In a Time of Treason

by David Keck

  “—This is no vague omen! Something stepped from hiding as the Eye left the Heavens. It is on the move in the west, My Lords: a thing new to us. And black wings rage before it as the storm cloud swells before the thunderbolt.”

  “I’d say Radomor will not be found among the bodies. . . .” was Sallow Hythe’s wry conclusion.

  Old Swanskin grunted. “We were lucky to drive the fiend off. We must call our battalions together and mount a defense at the Fuller’s Bridge.”

  As the barons rumbled assent, Durand felt something crackle among the reeds under his ear. The hall’s contingent of vermin was likely on the prowl with so much fresh meat abroad, but they would have to wait for him.

  Durand heard Conran rise to his feet. “No. It has crossed the Fuller’s Bridge and moves among the ruins of the city.” Durand could hear the Ash Knights drawing their blades. “Very near . . .”

  “The children should go into the sanctuary,” said Abravanal. “Father Oredgar, mind them.”

  “Our friend Radomor is not infallible,” Honefells said. “He played his game with Acconel, but could not break her. We took him unawares and snapped the prettiest snare his wit could fashion.”

  Durand heard a shy murmur: “Father, must I—?”

  “Almora, join the pageboys with old Oredgar in the sanctuary, please.”

  The carpet of reeds under Durand’s cheek came alive: earwigs, woodlice, and uncounted other crawling things erupted over Durand’s wincing face.

  “Hurry, Almora,” said the duke. The girl’s metal Power zipped through the sooty vaults. Then a great shock caused the little Power to jump. Somewhere a door—a portcullis—thundered against its frame.

  A second slam was full of splinters and torn metal. Bodies crashed and slid. But Durand could see nothing. At the duke’s dais, a few tardy blades whisked from their scabbards. The blond reeds on the floor at Durand’s side silvered impossibly before his eyes.

  “What’ve they done?” Abravanal rasped.

  Something had entered the hall, Durand was certain. The mighty scrape of its passage shivered in Durand’s broken bones.

  “Come no farther!” thundered Conran the Marshal, but the dragging progress continued, the sound grating louder and louder.

  A metal goblet clopped shut. And a clawed hand slapped the rushes a step from Durand, turning the gray reeds wet-black at the touch of its split nails. Durand saw copper wire glinting in knots of white bone, and mail swinging in sheets. Then the horror levered its bulk forward—as huge and dry and dead as a team of warhorses from a chieftain’s tomb.

  Durand undid a good day’s mending as he twisted to see more, but if this horror had come to kill them all, it didn’t matter. Jutting before a torso like whale’s ruin, the thing’s head swung: a knot of tusks and spidersilk. Across its eyes, an old helm had split, leaving an iron eye-slit like a blindfolding shackle. A serpent, a thicket of bones, the fiend dragged its bulk forward. Somehow, Durand knew it: in the line of its shoulders and the style of its ruined war gear, he saw Radomor’s bloody Champion, transfigured.

  It faced the duke and his officers.

  “Host of Heaven,” Abravanal whispered.

  The Septarim ringed the duke. “By the Lord of Dooms, come no farther!” Conran warned.

  But Radomor’s monstrous Champion subsided in its own time, a long tail of bone knobs and wire lashing across the rushes. Durand felt a panicked animal’s yearning to get away. He heard the man beside him trying: heels dragging on the reeds, fingers clawing.

  It was several heartbeats before Durand remembered that the man was meant to be dead.

  “Stop!” roared Conran.

  All around the Painted Hall, a scrabbling defied the Master, rising like whispers: all the dead men on the floor of the hall squirmed. Lungs wheezed in stiffened chests, hauling air through gray lips all around.

  And, all at once, they spoke: “His Majesty, Ragnal, King of Old Errest, bidss you greetingsss, Abravanal, Duke of Gireth. Yourz izs the victory, yes-s-s. But you will not long s-savor it. His Majesty, Radomor, has sent riders to every baron, banner knight, and man-at-arms, summoning all to his host. This will be no meager army gathered in secret. No force stirred by whispers-s. His Majesty comes for you with all the liegemen due his royal blood. Gather whom you will to oppose sense and justice, you will not save your gray head, Duke of Gireth. These knights of the ashes will not preserve you.” There was a faint chuckle among the dead voices. “There will soon be many more to sing in this grave chorus-s-s-s.”

