In a Time of Treason

by David Keck

He woke when a brittle weight snatched him from gray dreams like a stroke of lightning. Needle claws held him, his muscles twisting, and black wings battered his jaw. Durand could neither flinch nor fall to escape. He had a rook on each shoulder.

  One dagger beak poured its long whisper into Durand’s skull, “At long last, the hour draws near when all dooms must be revealed.” The sound skittered round and round.

  “King or carrion for our poor duke,” said the other. Maggots crawled over the feathers beyond Durand’s nose, while his head crawled with the damned whispers. He hoped the duke and his creatures would soon be carrion.

  Since Durand had dozed off, the army had become a thing of shadows and soft voices. Whatever the hour, the clouds and drizzle had nearly choked the daylight.

  “How long have we waited, brother?”

  “I would measure since the first whisper that called us north.”

  “The dream! Three moons before Radomor’s battle upon the Hallow Down.”

  Durand had choked down enough of the Rooks and their games, but, twisting between pain and the confusion, there was little left to him but fury.

  “A bare smile in darkness. Night after night.”

  “Have we told you, Sir Durand?”

  Durand grimaced, snarling, “What are you talking—”

  “A smiling man. Waiting. Locked in a stony night.”

  “We never spoke of it?”

  “Swathed in webs. Cloaked in dust. He whispered. We could not quite hear.”

  As the cursed whispers scrambled round Durand’s skull, he caught fleeting images of the two sorcerers, three hundred leagues south. Berchard had told stories of fallen priests, skulking among the tombs and desert places, drawn to murder and rebellion: the Rooks.

  “How could we not come nearer?” said one.

  “You’re mad,” snarled Durand. What devil would summon these fiends? Not Radomor. By their own words, they set out for the north when Radomor was still a hero, a married heir riding at the head of the Royal Host.

  The gray sky pitched beyond the column of shadowed soldiers. He ached to breathe. In the grip of the damned claws, he could drown in the open air, with a thousand men around him.

  “Impulsive, perhaps—and curiosity has long had the most fervent grip on our hearts. But hardly had we reached the northlands when we were greeted by the sounds of battle: the red flight of kites and the black of crows.”

  “The rightful king lying stricken on the field!”

  “Happy doom after happy doom has befallen us.”

  As they bragged and prattled, the vault of Heaven flashed with the beating of Durand’s heart. The sorcerers’ grip held him like skewers. His lungs convulsed. “Devils,” said Durand.

  “And we have been faithful in our curiosity, plucking up each jolly bauble laid in our path. Rightful kings to play with! How could any man doubt such a providence?”

  Durand snatched another half breath: “You will pay.”

  “Ah, Durand. Such surprises await you. You will never guess. Not for us, the life of the dull herd.”

  “To the Hells with you!” He could hardly prise his teeth apart to say it.

  “Please,” purred one Rook. “We were speaking of dreams.”

  “Where,” said the other, “is that little dreamer of yours, by the way? Is it possible that Lamoric’s lady has been bundled up in the baggage train?”

  “No,” said Durand. They had eyes everywhere. What had they seen?

  The Rooks laughed. “We are so happy you have come.”

  “Off! Off! Get off him!” Someone was shouting—the voice familiar.

  Both birds hopped into the air. And, with a gasp, Durand was free and nearly pitching from his saddle. As his head cleared, he heard the Rooks cackling into the low Heavens. He had to find Deorwen.

  “Here, here. Easy, boy. They must’ve taken him for dead!” declared a rougher voice. And, in a clumsy whisper: “You can’t blame the devils. Look at the state of him.”

  “Durand,” said the first voice. And now Durand caught hold of the sounds. He saw Deorwen staring back at him from her blue hood. She had been there all along. A fat man in a red cap sat with her on the same pack mule.

  “. . . That’s Sir Durand who fought with Lord Lamoric,” Deorwen finished, drawing a veil over her accidental intimacy. Durand caught her eye for an instant under her boyish blue hood.

  Durand heard the wooden thump and squeal of cartwheels and the gusty breath of oxen, and he understood that he’d drifted back from the head of the column to fetch up among the baggage. Badan would have watched him doze off and half an army would have passed him, sleeping. He didn’t like the thought.

  “Bastard. The Rooks,” he mumbled. “Gloating.”

