In a Time of Treason

by David Keck

  Or so he thought.

  24. A Broken Victory

  Durand drifted. He might have been a corpse at the bottom of some bog, dead a thousand winters. He did not know where he was. He had no memory of how he had come to be there. Creation had come adrift. There wasn’t a trace left in his head.

  Something hissed: a dry shrilling that swept the image of black water from his mind.

  He tried to listen, but the sound whispered away. Then, after a time suspended in the distance, it swung closer: crisp and bright above the murk.

  And it brought with it a sea of noise: men howling, people roaring orders, madness.

  Durand fought to peel his eyes open. There was pain—big sick waves of it—and only one eye answered his command. But he caught sight of a brassy glitter swinging under a blackened ceiling. For a moment, Durand fixed his attention on the twinkling thing as it floated by on a blur of damselfly wings. It was gone before he could remember it: a little thing as plump as a pigeon. It sported a lion’s head and a glint of gemstones.

  “Pale didn’t get hurt,” said a little voice—so close lips brushed his ear. “I saw him. Some of those men brought oats. They didn’t comb him. I wanted to, but he’s not a horse for little girls.

  “I don’t know what happened to Star. But Pale came home.” And Durand remembered: Almora. There were screams all around. She shouldn’t be in this place.

  Durand tried to remember what had happened to him: he had a sense that it was very bad. He tried very hard to answer the little voice, to raise his head—

  He heard only a hopeless bleat from his lips before the blackness thundered back in.

  ANOTHER LIGHT DAWNED over the dark, and Durand heard voices swell. It seemed to him as though feet were landing round his ears. And the pain! Like he’d fallen from a tower into a barracks hallway—with his face nailed to the floor. The thought of even a single accidental kick from all the trampling feet sent a shot of nausea through his guts. There were shouts and groans all round him, but from somewhere much nearer came a familiar voice.

  “Hurry, man!”

  Only one eye would open. Durand was looking up from two men’s ankles. The pair straddled a bench. It was Berchard sitting nose-to-nose with a rough-looking barber-surgeon. The room was full of howling, but old Berchard glanced down to smile.

  “You’re alive, are you?” The man’s face was bloody, his beard appalling.

  Durand managed a wet croak meant to be “Aye.” He’d done something to his mouth.

  “Here!” called Berchard. “He’s alive after all!” The old campaigner tried to wave someone in. But the barber-surgeon yanked his bloody chin around; the surgeon was tugging thread through a ragged gash above the old knight’s good eye.

  Berchard scowled at the surgeon. “Are you sure this ain’t dangerous? I mean, a fellow hears the evil’s got to be drawn out before you stitch up. And you’re—”

  The surgeon clopped the old knight’s mouth shut with a tug of his bit of thread: Berchard could have been a puppet.

  Wincing and blinking, Berchard kept up his wave. “Here. Durand’s come round!”

  The knight tried a wink—full of blood and stitches—confessing, “One of Radomor’s bowmen rang a bolt off the old dome. But I keep telling the girls that they love a good scar—and the bugger missed the good eye.” The eye blinked up: “Ah, here they are. Looks like some folk’ve got a moment to gawp at you.”

  Just the twitch of muscles as Durand tried to grimace nearly put his lights out again: he’d done something ugly to his face.

  When Durand blinked his good eye clear, he made out someone else nearby, crouching close: a face like his own under a mop of black curls.

  “Hathcyn?” he said, the sound mostly spit and gurgles.

  A pale grin flickered over the face of Durand’s brother. “Oh, good. Good. You should try to drink.”

  The brim of a jug clicked against Durand’s teeth, gushing bad wine. And every splutter as he choked shot skewers through his bones. It took Durand several heartbeats to wince his eyes back open.

  But, when he looked up again, his brother’s face was gone and his father’s beard loomed above him. “Hells, boy. What made you take your fool helmet off?”

  “Father?” Durand half expected his mother, the king, and half of Burrstone Walls to pop up next.

  “You could have killed yourself,” said Baron Hroc.