  Durand tore his wounds to twist and see the gray faces speak.

  And—as if in silent homage to this Champion—the gray dead sat up. The horror nodded low, spreading its great hands.

  Then there was a snarl at Durand’s ear: “Slave! Slave of Traitors. Stop!” Lamoric climbed to his feet. Now, he faced his enemy over Durand’s back.

  The Champion heaved, upsetting a table with an eerily fluid slither of its knobbed tail. Poised right over Durand’s smashed shoulder, it faced Lamoric, larger than bulls. With Durand’s one peering eye, he could see up through a vast, hollow basketry of bones in mail and silk and dusty coronets. A shrill whine issued from somewhere among the brittle arches.

  Lamoric snarled on, panting. “Tell your master: tell him we’ve bested him once. He needn’t trouble himself to march on Acconel. We’ll come for him!”

  The whistle in the Champion’s bulk seemed to swell for an instant, then the monster dropped into a crooked bow that brought the spidersilk of its beard spilling down over Durand’s clammy neck.

  After an instant of this misery, the monster leapt up and swarmed from the hall, flying with the sudden agility of an eel in a stream. Its clawed hands smacked soot from the ceiling, and then it was gone.

  Durand remembered the Rooks’ words: Lamoric would be drawn out, undefended.

  The Heir of Acconel collapsed.

  25. Path of Ashes

  When Lord Lamoric ordered his physicians to get him back in the saddle and his barons to prepare the host to march, the whole court of Acconel came alive around Durand’s ears. Lamoric would make Radomor choke on his threats. They would chase the demon Champion back to its master. They would throw the Host of Gireth upon the would-be king before a single traitor could rally to the Leopard Banner of Yrlac. Boots tramped round Durand’s head. War gear rattled and the officers bellowed.

  Durand ground his teeth in frustration. He could do nothing more than listen—and squint at the ankles of the excited throng with his one good eye—for he lay among the blind, the dead, and the victims of the doctor’s axes while trumpets called through the dark. The gathering roar of hundreds boiled in the courtyards beyond the arrow slits of Gunderic’s Tower. It echoed in the great mouth of the courtyard stair. And Durand pressed his eyes shut, his thoughts knotting around memories of his last ride to the castle gate: Lamoric on the saddlebow, the breath of clean air when the helmet came free, Acconel men all around him. But, of the last moment, he could recall nothing. Who had swung the blow that knocked him flying? Who had broken his jaw and ribs and shoulder? But, even when dawn glowed in the arrow slits, no memory came.

  With the army marshaled somewhere outside, Berchard and Hathcyn climbed back to the Painted Hall—Berchard with his eye glinting, Hathcyn with a hard gleam of teeth. Each man ducked close to say he’d be back before Durand knew he’d gone, then they were bowing and sprinting for the courtyard stair. Durand could do nothing but snarl at himself.

  Finally, Lord Lamoric himself appeared at Durand’s side in every stitch of his crimson war gear. It could have been their Red Knight days again. The army was ready. Every ox was creaking in its harness, hundreds of horses stood in their saddles.

  “Lordship,” Durand said.

  Lamoric’s hair bobbed in his eyes as he bent with a sheepish smile. “My head’s still ringing,” he confessed. “Tell no one. These leeches will have me back on the reeds.”

  “Hells,” said Durand. He didn’t like to see how badl
y Lamoric was hurt.

  “You did well enough to get me free of the battle,” said Lamoric. He mashed his eyes with one hand. “But I’d be happier if I could keep anything down.”

  “I should have been watching,” Durand said, but Lamoric was already on his feet—not steady.

  Lamoric’s lip twisted. “Fear not!” he said. “I’ll bring the devil’s head back and pike it on the Fuller’s Bridge.” And a crowd of Acconel men roared from the courtyard stair. “To Yrlac!” And, in moments, Lamoric was gone. Their shouts echoed till the hall was silent.

  Scarcely a fighting man remained.

  Durand’s broken ribs kept each breath short and panting. He fixed his will on slow, regular breaths in the silence. “Hells,” he said.

