In a Time of Treason

by David Keck

  “Sir Durand,” said Coensar. “You’d best come on.”

  EVEN COENSAR WAS silent as he led them up between the ranked tombs. And, though there were three thousand soldiers upon the steps of that terraced valley, Durand could hear the crackle of every campfire. Living faces stared from between the monuments as gray and still as the dead.

  “Oh, no, no,” breathed Deorwen from her hood. Durand saw men flinch from his glance as he fought to stay in the saddle. In their eyes he saw himself scarred, hunched, shaved, and blacker than cinders: a specter from Radomor’s burnt wastes. But Durand had ridden uncounted leagues through dark and death and devils; he could not give himself time for vanity. He gripped the saddlebow, fixing his will on staying upright long enough to speak his piece to Lamoric.

  As Coensar led them through a shadowy switchback corner, Durand felt Deorwen’s whisper at his neck. “Do what you must, Durand. But I will not see Lamoric. Not now. I must find my brother.” She hopped away, unintroduced in her boy’s hood and surcoat. With a pointed look, she disappeared between two white tombs.

  Durand nearly fell from the saddle.

  Before Durand could curse or rein in, Coensar was speaking. “We are here.”

  Pale clopped out upon a gloomy terrace, and Durand faced a cadre of Ash Knights, for all the world like a ring of mortuary statues in their silvery mail and ashen surcoats. Beyond the wary circle, Durand made out Lamoric’s pavilion slung like a market stall between the two mightiest mausoleums, and he swung himself down. The barons of Gireth shoved their way out of the pavilion, some with blades bare. One by one, they stared up in various shapes of horror. Durand tried to smear some of the soot from his sodden coat, but the hands he raised were black as a bear’s paws.

  As he glanced back, Lamoric followed his horrified barons, saying only, “Lord of Dooms . . .”

  “Lordship.” Durand settled onto one knee, grimacing at the waves of fatigue that threatened to toss him on his face.

  “How have you done this?” said Lamoric. “How have you come to this place? I’d half took you for some messenger from the Otherworld. God.” He stepped closer. Saffron circled the young man’s eyes.

  Durand teetered on his knee. “Lordship. Take the host out of Yrlac. You must—”

  Lamoric raised a hand. “Sir Coensar, what’s this man doing here?”

  “Who could stop him?” Coensar murmured.

  “It is a trap, Lordship.” Durand mashed his eyes tight a moment. “The Rooks. Radomor. They have tried to kill you.” The ride across the market cobbles flashed before Durand’s mind’s eye. “They are not finished.”

  Durand noted Berchard looking on with some bafflement, his eye still bristling with stitches. Badan glowered at the man’s side, his thumbs were hooked in a chained flail he’d knotted in his belt. As waves of exhaustion beat at Durand, his eye fixed on the chain. Every knob and corner. A thing like it had smashed his face and thrown him down. He could feel each link in the bones of his face: lock and key. Was Badan Radomor’s man? Durand could think of no more likely traitor.

  He pressed on. “And the army. The host. This march is what Radomor wants.”

  “Sir Durand!” said Lamoric.

  “We must pull the army back. They’re laughing. Licking their—”

  Lamoric snapped his hand up. A wind battered the hundreds of campfires against their coals, and Lord Lamoric clawed his hair from his face.

  “Sir Durand, we cannot carry you. The land is laid waste. The men are shaken. Already, our horses are failing. And there are these dogs at our bloody heels.” His eyes glittered as red as his surcoat in the firelight.

  “It’s death to carry on.” He heard his voice echo from the tombs and down toward the river.

  “Hells, man.”

  “We’ve put our head on the block.”

  “Durand!” Lamoric caught Durand by the surcoat. “Shut up. Conran’s got us camped with the dead. Radomor’s got the dukedom in cinders. And we’ve lost every man who’s ducked behind a bush to yank his breeches down.”

  “Lordship—”

  “Here you are, black as cinders, riding hunched over your saddle on a great black horse straight from the edge of your own grave. You’re bloody lucky we didn’t cut your throat or sick the Septarim on you. How in the Hells did you manage to break through the cursed dogs?”

  Durand found he couldn’t keep his balance.

