It would show his nobility.”
“I will not hear you speak of this,” said Lamoric.
An odd sound drew Durand’s eye to one glazed arrow loop in the dark: the debris of some fallen battlement raining past.
“If anyone’s to leave this place alive,” said Coensar, “they’ll have to hand us over.” The captain’s steely glance found Deorwen and Almora, playing.
Kieren leaned closer. “We must get them out of here somehow.”
Deorwen pushed herself up. “No.”
Kieren spread his small hands. “It will be all right. The girl will need—”
“You cannot send me off. I don’t deserve—” She stopped for a moment, a grim calm passing over her face.
“Radomor will never believe it,” she said.
No one said a word.
“Tell them, Durand,” she said.
Durand wanted to believe that they could spirit her from the place. But this was Radomor, a man who’d listened to his best friend drown, who’d slain his own father. He could only stare back at her.
A stone struck the upper stories of the fortress, jarring another rain of soot and plaster from the ceiling.
Almora was looking up at them all. Durand wished they could all slip over the back wall and swim out across the Bay of Acconel, leaving it all behind.
“Don’t worry about that,” Kieren said. “There’s always a way.”
“He won’t break us,” said Lamoric. “Our allies must have time. Our people will hold out as long as they must.”
But what if there was no one riding? They had seen the city burning. The smoke would have traveled a hundred leagues. Who would ride to a ruin and throw his life away? Many would bend their knees to Radomor if it meant they could keep their lands.
Abravanal was staring at his son, shaking his head. Durand thought he saw pride and regret and despair in the man’s face.
Durand looked away, back to the arrow loop—as its leaded casement exploded into the room. Picturing fiends on the wind, Durand charged to the narrow window, sword drawn, glancing down over black and gleaming stones of the harbor wall. He peered out into the night breeze, ten fathoms to the twitching obsidian of the mere.
A white hand waved from the water.
YOU COULDN’T HAUL a man through an arrow slit, but they found a larger window and many hands soon had the casement out and a dripping stranger shuddering in their midst. Patches of copper beard jutted from skin like snow. Every eye in the Painted Hall peered in.
Coensar put Keening at the stranger’s neck. “Who are you?”
The man opened his eyes with effort, shaking. “I’ve come from the b-barons of Honefells. Sallow Hythe. Mereness. Swanskin Down. His Grace’s vassals. They’re g-gathering.”
The duke had come near, his head tilted and his eyes nearly glowing.
The man blinked up. “A raft,” he added, by way of explanation. “Had to wait f-for dark. The bastards are watching the water.”
“Where are they?” Lamoric demanded. Durand imagined this army gathered just over the fields, south.
“Near the f-fens.”
But there were no fens—not within leagues of the city. The messenger coughed.
“What fens?” Coensar pressed.
Lamoric crouched, raised a calming hand. “You mean across the bay: Merchion.” It was leagues across the bay.
“Aye,” the man gasped. People around the great hall were passing their blankets forward, and the messenger shivered in a hairy cocoon of the things.
Like a man trying to kindle a fire, Lamoric bent near. “What tidings do they send?”
“His G-Grace. His host. It’s no match for Radomor’s n-numbers. But the ranks grow. Knights riding from the mountains . . . Swanskin and Honefells command. No Garelyn, no Mornaway, no king. But I am to tell you that they will ride five days hence.”
Lamoric looked back into Durand’s face. “We cannot hold five days. . . .” It was almost a confession.
“It will take two days to round the bay,” said Coensar. It was time to concede.
“Then,” whispered Durand, “they must come now!”
“Lordships,” said the messenger. “Radomor’s host, it’s twice our size.”
Lamoric’s mouth opened without a sound. For an instant, he was the image of his father. “After so much, is there nothing we may do?”
“Lordship,” said Durand. “This is why you’ve salted all these men away.” He lifted his hand toward the multitude of smeared faces looking on. “There’s half an army in this tower.”
“We are sick. Radomor is strong. What chance do we have?”
Durand gestured to the eggshell cracking of the vaults over their heads. Deorwen and Almora were looking on. “A better chance than we do of holding seven days more.”
“Yes.” Lamoric covered his face. “It cannot be seven days. We must take our chance. They must ride for Acconel at once.” A wry smile was starting as he looked up at Durand. “And there is only one way to reach them in time.” The sodden wretch who’d just paddled the bay shuddered between them. His eyes rolled back in his head.