  Durand forced his mind back into the fog, managing to croak a half truth like, “Couldn’t see.” But even saying that much hauled memories from the mist. He could feel the weight of a man—Lamoric—lying across his saddlebow. He thought he’d taken the man to safety, and now . . . He strained to look around though the pain was terrific. As he fought to keep breathing, he managed to croak something he meant to be, “His Lordship?”

  Baron Hroc’s eyes darted. “I’ll fetch one of these leeches,” he said, and disappeared.

  Durand felt a wave of dread. “What’s happened to—?”

  But Hathcyn leaned close. “Lamoric’s right here. You could reach out and touch him. He insisted on it. He got a good knock on the head, but he’s suffered less than you, I think. After the fall, your good captain got him clear.”

  Durand sagged back, gasping. Memories were rising around him like ice from deep water: the siege, the charge out the gates, the ride across the market with Acconel’s men all around.

  “What’ve I done . . . to myself?” he managed.

  “They were saying that you fell from your horse,” Hathcyn explained. “Hit the market cobbles.”

  “ ‘Fell’?” he grunted. How could he fall? It had nearly killed him—nearly killed the man he’d meant to be saving. It was hard to get air.

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Hathcyn.

  “—Aye,” said Berchard. “Doesn’t matter. We’ve knocked Rado’s rebellion on the head. Routed the bugger! Hero of Hallow Down or not.”

  There was a groan from the floor off in Lamoric’s direction; Hathcyn continued more quietly. “Sallow Hythe and Honefells ran over Radomor’s weak side and hit his center hard enough to slaughter most of the duke’s commanders. Father and I rode under young Honefells’s banner. Men from the Col all around us.”

  “Just mauled ‘em!” said Berchard. “Rolled ‘em up and ran ‘em down. Not moderate, exactly, but if they didn’t have it coming, who did, eh? There are still fights swinging through the city. Coen made me come in.” He waved his hand at the blood over his face. “Couldn’t see out the good eye. Yes. Anyway.”

  Durand put himself to the effort of nodding, then mumbled something he meant to be “Radomor?”

  Hathcyn shook his head. “Not yet. He was on the run. We saw men kill horses out from under him. He’s a fiend with that sword of his, but I’m sure I saw him stabbed.”

  “I saw him shot,” said Berchard. “His host jumped off him like fleas when we hit. Fear-mad buggers bolting into the Banderol, mail and all. Knights treed like cats. But we’ll find Rado soon enough, I reckon. He’ll be at the bottom of some heap or other, hatching maggots.”

  They were still dragging wounded men down the hall. Durand let his eyes—his eye—close on the chaos. Acconel was free, though he was sure they’d all be happier with mad Radomor’s head tarred and spiked over the gate.

  Even his good eye didn’t want to open in a moment. Scores of wounded men groaned all around on the rushes of the hall.

  Hathcyn touched Durand’s good shoulder. “We have them on the run; they say Abravanal will name your captain Champion to replace old Geridon—the one who died with Landast?—and your Lamoric has a good chance.”

  Berchard stood up, saying, “Yes. Well. It’s been a fine day. And I must let you talk. There’s work to be done in the streets.”

  Coensar had finally won his way back from Tern Gyre. Durand thought of the faraway castle over the sea where Coensar’s journey had begun.

  “How’d I fall?” Durand slurred.

  Hathcyn nodded. “Someone caught you wi
th a chained flail—your helmet.”

  Durand grimaced—a painful thing. But he couldn’t quite make sense of it. He had been clear of the mêlée. Or nearly . . . He had a memory of hoofbeats. He had assumed that he was clear, not checking. Some rescuer he was.

  His tongue moved over a row of broken teeth like knife edges. “Who?” he asked.

  Hathcyn glanced around the room, finally saying, “With a whole battle churning round and knights bolting in a thousand directions?”

  “Right,” said Durand. He remembered Coensar leaping from his saddle to crash through the nest of archers. He remembered Badan—shoving the man—Badan’s face, snarling and savage at being thrown off balance while fighting for his life.

  It was becoming difficult to fix his mind on the subject.

  “The leech put sssomething in the wine?” Durand mumbled.

  “Poppy, morel. That sort of thing, I should expect.”

  Blackness rose.