  In a wincing swoon, he fell from Lamoric’s fist.

  Face in the turf, Durand tried a crack-toothed grin. “A bell,” he said. “Took a toll on the dogs.”

  He felt hands on his shoulders. “Get up, man.”

  He struggled, but he couldn’t clear his head.

  “Durand?” Lamoric demanded. Then he was shouting elsewhere. “Get this fool into the tent. They’ve burying grounds enough round Acconel. He could have saved himself a journey.”

  And then his tone caught a wilder edge, “Durand? Get Guthred! Where’s Conran? Someone get Guthred!”

  Durand let them find him a place to close his eyes.

  DURAND WOKE IN a strange tent. The straw was damp. He heard voices outside. The nearest was old Guthred’s.

  “Don’t doubt there’s a dark hand back of all this. It don’t take no lord to think it through, neither. Does it start with our Radomor? Five years back, someone slays the old king a-hunting in Prince Eodan’s woods up there. But it’s Ragnal that takes his father’s throne, of course. Being eldest. But who’ll trust either son after that? And then Ragnal can’t keep a penny in his pouch. And there’s war in the marches. And Ragnal hazards his crown for a mad loan, and then these hostages. And Radomor? He rides in the van of the king’s host, but gets himself struck down. And these damned Rooks find him just as he falls and they start with their whispering just as his wife betrays him. Now, Eodan’s pulling his Windhover from Errest and King Ragnal’s marching to put him down. And the sanctuaries are falling, one after another. The Banished go abroad. And more and more sanctuaries fall, pulling the wards of them old Patriarchs with them. So there’s no ties between king and land and the lands coming apart. That’s what you’d do if you could stand to lie your three days under stone. If you wasn’t fit to rule. If you didn’t have a drop of royal blood. Ain’t it? Now, get to work. I’ll see if our sleeping prince is ready to take the air.”

  And Guthred poked his heavy nose in from a dawn both vague and wary with mist.

  “Lads got to roll up this here tent,” grunted Guthred. “Most of the army’s down the road. You’re with me in the baggage. We’ve got a cart for—”

  Durand lurched to life, surging past the old shield-bearer only to find the army vanishing all around him: the valley was a cauldron of mist with tombs bobbing like fat in a stew. Backs and horse’s backsides disappeared into the clouds. Already, the vanguard would be at the riverbank far below. There were only carts and carters left behind, maybe a man or two to ride rearguard. There was a cart waiting for him and Lamoric’s damned tent. Turning in place, Durand cried aloud for a horse.

  “You ain’t gonna catch ‘em!” called Guthred.

  But Durand spotted a liver palfrey, neat and nimble. “I’ll catch them, and I’ll turn ‘em back!” Durand snarled. And snatching the palfrey from its groom’s hands, he plunged down the tomb valley and into the mist.

  DURAND GOT NOWHERE. The track was narrow. With three thousand men, hundreds of horses, and scores of mules and oxen all wallowing down one riverbank track, Durand could not reach Lamoric. The slope climbing above the river was too steep to pass: all steep banks and rubble. An hour after beginning his chase, Durand was still trapped a bowshot from his master—and from any hope of turning the host back to Acconel.

  Every step of the palfrey had him wincing. He rode, curled up like a fist around his bad ribs, and resolved to catch Lamoric the first time the army halted: food or water, he’d bolt up the column and get hold of the man. And the plan gave him a chance to breathe.

  He would turn the army back. King Rag
nal would summon his host against the upstart in Yrlac. And with the Kingdom safe, he might find a way to untie the knots in his heart. He would confess it all to Lamoric, and lay himself at the man’s feet. He would run for the world’s ending. She would call him mad. Whatever might happen, everything depended on getting them out of Yrlac.

  He risked a painful twist to search for Deorwen—she would be somewhere among the staring masses marching east. But as Durand had wrestled his way forward, he had not caught sight of her blue cloak. He tried to remember the dreams that had led her east. Wherever she rode, she was safer with the host than she was alone with him on horseback. The dogs still ranged the valley. Men jumped at every noise, and even the outriders clung to the column.

  This last fact had Durand scowling. With the scouts drawn back, the host was like a blind man groping with a stick: the whole army could see no farther than the tallest man; at any bend in the river, there could be ten thousand swords.