“Yes, Lordship. . . .” said Durand.
22. The Banished and the Lost
Durand slithered down, barking knees and shoulders against the mere wall as he spun like a fisherman’s weight. They were looking down on him: Lamoric, Kieren, the Duke. In another window, he saw Deorwen, her eyes alive with dread.
And then the rope ended, slipping through his knees to drop him into the frigid grip of the mere.
He clamped his jaw against the urge to hiss at the sudden cold. There were archers on the nearest pier; the splash was enough without cursing.
Casting round, he spotted the raft—little more than wreckage—and, with the thing firmly under his ribs, he kicked himself slowly out of bowshot. Never a great swimmer, now he was hampered by Lamoric’s parting gift: a token no man of Gireth could ever mistake: the Sword of Judgment, now slung like an anchor around his neck.
For the better part of an hour, he kicked. Muscles locked in wandering spasms as he aimed for the black horizon. The yellow loops of the castle’s mere wall dwindled over his shoulder, though he was still nearby when the last refugees in the old fortress sank into sleep and left him alone in the dark.
Soon the waves were his horizon. He could see no more than a few yards in any direction.
Overhead, mists of thin light drifted among the hard points of the stars. With difficulty he found his way among the Lords of Heaven with their shields and spears until he came upon the lodestar around which all the others turned. With the lodestar on his left hand, he kicked his way eastward.
He thought of Deorwen behind him. He wondered how long she had watched.
Rhythm closed around him. He beat his feet. He scarcely felt the blind squeeze of the mere around his legs or the drag of his long linen undershirt billowing. He fought an urge to climb up on his few planks to see how far he could see: they’d never hold him. He might have been alone under the Heavens.
Then something splashed.
Durand froze.
Two broad leagues from any land, something stamped water into spray: hooves. He had expected to drown, for the cold and dark to beat him, the rivers were still whispered full of ice. The Banished had always stalked the wastelands between man’s firelit circles.
“Host of Heaven,” he gasped. Ranked waves walled him in, his breath loud between them.
Hoofbeats circl
ed, flashing spray. Then there was a liquid thunder, as though some sea-beast was hauling a warship down by its anchor ropes.
“Host of Heaven,” Durand swore and kicked with all his strength.
Something was rising before him, black with rot. Rushes hung. He saw a broad curve like the stern rail of some sunken ship, but, as the water streamed away, he understood: it was a massive sweep of horns and a broad brow of hair. A bovine head broke the surface before him, rotten and bulking greater than the whole carcass of a festival bull. The milky globes of its eyes shone like pale lanterns, while its nostrils disgorged torrents of bottom clay.
Durand clung to his raft. His stare took in the drumhead hollows of its muzzle and the gray rings of its nostrils.
And suddenly he thought of the Fey Gates. “The bull of the—”
“—Bole?!” the monster boomed. Now, the vast head soared, carried skyward by the eruption of a monstrous neck and shoulders from the mere. The brute’s chest and vast belly followed, rivulets lashing in the coarse hair. The monster climbed atop the waves, now tall as a sanctuary bell.
“No bole, I,” it said. Its milk-lamp eyes swiveled. “Noboll!” it tolled. “Lord King God of Silver Mere, am I!”
Durand fled like an animal in terror, striking out between the monster’s black legs.
The thing twisted.
“Nobollord. Kinggod!” it thundered.
Head down, Durand swam, cursing himself and Creation. He was meant to be saving Deorwen, the duke, and Acconel—
or drowning in the attempt. Drowning ought to have been hazard enough.
But, even wild with terror, a man can only kick so far. He clawed the water while the giant stalked beside him. Soon, it was all he could do to lock his fingers onto the planks with the sword’s old angle across his back.
The monster ducked near, his breath close and putrid. “Noboll I . . .”
“No b-bull,” Durand managed.
When he risked a shaking look, the thing’s head was swiveling, scanning the line of the horizon. It dripped fragments.
“Who are you to trespass here? What does this mean? Long have I waited the fall of these shore-priests. Long have they kept Heaven’s Eye upon my cool waters. But now, my traitor children are burnt from their city. The last sons of my enemy are penned in their stone house. The old chains, they hang slack. Nearly, am I avenged. And now?” The monster stooped, its rotten head swinging low. “One worm splashes from my stolen shore with the blade of my ancient enemy round his neck. Do they make an offering?”