  WHEN NEXT DURAND came around, he was in the dark: Gunderic’s Tower was silent—or nearly. Night air moved around him. He became conscious of whispers: dry sounds that scrabbled around his head. He peered at the gloom—

  A black shape crouched upon the reeds beside him. Durand imagined the Rooks—with him pegged out and helpless. But it was not their whispers he heard. Lips brushed his sweating brow. A hand caressed his cheek.

  “Surely, we don’t deserve such pain.”

  Durand took a whole breath for the first time in hours and a stupid tear caught him by surprise.

  “I had to see,” said Deorwen. “Hells. But, Durand, I’ve been walking the streets.” Her “streets” would be smoking wreckage, torn bodies, men wild with blood and fear. She shouldn’t be out in it. “I found the place where she fell. The woman?”

  “Wha—?”

  “The dream. The woman in the ditch? Do you remember? With the soldiers coming? She was still there in the weeds, shining under the moon—and I brought the wise women down. You should have seen them.” Wise women in a latrine ditch. “We set her on the bank, and the old women said the words.

  “And now I think she’s gone. We’ve sent her to her rest.” She scrabbled at her head.

  And Durand remembered the first of Deorwen’s nightmares: the barefoot woman at the cook pot as the soldiers came, the gush of ditchwater from Deorwen’s mouth. He reached for her, gripping her fingers in the reeds.

  “We’ve found six more since,” she said. “Following them to their dream’s ending.”

  Searching for the dead in a burned city. She would be muck to her knees and soot to the top of her head. And what she must have seen. He wanted to tell her “Stop!”

  “Soon we will all have peace,” she said. “These dreams. They were calling to me.” Finding the Lost of a ruined city. It would be a task greater than a war. “I’ll walk wherever I must.”

  A new voice croaked. “Wha? Host of . . . Deorwen, you shouldn’t be out there.” The voice was Lamoric’s. “Is . . . izit the middle of the night? What are you doing awake? I’ve told you, you need sleep. You’ll worry yourself to the Gates of . . . Iz the middle of the night.”

  “You are awake, Milord,” said Deorwen. Her fingers slipped from Durand’s, and, with a little hesitation, she stood. Durand smelled cold mud on her dress, it slid like a wet brush over his bare wrist as she crept to her husband’s side.

  Durand heard Lamoric mutter off into delirium.

  IN THE MORNING, Durand woke to the whack and scream of surgeon’s hatchets and the hiss of their cautery irons and began a day of straining to hear how the battle progressed. There were dozens of men—dead and dying—sprawled on the floor all around. Servants ran with ewers of water, blankets, and bandages. Nothing was over, that much was clear. After a lull in the night, there were too many armed men on the run.

  From his spot on the floor, Durand could nearly catch the drift of conversations between Abravanal’s officers at the head of the hall.

  Beside him, Lamoric lay—not conscious since Deorwen’s visit in the night—but Durand couldn’t even turn his head to look at the man. He was comforted, however, by the sound of the man’s steady breathing.

  Lying there as so many other men ran, Durand groped at the fragments of his memory, trying to piece together what had happened during his charge for the castle gate. He had been sure that the enemy was far behind him—dismounted in the street. But he should at least have turned—or kept his bloody helm on his head. He might have seen whoever swung the blow; he might have avoided it. Now, he could only guess.

  Shifting his hands, he found a dry, smooth, round some-thing in each palm—like a stone. His fingers were caught. Threads tied them round each hard roundness. He turned his hands over and grimaced in confusion, but couldn’t even manage a look at his own fists.

  Then he glimpsed Heremund’s bowlegs from the corner of his eye.

  “Heremund!” The sound was more a croak than a shout; Heremund was already out of sight. “Hells.”

  Then Heremund bobbed back into view, upside down and grinning. “Good morning.”

  “Whadz—what’s hap’ning?” asked Durand.

  “Ah,” said Heremund, and, with a conjurer’s flourish, he snapped the threads and produced a pair of hen’s eggs.

  Durand, even with his jaw locked and full of broken teeth, managed to gape.

  “Here, boy,” said the skald, finding a basin and smashing the eggs. The reek seemed to leap down Durand’s lungs, and the mass that flopped from the shells was as thick and gray as mucus.

  “Hells, Her’munn . . .”