  If Radomor chose to block the valley in a narrow pass, fifty men could bottle up a thousand. If he dropped on their backs as they crowded between the river and the valley wall, he’d cut them to pieces.

  Again, Durand twisted in the saddle. All of this was just what Radomor would want: the host caught blind in a valley as narrow as a horse trough. It was more trap than an able commander would need. He scoured the ridgeline above them. A battalion could fall on their necks at any moment; they were blind and strung out for half a league. This was how Radomor would take them.

  He would not wait for a convenient halt. Durand looked up and down the column: three thousand men strung in the narrowest chain. It could happen any moment, and every doom he could imagine would collapse on him.

  With a pang of desperation, Durand spurred the palfrey straight into the mob ahead of him. He barged between the knees and hindquarters of ten ranks of cavalry—and got nowhere.

  Frantic, he craned his neck—and spotted a way. He could see stones out beyond the riverbank. With a fierce grin, he spurred the little palfrey from the mashed track and straight into the shallow Rushes.

  All along the army he rode, spray flying and hidden pits catching at the horse’s legs. But, by luck and force of will, he brought the palfrey splashing to Lamoric’s side.

  Lamoric raised an arm against the spray. “Lord of Dooms! You might have killed that poor devil.”

  “This is Radomor’s trap, Lordship,” Durand panted. No one could stop, so the palfrey was still diving and splashing.

  “Where’s Guthred?” Lamoric glanced back down the long line of nodding men and beasts. “I thought we had a cart to haul you.”

  “Lordship, the army’s going mad back there. These valley walls closing us in. Without our scouts and pickets riding, Duke Radomor can drop on us whenever he likes.”

  “Durand, I’ll have you sent back in irons, dogs or no dogs. Bring the damned horse up here. You’ll kill it.”

  Durand vaulted the bank, jostling in among Lamoric and his officers.

  “I’ve tried to warn you. The Rooks. They came to me in the Painted Hall,” said Durand.

  “With your head full of poppy and morel and God knows, you’re so sure, Durand?”

  “Then forget the Rooks, Lordship, and only look at what’s before you. We stand in the track the duke has made. That Champion was a goad to start us moving.” He blinked hard. “Now, he has us blinded! Our necks stretched. How long till—”

  Lamoric’s barons hissed like snakes. Swanskin spluttered, “By Heaven, who is this man?”

  They had an audience: knights in the next ranks were looking on—knights who likely had all the dread they needed with the dogs and the gibbets and the burnt acres all around them. But Durand had not ridden alone into Yrlac just to ease his countrymen into Radomor’s trap.

  “How long till the Rooks, the Champion, and Radomor’s host come tearing down the valley? We’ll be slaughtered, and the way to Gireth will be open behind us.”

  Sallow Hythe raised his bearded chin. “The traitor has missed his guess before.”

  Big Honefells flashed a row of white teeth. “We set off damned quick!”

  “Indeed,” said the Baron of Sallow Hythe. “We may yet find his snares half-strung, his pits half-dug. His men amazed.”

  Honefells waved one broad hand. “If he’s set a trap to catch an army, we’ll bring him a bloody thunderbolt. Eh, Sir Durand?”

  Lamoric raised his hand, wanting no thin good humor. “The sooner we can force Duke Radomor to battle, the better.”

  “Lordship. This is just what the devils hope we’ll believe. While your barons argue that Radomor’s devices cannot be ready for us, the devil’s already tied a blindfold on your host and burnt a dukedom.” They had to turn back.

  Lamoric glanced to Coensar and his officers, Sallow Hythe among them. Honefells didn’t know where to rest his gaze. “We’ve discussed reconnaissance in force,” said Lamoric.

  “Fair enough, but . . .”

  “They have not returned,” said Lamoric. His officers now wore darker expressions.

  “What do you—?”

  “They rode, but there’s been no sign.”

  Durand set his broken teeth together. “Hells,” he said. “How many?”

  “Three fighting conroi. Two score and eight. They rode out an hour ago,” confessed Lamoric.

  “Lord of Dooms, we are just where the devils want us!” Uphill he could see the top of the rise rippling against the leaden sky. He swung his arm across all of it. “His road, his valley, his plan.” Was it too late?