  Red-Cap put a hand to his mouth, trying another hamfisted whisper. “You’re sure it’s him? A fellow’d hardly know the poor devil! And he’s nearly killed himself to get out here—I’m just saying—maybe a man’s got to know when he’s—”

  Just as Durand made ready to knock the cap off the man’s head, a strange whisper sizzled to life. The sound came from everywhere and nowhere: familiar verses from the old Book of Moons.

  At once, Durand flashed Ouen’s blade into the gloom, though he saw nothing but carts and packhorses. Tall brown grass swept the horses’ bellies.

  “Here,” spluttered Red-Cap. His face gleamed with sweat or grease. “There’s no call for anger, Lordship! The lad! It was the lad! He was just curious. Saw we was passing you, like. And the crows, and—”

  —The tall grass boiled, full of dogs.

  The horses screamed out.

  All around, the dogs tore through the column, leaping and snapping at men and beasts. Scores of the things. Pack upon pack. While Durand clung to his spinning palfrey with spurs and fists, men all around him leapt from carts to save themselves as their animals ran mad with fear.

  Durand twisted in his saddle, catching a fistful of ear and bridle to hold Deorwen’s mule; the fool beast made to bite him.

  All across the eerie darkness, he saw snatches of flying blood—and soldiers staggering into wild-eyed knots, their weapons aimed at the grass. The baggage train was tearing itself to pieces. Carts tumbled at the heels of wild oxen.

  As quickly as they’d come, the dogs were flowing off through the tall grass like pike under the skin of a pond. Somewhere, an ox bellowed on and on. Anyone pulled from the cavalcade was dead. The brutes had waited for the first stretch of tall grass.

  With a glance that nearly left him flat with relief, Durand saw that Deorwen had survived—though her companion was missing. He loosed the twisting mule. And shouts nearby summoned his attention.

  A few paces away, her red-capped comrade had turned up: he had caught one of the brutes. Durand gave Deorwen a glance, then jumped down into the marveling circle around the body of a ruddy mastiff. The thing lay spitted on the end of an old boar spear in Red-Cap’s fists, motionless but for a mass of flies.

  This was how close the things had come to Deorwen.

  The wind ran over the high grass as the circle of men muttered charms against evil and held their hands in the Eye of Heaven or tight on the hafts of their weapons. The fields were still alive beyond the column, but they had one of the creatures before them.

  Deorwen spoke. “Hadn’t you better give him some room, Braca?”

  “No, here. Look, boy!” Even Durand flinched as red-capped Braca abruptly hoisted the dog from the turf, scattering flies and worse over the onlookers. His old spear could have been a pitchfork.

  Durand and the ring of common soldiers gaped: the stiff shape could have been dead a month. Durand felt the faintest trace of the dogs’ whisper—as though over leagues of grassland.

  Someone rode close; the jingle of tack turned a few heads from the carcass. Lamoric and his officers rode down the flanks from the column’s head: Conran, Coensar, Sallow Hythe, and the rest, ready to drive off the dogs or assess the disaster. Now, they found the circle around the dead creature.
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  As Lamoric dropped from his saddle, the soldiers made way—Lady Deorwen retreating a step faster than the soldier crowd. A bow neatly hid her face. And there, Braca stood alone before the mighty, autumn tufts of stubble on the greasy bladder of his face.

  “Lord of Dooms . . .” murmured Lamoric, coming closer. Braca flinched a dyspeptic grin. The red mastiff’s limbs stood stiffly. “Now, we’ll have a look at the bastard. Here—” He reached to take Braca’s spear.

  “A moment, Lordship,” Coen said. In a smooth gesture, he drove old Keening through hide and gristle and into the turf below. Piercing the thing, again, provoked a nasty reek, but Coensar only muttered and gave the blade a good twist. Durand heard the earth grate under Keening’s point, though there was never a twitch from the carcass. The thing’s reddish hair fluttered in the wind.

  Coensar bent, marveling. He looked to Braca. “You’re sure you saw—?”

  As Coen’s knee touched the turf, the faded whisper in Durand’s skull returned with the force of a thunderbolt. In a flash of teeth, the carcass twisted. And only a sudden blow from Durand knocked his captain from the thing’s reach.