  The skald smiled. “Better in these here eggs than in you, I reckon, eh?”

  “Leechcraft . . .” Durand said, appalled. He tried to gesture with his broken head: “Lamoric?”

  Heremund looked over at the sprawled heir of Acconel. “Still breathing. There was a little muddled shouting when Coen carried him in, but he’s been out since: wise enough after such a rap on the skull. If he didn’t have a good hard head, Abravanal would have talked him into a feather bed—not lying sprawled here on the reeds with the likes of you, eh?”

  Durand swallowed. “Coen?”

  “Mmm. He’s still in the streets, fought like a hundred madmen, they say.” Durand blinked hard, picturing the captain in the city. “Led the garrison out. All blood. Scourging the devils from Acconel.”

  “How do we fare out there?”

  Just as Heremund was about to answer, a long, rattling sigh issued from the stranger sleeping at Durand’s right hand. Heremund frowned. “Ah,” he said, and took a moment to pull the blanket up over the man’s eyes. “Well.”

  “Hells,” said Durand.

  “As to the world outside,” Heremund said. “If you can’t be bothered to mind what’s going on around you . . .”

  “Men are still running. Swanskin’s cursing.”

  “Coensar led a squadron of Acconel men who rode over the Banderol an hour or two back and got their noses bloodied. Radomor’s boys ain’t done.”

  “Should be out there,” Durand managed.

  “Aye, right. You’d do our boys no end of good right now. We drag you out and you’d show ‘em what becomes of brave men, eh?”

  One of the physicians turned to Durand, peeling a dressing back: the poultice writhed with a gray mass of worms such as a man might find under some forest carcass. With a narrow expression, the graybeard physician gathered up the corrupt thing and Heremund’s basin.

  Heremund wrinkled his saddle-backed nose. “I’m not sure I truly understand leechcraft either. But they’ll have the priests work those over before they toss ‘em out,” said Heremund.

  “They’re still fighting,” Durand pressed. “That’s what you’re saying. . . .”

  “And you’ve got more snapped bones than’s good for a man. You should let it take what time it takes. The barbers’ll have done some tugging when they dragged you in—matched the ends up, like—but I’ll wager they ain’t sure now with all the swelling. There are ways
to force such things, but the buggers might leave you worse than you started.”

  “Fair enough.” And it was. If a man couldn’t roll over, he wouldn’t be much use in a fight.

  “I should let you rest,” said Heremund. “Where you ain’t purple, you’re a nasty shade of green.”

  Durand reached with his good hand.

  “Wait, Heremund. Get me closer to the head of the hall,” Durand asked. “If I can’t ride . . .” He took a quick breath, thinking as quick as he could manage. “Tell them, Lamoric. He should be up there.”

  Heremund raised one eyebrow. “He should be at the top of the hall. And you beside him still . . . Easier to hear up there. Aye. I’ll see.”

  DURAND GOT HIS wish and was soon lugged to a spot near the dais steps: a painful process that he had cause to regret for some hours after the move. Still—laid on his face to save his shoulder—he was privy to the barons’ talk of how many barrels of bacon had rolled in, how many carts were caught in what mud, and guesses at how many bolts of canvas the refugees would need for tents. Oh, it was worth the pain.

  Soon, he would wish for boredom.

  He could see only a foot or two of bare reeds—and the rise and fall of a new stranger’s chest beside him. As the light bled from the evening hall, however, this new bedfellow gave out a fearsomely long sigh. Durand found himself listening, straining for the next breath. He called for help, but neither physician, leech, nor surgeon could bring the poor soul back.

  As the medical men drew the dead man’s cloak over his face—an act Durand could only see the edges of—a heavy stride rumbled down the Painted Hall. The shadow of several knights passed over Durand, followed by the crash of mail skirts as a troop of armored men knelt before the dais.

  “Your Grace”—Durand knew Marshal Conran’s rumble—“the carrion birds have returned to the city.”

  Durand heard a goblet clatter on the dais steps. The cup—winking jewels—bounced to a halt in the reeds beyond Durand’s dead bedfellow.

  “Honestly,” the blond Baron of Honefells answered, “Brother Conran, friend, the crows will still be finding men and horses for—”