  Now, Lamoric paused a moment. “That we could change.”

  There were glances among the officers.

  “Why not take the high ground?” said Lamoric.

  Through his mustaches, old Swanskin Down spluttered the obvious objection: “And be seen for five leagues in every direction, plain as day!”

  “Aye,” said Lamoric. “Seen for leagues, but we’re marching up a path Radomor’s rolled out for us. Every man here knows it. And these are his creatures we’ve got ranging around us on every side. By now, the whoreson knows just where we march and precisely our number.”

  Lamoric stared into Durand’s face for several long heartbeats while the company plodded deeper into Radomor’s duchy. “I will not turn tail. I will not let Radomor build his strength. Let him do his worst. A man might catch a tiger in his net, but does he know what to do once he’s got it?”

  “Radomor knows,” said Durand.

  “Enough! I have said my piece. We knew it would come to fighting. We knew what we faced in Radomor. Not every man will ride home. Now, stop trailing after me like some toy on a string. You will ride in my guard. Take your post by Sir Badan, I think our poor old Berchard’s tired of the devil.”

  Durand managed a grim bow. If Lamoric meant to go on, Durand must follow. He could not abandon Deorwen. He could not abandon Lamoric. He must urge his countrymen back to safety or share their doom.

  THEY CLIMBED, RIDING the broad spine of Radomor’s dukedom, farther from escape and with Deorwen in tow. Dogs took three more men as bowels and modesty drove them from the line. The ride over the bare back of the high ground was rougher, but the men could breathe a little more deeply with the black walls drawn back and a few leagues of open country around. Honefells got some of his liegemen singing, but, despite the army’s longer views, there wasn’t an unclenched jaw in the armed line that teetered along the valley top.

  Radomor would have foreseen all this: an army willing to march blind would have been too much to hope for. But Durand had no doubt that Radomor would have taken advantage of the chance if they’d given him much longer.

  “Hey!”

  Durand twisted—too fast for his aching ribs—and found Badan sneering at him. The man hauled his mail hood down in a rusty gesture that left his forehead bulging, bald as a dead man’s backside. “Much better,” he spat. “Your idea, this riding on the ridge.” Their horses lurched up some farmer’s berm. “The boys loved the climb, I�
�m sure. They all needed a good stiff scramble after the rain and the soot and the mud. And there’s no road to worry about up here. Just lovely peasant berms and ditches. It’s a wonder.”

  But Durand was looking at the old chain flail knotted round the whoreson’s middle, and feeling the knobbed aches in his skull and bones as a man might finger a sharp knife’s edge. “You carry a chained flail,” he said.

  Badan winced. “What of it, mooncalf?”

  “You weren’t happy in that alley back in Acconel. Were you . . . ?”

  “What? That push of yours? Huh. Maybe someone will give you a good shove at the wrong time, eh? Teach you a lesson.”

  “Maybe,” said Durand, “they will.” Maybe they did. He could almost see the sneering whoreson in front of him, chasing him from the battle at Acconel, old flail rattling like a sack of nails. He could feel every leather strip round the grip of Ouen’s sword.

  Then there were shouts; somewhere alongside the column one of the devil dogs trotted a gully, orange and streaked as old iron. Durand hauled Ouen’s blade from its scabbard, but, before he could spur his palfrey, crossbows were clanking and snapping death from every side.

  As the column looked on, bolt after black bolt flickered through the bounding devil. “Hells,” said Badan, “they’ve missed. Must have.” And finally, the brute bobbed over the next rise. The barbs of razored iron might have been sticks and pebbles shied by plowmen’s children.

  Still, Lamoric drove them deeper and deeper into Yrlac.

  While the officers spoke of strategy and the lay of the land toward Ferangore, Durand twisted with an agony beyond bones and bruises. They had to turn back. With Lamoric and his commanders all determined to march on, he could do nothing but keep his eyes open, and ride beside Badan at the back of Lamoric’s guard.

  Riding got no easier. Hagon’s bottle was soon dry. Durand’s winces merged into a long, drifting time when he might have been on the waves of the Broken Crown. Or tumbling in the cold grip of Silvermere.