  IN THE DARKNESS of the hall-come-infirmary that night, Durand still lay sprawled on the reeds, trapped under his broken shoulder. Durand’s father and brother would be marching west. His lord. His captain. He could imagine a thousand black dooms for the army, but there was nothing for him to do but wait.

  They’d pulled a cloak over the nearest man to Durand—the dead man. The corpse’s silhouette stood against the greater darkness of the distant walls as still as a mountain. Durand tried not to picture the poor wretch under the cloak, gray and stiff. His good eye followed the ridgeline of the man’s silhouette as though it were the mountains above his father’s hall.

  Then the silhouette moved.

  “God,” said Durand.

  The folds of the man’s surcoat bulged. Under caked layers of wool and linen, something scrabbled, making wet sounds. With the Ash Knights in Yrlac and the Patriach among his people, Durand could only hope for rats; there was no one to ward off the darkness. “God,” Durand repeated, and tried to move.

  It was no use.

  Something dropped in the putrid reeds by Durand’s chin. It blundered against the wool at his throat, reeking enough to choke him. Another shape thrust against the surcoat of the dead man, before a rancid voice snapped Durand’s attention back to the thing at his chin.

  “S-i-r D-u-r-a-nd.” The voice sizzled from the darkness between the dead man and Durand. And something feathered past his eyelids.

  The second creature won free, standing on the breast of the dead man where Durand could make out its shape: black wings scissored above spindly legs, scattering lice or maggots into Durand’s face. “You are not asleep?” the new creature said.

  The bird—a rook—hopped to Durand’s smashed shoulder. Durand felt a stab of pain as though a spear had been jabbed through the length of him. For that instant, he was paralyzed by the rook’s mortal touch. Then it tumbled onto the floor at Durand’s back. “So easy now the Knights of Ash have gone. We are more free to speak.”

  Durand shook with the memory of the thing’s touch in his muscles. It peered at his eyes and ears.

  “Sleep can be elusive.”

  “Perhaps he is plagued by dreams, brother.”

  “Like the dreams that called us to these misty north-lands?”

  “Perhaps.”

  Durand wondered if he could get an arm free to make a snatch at one of the devils without tearing himself to pieces. Just the tension had him fighting for air. But he couldn’t do so much as lift his chin from the floor. “To the Hells with you,” he said.

  “You are not the first to suggest such an outing.” The beak razored across his ear, sending another flinch of agony through his lungs. “But not before we play out our little game.”

  Durand gulped air. “Lamoric will put an end to that soon enough.”

  “Ah yes, Lamoric’s march. Such trouble to arrange. As a man of brawn and daylight, you would have no idea. Even with the Wards of your Ancient Patriarchs so threadbare and the high sanctuaries all a-tumble, it was no easy feat for our messenger to reach Lamoric here. Was he not splendid though, our emissary?”

  Durand blinked at the miserable reek and snarled into the reeds: “Your master. He’ll be well paid for your troubles. He’s brought the Host of Gireth down on him. Our men will be in a bloody mood when they get hold of him.” The creatures were still breathing close, and he gasped at the foul air.

  A long skull tilted. “But surely we can be forgiven our little threats. An invitation is no invitation unless one believes that it might be accepted.”

  Durand grunted. “What?”

  “Our messenger applied the goad,” the bird sprang onto Durand’s broken shoulder in a rain of crawling things. Its touch stopped his lungs, his heart—it threw lances of pain down every crack in his bones. The rotten beak caught at his ear. “Now your master brings his army to us. We may, one hopes, be forgiven a moment’s rudeness.”

  Durand grunted, suffocating in the open air. He desperately wanted to get one of these devil birds into his fist. Through knotted jaws, he croaked, “You lie.”

  “Brother, how can he doubt us?” one bird lamented.

  Broken teeth creaked in Durand’s jaw.

  The rook on his shoulder loomed in Durand’s eye, blotting out the room. Vermin writhed audibly in its feathers. “Everything is prepared, friend Durand. Fear not. The fires are lit. We have spared no pains.”

  “Ah, brother! What a shame it would have been if Lamoric had stayed at home. So many dark hours wasted.”