  Staggering, Durand made to sweep his own blade down on the thing, but Conran the Marshal had stepped into the circle.

  “Ah!” The giant knight stood over the fiend-dog, with his solitary eye flashing, and the point of his sword through the monster’s neck. Now, the thing writhed. Though it might ignore Keening, it could not pretend to sleep with the marshal’s blade in its gullet.

  “Days now, I have waited for you,” Conran rumbled.

  Each baron had found his sword, and the blades ringed the marshal as though the men were ready to dance the Turning of the Year.

  The dog snarled; Durand’s head shuddered with the Book of Moons: “She looked upon the waste her delay had caused. She saw the pain brought by the Hag and Son of Morning: death, hunger, want, jealousy. She looked and her Tears fell upon Creation.” Its tongue flapped and curled.

  But the marshal held the monster. His knuckles bulged as thick as ankle bones. “See what your games have cost you now, vile one! By the King of Heaven! By the Warders’ shields. By the Champion’s lance! By the Traveler’s crooked staff!”

  Now, the dog shrieked—a whistle. It kicked and beat the ground. But Conran only leaned on his great blade, pouring out invocations until the very clouds curdled over the heads of the army.

  The Heavens changed. Men gaped at the churning cloud. They tottered in circles as flickers of yellow light slipped through the gray ceiling to fall upon marshal and monster.

  For a league or more across the fields, the giant knight’s voice rolled. “Creeping thief!” he roared. “You are helpless!” His free hand shot into the sky. “Under the glance of Heaven, you are destroyed!”

  At his word, the Eye flashed down upon the ancient knight and crooked dog. Beyond Yrlac it must be noon, for the Eye blazed, kindling Conran’s blade. And the rotten creature split. From its hide, a shadow burst into the sky, towering in an instant higher than a stand of oaks over the army.

  The men shrank against the earth, among the roots of the stinking cloud, breathing foul air that frayed the soul. But the darkness could not endure the Eye of Heaven. The long blade of the Eye turned through the heart of it, and soon the shadow faded and was gone. Durand peered out across the high ridge, where there was nothing but breeze and empty air between the host and Heaven.

  But the clouds were knotting overhead, and Conran slid his blade from the carcass as the gloom returned.

  “Hmph. The Tears,” the great man muttered.

  Lamoric and a hundred others looked into the crags of Conran’s face. “I don’t—”

  “The Tears of Heaven’s Queen.” The giant took a moment to wipe the length of his blade in a pinch of his cloak. “A man might find it all in the Book of Moons, but I will tell it. The King of Heaven wrought Creation, dreamed it, made it turn in the Heavens. Only late did the Queen join her King here in his Creation. As he left, she revealed Creation to the Hag. And she mourned the grief her act and absence wrought among us: the death and fear the Son of Morning and the Hag brought.

  “One such creature runs the land for every tear she shed when, finally, she joined us here—and understood what she had done.” He brushed a spatter from the hanging sleeves of his mantle.

  “It’s the story the devils whisper,” said Durand.

  The man raised one snarled eyebrow, fixing Durand with a glance. “Aye. Some can hear a few words. Sour old devils they are, traveling like foul breath on the wind. Feeble things.”

  Now, Lamoric gaped. “Feeble?” he said.

  “They would not allow my brothers close enough to know them. Wary, slinking things they are and loath to act. What power is in them, they have stolen—a drop of the divine for each—and they fear to lose it. A glance from Heaven’s Eye is more than they can bear. Without such borrowed carcasses as these, they could not act upon Creation at all.

  “I’ve not heard of their being met in such numbers before this day. Not in Errest the Old. Not in the Atthias at all.” The man squinted westward toward the heart of Radomor’s dukedom. “Our rebel’s black-cloaked friends will have bound or bribed them to this little rebellion of theirs.”

  Durand was not alone in feeling a shiver at this.

  Conran looked round him, the glass-pale eye glittering in his stony face as he noted the wary ring of blades around him and the empty carcass. He smiled. “It will not bite. Not now.”

  Lamoric raised his hands. “Put up those swords, gentlemen,” he breathed. “We will trust the marshal, I think.”

  Old Swanskin scowled, slipping his sword back into its scabbard. “Who are you?”

  “Brother Conran, Baron.”

  “But what are you? You Septarim. Why’ve you come?” the baron pressed.

  “Some force is picking at the Wards of the Ancient Patriarchs, freeing every devil to walk the land.” The giant cocked an eyebrow. “You would rather we left, Baron?”

  Swanskin snorted, though from him it seemed a note of reconciliation. “Lord of Dooms. I won’t count the teeth in a gift horse’s jaw.” He looked back over the column. “Aye. I’m more worried by the pack train. There’ll be more tears shed when the men mark how little bacon these dogs have left us. They’re none of them blind.”

  Broken carts and torn oxen were scattered for a bowshot in every direction.

  “The choice was men or meat, Baron. My brothers cannot be everywhere.”

  Lamoric peered over the carnage. “I am content with the marshal’s choice.”

  Durand scrubbed his aching shoulder and wondered why Radomor would bother with the pack train. The sleeping dog might have beheaded Lamoric’s army, but the baggage meant only that the army would be hungry if it managed to survive another week or so. Whatever Radomor planned, the dogs and gibbets and charred fields chilled the marrow of every man. Was it fear alone that Radomor intended? While he might believe it of the Rooks, he knew that Radomor was too pragmatic to bother with such petty victories. What was he planning?

  Durand found Deorwen’s brown eyes in the uneasy crowd and wished more than anything that she had stayed with the wise women in Acconel.

  HOW MANY AND how far? These were the questions on Durand’s mind as he rode the ridge through soaking drizzle. Radomor’s army was still abroad. Durand had found Pale among the bags, and felt strong again with the thickset black bounding along under him. They had slain one dog, and Radomor’s army was out there in the rain somewhere: the teeth of the trap.

  It was an hour later that the vanguard of Lamoric’s watchful army rode into an area of churned earth. And Durand was out of the saddle before Coensar called a halt. They’d stumbled into a broad, bowl-shaped basin above the Rushes. Durand stalked out among great, matted swathes of grass and thistle. Berchard and a few of the others from Lamoric’s group were ordered to follow while Marshal Conran sent a ring of his pale knights to take up positions facing the fields and valley.


  Each flattened rectangle conjured battalions in Durand’s mind’s eye, sellswords and renegades all hunkered low on the ridge. Durand turned to the valley side only to find a sheltered slope rolling straight down to the river track, perfect for a sudden downhill charge. This was where Radomor’s host had slipped close, sharpening its blades in wait for Lamoric’s slender column to snake below. The thought touched him like cold fingers. He could taste their sweat in the air. This was the spot where Radomor would have destroyed Gireth. But a shift in Lamoric’s tactics had dislodged Radomor’s army, and now they were on the move again somewhere beyond the veils of rain—not quite omnipotent, it seemed.

  Berchard grunted.

  “Could have been a city camped here,” Durand murmured; he could see signs that a great many tents had been pitched in the basin. There were fire pits. “Hard to guess how many.” But a good count would be the closest he had come to clapping eyes on the enemy. They were not infinite.

  Badan picked across the place, a sour look on his face. “Keep your eye out for dogs, mooncalf. While you’re sniffing.”

  Berchard laughed. “Fear not, brave Badan. We’ve got our Holy Ghosts to watch over us.”

  Durand glanced at the backs of the still knights as he limped over the rumpled ground. “Holy Ghosts.” Old Sir Agryn from back in the Red Knight days had nearly joined their number—except that a woman had drawn him away. Durand wondered what they could really do. And what the Rooks had planned for them.

  Berchard’s beard split in a wide smile. “Servants of the king since the High Kingdom they are—and the bravest of knights to a man.” He glanced at their pale and silent circle, then pitched his voice for only his comrades to hear. “I drank with a charcoal burner from near the Knights’ House at Loegern one rainy night. We sat in his moldy hut while the old oaks dripped, he told a story about climbing the great curl of a beech limb near the Loegern walls—as a boy, you understand. And seeing a squadron of these Holy Ghosts stretched out on long slabs, pale and dead in every stitch of their war gear. And, being a boy, he couldn’t resist slipping down among them. So, there he was, stealing along the white aisles of them, prodding cold flesh and fondling buckle-brass and iron ring, says he, when a great blade of ruddy light swung into the place: the old Eye of Heaven had sunk low enough to slide through the west windows, and the dead lads were up. Rising from their slabs!”