  Durand grunted into the reeds. The spasm had lifted his knees from the floor. His fists and feet had curled into knots of bones. If the rook didn’t release him, its devil’s touch would crack his bones or choke the life from his chest. But his mind fought. What had these devils driven Lamoric into? What sorcery did they work in the dark hours? He pictured the army marching west, blind and deluded. Certain that they’d got Radomor running—that they were striking in time.

  “Children’s stories,” he gasped. “You waste your breath.”

  “No, Sir Durand. For you, we would take great trouble and never count the cost. You have played such a mighty role in our past encounters,” said the voice at Durand’s ear. “It is a shame.”

  Blood thundered in his skull. He wondered how long he could keep breathing.

  Then, with a flap, the first rook joined its brother on Durand’s shoulder—the simple hop ramming a dozen more lances through Durand’s bones. The spasm wrenched his creaking jaw from the reeds. He twisted while the devil peered down the blade of its beak into his eye. “And this one will be missed, I think, brother. Here was Lamoric so long secure among the crowds of his followers with his formidable bodyguard at his side.”

  “—And the Patriarch to pray for him, and the Knights of Ash all around.”

  “Who could touch such a man? How could an enemy strike at him?”

  “Even if there were some turncoat among poor Lamoric’s men—a traitor—waiting only a whisper from his true master, how could he dare to strike with so many loyal men pressed close?” The birds circled, claws and dagger beaks darting around his eye and ears. He had only heartbeats more.

  “The frustration! The waiting, brother! Always, His Lordship was surrounded. Always, he was watched. The poor traitor would be sharpening his dagger, hoping only for the very first lonely moment in which to strike.”

  A beak slipped close. “Riding into that solitary heartbeat when an army’s back was turned? His poor master draped over a saddlebow?”

  “Aye. Well, brother.”

  Both birds now trickled their words straight down into his ear, stepping from face to neck to shoulder.

  “Such a fleeting chance.”

  “The very first!”

  Durand gasped, bent like a trussed deer. He saw the picture the two devils were painting: a man planted close to Lamoric waiting for his chance to strike their lord down. A man turned by fear or pride or silver, praying for an unguarded moment in which to strike Lamoric down and slip away. Such a man, undiscovered, would not wait long to move again.

  One of the creatures flapped to catch its balance as Durand rocked on his belly. “What will happen now, in the hurly-burly of a marching army?”

  A talon need
led Durand’s broken cheek. “Where even the walls are canvas.”

  No one had spoken of an assassin—not a word. Lamoric was marching his army into some snare of these fiends’ devising, and, all the while, a traitor had his knife poised at the man’s throat. And here was Durand, pinned by his broken bones to the floor of the Painted Hall as they slid further into disaster.

  One of the birds stepped too close to Durand’s grasping hand. Despite the iron bands of suffocation and paralysis, Durand lashed out. And felt greasy feathers and cracking bones in his fist. Living things lashed around his fingers, and, for a dozen harried heartbeats, the thing thrashed its wings against its captor, shrieking its life out.

  But he could breathe again.

  The little corpse burst into stinking gobbets between Durand’s fingers. The surviving rook alighted on Durand’s dead friend as the commotion drew running feet. The crowd trampled near.

  Durand gasped against the ground, “I will come for you.”

  “Ha!” was the only answer, and the bird pinwheeled through shins and warding hands, off into the night.

  Heremund was first. “Durand! What’s going on? God!” He snorted at the reek. “Are you—”

  Durand locked his slimy fist on Heremund’s wrist. “Heremund. You said I ought to wait, that I shouldn’t rush while the bones knit.”

  “And so you—”

  “They must be warned. Called back. The time for waiting is over.”

  The skald wrenched his hand free of Durand’s fist. “Hells.”

  AFTER AN HOUR’S wondering, a scowling Heremund appeared with Hagon, Kieren, and the Patriarch of Acconel himself. They set something in the reeds where Durand couldn’t see.

  “It’s too much for these masters of physic,” said Heremund, “but I’ve found a man.”

  Blind Hagon grinned down. Kieren’s fox mustaches twitched in disapproval.

  The fearsome Patriarch scowled at Durand. “You are a bloody fool, but ask and we will do what can be done.”

  “Who did they leave behind who could make the journey?” Durand said.